Nowtopian

Biking and Biting by the Bay

That’s what we called our rolling, 4-stop, 4-course picnic last Wednesday. We were only 13 folks since we held it at 3 pm on a Wednesday, but we figured it was a trial-run of a (hopefully) good idea, and that it will be easier to replicate with more people later.

LisaRuth cuts her ever-more famous and always astonishingly delicious bread!

Carin McKay, my erstwhile flatmate, and former collaborator on our Slow Food Feasts at CounterPULSE, was my co-conspirator in setting this one in motion. We started from home, our bicycles laden with good food and drink, utensils, tablecloths, etc., and rode to the bayshore at 24th, known to the City’s Rec and Park Dept. as “Warm Water Cove” but to many locals as “Toxic Beach” or “Toxic Golf course” (back in the day, people went there to get drunk, bbq, play music, and yes, hit golf balls into the bay). It’s next to the Mirant power plant which will be shut down next year, ending a decades-long history of heavy polluting power plants along the southeastern bayshore of San Francisco.

Oh, the bread, the bread!

After scrumptious gazpacho, along with the bread and a great olive tapenade, fresh sweet butter, and a couple of bottles of red wine to get us going, we headed north along Illinois Street, past the stump of Irish Hill, and through the bizarre suburban landscape of the new UCSF Campus at Mission Bay. On the north side of that blight on the city we stopped at the edge of Mission Creek under a tree filled with defecating birds (one of our friends was nailed as we pulled up). Once we settled in, the second course proceeded with several bottles of Prosecco, Tuna Carpaccio, and a vegetarian analogue, a zucchini marinade with mint and cilantro, lemon and peppers.

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Needed: Climate Change!

Since I’m planning to go to the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in December, it seems only appropriate that I should show up to local efforts to address the topic. After an intense flurry of dozens of messages sent via Facebook (and Twitter, were I using it, which I won’t) I thought the “Mobilization for Climate Justice” yesterday in Richmond would attract a couple of thousand people or so… But no, there weren’t even 300 people at the rally near the end of the BART line in Richmond. It wasn’t entirely the same old people, but it was one of those political experiences that reward the patient and frustrate anyone who thinks something as difficult as this is easy.

The march starts, led by Henry Clark of the West County Toxics Coalition (in the black hat).

I have friends who have doggedly organized against Chevron for years now, trying their best to connect to the local efforts against toxic emissions and pollution and for environmental justice, so I was surprised at how few locals attended the rally. I joked with Robert as we got back to SF that at least we felt better for having gone, and had to acknowledge that it wasn’t much different than the people who feel better for having gone to church. Leftist demonstrations seem to have fully collapsed as meaningful political forms now, and only the true believers can maintain any sense of efficacy in participation in them.

richmond-protest-signs_1220

Richmond elected a Green mayor last time around, and there's definitely a growing vision of a new life growing here.

Continue reading Needed: Climate Change!

Ruminating on Nowtopia

Funny to get a news feed indicating that “nowtopia” had popped up in an essay over on Counterpunch, written by a Torontoan… it’s a lovely essay, and flattering to see nowtopia becoming a useful noun already!

In May 2008 Nowtopia was published. It’s been a year and a quarter and I’ve had the great fortune to travel to many places and present the book, meeting incredible people, reconnecting with old friends, and it looks like I’m not finished yet! There is a good chance I’ll be making a trip to Buffalo this fall, and to Scandinavia for a mini-tour prior to the Copenhagen Climate Conference. The questions that I try to prepare myself for are the inevitable queries a couple of years from now: Was the analysis in Nowtopia wrong? Is this argument about a transition to a new way of knowing life really happening? What’s the evidence? And what about the notion that this is a process driven by a working class recomposing itself in terms of useful work?

I don’t actually think I’ll be able to answer those questions in two or three years. Part of my analysis gets me off the hook, because it doesn’t have to show up in a given amount of time to be “true.” On the other hand, if there is nothing happening that corresponds to my analysis, that might serve to debunk it, of course.