The People’s AI Summit, Streets and Action, Notes on A Fall in Motion
Laguardia students walk out of class over AI use, the Kushner Albania project looks dead after months of protest, students burning down the Supreme Court in Albania, the French students tear-gassed as they perform a classical symphony at Republique.
Suffice it to say, the streets are alive, with energy right now.
Disgust is the best word I have for the orange one and the oligarchs, siding with Putin, lowering sanctions, rewarding Russia for the Ukraine invasion. It tarnishes us all; their cruelty doesn't seem to end. Embarrassed, a second word.
Still, there are ways out. I have to remind myself.
Wendy suggested we all meet for a talk.
So, I biked to Webster Hall to join Wendy and Ray for the People's AI Assembly. The room is full of organizing friends, comrades from CUNY, members of the Rise and Resist Climate Group, etc., connecting the dots between waves of movements. Labor and environment, technology and education. I've seen Naomi Klein at these things for years, at the CUNY Graduate Center rasping poetic about a “burlesque of DIY activism” after the Battle of Seattle, connecting our wanderlust with the climate movement in Paris during the COP in 2015, tracing stories and movement trajectories, student protests in Paris and Albania their fight against austerity. Catastrophic job loss is a policy choice, says Klein. No one is too big to fail. None of AI is inevitable. These companies are fighting like Pepsi and Coke, notes Klein, watching inequality expand as they plan their carbon emitting data centers, with little regard for externalities. A researcher like few others, Klein laments the corporate arms race between companies like Microsoft/OpenAI and Google—carbon-emitting data centers, draining local power grids, exponential inequality, and "greenwashing”. When Trump had the AI tech company heads to Washington, they said they wanted no regulations, rather they’d prefer the wild west. The core agreement that the industry should remain self-policing rather than government-regulated. Never one to shy from flaunting ignorance or bias, Trump suggested the statement they signed was as important as the Constitution. Milton Friendman felt like the New Deal was the wrong answer to the Great Depression, Klein reminds us. But it didn’t go far enough. We need democratic socialism, she says. We are not just excess humans to be surveilled or controlled, or liquidated. We could be here for the next two days, talking about AI and women and girls, about immigration, etc says Klein.
"Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing" wrote the Indian author and activist Arundhati Roy years and years ago, putting a poetic twist on the movement wanderlust of the global justice movement, that connected a critique of corporate globalization and capital, with its race to the bottom, in search of cheap goods and services, away from countries with labor laws to Mexico and those places where exploitation and unfettered labor run wild. Fast forward a quarter of a century, Roy’s eye is still on the exploitative nature of automation, and the race for cheap labor, diminishing thinking, and even dreams.
Attendees received copies of her essay, “Apocalypse Now and Then”
They got the em dash, she laments. We all lament.
Probably the highlight of the evening was their discussion of John Berger.
“When people and societies enter into a state of shock, they lose their identities and their footing. Hence, calm is a form of resistance,” says Berger.
Klein sent him a copy of her Shock Doctrine book, hoping for a blurb, but not expecting much. Yes, she got one. Berger felt a sense of calm when he read her work; he told her. Berger taught her to embrace that calm, as a form of meaning-making.
Arundhati Roy had her own engagement with John Berger's thinking. "Never again will a single story be told as though it's the only one,” wrote Berger, offering an opening for an entirely new way of looking at an anti-colonial critique, particularly for Roy.
These two authors, Roy and Klein, have been movement bards for longer than many of us can remember. It’s always a pleasure to hear them. I could write a book listening to them, scratching notes in the dark Webster Hall as I did in Paris listening to Klein at the beginning of the Conference on the Climate demos.
We have been lulled by the stories of the apocalypse for as long as we have been telling stories, notes Klein.
Recall, Works and Days by the Greek poet and historian Hesiod:
In other words, we’ve seen our best days as being behind us for ages.
Rather than lament, get organized, follow labor unions, join environmental campaigns, note the participants of the AI People’s Summit.
Great speaker after great speaker, organizer after organizer, the event began with Ilana Glazer, the comedian of Broad City fame who criticized artificial intelligence, as "the roommate who won't stop 'actually, ackchyually'-ing her,” chatting with New York Mayor Zoran Mamdani, about ways to run a city and limit AI’s reach. The two spoke about New York City Public School one-year moratorium on generative artificial intelligence for students in 2-K through 8th grade. Mamdami mentioned he appreciated Governor Kathy Hochul’s approach, although she has not signed the Responsible Data Center Development Act, S10642/A11560. Rather she signed a watered down one-year statewide moratorium on data centers through an Executive Order signed in July 2026. Between rhetoric and reality, Mamdani is viewed as one of the most prominent critics ofAI, challenging the narrative of inevitability.
All week, audiences, including Baby C and I, flocked to see You Can See Everything, the documentary about Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of a tech/ blood testing company serving eleven years in a prison in Texas. Perhaps the most chilling part of the film involves her husband’s cavalier use of AI images of her speaking as she sits in jail, unconcerned when asked about the use of the same images in porn films.
“We could have had a Green New Deal. It would have been a lot cheaper,” says Klein.
Astra and I were writing furiously to try to keep up with what was going on, says Naomi, referring to her new book with Astra Taylor "End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World" with its “critiques a powerful coalition of tech oligarchs, religious fundamentalists, and far-right figures who they argue are accelerating societal and climate collapse rather than trying to prevent it… [with] a "bunker mentality" to insulate themselves while leaving the rest of the world to deal with the fallout.”
I felt the same way, trying to keep up with the details about the world as I wrote the ending summary of the travel book I’d been working on for the last few years. The Albania story started to change last week, with students moving from non-violence to violent insurrection. I drafted a brief afterward to the Albania chapter ending the project.
Afterward
The daily protests continued in the months after we returned. Every day more actions, more escalation. By October, student protests had broken out in Paris, followed by Tirana. October 14, images of molatov cocktails and broken windows, riot cops and students in black masks filled my media feel from Tiranë. The protests were already escalating when we left. Months and months with little to no official reply or acknowledgement. It looked like the powers that be were ignoring the nightly manifestations. Along the way, the Flamingo Revolution turned into an Eagle, noted one observer. “Fire erupts at Albania's Education Ministry as protests spiral” reported Al Jazeera (2026, October 14). Throughout our tour of Albania, we heard story after story about corruption in the schools, about neglect, and feelings of disenfranchisement. “‘this protest came on the back of four months of daily rallies on the main streets of the capital’, said Besar Likmeta, editor at the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network in Albania. As we saw in August, the Flamingo Revolution was largely driven by resentment over a Jared Kushner’s development project, which enjoyed an environmental carve outs for developing on wilderness area that only the son of a sitting US president could enjoy. All month long, people cried foul, pointing out that this was not an isolated incident. News of the deal was followed by frustration and anger over lack of transparency, complaints about bribes and corruption. Many on the streets called for Prime Minister Rama’s resignation. “But then they, they spread into wider demands about better opportunities and anti-corruption, lack of opportunities for youth, and particularly a sign of growing disenfranchisement among this younger generation of Albanians,” Likmeta added. And the demonstrations took on poor conditions in schools, higher tuition for compromised services, and general neglect of youth (Al Jazeera (2026, October 14).
By the weekend, the Supreme Court of Albania went down in flames, as the protests continued.
“It's safe to say that the Kushner-Ivanka Resort in Albania is Dead” notes one reporter, acknowledging the project has been put on hold (Sommer & Stein, 2026).
That October afternoon in Brooklyn, I looked out a 5th floor window on Jay Street, down at the City University of New York students outside on the corner of Jay and Tillary, wondering about their lives. People out and about, actions all week long, activists marching that night for slain Nolan Wells in Union Square, others rioting in Albania. When we were in Tiranë, the protests were peaceful, their concerns largely ignored. Many worry for their future, if they have one. That was taken from Nolan. Protests and possibility, darkness and light always contend with each other, friendship and struggle, solidarity in the streets. There's been enough tragedy.
Hearing about the riots, we spoke with our kid in Germany. They’d been in Paris the week before for the student actions, over school underfunding, teacher shortages and austerity. What's it look like, we asked. Not sure it's going to change anything, they replied. You never know, we followed. Baby C was in school when the Berlin Wall fell, traveling to Berlin. “"Die Mauer muss weg!” (The Wall must go!) she chanted hammering on the wall, that fall of 1989. They might be in Germany when the first right wing government is elected in Germany since 1933. Or it might be the year democracy is reborn.
And the world whirled about us.
October 21
We met for David Greenberg's reading of his memoir of his seven year relationship with Allan Ginsberg. Allan Ginsberg & Company on Wednesday the 21st at Village Works. Hearing David read about meeting Allan, all sorts of memories poured through my mind about meeting the bard in 1992, greeting him, him.greeting me after his reading, him flirting, me gushing, setting my life on trajectory, looking for lyrics, gestures, meaning, words, movements, civil disobedience, late night train rides, across oceans, to beat hotels in Paris, ferries to Tangiers, through Big Sur, on and on, movement, followed by movements, in search of that sense of wonder.
I remember Ginsberg reading “Many Loves” recalling a night with Jack Kerouac, all those years ago for him. Now, it's even longer for me. I remember calling Dad when Allen died in the Spring of 1997, five years later.
October 18
"We've got to learn to accept each other," said Andrew Young at Judson Memorial, recalling Rev. Dr. Robert Warren "Bob" Spike, with whom Civil rights leader and former Ambassador Andrew Young worked alongside during the 1960s civil rights movement, murdered six decades prior in Columbus, Ohio, on October 17, 1966, in an unsolved killing. Young recalled Spike helping fund and support schools in Thomasville GA, Dad's home town. And John Lewis organized sit- ins to draw attention to the issue of racism, that he later joined. "We went to Atlanta," said Young. Bob helped make that happen. He was one of the greats of my life. Be grateful for all of the interrelations of our lives. Young talked about learning from the Kinsey scale. Thank god there are so many queer people in the world. We all have a lot to be grateful for, Young concluded. Yea, that was a surprise to see 94 year old Andrew Young preaching at Judson. To walk through the city thinking about the lines from my childhood in Atlanta to Judson in NYC, from Village Works, to King's story about a Birmingham jail, to the AIDS ministries and syringe exchange programs Dan talked about later in the afternoon at Judson, the redeeming sense of possibility on a fall afternoon.
October 17
Mom and I walked through the fall leaves. I spent the weekend reading Under the Net, Iris' first novel, a Whitnail and I like absurdist tale of one turn after another of a bizarre love love triangle of London.
I thought about it while talking with Ron about the difference between a Borromean knot and the mythological Gordian knot. He's been reading a lot of Lacan. A key term for French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan in his later seminars, this mathematical concept of the knot seems to elude comprehension. For Lacan, it is a sort of schema for subjectivity.
Unlike the Gordian knot, the Borromean knot represents a state of interdependence. I guess we are all enmeshed in the ideas bubbling through our minds, our loves, our pain.
Our lives, our selves are all a set of ideas, the sense of ourselves, an amalgamation of ideas bubbling about us.
I think the term is sonder, said Brian, at the no kings rally, which is: a "realization that every random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own, filled with ambitions, anxieties, relationships, memories, and private struggles that are just as real as yours."
Watching Caroline getting the venik ritual, with leaves hitting the back at the Russian bath, Jeff and I talked about the ways we adapt to pain, passed down from parents.
"Those wounds form who you are," said Joe, as Carline was being hit with branches, recalling her mother's pain that she brought from the war to New York, that she endured.
Reading Under the Net, full of outrageous stories, of conversations at pubs, that become novels, I find myself thinking of London and Brooklyn and a novel by a friend here that none of her friends liked. They told her so. And then she walked away. And they felt snubbed. The wounds continued and continued, echoing from one group to the next, each experiencing their own sonder, their own internal buzz, their own conversation.
October 17
With one horror after another for ten years, from siding with Putin, turning his back on our allies, profiting off the presidency, tarnishing the Emoluments Clause, that
"prohibits federal officials from accepting any present, office, title, or "emolument" from any king, prince, or foreign state without the consent of Congress,"
hiring the richest man in the world to gut US AID, putting thousands, possibly millions at risk, leading an insurrection against the peaceful transfer of power, among other horrors, it is time to vote 'em out Nov 3. No Kings, get out the vote rallies across the city, across the country. Scenes from the No Kings: Vote Early" / "VOTEFEST NYC" events Saturday, October 17, 2026, at Washington Square Park (5th Avenue & Washington Square and at the Post Office on 8th and 33rd Streets.
October 16
Full day of meetings, a trip to Henry Street for vaccination shots, a stroll through the fall leaves, talking about the new buildings coming, from Hoyt to Barclays to catch the q, to Brighton Beach, so we went to Manhattan, looking out at the East River, I think we're going the wrong way, says Baby C. Switch trains at Canal. Hit the Russian bath house at NY Bath Club 1196 Gravesend Neck Road, a banja that Gene loves. Jeffs there as well. So is Ron. Beers, hot cold, hot cold baths. Meet a few new friends, chatting away. Baby C gets a leaf massage, the "bundle of leafy branches used for the massage is called a venik, and the ritual massage treatment ...a platza (or parenie)." Ron reads us quotes from the Gnostic Gospell, Gene tells us about his prom night in New Orleans, and Jeff shares stories about his dad, Baby C endures the venik. A few dumplings and shots are had, beers, and we find our way back to Nigel and Nico.
October 15th
We went to the ICE Out benefit for families affected by ICE, a small gallery show on East Second, where a bunch of Lower East Side artists, including Caroline, were selling their work. We ended up buying a couple of pieces: one by Gili Avissar, a new friend, and another by Ryan, a wonderful mixed-media piece. Talked with Chris Flash. Enjoyed the autumn evening as the world swirled in chaos.
October 14
As my students took an exam, I looked out a 5th floor window on Jay Street, looking at the students outside on Jay and Tillary, wondering about their lives. People out in the street, actions all week long, marching for slain Nolan Wells in Union Square, students rioting in Albania. When we were there the protests were peaceful, their concerns ignored. Many worry for their future, if they have one. That was taken from Nolan... Darkness and light, ever contending with each other, friendship and struggle. Solidarity in the streets. There's been enough tragedy.
We found ourselves in the back of a packed movie theater, watching
"La Haine (French Hatred'; released in the United States as Hate) a 1995 French social thriller. The film chronicles a day and night in the lives of three friends from a poor immigrant neighbourhood in the suburbs of Paris. The title derives from a line spoken by Hubert, "La haine attire la haine!", translated as "hatred breeds hatred".
October 13
No Human is Illegal. All eyes on MDC Brooklyn, 80 29th St, Brooklyn, NY 11232.
On Tuesday, October 13, 2026, I joined other activists outside the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) Brooklyn. It was
a direct response to the federal ICE shooting of Oscar Belgal, a 28-year-old Dominican undocumented immigrant who was shot by plainclothes ICE agents in the Bronx on October 8, 2026, while his 5-year-old child was in the vehicle. Belgal is currently being held in solitary at MDC Brooklyn. The harm being done by ICE is immeasurable, impacting individuals, families, and communities. Belgal's kid was in the car when the ICE agents shot him and took him away.
Rally hosted by the MDC Brooklyn Community Support Coalition
October 12
Sometimes I wonder why I read anything but
Haruki Murakami, up late in the night finishing, Sputnik Sweetheart.
"Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?" writes
Murakami. "I have this strange feeling that I'm not myself anymore. It's hard to put into words, but I guess it's like I was fast asleep, and someone came, disassembled me, and hurriedly put me back together again. That sort of feeling." Snapped a few pics of passages from the library book I'll return today. No one's rented it in nine years.
October 11
The rain filled everything. Nico greeted me as I read. They were all in the car and it all disappeared. Couldn't tell what was real and what was a dream of the disappearing, our lives, our loves.The little ones who became big ones and moved away. Micah blessed the animals at Judson. I thought of Shannon the cat, buried in the back yard in Princeton. They talked all night in Sputnik Sweetheart. We walked into the rain, to the bookstore, looking at Samuel's books on St Marks Place. Greeted Ally. And watched the rain at Al's. Read into the night, the book into the dream, blurring into the book, blurring back into a sleep. Looking at everyone there disappearing.
I saw a post by Sarah Schulman, who writes:
“I saw the movie Naza in a theater in Chicago - the makers are making it available for free and the more people who see it the better.
It is a film that confirms in detail, through the testimony of Israeli intelligence, technocrats, and soldiers, what Palestinians have been telling us for years. That the systematic slaughter of the people of Gaza is deliberate, wanton, and depraved.
The attitudes and the language of the Israelis are those of technocrats- anyone who has studied the Nazis and seen the Eichmann trial will recognize all the elements: a complete separation between technology, professionalism and any concept of morality.
Mass killers brag about the eliteness of their units and how high they have climbed in the hierarchy. No one ever had any thought at the time that what they were doing was wrong, mass killing through remote technology is fun. No one around them raised any objection. In this militarized, apartheid society, where universities and the government are one entity, there is group think reinforced by drones, video screens and colored coded killing guides.
One killer said that he is not "an Arab hater", and gave as evidence the fact that he lives in cosmopolitan Tel Aviv- the guise of modernity.
Also noted that this was co-produced by Jonathan Glazer of Zone of Interest.”
October 10
On a gray Saturday, I found myself enveloped in an old novel Federico suggested I read, Haruki Murakami's Sputnik Sweetheart. "Neither of us knew anything that really mattered... there was nothing solid we could depend upon. We were nearly boundless zeros, just pitiful.little beings swept from.one kind of oblivion to another."
All day i thought about it, wondering about the existential streets of Paris and Iris Murdock's London, the curves and curry in the pubs, the characters we meet, the mysteries about us, in a late night beer crawl ending with a cleansing in the Thames, London, in her first novel Under the Net (1954). A few pints in him, Jake takes a midnight swim with eternity. In Princeton, Mom and I revisited a favorite, Murder She Wrote from 1961. "How many murder mysteries have we read?" Margaret asks her friend in the library? "Would you say this gives us insight into the criminal mind? It is time to put that to the test..." I guess it's time .
October 9
EMERGENCY PROTEST AT 5:30PM IN FOLEY SQUARE
ICE SHOT A MAN IN THE BRONX. ABOLISH ICE NOW.
Marble Hill, NY — Around 4:15pm ET Thursday, ICE shot a man at 225th Street and Marble Hill in the Bronx. The victim was shot through the windshield of their car with a 5-year-old child in the back seat.
Rally at 5:30PM in Foley Square.
Fall energy about us, activists from all over the city met at Foley, as they had the night before, marching, pleading, not knowing what else to do. A public execution was planned. ICE out shooting people in plain sight.
October 8
We showed up at Court, just off Center street, for our court date for failing to disperse when police told us to as we, members of Rise and Resist, blocked cars when Trump came to the United Nations, two weeks prior. Ron Kuby, the mentee of the legendary radical civil rights attorney William Kunstler, was there to represent us, with ponytail and all. “Good afternoon your honor,” he says to the judge, who doesn’t even let him speak, before throwing out our changes, for facial insuffiency. 20 out of 23 of us have our changes dismissed. “I can’t believe the police filled out three of the forms properly,” he laughed. “You are free to get arrested again,” he tells us. “Well, you can always get arrested.”
October 7
I call.this one Caroline reads The Book of Laughter and Forgetting on the way home from the Magician, our post Occupy hang out among friends and comrades, combatants and ne'er-do-wells. Greg, Mary, and Meaghan, from.Barbes fame , dropped by. Christine reported on the Brazil election, and Bradon the kNick's, Andrew on the Trillionaires, VV brought a painting in, and Baby C and I planned our next trip around the world, on and on....
October 6
A few of us from book group went for a field trip to St Anne's Warehouse, gossiping away about Sarah's book with Alexis, whose in it, chatting with Nora about her trip to perform in Berlin, Virginia about the play, CJ about his cat, Joan E about her topless horse ride she said was not not naked in, on and on.
In the middle of the conversation between Kramer and Fauci, Kramer sits getting enveloped in foam. What the hell was the foam, red tape, rules, barriers, illness, disease, triffids?
Loved the caller dressed as a chicken.
Adored Fauci, oddly.
"Acclaimed director Daniel Fish (Oklahoma!) turns his eye to one of the most combustible conversations of the AIDS crisis: the 1993 televised clash between Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading AIDS researcher, and playwright-activist Larry Kramer. A confrontation charged with rage, urgency, and unexpected intimacy, it crystallized a turning point in the fight for care, treatment, and recognition. Fish dramatizes their exchange as both history and provocation, a searing reminder of how art, activism, and public health collide on the most human terms. With Tony Award-winner Will Brill (Stereophonic), Thomas Jay Ryan (Henry Fool), Greig Sargeant, and Jennifer Seastone."
October 5
Protests in Paris, leaf printing in New York.
Texas to Brooklyn, Christine and Billy rolled through, a few conversations had, the sun pouring through a bright, bright Monday.
AI billionaires protest at City Hall Park- Listen to NYers not AI Billionaires! The City Council is holding hearings on the dangers of AI.
AI companies are cozying up to Trump, and some are run by fascists.
They’re in our schools, they’re driving the creation of data centers and their scam IPOs put our financial futures in peril!
Add your voice against AI Billionaires!
October 4
The Modern Testimony from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard (4/30, 1945 - 9/15, 2026) "Thomas Merton wrote, 'There is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy
statues...The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright... The gaps are the thing. The gaps are the spirit’s one home, the altitudes and latitudes so dazzlingly spare and clean that the spirit can discover itself for the first time...The gaps are the cliffs in the rock where you cower to see the back parts of God; they are the fissures between mountains and cells the wind lances through, the icy narrowing fiords splitting the cliffs of mystery. Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock—more than a maple—a universe. This is how you spend this afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon." Mom and I read in the morning, groaning at the news, before I caught the morning trains, which were late, to Judson, where Micah was preaching. Irwin met me for lunch, chatting about the chaos, and absurdities. And book club met at Nora's. Her cat joined, taking a particular appreciation for David Feinberg's last book, his last days raging at act up for failing him, before he departed, the final lines of the AIDS act up timeline to conclude, Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987–1993. A study of resilience and adaptation, play on the brink of catastrophe, the book captured stories of the long dead, some forgotten, lost friends, activist comrades, conflicts, unfinished business that has enveloped my life for the last thirty years. Wow. Joni recalled riding a horse naked down 5th Ave, meeting Anne Northrop, going to the clitclub, Nora unpacked the split, VIrginia the tributaries to rise and resist, CJ the harm reduction, and I was struck by César Carrasco's recollections of the Latina/o Caucus of ACT UP in the Oral History Project, the wounds, traumas, and survivor guilt, the pleasure, the friends, the escape from a dictatorship in Chile to the queer ny and its AIDS catastrophe.
October 3
"I spent a month in Japan in 1952" said Mom as we watched Hiroshima Mon Amour.
"It was like I was living a life that no one was living."
Read all morning and walked out to Chinatown with C, into a few galleries, for some dumplings, and a trip to Metrograph, the "independent cinema on the Lower East Side." Took in Amour (2012), "a heartwrenching French-language romantic drama film written and directed by Michael Haneke, focusing on an elderly retired music couple facing the terminal decline of their lifelong bond." Life choices and hopes, end of life, and the small moments, freedom and frailty, the inevitable goodbyes. Found my way to Princeton to see Mom. Lots to ponder in the last film of Emmanuelle Riva, 24 February 1927 – 27 January 2017) the French actress, in both Hiroshima mon amour (1959) and Amour (2012).
"It would be all too disappointing if it worked perfectly" said Mom, as we read The Magician's Nephew together. Time travel, the rings connecting worlds, it never quite works as planned. I guess that's the lesson as fall summer turns to fall.
October 3
Judy and I walked across the city, from Art Bar, to Village Works, talking about it all, running into Eddy, C, and Brandon, the city in motion, whirling on a Friday night, people out, about, talking, looking, having a bite, out for dancing, into the evening...
October 2
Ken Schles took this pic at a press conference on Wednesday at City Hall. He writes: "I voted for Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani Zohran Mamdani. I worked to help get out the vote to make the change this city needs. Appeared in viral videos, volunteered my time and my talents getting him elected. And he made promises to us. He made promises to the climate organizations who endorsed him and threw their weight behind him. He made promises that, 10 months in, he hasn’t moved on. He traded alliances and gave allegiances to get weak promises that he thought would help his agenda. His demands of party leaders and early endorsement of Governor Hochul gave the governor cover to gut the state’s methane accounting rules and drive a stake into NY’s climate law, the CLCPA. He received endorsements based on his promise to close the loophole that harms the city’s most substantive climate law, Local Law 97. A law that the former “real estate mayor,” Mayor Adams administratively inserted a loophole into to appease his real estate cronies, effectively reducing its effectiveness by 50%. He abandoned his own platform to green our overheated, aging and toxic schools and, to this day, has not stood up to stop or speak against the data center frenzy spurring on an unprecedented build out of new fossil fuel infrastructure that is straining demand and raising our bills. Where is his affordability agenda now when our utility bills are skyrocketing?
1. Close the landlord loophole in LL97
2. Stop the proposed Gowanus fracked gas power plant
3. Retrofit, make resilient and green our public schools
The first two take no money, only mayoral action, the third you failed to even put in your budget—even though you campaigned heavily on...we didn't vote for you cause you ran a charm offensive."
October 1
Woke up and started collecting the ingredients, cooking rice and beans, teaching a few classes, zoomed into Andrej's social movement research class to talk about friendships and fighting, humor and social movements, meeting the moment, biked over to Lucky 13, a heavy metal bar on Sacket, and then met Al for the football game, speaking about Bartok and Bach, Brahms and his favorite clarinet player. "Nobody can blow the clarinet more beautifully than Herr Mühlfeld of this place," said Brahms, who gave Mühlfeld several affectionate nicknames:
• The "Nightingale of the orchestra"
• "Fräulein Klarinette" or "Meine Primadonna"
"If I had known that one could play the clarinet like that, I would have written a clarinet concerto long ago," he confessed. And we chatted about Bachs and Buxtehold.
In 1705, 20-year-old Bach walked 400 km to Lübeck to hear the master organist...The stories were many ...into the night. Go Browns.
The topic of Cornell came up in all my classes this week. They made them write an essay, say the students, an essay? Bravo to the student newspaper for keeping the story alive. Eight years after we got arrested fighting the Kavanaugh nimination. 70 of us busted screaming believe women with rape whistles. Oh my. How do we stand up to this moment?
September 30
Here Gerri was at her happiest, said Erin, the daughter of legendary activist Gerri Wells, standing on E 3rd Street, unveiling the plaque on for Gerri Wells, with the words, lover, mother, fighter, friend. A gorgeous night recalling a few of the moments of Gerri's years of acting up, recalling the pasta dinners at her long time home.
"Join us to pay tribute to a great activist!
Gerri Wells Memorial Tree Unveiling
Wednesday, September 30, 2026, 5:30pm
80 East Third Street, NYC
In memoriam to that force of nature, Gerri's daughter Erin has planted a tree and will unveil the commemorative plaque on Gerri's 71st birthday weekend.
Meet at 80 East 3rd St, the building where Gerri lived for decades, raised a daughter, ran Lady Contractors and mentored a generation of Lower East Side teenagers — all under the watchful eye of the Hell’s Angels.
5:30pm Gather in front of 80 East 3rd Street
5:45pm Family remarks
6:00pm Unveiling of plaque
6:30pm Irish wake at Big Bar at 75 East 7th St
Earlier in the day
Press conference at Noon.
Climate activists from groups like Sunrise Movement NYC and Climate Defenders are urging Mayor Zohran Mamdani to close the "landlord loophole" in Local Law 97, which allows large building owners to purchase renewable energy credits (RECs) instead of making direct emissions-cutting retrofits. Decarbonize NYC!! https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/.../enviro-advocates.../
That morning,
Eulogy for a willow tree, the big tree with a tree house, the anchor of El Jardin del Paraiso NYCo, the beloved community garden on 4th Street, between Ave C and D.
Planted in 1982 by Juana Soto, one of New York's great trees. We met there for years and years; she offered us cover, as we occupied the empty space, ate, napped, said goodbye to Michael, and told stories. This was a hub of energy. JK recalled a lover, Ray a beloved fly, Brad a Coney Island Oyster, JC into a play about fungi and our lives, each Mayday more poems, each Lungs festival another round of feelings, an exquisite corpse of prose, one story on top of the next, all of us sitting about her. Sandy flooded about her. A tree house came and went. Kids grew up around her, got older, went to high school and then college. Some came back to say hello. Others kept walking about the globe. She remained there, in the back of the garden, resolute. Welcoming us in the spring. Each fall, a harvest festival, a garden tour, a daydream, shade for a nap, a place to come, to escape, to stop, to imagine, to see the other side of the city, a green ecology of wonderment, where bugs and birds found common cause, dialogue with Nuyorican poets, beats cried, a neighborhood grew out of the rubble. And we listened. Time.
A nor'easter storm. Rain for three days. And word spread. You were gone. Thank you willow tree. Poems and trees, tears and departures, and hellos and goodbyes.
Virginia followed: “A favorite memory there, from the spring. Poets were reading, and it was so friendly and beautiful that I was emboldened to read a couple lines I wrote, introducing myself with "I'm not a poet, but I am an oversharer."
Brennan Cavanaugh, without missing a beat: "Oh, poet is just Latin for oversharer."
I read something dark and unsentimental about my mom's death the month before. Brennan said, "Yeah, my dad just died too." Ann gave me a wordless hug. More people read their poems, then JC Augustin divided up roles and we all performed his children's play about fungi, starring Benjamin Heim Shepard, who could not stop documenting what we were doing, even though he had the star role of Fun Guy. He frantically went back and forth between writing in his notebook and reading the passed-around script.
People wandering through the garden joined the cast. One older gentleman burst out, mid-play, "This role is beneath me!" It was the hardest I'd laughed in months.
Ben, you created some of my favorite art-community-healing moments underneath that tree. We'll find another tree for next spring.”
JC, another tree poet, followed:
“Tree tree
You steered upward and outward
Reaching round our souls.
Though awesome,
Perhaps your spirit
Thrives below.
Your roots rooted
To the core
To the first point
Of understanding.”
September 28
News from Cornell, another cyclist killed in Manhattan. Oh my, look out for each other. Can we look out for each other?
A 50-year-old female rider struck by a dump truck in a hit-and-run crash in Midtown on Monday, September 28, 2026
Here's a video Dave put together of the 9/23 Palantir demo. Palantir Out of Mt Sinai https://youtu.be/5doAd4j1j7A
A dozen organizations confront Mt Sinai and its CEO Brendan Carr at an AI Health Summit. Their contracted data analysts Palantir use AI to curtail health benefits, cut trans treatments, and optimize ICE operations and genocide in Gaza. Public hospitals in NYC have cut ties with the data devils, but Sinai prefers the devil they know. #PalantirOutOfMtSinai
September 27th
Woke up to the rain. Said hi to Mom. For Your Meditation announced the morning bulletin:
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living.”− Annie Dillard (April 30, 1945 - September 15, 2026). And ran out to the train. Off to Judson, where Micah talked about our action the week before. Palantir is a huge target. And I talked about our action and Sarah's epic book about act up, we're reading. After the service, strolled 14th for Street for Art in Odd Places UTOPIAS. And on to Village Works, everyone's favorite community-oriented bookstore and gallery in Manhattan's East Village. Ken dropped off copies of Invisible City, his epic photo essay about the East Village, across the street from where he first dropped it off at the Saint Marks Bookstore at 13 Saint Marks when Invisible City came out in 1988, he told me. It "moved to 12 Saint Marks," where Village Works is, "a year later. The move proved too expensive for them and they had to relocate to the Third Avenue spot, run by Cooper Union, who offered them a cheap lease. The bookstore then got squeezed by a subsequent board who drove Cooper Union into insolvency." The stories are many here, in the rain on a Sunday.
September 26
Lazy day with the storm clouds. Where's the storm, I think, reading in bed. Drizzle here, we look out. Walk in the cemeteries and talk with our friend Walt, lots of Mary O poems. I'm thinking about Karen recalling Robert's passing in Sarah's book. And Bill and C Squat, putting on a show, and Frank talking about squatting, and living and dying and the Anarchist bookfair. The storm is on its way, I think, looking at posters at Howl on E 1st, up to St Marks. Do not bother me, I'm having a crisis, says the poster. At Tompkins, the pigeons sit silently waiting, anticipating. I'm off to the train, Astor to 14th, L West, and up to 34th, to Mom, talking about the kids in the rain, what happens to them, where do they sleep, shelters full, what happens when rain comes, the rain pouring through the sky. I can hear it now.
September 25
Wind whirling about the morning, Brad and company read Poe from the water, as we stood listening, beginning the day at Carroll Street Bridge. It was that kind of a day. A tint of gloom in the air, Gili Avissar presented Ushpizin: Guest and Ghost inside a temporary sukkah for the festival of Sukkot in Brooklyn. We looked at the fold of material that arrived from two suitcases from Israel, lights, color, wind blowing through it. Will the Sukkot hold in the storm?
Photography by Dylan Sutton + Gina Randazzo
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