Why Work?

In my 'academic' work, I am interested in, well, work. I am not a vulgar Marxist. But Marx, to me, offers a compelling analysis of capitalism. He suggests that in the transition from feudalism to capitalism, people became 'free' to sell their labor on the market for a price. Of course, the 'price' of that labor is deeply tied to assumptions about what kinds of work is meaningful, skilled, and so on. And, the more that marginalized people occupy particular kinds of work, the less it is worth. Relatedly, marginalized folks often occupy 'less-skilled' positions in the marketplace.

Work is not the *only* arena in which social inequality reproduces itself, but the way in which work is set up is structures and is structured by other systems of inequality. Citizenship, gender, race, able-bodiedness, sexuality, 'professionalism', affective labor - all of these things structure how most of us are compensated for the work that we do, what jobs are available, and what people understand as worthy ways to spend the majority of their lives. Like, really, what the fuck to hedge fund managers do that contributes to the social world meaningfully? In my opinion, very little. In the opinion of the marketplace, that is if compensation were an adequate measure of social worth, they do a whole hell of a lot.

Furthermore, the need for global economic growth eclipses most other measures of economic well-being. As long as growth remains the yardstick for a healthy economy, people and the environment will suffer. PERIOD. Therefore, new economic systems MUST emerge that opt out of traditional measures of a healthy economy. This is important for several reasons:

1. Industrial capitalism is the primary lens through which social policy around work is structured - both in terms of the economic stimulus but also in terms of the traditional labor movement be they trade unions and even poor people's movements. This is a problem as it leaves unquestioned the fact that most of these jobs - selling and buying shit that nobody needs and that will wind up in a landfill - are soul deadening and planet killing. It's just the 'double movement' wherein the most egregious exploits of capitalism are somewhat alleviated but the system itself remains intact.

2. It's not that labor movements aren't important. They are. But I think work can very well be understood differently. In fact, work must be understood differently if this planet is to survive. That is, if economic growth is the primary driver of greenhouse gas emissions and both wealth and job creation in their contemporary forms create that growth (jobs so that people can shop so that industries remain profitable), then the way work itself is structured is profoundly flawed. Yet work (not necessarily jobs) is the means through which needs are met. And needs can be met in new ways - ways that allow people more time to creatively pursue their interests, have more "free time", and engage in a myriad of activities. What are those ways?

3. Not all, but a lot of work is soul-deadening. I don't think it has to be. And we do too much of it in its formalized incarnation.

4. Collective work structures can mean radically reshaping both the *point* of work as well as its processes. Forging new economic models can forge new definitions of work and radically alter the value structures upon which work rests - e.g., the work of caring, the work of reproducing everyday life - often the things we think of having to do *after* work (or hire someone else to do for us). It can give people the sense that they do have a say in the conditions of their lives. It can create ways of meeting needs that do not kill the planet.

These, to me, are profoundly political questions. From all of this, I need a focused research question for my grant writing. Anyone? Anyone?

Deeper Tendencies

One thing I've learned to do over the years is control my temper. I know I've mentioned this in earlier posts. I would say that my two worse features are my temper and my tendency to needlessly worry about everything making me somewhat controlling. I've learned to let go a bit, but I'm by no means close to being able to let go. Imagine, then, a situation where I worry and worry all the while being pissed off.

I have learned over the years to observe myself in order to assess my behavior. I am not unreflexive. Yet there are times where I simply cannot control myself. I see myself and I know how I appear but still I can't control it. Why can't one stop herself in the midst of behavior she knows isn't benefitting anyone? After the fog wears off, I always feel a sense of regret and embarrassment. Some situations (and some people) just bring it out in me. What is that?

Head in the Game

I am trying like hell to get my head back into school mode. It's weird, I have this aversion to reading ever since I started grad school. It's like reading has become a task rather than a pleasure. I think I have to ease my way back in with a novel or something (not too heavy - suggestions???).

I know I can talk some shit about Toronto and if you've heard me do it already, stop reading 'cause you will most likely be bored by my observations. I've heard two radically different things about Toronto. Most artists and musicians that I've come across call it (and I've heard this several times) "magical." I believe that "magical" Toronto must happen when I've already gone to bed. Then there is the Toronto I've heard described as "hard" and "cold". This, of course, does not describe its inhabitants individually. Rather, there seems a collective sense that one keeps to herself, does not talk to strangers on the street, and does her best to be "polite" when encountering others. It's cultural. This is not what I am used to.

A Torontonian friend of mine recently visited New York. This was his first visit to a major US city since he was a kid. He noted that people were so warm and friendly despite New York's reputation for having rude inhabitants. It's different, for sure. And juxtaposing Toronto and Baltimore once again, so closely, I am really homesick already. I miss the warm greetings, hellos and such.

I associate all of this with school. School represents to me anxiety, competition, and insecurity encased in a cold, hard city of people who would sooner run me down than say hello. Needless to say, I have to get the fuck over it and get myself started.

Really?

It's been fun working on the house with my dad and Ray. Chris has been feeling a little bit better but a lot of his energies have gone toward working on his actually paying job. I've been at the house weekdays from 7:30 am until about 4 pm almost everyday unless I have to work - write a paper or teach yoga or something like that.

Yesterday Chris was to finish his project and come to the house - we finally were going to get to work together. The couple days he's been there to work on the house have been great. In fact, the point of this whole thing was not only to have a home but to build the home together (with the help of my dad of course). It was supposed to temper all the struggling we've done in Toronto - his and my incessant schedule, doing tedious work in the same home - all of the things that makes life a bit tedious. Needless to say, I was really excited for us to work together.

Yet, fate (literally) hit me on the head once again. The kitchen ceiling/office floor had to be torn down and rebuilt. This week, my father and I spend our time measuring and building new joists. While my father was putting the plywood down, I was adamant about tearing up the remaining kitchen floor, eagerly awaiting Chris and looking forward to this week spent working together. I thought, "finally, we get to hang out and do this together as we planned." As I was struggling with the floor, my father asked if I wanted to come up and help him screw in the plywood. I, again, insisted on tearing up the floor so we could get our final dump run in. My father was sawzalling the plywood above me, the plywood got away from him and the sheet came crashing down onto my head.

I knew it was bad when my father, ordinarily NOT an alarmist, came running down the steps in a panic. I realized that my head was bleeding pretty bad. I called Chris who was at the hardware store, and told him to get there. He ran over, and we decided it was best to go to the ER. Between the tetanus shot I had to get last week for stepping on a nail, the ER bill that will surely be a doozy from yesterday, and the massive ER and ambulance bills from Chris's fall, we've racked up a load of medical bills. You'd think we'd learn our lesson and at least wear a fucking hard hat. The moment I saw Chris, I bursted into tears. It's been great but really disappointing.

The cut hurt. The staples they used to suture it is excruciating. The doctor was training a resident and while the doctor had a delicate and decisive click of the staple gun, the resident was much more hesitant and slowly drove the damn things into my head. Patsy told me that new residents start in July so it's best to visit an ER in May or something. I'll keep that in mind.

week of destruction

The demo started this week. Day one started off well enough. We got a bit of a late start because we had to rent a Uhaul van to move our couch into the storage space. When I rented the storage space, there was a dude living next to the my cubby who clearly had diabetes and had swollen, bleeding feet bursting out of his shoes. There was a puddle of blood in front of his space. Did I mention that his space was next to ours? When Chris and I dropped off our bed the next day, he was still there and the blood puddle spread to what I can only assume is the bathroom. Finally, on day one of demo, we went to move the couch into storage and we were almost unable to gain access to the space as the blood was now all over our floor and a hazmat team was called in. Fun.

We demolished the living room and the dining room on the first day. I wasn't very strategic and advised the dumpster driver to put the dumpster in a space where it was almost impossible to open the door. Oopsie number one in what I assume will be a sea of mistakes and mishaps. So loading the dumpster was unnecessarily difficult the first day (Dad saved the day later on and I am now a master dumpster rearranger). The demo transformed our downstairs from this:

To this:

And here are the happy campers at the end of a hard work day.

Day two... well not so great. Chris and I were dogsitting for this gal a block away. I got up a bit early to walk the dog and meet my dad for demo day 2. I let Chris sleep in a bit and figured he'd get some coffee, take the dog for another walk and join us. When he got up, he was taking fan down the step and slipped on the first step and tumbled all the way down. He got up, tried to call me and my phone had no signal. So he walked over to the site after sitting and assessing his goose egg. He came over and lucidly told me that he fell down the stairs and asked me to bandage up his arm. I asked, "do you think you have a concussion?" He wavered, said, "whoa" and passed out in a house full of exposed beams and rusty nails. His head, and eye, scraped all the way down a very scary wall. I tried to catch him and think I might have diverted his eye from getting completely destroyed by the nail. It was very close and he was very lucky. He could have very easily lost his eye.

I had our friend Ray call 911 and wouldn't let him move. We were both very scared. The paramedics arrived and put him in a cervical collar and on a board as a result of his trauma. They had him in the ambulance for a while to work on him. It was an excruciating wait. We got to the ER, they stitched up face and did a cat scan. Luckily, he didn't do any damage to his eye and his cat scan was okay. The end of day two looked like this:

We were so lucky and unlucky at the same time... more later!

Out of the loop and in Baltimore

I don't know if anyone really follows this. But I've been trying to reorient myself to Baltimore, figure out this house thing, and write a paper. It ain't so bad. Writing will always plague me and feel like pulling my fingernails out. I feel like it's just the nature of academic writing and I am not sure if it'll get easier. I really miss (but don't) the formulaic style of journal articles. Lit review, gap in the literature, how I intend to fill that gap, methods, findings, limitations of my particular study, using those limitations to suggest future research and get myself tenure. Ta da!

This post is actually about the house. The ugly, soon not to be as ugly, house and our hopes for it. Actually, the kitchen is the room that's plaguing us the most. Other rooms are easy enough (until I really think about the bathroom). But the kitchen! Planning a kitchen from scratch - well from scratch with the parameters set up by the space - is so hard. First, most kitchen cabinets are u-g-l-y. Really. Chances are, if you are renting or didn't choose your kitchen cabinets, they're probably not the ones you want to look at. Given that ours can easily fall apart at the stroke of a sponge, we are just getting rid of the fuckers.

We've heard from several folks that Ikea has the most affordable, durable, and attractive cabinets around. Frankly, upon visiting, we really weren't that impressed. I had all these dreams for a penny round tile backsplash and wooden countertops and attractive, but sparse, white cabinets. Nope. Cheap and u-g-l-y. Unless one is willing to plunk down a hefty chunk of cash, it's pretty likely the cabinets she buys will be fairly unattractive. So, Chris and I, in a moment of clarity, decided on the module, free-standing Ikea cabinets. could this post get anymore boring, you ask? Sorry. I'm gettin' this down for posterity.

Here's what we're looking at:

From this:

To something like this:

Or some approximation of this kitchen given that we are not morons and know we cannot make this exact replica. But these are the units we're interested in. Now this question is: what color walls?

what a fucking week

I am writing to get down on "paper" what I experienced this weekend before it fades from my mind. Also, I am not entirely sure I can recount the events as I was in crisis mode, I felt, for about 72 hours.

I've been organizing for the G20 protests for a while now. I am by no means a central organizer. But I was involved with planning logistics, feeding protesters, and opening/running the convergence space. This gave me some semblance of institutional memory.

The week started off like a week of protests/actions in which people marched 'non-violently', expressing their discontent with the G20's mandates. I was only able to attend the Indigenous Sovereignty march on Thursday and I have to say, it was lovely. I was otherwise often at the convergence center or dealing with a (maybe) sick cat, knowing that the weekend would demand my full attention.

I was slated to feed breakfast to the tent city in Allen Gardens on Saturday morning. Therefore, Friday I was at the convergence center making hummus and doing general logistics stuff. I was to meet a friend coming up from the US Social Forum ("G") at the tent city on Friday night so just decided to wait, meet another friend to join me at tent city, and head over to Allen Gardens. In the meantime, I hosted the bike squad from Montreal as they prepared for their amazing bike bloc. They arrived earlier in the day on Friday, so my day was full of organizing organizers.

Friday night, after the tent city, G and I headed back to my house where I hung out with my visitors and figured out a way to get everyone access to a comfy place to sleep. They were meeting for a bit at my place so they didn't get to bed until a bit after 1 am, so I was up for a while which was no fun given that I had to wake at 5:30 am to prepare and serve the tent city breakfast. My wonderful friends volunteered to help serve and coordinate. G was amazing with all his support, given we had a coffee debacle and we were driving around the city amidst the first reports of my friends and co-organizers having warrants out for their detention.

The tent city event was great and No One Is Illegal prepared for a press conference. Given the intimidation that many organizers had faced, the mood was tense and there was visible fear on the faces of those who were eventually rounded up (http://www.mediacoop.ca/story/community-organizers-thrown-unmarked-police-vans-en-route-press-conference-targeted-arrests/38).

Strangely, when I woke up that morning, I said to G that I had a weird feeling about the day. I had no idea how right my gut was. The very nice man who drove us to the tent city was passing a kidney stone and after we fed folks, we rushed him back to the convergence center as he was in unbelievable pain. After that, we had to make our way back to my house in order to meet up with my house guests. One, from Toronto, asked if I was able to take charge of the TCMN van as the transportation person had been arrested in the preemptive raids. I agreed, saw my guests off, and was picked up by one of the other drivers in order to hand out placards to the Saturday march against the G20 entitled 'People First. We Deserve Better!'. I was admittedly disappointed that I could not participate in the march as it was quite large and very joyous.

In possession of the TCMN van, I then headed back to my place, picked up G, and headed over to the convergence space to see how I could be of assistance. Knowing that I had to co-facilitate the information session that evening, I was trying my best to stay abreast of the goings-on on the street. I watched the news and about an hour into the march, that's when things turned 'ugly'. The first thing I saw was someone break a Scotiabank window, then Starbucks, then Nike. I was a bit irritated as I thought this was pure theater and such a cliche. This, of course, will invite criticism by some, but I had no idea what was to come.

Many know what came next - police cars burned, businesses trashed. At the end of it all - by about 9 pm or so - there were 15 arrests (!). People gathered at the convergence center for the information session. We were trying to make sense of what happened. Why were the police so 'tight' during the week but absent during the 'rioting'? Why was the fence virtually unguarded? Why were those police cars just sitting there, empty in the middle of the street? During the whole thing, my friend H, who was a street medic, was reporting what was going on and he continuously remarked that the police were not arresting folks though they had every chance to. What the fuck was going on?

The information session was alright. We were still trying to make sense of what was happening. The reclaim the streets party was cancelled and we were trying to figure out how to act next. H was worried about the next day. Given his experiences in Seattle, he was pretty sure a crackdown was in the works. He was so right.

Saturday night was a bit scary as there were police at my house for a bit (I was not there). I advised the bike squad to clear out not knowing what risks there were. Civil liberties were clearly out the window and any and all repression and detention seemed entirely possible. We had meetings and organized throughout the night. Having had no sleep, I finally arrived back at my place around 1 am, fully prepared to be raided at any time.

I luckily got about 6 hours of sleep and returned to the convergence space early in the morning to prepare for a day of responses. I awoke to the news that the jail solidarity street party had been repressed and 30 were arrested. There was another jail solidarity rally in the works for Sunday and a lot of organizing around getting the accessibility van to its designated space and getting food to the jail solidarity rally.

Again, I was disappointed that I could not participate in any street actions as I was needed logistically. I waited for possible accessibility needs and then headed back to the center where G and helped R (amazing, amazing R) with food. R took her delicious wraps to the jail solidarity when I got word that the rally was met with tear gas and rubber bullets. The food was abandoned and G and I headed to the rally to possibly pick people up who were trying to get out of dodge. We coordinated with some folks and were headed back to the convergence space when we got word that it, along with the media co-op, were being raided. This turned out to be untrue and we got back to the center once again trying to understand what the fuck was going on.

There were reports from the streets that people were randomly searched if they 'fit' the profile of activist, particularly if they were wearing black. There was a press conference nearby the convergence space and when it ended and folks were headed back to the space, there was an increasing police presence and the searches grew more random. A graffiti artist was stopped near the convergence center and was found to have a 'gas mask' in her bag. At that point, the police could fully justify searching everyone around the space. They surrounded it, took everyone's name including several people who just happened to be passing by, had the place on lockdown for a couple of hours (footage available here http://vimeo.com/12928760), and began arresting folks.

Hearing of the lockdown and possible raid of the convergence center, a group of marchers were headed over to center for solidarity and were surrounded by police, creating yet another 'stand-off' (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Heb9BXjYcII). Tear gas and rubber bullets flew once again and more random arrests were made. After the police left the convergence space and the standoff was still happening in the streets with soaking wet protesters facing off with the police, we scrambled to figure out our response. G had to catch his bus back to Detroit and I eventually made my way down to the detention center where the responses of solidarity were strong and inspiring.

Knowing that I would need some rest, I went home, slept for a few hours, and on Monday morning, made my way down to the detention center where I franticly organized folks as they were getting out who exhausted, hungry, and increasingly traumatized. I was at the center for 13 hours and H and P provided amazing support. I was sad to hear that I missed a 5000 person strong jail solidarity rally with Naomi Klein among them (http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DrkQK9uP8ok0%26feature%3Drelated&h=66b2euXYPY5nOSrerzpuOHP23Uw). I then helped a gal find her friends at the courthouse, drove some food back to the convergence center, and met my friend Reana for a quick meal and home to get some much needed sleep.

Yesterday was a bit more of the same, though without the same complete overriding sense of urgency. The reports of police abuses and lies continue to trickle out and I am now trying make sense of this week. It's too bad I can't be around for the debrief as I believe it's really important.