Boomcrash

Effectiveness, Ethics and Community

A reply to Jen Angel’s “On Oscar Grant, Violence, and Outsiders”

In looking at this situation, three questions come to mind:

Effectiveness: What is obtained by a given action for oppressed and marginalized peoples?

Ethics: What is the impact of a given action on oppressed and marginalized peoples?

Community: What is the response from oppressed and marginalized peoples who are most directly impacted by a given action?

As with most of the “activist left” in the US, especially among the college educated and/or white middle class left, black bloks pretty much fail in all three of these areas, but first and foremost, they tend not to be an effective means for building towards liberation, including the kinds of liberation that have anti-authoritarianism at their core: they’re a symbolic means of expressing extreme displeasure with a given situation, but frequently with a vaguely defined message and an even vaguer target. This is not to say that all forms of property destruction are inherently ineffective — indeed, there are a number of examples of such actions having a very clear message that is directly targeted at the source of the problem (warheads, for example), which while being symbolic in nature, use said symbolic means to raise both questions and awareness regarding the morality of a given enterprise from the powers-that-be. In contrast, going all smashy-smashy on a Whole Foods in the middle of a street-level moment of resistance to police violence may feel good — and believe me, there’s a lot that can be rightfully said and acted upon as per Whole Foods — but effective? I don’t think so. It’s not that Whole Foods or Starbucks or any of these corporate-based lifestyle behemoths aren’t an active part of people’s alienation — clearly they are – but targeting them by default typically doesn’t speak to the immediately tangible and quite real sources of people’s anger, and if anything, acting in such a fashion reinforces the laughably inaccurate view perpetuated in the mainstream media that “anarchists” (read: anybody dressed in black who breaks something that represents the status quo, regardless of their politics, race, gender, economic status, views on the state and so on) are a bunch of young, petulant white suburban youth who are just looking for something to vent their oh-so-inexplicable rage on.

In terms of ethics: I think much of what drives people in black bloks who have genuine intentions to change society for the better, if the various manifestos and statements I’ve read over the years are any indication, is the need to spur people to actively resist the myriad of ways that mainstream society oppresses the vast majority of people in a routine if not constant basis. In this way, the “outsiders” argument falls flat: the only real outsider is someone who is so removed from the vicissitudes of daily life as to be untouched by the quotidian, which means that with rare exception, none of us are outsiders, and we all are in this ennui-laden mess together. The problem with this approach as a justification for property destruction is that, if said manifestos are any indication, there doesn’t appear to be much of a dialogue outside of manifesto-writing circles and such as to what actually is both effective and ethical outside of said circles.

In contrast, what is needed from non-marginalized peoples in a given context (for example, white radicals living in a predominately black neighborhood) is much more in the way of efforts to actively engage in community dialogue in a way that is a two-way street, as well as a willingness to re-evaluate behavior on the basis of that dialogue — a “for us” as opposed to an “against you all.” The reason that this is necessary is not because of the mistaken presumption that a “white means bad, therefore, you’re blaming me for things I have no control over” sort of attack is being fomented by communities of color and their allies (a disturbingly common assumption, in my experience), but because mutually beneficial dialogue is how the work gets done. I’m speaking in general here; there are exceptions, but that’s the problem — they need to be not just exceptions, but the rule in order for any given group of people coming out of the broader radical left, including people who participate in black bloks, to be effective once again.

That said, I think the biggest ethical dilemma with utilizing black bloks as a tactic is that it can, and frequently does, give the police an excuse to institute ever more draconian measures at protests, while at the same time, providing them with a golden opportunity to improve upon the sorts of militarized tactics that have been used in poor communities on a regular basis for decades. In short: the intention coming from people who are part of a given black blok may not be to do the cop’s work for them (if anything, it can be and frequently is the opposite), but in practice, it does so, and quite effectively. This is exactly why the police love to infiltrate black bloks — it’s not just a matter of “getting the bad guys,” it’s also a utilization of a remarkably effective way to further drive a wedge in already polarized communities from all backgrounds, especially if infiltrators succeed in committing property damage without getting exposed, which in turn kicks in the mainstream media portrayal of “scary anarchists” in near-record time.

Further, the mainstream media’s common portrayal of your typical “black bloker” is white, male and quite far from being a cohesive “blok” of anything; it’s as if said individuals somehow found each other through some form of chaos-driven telepathy, or possibly via “anarchist gaydar,” as Jen Angel notes. The fact that this is not representative of the race, gender, social views, political work, et. al. of anarchists on the whole does not change the fact that a) the common perception among many non-anarchists is that anarchists equals black bloks equals those crazy white guys with their smashy-smashy, and b) while anarchists on the whole are not exclusively white and male, a lot of the people who are represented as “black blok anarchists” in the mainstream media in fact are such. This reifying of a tactic into a representation of “anarchists” writ large is further compounded by said portrayals typically being the only time the mainstream news ever mention anarchists or anarchism. This presents an interesting ethical dilemma for anarchists who do not feel adequately represented by this portrayal: how should we respond to this obvious misrepresentation of our work? In my view, the best way to counter this is to actively represent the ways in which our work is not represented by this portrayal whenever possible. By engaging in forms of work that actively challenge white supremacy and other mechanisms of oppression in the larger society, while openly representing how our political views can be used as a tool in transforming authoritarian social dynamics, we provide a counter-narrative to the dominant myth of the chaos-loving white boy in all black.

Lastly, community. The vast majority of resistance movements I’ve encountered on the broader left in the U.S. don’t have so much as a clue as to what concerns and motivates people in marginalized communities. The reason for this is simple: most people who self-identify as activists are too busy being right about things off in their own respective subcultures (be they professional, as in non-profits — or “amateur,” as in protests et. al.) to pay much attention as to what people who are not part of a given activist subculture thinks about them, and in turn, what the impact of what their behavior (from being the fairest of fair-weather friends to gentrifying neighborhoods) winds up being, even when they are living and/or working in the middle of poor and working class communities. The reason I point this out is that I would be remiss if I laid the burden of these counter-community sort of situations exclusively on people who happen to on occasion be in a black blok, whoever they may be; while there most certainly are white anarchists and other left radicals who are part of the problem, there are also people who politically identify as anarchists, radicals, et. al. who actively aren’t part of this problem, as well as white non-radicals who are every bit of guilty (if not more guilty) in having a deleterious effect on urban communities of color. However, nobody should merely be let off the hook here – saying “I’m one of the good guys, I want to change the world” is the oldest trick in the book.

This situation symbolizes a problem that, while in some ways highlighted by both the myths and the social realities surrounding black bloks, is also much larger than the occasional broken window. The sooner that larger numbers of people from the corners of the left addressed in this article realize this and start making moves to actively participate in changing these sorts of counter-community dynamics in all their forms, in ways that allow for direct representation from marginalized communities, the better off we all will be. By actively listening to, and when appropriate, engaging in community-based discussions regarding effectiveness and ethics, we create the potential for social change not by activist-based fiat, but through a process that is both diverse and decentralized – a goal that has been much touted not just in anarchist circles, but by the grassroots left as well. It’s my hope that this most recent example of “the trouble with anarchists” can be turned on its ear, and replaced with the beginnings of an actual dialogue for the benefit of all.

Beyond the Pretenses of U.S. Politics (Guest Post)

I have a guest post up at P! Post-Politics in Depth: An Asylum for Broken Rabble. I also wrote an article for ALLiance a while back; look for “Conviviality and Empire” in the table of contents. Enjoy.

The extended spring of my happy discontentThe extended spring of my happy discontentThe extended spring of my happy discontent

An epiphany in honor of Jeanette Winterson

It was the spring of 2007 when the work began to dry up. I had been working as a freelance copy writer, as well as doing a bit of work grading ESL papers. Money was tight, but manageably so. Then slowly, things turned to a trickle. The workload was cut, wages were slashed in half. It was quickly becoming pointless, so I walked into the future, into a vast, welcoming sea of…

…total brokeitude.

I have been here before, many a time. Consider 1993, when I was four months behind in rent. Thanks to a landlord that was flexible enough that I’m still convinced that she was not quite of this world, I didn’t end up on the street. Things did turn around though, and before I knew it, I was waist-deep in a solid income. Lo and behold, I even had the approval of my parents, who as much as they love me, have never really got the whole artist deal. I was acceptable, almost normal, even.

I was miserable.

So when things tanked again in 2001, I walked away from moderately well-heeled despair to attempt to undo the horrendous mistake of it all, this time with a bit of severance pay to soften the blow. This in turn led to graduate school, as well as more time protesting than probably was in my best interests. As noted above, a smaller but noticeable amount of regular income came back into my life for a bit, but things soured again.

Would it shock you if this state is where I find myself still, two years in, ever-so-slowly finding my own way, eking out something well beneath what most people in the US would consider to be a stable income – and yet, even the worst days are vastly more sane, balanced and in tune with the world then the best days previously were? If you are confused by my sense of priorities here, consider this: the “best days” during my corporate years were the days where I had a glimpse of my former happy existence as a broke artist.

If this still puzzles you, let me refer you to a white paper, it may help a bit. “A liminal existence.” That’s what the white paper from AWP said about the post-graduate life of people like me. “Liminal.” See? It’s official. What was formerly the exclusive domain of visionaries and other mad people (I’ll leave it to you to decide which one I am) is now a demographic. You can rest easy in the certainty that I have my place on the spreadsheet now.

This certainty of course is preposterous. All they can offer up is what not just any post-MFA student knows, but what any serious aspiring artist knows as well – that the path of the artist is treacherous, frequently full of failure, and further, that a sizable number of the so-called successes fail epicly to a degree that only Guy Fawkes could fully appreciate, with trashed hotel rooms, fits of mania or suicidal tendencies, and various forms of train wrecked existence in lieu of gunpowder plots? Please. Apologies all around, but forget the white paper. What saved my rounded bottom somewhere between the work drying up and the work drying up yet again was Jeanette Winterson.

Listen to her for yourself:

A work of art is abundant, spills out, gets drunk, sits up with you all night and forgets to close the curtains, dries your tears, is your friend, offers you a disguise, a difference, a pose. Cut and cut it through and there is still a diamond at the core. Skim the top and it is rich. The inexhaustible energy of art is transfusion for a worn-out world.

And:

The artist imagines the forbidden because to her it is not forbidden. If she is freer than other people it is the freedom of her single allegiance to her work. Most of us have divided loyalties, most of us have sold ourselves. The artist is not divided and she is not for sale. Her clarity of purpose protects her although it is her clarity of purpose that is most likely to irritate most people. We are not happy with obsessives, visionaries, which means, in effect, we are not happy with artists. Why do we flee from feeling? Why do we celebrate those who lower us in the mire of their own making while we hound those who come to us with hands full of difficult beauty…what would happen to us if we could imagine in ourselves authentic desire?

These quotes are from a magnificent work of hers called Art Objects, and while it would be a stretch to say that it saved my life, it did save me from a very hazardous toying with a return to the death that is corporate america when the ramen ran out yet again, and the cheap rent started to look insanely expensive.

“Objects to what?”, you may ask.

Being constrained, moulded, packaged, lectured, cajoled. Put into a box for safekeeping. Shrink-wrapped. Lied to, sat upon, mistrusted, misunderstood, ignored. (The former activist in me has to find humor in how closely this resembles Proudhon’s admonishment of government – which is no accident or mere coincidence at all.) In which manner does it do so – the protest, the direct action, the takeover? No. It does so through art itself – not the “I’d like something in green to match the sofa” sort of art – which is more a form of interior decorating – but the kind that takes hold of you and refuses to let go. A tempest that devours the teapot and leaves you bare and Awake. It’s what I live for, and while I would never be so rude as to say that it’s what you should do as well, if you do find yourself in fits of despair, you may want to look at where the creativity in your life resides. If the answer to this is “under a rock,” it may be time to get into the mud a bit.

It should be noted though that none of this is meant to romanticize poverty. The rather dismal state of affairs for artists (and increasingly, for everybody who needs to work for a living) has led to a truncation of the inherent need for creativity in people’s lives by war and economic uncertainty. As Winterson points out, “Ours has not been an easy century for art…Two World Wars, the Spanish Civil War, the General Strike of 1926 and the Depression of the 1930s cut short those experiments in language and in thought that human beings perpetually make and perpetually need.” What she specifically is referring to here is Modernism, but this could be applied to present day realities as well. How much has remained unsaid because of famine, disease and the cultural wars against drug users (actual or suspected), against queers, against pretty much anybody who disobeys? Quite a bit – but consider how power always has two sides; while I think that hip-hop would have emerged with or without the drug wars, consider also how the necessary resistance to power on the part of those who were oppressed led to some of the best works of Hip Hop’s first generation. As Hardt and Negri note repeatedly throughout their work, the price that Empire pays for utilizing biopower may be Empire itself. Do be aware though that for those of you who think that “The Work” is fine and all, but that it’s not social change work, and that it’s not even close to being revolutionary? Please do not project onto artists your own failed attempts at fomenting an uprising because we have the ability to charter the chaotic with greater finesse than you. It makes you mundane, and the last thing the world needs is yet another sorry pack of trifling, artless insurrectionists.

Meanwhile, while we all wait and wonder if capitalism is finally done for good, let it be known that what saved me was not the trade organization, not work (definitely not work), and dear god, don’t even get me started about activism. No, it was art, as in The Work. And my Work objects. Frequently and loudly – but more and more as I recover from activism, from the streets, from that anything-but-liminal form of soul death that I used to call a life? Subtly as well. Art resists – but with a sense of style.

Seattle is dead, long live MultitudeSeattle is dead, long live MultitudeSeattle is dead, long live Multitude

One of the things that tires me to no end about left activists is the notion that we all have to be on the same page, all the time, about everything. Having weathered through a seemingly endless number of house meetings, groupthinks, clusterfucks and so on, I can personally testify to the incessant drum beat of such practices. Note that this includes anti-authoritarians, although for obvious reasons, not to quite the same degree as a centralized, cadre-driven Marxist-Leninist party: think vegans, punk rock/hipster conformity, and collective living.

In no small part, I think this hive-mind-as-potluck tendency is due to leftover – and in some cases, active – strains of 1960s/70s Leninist centrism within left activist circles; an approach that has its origins in a centralized vanguard controlling a mass movement via multiple satellites. Simply put, this approach has outlived its debatable usefulness, both culturally and practically. If anything, discussing this in anything other than the past tense reflects how much a large portion of the activist left is out of touch with the changes that are happening rapidly within global culture. A cursory glance over the political landscape in the US reveals many recognizable movements, and then there’s the thousands of internet-based groups, of which a small but notable minority are political in nature – and yet, if you were to take your information from your standard Usual Suspects, you would be under the impression that there’s a small scattering of such movements, if not a monolithically framed “The Movement” – as if working for social change was some sort of singularity for process freaks – while groups on the internet are dismissed as being escapist or dilettantish.

In fact, it is not centralized, factory-like apperatti that drive social change at this point; instead, it is the very same tendencies towards decentralization and spontaneous mass formation that are part of the culture as a whole, and that are frequently used to formulate mass opinion via crowd psychology. As awful as that may sound, this trend is enormously beneficial: as Rosa Luxembourg noted back in the day, revolution starts with the unconscious: the spontaneous forming of mass resistance to societal forces occurs when a critical mass of people can’t take the unbearable bullshit of it all and start to fight back. It is after this resistance starts to mature a bit that the need for some sort of organizational structure begins to take root. In addition, as Hardt and Negri note in their seminal books Empire and Multitude, the fomentation of a decentralized mostly rural resistance under a centralized command has started to give way to a urban one of a more autonomous nature, circa 1968 onward. As such, the formation of Empire through a decentralized web of semi-conscious individuals, wherein each person is a potential consumer (or if you will, an energy source within a Matrix-like socioeconomic framework) is also the same mechanism wherein individuals can wake up, creatively formulate and strategize with others, and start to resist their own subjugation.

This process of shifting from centralization to autonomy began as many things do: at the end of a cycle. As anarchists were still suffering from the defeat in Spain (as was everybody on the left who was within Franco’s purview), the beginnings of what would become the New Left were beginning to take shape, both culturally and politically. Possibly because of the psychological impact of World War II, as well as the eventual mass availability of the birth control pill and the personal computer, the progressive modernist ideals of the late 19th and early-to-mid 20th century were giving way to postmodern ones. It is for this reason that what has matured throughout the latter part of the 20th century up to the present day is not a centralized, vertical apparatus, but a swarm of decentralized, horizontal pluralities with varying states of authority or autonomy on a case-by-case basis. Seen through a modernist lens, this may look like a regression; but in fact, it is a meaningful shift in tactics and strategies to the present-day virtuality of culture. What is now clear is that centralized organizing as a unitary movement-generating tool has long outlived its prime, and what the left – and in particular, the radical left – is currently suffering from is the last vestiges of that dying ember.

And now, we find ourselves in the midst of an even more articulated form of autonomous resistance yet again, thanks to the internet. The very technologies that are being used to monitor us all are also being used to coordinate the beginnings of mass resistance. As Clay Shirky notes in his seminal book Here Comes Everybody, what used to be the exclusive domain of governments and mainstream media is now potentially in the hands of all, or will be very shortly: from flash mobs in Belarus to internet-coordinated student walkouts in the US, people are using digital technology to assert their collective power in creative and unpredictable ways. (The irony of this to Star Trek fans should be evident: it’s as if the Federation – the government – had given the Borg – the resistance – a bad reputation by castigating it as mindless and hierarchal, when in fact the opposite is true.)

With time, hopefully the activist left will start to capitalize more effectively on this trend towards mass decentralization and empowerment, and act accordingly. As it presently stands, it appears that we’re going through a prolonged period of the left using these tools, but not necessarily being adept at manipulating them. (My own personal attempts to educate fellow activists on the usefulness of these technologies can stand as testament to this fact: having grown weary of debating the merits of the web with laptop-lugging luddites and patiently re-re-schooling “How do I use the internet?” newbies, I’ve taken to blogging instead.) While I do think this is a shame, I also contend that it is critical for people on the left to realize that people en masse are going to empower themselves, with or without activists to “help” them. Any other course of action would be a rather profane act of self-effacement, serving no real purpose other than adhere to antiquated notions about the nature of power in society, such as technology being exclusively in service to our supposed betters, rather than a multi-faceted manifestation of biopower that embodies as much as it oppresses. Most people do not have the sort of luxury that allows for such adherence, and the left should not delude themselves into thinking that they have that sort of cultural opulence either.

Hello, activism? I need my life back.Hello, activism? I need my life back.Hello, activism? I need my life back.

I ran into a friend of mine from grad school a while back, and as part of getting caught up, I mentioned that the people I was spending time with were holding up the works – I was starting to flounder a bit in terms of my creative process and life direction, and as a result, I was ready to pack up and move to LA or NYC. After pointing out the obvious fact that it’s far easier to change who you hang with than where you live, she asked who these meddlesome folks were.

I replied sheepishly, “Um, activists…”

Her jaw dropped. “Oh, honey…”

Needless to say, activism is not her game; she’s more into a combination of art and deal-making – but it definitely was mine. I got my head or other body parts banged around a few times, got arrested a few times more than that, sat through an endless procession of meetings, and pretty much was living the life on-again, off-again just prior to the first US-Iraq war, and all but full-time since 1999. I had paid my dues, and thoroughly was in the mix — between organizing and living collectively, my day-to-day life looked like a cross between The Real World and Battle in Seattle. I loved it tremendously – after a long period of vacillation between counter-culture and corporate “culture,” it was very refreshing to be true to myself and to my politics.

Then? I walked.

It wasn’t for lack of trying to make things work; if anything, I was stubbornly trying to hold it all together, as if activism was some sort of dysfunctional-but-the-sex-is-great relationship that was starting to spin out of control. The minor disagreements that had occurred over the years started turning into pitched confrontations with increasing regularity, and conversations were taking that “Sweetie, perhaps you should not mix Vicodin and Hennessy” tone in both directions. When I got booted out of yet another collective house, I packed it up and moved to LA…

…where I found myself in the middle of the May Day cop riots. I managed to not get my head beat in, but just barely. That sort of ended it for me right there, not so much because of the risk involved, but because I was putting it all on the line – and I do mean it all, people do die or end up with permanent injuries on occasion – for what, exactly? It felt like I was increasingly running counter to my life’s purpose; while I managed to make time for both art and activism, I was doing so at the expense of everything else, and was stressed to the eyeballs as well. So I stopped for good.

After I had packed up yet again and moved back to the Bay Area, humbled yet strong, I went about rebuilding my life without activism as a central fixture. I stopped going to protests, and gave up on meetings. I even managed to shrug off the resulting I’m-abandoning-the-movement feelings of guilt – which may seem uncalled for, until you realize that I had been involved in campaigns and organizing since the 4th grade – and set to work on finishing up a poetry manuscript, followed by designing social community sites. I also vowed to live with fewer people, even though that meant risking higher rent, which thankfully didn’t turn out to be the case. Life started to feel like something that was uniquely mine, rather than time-shared with an ever-changing cast of characters, all with hard-won opinions about everything. I was less stressed, and definitely a lot more happy. I was becoming human again.

So what’s the lesson here? Peoples, listen. The world needs more activists, and badly does it need them. But what the left seems to miss out on with a frightening level of consistency is that activism takes many forms, including things that don’t typically get labeled as activism at all – and socially-minded arts and media creation are two of those things. (Spirituality, relationships and in some circles, community building/organizing frequently get placed this way as well, which pretty much leaves activism as the primary option for social change agents, in terms of collective power. See how this works?) Never mind that activists are frequently active consumers of socially conscious media – but in my experience, activists in the US are as guilty as anybody else when it comes to entertaining the mistaken notion that music, writing, poetry, art, performance, social media and so on just create themselves out of thin air while also being tremendously important, which paradoxically enforces the supposition that creators of art and media are completely on the wrong foot and of critical importance at the same time. It’s a losing battle, and one that I got tired of fighting. I’d rather be creating it than debating it – so that is what I’m doing. End of story.

And yet…I still feel conflicted about it all. It’s as if I’m wanting approval from a tribe that I’m still a part of, but that I have a fundamentally different relationship with, post-capital ‘A’ activism. The problem with this line of somewhat irrational thinking on my part is that it tends to cloud the void-like well that creativity springs out of; in other words, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. So I do what I always do when pernicious doubt tries to sneak into the equation and suck my creativity dry: I ignore it, but make sure to throw it a bone on occasion (chocolate works, but long meandering walks work better) and tell it to pipe down when I need to. I also make sure to give it the love that it desperately wants, while not being ruled by it.

So let this serve as a warning to y’all, as the economy continues to spin and reel, and we all continue to look for answers – the solution that you find may just be the one that most closely mirrors your true desires, and not what your superego-like conscience tells you to do. Don’t listen to anybody who tells you otherwise! Trust yourself, trust your instincts, and together, we artists, activists, visionaries and so can start to build a sustainable future together, free of being ruled by guilt and shame.

Is this a technology blog or a political blog? Yes.

Back in early 2006, I had recently graduated with a MFA in Writing, and my life was on fire. My dad had died, I was increasingly at odds with my political community, and in a sign of things to come writ large, all my editing work was drying up. With the exception of a few crazed years during the 90s, I had careened between the lower rungs of the middle class and the upper rungs of poverty for quite some time, but this was looking downright scary in its proportions. I was crazed with grief, and struggling to hold my life together at a time when everything seemed to be coming apart.

Nevertheless, I managed to keep going -– keep writing, keep performing, always, always making music -– and then? I fell back into the technological soup in a way that even moi could not have foreseen.

Understand: After several years of juggling the tech industry, social justice politics and writing, I got laid off three weeks after 9/11. Still reeling from both that and a canceled east coast spoken word tour, I counted my blessings that at least I got a chunk of change from the process and went on tour elsewhere. As a result, while the whole social networking thing was taking shape, I was more concerned with getting from Chicago to Kalamazoo than musing over the benefits of fiber optics over DSL. As the corny joke goes, I was much too busy having a first life to worry about a second one.

In the two years and change that followed, I had gone through more stillborn “movements” than I could count, learned and relearned a whole slew of webtech, and last but not least, gave the aforementioned political community the heave-ho. After all that struggle, I was reborn…as an open source software/content nerd? It works for me, and in my own still-in-recovery way, I’m happy as well.

So, that’s the online story. Here’s the personal is political one: webgeek, author, musician, performer, sometimes video artist; feminist, queer, intersexed, black-and-brown-centric, all with a thick dose of open source advocacy. I also design and administer the new open source publishing platform Sharebook, which should be public any day now. (If you want to beta test, I’m still looking for help with the final touches, so drop me a note.)

Lastly, a few words about what to expect out of this blog. I’m envisioning this as a wedding of the more social/political aspects of online life with a varied range of issues and struggles on the real life tip, with a lot of commenting on events as they unfold. Sort of like Angela Davis meets Gonzo journalism, with a good dose of Huffpo for the measure, as well as a fair amount of Twitter integration. It’ll all reflect my overarching politics, but always with room for dialogue and discussion. Can’t get change without mutual support, amirite?

So that’s about it! Lucha sigue, peoples. See you soon.

All my best,

solidad