2004-05-01 - 12:34 a.m.
So now that I am on a total caffeine kick, I will write about last weekend (this is how the delay in my communication has been working lately, there’s just too much right here in front of me)...
Finally, after 4 years of promising my friends I would come down to visit, I took the Chinatown bus four and a half short hours to DC. the first thing I notice about that city is the scale, the buildings are lower (I guess none can be built higher than the capital, go figure...), and the trees. The major purpose of my weekend there was the March for Women's Lives, but I went down a day early to do some other work and hanging out. It made for 36 very intense hours.
My first stop was a conference called “Girls Voices” for teen girls, put on by the Empower Project, where my amazing friend Katy Otto works. I met Katy 4 years ago when I set up a show for her old band. She now plays in the band Del Cielo and runs a label called Exotic Fever. The conference was to encourage self expression and health of teen girls and also gave workshop on skills like financial planning and relaxation. I helped out with the “musical expression” workshop and taught a bunch of girls how to hold a guitar, the names of the strings and how to play a few chords. It was so exciting. I remember the first time I held a guitar and was totally intimidated, but as soon as I knew how to play a few chords I realized that I could do this, that making rock music (I was classically trained on clarinet and piano before then) didn’t have to be a mystery left to those with some kind of magical talent that I didn’t possess. The other cool thing was meeting the other workshop facilitators who showed girls a bit of drums, keyboards and drum machine and samplers. It is always exciting for me to meet other women who play music and it certainly reminded me about how much I want to be in a band again. KTO, who taught keyboard at the workshop, gave me a CD of her band, Karmella’s Game, which is amazing. I am totally jaded about music lately (unless it is by my friends) and this CD totally made me trust kids making music again. Check out http://www.karmellasgame.com (other bands that are good: Life At These Speeds, Skeleton Coast, Del Cielo, Plow the Fourth One Under, Davies vs. Dresch and the Syndicate)
After a nice diner, Katy dropped me off at the Brian McKenzie infoshop where I met up with my friend Wade, who set up a show for my old band 4 years ago. I can’t believe it had been so long since I had seen him. There was a reading from the book “We Are Everywhere: The Irresistible Rise of Global Anticapitalism,” which is a really amazing book. It looks at 10 years worth of resistance movements all around the world. Though I have my qualms with activists in the global North glamorizing indigenous activists as the “real” militants (like how many in the punk community totally idealize and exoticize activists in Chiapas, Mexico), I do think it is important to record the history of anti-capitalist resistance in many different ways and to think of ways that activists all over the world can link struggles and share strategies while being aware of the difference of power they hold in the global economic system. The craziest thing is, there is a picture of me and the Portland Radical Cheerleaders from May Day, 2001 in the book. Hot damn, who would have thought!
Driving back to Wade’s brother Ryan’s house was interesting: during the course of the evening the passenger side window in Wade’s car had been broken (or broke of its own accord, due to some heavy poles from a banner pushing on it), so not only was there glass everywhere, but we were crammed in the little care with the afore mentioned banner poles sticking out at a 90 degree angle. We made jokes about “car jousting” until a garbage truck came up the other way and the garbage man hanging on the side started yelling “Oh Shit! Oh Shit!” thinking he would be stuck by our poles. Thank gawd we missed him.
We stayed up too late, making fun of over zealous factionalist Marxists who constantly push their papers (and their narrow idea of revolution) at you and coming up with the “Revolutionary Cat Party,” based on Ryan’s desire to be more like a cat. We also wondered why Marx gets all the credit. Does anyone know what happened to Engels? We also, on Fereh’s initiative alone, painted pink sheets with slogans to make into flags for the march. Fereh made one that said “No Laws (on my body)” and I, in my tired state, only managed to come up with “Pro Queer, Pro Choice.”
On Sunday we woke up early and I did not feel too well. But we schlepped down to the park to meet the other radicals for the radical feeder march. Emily called me on my cell phone and thought I told her I was in a park with “a bunch of assholes.” “No, no, RADICALS,” I said into my phone, probably making everyone think I was an infiltrator or something. The feeder march itself was pretty neat, though the huge police presence made it move a little too slowly and by the time we got to the mall our feet hurt a lot and I was feeling really nauseous. We sat down on the mall and stuck our flags into the wet ground and set up camp for the day.
I was feeling really exhausted and hungry, but too sick to eat. At one point I laid down on the grass and went to sleep under the “Pro Queer, Pro Choice” and “We’re Pro Choice and We Riot” Flags. When I woke up, groggy and stretching a woman approached me and told me I “made a perfect picture.”
At some point during the day Madeline Albright and Ted Turner spoke, drawing huge cheers from the crowd and boo’s from us. I think it’s important to have a large range of views and unite people across the spectrum to rally for women’s health and a pro-choice agenda (and at 1.2 million people strong, I would say the march was successful at that). However, I feel like women’s health and access to abortion and reproductive freedom also needs to be connected to the ways that the government and monopoly capitalism (which Albright and Turner are both very much a part of, respectively) have undermined all of these things.
I think the most amazing thing for me about being in DC, besides taking part in one of the largest marches on Washington in history, was seeing my friends and learning from them. They are incredibly active, doing work connected to and outside of the “punk” scene. What I was so excited about was how they worked to connect issues and struggles and use their DIY spirit to be positive forces in the communities they live in, in DC. Not only do they run the infoshop and put on events, but connect to other organizations around the city, such as the work Katy does at the Empower Project. It’s really inspiring for me, who often feels so exhausted and jaded, to see this kind of energy and work combined with a thoughtful critique. It heartens me to know those kids are out there and the work that they do.
I got a ride back to NYC from Emily, Joelle and Emily’s sister Phoebe. By this time I was feeling the sickest I have felt in a long time and despite some soup at the Health Bar and an attempt to sleep in the car, it was bound to have a bad ending. And so... at 12 am on Monday morning I puked in a strip mall Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot in Harrison New Jersey and created a scene which Joelle promises to put in her next “suburban chaos film.” Awesome.
