Thursday, October 20, 2011
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Monday, May 2, 2011
Thursday, April 28, 2011
GIVE A FIG: Poets' Strike?
GIVE A FIG: Poets' Strike?: "'Why don't we all refuse to write or read poetry on May 1st and turn our energies towards political acts all over the country and you k..."
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Monday, March 28, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Friday, March 11, 2011
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Coming Down From The Forty Foot Pole (Notes on Zen Buddhism and Radical Tactics)
1st nen: educate (learn)
2nd nen: agitate (calm)
3rd nen: organize (let go)
2nd nen: agitate (calm)
3rd nen: organize (let go)
Tahrir Square --> Madison Capitol -->
Am blown away by how similar the Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Soueif's description of Tahrir Square's emergent organization/relations are to what I experienced in Madison, while inside the capitol:
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: And what did it mean in Tahrir? You were there almost every day. From the day you arrived, I saw you there every day. And it was like a revolutionary republic in there. It was a different Egypt, very different from the one outside on the streets of the rest of Cairo. Talk about what—this kind of new kind of Egypt that was created during these 18 days.
AHDAF SOUEIF: Well, you know, I think that what happened—and this isn’t just me, because at one point, you know, you start thinking that maybe you were having visions or you were, you know—but everybody who talks about it talks in the same terms, that it was: people were rediscovering themselves and each other. It was as though everybody had been locked in solitary in a small little dark box, you know, and told to be afraid of everything else and sort of rattled from time to time. And you’d opened the box and stepped out and found that everything was great. You know, there was light. There were other people.
And what happened was that almost overnight a civic space was created in Tahrir Square that was the ideal space, that one imagined, that everybody imagined how the country should be or how any country should be. People were kind of like really careful of each other. People were overly courteous. People were picking up rubbish. People were bringing things to offer. It very soon became that you didn’t go to Tahrir without something to offer, whether it was cookies, whether it was your effort, whether it was water, whether it was medicines for the field hospitals. In other words, everybody was finding the best in themselves and putting it forward. And that was just incredible.
It is living...
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: And what did it mean in Tahrir? You were there almost every day. From the day you arrived, I saw you there every day. And it was like a revolutionary republic in there. It was a different Egypt, very different from the one outside on the streets of the rest of Cairo. Talk about what—this kind of new kind of Egypt that was created during these 18 days.
AHDAF SOUEIF: Well, you know, I think that what happened—and this isn’t just me, because at one point, you know, you start thinking that maybe you were having visions or you were, you know—but everybody who talks about it talks in the same terms, that it was: people were rediscovering themselves and each other. It was as though everybody had been locked in solitary in a small little dark box, you know, and told to be afraid of everything else and sort of rattled from time to time. And you’d opened the box and stepped out and found that everything was great. You know, there was light. There were other people.
And what happened was that almost overnight a civic space was created in Tahrir Square that was the ideal space, that one imagined, that everybody imagined how the country should be or how any country should be. People were kind of like really careful of each other. People were overly courteous. People were picking up rubbish. People were bringing things to offer. It very soon became that you didn’t go to Tahrir without something to offer, whether it was cookies, whether it was your effort, whether it was water, whether it was medicines for the field hospitals. In other words, everybody was finding the best in themselves and putting it forward. And that was just incredible.
It is living...
Monday, March 7, 2011
SEE YOU TOMORROW (Anonymous Sign From Inside Capitol, 3/8/11 1:41am)
"If they cannot push us out of another world, they cannot push us out of this one.
We are still inside the capitol."
We are still inside the capitol."
Friday, March 4, 2011
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