Well, to set it up. We were discussing concrete activities we could do now. Things to accomplish. Everyone had to name just one small thing we, as a group, could do.
Ideas ranged:
- eating healthy, organic food and donating organic foods to shelters
- everyone of us taking it upon ourselves to ride every damn route on mass transit so we could attend meetings and explain to the ever loving idiots that design mass transit in every city I've lived in, that they always make it virtually impossible to want to ride mass transit because you go 7 miles for a one mile trip in order to hit the hub first (Syracuse was like that too!). The idea there was to be a voice for the folks who actually have to ride mass transit, to experience it and be able to explain what the problem is. The goal was to get them to fix it so that more people might use mass transit even if they don't have to.
- creating some kind of social services type outreach where, like the religious orgs Ehrenreich writes about in Bait and Switched, we are providing things that people really need: help finding a job, a place to stay, etc.
- Since Amy Goodman is a goddess, we must raise awareness about Amy Goodman amongst everyone we know.
- someone from Catholic worker said we ought to make time to talk to immigrants in the area. Chat them up. Find out who they are. etc. I'm not sure what we were supposed to do other than make it clear that we were nice lefties on their side?
- a woman who'd been around in the sixties want to do teach-ins, but wasn't really sure about what.
- AIDS education/awareness
- creating alternative education to the vocational trades offered in schools. For kids who have a hard time in a traditional classroom setting, teaching them math, physics, etc. through building projects, boat building, public shop classes.
- someone said to support Fair Trade
- then: Boycott something. Come up with some product we could all boycott. The person who'd advocated a teach-in pointed out that this was a great idea because boycotts are fun!
someone said that boycotting Nike would be a beautiful thing. Then, he lifted his shoes to point out that he was wearing them: evil nikes! Then another guy said that he didn't feel bad at all. He got his sneaks from the second-hand shop. I'd biked in, and looked down trying to remember the name brand, some wacky pair I bought for traipsing around the outerbanks, nice comfy walking shoes but sleek and narrow for wearing with my much beloved lesbian coulottes. God, I had such crushes on my gym teachers with their pom pom peds and coulottes.
where was i? lost in reverie for a moment there.
meanwhile, as all this talk about boycotting and eating healthy organic food was going, I sipped on the miller beer I'd been handed at the start of the meeting by a guy we call Moose who likes to bring everone 'dinner': beer. I thought: dang, haven't had a miller in ages. Not horrible. Not giving me heartburn like some wicked ass microbrew usually does. I sipped some more miller horsey beer and listened to people crunching on cheetos and passing around the bag, crinkling the wrapper in sharp starburst sounds. People were kinda getting into that Cheetos bag, sitting close together on the couch, their bodies sagging in toward each other almost conspiratorially as they reached in and withdrew fistfuls of cheetos and munched munched munched.
don't that beat all. so take that! you people who are critical of hairshirts. boycotts are fun! And cheetos and miller beer and nikes from the second hand shop are cool, too.
Also, the other night at the hippie dippie peace gathering, *I* had dicks 'n' dough. Godamn. I never woulda thought I'd get dicks in dough for my buffet that night. Luv dicks 'n' dough. Luv luv luv.
:)
not that there is any point to this other than that i'm abusing lbo to record some experiences for something i'm putting together.
shag
-- http://cleandraws.com Wear Clean Draws ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)