circle the A in volim te

and one enchanted day my friend

ill meet you there by the fountain

where polish firemen defend

the city of berlin

sincerity is the new black…….

Twenty forth and york is my home in the mission…. Yesterday while walking in the neighborhood I stumbled across a newly renovated sushi bistro. It isn’t open yet, but under construction. I actually smelled it before I saw it, that smell of construction site…  of plywood, adhesive, saw dust, of exposed earth.  I am a plumber for a living, it’s a smell that that I know quite well and strangely a smell that I actually like. What was there before I couldn’t remember… wasn’t it that fancy panty shop, I asked myself, where did that go?.. oops that’s still here but right next door. I got very sad and annoyed, which is always my reaction to what I perceive as fancy bizness in the neighborhood… and as this kind of gentrification is now spreading to my neighborhood, I am annoyed a lot. . and saddened a lot…

If we or our loved ones are lucky enough to have not been evicted recently, or had condo lofts built next door, its the retail face of gentrification that many of us see when our neighborhoods are invaded by developers, real estate speculators, business entrepreneurs, home-buyers, “hipsters”, yuppies or the baby stroller traffic jams on the sidewalk. These new businesses cater to the tastes of the new residents… or do they? Which comes first, people who like really good coffee, sushi and lingerie boutiques or people who make really good coffee, sushi and sell lingerie? Don’t working class people like good coffee and maybe even sushi and lingerie? I know I do? (and of course that depends on the price of  these things).

Which ever comes first, the gentri or the gentrification, maybe the question doesn’t really matter, as the outcome of the process of gentrification, I would argue, is always destroyed community and lives. The retail manifestations of this kind of change are always a warning sign of more to come.

… i get really angry at the new business in the neighborhood, I don’t know most of the folks who operate these businesses, so maybe it’s unfair in some way to have such a reaction without some attempt to find out who they are and what they think about the changing neighborhood. After all, I am a small businessperson of sorts as I work for myself as a plumber. I have talked to some of the many of the workers in these businesses and I will try to share some of that in the following months.

Gentrification is many things.. it is heartbreak, it is memory loss, it doesn’t care about historical context, or cultural context.. its ideology is all about growth economy. It is brutal.
Gentrification, in san Francisco at least, comes in all colors, genders and sexual preferences, although my assumption is that it primarily white and heterosexual.

Some of what it creates is a mono culture of class, a “safety zone” for the bridge and tunnel crowds, a “slummers playground”, a place to build equity for a while until you move up and out to another neighborhood, until you “cashout”.

Gentrification is eviction, and for low income people, many times that  means moving out of s.f, as a new flat and a new lease would be totally unaffordable… and for many others eviction can mean homelessness…

Gentrification is “quality of life policing” where police target homeless people, sex workers, and youth of color to get “undesirable elements” off the streets where they are perceived as bad for business. The recent gang injunctions in San Francisco are a disgusting testament to this kind of racist policing to target youth of color.

Gentrification is allocation of tax money away from services for poor folks and the arts and into bigger police budgets or into keeping the opera and the symphony alive and well.

Gentrification in its advanced stages is a disneyland for tourists… where cities become parodies of themselves. Think fishermen’s wharf or some parts of north beach… think Greenwich village or the lower east side of new york or times square…   Williamsburg Brooklyn…

I want to say upfront, that I am not a hater when it comes to “new people” in the neighborhood. I consider myself a san Franciscan, although I am from new york. This is my home and I have lived in the mission long enough that my heart calls it home…….. I really, really, really love san Francisco. The issue of “nativism” in discussions about gentrification has always annoyed me, as in who deserves to be here.. who is really a san Franciscan and who has been here long enough to deserve the right to be here? There is a race/class element to these discussions that always feels complex, and that quite honestly sometimes feels bigoted to me.

Some of the easiest targets in this “nativism” are “hipsters”. Hipster hating is rampant in my community, and although I like to join in the fun from time to time, (I know some great hipster jokes).  Hipsters have become the scapegoats of a lot of anger about the gentrification in the neighborhood. Hipsters are visible, they are in cafes and bars, on their bikes, in the street, in bands etc. and in some ways this makes them an easy target.

The “hipsters” I know do not identify as such. In fact, no one I know, (including myself) no matter how many of the hipster signifiers they were sporting would identify as a hipster….   no matter the hoodie, fixee, tight pants, asymmetrical haircut, baseball cap, the over developed sense of irony, love of obscure pop, the facebook profile, the hangover… nor the “punk rock” hipsters with all the black, the boots, tight pants, hoodie, the pitbull, the piercings, the asymmetrical haircut, the fixee, tattoos, bondage gear, the hangover, the punk rock swagger… Hipster is always used in the diminutive, in the derogatory by everyone I know.
. …. So I am going to go out on a limb here and because my parents were from Brooklyn I will speak my mind in that new york way for a moment……..
Ask anyone you know to close their eyes and envision a typical hipster and then ask them the race of the person they see. 9 times out of 10 it’s a white person they see.

… I have begun to feel that hipster hating may be a way to indirectly express deeper feelings. Sometimes I feel when it is expressed by my friends who are people of color, that hipster hating is some kind of cloaked bigotry, as in its white people who are destroying the neighborhood …so fuck that and fuck them. Whereas hipster hating coming from friends who are white I feel is white guilt coming to the surface… guilt about being part of the gentrification themselves by being white and moving to a neighborhood that is mostly working class and latino…. So similarly its fuck that and fuck them…. plus the added element of “fuck me”….. I, myself fall into this later category of fuck that, fuck them and thus fuck me….

…. I’ll put my “California speak” back on and say… its not that any of these feelings are wrong, they are of course justified given the cultural and economic history of the neighborhood and I would argue, of racism, capitalism, and the very notion of private property itself…..  but maybe that’s a different discussion?

Last year my neighbor sold his house, after 30 years in the mission. It sold for 1.2 million dollars. Two flats, an in-law with a garage in a very plain looking building. Maybe he got out just in time as the housing prices, even in san Francisco are dropping. He told me at the time that he was moving back to mexico to retire… and who can blame him, after 30 years of working and paying a mortgage. You could make the argument that the sale of his house for 1.2 million dollars did more damage to our neighborhood than the new coffee kiosk, the new sushi bistro, or the fancy panty shop … couldn’t you? I mean the folks who moved into this 1.2 million dollar house are definitely from a different class than most of us on this block of 24th and mission. And, we could safely assume, if they sell one of the flats it will be at market rate. If they rent one of the flats it will also be at market rate … this one house on my block will never again be affordable to anyone who makes less than a shit ton of money? Which comes first the gentri or the gentrification?

I have discussions with friends all the time about the gentrification in the hood, the skyrocketing price of rent (a two bedroom flat in the mission is now $2400/month even in the current “recession”!), the latest news on what ridiculous restaurant has moved in, what new boutique. Ive helped many people fight their evictions, celebrated when they won and helped them move when they lost, ive worked on campaigns when anti tenant propositions get on the ballot, ive gone door to door, ive cursed the sheriff when he arrives with his posse to do private property’s dirty work and removed the tenants from their home, ive rent striked, and walked picket lines and done direct actions and occupations of buildings.

I have been asking questions to just about everyone I know  … what are effective ways to stop gentrification, should we focusing our energy on creating affordable housing, saving rent control, land trusts, squatting? A lot of the actions and campaigns I have been to recently are about saving individual families from eviction, either from the ellis act or from t.i.c’s. or about changing the plans of big development to include “real” affordable housing. These actions have been awesome and I think that the politics of confrontation is something that we need a whole lot more of. I don’t however want to be fighting these individual battles and the larger war, the right to a home, the market driven real estate economy, or the very notion of private property get pushed to the background as we try desperately to put out the latest fire…..I don’t have any answers….

… but back to the hipsters….i feel there is this perception that hipsters are trust fund babies as in they don’t have to work because they are receiving a check each month from mommy and daddy. While this is probably true with some, my experience is quite different. Most of the folks I know who would get profiled as hipsters are actually working class kids who are struggling to get by in this city like most of us. They are renters, they are students, school teachers, they make coffee (baristas), they are waiters, pizza makers, sound engineers, they work in bookstores and record shops, used clothes stores, in temp agencies, as laborers on construction sites, carpenters, as house cleaners etc. They are doing the jobs that people new to a city have always done… they are doing the jobs that working class people always do in cities.

For those of us who work on local politics,(housing, homelessness, immigrant rights, service providing etc.) we got “politicized” at some point in our lives, there was a moment in our lives at which this happened? For some folks I know it was punk rock or hip hop that politicized them, for some it was a teacher or another person who was influential in showing them different ways of thinking. For some it was college. For some folks I know it was their parents….. some of my friends had hippie parents with college educations but for those of us that didn’t have this privilege we were lucky to have someone or something  to show us different ideas….

I got politicized by punk rock, and yes that makes me a cliché, thank you very much. First it was the clash, which led to bands like chumbawamba and then crass and so on… which led to me actually picking up a guitar and writing songs…..  which gave me art….which led to me seeing a world outside of the abusive one I grew up in …it gave me community and hope. But before all that happened I was really lucky to have a social studies teacher named george larocca, who was not at all like the rest of the teachers at my school. He dressed like us, he had long shaggy hair and he gave us an alternative to the history in the text books. In some way he gave my budding rebellion a language, something real, something more than simply “fuck authority”. To him I am forever grateful. THANK YOU MR. LAROCCA.

I want to go out on another limb here and say….I think that hipsters could actually be one of our allies in fighting the monster of gentrification. Allies like any perceived group of people can be. (sorry for the generalities here). Allies in the sense that they are renters, that they are workers, that they can be really creative, and the hipsters I know are really sincere. Sincerity is the new black y’all…..

Maybe organizing hipsters is a little like union organizing, or student organizing, you go out and you talk to your membership and ask them what they care about.  The fact that gentrification and skyrocketing rents hurt most of us seems like a good place to start …. I am not saying that I am about to try and organize hipsters, oh hell no!…. no one identifies as one anyway and I am more curious about who the folks in the neighborhood are and what they think.. I have enough organizing on my plate already…

So in the following weeks and months on this blog I will be talking to people in the neighborhood. All kinds of people, I will let them identify as they will, and I will be asking questions about the changes in the neighborhood and what they think we should do about it.
Stay tuned for more, and expect me to interview you if you are a friend….

DO VIDENJA……

….so dear readers we have come to the end of the beautiful balkan/europe adventures…………..

Mongol Shuudan (russia) LISTEN!

…..and we had two choices for traveling back home……

……….across the atlantic on this aeroplane made of tiny lights…..

… or overland thru siberia on these magical sheep…. thats me on the right and wendy on the left…..

volim te  xo  marko

Quelqu’un M’a Dit  (carla bruni france) LISTEN!

…won’t you meet me at the gates to the garden

And I always thought: the very simplest words
must be enough. When I say what things are like
everyone’s heart must be torn to shreds.
That you’ll go down if you don’t stand up for yourself,
surely you see that.     Bertolt Brecht

Wendy and i placed red carnations on the grave of Brecht, which is the tradition…. And Wendy poured “Club Mate” (very strong mate soda) on his grave hoping he would wake up and have a conversation with us….  and magically it worked!….

We talked of art and theater, and both got totally inspired… she studied theater at university and knows a lot about it. Did you know that Brecht used what he called the 4th wall in his plays? Its something like when the performers break with “the performance” and turn and talk directly to the audience. I know all you theater folks already know this … so im not telling you anything new.. but I am relatively new to theater, having only been a lowly punk rock star in a former life, so its new to me.. and really exciting!

so now I’ll break the fourth wall…. and turn to you and say….

Brecht was called before the house un-American activities committee (HUAC) in 1947 to testify about his communist allegiances. He was blacklisted along with about 40 other writers, directors and actors. Brecht initially said that he would not testify about his political affiliations, but later, on the advice of his attorneys and the fact that he had a flight booked back to east germany.. decided to testify.

The story goes, that he made a theater of the proceedings by wearing  workers overalls and smoking a very smelly cigar. He also slowed things down a bit by speaking English very poorly and giving the translator a hard time… anyway, he did testify that he was not a member of the communist party and was thanked by the chairman for his testimony.  He was criticized afterwards for breaking with the others who stood strong in their conviction to not testify and were cited for contempt……

…. was this another case of the bourgeois artist looking out for number one? ….. or of another Marxist, yet again selling out his sisters and brothers ….. or a brilliant spoof on the “new fascists” in America? ….  ?????

If all people want is to see something they understand, they shouldn’t go to the theater. They should go to the bathroom.     Bertolt Brecht.

die moritat von mackie messer    LISTEN!

dragi friends……

eva… this is not the amazing eva, but a photo of nick from rudimentary peni. .. for some unknown reason i dont have a photo of eva… which is sad… besides being our wonderful host..we sang “three quarters of the world are starving, the rest are dead” as we cleaned house together….. thank you!

hvala! danke! gracias! dzieki! grazie! multumesc! faleminderit! nais tuke! thank you!

tu casa es mi casa

Spent an oh so lovely day with wendy at the graves of Bertolt Brecht and Heiner Muller.! Which is a dream come true for me! We made a quick stop at Tacheles, a former squat turned tourist attraction/nightclub/ beer garden… it has that certain esthetic that is still popular here of “faux squat”. A kind of post-industrial artist warehouse, without the artists. The walls aren’t fixed, bricks exposed, there is “grafitti” in the bathrooms, … but the drinks, and the lighting are really expensive  … it was closed when we arrived. The art that still gets shown here is similar to what you would find in soho in N.Y.C. …the music/performance are people like mark e smith from the fall, or the drummer from sonic youth on solo tours.. a kind of nostalgia for a former time when sonic youth or the fall actually played here. Wendy and I were both here in the 90’s (before we knew each other) and the place held some kind of attraction for both of us then, (which I think is sweet)…. It still had some of its “squatiness”, and artists/activists then…..now its just sad.

The gentrification in berlin is everywhere and like everywhere there are similarities in the ways the process unfolds and in the ways in which it destroys communities. Berlin is interesting in that it is still one of the cheapest European capitals to live in, and although ive asked why this is true to pretty much every Berliner I know, no one can tell me why. A few theories ive heard so far: there is a glut of available housing in berlin, this was more true in the first years after the wall came down, but still true today. There was unused housing in the former east, which was either squatted or renovated for rent or sale after the fall of the DDR. As the capital was moved to berlin from bonn, a lot of housing was built and or renovated in anticipation, but the mass influx of people they expected never happened.

Another theory is that there are neighborhoods in Berlin that have primarily Turkish people living in them, (who came to berlin as “guest workers” in the 70’s and 80’s)  and since a majority of them come from Anatolia in Turkey, which is a rural region in turkey, that somehow they have a different relationship to land, to ownership, to family and to thus to capitalism…. I don’t quite know the logic in this theory, but I think it has something to do with the fact that many of these folks from the first wave of “guest workers” are now owners of property and they keep the rents down so that family and friends can also emigrate to Berlin… ??? this is a fascinating theory and I would love to know if anyone knows anymore about it…..

Wendy and I went flyering with our dear friend veronica for a meeting that is being organized to discuss/ take action against the gentrification in krueztberg. Flyers in german and in turkish… one of each for each door in the neighborhood…..

Many folks I know recently saw the movie “BOOM the sound of eviction”, a movie that was made in san Francisco in 2001. It tells the story of the dot com boom in s.f and the resistance organized against it. I love it when art lasts and inspires folks to action…..

ich bin ein berliner… i am a jelly doughnut

Tonight while walking the “countryside” in berlin (a long walk around kruetzberg, that includes part of the old wall and a park where a canal from the Spree river was diverted long ago), my dear friends Bergit, Martin and i talked of our lives in the past 2 years…. I learned that martin is a real Berliner as in he has lived here his whole life…

The end of autumn is here and in the fading light and growing cold, we talked of trauma (personal and community), and we talked of change and our work in various projects. A lot has happened in 2 years in our lives and I realized how much I have missed them. These amazing people that I visit again and again who have dedicated their lives to changing this rotten ass system. The last part of the walk Bergit and I took alone to gorlitzer park in the dark. She said something that really struck me… something about how we (anarchists, punks, leftists, queers etc.) are reluctant or scared to talk about personal trauma yet we all have experienced it on some level… while at the same time, many of us work on these projects that have trauma (personal and community) at their root. We tend to work on trauma in the abstract, trauma is something that happens over there to the less fortunate. She told me that she respected me so much not only for sharing my life with them so honestly, but also for being so open to listen. She said that the work of buildingbloc, (when we were here 2 years ago), changed her life in some way…
… the last part of our walk I told her how much I feel she has to offer her community here… bringing her own personal experience to share.. how much hope and strength I get from knowing them… it’s a lot really… not abstract in the least… I feel really lucky to have these people in my life.. all of them!… berlin is becoming a second home of sorts…. “ich bin ein berliner” (i am a jelly doughnut)

erinyen anarcha-feminist collective

check out this amazing collective from berlin!

erinyen anarcha-feminist collective

Although anarchism is, in theory, inherently feminist, the reality is often quite different. Erinyen was created out of a need to bring issues of dominance, alienation, lack of control and masked hierarchy more into the anarchist sphere as well as for creating a place to share information, struggles and ideas. We hope with this platform and the magazine we contribute to more solidarity, understanding and change on all levels, regardless of gender, sex, age, ethnicity … and so on.

CESTA! undercovered…

hey all you artists.. wanna apply for an amazing collaborative arts festival in the
beautiful hansel and gretal forest of Bohemia cz republiki. heres your chance!
CESTA

CESTA’s 13th Arts Festival of International,
Interdisciplinary Collaborations
August 2009

Hidden and naked. Protected and endangered. Forgotten and targeted. The duality
of undercovered is inescapable – the concealed to the unveiled, the censored to the
recognized. The current unprecedented access to information encourages
discovery, yet we attack the conspicuous. We guard our histories, and suffer as the
ignored. We pursue knowledge to achieve progress, yet illumination creates
shadows, and definition creates margins. When do we seek protection through
visibility and when through anonymity? In our quest for recognition and
representation, what do we discard or overlook, and why?
For UNDERCOVERED, CESTA invites artists in all disciplines to collaborate in
creating works implicating this duality through their choices of artistic content,
process, or discipline.

CESTA’s festival themes and parameters of cross-national interdisciplinary
collaborations represent the center’s commitment to improving communication
through creative expression. We base our selection of artists on a review of
applications resulting from our annual open call. Applicants request CESTA to
connect them with one or more collaboration partners or apply as a pre-formed
collaboration group .

For UNDERCOVERED all final festival collaboration groups must be:
1) Cross-national: more than one nationality
2) Interdisciplinary: more than one artistic medium
3) Collaborative: conceptualizing and creating interdependent artistic work
AND must contain work created exclusively for UNDERCOVERED.

Festival Application Deadline: December 19, 2008
(postmarked)

UNDERCOVERED festival schedule
On-site collaborations in
progress:
August 1-26

Presentations of participants’
past work:
August 13-18

Seminars, workshops and
educational programs on the
festival theme:

August 13-18

Final presentations of the
collaboration groups:
August 28-30

Daily reviews of the
presentations:
August 29-31

Festival closing forum:
August 31

LAST RAMONE STANDING WINS!

Deuschtland is a place where obscure punks can still make a living….. where punk drummers can still make a living..

Marky Ramone is a d.j?…. who knew? ……… john langford of the mekons, (one of my favorite bands of all time)  once said in a radio interview, something like…. it was the era of “the least common denominator” the conservatives and the fascists had Reagan and Thatcher and we had THE RAMONES!

weißer mann…..

my presentation in berlin went really well!!! I presented with my friends alex and sandro. The evening lasted 4 and half hours after all the questions… I was blown away by peoples interest and their genuine inquisitiveness…. It’s a very different scene here with ideas and conversation, and time for both… longer attention span? I dunno? There were about 45 people in attendance, which is a giant crowd in berlin for a presentation, as there are lots of presentations/ parties/ meetings almost every night of the week all over the city. I didn’t expect so many people to show up! Thanks to Abolishing Borders from Below for all their work in making these events happen… super!

Alex presented an overview of roma life in the different countries she has traveled to, with a short slide presentation. It was great and made me realize how what i experienced was such a very small, specific slice of Roma culture. One thing that Tito brought to the former Yugoslavia was a home for many people. The Roma in Kosovo live in communities (in houses) and this is definitely not true in all other parts of Europe. Alex’s presentation showed the diversity of roma life and the class divisions that also exist within the culture. Stereotyping of roma people is common, and by showing the diversity of roma life it was a good way to break those sterotypes.

Sandro presented on the current situation in italy… (in Rome and in Napoli). A story of violence, eviction of entire communities and deportation with the support of the Italian state. Its really fucking horrible… incredible racist… and it seems that very little of the Italian public is organizing to stop it….

after a break for cigarettes and club mate (the drink that single handedly keeps the berlin @movement alive and functioning) we had a long question and answer period.  Some of the toughest questions for me were about working for an international ngo, and cultural imperialism. One person kept trying to make the point, or ask the question about me being a white boy (weißer mann) in a community that is not mine and how did that change the community or the integrity of roma culture…. Great questions which I have thought about a lot.        

I realized, that for me, there is a way in which my own analysis of many things went out the window when I was in Kosovo…. That being there in the midst of the daily trauma, discrimination and poverty…  I just tried to focus on the kids I was teaching and give them as much love as possible. Things were at such a survival level much of the time that all my questions of how I was changing “roma culture” by being there, or by teaching English faded to the background. Oh gawd!  does this make me a bleeding heart liberal?

My students were obviously happy that I was there and the love was mutual. The education center itself really took off in my time there and became a  wonderful place for the kids. Its not that my questions weren’t there, they just didn’t seem as pressing when in the midst of everything. I not saying this is right or wrong… just that it was…

One of voice of roma’s first projects, 7 years ago, was intensive English classes for about 50 students. Many of these folks now have jobs in ngo’s, as translators for the very large international community in Kosovo or with kfor and the united nations.. I know some of these folks and there are supporting large families with their incomes. Learning the english language has changed their lives for the better.. they told me so again and again. Unemployment in the roma community in kosovo is around 90%, speaking english is one of the few opportunities that folks have for employment.

I realized my own “cultural imperalism” one day towards the end of my stay in Kosovo. I wanted to do an evaluation with the students in both of my classes. Not just an evaluation but to give them the opportunity to speak about the things that they wanted from their education center. I definitely had a motive of trying to empower the students and to give them the feeling of ownership in the education center… noble goals maybe? We spent a lot of class time on these questions. I took notes on everything the students said. I had the feeling, half way into the first evaluation, that the kids in my classes had never been asked questions like this before. That maybe I was way outside a cultural context for them. I got a lot of blank looks, a lot of kids just repeating what their classmates had already said.  The adults really control the kids worlds and its not normal for them to step outside of that and speak for they want…   I started to feel that I was imposing something on them that I thought was a good thing for them…. was it?  is this appropriate? I am still asking myself.