Precariously Not Rich

Two weekends ago, I attended a night of stencils, cement scrawls, and Precariousness at ATA’s Other Cinema. Chris Carlsson showed some videos from Greenpepper Magazine’s “Precarious” DVD, and then started a discussion on the new European movement. The DVD clips he showed were amusing creative civil disobedience for the most part, based upon a new definition of where we all fit into this crazy capitalist world. One clip showed Italian citizens discussing what made their lives precarious and I instantly related to alot of them. The idea of being precarious hit home when a few immigrants spoke about how hard it was for them to make a living under the threat of not having papers.

As the discussion, which didn’t really go anywhere, progressed to nearly midnight, I lost concentration. Afterwards, I headed to El Farralito with Josh MacPhee and some other friends. Along the way, we joked about how precarious our existence was, and that that was a big word to swallow as a name of a unified movement against capitalism. It was too intellectual. At one point in the walk, I realized I wasn’t joking, and then started to seriously think about this new language coming out of Europe.

Chris mentioned that Greenpepper magazing and the Web site, Metamute, had articles about Precariousness. The next day, I went to the site and tried to read an article. Staring at the tiny type crossed my eyes. I took it as a signal to meditate upon my own personal precarious existence for a while and print out copies of the Metamute articles for future absorption.

Just what does precarious mean? According to WordPress’ dictionary, precarious means:

1. Dangerously lacking in security or stability: a precarious posture; precarious footing on the ladder.
2. Subject to chance or unknown conditions: “His kingdom was still precarious; the Danes far from subdued” (Christopher Brooke).
3. Based on uncertain, unwarranted, or unproved premises: a precarious solution to a difficult problem.
4. Archaic. Dependent on the will or favor of another.

Putting the meanings into plitical cotext made me exclaim, “No shit. We’re all precariously existing in this system!” I realized that I knew almost no one who doesn’t live close to some form of capitalist edge of oblivion. Also, I knew many folks going through various hard times right now, and we were all creating support networks and mutual aid to get through it. The basic conclusion I drew, without reading any text on Europe’s Precarious movement, was that there are two classes: the Rich, and the Not Rich. This fit in with Chris’ statement that the working class was a misnomer and that language needed to create a new phrase for 21st century dwellers to actually relate to one another. In capitalist terms, almost the whole human population is Not Rich.

Put that in your solidarity pipe and smoke it. Chris was interested in trying to get the attending activists to somehow relate to the blue and white collar workers, and the discussion didn’t really create any juicy leads on how to do this. My time spent in the Corporate sphere showed that white collar workers do indeed live precariously, yet they strive to live in what is either a delusional lie or a dream. While I worked in that environment, I had a hard time relating to my coworkers. I was a prole admin employee, getting paid at the bottom of the scale, yet I lived better and maybe richer than the top-paid executives. How? Well, they worked their asses of for one thing, and consumed at a larger quantity than I did. I’d say that their money concerns, commutes, mortgages, and desire to have more and be more got in the way of the fact that they worked stupid jobs and lived with little real security.

Yet most of them would probably agree that they lived precariously if I had discussed it with them. This ties in nicely with the Coop research that I’ve been doing. I’ve recently discovered that Argentina’s middle class has sided with the unemployed masses on and off for decades! A teachers union started the picket tactic (blocking roads, bridges, etc.) that the piqueteros have used since the 1990s to degrade the capitalist system there. Why, do you ask? My guess is when a corporatist government makes white collar workers feel really precarious, then they’re out in th e streets fighting over it.

So my brooding is over, and the Metamute articles have been printed. Once the Coop research is done, I’ll dive in and see what this movement is all about. I hope to have more things to say about the Not Rich Class, and I hope to discuss precariousness further with people who don’t know that there are terms and philosophies being developed around the idea. That’s where I hope to find some fresh perspectives on what tactics can unite us all to try to make some tough changes. But these changes need to be made, and systems of mutual aid need to be set up in the future.

Coops in the Americas I

I mentioned in an earlier post that I would try to follow up on the coop movement in Argentina. Watching the documentary The Take came at a good time as forthcoming information on what is happening in all of the Americas soon followed from diferent sources. At the monthly NoBAWC (Network of Bay Area Cooperatives) meeting, not only did I get a reportback on what is happening in the United States, but there was also a reportback on the coop movement in Argentina and Venezuela. On top of that, I just scoured the Anarchist Bookfair for books en Ingles on the Argentine coop and peoples movement and only found an article and two pamphlets. Since this research is ongoing, I will continue to post entries about what I’m reading.

Locally, the recent NoBAWC meeting proved to be a watershed moment for the growing coop movement in the Bay Area. NoBAWC just restructured their model to rely on incoming dues from the member coops. Members pay a sliding scale fee that is based upon what their annual income is. One smaller-sized coop, and another larger one, voiced concern over justifying to their paying dues for a larger organization that doesn’t really do anything.

This was my first meeting with NoBAWC, so I listened intensely as other members voiced their concerns about getting future approval from their members to pay into an organization that only provided a card that gives members discounts within the network. The larger organization is currently loosely organized, with a steering committee and a part-time employee. It is not currently a nonprofit and has been trying to go there for a few years. NoBAWC also doesn’t currently produce any content other than the discount card (I’ve seen posters done from the recent past). No other services currently exist, and no information is posted on how to create a coop (something several members mentioned in the recent meeting).

One person attending the meeting summed up the next step when he stated that coops work best in a committee form (or clusters as CELLspace calls them). NoBAWC needed to put an item on their next meeting agenda to address the need to create smaller working groups to begin to set up tasks and follow through on creating services in a Bay Area-sized, and even national, scale. Everyone at the meeting seemed overworked and booked out with their various businesses and causes, but all agreed that it was time to step up and get the region organized.

This intense discussion started when a member of the NoBAWC steering committee gave a reportback on a few other regional coops and on the formation of a United States coop federation. Sadly, I did not take any notes on the reportbacks, but can say that the other regional organizations were charged with energy and already beginning to eclipse NoBAWC in services and action. On the national level, The U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives recently formed in May of 2004. The reportback said that the Federation was in the process of creating bylaws for nonprofit status, membership processes, smaller regional state federations, and was created in response to other countries wondering why the U.S. wasn’t working to unite coops on a national level.

Summing up, the meme of coop organization that I feel sparked a fire in South America in 2001 has come home to the belly of the corporate capitalist beast that is the United States. As you will see, the fire of hunger and desperation that created the horizontal organization of neighborhoods and businesses in Argentina, ripples in the liberal enclaves like the San Francisco Bay Area and on a national level. Options other than “clearcut and sell” need to be given to the public, and as the Not Rich class continues to slide into precarious existence in the United States, the coop model proves to be a testy power rising from the cracks of mainstream consumerism. With the Bay Area getting off its ass to organize, and the United States beginning to organize, there’s a chance that different options mean better living and freedom of choice.

If not now, when? If not you, who?

to be continued…

Flyer Art for Golden Thread Productions

Stencil Pain

Just so you know, my life tends to revolve around stencil art. You know, those sidewalk paintings that you see all over the Mission (or maybe a street in your hometown). I make them, collect photos of them, have friends who make and collect them, and even go through withdrawal if I don’t carry my camera with me everywhere. I love them so much I tried to sell a book idea to several publishers back in 2001. No one took the bait, so I taught myself how to make a Web site and created stencilarchive.org. Don’t bother checking out the link right now; the site is down once again.

Lately, stencils have been a painful part of my life. Before November of last year, I was working with a designer on a new redesign of the site. He assured me it was easy, is an activist, so gave me a great deal for his labor. I watched him design the new site and work the code. He sure as hell knew more than I did. All the features that I wanted, he found as “modules” with an open source code called PostNuke.

We worked weekly on the site. I watched him more than helped him, but eventually started uploading content to the new sections that I’d thought up. It was looking good, moving along, until the designer couldn’t make the album module work with my current host server. He suggested that I move the site to someone he worked with. The new host would work with us on allowing permissions that my old host wouldn’t open for security reasons.

I wanted the site to go live in October to crossover with the street art show I was co-producing. “For the People” had great art on the walls, and the scene showed up. It made no money and [content deleted due to accusations of defamation of character by the co-producer] So I never contacted him.

Stencil Archive went live on the Day of the Dead, a Mexican holiday for celebrating loved ones who’ve passed into the shadows. The site was live for a few days and then went down. It took my new host’s other sites down as well. They wouldn’t let my site up for weeks while they upgraded their server and security shell. At one point, it went live and was instantly hacked via the PostNuke source code. A temporary headache, but another headache nonetheless.

While down, I had to beg my designer to work with the host admin to make changes. I wouldn’t hear from him for days, and then he’d pull an allnighter to try to get the site up again. I can understand his reluctance. I wasn’t paying him much (the site makes very little money), and he’s got other things in his life going on. He was very supportive when he responded to my pleas and actually got the site up again about three months after it went down.

Stencil Archive went live again with little fanfare this time. It was about 80% complete, so I had to reinstall the FAQ and some links. I had hundreds of stencil pics backed up to upload and didn’t have permission to access the albums. I had to ask my designer to help me with permissions, and he finally responded with another allnighter. It took the host’s server down again.

Last week my new host admin officially took over Stencil Archive. Though I was impressed by my desingers coding skills, he is not a coder. Now my bill for hosting and design just got higher. The admin called Stencil Archive a hobby site, though I’ve always wanted to have a store on there to at least break even on the price I pay to support it. It’s still down, and now the admin is trying to contact the designer to see what changes were made to the code. So the pain continues.

About the same time last week, the For the People co-producer [content deleted due to accusations of defamation of character by the co-producer]

Soon after that, the co-producer started [content deleted due to accusations of defamation of character by the co-producer] I called him on it.

He threw [content deleted due to accusations of defamation of character by the co-producer] Just isn’t my thang.

Anyway, [content deleted due to accusations of defamation of character by the co-producer]…terminated.

So the moral of this story, and the story has only been partially laid out here, is to try to get things in writing. This isn’t the first or second time I’ve been burned by supposed verbal agreements. CELLspace learned this the hard way and I guess I am too. When money is involved in shady underworld art scenes, a handshake is usually the beginning of a road to pain. If you don’t get things in writing, at least save every last e-mail and typed notes you have. It may clear things up down the road, or in small claims.

Business Card Art for All Star Stilts

Stencil Board

I go to a local art store to buy some stencil board. The worker tells me that they have regulated that product due to its misuse by street artists. To buy some, I’ll have to sign a waiver saying that I won’t use it for illegal reasons. I agree to sign, thinking of a fake name (Wayton?), and the worker tells me that I have to sign with a manager.

I find the manager outside near a pick-up. I ask her what I need to sign and she hands me a piece of scrap paper. She isn’t paying any attention to me when I hand the paper back to her. “Excuse me, here’s the paper.” “What? Oh, sorry. How can I focus with that going on over there.” She motions to the street behind us, and I look over my shoulder.

Someone has be brutally run over. A rolled-up, mangled body lies in the middle of the road, and possessions are strewn about. I think it may have been a homeless person, and turn away in horror. The manager has walked out into the street, well away from the accident, and is crouched down, bawling and talking to herself.