“Huckleberries scatter through pinewoods” April /May Journal, Spring Poems
April 21
We arrived back in NYC, a Spring chill in the air, thinking about where we’d been and what we were arriving back into. Over the next few weeks, we’d read poems together and talk about Murakami’s Wind Up Bird Chronicle and Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, The Passion According to GH, poem after poem, demo after demo. Murakamis memories of Manchuria would keep me up at night, Orwell’s reflections kept me wondering.
The city was recalling the five years since COVID brought the city into a lockdown.
I thought of my friend Ed, who shuffled off, after coping with HIV for years and years.
People of color, those with pre existing conditions, essential workers, health care professionals facing it first, feeling the worst of it.
In class, Joya recalled her Dad’s departure during the pandemic.
“Rest in Eternal Peace Ed Shaw,” wrote Lillibeth on April 20th, 2020. Rest in Peace Ed.
April 22
First day back, in town, teaching, off to demos to see my friends.
Back in New York. Go Nicks! Out in the streets with the @risenresistnyc yea... in solidarity with current as well as fired EPA workers. With activist street theater, they target Trump, Musk, and EPA director Lee Zeldin at their ribbon-cutting ceremony rededicating the Environmental Protection Agency as the Environmental DESTRUCTION Agency…. At EPA Headquarters, 290 Broadway And then city hall, calling for Assembly Member Carl E Heastie to support the NY Heat Act. We saw plastic bottles in the most beautiful beaches in Thailand. On Earth Day we rally on the steps of City Hall in support of passing the NY HEAT Act. The NY HEAT Act is the top climate priority of New York's environmental movement, with its promise of lower energy bills while eliminating massive subsidies to the fracked gas industry.As New Yorkers contend with the threats of climate change and rising costs of living, the rally will highlight the need for making energy more affordable while moving off fossil fuels. As Jo Anne Simon says: "This Earth Day, as the federal administration doubles down on rolling back climate protections, New York must step up and lead. The NY HEAT Act is how we fight back—by lowering New Yorkers’ utility bills and slashing fossil fuel emissions. Our planet is out of time, and our communities can’t keep footing the bill for a broken system built on dirty fossil fuels. Let’s include NY HEAT in the state budget and build a better, modern system that also protects our planet—before it’s too late."
Earth day is every day.
Jet lag grasped at me all week.
It was with me on Friday before the talk at ABC No Rio.
“Thank you for Coming to Work Today”: A Conversation on Activism, Friendship and Fighting, a Conversation Between Benjamin Heim Shepard, Frank Morales, and Jack Vimo
Friday, April 25th, 5-7PM
Thank you abcnorio45.org. Thank you Emily Harvey Foundation, I said as I began my talk at 537 Broadway #2, NY NY 10012. Thank you to Allan as well as Steve Englander, RIP, and the Board of ABC No Rio and their countless supporters, for your tireless work to save this special institution.
I’m honored to be on stage with Jack Vimo. Jack is an activist, organizer, and scholar who is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and Law at Montclair State University (MSU). Jack has a long history of fighting for social justice on a number of issues, including immigration, healthcare, HIV/AIDS, housing, economic justice, and LGBTQ+ rights.
So today, we’ll talk about friendship, movements, and their twin, the fight.
How do we make sense of a fight?
What's a good fight vs a bad one?
How do we open up our tent so we can broaden what this all means.
How do we call people in, instead of calling people out?
We recalled the battles at ABC through the years, the time I bought corporate beer instead of the home brew from the beer collective I was ostensibly a member of.
Everyone had a conflict, a story to share.
Thank you to Alan W. Moore
For inviting us and organizing. The room was full of friends, even if Frank couldn't make it. Jack and Peter, Kate B and John, our former student, everyone sharing stories about movements and ideas, our propensity to idealize and de idealize, how to open space instead of punish, to find ways to see each other even when we stumble, to rebuild, to create something new, to get 3.5 of all of us into the streets. Public space for the people.
Out to dinner with John and Kate and Jackie.
Back home after a few beers at Von on Bleeker Street, European Democrats posted a note:
Darya Kozyreva, 19, has been sentenced to nearly three years in a Russian penal colony—for quoting a poem and remembering the suffering of Mariupol. Her “crime”? Using words to oppose Putin’s war. Free speech is not a crime: tell that to Putin’s American friends who love to preach about it—until it’s inconvenient. When poetry becomes dangerous, tyranny has already won.
Defend freedom. Spread her story.
April 27th
Mom actually liked the scarf I got her from Thailand. I think Shannon did too. Good morning world.
April 28
Gorgeous day in the life, waking into the strange skies and forgotten pieces, thinking about Helsinki, from Princeton to Brooklyn and back to Princeton back to Brooklyn, across Manhattan Bridge, reading Victor Serge's poetry of "a shipwrecked revolution," clarice lispector's passions and metamorphosis, to the West Village, the cherry blossoms and jazz in the air, wild clouds, dreams in blue billowing through the sky, walking East with Ray, to B and H Deli, opened in 1938 one of the oldest surviving kosher vegetarian restaurants in New York. i swear to god Jane Jacobs' doppelganger was there, people from the past, future, walking the streets, looking a the city, enjoying a knish and soup, a cup of coffee and conversation, recalling layovers and leftovers, time travel and accidents of history, back to st marks place, homesick at Village Works, looking at Dylan Thomas novels, greeting Damian and Joe and Alley, the coolest cat around, out to Tompkins, greeting Colin and Babs, laughing about virtue signaling and ny magazine, and the new park bathrooms, out to Brooklyn, for beer and tunes, through a rezoned neighborhood to the Littlefield with "L Train Brass Band - Brooklyn's own community brass band - celebrating our 8th anniversary! ... four bands from our #BrassLove community: Off-Beat Jazz, Brass Meets World, Dark Tide Brass, and Nice Brass. Your hosts, L Train Brass Band close the show. Special performance from 3rd Rail Drumline to kick off the night." Back to Victor Serge's poems and the archaeology of the Gowanus Canal, to sleep....
Monday
April 28th
Mutual AID talk on zoom.
Thank you rosemary for inviting me, I began, still jet lagged, with a cough and sniffles after a filling at the dentist.
Thank you ACOSA.
What an honor to get to speak about mutual aid and social work.
So today, we’ll talk about friendship, movements
And mutual aid.
I’ll explore my experiences in mutual aid
How social workers can look for mutual aid opportunities to get involved with and to connect the people they work with
How can mutual aid help us create communities of care?
Let's all talk it through.
How do we make sense of a fight?
What's a good fight vs a bad one?
How do we open up our tent so we can broaden what this all means.
How do we call people in, instead of calling people out?
For me, it's always been about the friends, the friends in the streets we see, that make going to the demo fun, the comrades that become family.
For me, it's always been about mutual aid, with the AIDS crisis, and the caregiver support groups, the community gardens in the lower east side, food drop off during covid,
It's always been about mutual aid.
Even my students in classes helping each other out with whatsapp groups.
And know your rights training, supporting immigrant families and each other.
And, of course, the larger point was that our efforts are limited when our tent gets too small, too restricted, when we get too critical of others?
But what can we learn of these conflicts?
How do we work together in hard times?
What happened to solidarity?
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it's the only thing that ever has."
What is it about this quote?
What is it saying?
Jet lagged, five, ten minutes before the talk was about to start, I asked AI it thought of the old adage, replying:
“Small groups can often be more focused and passionate about their cause, leading to more effective and sustained action,” replied the computer. No doubt, 2024, 2025 are the years the computer woke up. But the errors are many, says Baby C. Even AI admits “AI errors can manifest in various ways, ranging from factual inaccuracies and biased outputs to harmful suggestions or even dangerous outcomes. These errors can stem from issues with data quality, algorithmic flaws, or even the inherent limitations of the AI's training and reasoning processes. AI Hallucinations can be understood as incorrect or misleading information generated by AI models, often presented with confidence even when untrue.”
Page after page of notes fell on my screen.
“Smaller groups allow for closer relationships and collaboration, fostering a sense of shared purpose and accountability.
Agility and Innovation:
Smaller, more nimble groups are often more adaptable and can experiment with innovative solutions more easily.
Inspiration for Others:
The success of small, impactful groups can inspire others to take action and contribute to larger movements.
Examples in History:
Throughout history, small groups have led significant social, political, and cultural transformations. For example, civil rights activists, environmental advocates, and social justice movements often started as smaller, more focused groups.
Examples in Action:
Civil Rights Movement:
Environmental Movement:
Social Justice Movements:
.In conclusion: While it's true that large-scale movements can be powerful, the seeds of real change often lie within the dedicated efforts of smaller groups of people who are passionate about their cause and willing to take action.
Mutual aid, a form of community support and collective action, has a long and diverse history rooted in human social structures and cooperative behaviors, predating its formal conceptualization by Peter Kropotkin in the 19th century. While not always explicitly labeled "mutual aid," practices of mutual support and reciprocity have been evident in various societies and throughout history.
Early Forms of Mutual Aid:
Indigenous and Non-Western Societies:
Early American Societies:
Working-Class and Union-Based Mutual Aid:
Black Mutual Aid Societies:
.Formal Conceptualization and Growth:
Peter Kropotkin's Influence:
Kropotkin, an anarchist philosopher, popularized the term "mutual aid" in his work, arguing that cooperation and mutual support are essential factors in the evolution of species, including humans.
The Black Panther Party's Mutual Aid Programs:
The Black Panther Breakfast Programs
Emergence of Mutual Aid in Crisis:
.Contemporary Significance:
Marginalized Communities:.
Mutual aid remains a vital tool for marginalized communities, enabling them to address their needs and build resilience when facing systemic inequalities and discrimination.
Community-Building and Resilience:
Mutual aid fosters community-building, strengthens social bonds, and promotes self-reliance and collective action.
Challenging Existing Power Structures:.
Mutual aid can challenge existing power structures and advocate for social change by demonstrating the power of collective action and grassroots organizing.”
There is a lot of information out there.
But it's still more fun to dig through my files and interviews than ask the computer.
And of course, right now, we need mutual aid more than ever.
We need to form pods with people with thrust, sharing information and resources and support for our communities and ourselves.
Connecting with lawyers and allies,
Know your rights, training and friends.
What kind of friendship networks are you finding yourself in?
What are the barriers?
What are your pods?
What are your affinity groups?
How can small groups support our work in ways that larger orgs cannot.
They are not beholden to funds.
Small groups are not.”
I placed a few more of my questions into the computer.
On and on, AI went, offering an overview on mutual aid and social work practice:
“Mutual aid in social work is a practice where individuals with shared challenges help each other through problem-solving and mutual support. It emphasizes a strengths-based approach, recognizing the value of collective resources and knowledge within a group. Mutual aid fosters a sense of solidarity and empowerment among participants, moving beyond traditional models of professional help to create a more holistic and empowering approach.
Here's a more detailed explanation:
Key Principles of Mutual Aid in Social Work:
Strengths-Based Approach:
Collective Responsibility:
Empowerment:
Holistic Approach:Anti-Oppressive Approach:
Mutual aid challenges traditional power dynamics, promoting a more egalitarian and inclusive environment.
How Mutual Aid Works in Practice:
Group Work:
Problem-Solving:
Peer Support:
.Resource Sharing:
.Benefits of Mutual Aid in Social Work:
Enhanced Problem-Solving:
The collaborative nature …”
Social workers from across the country join our conversation, sharing stories and ideas. Some talk about unions, others talk about group spaghetti and lasagne sharing events.
It's more fun to talk with them than the computer.
The world is changing and so are we. My dissertation advisor Irwin and I talk about his history of data mining and AI, methodological pluralism and research. There’s a lot to unpack here.
April 29th
I posted a note with a picture of myself, calling for poets on Saturday.
Looking at Babs, thinking about the world, hoping you all will join us for poetry at El Jardin Paraiso on Saturday at 3 pm, 710 E 5th St, New York, NY. Thanks for the pic Babs.
April 30th
Any favorite poems of springtime friends?
Your thoughts or suggestions for our 3 PM poetry hang out at El Jardin Paraiso this Saturday are most welcome.
May 1
Happy May Day everyone! I write before biking out to the demos.
I always think of McKinley on Mayday, looking at the police accompanying us, looking for
Leon Czolgosz, the anarchist, who shot him twice at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, 1901, the police chasing his shadow.
I think of Emma G speaking in Union Square,
And Dana reminding us Mayday is jayday.
We’re all there, friends through time, the same cycles repeating.
Mayday dumpster diving with Babs.
Dancing with Lorrie.
See you at Foley Square at 430 PM.
No US concentration camps, save due process, workers unite. The messages were many on a gorgeous Mayday.
I hadn't been at #9 Bleeker since Dana was there, before the Yippies were kicked out. But the legends there were many. Smoked a jay with Gilbert baker there. Ran into generations of squatters, punks, anarchist puppeteers, renegade cyclists, Rude Mechanical Marching bands, and danced in a sweaty basement. Mayday is jayday. Everyday is Mayday.
May 2
Off to Chinatown to grab some groceries, feels like another city.
out for music at Public Records.
Hi Gene, I greeted my buddy on Orchard Street.
May 3
On Poetry and Green Space, Open Poetry Afternoon, El Jardin Paraiso, 710 E. 5th Street, NY NY 10009, Join us by the big tree. Bring a poem.
Hug a tree.
3 PM.
See you in the garden... if it pours we can read in the gazebo in el jardin paraiso....
I met Mom that morning before poems, sitting in her garden. As usual, we talked about things from a long time ago, places we plan to go, as well as places she's been. She recalled that trip from Rotterdam to Afghanistan in the summer of 1965 with Tad, Fred, and Dad. 'Life goes on,' she told me. 'The way we do things is not the only way to do things,' Says mom, thinking about the trips to the east, looking at the flowers in her garden. Back in the lower east side, we met at El Jardin Paraiso, reading poems, talking about what a poem can be, the lines that pour through our consciousness, the Coney Islands of Our Minds, the poems Auden wrote about Spain, Orwell's homage to catalonia and the infighting that consumed the republic, the shipwrecked revolutions Victor Serge lamented, the words that are now censored, the Yage Letters dad underlined from the old volume from city lights, professor seagulls stories and poems about a lost bohemia where stories fly from naked bodies, ray and brennan, jc and wendy, elissa and virginia, anne and jk, mom and dad, victoria noe recalled old friends, colin read from gary snyder... I asked him to read from "Ode" by Karen Solie, which Caitlin McDonnell told me about: "Blue jay vocalizes a clash on the color wheel, tulip heads removed one by one with a golf wedge. It’s something in the frequency. Expectations are high. There’s a reason they call it the nervous system. Someone in bed at 11 AM impersonates an empty house. Dear god. The sharpener’s dragged his cart from the shed. His bell rings out of the twelfth century to a neighborhood traumatizing its food with dull knives. A hammer creeps to the edge of a reno and peers over. Inching up its pole, a tentative flag. What is the source? Oh spring, my heart is in my mouth."
My comrade Ray Black posted a note after the reading:
Today is the birthday of Jane Jacobs and Keith Haring, two of my favorite New Yorkers, who came from somewhere else but became New Yorkers through and through.
That description fits my friend Howard Pope as well, whose birthday is also today. Howard would have turned 65 if he hadn’t died of AIDS 29 years ago.
I wrote this poem for Howard in a poetry workshop two years ago and read it publicly for the first time about a month or so ago at a poetry reading at Lucky Bar in the East Village organized by Benjamin Heim Shepard. I’m sharing it below with all of you today:
Just Before the Cocktails Came
It was unexpected to find myself young during a time of war
When the bombs fell selectively, precisely,
And strangers sitting near me on the subway knew nothing at all.
There were two cities then, AIDStown and New York.
A person lived in one place or the other,
Two universes running parallel within the same world at once.
We met as the eighties wound down,
You all muscles and sarcasm and impatience underneath a mop of punkish blond hair.
We’d both found our way to ACT UP and jokingly calling it ACT UP High,
The queer teenage experience we finally got to have
If high school had been the French Resistance
Taking on the Great Bubonic Pestilence.
You were a sexy cool kid,
Bartender, musician, Rock N Roll Fag Bar star.
I was less cool, tentative, wandering in and out of ACT UP meetings,
Lingering at the edge of protests.
I was an alley cat raised by wolves sniffing trash cans in the alley for the first time,
A little afraid, a lot excited, by finding finally the alley and the cans.
The end came sooner than we planned.
I remember how your skin felt when I last touched your hand,
Paper-thin and willowy like an old man.
You’d moved to San Francisco, so I hadn’t seen you in months.
As I approached the corner of Ashbury and Haight you stood there smiling, leaning on a cane,
Having gone from muscly to emaciated in the span of one winter and two weeks of that spring.
It happened back then before the good drugs came.
1993, 1994, 1995 – guys our age still died in droves
Disappearing from Chelsea, the Village, Cherry Grove.
Not like the early days when no one knew anything, and everyone was in shock
But a dying on the eve of salvation when the cocktails came out,
Highly active antiretroviral therapies that would save millions of lives.
You missed it. Just missed it. We had no idea then how close we were to that,
Still in the Dying Years when you accepted your looming death and rehomed Godzilla, your cat.
As you slipped in and out of consciousness, unable to stay,
Your beautiful body ravaged by AIDS, the pandemic that ravaged our gay salad days,
You asked of me one thing, dear Howard my friend,
To write about you, not leave you lost in the fray.”
Rays the best.
RIP Howard
May 4th
I open the paper to the obits, cruising the death noticing, finding word of a singer I once knew,
Mike Peters obit in the NYT, a black and white photo of two musicians.
For a while there in 7th and 8th grade, we used to journey to the Bronco Bowl in Dallas to see them. They played there all the time. Dallas gave them keys to the city. We'd sing along to every song, stories of angst and hope, punk rock dreams, and faded glories, long spiked hair, and greetings. Everyone in town was there. And then, we'd put on the tape of the album, on the way home... singinging into the night....
RIP Mike Peters, godspeed.
We always recognized the opening chords:
"Born into a war and peace
Forced to choose between the right and wrong
Each man kills the thing he loves
For better or for worse
Face to face with a ragged truth
Mixed up and torn in two
And turned your back on the only thing
That could save you from yourself
[Chorus]
Where were you hiding (Four)
When the storm broke? (Winds)
When the rain began to fall? (Howl)
When the thunder and the lightning struck?
And the rain and the four winds did howl?"
May 5
Sunday, Irwin and I met for lunch, talking about his life and stories, the footnotes of giants he walked upon.
And I rode to Battery Park for book group.
"And handing myself over to the trust belonging to the unknown.... as great as a far off landscape," wrote Clarice Lispector in the passion according to gh. We spent all afternoon talking about the book and mental illness and death, drugs and losing ourselves to find something, letting go and finding something else, separate from and a part of everything, nature as other, as ourselves, swimming and navigating wounds, traumas. Our book club has become an exploration in madness, mental illness, movements of ideas and conflicts, from Don Quixote to Infinite Jest. All day, people were thinking about it. At Judson, we talked about Thomas's doubts and Jesus' wounds, the ways these wounds are repeated. The church bulletin included a quote from − Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: “We have learned that trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on mind, brain, and body. This imprint has ongoing consequences for how the human organism manages to survive in the present. Trauma results in a fundamental reorganization of the way mind and brain manage perceptions. It changes not only how we think and what we think about, but also our very capacity to think…Neuroscience research shows that the only way we can change the way we feel is by becoming aware of our inner experience and learning to befriend what is going on inside ourselves.”
May 5
Monday,
Raining out, I skip the “Rally for Andry Hernandez Romero, let’s protect LGBTQ+ Immigrants.”
A post on facebook declares:
Andry José Hernández Romero, a 31-year-old gay makeup artist from Venezuela, was wrongly deported to El Salvador despite seeking asylum legally and having no criminal record. He was targeted by officials claiming his crown tattoos were linked to a gang.
This May 5th let’s rally for him and for other immigrants that have been wrongly deported by this administration.”
I’ll make it out later in the week.
May 6
Laura greeted everyone at
City Tech screening of
" Heightened Scrutiny”
The director Sam Feder was there for Q&A after.
Tues. May 6, 2:30-5 pm
Academic Complex Theater
“'Heightened Scrutiny’ follows Chase Strangio, ACLU attorney and the first out trans person to argue before the Supreme Court, as he fights a high-stakes legal battle to overturn Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth (United States v. Skrmetti)." As we watched the movie, the United States v. Skrmetti is a pending United States Supreme Court case on whether bans on gender affirming care for minors under the age of 18 violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Few of us are particularly optimistic. This is not the Kennedy court of nine years ago, says Strangio, ACLU attorney. Later we discussed it all at Barbes, on a moody, cloudy Spring day night. #citytech #LGBTQ
May 8
Spring is the season for pulling it together, grading, prepping for last classes of the year, taking in the stories of those who cannot present their research yet, the walls we all have to climb, the extra reading for book groups. For the last several nights I've been absorbed in Homage to Catalonia, trying to make sense of what happened. We talked about history and social change today in intersectionality class, the prisons we just can't evade, even when we get out. One student recalls the story of Kalief Browder (May 25, 1993 – June 6, 2015). Says Wiki, “Kalif was an African American youth from The Bronx, New York, who was held at the Rikers Island jail complex, without trial, between 2010 and 2013 for allegedly stealing a backpack containing valuables. During his imprisonment, Browder was kept in solitary confinement for 800 days. Two years after his release, Browder hanged himself at his parents' home.” My friend did the same thing, says another student. Sometimes we don’t get out. Students shared their favorite lines from the reading. “There can be no love without justice, and there can be no justice without memory” (hooks, 2009). Visiting from Berlin, Jana took a few shots of us at home prepping for class and at Barbes, second home in Brooklyn. And Jana at an outdoor rave in beloved Berlin.
In between classes, I ride to Foley Square
ABOLISH I.C.E. Protest @ ICE Offices
Thursday, May 8 · 12:30–1:30 PM
26 Federal Plaza, NYC
Let’s be real, the Trump regime is using tactics and strategy straight out of the Nazi playbook.
They are sending masked and unidentified Trump troopers to kidnap children and adults from grade schools, churches, and courts.
May 8th
Ronald Okuaki Lieber invited us to his reading
Hey folks. I'm reading tomorrow Thursday evening at Unnameable Books on Vanderbilt Avenue in Brooklyn. And several of the bath house alumni were there to welcome him. The poems, many, majestic and silly. One performer, put on a live version of Revolution #9, something to that effect, loud and dissonant, a bit like the knitting factory. Wearing a suit, Ron stood up to read.
Formal and informal, academic and playful, his words light the room.
May 9th
Friday
After a heavy week, a night out at the movies was in order. Nothing fits the bill like a meditation on German history, from a French director no less on a rainy day trip to the movies, for Godards Germany Year 90 Nine Zero at the Metrograph on Ludlow. 'I thought it was utter nonsense,' said Baby C out for fried rice on a drizzly Friday. Someone doesn't like French movies. I kinda loved it. Says the Metrograph: "Eddie Constantine, age 73, reprises his signature role as detective Lemmy Caution, last seen on the big screen in Godard’s 1965 Alphaville, here found roaming a newly unified Berlin, left with nothing to do when the abrupt end of the Cold War renders his mission moot. Prompted by producer Nicole Ruellé’s invitation to make a telefilm about solitude, Godard’s film was originally to have described the solitude of isolated East Germany, but with the fall of the Wall became something very different, a film steeped in the atmosphere of both exuberance and dazed “What’s next?” confusion of Mitteleuropa in a post-Eastern Bloc world.”
“Now the cold war is over. Being American is ridiculous.”
On the way home that night, we got some good news.
“Vermont federal judge orders Rümeysa Öztürk to be released from custody,” reports Shaun Robinson. “The Turkish graduate student’s detention “chills the speech of the millions and millions of individuals in the country” who, like Öztürk, are not U.S. citizens, Judge William K. Sessions III said Friday.
The college kid in Boston went to demo after demo for her, witnessing the rage and the propensity to forget.
Sat
May 10th
Spring in the air, I drove up to pick up the kid, clearing out their dorm. After a majestic Freshman year, students moved out of Freshman dorms. Live music playing from the porches stoops, we stopped by kellys dinner for grilled cheese and fries, compared notes on classes. Goodbyes to buddies and we were on our way back to nyc. Music playing, napping, elvis singing unchained melody, mort garson's earth symphony, the marshmallow kisses playing as we drove through new rochelle, the magic light shining as we made our way along the the fdr, wondering what happened to connie converse, back over the brooklyn bridge to home, comparing notes living and learning, no highs, now lows, learning along the way, archaeology, classes, library spots, critical mass bike rides, new friends, discovering another part of the city, and the self.
That night I dreamed I was Che on the motorcycle, exploring a continent, one town, one city, one leper ward, one dance hall at a time.
Sunday
Mother’s day
Hi Mom, Hi Baby C, I say at lunch, after our journey, from Brooklyn to Princeton, back to Brooklyn, dinner with Al, mothers through time, aging and drinking prosecco.
Back to Ken, who sent me a movie about Gary Snyder, leading us through a discussion of Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia.
While the fighting began on the 17th of July, 1936, when the coup attempts by General Franco and the reactionary Spanish military failed, fight after fight followed. A particularly reactionary one upfolded after the Republic legalized abortion on demand, December 25, 1936, recognizing and supporting free abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.
“Taking away abortion is tool in the rise of Fascism, in Spain and Germany in the 1930's, and the US in the 2020's,” says Baby C. Franco would ban the practice after Fascism succeeded in Spain.
AI does not agree with our contention, I reply.
Still, it begrudgingly acknowledges:
“While some fascist regimes did have policies that impacted women's reproductive rights, this was often part of a broader agenda of social control and a desire to promote specific family values, not the primary cause of their rise. “
Civil war between Nationalists and The Republic would last the next three years.“The anarchists probably saved the situation in the first two months,” wrote George Orwell in Homage to Catalonia, “but they were incapable of organizing the resistance after a certain point” (1952/80, p. 68). Anarchists ignited Barcelona. Liberated it. Inspired Madrid. Autonomous workers, Durutti Column volunteers, trade unionists got involved, pushing down the coup. “The revolutionary atmosphere of Barcelona had attracted me deeply,” wrote Orwell (1952/80, p. 47. “But I had not made an attempt to understand it. As for the kaleidoscope of political parties and trade unions, with their tiresome names… they merely exasperated me. It looked at first as if Spain was suffering from some plague of initials. I knew that I was serving in something called the P.O.U.M.” Roughly speaking, Orwell was part of the Republican militia, but he didn’t have much knowledge of the POUM. For a while there, an egalitarian spirit propelled the conflict. Over time, the world seemed to pick sides. France, US, UK, stayed out, officially, officially, moving behind the scenes. Germany and Italy sided with Franco. The Soviets supported the Republic but not its revolution. And the Popular Front tried to hold, unsuccessfully. Split after split. “Obviously there was no real Popular Front in Franco’s war,” wrote Orwell (1952/80, p. 69). “It was inconceivable that the people in his territory, at any rate the town-workers and the poorer peasants, liked or wanted Franco, but with every swing to the Right the Government's superiority became less apparent.” And the popular support started to wayne. “What clinches everything is the case of Morocco,” wrote Orwell (1952/80, p. 69-70). “Why was there no rising in Morocco? Franco was trying to set up an infamous dictatorship, and the Moors actually preferred him to the Popular Front Government!” Sounds as if he’s writing about our current situation in the US. Says wrote Orwell (1952/80, p. 69-70):
“The palpable truth is that no attempt was made to foment a rising in Morocco, because to do so would have meant putting a revolutionary construction on the war. The first necessity, to convince the Moors of the Government's good faith, would have been to proclaim Morocco liberated. And we can imagine how pleased the French would have been by that! The best strategic opportunity of the war was flung away in the vain hope of placating French and British capitalism. The whole tendency of the Communist policy was to reduce the war to an ordinary, non-revolutionary war in which the Government was heavily handicapped. For a war of that kind has got to be won by mechanical means, i.e. ultimately, by limitless supplies of weapons; and the Government's chief donor of weapons, the U.S.S.R., was at a great disadvantage, geographically, compared with Italy and Germany. Perhaps the P.O.U.M. and Anarchist slogan: 'The war and the revolution are inseparable', was less visionary than it sounds.”
Ken Knabb led us through the discussion, recalling the split between the followers of Mikhail Bakunin (Bakuninists) and Karl Marx in the 1870s over the role of the state and the method of achieving socialist goals. Similarly in Spain, Marxists and Anarchists both seemed to want Socialism, the Anarchists in favor of the land reforms of the Republic, which the Soviets seemed to oppose. Stalin sent in advisors and support, guns. No one was sure for what. Rival sectors fought for control. The lice feasted on Orwell’s boys. He read novels, killing time in the trenches, bored. He was shot. But that was the least of it. And the Soviets set their target on him for this participation in a Trotski like group, before he left the country.
We talk for two hours, trying to unpack it all.
The teenager and I dig through the shelves, through Dad’s Kerouac novels, my copies of Junky and Giovanis’ Room, Diane di Prima’s memoirs, pulling out a few books in the office to explore.
I stay up late, watching scenes from the Gary Snyder film about his life, thinking about what came of it all, thinking about Snyder’s Buddhist Anarchism, “supporting any cultural and economic revolution that moves clearly toward a free, international, classless world. It means using such means as civil disobedience, outspoken criticism, protest, pacifism, voluntary poverty and even gentle violence if it comes to a matter of restraining some impetuous redneck. It means affirming the widest possible spectrum of non-harmful individual behavior — defending the right of individuals to smoke hemp, eat peyote, be polygynous, polyandrous or homosexual. Worlds of behavior and custom long banned by the Judaeo-Capitalist-Christian-Marxist West. It means respecting intelligence and learning, but not as greed or means to personal power. Working on one’s own responsibility, but willing to work with a group. “Forming the new society within the shell of the old” — the IWW slogan of fifty years ago.”
Dreaming about poetry readings from a long long time ago, what Kenneth Rexroth might have read at Six Gallery, on the 7 October, 1955. Went to bed dreaming of Orwell and the anarchists of Spain, Kenneth Rexroth and friends, from Chicago to San Francisco, the poetry and lives of Gary Snyder, birds chirping when I awake, biking, greetings friends of morning, the crossing guards, the man man walking with his shirt tucked about his shorts, high, radio in hand, Maria tardi for yoga, the poem Gary read at the Six Gallery reading from October 1955..
"The Berry Feast"
"Delicate blue-black, sweeter from meadows
Small and tart in valleys, with light blue dust
Huckleberries scatter through pinewoods
Crowd along gullies, climb dusty cliffs,
Spread through the air by birds;
Find them in droppings of bear.”
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