yeah. i got involved with the creation of a local GI Coffee House and am participating in a feminist group. (oh, and by the way, i realized people don't know what i mean by GI, or GI Coffee House. Here: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=0AC&ei=e9i7SbmLHpaqMqK3mKgI&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=%22gi+coffee+house+movement%22&spell=1 )
I was talking with someone about it at work and they said, "What is a GI." I hadn't realized that the phrase had fallen out of popular usage.
I'm not keen on the move on stuff that is endorsed by the guy who started the coffee house. But I have to give both organizers credit for getting the ball rolling on *something*. The really, I don't know, basically liberal analysis of most issues is disconcerting -- especially on the heels of working with Uhuru in FL, which pretty much had its fingers in everything anywhere near political.
But, it's where I am, in the town I'm in, and it's where people are in their lives and political thinking. I wasn't sprung from the head of Zeus, and it was people who stuck it out anyway, who modeled for me a different mode of political practice and political analysis, who made the difference.
It's the activity of doing things, together, that is extremely important. I don't view it as anything that will change the world now. Or even in a year, or ten years. It's about working together, either in face-to-face groups or in online community-building efforts where the effort is focused on creating something, together, that's important. This is because it is a form of *learning* and learning new skills. Or putting those skills you already have to the service of working with others to create something: a coffee house, a book reading group, a protest, a sit in, a teach in, a community garden, an abortion clinic defense front, a blog opposing obame, such as the one this guy is trying to get started, http://www.gaysagainstobama.org/.
it really doesn't matter. the thing is about building a set of alternative political practices, alternative norms and institutions, alternative roles and identities in such institutions (sociology lingo, sorry), a set of alternative spaces (what have been called Free Spaces) where people gather the social movement resources (skills, slogans, agitprop, communication networks, etc.) and where these skills, resources are honed. where the ability to do small things, together, become the skills upon which we will build social resistance movements when the shit really does hit the fan.
this is, in part, an answer to eric's question at my blog. i was too tired to write a couple of days ago and somewhat befuddled because i've written this same shit, over and over again. heh.
but anyway, i was just reading postone b/c i was way too lazy to hike up the stairs and grab agustin's book, Sex on the Margins. so back to thinking about writing a post about postone. although, really, i should clean house, get books put away on the bookshelves, hit the gym, and oh my god it'll be monday again before i know. what was that about time carrol? :)
shag
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