Sometimes it's all falling apart, and then it comes back together, but only for a short while, before the next break. Think Dialectically, I wrote when Trump ascended to power a decade ago. Since then, MAGA has risen, followed by Black Lives Matter protests, mass death, Biden, Trump, back to the Blue Wave, backlash to the backlash. Still Texas turning blue, with a democratic governor and senator surprised me. I remember those years a long time ago, when Anne Richards won. Wow, Texas. That was a long time ago. Then things went dark. And I left.
And then November came.
Blue Tsunamis remind us, we don’t always have to be cruel.
The American voter is a fickle one.
And they’ll surely turn on this new majority, in an election cycle or two.
Still October rushed into November, with AI zaps and elections and book club, Bike Kill on Halloween, theater and movies, the city in a whirl.
Daman wrote a poem about a Heaven Tree (posted at the end of this blog), an homage to weeds and cities, on top of cities, nostalgic for older cities that used to be, that leave reminders in this city, the new city, with shiny windows, towering into the sky.
Kate held a fundraiser for the people without homes in those buildings.
And brought us all together.
After class last night, I grabbed a train to 40th street, walked west through the old Times Square and the new, one city built on top of the next, homeless people still about, liquor stores here and there, joining Kate Barnhart and friends at the fundraiser New Alternatives. THe event honored "longtime activist Andy Humm with Ryan Casey performing and the delightfully outrageous Pink Pancake as our host. Proceeds benefit New Alternatives’ work with LGBTQ+ youth and young adults experiencing homelessness." I sat with Brian and Brownie, Eustacia and Emmaia, chatted with Virginia and Jay, and Ivan. Ryan's performance reminded us of the violence, of bodies flying. We chatted about Bayard Rustin and the new John Malkovich movie, "the new dark comedy-thriller Wild Horse Nine...Set in 1973 shortly before the Chilean coup, the story follows aging, cantankerous CIA agent Chris (John Malkovich) and his younger, longtime partner Lee (Sam Rockwell) as they are dispatched from Santiago to Easter Island (Rapa Nui) on a covert mission.." reflecting on the tragicommedy for our times. Steve Questor sat in the middle of the room, Karen in the back, Rise and Resist in front. Kate talked about getting arrested with ACTUP, YELL, and Rise and Resist. "We all gotta stick together," said Andy. Truth. As the evening finished, news trickled in that "Scott Colom has defeated Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi’s U.S. Senate race the first Black U.S. senator from Mississippi since the Reconstruction era"
Mississippi God Damn.
Nina Simone lives.
Rip Emmett Till.
It had been that kind of a month.
A few highlights of a month in the life.
October 31
Breakfast with Mom and a journey to Bike Kill, a maniacal bike conference at an abandoned loading dock in Red Hook, a meeting of old bike buddies and new, music in the air, bikes everywhere on a bright October day, even Will rode, off to see marching bands at gosanus dredgers at carroll street bridge, greeting Monica and Phil and Joss on the water, don't fall in Josh, a disco nap and late night dancing at Book Club Radio Meeting #39 Maneater... into the Halloween night in New York.
November 1
Sleep blurs into awake, visiting friends, snapshots of parties, Sunday mornings after late nights, feeling good, the slippage between a trip to Judson and Village Works, Rev Billy and dinner with Bradon and Gene, recalling. Book club radio the night before, chatting with Al and Bruce, and Will, the choir singing about trees, the sermon about friends, the eulogy I can't find in the dream, that doesn't quite go anywhere, more snapshots, holiday plans that don't quite make sense, the novel about a night in Tokyo that won't quite end, the november day of the dead El Niño joined us, bright blue skies, changing leaves, choir rehearsal at the old spot on Ave C.
THat night we hear about protests turning violent in Germany, shops looted, infiltrators, playing into the hands of the hard right. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cqj34gnd3n30o
https://www.cnn.com/.../germany-gen-z-protests-turn...
November 2
"The Puck building is taken over by AI," reported @Revbilly Sunday at Earthchurch. "OpenAI leased 90,000 square feet inside Manhattan's historic Puck Building at 295 Lafayette Street in SoHo for its first official New York City office" the internets confirmed. We brought mirrors to the building where Caroline and I were married a quarter century ago, Billy in attendance inside. REI is gone. Reflect on yourselves, we asked, slithering about in front of the steps. We are not excess humans. No data centers. No one wants you. Security did not want us. Things got heated. Billy preached. We slithered. And the police came. Ai rots your brain we told them, people watching, snapping picks.
November 3
Mom says get out and vote. So does Nico!!!
We watched the election results at Emily’s.
The good news starts to trickle in about Texas, Wow, I remember Lloyd Bentsen all those years ago. Texas!!!! Bye bye Trump dead duck!!!
Great night. Texas. Dems winning in Texas for the first time since I was in college. 35 years ago. Messages and headlines from friends around the world. I'm still shocked Trump was elected. Or re-elected. There are people who voted for Obama Trump Biden Trump. A very fickle electorate. But for a night ill take it. The Trump era is about done. But governing is hard. All five NYC government ballots approved, taking away people's input. The US spent $47.1 billion on the Iran war. I don't want to hear we can't have national health insurance.
Then the senate race in Maine.
I recall Susan Collins casting the deciding vote for Kavanaugh. She said she believed him when he said Roe was settled law. Bye bye Susan.
Then in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed was elected.
November 4th
We all met to talk about it all at the Magician, the 1974 76 cycles that brought Carter followed by Reagan, the 06 08 democratic gains that brought Obama followed by Trump. How they pop up and disappear, once perversity twice perverse, adored and rejected, over and over again. Labor gains only to be rejected a year later in the UK.
Still, we are within grasp of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) to do away with the electoral college, doing away with swing states, moving us back to one person, one vote, democratic reform.
November 5th
lbj used to say never announce how many you are ahead by.
November 6th
Join us tonite, I wrote, posting a note on the
“ACT UP at 40 NYC Launch: A celebration of 40 years of resistance and collective power!
When - Friday November 6th - doors open 6.30pm. Event 7.00-8.30pm.
Where - Bureau of General Services—Queer Division - an independent, all-volunteer LGBTQ+ bookstore, cultural center, and event space located in New York City.
Hosted by Bureau of General Services—Queer Division please join ACT UP New York, and ACT UP ACT UP Latina/o Caucus activists for the NYC launch of ‘ACT UP at 40 Celebrating Resistance and Demanding Healthcare for All’ 2027.”
https://www.bgsqd.com/.../act-up-at-40-nyc-calendar-launch/
A drizzly Friday, I biked up to the Boiler in Williamsburg for @VillageWorks show curated by Damian and Dominic, stories of people and neighborhoods, homesick for lost worlds, looking at the city and themselves, at lives and art, "To Embrace the Spirit of a Heaven Tree."
A wonderful activist, Dan Glass from London, started zooming into ACTUP meetings from the middle of the night in London, organizing an launch in New York fir a calendar full.of stories and dates, photos of ACTUP chapters from around the world, Rio and Houston, New York and London, inviting members of the ACTUP Latino Caucus to come speak about their organizing, brining in historic actup and new, to share the stories of act up as a discourse on civil disobedience, a methodology for fighting healthcare, a coalition of strangers. I found myself on stage. "Situation normal, completely fucked up," said David Feinberg in Fear and Loathing, Rants of a Raging AIDS Queen, published after he died himself. "Who do you have to blow to get arrested around here" he lamented. Oh David, gone too soon. A place we could go, to have a laugh, an outlet for an otherwise horrendous situation, to fight, to find direction, to find meaning as César Carrasco noted in his act up oral history, for meaning making with HIV and trauma, Act up as emotional catharsis, as a discourse, situation normal, completely fucked up, overlapping with movements, a repertoire of civil disobedience, a way to think about living and dying. In Before Night Falls (Antes que anochezca), Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas writes about the devastation of AIDS, arriving in the US out of Cuba, his choice to live on his own terms, his suffering: “I have always considered it despicable to grovel for your life as if life were a favor. If you cannot live the way you want, there is no point in living.” In between it, we live. "Your ass isn't covered" said Andy Velez, with Eric. We got the ACA. They tried to take it away. Jennifer, Tim, Kate and Paul, used direct action, an open ended call for civil disobedience for healthcare for all. ACTUP for healthcare, for trans rights, against ICE, for people, for trans kids, for the homeless.
November 7th
Spent the afternoon at the March for Democracy and off to book group at Julie's exploring Iris Murdoch’s 1954 novel Under the Net and its exploration of language, tracing the author's post war fixation with Jean-Paul Sartre's Existentialism, gradually into Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophy of language, and forming her own unique ethical framework, her own story between
Wittgenstein and existentialism:
"All theorizing is flight. We must be ruled by the situation itself and this is unutterably particular. Indeed it is something to which we can never get close enough, however hard we may try as it were to crawl under the net."
Virginia followed: “You left out that Under the Net is a hilarious Monty Pythonesque romp. It's more fun than Ben is making it sound, people!”
November 8th
Judy's dog said hi in Prospect Park, a majestic afternoon in the park. Mom and I had been out walking in Princeton. Micah and Ryan and Carmen making announcements at Judson. Caroline selling books chatting with the French woman about music at Judson. Watching football with Al. I had been late to see Judy because a man was running on the subway tracks on the #2 train. Waited for the three. I finished reading my Murakami novel. Took the 4 to the 6 to 28th street to see Faust Syndrome at Theater Syndrome at the Episcopal Actors Guild. A man in front of us started talking about beauty. I was thinking about Faust, our thirst to conquer. We went out for some late night Korean food. And I looked up the quote the guy was telling me about. "We respond with joy to the call of beauty because in an instant it can awaken under the layers of the heart a forgotten brightness. Plato said: 'Beauty was ours in all its brightness...Whole were we who celebrated that festival' (Phaedrus). - John O'Donohue.
November 9th
Protestors Arrested During #BlockTheIPO Action at NYC Anthropic Offices
Protestors Gathered to Demand Anthropic Halt Its Planned IPO As the Company Begins its Investor Roadshow.
Five people were arrested in a #BlockTheIPO protest happening now at the Anthropic Offices in New York City. As the company begins its investor roadshow this week, about [NUMBER] protesters, including Stop Funding Billionaires, climate activists, community members, gathered at noon to demand Anthropic halt its IPO due to the risks it poses to working people’s retirement and the economy as a whole.
Anthropic is seeking to go public at a sky-high valuation despite its dangerously faulty technology and staggering debt, revealed in the company’s registration paperwork for the IPO it filed last week. Further inflating the AI bubble, Anthropic’s IPO would offshore the risk and volatility of the company’s unprofitable financials to the American public.
Wall Street has already rewritten financial rules so that newly-public, large AI companies can be fast-tracked into workers’ pensions and 401(k)s—meaning working people’s money is being set up to prop up AI corporations. Pre-IPO investors and insiders will be able to cash out, while working people’s retirement money in slower moving index funds will be left exposed to the losses. This reality, which echoes the dot-com bubble of the 1990s and the 2008 housing crisis, is triggering grave concern amongst the general public.
Capital from the IPO would finance the expansion of a technology with significant environmental costs and documented social harms into sensitive settings, including classrooms, hospitals, and military operations. Billionaire AI executives and organizers alike have warned that this expansion could cause job displacement and economic disruption on a historic scale. Even as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has acknowledged that AI poses grave risks to humanity, the company is advancing rapidly toward a public offering.
To prevent these severe social, environmental, and economic consequences, Anthropic should halt the IPO. If it proceeds, and the AI bubble bursts.
"Ai is a weapon of the rich against the poor" we chanted inside the Anthropic Offices at 330 Hudson.
Watching us take over the lobby at the offices of Anthropic at 330 Hudson, staffers darted about, trying to get out of the building. "We're going to see more of this," said one security guard to the NYPD. No one wants the data centers. No one. Bad for the environment. Bad for jobs, education, thinking. Ultimately Bad for our lives. Anthropic AI exists to prop up techno-fascism at the expense of the entire global economy. Billionaire greed is a race towards the irreversible destruction of our only home, and we must unite against it. Never ever forget: Oligarchs are fascist slobs and AI's gonna steal your job.
"I'm getting arrested to try and keep Ai from crashing the global economy," said Jonathan of Climate Defenders.
"This impacts everyone with a pension fund, everyone's retirement," said Frankie, after their arrest.
Others chanted:
"Oligarchs are greedy snobs, Ai is gonna steal our jobs!!!
"No Anthropic, no billionairios!!!
"We want clean air, not & data centers everywhere!!!
"Anthropic, get off it
Put people over profit
"Hey hey, ho ho
Block the Anthropic IPO
"What do we want?
Block the IPO!
When do we want it?
Now!
"Billionaire greed, we say no!
Block the Anthropic IPO
Later that night,
Dan Glass posted a note about our Friday ACT UP session:
So moving to read these reflections from Friday's 'ACT UP at 40' calendar launch at Bureau of General Services-Queer Division and The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center .
Huge love to all ACT UP New York involved! Join Ryan Foster Casey and Eric Sawyer next on 15.11.26 for the 'ACT UP at 40' Fundraiser.
"I talked about how for my generation AIDS was our Vietnam, our existential crisis, much the way the climate is for young people now. I concluded by saying that I feel like I was raised by ACT UP and several people in the room said out loud “you were!”
The other three speakers told their stories – Francisco found out about ACT UP from a client while working as a spanish speaking social worker; Danette had come from Puerto Rico and was hanging around at the Center, her only connection to queer life, when she heard about it, and Alfredo had just arrived from Argentina.
Eventually Ben joined us and talked about doing social work in San Francisco with people dying all the time. We then went on to talk about various actions – the Latino Caucus people talked about protesting inside the Somos gala and organizing a community march in Puerto Rico, as well as translating ACT UP materials and carrying donated HIV meds to other countries when they travelled.
We could have told stories all night, but we had to make way for the next panel. Charlie talked about ACT UP Nation, the effort to coordinate various chapters and individual activists. The next person talked about being an observer and a “memory worker,” a term that was new to me. After that came a trans woman talking about the coalition work ACT UP is doing with trans groups. At some point one of them mentioned the old ACT UP and Ben nudged me and said “We’re the old ones now.” It’s a weird feeling." Kate Barnhart , Founding Director 'New Alternatives for Homeless LGBT Youth'
***
"A wonderful activist from London started zooming into ACTUP meetings from the middle of the night in London, organizing a launch in New York for a calendar full.of stories and dates, photos of ACTUP chapters from around the world, Rio and Houston, New York and London, inviting members of the ACTUP Latino Caucus to come speak about their organizing, bringing in historic actup and new, to share the stories of act up as a discourse on civil disobedience, a methodology for fighting healthcare, a coalition of strangers.
I found myself on stage. "Situation normal, completely fucked up," said David Feinberg in Fear and Loathing, Rants of a Raging AIDS Queen, published after he died himself. "Who do you have to blow to get arrested around here?" he lamented. Oh David, gone too soon. A place we could go, to have a laugh, an outlet for an otherwise horrendous situation, to fight, to find direction, to find meaning as César Carrasco noted in his act up oral history, for meaning making with HIV and trauma, Act up as emotional catharsis." Benjamin Heim Shepard
Damnian Poem
To embrace the spirit of a Heaven Tree is a group exhibition curated by artist HOMESICK and Damian Bielak. The exhibition is a visual narrative of a neighborhood and city, its history and legacy and the
methods in which we can reclaim space after once being displaced from that space. The exhibition utilizes visual mapping in the form of artistic
works to tell that story. The Heaven Tree (Ailanthus Altissima) is a weed that is very resilient.
She is nature’s very own reclaimer, finding her way into vacant spaces or into luxury spaces. She leaves her mark where she is not wanted like a
graffiti writer. She goes where she is not wanted like a trespasser. Difficult to remove and persistent. Creating a home for herself where she
lays. A squatter. The queen of weeds. Growing tall, strong-willed, persistent. Resilient like a godmother. The same godmothers that kept
the neighborhood together in times of city disinvestment, is the same godmother spirit we need now in times of city displacement.
“This is the spirit we must embrace if we want to remain here and flourish here”
Book release by Homesick and @zabeled
