9/11 Entry

9/11 Entry

When I heard Mayor Giuliani compare himself with Churchill after 9/11 I knew we were in trouble. I knew we were being manipulated. It rehabilitated his career after this unpopular Mayor announced he was going to divorce his wife during a press conference. Shortly afterward, Giuliani went into business to capitalize on the fear of with his consulting business with Bernard Kerik, who would later be convicted as a felon. Its was awful what happened. Lives from all walks of life were lost. Yet, it is also sad what happens with the homeless, people with HIV, with the people of Chile who also have their own tragic loss on September 11, 1973.

Immediately afterward, we traveled to London and visited the bunker where Churchill and the English were pulverized for years, some 4,300 died. Shortly after college I worked in San Francisco with people with HIV/AIDS. Some 19,000 people died in San Francisco during the AIDS years. New York lost some 3,000 tragically with 9/11. And the event is treated as a historical anomaly. It is just not true.

Sadly, we lost a view of the US as a space for freedom, a space for self determination or for religious freedom. We gained the Patriot Act, Extraordinary Rendition, wire tapping, preemptive arrests of activists, and overzealous policing. Sadly, we lost a lot that day. Instead of embracing the world’s good will, we turned our back on that sense of solidarity. Budget surpluses became deficits. We lost the peace dividend. Sadly, it was the beginning of the end for what many people view as great about the US. The global image of the US as liberator of Auschwitz was replaced with an image of Abu Ghraib. The Empire went into decline.

Here as a en entry from Play, Creativity and Social Movements on the days before and after 9/11 when the most vital social movement of my lifetime was consumed. The movement was on its ascent in Quebec during the Free Trade of the Americas Projects of 2001.

LA Kauffman, Mark Leger and David Crane spent the summer of 2001 organizing a new project group, the Masquerade Project, which sought to provide an aesthetic intervention for a Global Justice Movement that was increasingly characterized by images of quasi-militaristic Black Bloc types. “[I]nstead of ‘BOMB-WIELDING ANARCHISTS DUELING WITH THE UPHOLDERS OF LAW AND ORDER,’” the news about the Masquerade would show a far more ambiguous “slippery image—one of queer unique bodies in carnival together and in contradiction to these strange and oppressive police officers... They would present an image of how people in the New World dressed, behaved and cared for one another” (Herbst, 2002).

Similarly, RTS New York started thinking about ways to organize a different kind of block, with a less militaristic presence at the next convergence action in Washington, DC, scheduled to coincide with the IMF/World Bank meetings in mid-September. Under the heading "Big Meeting! Traveling Carnival!" an email announced a meeting at the Charas/El Bohio Community Center to organize a carnival block:

Calling all RTSers, Anarchist Clowns, Radical Cheerleaders,
YaBas, Marching Bands, Puppeteers, Masqueraders and other
kindred anti-corporate globalization protesting freaks....

The call noted Reclaim the Streets/NYC was hosting an open meeting on Wednesday September 5^th at Charas/El Bohio Community Services Center to plan for a traveling carnival block to go down to Washington DC on September 29 & 30 to protest the IMF/World Bank Meetings. “Who better than a bunch of clowns to make the point that the humanitarian claims of the IMF and World Bank are a fucking joke?” Steve Duncombe (2001) wrote. “So please come with your ideas, your friends, your sense of
humor, and most of all: yourself. See you there, XOXO RTS/NYC” (quoted in Duncombe, 2001).

That day, September 5^th, a crowd of nearly one hundred activists filled a room at Charas/El Bohio where we had met to organize so many other actions. I facilitated the meeting to discuss plans for the IMF convergence. Kauffman announced plans for a concept called the Masquerade Project. She explained the point was to decorate gas masks with sequins to bring a more of a colorful flair to the actions (Herbst, 2002). Others followed with a proposal to have a clown block at the action. “One of the most popular sites on the web is the ‘Kill Clown,’ one observer noted. “People actually like seeing cops beat up clowns.” So they decided not to do a clown army, but instead would put out a call for a “Silly Block” with a time and a place to meet up in Washington. Most walked out feeling like it had been a productive get together. A work session was scheduled for the Masquerade Project the following week. The time of play in a social movement action seemed to have truly arrived.

A Plot Shift

What happened the following Monday, September 11, is now history. As many recall, it was a startlingly beautiful autumn morning. I was trying to get to Hunter College that morning for classes in the doctoral program at the School of Social Work. As I left my house in Brooklyn, someone ran up to me and screamed, “Someone flew a plane into the Twin Towers!” And I thought they were crazy for acting so hysterical. Yet the subway was not working well. And by the time I reached Union Square during rush hour, I was forced to take the bus up to the school on the Upper East Side. Smoke teamed through the air.

Angry that the city could not handle an accident that sounded like a little air traffic confusion, I took the nearest bus up to school. As more passengers got on the bus, it became one of those communal New York moments. Different passengers brought different bits and pieces of information into the commute. When a man walked up and proclaimed, “They also hit the Pentagon,” I stopped thinking it was an air traffic accident. “Now I’m starting to get scared,” said another rider, echoing what many felt. “Now I just want to go home.” I felt the same way looking behind me at the smoke rising from downtown. One woman on the bus was convinced Osama Bin Laden did it. I scolded her for rushing to judgment. There would be a lot of rushes to judgment in the days and years ahead. Within the duration of the bus ride, both of the twin towers would collapse.

All at once, the movement of movements faced the end of play. Kauffman (2001) wrote a dispatch for her email column stating that “everything has changed” and the Masquerade Project was scraped. And Kauffman gave the gas masks to the relief workers digging through the wreckage downtown. “It's now official: In the wake of the September 11 disaster, the IMF and World Bank have indefinitely postponed their planned late-September meetings, and the raucous street protests that were to greet them have effectively been canceled.”

That September 12^th at about noon in Union Square, the day after the attacks, we all sat in the park. September 12^th, a group meeting was called for many who had been involved in the actions. Some RTS people arrived; Jason Grote and LA Kauffman was there; Andrew Boyd, Priya Warcry, a few ACT UP folks, and some others who met in the grass at Union Square. There was a huge cloud of smoke coming up behind us. Everybody was shell-shocked. Kauffman had buttons she’d made which plead, “Our Grief is Not a Cry for War!’ We talked about the need not to blame Islam. Some talked about ways to get downtown to help, even if they were not wanted. Others called for direct action. And a group from C Sqaud planned to go downtown. And Kauffman declared, “The Global Justice Movement has got to become a global peace and justice movement.” It was the first time I’d thought of, wow, I guess this is where we are going to have to take this thing. “That was such a haunting meeting,” Kauffman (2004, p.382) recalled in an interview a few years later. “The smoke from Ground Zero got closer and closer until that horrible stench surrounded us and we had to flee. We went and re converged in the back of the New York City Independent Media Center because you couldn’t breathe.”

A second meeting was scheduled for later on that night at Charas. I stayed home and had dinner in Brooklyn. Jason Grote attended second meeting. By that evening, many were aware that things had changed. Grote and I talked about the end of that spirit of rambunctious possibility: “I think that everybody was traumatized… I saw you that day (September 12) and people were meeting in Union Square and the smell was in the air. And the thing is, too, that the hair-shirt left never really went away.”

There were always those who were hostile to more flexible or pragmatic approaches to organizing. This antagonism dated years before September 11^th. Yet, after the bombings, dourness came roaring back with a vengeance. It was particularly on display at the September 12 meeting at Charas/El Bohio. Grote recalled:

But part of what happened in the meeting that day, at the earlier meeting at Union Square, there was a mass shrine. Someone had put a flag of the earth in George Washington’s arms. And there was a very active and vibrant peace movement happening there that was really holding the mourning, the grieving that was going on. Even there was debate there. There were American flags there. But it wasn’t hostile. It was divided. It was very civil. People were talking. Some people were taking photos and I understand paranoia, but it was a weird activist hostility. And I was thinking, here are people having a really constructive not hateful response, and these are the people who are supposed to be the left. And they are full of anger. The day that it happened I was feeling ambivalence too. Here we are fighting global capital, the WTO, etc… At the time I had a really hard time figuring out my own feelings and fantasies of ‘smash the WTO’ with this. It wasn’t rational. It was a gut thing. John, who was involved with RTS, was asking people how they were feeling and he wrote to the [email] list saying, ‘let’s not forget that we got into this because we wanted to alleviate suffering.’ And I needed to hear that… And the next day, there was a meeting about a people’s response to this at Charas... There was a lot of talk about what we could do in the face of a lot of helplessness and futility… The strategy of play didn’t seem to fit with this...That sort of humorless hair-shirt left came roaring back.

Grote would drop out of organizing after the Charas meeting.

The week after September 11, Kauffman (2004) busied herself with a frenzy of organizing. All the while, Union Square was becoming a space for peaceful remembering with art and stories and pictures on the sidewalk to accompany the often poignant “missing” signs all over the city seeking information about lost loved ones who were probably not going to be found.

Tomorrow 9/11/2011 I’ll be at Union Square at 2 PM celebrating peace once again, I hope to see you there.

Biking, Screaming, and Policy Alternatives for Non-Polluting Transportation

The other day on the way home from work, I turned left off Smith up Sackett Street, where I live. As I turned, a man in an SUV scream at me to get out of the way, and sped up the street only to stop at the red light. It was a jarring experience, on a residential block. This has been a tough week for cycling in Brooklyn, with two cyclists killed; a friend was hit by a brick, and another acquaintance given a ticket for “obstructing traffic” by belligerent police because he did not yield to cars fast enough. This can't be the news every few weeks. It made me think about the need for safety and respect among everyone using the road, including the right of cyclists to ride without being harassed on threatened with bodily harm. All year long, cyclists have fought a bike backlash. Yet, over and over the media, politicians, and police have helped create a hostile environment on the road for cyclists. Today, the roads are fundamentally unsafe for cyclists.

“In several European countries, the higher standards of duty-of-care for more vulnerable road users include the legal responsibility for car drivers to avoid collisions with cyclists and pedestrians. In these countries the onus is on drivers to prove no-fault when in collisions with pedestrians and cyclists,” notes Jan Garrard in her editorial “Its Not Just About Bike Lanes.” “"I just didn't see her", "He came from no-where", or "It was raining/foggy/dark/glary" are not legitimate excuses for colliding with people on bikes or on foot. A driver is expected to anticipate the presence of cyclists and pedestrians on the road, and take action to avoid injuring them.”

If only we had such a culture here. Instead cyclists are routinely harassed, forced to navigate unsafe streets, and even killed by motorists, who face little to no deterrent for such behavior. Erica Abbott's senseless death highlights the systemic failures of the city to make the streets safe for all and to hold those who create obstacles to safer streets accountable for their actions.

Yet, the situation is changing all over the world, starting with car friendly Los Angeles where my friend Barbara tells me the city just passed anti-harassing legislation making it a crime for drivers to threaten cyclists verbally or physically. Other progressive laws include Idaho’s stop-as-yield statute which allows cyclists to stop at red lights like they would stop signs. While the great state of Texas’ legislature passed a similar vulnerable road users law in 2009, the measure was vetoed by Bush’s successor Rick Perry. And most European countries have “Strict Liability” laws which hold drivers accountable for accidents or collisions with cyclists. These are best practices worth emulating in New York. In Times Up! we are currently drafting legislation to make riding a bike a far more friendly and safe experience. After all, we all have to share the road.

The Battle of Brooklyn: Eviction Defense

Riding through Bud Stuy at Mary Lee Ward’s apartment this morning, I passed by Atlantic Yards, where 5^th Avenue, its bars, and much of Ft. Green is being consumed into the super shopping big box expanding from Ratner’s unpopular project. Throughout Brooklyn, regular people of the borough are fighting off dynamics of a global urban experience, uneven development, speculative gentrification, displacement, police brutality, long seen in Manhattan. The Battle of Brooklyn is a struggle to help keep what is distinct and rich about Brooklyn, its streets, distinct neighborhoods, and people. While, it is the fourth biggest city in the United States, it has long resisted elements of the homogenization steamroller exorbing other cities – big box stores, chains, and high-rises. The people of the borough fought to preserve their brownstones. Yet, today the battle is changing. While certainly some of the renaissance taking place in Brooklyn is a good thing, growth is paradoxical. Today, the Battle of Brooklyn is a struggle against the sea of identical details, Wallmart, Stadiums, out of place buildings, and displacement of long time residents. Certainly, this was the battle August 19^th, 2011 at 8 AM as I rode from Carroll Gardens to Mary Lee Ward’s apartment in Bed Stuy, where she was facing eviction from her long time apartment. Of course, the people of Bed Stuy have long endured hardships of banking. Red lining was practically born in the neighborhood, where bankers once drew lines around the map of the district and denied bank loans for those in the area. Today, many of these same people are facing the foreclosures. Yet, they were also fighting back.

Word on facebook all week was about Friday’s eviction defense action: “Stop the Eviction of Mary Lee Ward! Eviction Blockade” to take place at “Ms. Ward's Home in Bed-Stuy.” The facebook invite provided background on the scene:

Mary Lee Ward, an 82-year-old grandmother and resident of the Bed-Stuy community for 44 years faces eviction from her home due to the deceptive practices of bankers and speculators.

Predatory lenders like the now defunct Delta Funding, Inc. and real estate speculators like 768 Dean Inc. are targeting and destroying diverse communities of color like Bed-Stuy, intentionally stripping them of their equity, wealth and homes!

We, the members of Organizing for Occupation (O4O) www.o4onyc.org, a citywide network of concerned NYC residents active in the struggle to make housing a human right, can no longer sit back and watch the destruction of our communities!

Stand in solidarity with Ms. Ward this Friday morning, August 19, 2011!

Stop the eviction of Ms. Ward from her home!

EVICT THE SCHEMING BANKERS AND SPECULATORS FROM OUR COMMUNITIES!

Organizing for Occupation
www.o4onyc.org
212-213-3920

Riding down Tompkins toward Ms.Ward’s home, I heard roars of the crowd, cheering after countless cars and trucks honked in solidarity, followed by more cheers in a reciprocal display of neighborhood support. “Housing is a human right, fight, fight, fight!” The crowd cheered. Members of Picture the Homeless were there, many locked inside Ms Ward’s home, ready to physically resist the marshals. Activists from neighborhood organizing, as well as global justice circles were there in support. My friend Beka, who fought the rezoning over the Brooklyn waterfront, was there. TV cameras, politicians, undercover police, participants in the Doe Fund program down the block were there. I looked up to the second floor window of Ms. Ward’s apartment and Seth Tobocman and Frank Morales watched. Tobocman is author of War in the Neighborhood, a graphic novel on squatter battles of the 1980’s and 1990’s, when residents fought displacement from the East Village. Then as now, the message was the same: housing is a human right. Black and white signs hung from Ms. Ward’s apartment: “Evict Speculators=Not Grandmothers” and “Predatory lending = Racism and kleptocracy.”

We were all waiting for the marshals to come make an attempt to take Ms Ward’s home. “Hey, my people. We have a story. Tell the whole wide world this is people territory,” people began to chant, clapping along. “Defend the block.” And that they did. More and more people filled both sides of Tompkins Street. “They are not going to come today,” I commented to a friend. “Too many camera crews.” Evictions don’t tend to take place when everyone knows about the plans, too many cameras. Those involved in such unsavory activities thrive in secrecy.

By 9 AM, people were coming in and out of the apartment, where activist film crews sat along with the activists ready to fight the eviction. And out come a lawyer, who notified the crowd that local politicians were working with the “landlord” to work out a deal so Ms Ward would not be displaced from her long time home. Everyone roared. As the morning went on, it started to look like the marshals would not come today, that the eviction blockade had worked, and Ms. Ward would remain at 320 Tompkins. Sometimes activism works. The combination of the mobilization of social networks, legal coordination, direct action, as well as neighborhood leadership all helped provide a show of strength for the neighborhood. Yet, the battle is far from over. And a rally is planned for Monday in front of the speculator’s office. More info TBA.

On my bike ride home, I ran into my friend Austin, who is fighting Walmart moving to East New York. It’ll be yet another ongoing skirmish in the long term Battle of Brooklyn.

Shut Down before Meltdown Ride

Childhood memories alternate between scenes from post-apocalyptic sci-fi movies such as The Day After, War Games, Mad Max, and A Boy and His Dog and new wave imagery of the humans creating something better with their worlds, daydreams and lingering concerns that we just might blow it. This was what growing up in the Cold War was all about. 100,000 million people saw the television movie The Day After in 1983. I recall waking from a dream a few days later, with a lingering feeling that all we had known had been destroyed, by us. It took me a few minutes to realize that the nightmare had not happened, that the sun was out and we had not really committed suicide as a people. Over the following years, I would frequently wake up with that sense of both fear and relief that while we had walked to the precipice, imagined how horrible that might look, we had not crossed that Rubicon, at least not yet. I hoped it would not be soon. The other shoe hasn’t dropped, at least, not yet. In the years to follow, I would grow up to watch the end the Cold War, which generated so many of those nightmares, as a generation of people tried to do away with nukes, and fight to create a sustainable urban environment.

The last ten years of my adult life has included days and days of running around Garrison and the West Side of New York, NY overlooking the majestic Hudson River, a swatch of water which has made a comeback after years of pollution. Through organizing, lawsuits, cleanups, and cultural advocacy by groups such as Clearwater and Riverkeeper, the river is being relocated as a space for work and play, not simply industrial waste and nuclear power.

As a member of Times Up!, a quarter century old environmental group volunteer for, I have watched activism take many forms. Over the last decade, Times Up! has volunteered doing bike valet at the Clearwater Festival at Croton Harmon. I’ve enjoyed watching Pete Seeger sing there, along with Arlo Guthrie, Taj Mahal, and many others. At one show, Guthrie talked about the birth of Clearwater from the simple question: why is there so much shit floating on the Hudson River. Over the years after activists begin to ask this question, Clearwater and Riverkeeper struggled to get down to the bottom of the question, take action, and the river became a place people could swim, play, and thrive.

This Spring, after the Fukushima meltdown we started talking about Indian Point and the need to do more for the issue of the four decade old power plant 35 miles from downtown Manhattan. The plant sits in Buchanan, NY just south of Peekskill, along the majestic Hudson River, where the American Revolution was fought and Rip Van Winkle slept. A melt down comparable to the one in Fukushima would sent radiation down the river directly into New York City, jeopardizing the lives and homes of the 20 million people between the plant the city.

When I mentioned doing an action around Indian Point at one of the Times UP! planning meetings, the idea resonated. Many said they would like to get involved. For some, such as Times Up volunteer Barbara Ross, who is celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of her 1986 walk across the country to stop nuclear energy, the action idea struck a special cord. How should we do it, we asked. “How about a boat up to Indian Point as pirates trying to shut it down!” one volunteer suggested. "Indian Point must not be relicensed. It must be shut down now!” others chimed in. So, we would do an action with a boat. Leaving the meeting, we had a date and plan, lots of bikes and no idea how we would get a boat.

With little but a skeleton of a plan to boat to Indian Point, we started looking at options to get a boat. Gradually the pirate component of the action faded away. The Freegan Yacht Club had a boat they said we could use, but it might take six hours to get up to Indian Point, with it and only a few people could ride. Perhaps we could do an action at Chelsea Piers, create a theatrical evacuation plan amidst the cars and congested streets, and head out to our small boat? People liked the idea of the evacuation ride. We started drawing up propaganda for the action.

“INDIAN POINT IS 35 MILES FROM MID TOWN MANHATTAN.

Shut Down Indian Point Now!”

This would be our message. As we drafted media materials, we looked at what others thought of the plans. Few had any better assessments of the Indian Point evacuation plans which suggest that in the event of a meltdown that we go inside and roll up the windows. “Indian Point Evacuation Plan is unrealistic!” noted the NY Times on March 20, 2011. FEMA was no more comforted by the plans.

So we had a message down, but we still did not have a boat. Toward the end of June, the group rode up to Croton Harman and did bike valet at the Clearwater. Over the weekend, several people suggested we contacted Clearwater about using the sloop Pete Seeger helped set sail to clean up the Hudson four decades prior. When we reached out, Clearwater showed interest, and the two groups started planning a sail of the Sloop directly to Indian Point, with banners declaring: “Times UP! Shut Down Indian Point!” and “No Fukushima on the Hudson!”

Over the next few weeks of July, members of Times Up! would buy banner making materials, paints, get precise measurements, coordinate artists, banner makers, and so on. The last weekend in July, the group went on a retreat to Jamestown, NY. In between romping on the beach, swimming, eating, chopping wood in various states of undress, members of the group starting painting banners. Within a short walk of the site of the Shoreham Nuclear Power plant which was shut down by Governor Mario Cuomo in 1989 after just one day in action, the group brought the first banner to their site. We took heart from the message that a site such as this can be shut down when a community does not want it. We hope the governor will follow his father’s lead in supporting the no-nukes movement, as well as his own public statements that Indian Point should we be shut down now.

Over the following weeks, we would continue painting banners, making props, and drafting a press release for the action.

TIME'S UP! JOINS FORCES WITH CLEARWATER FOR BIKE RIDE & SAIL ACTION UP TO INDIAN POINT NUCLEAR POWER PLANT WITH 50FT BANNER: "SHUT DOWN INDIAN POINT NOW"

WHAT: “Shut Down Indian Point” Bike Ride & Sail Action from Manhattan to Nuclear Power Plant

WHEN & WHERE: Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Manhattan:
7:45 am – 8:45 am - "Shut Down Before the Meltdown" bike ride starting from downtown, ending at 8:15 am at Grand Central Station information booth for a quick action dramatizing the impossibility of an evacuation in the event of a nuclear meltdown


Verplanck (upstate NY):
11:00 am – 2:00 pm - Participants from Manhattan & towns surrounding Indian Point board the Clearwater Sloop, docked at King Marine at 270 6th St, then make the 3-hr sail around the Nuclear Power Plant

NEW YORK, NY (August 4, 2011) – The environmental groups, Clearwater and Time’s Up! team up for an August 9th action including a 3-hr sail on the Hudson on the Clearwater Sloop to Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant, with 50ft banners reading: "No Fukushima on the Hudson" and "Shut Down Indian Point Now!” to call for the permanent closure of the aging power plant. Cyclists from Time’s Up! will start the journey at 7:45am from 156 Rivington Street, with a theatrical "Shut Down Before the Meltdown" bike ride, carrying windmills and signs highlighting the need for safe energy alternatives including wind and solar power. The August 9th action will also draw attention to Indian Point’s many safety violations, including the lack of a workable evacuation plan.

Twenty million people live within the 50-mile "peak injury" zone of Indian Point nuclear power plant. A large radioactive release triggered by terrorism, natural disaster or accident at the facility could have devastating health and economic consequences, rendering much of the Hudson River Valley, including New York City, uninhabitable.

“New York City is only 25 miles from Indian Point. Can you imagine over 8 million people trying to evacuate New York City in a nuclear meltdown?” said Time's Up! spokesperson Barbara Ross.

”Due to the plant's vulnerability to a terrorist attack, a laundry list of safety problems, the storage of 1,500 tons of radioactive waste onsite, and the lack of a workable evacuation, we are urging Governor Cuomo to deny the plant’s owner, Entergy Corporation, a 20-year license extension and shut down Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant now,” says Ben Shepard, organizer of the August 9th action. "A relicensing hearing is upcoming later this year and we are urging the public to attend."

"The best way to commemorate victims of the Fukushima disaster is to abolish all the nuclear plants on the planet", says Yuko Tonohira, who will be joining the action for her parents and close friends who live in Japan.

The call for closure is supported by over 400 elected officials, including 11 members of Congress, and a broad-based alliance of environmental, health, public policy, and civic groups united under the Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition.

August 8^th, we had a final meeting at ABC No Rio on Rivington in the Lower East Side. There we made evacuation outfits, consisting of paint suits, and paper propellers to put on bike helmets, symbolizing the wind power alternative, just like a wind machines, we hope the state can adopt as an alternative to nuclear power. Throughout the meeting, we discussed plans, worst case scenarios, and a phone tree to get everyone to the space by 7:30 for the 8:45 evacuation ride.

Just a few hours later, everyone reconverged in the Lower East side. Some had just a few blocks to ride, others arrived from Williamsburg and Carroll Gardens Brooklyn. While the phone tree did not work, most everyone arrived, basically on time. There everyone put on their evacuation suits, their wind power propellers, we mugged for pictures, did some interviews, and headed out.

“4 hours…

… is how long it took for the Fukushima Daiichi Reactors (in Japan) to melt down!

Can you imagine evacuating 20 million people from New York City in 4 hours?

Neither can we.

INDIAN POINT IS 35 MILES FROM MID TOWN MANHATTAN.

Shut Down Indian Point Now!”

I declared through megaphone, in between sirens, as we rode to Grand Central Station, where we planned to display our banners on the stairs, pass out some flyers, and not get arrested before we embarked on an 8:49 AM train to Peekskill. Arriving at Grand Central, where ACT UP once clogged the station for hours, security greeted us as we walked inside with our bikes. “Do you have a permit for that?” a policeman asked me, pointing to my bike. Yes, I did. I pulled out my bike permit for the train. As the policeman inspected the card, my friend noted the train conductors usually look for the bike permits on the train. The policeman then pointed to one of our banners, asking about a permit for that. The following day, the Daily News would report the police were increasingly cruising through social media, where groups such as Times UP! promotes its actions. They obviously had been doing so for this action. By this point, there were ten police with plastic cuffs accompanying us inside and police sitting on the stairs where we planned to hold the banner. Instead of fighting them or taking a bust, we walked back outside, and unfurled our 22 foot sign: “YOU ARE 35 MILES FROM INDIAN POINT. WHAT WOULD YOU DO IN A MELT DOWN?” just outside the entrance as people walked into the station, alternating with our, “Times Up! Shut Down Indian Point” banner, while passing out flyers.

By 8:35, we moved back inside, escorted by a group of police. “We’re just going to the train” I told them. They seemed glad to see us leave. At the track more police escorted us to the back three trains, which we had to ourselves. They would sit on the back of those trains. Leaving the station, the conductor even announced, ‘If you are taking the train to Indian Point, take one of the back three cars.’

The train to Peekskill took little more than an hour. Getting off, we were met by more police, as well as activists from Clearwater. And our message changed: “You are now less than three miles form Indian Point. What would you do in a meltdown?” Riding the three miles from Peekskill to the Verplanck, police escorted us, stopping when we stopped outside the disposal plant for Entergy Corp, the corporation which runs Indian Point, and stands to lose some $400 million in profits a year if the plant is shut down. This is probably why the corporation has engaged former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who once endorsed convicted federal felon Bernard Kerik to be the head of Homeland Security, to vouch for the safety of the plant. Outside the entrance, a group of police as well as a man with an M37 stood watching guard on the corporation. And the ride proceeded to King Marine at 270 6th Street, Verplanck, where we planned to emark.

While the crew on the Clearwater Sloop hung the banners, members of media arrived and I gave interviews, reiterating the message from our banners. This is not a safe place. The times for nukes is over. I have two kids who I hope will be able grow up happy and healthy without a melt down on the Hudson. This plant is like a beaten up old car. Not many of us drive cars built in the late 1960’s anymore. And we certainly should not depend on decade old machinery, with no possibility for disposal of waste, to fuel whole cities. Much of this message would find its way into several media outlets. That, after all, was a big reason for the action.

By the time, we left, our two banners, hung from both sides of the sloop. We displayed several throughout the boat, binging the message directly to the plant. “NO FUKUSHIMA ON THE HUDSON!” Some sang; others watched quietly, and we alternated banners for views from the East and West sides of the majestic river. As we sailed by the plant, a group of us staged a die-in, creating an image of what this plant can do.

After a peaceful ride, we rode home in the rain. “Special thanks to Clearwater Environmental Organization and NYC police, Grand Central Station special forces for giving us three empty train cars, undercover government agents dressed like construction workers and the state police for following us around all day,” one of the Times Up volunteers would later post. It was another glorious day, another day to dodge a bullet. There has not been a Fukushima on the Hudson, at least not yet.

Skin Ride 2011

The World Naked Bike Ride was scheduled to take place in June. But torrential showers got in the way. So we rescheduled. Over time, we stared to wonder if we could pull the energy back into this experiment in freedom. After all, it is no small thing to pull together a clothing option event in the light of day in the town which made Anthony Comstock and his obscenity laws famous. But this is the naked city, so we were going to give it a shot.

The plan was simple. We were going to meet on Sunday, July 24^th at the East River Park, off Delancy Street, NYC. The meeting time was 4 PM, with the ride scheduled to start at 5 PM. That Sunday was also the first day of gay marriages in New York State. So, it was already a day heady day and time for celebrating freedom. Much of the ride is about self determination of bodies and minds, and a rejection of body shame. A "bare-as-you-dare" bike ride to raise awareness around the dangers posed to the world and human bodies by nuclear energy, automobile and oil dependence – noted the organizers. But as one of the women put it in one of the World Naked Bike Ride promos, it is both a little creepy and fun when a bunch of guys show up naked for a bike ride. And show up five hundred men and would.

Press materials declared:

“More Nudes, No Nukes!!!”

“More Ass, Less Gas!!”

“Love Your Body, Ride Your Bike!”

These are just some of the chants you'll hear as New York City joins cyclists in cities around the globe for the 8th year of the World Naked Bike Ride, 2011. A fun and liberating protest against indecent exposure to toxic pollution, nuclear disaster, reckless driving, and police harassment of bicyclists, WNBR NYC (World Naked Bike Ride New York City) celebrates alternatives to automobile & oil dependence for its a third year rolling.

How: Volunteers and participants collaborate to create the event, including body painting prior to ride. Final route will be communicated to riders who show up only…people in cities across the Northern Hemisphere will gather to ride bikes and expose their bodies, many painted with messages raising awareness of the indecent exposure to toxic pollution and reckless driving.

The ongoing nuclear disaster in Fukishima, Japan, and the looming danger of Indian Point nuclear plant in New York are inspiring many to participate in NYC's 3rd year of WNBR, as the date coincides with a worldwide day of action against nuclear power. The dangers vulnerable street users face in local traffic is also a focus, as cyclists find themselves the target of media scape-goating and an NYPD crackdown in recent months, though motor vehicles are taking lives weekly on the city streets.

WNBR promotes positive body-image and freedom from shame, and promises to be diverse gathering: bicyclists, artists, safer-streets advocates, performers, renewable-energy activists, LGBTQ, nudists, civil-rights supporters, and other ordinary New Yorkers.

Nudity is not requisite; riders are encouraged to come "as bare as you dare," dressing for comfort and fun while mindful of relevant local laws and enforcement practices. Both women and men are free to go topless in NYC. All forms of human-powered transportation are welcome. Participants will engage in body painting, bicycle decoration, modeling, music and poetry to create a carnival atmosphere prior to the ride at the starting location in East River Park in Manhattan. A fun route will be communicated to participants the day of the ride, which will proceed at a brisk pace through the boroughs of New York City with the aim of maximizing exposure to signs and slogans painted upon participants' bodies.

"That was the most liberating experience ever.... meeting so many cool people, painting and riding the bike with [WNBR] was just amazing... I wish I was in New York to be part of this again...Have a lot of fun and make sure to enlighten many people of the damage being done to our planet." gushed WNBR NYC 2010 participant and volunteer Alexandra Cifuentes.

"Riding a bike could be a practical action to be independent and being free from the contemporary life that is highly dependent on [nuclear] energy," says video artist Yukimi Otagiri of Queens. Inspired to take action by the situation in Japan, the newcomer sees WNBR as part of a crucial choice: "It gives us a power to choose our own energy, and asks us if we could choose energies that have smell of death...Being naked on the street is the response of the oppression from the power."

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Riding through Lower Manhattan to the ride, I saw a group of police cars lined up along the East River Park. Immediately, I knew this ride would not be like last year, when we met on a sunny afternoon on Greenpoint, with hundreds of bikers and sunny skies. As with June 11th, there had been a 40% chance of rain before the ride. With rain pouring an hour north of the city and clouds looming, the gods seemed to be telling us not to do the ride. But the rain never came.

Walking through the crowd, a small group of musicians played, and body painters décorated the parts of the bodies people were willing to show. Declarations, such as “Coal is not cool” found their way across semi-clad bodies.

Still, the police presence inhibited the vibe. Some 25 police were assigned to the ride.They But people were still in a good mood. By 5 PM we converged along the water with the Manhattan Bridge in the backdrop. A few unfurled our banners declaring: "Shut Down Indian Point Now!" and "World Naked Bike Ride." Others pontificated about the importance of freedom for everyone, including those same sex couples getting married, contending with the phalanx of protests and counter protests, opposing and supporting the new practice.

And we started to ride South along the water before moving Westward, with the police scooters on our trail. A few ran some lights. "These are the police who come to Critical Mass" one friend noted as we rode, observing the police cork for the ride. "They make you feel comfortable and then they arrest." The police had communicated to a few of the riders that as long as we obeyed the laws, we would be fine. But the gap between the reality of riding in the streets of the city and the traffic laws is anything but simple to the traverse.

Not quite a naked ride, many worried they would face the wrath of the police if they stripped bare. So the men wore shorts and briefs, the women bathing suits, many legally topless. It was more of a skin ride, which made for a fabulous moving spectacle through the streets.

For a while there, no one was arrested. We zoomed through South Manhattan, up through Chinatown and the Lower East Side to First Ave, chatting, dancing, performing karaoke with the sound bike, and chanting "More Ass, Less Gas!" to roars from onlookers.

Around 18th Street, the police started pushing us into the fight lane on 1st Ave. Most of us were doing our best to forget the police were along for the ride. And we moved right. When a younger rider, tried to zoom outside the police line, one of the cops pushed his scooter into the way; his bike crashed, and rider hurled onto the street. This younger activist had had a verbal altercation going on with the police for several blocks. Several of us started screaming "Shame, Shame, Shame!!!" After a minutes, the ride started up again, albeit with a more somber tone.

"Do they have to do that today?" moaned one rider.

Perhaps this type of police behavior was why one rider had the words: "MORE FREEDOM PLEASE!" pained on his back.

The ride pressed forward, moving up to the Governor's office at 41st Street. By this point the ride was stopping at every light. Nonetheless, the police moved in. Give her a ticket, a white shirt ordered, pointing at one woman not riding in a bike lane. Riding through traffic, it is not always possible to ride in a bike lane. Still, police insist on the practice.

As we parked at the Governor's office at 41st and 3rd, a group lifted their cycles over their heads and started to chant, "Don't Frack New York!" The point of the ride is there are too many pollutants in the physical and mental environment. No need to add unknown chemicals to the watershed. "They are going to dig with a 2,000 feet of the shale," another rider bemoaned as we rode away. Sadly, the Governor has signalized he is not willing to ban fracking across the state.

Nonetheless the ride churned forward and spirits started lifting. "Empire State of Mind" blard out of the sound bike as we careened down Fifth Ave. Onlookers laughed, cheered, took photographs.

Riding East from Union Square, I talked with the white shirt policeman. "You guys treated this like you used to treat Critical Mass before 2004," I noted referring to the ongoing crackdown on Critical Mass. "Maybe you could take it easy on the ride? And not waste so many taxpayer resources on cracking down on the ride?" The white shirt smirked. He barely acknowledged I was speaking to him.

"The police were not too easy going today," another rider noted as I rode away the lieutenant. "My friend is spending the night in jail tonight for taking part in a bike ride."

It was true.

Still, the world naked bike ride had been a splash. One gets few surprises in life. After the success of last year's ride, there was little doubt that the police would be along hand to make sure the party did not get too rowdy this year. It was yet another skirmish in an age old battle over the contested streets of New York City.

And we tasted a small bit of freedom which still takes place in the naked city.

Riding up the Williamsburg Bridge, we said goodbye to the police. "The police are gone," another Times UP! volunteer declared, pulling off his shorts as we started over the hill. Many followed his lead, stripping bare, as they cruised from Manhattan toward the liberatory space known as Brooklyn, for the after party at the Time's Up! Brooklyn space at 99 South 6 Street off of Bedford Avenue under the Williamsburg Bridge. There we danced and watched the sun set on the robust, highly conflicted, yet still naked city.

From Drag to Eternity: Street Protest and Gay Marriage in a Neoconservative City

Deep inside of last Saturday’s (6/25) triumphant coverage of the gay marriage equality vote in Albany, the newspaper of record, the New York Times, reported: “A drag parade on Friday from Tompkins Square Park in the East Village to Stonewall in the West Village also went on as planned …” More than an afterthought, the annual drag march is a central event for many of us. “This is my favorite celebration during the whole of LGBTQ Month,” noted Guncle. Rather than a choreographed parade with sponsors, crowd controlling cops, and barricades separating spectators from participants, the annual drag march blurs lines between carnival and spectacle. Everything flows into itself, with few strict demarcations between participant and observer, or street and sidewalk. This 18th drag march was both a street party and a critical mass opening space for everyone, as our cavalcade cascaded through the streets and history at the Stonewall once again.

A little history: “The Drag March started as a protest against the organizers of the Gay Pride Parade (officially the LGBT Pride Parade),” notes Guncle. “During the 25th Anniversary of the Stonewall riots, this very white male-influenced and weirdly conservative group thought that drag and leather were no longer appropriate for the annual parade. Apparently they ignored the fact that it was trannies and drag queens who were the majority of rioters at Stonewall.” Trans groups planned protests and the drag march was born.

Every year since 1994, queers in New York have kicked off Pride weekend with an unpermitted neighborhood street procession in drag on Friday night. I first attended in 1999, when the rumblings of the nascent alterglobalization movement overlapped with some twelve years of queer ACTing Up in the city. The global justice movement would make its national debut during trade talks in Seattle later that fall. The burlesque of ACT UP’s rambunctious queer political tradition would find its way into much of the playful ‘tactical frivolity’ of the ascendant movement. Only one week before the 1999 Drag March, members of New York City’s chapter of Reclaim the Streets (RTS), converged to stage their own model of carnivalesque protest on June 18^th, 1999. “Dancing Protestors Shut Down Financial Center to Protest Global Summit,” the group declared in a press release. The point of this movement was to make public space for the people, much like this drag march.

The Drag March was the next week. That week a friend involved from both RTS and queer organizing circles sent an email containing the following question: “Is there a DRAG MARCH this year?” His answer, “Depends on what you’re wearing.” The call highlighted the highly participatory nature of the yearly Drag March. “7:30ish or so, step off when it’s dark enough and critical mass has been achieved,” his note continued. “Permits: None,” it noted in reference to the debates about the politics of requesting police permission to participate in constitutionally guaranteed activities such as freedom of assembly. “Restrictions: Drag is how you define it,” explained the polymorphous invitation. I decided to attend, as I have almost every year since.

This year, I was running late, having arrived from Miami the morning before. I’d spent the week drafting an essay on queer activism and public space I hoped to use to promote the action as well as some of the thinking behind it.

The plan for the 2011 march was no different than other years. “Drag is what one makes it. “Dress for success? Dress down? Undress? Under-duress? Anyone can join in…” promotional material declared. “All it takes is a well spent dollar at your favorite second hand clothing store and a dream. Brought to us by the New York Radical Faeries and The Church Ladies For Choice.” Times UP!, a cycling group I work with, promoted the event on its website: “Come ready to dance. Remember nothing says resistance like drag queens in high heels. Tonight we’ll have hundreds of them. Plus a sound bike!” The group planned to bring a sound bike and ipod to ignite a dance party immediately following the march, contributing in its own way to the festive celebration of colors, streets and New York's unique culture of resistance. As usual, the plan was to meet at Tompkins Square Park (8th street entrance) at 7pm and revel in the East Village summer sun, before marching West to Stonewall Place/Christopher Street.

Friday night, I rode out from my house in Carroll Gardens, in South Brooklyn, up to Williamsburg to meet some others from Times UP! to gather the sound system. Two other volunteers with the group were there to help set up the sound bike, equipped with the equivalent of a car stereo on the back of a bike. Joe wore pink hose, a wig, and a t-shirt that declared “Trans Power.” Another friend wore a tight fitting lycra number with a bare midriff, long hair and a beard, very genderfuck. “Come Sail Away” and “I Want to Be Free” blared out of the sound bike speakers as we rode through the fog across the Williamsburg Bridge into the city. Onlookers screamed with approval as they heard the sound bike.

Harmonie Moore, aka, Brian Griffin, greeted us and offered an ipod full of drag anthems for the dance party. I love my first glance of the Faeries, drag queens, costumed village vagabonds in their colors, costumes, and glitter and connecting with friends already there. A mix between the Cockettes and the cast from Hedwig and the Angry Inch hang, anarchists mug with drag queens, trannies with clones, hippies with crusty punks, Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and homeless people cavort together, playing drums, dancing, blowing bubbles, and sharing space in the nether zone of the East Village.

At around 7:45 the Faeries called for those in attendance to circle. Everyone gathered and held hands, as various Radical Faeries welcomed the Witches of the East, West, South, and North, with Faeries strolling through the circle to remind everyone why we are here. Harmonie Moore passed out lyric sheets for “Under the Rainbow” for after the parade, with information about New Alternatives, a social services program for homeless queer youth, on the back. Street youth were the ones who ignited the riot after all. And the bikers, Church Ladies and Faeries meandered out of the park, west on St. Mark’s Place.

People always cheer for the march. This year as they leaned out of their windows, my friend said he felt more like he was at Mardi Gras. It certainly felt that way, particularly when the ride intersected with “Queerball, a radical street party” as members of the Rude Mechanical Orchestra joined the drummers, playing "When the Saints Go Marching In". And the saints and sinners marched. More and more different groups converged, with the Times UP! Central Park Traffic Calming Ride intersecting with Critical Mass at Broadway - all headed West. At one point, a Japanese dance troupe joined the parade, dancing along.

Harmonie Moore led everyone in a rendition of the Mary Tyler Moore theme song. “Love is all around, no need to waste it. You can have a town, why don't you take it.” The sun was setting in the summer sky. Few knew all the lyrics, yet most everyone joined in for the chorus, “You’re gonna make it after!!!! You’re gonna make it after all!!!” throwing their hands in the air. The Church Ladies for Choice sang, “God Is a Lesbian” to the tune of “God Save the Queen.” Others chanted, “Arrest Us, Just Try It, Remember, Stonewall Was a Riot!” Some screamed, “We don’t’ want to marry, we just want to fuck!”

When we arrived at the Stonewall, everyone sang the familiar words

Somewhere over the rainbow
Way up high,
There's a land that I heard of
Once in a lullaby.

A little hokey, but many are still moved to connect with this piece of history. Decades later, there remains a utopian hope in the lyrics and the promise of a movement born with these words. The riot being commemorated took place on the night of Judy Garland’s funeral.

As the song ended, the Radical Faeries and RMO played drums while the dancing crowd swelled. The sun had gone down by now. Some meandered into the bar for cocktails. I ran into one of the Yes Men covered in sparkles. We talked about how hot the march had been. So much has been good this year, he nodded, looking around.

After a couple of songs, Joe turned on the sound bike to play “Fly Robin Fly.” A few Faeries started a makeshift ballet performance in the streets. The crowd expanded with “Dancing Queen.” As the street party started expanding, the police moved in, first to get Joe to turn down the music and then to push the crowd out of the streets. Last year, we scheduled the dance party for 10 pm after a brief bike ride, allowing the crowds to leave only to pump up the sound system on our return. The crowd reconverged. Joe and company danced on cars. This year, there was no such pause in the action. Instead, drag march participants – from public space groups such as the Radical Homosexual Agenda, ACT UP, and Times UP! – collaborated to hold the space.

Run-ins with police are not uncommon at the drag march. In 2008, members of RHA participated in the unpermitted action. It was just the kind of event public space activists had long defended. Yet, it was also just about shut down before it could begin.

“Who's in charge” the police asked Hucklefaery, who helped organize the event.

“No one,” Hucklefaery stammerred, bluffing for time.

“Do you have a permit?” they asked.

“I don't know?” he bluffed.

“You're all going to jail,” the cop retorted.

While this conversation was taking place, the Church Ladies led the crowd into the street. Hucklefaery turned around to see the street clogged with queer bodies. Emboldened, he informed the police, "No we're not getting arrested... where were you -- we've been waiting for you, what the hell's going on? Can't you talk to someone and fix this? They were dumbfounded...” Yet, there was a method to his negotiations. “[I]t was pleading, but also a bit bossy and... compliant as long as you did what I asked...”

Looking around the police saw hundreds and hundreds of drag queens dressed to the nines. And they gave in. For Hucklefaery the action included cornerstones of queer political performance and protest: “challenging fear,” “standing up and standing strong,” and, “for lifting me up to new heights of realization and ACTION!” Most importantly, the Drag March is informed by a bountiful energy of play. “I loved killing the cops with kindness, while you told 'em to fuck off,” noted Hucklefaery. “It was my favorite Drag March Ever!”

This year, the police were in no mood to be killed with kindness. As they pushed forward, the crowd started to chant: “Whose Streets? Our Streets!!” Joe pushed the sound system further into the crowd. And the police tried to arrest an activist from Times UP! getting in the way of the police crackdown, who stood on a police car. With a little help from the crowd, he proceeded to unarrest himself, pulling away from the police, exiting the scene, only to return in a different outfit. Unable to detain him, the police attempted to confiscate his bicycle. “That is not your your property,” an observer reminded the police, who ignored her. Yet, she insisted: “That is not your bike. You cannot take it.” As she spoke, another bike supporter inserted the pedal of his bike into the wheel of the bike and pulled backward. The scene became more and more chaotic, as the push and pull between police and activists escalated. Activists were eventually able to grab control of the bike. Meanwhile, a gentleman in a white wedding dress started talking with the police. Once again the police were going on about a permit. A few noted that the First Amendment is a permit for those wanting to “peaceably assemble” and enjoy a little of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” “You can’t do this tonight,” the man in the wedding dress implored, as negotiations intensified. Another observer would note, “We did this last year without a permit. We let the cars through and kept on dancing.” The man in the wedding dress chimed in: “They are voting on gay marriage in Albany right now. And this is the anniversary of Stonewall. You don’t want a riot do you?” The policeman went back to community affairs and eventually the police left.

By this point the sound bike was booming. It was getting closer to 10 pm, and Christopher Street was a full street party. “Express Yourself,” “YMCA,” "Macho Man” all boomed from the sound system. After 10, rumblings came from the bar that gay marriage had passed in Albany. And the crowd broke out in applause and cheers. People wanted a New York song. So Joe put on “New York State of Mind” by Jay Z. And all of Christopher Street sang along. Beyoncé’s “All the Single Ladies” drew roars from the crowd. “If you like then you better put a ring on it.” “I was honored there to be there DJing on such a historic occasion,” Joe noted that Sunday night during the Times UP! radio hour.

As the evening proceeded, a luminal quality started to open up, spreading a feeling of possibility throughout the city. On news of the governor signing the bill, El Jardin del Paraiso Community Garden in the East Village opened into a roar of celebration. Confetti streamed through the streets. People opened windows and cheered. What a lovely city, it'll break your heart and open your heart, I thought looking into the night. Even the most cynical of the radicals reveled in the moment. While many of us have long called for queer life to extend beyond calls for marriage and military service, we were still happy with the blow against homophobia. Recall Andrew Cuomo won election in New York over openly homophobic Carl Paladino. This was a victory for a far more tolerant New York.

Leaving the Stonewall, I said goodbye to some of the Rude Mechanical Orchestra folks, noting the Church Ladies had clinic defense the following day. The RMO would be there as well. Throughout the night, many agreed that while the gay marriage victory was an important precedent, it also represented the most conventional element of the gay agenda, a conservative policy for a neoconservative age. Years before the decision, Ryan Conrad put together a Facebook page collecting critical essays on the politics of equality in an edited volume: Against Equality: Queer Critiques of Marriage. For critics such as Conrad, marriage equality represents a privatized version of gay life, a turning away from public sexual cultures, outlaw status, and the creative alternatives to marriage once offered by Gay Liberation. The volume features seminal essays by John D’Emilio, Kenyon Farrow, Dean Spade and Craig Wallse, and Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore (who attended that 1999 drag march). Many favor gay life as a freedom not to marry, as John Waters famously quipped. These writers lament the push for marriage as a spectacle which dulls the queer imagination, while excluding social outsiders. “Marriage equality …will end up being more marriage inequality” argues Kate Bornstein. “There’s no reaching out beyond sexuality and gender expression to make room for people who aren’t just like us.” The spectacle limits political space for single parents, promiscuous queers, sadomasochists, outlaws or social outsiders, in much the same way the ongoing raids on public sexual culture limit the physical spaces for those who build their lives with alternate social networks to marriage and family. “Make room for genderqueers, polyamorists, radical faeries, butches, femmes, drag queens, drag kings, and other dragfuck too fabulous to describe…” counsels Bornstein in an open letter to marriage advocates. “You cannot afford – politically, economically, or morally – to leave out a single person who bases a large part of their identity on being sex positive or in any way a proponent of gender anarchy.” Rather than cater to a model which has failed so many, created so much misery and abuse, those involved in the Against Equality collective favor a politics of “our most fantastic queer histories.” “Marriage is a coercive state structure that perpetuates racism and sexism through forced family and gender norms,” argue Dean Spade and Craig Wallse. “We still demand a queer political agenda that centralizes the experiences of prisoners, poor people, immigrants, trans people and people with disabilities.” Such an agenda favors universal healthcare, rejection of police brutality, the war on drugs and a push to create a world in which “no one is illegal.” “We reject a gay agenda that pours millions of dollars into access to oppressive institutions…” For these writers, queer life means something more bountiful than emulating tired heterosexual rituals. It means sexual freedom, self determination and autonomy from the state.

Throughout the evening, some partied. And others posted updates on Facebook. My friend, ACT UP veteran Jay Blotcher, posted he was: “Celebrating the legal victory with the man whose courage sparked the marriage equality movement in New York State: New Paltz Mayor Jason West.” Many activists such as Blotcher have spent years reconciling the converging and diverging dynamics of queer life through multiple forms of AIDS activism, harm reduction, and struggles for marriage equality. Such activism is not an either or effort. “Three cheers for the trailblazers!” posted Andy Humm. “And let's not forget that [the Gay Activist Alliance] GAA invaded the NY marriage bureau and shut it down in 1971. And the MN couple who sued to get married around 1970. It has been a long fight and is far from over.” For Blotcher and Humm, as well as many of the organizers from ACT UP, gay marriage is just one part of a larger social struggle. Yet, the goals of the GAA-focused agenda continue to conflict with those, such as the Against Equality collective, in favor of a Gay Liberation Front style multi-issue organizing approach.

Reflecting on this decade long divide, it is useful to recall that GLF imploded within a year of the riots while GAA lasted almost a decade. "The best combination was both," notes Jay Blotcher, who was friends with both GAA and GLF members during his years with ACT UP. "Which one was better? GLF showed the full fury of what queers could do. GLF had a multi faceted agenda, got a begrudging acknowledgement from the Black Panthers. GAA a bit more pragmatic and had some significant wins. You have to wonder which was right. I don’t know. It is a question that doesn't have an answer really. ACT UP faced the same thing - stay pure or sit at the policy table as Treatment and Data was able to do. Sometimes sitting at the table is useful. Treatment and Data got a lot done by not being purist. But many felt they left people behind when they did so." Those in the Against Equality collective feel the same way about gay marriage. Yet, it is certainly not a zero-sum game. “I am fighting for marriage,” argued Blotcher, who is able to straddle both sides of this political divide, supporting both safer-promiscuity and marriage equality. “But it is a rickety institution. There is something wrong in this country that someone who is married should get better treatment or benefits, whether gay or straight. This institution needs serious reform. And what is all this monogamy bullshit?"

Well, aware of all these conflicts, I still felt like something had changed in this little moment. But I was also aware that legal precedents fail to protect citizens when push comes to shove. The celebration after the 1986 anti-discrimination bill in New York did little to protect people with HIV from eviction or defamation. Old problems would remain. As I rode my bike across the bridge the night of the vote, the NYPD was busy raiding the Eagle on West 28^th Street as the quality of life crusade churned forward. It is hard not to think the raid was more than a show of force by the NYPD, but a push by the mayor to gentrify and steamroller visible signs of public sexual culture. Over the last decade and a half, a class cleansing has sanitized the public commons, starting in Times Square and moving outward throughout the city. “[T]he common focus of state intervention has been on eliminating visible manifestations of poverty and deviance (both racial and national) from urban spaces,” notes Elizabeth Bernstein in Temporarily Yours: Intimacy, Authenticity, and the Commerce of Sex. The raid on the Eagle merely extends the process of pushing out signs of difference in favor of a blandified model of urban living. Sadly, the night marriage equality advanced in Albany, the city police were once again pushing out and harassing spaces for kinky queers. The suburbanization of urban space, of queer space, rages forward as the state divides good gays from bad. “"Mainstream gays have responect of the public at large, but only if they mimic those values,” notes Blotcher. Yet, he points out that many queers do not want to do so. “You're gonna see that dichotomy more and more.”

The next day, I met Harmonie Moore, who had been out partying till 5 am in Brooklyn. Several of the Church Ladies for Choice as well as RMO and Brooklyn Pro Network were on hand for clinic defense at the Brooklyn Ambulatory Clinic on 43^rd Street and 3^rd Ave. Members of a local Catholic church were also on hand, replete with rosaries and crucifixes, ready to harass those women seeking health care services, in some cases including abortion. Both the antis and Church Ladies vie for their space, singing songs, mocking each other, and entertaining the troops. My friend Steve, who volunteers as a clinic escort, remarked that these Saturdays are like Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner in the old Saturday morning cartoons. They punch their clock the first thing in the morning, green each other, fight all day and clock out. The spectacle is all too familiar. Attacks on public sexuality are anything but uncommon in today’s New York.

By 10 am, the anti’s filed out, praying and snapping photos. I left to attend an anti-fracking rally , while members of the Church Ladies left to get lunch and recuperate before the Dyke March later that afternoon. Like the Drag March, the Dyke March tends to be an unpermitted affair, inviting the wrath of the NYPD who follow their own parade permit rule that posits that groups of fifty or more must apply for a permit to gather. The City Council Speaker, lesbian Chris Quinn approved of the measure without a peep in 2007. Many have come to describe Quinn as the “Deputy Mayor” for her failure to use the power of her office, as the head of the legislative branch of government, to check the power of the executive branch. In the old days before her ascent as speaker, she participated in the march. Today, the NYPD are left to harass the parade. “Three times during the march, NYPD police officers assaulted marshals by grabbing them and tearing them apart forcefully,” noted members of the NYC Dyke March Committee in a Facebook post titled “The 19^th Annual Dyke March and Police Misconduct.” “This is not OK. This is another example of the NYPD’s complete disrespect for NYC’s citizens especially women.” Currently, members of the committee are filing complaints to the NYPD Civilian Complaint Review Board.

The following day, Reverend Billy and the Church of Earthalujah held a community service at Theatre 80 in the East Village. The theme of the event was: “same sex a lujah”!!! For the last two years, the Church has held “unmarriage until gay marriage” events in Central Park, holding unmarriage ceremonies for heterosexual couples to unmarry themselves until marriage is available for everyone. The action echoes Eric Rofes’ call for queers to use direct action to fight for gay marriage as many have over the years. “I guess we don’t have to do another one this year,” declared the performance artist, dressed as a televangelist turned environmental crusader in his own brand of drag. Many in the choir had participated in the drag march the previous Friday. When the Reverend ran for Mayor on the Green Party ticket in 2009, one of their early campaign events was to attend the drag march, where the whole choir, including Donald, a long time Radical Faerie, boogied. “There is a way for us to get married, man for man and woman for woman,” sang the choir, who looked like they were auditioning for Hair. Their décor, the up is down quality of the carnival of the present, the celebration of gender play, of difference, only contributed to the luminal feeling in the air. “Life is not as determined as we would all like to think,” one of the choir members declared early in the show. “There is a lot more randomness out there. Sometimes that is the best way to do things.”

“They are trying to tell us we cannot afford human services,” the Reverend lamented, commenting on the Koch Brothers and their assault on the public sector and public services. Sadly, even Governor Cuomo here in New York, has been funded by them. While he wants to shut down Indian Point, he also supports ending the moratorium on fracking. The governor is still poised to advance a neoliberal assault on the public sector, unions and the public commons, just as the police push protesters off the streets to make way for a better business climate for uneven urban development, for more condos and their owners poised to consume. Reverend Billy’s shows challenge the idea of shopping as a form of citizenship. “With this mirth is a highly serious message,” explained Benjamin Barber, who was sainted at the Reverend Billy show. “Shopping is not a sin, it is a symptom, spending billions on things we don’t want, on wars in Libya, Iraq. This is death shopping, part of a destructive interdependence . We need a constructive interdependence. Even I shop, I must confess. It's part of pluralistic democracy. It just can’t be all we do. We must also play and prey and walk in the woods.” Today, much of our public life and politics is absorbed into buying and selling. “You are not doing it, it is doing you,” notes Barber. “We need a cathedral of constructive interdependence to challenge late 20^th century capitalism, replacing shopping with interdependence.” Yet, today spaces of difference, such as the Eagle, are under attack. And the public commons is being transformed into a shopping space. At various points during the show, the choir put on their own drag performance, exchanging choir robes for mustaches and bow ties for the ladies, garter belts for the men. Looking at this choir, I started to think the whole world has gone queer, including the movement still struggling for access to public space. The spectators were eventually invited up onto the stage.

In the days after the vote in Albany, the city has been dividing good gay from bad, praising the charmed few who choose marriage, and labeling street youth who build community in public space as “criminals” and “drug dealers”; “Chaos on Christopher: Iconic Village stretch overrun by drug dealers, prostitutes, violent youths,” reported the Daily News. Many of these are youth of color who have used Christopher Street Pier for over a generation. And every few years, the city whips up a panic over these youth in order to justify more aggressive policing of social outsiders. Few of these youth look like the clones of the neighborhood’s past or those getting married. In this way, Allan Bérubé, Dean Spade and Craig Wallse note the politics of equality “equates gayness with whiteness.” It divides good gays and bad, while reinforcing social hierarchies.

Still, activists such as Blotcher argue that there is a rationale for moving forward with issues such as gays in the military and marriage. “"I was working for gays in the millitary, even though I despite the military industrial complex. But I thought it was a stepping stone.” Many queer activists, including Allan Bérubé, have taken a similar position. “It’s wonderful to be a purist. But you have a shorter expiration date,” noted Blotcher. Yet, this does not mean the movement’s work is complete with the marriage milestone in New York.

Certainly there are any number of inequalities still out there. And no doubt they will continue with gay marriage and the subsequent panorama of nuptials, parties, long term romances, separations, adoptions, divorces and so on. This is all part of the marriage game. “The full catastrophe,” famously laments Alexis Zorba in Zorba the Greek, confessing the whole affair has its limits. “Am I not a man? And is a man not stupid? I'm a man, so I married. Wife, children, house, everything. The full catastrophe.” It is all part of the experience the ritual supports. Years before the practice was supported in Albany, queer people around the world participated in this ritual and recreated it in their own terms. “"You have two elements of the relationship, private and public,” notes Blotcher. “People realize how unpractical those Christian morals are. People work it out so they remake it in their own way.” Today, their gestures of freedom are recognized by the state of New York, thankfully. Yet, inequalities still persist. Queer youth kicked out of homophobic homes still suffer without a space to call home in this neoliberal city, just as services are being slashed in city and state budgets. The commons are still being cordoned off, just like the piers off Christopher Street which the NYPD and the Parks Department fenced off during the Pride Parade. But it is up to us to open them. And this is what shows such as those by Reverend Billy and Circus Amok, as well as the drag march, still do: they expand a theatre of the imagination from the stage into the streets. Through this participatory theatre, we create the possibility for something better, especially as we march and reclaim public space. Yet, this vision, the vision of a Right to the City clashes with a privatized vision of citizenship and imagination. With gay marriage moving forward in New York, hopefully queer activism will once again push for a space for difference once more. Here, queer youth find a place in this mean city; public sexuality and sexual self-determination pulse, and the public commons thrive once more as a space for difference, not police crackdowns.