The Major

Category: Activism

  • Locavores

    Over the past few weeks, I have been thinking a lot about what can be done about global warming. One thing that can be done, and I don’t think enters many people’s minds, is to eat locally.

    Our food often travels thousands of miles before reaching our mouth. This is all well and good if you don’t have to worry about the consequences of how it got here. Unfortunately we do have to worry about this very thing.

    Eating locally aims to reduce this impact on the environment. On a whim, I googled “eat locally san francisco.” The first result was for Locavores, “a group of concerned culinary adventurers who are making an effort to eat only foods grown or harvested within a 100 mile radius of San Francisco for an entire month.”

    Their next eat local month is September. It looks like I am going to give this a try and see what I learn. Of course, it will be much easier for me than for someone from, say, Arizona. It seems as though Northern California has enough variety so that I will still be able to eat like a king.

  • Enough Bitching, Time for Action

  • Lethargic

    There are two issues that are top on my list for things that need changing. The Iraq War (let’s get the hell out of there) and global warming. As I walk through the city streets almost every day, rarely do I see anything being done by ordinary citizens on either of these two issues. How are things going to change if we don’t make them change?

    I figured there would be a few possible avenues that I could help make some progress. First, in concert with someone else, I checked with my Chomsky book club basically asking the question, “Reading these books has given us a better understanding of the world. Wouldn’t it be great, since we are already a group, to do something about these things as a group?”

    It was decided that people didn’t want to do anything as a group. We’ll just keep reading about what is wrong with the world. Granted, certain individuals are certainly doing things outside of the group to right the wrongs that they see. Anyway, that disappointed me, but I decided to explore other possibilities for action.

    Before I continue, I should point out that there are organizations that work for change. But there are some major problems that I have with organizations like the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition and World Can’t Wait. First of all, the events aren’t nearly frequent enough. Secondly, they are generally always in the same place all the time (5th and Market). How can you have an affect on a large number of people if you are always in one place? The same people will see you every time. Also, specific to A.N.S.W.E.R., they don’t focus. They want to get us out of Iraq and free Mumia and something about the Cuban five and and and… Having said this, I am currently trying to join up with one or both of those groups. We’ll see how that goes.

    I think it would be good to form some local, smaller organizations which both do their own thing and join with larger organizations for select events. So I went ahead and made two posts on Craigslist. One was for The Russian Hill Out of Iraq Group. The second was for The Russian Hill Global Warming Group. And you wouldn’t believe how few responses I got. Zero. Zero responses. You know people are looking at these group listings. I guess they’d rather join the Gay Scrabble Club (seriously, I saw a posting for this) than actually do something about what is wrong with the world.

    OK, so maybe some people had a different idea about how to approach problems than I did. Fair enough. So I put myself on the other side of the Craigslist posting and responded to one that wanted to meet with other people to explore how to do something about the problems that this person saw in the world. It was more of a general group, and it wasn’t neighborhood-specific, but I figured I would give it a shot. I responded, as did two other people. Four people is better than one, at least. Well the group creator emailed all of us with some ideas on how to meet up. I responded, with three days passed I have not heard from the other two people nor have I heard again from the group creator.

    Maybe Lee Iacocca was right. Maybe Rich was right. People do need to be more outraged. If people just took one night per week to do something about the problems that they saw in the world, rather than watching TV or going to a basketball game or “getting their drink on,” I think a lot of people would live in a much better place. Seriously, 20,000 people regularly meet in the same place at the same time to watch a basketball game for $20-$200 but we can’t get four people together for an hour to do something about the world, all for the price of bus fare and a cup of coffee?

    Now don’t get me wrong. I could certainly do more. A lot more. And my ideas about what is not being done correctly to make change are likely to be out of whack. But I have found that most people don’t want to even open their mouths let alone get their hands dirty.

    And like Lee Iacocca, I am mad as hell. If I can’t find other people to join up with that want to do something about the problems in the world, I will find out what I can do on my own, not just in terms of changing my personal lifestyle (war tax resistance, buying local, among many, many other things) but also in terms of changing the behaviors of other people. As liberal as I might be, I often have the very Ayn-Rand-ish viewpoint that I’m not going to wait around for others to let me do what needs to be done.

  • Michael Albert on Democracy Now

    Michael Albert, co-editor and co-founder of Z Magazine, was on Democracy Now yesterday. I hadn’t heard of him until today, but I have read Z Magazine a few times.

    He said something that I think is rather brilliant. He was quite long-winded in saying it, so I’ve summed it up: There are two obstacles for people to try to change the world around them. One is an ignorance of reality. The second is that they think there is no alternative.

    This man’s ideas rather intrigue me; I think at some point I will read one of his books: Parecon: Life After Capitalism

  • Ah This Should Be Good

    I’ve got my glass of wine. I’ve got my Chilling Effects (boring but relaxing at the same time). And I’ve got Democracy Now, today’s show with Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky. I’ll update this later with links.

  • News and Notes

    I think once or twice, I have started a blog post in this fashion. I think I have a lot of things almost worth saying, but nothing that is worthy of its own post. So I just start slamming my thoughts all into one post. Anyway, here goes:

    I posted my car for sale on Craigslist. I hope it sells soon. Because when it does, I am going to buy a mountain bike and maybe a new laptop. Also, I can “move on.”

    I really get a great feeling out of doing something correctly. I usually can’t do something correctly if I am rushed. So I have learned to not even try, sometimes, if I am going to be rushed. Today with my car, I was able to take my time and get this first part done right. I double parked in front of my apartment to take all of my belongings from the car to the apartment. Then I drove it down Van Ness to get it washed. $50 + $10 tip. Worth it for a good detail. I then drove it back to my garage and took about 40 or so pictures. You can see them here. Posted on craigslist…and now I just have to hope it will sell. Actually, if I don’t hear from someone by tonight, I will post on eBay or the paper or autotrader.com. But the great thing is that my legwork is done. At this point, almost all my work can be done from a desk.

    Moving on…Alyssa and I saw “An Inconvenient Truth” on Saturday night down at Santana Row in San Jose. It was a great movie. Gore covered everything: past, present, and future of the effects of global warming. past, present, and future of what is being done to prevent global warming. I think that a lot of “issue” movies miss out on at least a few of those things.

    I was honestly pretty amazed at the scope of our current problem. I didn’t realize that we were already so far in the deep end. But that doesn’t much change my outlook. I was already on Gore’s side, at least I would like to think, when it comes to the environment. One thing I would like to do, however, is take a look through the Gore-debunkers’ arguments just to see if they have any substance to them.

    I sometimes think that I am a bit too exposed to the liberal viewpoint of things and not exposed enough to the conservative viewpoint. And even if someone is a complete liar, you can still learn a lot from listening to them.

    On the way back to the city on Saturday night, I was listening to Rush Limbaugh. I have always thought that the guy spouted complete nonsense, but I gave him another chance. He failed. He spouted complete nonsense (except for one small rant he had about a Walmart issue). But even so, it was good to listen to him because so many other people soak this crap up, and it is good to know what the talking points from the other side are.

    The same theory goes with reading almost all newspapers. Even if you think that they are completely controlled by corporate America, you can still learn what corporate America wants you to think. And that is very valuable.

    Moving on (again)…I am currently reading ABC of Anarchism by Alexander Berkman. I can’t really say that this book is a great read. But it is great in the fact that the main idea is so new to me, and it has gotten me thinking a lot. The main ideas are that workers are “wage slaves.” This means that they have the freedom not to work, but they will starve if they don’t. And they are being stolen from by the capitalists – they get paid much less than their work is actually worth. This is evidenced by the fact that there is so much excess capital to go to those at the top – those who did no actual work. I can’t really say that I disagree with any of this. But at the same time, a lot of what he says is stated as fact, when indeed it could use a lot of supporting evidence. I cannot complain about this too much, however, since this is indeed supposed to be an introductory book to anarchism. I would very much like to read more on the subject after reading this book.

    One way that these ideas are applied to real life is by thinking that – remember that guy that cut you off today? That was horrible, wasn’t it? Well where were you coming from when he cut you off? You were coming home from work. Your workplace where you spent 8 hours getting stolen from. So, yeah, that guy that cut you off wasn’t very nice. But if we’re going to get mad at someone, why are we going to get mad at that guy? Get mad at those who are stealing your hard work.

    Having said that…I would not say that I am an anarchist. I will have to read a lot more on the subject before that previous paragraph becomes something that I would care to defend fully. The field of Economics is pretty much the enemy of anarchism – I’ll have to do a bit of reading on that as well.

  • Taking a Stand on One Thing at a Time

    I read a short article about Richard Stallman trying to meet with the French PM. I have a lot of respect for Stallman, but the Slashdot nerds brought up a good point: If you want to play ball with the politicians and businessmen, you have to dress the part, or you’re going to lose a lot of respect for your original cause.

    This reminds me of a few years ago when Michael Newdow was fighting against the word “God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. At the same time he was a stickler for using the word “de” as a unisex version of “he” or “she.” Sure, I could maybe agree with that…but could you hold off until you’re done with the other issue please?

    I guess the basic moral is: Choose your battles wisely.

  • Feeling Like a Dope

    I found an article over at the Free Software Foundation about a protest against ATI on the MIT campus recently. Reading stuff like this always makes me feel like a dope. I feel like a dope for not being a part of this movement.

    And it isn’t just the Free Software Movement. There are so many things that I am not a big enough part of. The anti-war movement. The workers’ rights movement. The consumer rights movement. Many different civil liberties movements.

    But at the same time I realize that you have to mix practicality with being a stubborn bastard. Sometimes I feel like I am compromising my morals too much. Most of the time I feel comfortable with how I live my life.

    But however I feel, I look at these people – people like Ralph Nader, Richard Stallman, and Noam Chomsky – and they just provide me with more motivation to do things about what pisses me off. Maybe one of these days I’ll be more of an activist. Probably my own greed will only let me do so much.

  • Protest in San Francisco

    I wrote up a short article on Wikinews: Thousands in San Francisco protest US wars.

    It isn’t a great article, and it is pretty short, but it is kind of neat to write your own news. Also, the nice thing is that other people can go in there and edit it – add more information and such.

  • Thomson Prometric Sucks

    My brother Rich has started a new website – thomsonprometricsucks.com. It details his horrible experiences in dealing with Thomson Prometric testing. There is no point in me writing any more – just click the link above and read on.