So I got peeved this afternoon when after I posted to a social list I'm on a last-minute announcement about an event concerning Prisoner Support and Solidarity, at Dry River tonight, this person wrote back:

On Apr 5, 2008, at 12:32 PM, nmyers@igc.org wrote:
Wait a muinute...don't forget that tonight is the special showing of the
film "Taxi to the Dark Side" at the Loft. 7:00.
Please come and have your potluck and films another time.

The nerve of some people. How ridiculously lame! So I replied:

Nancy,
Night life, or activism for that matter, in Tucson isn't, or shouldn't be, IMHO, a competition, and my announcement didnt say to skip your screening at the Loft, so I quite resent that you seem to think that your event is more important than anything else and that you seem to think that it's okay to actively discourage people from doing something else. The event at Dry River has been planned for months and is at least as worthy of people's attention and attendance. A tunnel-vision, zero-sum, cuthroat jockeying for the time and interest of your fellow community members is not the way to treat other community groups that are or should be allies.

That pretty much says it all.

I've been asked for suggestions about fundraising for Denver IMC's coverage of the DNC this summer. They need twelve thousand dollars, apparently.

Not that I know anything special about fundraising. However, I actually think covering the DNC and RNC protests should be deemphasized, as should be the protests itself - the more media coverage of these things there are, the more sexy they seem and the more protesters will come to them and future iterations - But these mass mobilizations are a dead and tired and wasteful tactic, IMHO, and especially the party conventions, because, for one reason, for the last several elections the nominees are already chosen beforehand, and the conventions are just theater...

As far as funding goes, if possible the people that are still committed to the tactic should pay for it, but here's an idea: maybe there are some folks who could be persuaded to NOT come to Denver, and could send money instead that they would have spent on travel, that could fund local activist organizing and local indymedia coverage. If 24 people who would have spent $500 flying to denver just stayed home (or 50 that would have spent 250, or whatever, you get the idea), they'd not only have enough to cover the $12K, but they'd save literally tons of greenhouse gases...

Or at least use your carbon credit money, if you believe in that bullshit, to fund green media projects in Colorado. Or whatever, but let's just do SOMETHING different, folks, cuz this shit is tired!

Well, I'd heard some rumors, but today it became true. Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff is going to use the waiver power given to him under little-known section 102 of the RealID Act to ignore all laws on the entire U.S.-Mexico border, so that the department can go ahead and build the border wall and not have to deal with any more legal challenges.

As of March 17, there were 309 miles of fencing in place, leaving 361 to be completed by the end of the year to meet the department's goal. Of those, 267 miles are being held up by federal, state and local laws and regulations, the officials said... building in some areas requires assessments and studies that

• steev's blog

I've been using Good Reads a lot to review books and get tips from friends of good stuff they're reading.

Last week I read a book called "Unmarketable." It has a detailed and workable plan for resisting and totally destroying all commercial marketing everywhere and then in fact eradicating corporate consumer culture completely! It's a great book!

April Fools.

No, actually, the book was kind of underwhelming.

A lot of it is old hat to me, the copyright stuff, etc, but it documents some very recent developments in marketing that are extremely disturbing.

If you've already read books like Conquest of Cool, No Logo, Captains of Conciousness, or been reading zines like Stay Free!, this is not going to be a really useful or revelatory book.

Overall, i was disappointed because the book doesn't really provide many solutions. there's a chapter at the end called "taking dissent off the market", but it only provides one example, and a pretty tepid one, of people trying to fight and answer these latest trends in marketing. it also didn't address a fundamental question: why do some people not "get it"? Why do people, even people involved with "underground" or DIY expression, not "get" that it's a political act, and that you're helping to dilute and destroy integrity every time you go over to the other side? I guess it's just like every other political issue - some see the problem, others are just living blissfully stupid and happy. And I suppose some might say that about me (like maybe some think i'm a blissfully stupid idiot for not agreeing that fighting for impeachment of Bush is vitally important and worthy of my time).

Anyway, the book mostly just created a sense of hopelessness, and a depressed feeling that the only way to really prevail over corporate hegemony is some sort of a Fight Club style destruction of our entire civilization. sigh.

Yesterday I was biking home after videotaping a yoga class for a client (and friend), and I noticed a couple dozen people, many who I knew from my neighborhood, digging holes in a vacant lot a couple blocks from my house. There was a huge hand-painted sign ready to be installed that said "Ramona-Magon Memorial Garden and Autonomous Community Park". Wow, I thought, that is so cool. You see, this vacant lot was city property, and it was about to be in the path of a huge new road project that has been a hot battle for years.

Greta and I came back a little later and grabbed some shovels to help out. I took some photos. People were putting in benches, planting native plants, digging water basins. The idea was to put something else valuable to the community there, obstructing the construction project.

My arms are still tired from chopping up caliche (the hardened desert earth that is so common around here) and shovelling dirt, but it felt good to be part of the project. This was a perfect example direct action that I would wholeheartedly embrace. Even if it gets destroyed and doesn't stop the highway, I feel like it is still effective, because planting plants and generating the kind of constructive, barnraising kind of positive feeling is a great thing for the community, even if it is only temporary.

Anyway, I wrote an article on Arizona Indymedia about it. Read more. Look at more photos.

I've been away from home for the last 9 days and today I'm finanlly returning. It seems like much longer. I'm so glad it's over. It's been fun, and also very productive, and I was able to see several friends and acquaintances I haven't seen for quite awhile, but none of that has counteracted the ache of missing my partner, and her dog.

Not to mention that I've had quite enough of the New York City transportation experience. The subway system is amazing considering its challenge: providing a way for a few million people to move around without all needing to drive cars. But I can't really wrap my mind around the need to budget an hour to get anywhere. I'm accustomed to hopping on my bike and being anywhere I routinely need to be within 10 minutes, maybe 15 tops. So waiting for these big metal worms to laboriously drag me through this concrete anthill is not cool.

Oh and speaking of cool its still damn cold in NYC. Sonoran Desert here I come!

The war tax resistance documentary is taking me out of town again, for 9 whole days. I'll be flying to New York City tomorrow and we'll be shooting Sunday and Monday there, and then heading down to DC for the big anti-war demo there on Wednesday. Activists will be blocking the IRS building that morning, and all sorts of other things will be happening. Later in the week we'll head up to Western Mass. to talk to WTRs there.

I'm kind of tired of travelling so much, and i'm not looking forward to cold and snow out there just when it's starting to really be nice and warm here in Tucson... although a side effect of that is that the pollen count has been crazy high and my sinuses are under assault to an almost intolerable degree.. so in that sense it will be good to get away....

Well, the nice thing is that a judge in Texas slapped down Chertoff for not following the law and consulting with landowners before having Homeland Security try to force its way onto their property to build the border wall.

On the other hand, back here in Arizona 2 more fascist and racist things happened: a mistrial was declared in the murder case against border patrol agent Nicolas Corbett, who shot dead in the back an apprehended migrant who posed no threat to him. The jury couldn't decide after 3 days of delibration and so now it has to be tried all over again and meanwhile the asshole walks free.

And in the Arizona state legislature last week several anti-immigrant bills passed through their respective committees. All of the ones that had been introduced, in fact.

But hey, more good news, Chertoff says that on the white border, err, I mean, the Canadian border, there won't be a wall, just another broken high-tech cyber fence, like the brilliant $15 million boondoggle that Boeing scammed the feds on here in Southern Arizona, which even McCain is calling "a disgrace."

Meanwhile unknown parties on bicycles are blowing up army recruiter stations in Times Square and not getting caught. I feel so damn safe I can hardly stand it, Michael. You're doing a heckuva job.

I'm getting increasingly tired of people using the name "Turtle Island" without, in my view, really understanding it. Activists, new agers, poets, etc have been using it to be another name for the North American continent, in an effort to get away from using names invented by the white colonizers, ever since Gary Snyder published a book of poetry by that name. I guess it's somewhat debatable, but here's my point: the idea comes from the common Native American cosmovision that all the world is perched on the back of a giant turtle. One might argue that it refers to just this continent because they weren't aware of any other continents, but if there were there would be Deer Island and Whale Island and whatever else besides Turtle Island. But the point is that it's a cosmological, not geographic, worldview - they believed this continent was the entire world, was all there was for humans and other animals to live on. Therefore, I think you're really being too specific if you refer to North America as "Turtle Island." The whole world is Turtle Island.

I admit that it is ambiguous though. Here's part of a version of the myth:

Nanaboozhoo took the piece of Earth from Muskrat's paw. Just then, the turtle swam forward and said, "Use my back to bear the weight of this piece of Earth. With the help of Kitchi-Manitou, we can make a new Earth." Nanaboozhoo put the piece of Earth on the turtle's back. Suddenly, the wind blew from each of the Four Directions, The tiny piece of Earth on the turtle's back began to grow. It grew and grew and grew until it formed a mi-ni-si', or island in the water. The island grew larger and larger, but still the turtle bore the weight of the Earth on his back. Nanaboozhoo and the animals all sang and danced in a widening circle on the growing island. After a while, the Four Winds ceased to blow and the waters became still. A huge island sat in the middle of the water

So, is it "a new Earth", or is it just "an island" that is part of the Earth? Maybe a European, over-rational mind just can't make sense of it.

Here's a photo of me in the Lower Rio Grande River Valley shooting an interview for the project I'm doing for the Sierra Club on the environmental impacts of border infrastructure.

The project is really coming along. I just got back from another interview with a biologist here in Tucson, just a few blocks away from my house. It's funny that I've been from the Gulf to the Pacific on this project and also working right in my neighborhood.