i doubt i will be writing more personal entries any time soon, but will definitely continue blogging about (some of) my political work and posting articles and crap i publish when i have time. so im not sure what to do with this journal. do any of you care about that stuff? should i doublepost those entries to my livejournal too? would you read them? would you start reading my wordpress blog if i didnt do that? is it possible to get an RSS feed of my wordpress blog in a livejournal friend's list? i'd love some ideas.
We have been doing a lot of support and solidarity work with Grassy and fighting major corporate campaigns against a company called Weyerhauser (a logging company clearcutting Grassy Narrows land without their consent) here in the US, to help give indigenous organizers space and breathing room up north to organize their own communities.
In support of the DVD Propagandhi is going on a short tour and I get to go with them and speak about activist stuff every night before they play. If you live near any of these places and want to hang out, I would love to see you!
- organizing a ( RAN Organizer Training Camp ) in Atlanta preceding the Forum. We are giving scholarships to help folks get to the camp and to the forum. The applications are due in two days - you can fill it out quickly online here.
- working on SDS stuff pretty much nonstop. aside from major changes with our fundraising body, we are coordinating a rather serious constitutional National Convention, and TWO Action Camps. It's draining. Sometimes I feel really alone in the work, even though we have over 2,500 members. But I really think this is one of the most innovative and exciting and promising things happening right now. I just hope it doesn't kill me.
- we've been getting some neat feature articles lately, including cover stories in:
- recently getting back from The 8th annual White Privilege Conference, which was a surprisingly inspiring and empowering gathering of 1,000 folks confronting racism in lots of different ways in their organizations and communities.
some stuff on monday my affinity group blockaded and shut down the front entrance of chevron's world headquarters. we got in the new york times and 18 other media outlets. you can read about it here: www.radicalblogs.org/joshrussell
i got to wear a diaper. a SWAT team cop told us "you know you are really well organized. you run a tight ship. i can respect that!"
in other news:
-neena is coming to visit soon and im a bouncing ball of excitement. -carol is visiting after that! -i went to my first critical mass in SF this weekend. -this last week of antiwar actions has been crazy nationally. people are doing direct action and civil disobedience EVERYWHERE. over 5,000 students were involved in actions this weekend alone nationally. -tomorrow i am going to see my twin cousins get bar and bat mitzvahed and hang out with my grandpa. -i have health insurance through RAN now! -i officially am sick of traveling. i want to stay home. my life is conferences and panels and workshops and actions and writing. i want it to involve more laying in hammocs and sleeping and drawing. -that said im going to a white privilege conference in colorado in a couple weeks and i think its going to be neat. -my life is unbalanced and ungrounded. i miss my friends. i get to see a lot of people but for such short amounts of time that i cant give people the attention they deserve. i wish i was in the Bay for enough time to be forming deeper relationships with more people. i miss my people on the east coast
been running round the east coast to SDS conferences and events and speaking on panels and doing workshops and facilitating things and visiting people and hugging friends and stuff. its been neat. i met a lot of neat folks and a LOT of crazy people. like actual crazy people. i also got to hang out with jd a lot and other wonderful friends.
im watching the oscars right now with neena cuz my flight back to oakland was canceled.
on weds i did this:
i wrote about it and put more pictures here: www.radicalblogs.org/joshrussell
it was a media frenzy which was pretty neat. our local action made the front page of the boston metro, indymedia, were were in the boston globe, the boston herald, some local tv and radio, and might end up in newsweek. we had almost a hundred media hits for our actions nationally, including a recent writeup in the new york times.
...and it seems like it may have worked. the 11 plants have been scaled back to 3. still waiting for the details to unfold to get too celebratory, but its pretty great i think.
im tired all the time now. i dont have any balance in my life anymore and its taking a toll on me and my relationships with people. im going to texas in a couple days and then a few days later to DC. i love it so much but sometimes i want to relax too. blah. the good news is that its also cadbury creme egg season and im celebrating by eating them.
come to this! hey everyone! ima be in boston next week and on wednesday we're doing an action that YOU SHOULD COME TO. it will be fun. we need folks to RSVP to know how many costumes to buy. last action ended up on MTV, so if you show up you may become a rockstar and get to hand out with clay atkin. email me (brownietime@gmail.com) for more info. and background.
Stop TXU!
No to environmental classism and racism! No to reckless fueling of climate change! No to global warming! No Merrill Lynch funding TXU!
Join us in a street theater die-in in front of Merrill Lynch’s Boston Branch. We will provide costumes – tyvec hazard suits, masks, and lots of coal to splatter around.
Date: Wednesday, February 21st
Meeting Time: 12:00 Noon (sharp!) Meeting Place: South Station Summer St & Atlantic Ave. Boston, MA 02111
Meet under the train schedule board (in the main lobby).Please show up on time for costumes and prep.
The action Starts:
Time: 12:30 Place: Merrill Lynch One Financial Center Floor 37 Boston, MA 02111
Help us stop the funding of 11 new dirty coal-fired power plants in Texas. These plants will be built in low income rural communities, causing asthma and other environmental devastation. These plants will cause more greenhouse gases than some countries. These plants will cancel out the entire reduction of greenhouse gas emissions through the Kyoto Protocols in Japan. These plants are the equivalent 14 million new cars on the highway. These plants are the biggest step backwards our country could take in fighting climate change.
Contact Joshua Russell or Jonathan McIntosh with questions and to RSVP!
new radicalblogs post i guess its kinda weird to have 2 blogs and post that you have an update on one in the other.
this post is about the recent demonstrations in Athens that i had the privilege of being a part of. their SDS is doing awesome stuff, bridging communities and radicalizing frat boys. im learning a lot from them. its here: http://radicalblogs.org/joshrussell/
since this journal is more personal and self indulgent and vain and crap, i can post videos of myself and not feel weird about it, right? you can see me ranting and raving about "free speech zones" here:
radicalblogs. i have a blog now in SDS's blog community. we will see how long it lasts. its different from lj, in that its all political. yay. i just made my first post.
a lot of stuff has been happening. things are great but i am always exhausted. i wrote a zine this weekend. well, sorta. its an organizer manual for high school and middle school students interested in environmental activism, and its laid out like a zine. the layout is kind of a wierd mishmash of a hip hop and a traditional punk/personal zine. im working on a larger organizer guide for college aged folks that i would love feedback on from any of you...
sometime ill write a more meaningful post here. in the meantime, this show is blowing my mind:
since christmas i have been in vermont, connecticut, oakland, san francisco, new hampshire, boston, new york, ann arbor, and detroit. organizing overdrive. i am very tired.
ive been helping facilitate some stuff at the SDS midwest regional convention.
the convention has been great and empowering and im in love with SDSers. i just got back from facilitating a strategy session with the Wayne State SDS, and Sunday did a sustainable organization building training, and then later with Nile an anti-oppression workshop at the convention. i feel really lucky to have the mobility that i do to organize with both RAN and SDS. after the conference a lot of different student groups have invited me to their campuses to do trainings and speak and stuff. thats pretty neat i think.
but not all the news is good news.
im also here for the detroit auto show. apparently GM was REALLY freaked out about what we pulled off in LA...and here in the motor city the cops work for the auto companies. so all the police have a little booklet with our photographs and names and descriptions that they carry around with them everywhere. they bragged about it. GM has hired private investigators who are bragging about monitoring us to sarah and mike. on the first day a mob of THIRTY cops surrounded two of my friends and followed them for blocks, just for walking on the sidewalk NEAR the convention. Nile got cited and has a court case for doing projections and Sarah and Mike both got arrested today for just stepping inside the convention center and doing nothing. They got handed from private security to the Michigan state police to the Detroit Police to the INS (!). Mike is Canadian and they are trying to DEPORT him on a fucking trespassing charge. sarah got out of jail but mike did not. we dont know what is next for him. this is absurd. and GM isn't gonna hear the end of it. If GM wants to spend crazy amounts of money repressing and deporting activists for highlighting their abuses we will make it a PR nightmare for them.
meanwhile we are doing this big meet and greet event tomorrow for all these local activists, trying to bring together union people, unemployed workers, environmentalists, students, and anti-war activists. and i am writing this organizer manual that i was hoping would be done a week ago.
plus, i lost a bet in a bowling game against mike and now owe him lots of stencils.
tis the season in case you want to get me a belated chanukah present, or perhaps an early birthday present (its like a month away!), i suggest the new graphic novel by the NRA, entitled Freedom In Peril: Guarding the 2nd Amendment in the 21st Century.
where good american citizens are encouraged to arm themselves against the dangers of:
eco-terrorists
billionaire jews
immigrants
(i have my fingers crossed that they quote immortal technique saying "you better watch what the fuck flies outta your mouth, or ima hijack a plane and fly it into your house."
chappy chanukah been on the east coast for a few days. neena's family treats me like a son. they had hand sewn stockings on the mantel for neena, her brother, her parents, and me. it was so sweet of them. my aunt and uncle and cousins are visiting right now. we are all in vermont. i have a lot of work to do but neena and i are going to play in the snow tomorrow. today we went to a waterfall with my dog.
my vigilante group in case you want some context for the badass photo a few posts earlier, a short 5 minute documentary was made about us. it mostly features agent Chartruse and agent Orange in NYC. the ruckus society put it up online. see it here:
www.oilenforcementagency.com
my favorite quote is the professor analyzing us saying "is this domestic terrorism at it's best?...or democracy gone wild?"
respect your elders son every day i realize how much more i have to learn. i think thats exciting. there are so many amazing older activists in the bay area who are willing to share their experience and knowledge. its actually really an honor. i realized that for so much of my life i have been looking for mentorship from older generations of activists and had no idea where to find it (outside of proscribed roles like teacher-student etc). one of the biggest things hurting social movements in the U.S. is the lack of intergenerational dialog. it's such a blessing to be in the company of people who have done amazing things and are not only willing to share stories about it but willing to teach you what they have learned and work with you to make it happen again. i just sat on the street with my next door neighbor for two hours. he was a panther and told me about how huey newton was killed ON MY STREET across from my house. i had no idea...there is such a living history all around us and most of it is not in any book and cant be found unless we listen to the people who were hear before we were...
neena and i are really good at this long distance relationship thing, but sometimes i just miss her so much its hard to think about anything else. we get to see eachother SO SOON and im SO EXCITED but i think this last week will be the hardest.
for the occasion i shaved my face to intimidate the opposition:
and made a brownie pizza (cookie crust, brownie batter sauce, frosting cheese), pumpkin pie swirled fudge brownies, and soynog nutella brownie custard.
ill wait to write stories about the rest of the week's actions until i have more pictures and the videos are posted.
for now, ill just say this is how i feel:
i got an email from the Yes Men who want to use my video in their next movie, and they may join us for our actions at the Detroit Auto Show in January. those dudes are totally my heroes. i do my best to try to keep a clear head with the star worship thing, but that is pretty great.
i grew pretty close to some unlikely people this week. i have so much respect and admiration for the people i work with. im constantly struck by how brilliant these people are and how lucky i am to have the chance to learn from and organize with them.
i feel like i have been working 24 hour days almost every day for the last month. but i also feel like the last week was a creativity pressure cooker that a lot of us really needed. i feel like it was a transformative experience, at least in the sense of how i relate to my job. it almost felt like i was with an affinity group and not coworkers.
i got to see and hang out with priya and dave. they even joined us as secret agents in our OEA action on saturday. it was really wonderful to connect with them more.
sunday night at like 5am i was standing out by the ocean in venice beach, watching the harvest moon set just before the sun came up and an important, if cheesy-sounding point of clarity. i was watching the waves crash with this kind of destructive beauty, and it reaffirmed how fleeting everything is. nothing lasts and thats beautiful. i feel so lucky right now and i have this tangible sensation that that can all change at any moment. so while i have it, i am grateful.
more soon. i have work all night. woo.
the current media count is that we made over 700 print outlets. crazy. check out CNN!
OUR IMPERSONATIONS AND DIRECT ACTIONS TODAY GOT PICKED UP BY MORE THAN THREE HUNDRED NEWSWIRES INCLUDING CNN, NBC, FOX, CBS, ABC, AP, REUTERS, BLOOMBERG, and hundreds of big and small papers across the country! in europe too!
after all the logistical and chaos, disagreements over messaging and talking points, we somehow pulled this off seamlessly. we stayed up all night getting together materials looking at the layouts of buildings and scheming and taking inspiration from the Yes Men...
you can see the video i took of the infiltration here (explanation and story below):
we got fake press credentials and not only all got into the auto show, but into the CEO of GM's keynote speech too. i got to play the role of "David Smalley" an auto magazine editor who also happens to have the same name as the singer of Dag Nasty. While sneaking into the auto show, the security yelled to me. i kept walking and i heard one guy turn to the other and say "oh well i guess we can let one crazy person in and it wont matter."
the reason we were doing this at the LA Auto show is the whole theme this year is that the auto industry is "going green" and all these big auto makers have absurd amounts of PR telling thousands of reporters about their environmental commitments...problem is that it is all greenwashing and insincere and a ruse. false promises, concept cars that never hit the roads, the speech was a LOOOTTT of big talk that has yet to materialize in anything real. its part of a larger strategy of reframing climate issues around oil addiction and pressuring auto companies to change their fuel efficiency. check www.jumpstartford.com for all the facts and figures etc...
so we called them out.
we snuck into the keynote speech, which was given to a room full of several thousand reporters. at the end of the speech two of us went up on stage, impersonating LA Auto Show staff (and even convincing the sound technician to flip the microphone back on!), shaking the CEO's hand and congratulating him in his commitment to green technology and fighting climate change, and presenting him with a 5'x5' pledge, stating that GM would commit in writing to becoming the most fuel efficient automaker by 2010. he refused to sign, the press went NUTS, and everyone saw that it was all about promises with zero delivery.
afterwards we got MOBBED by press, and mike got into an argument on CBS news with this corporate wingnut. he degenerates into name calling and physical threats ON CAMERA ON CBS NEWS here:
then later in the day, we set up a big street theater press conference, when we had an OIL ADDICT ANONYMOUS meeting. we each got really into character, and acted as CEOs admitting our addiction to oil. the jokes were AMAZING - the script was written by the mastermind behind billionaires for bush, who i am totally in awe of. i got to be willie nelson, who was the sympathetic character, since he drives a bio-diesel bus and is totally awesome. i got to sing.
tomorrow we are "greenwashing" a hummer in front of the auto show by having a 50's style car wash with green suds and ladies in bikinis and dudes in hottpants wearing rollerblades. there are lotsa other fun stuff too...and we have somehow acquired tickets to the GM shareholders meeting on saturday...
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brownietime's journal
