(thanks to Laura for this pic from Dachau, Germany)
A month or so ago, I photographed a new stencil in Clarion Alley, the funky painted street by Community Thrift on Valencia St. I wasn’t sure at first if I was going to post the image to Stencil Archive, because for the first time in San Francisco, I had captured a White Supremest logo as negative space. Huh? The “New Right”? Why the hell are they tagging a right wing stencil in Clarion Alley? [I posted the stencil, because people need to know what their icons are and deface them whenever they can.]
Before the Clarion Alley block party, a friend buffed the stencils. I don’t blame him, especially since Clarion Alley is a lefty, Anarcho-Radical zone, with murals that make hate-free political statements as well as critique capitalist society. Before the Block Party, I got word that the SFPD were going to crack down on open alcohol containers during the event. I stopped by the alley early to look for stencils and double check that rumor. Sure enough, a volunteer was making a sign telling people to behave that day. (The SFPD harassed participants by riding motorcycles through the party and did issue open container citations.)
Question and Answer Discussion following the film with Andy Bichlbaum and Antonia Juhasz
Protest Chevron with The Yes Men!
6:45pm
After the Q & A, Andy Bichlbaum will lead the entire theater of moviegoers to the Chevron station at Market and Castro for a colorful, ruckus, creative, protest of the kind only the Yes Men can offer!
Even if you can’t join us for the film, show up afterwards to take on Chevron Yes Men/Global Exchange style! We hope to see you there!!
Sunday at the West Fest, a free concert in Golden Gate Park, I threw a new line in my carny spiel: “Just like the SF Diggers gave it all away in the Summer of Love, our games are free. There ain’t no line, and it don’t cost a dime!” The SF Diggers have inspired me many times over with their mad, creative urge to make the word “free” the real deal. They gave food away to the wayward runaways that flocked to Upper Haight, inspiring the Food Not Bombs campaigns. They hustled landlords to get living space and then crammed in as many homeless teens as possible to get them off the streets, and the Huckleberry Youth Programs is a reminder of their work. The SF Diggers threw free concerts in the Panhandle, the West Fest was a quasi-unsponsored (they did have logos all over things) example of that legacy. Finally, the SF Diggers created free stores, where money wasn’t considered. The Really Really Free Markets and Clothing Swaps stand as 21st Century Examples of this idea.
The SF Diggers, for good or bad, were tied to the San Francisco Mime Troupe. On top of all that free culture listed above, there were also many puppet performances, spontaneous art happenings, and wild, tripped out parties. The Mime Troupe gave their shows away for free in parks across the City, and they had to fight for that right, inspiring the SF Diggers (and bringing on the hilarious arrest of some of their giant puppets). On the East Coast, Peter Schumann’s Bread and Puppet Theater also began to throw free performances in New York, Vermont, and beyond. And Luis Valdez and El Teatro Campesino also began free, radical performance from a Mexi-Cali Latino perspective.
Why do I read the news anymore? Well, why do I read news headlines? I have good sites to go to, but they still spin the schlock people want to read most. The past few days, I’ve been watching how the right-wing spin-mongers have totally wound their panties so tight, that their eyeballs are popping out. I just Googled “obama socialist” and got a pile of hits on this meme. Which makes me laugh since Obama isn’t really anything unless the Democratic corporate backers tell him what he is.
I got angry today when I saw the NY Timesspin the Obama school address non-issue on their site. In the lead off paragraph, which is about all anyone reads these days, the Times said that the address “has set off a revolt among conservative parents, who have accused the president of trying to indoctrinate their children with socialist ideas.” Last night, on the Huffington Post, I watched as current media darling Glen Beck connected Obama to the Rockefellers to socialists and fasciscts via all the artwork on the Rockefeller Plaza by way of Van Jones (the current punching bag for the right wing mudslingers). Beck’s main piece of art was a Diego Rivera mural that is no longer in the Plaza, which most Americans have never seen in person. Finally, on the Drudgereport tonight, a link to a local news site stated that elected official U.S. Rep. Paul Broun “told a meeting of the Morgan County Republicans on Wednesday night that Obama already has or will have the three things he needs to make himself a dictator: a national police force, gun control and control over the press.”
CNN is on here at my hotel room in Buffalo, and the main news story is how “citizen journalists” in Iran continue to cover the breaking stories with cell phones, Twitter, and FaceBook. Iranians are risking their lives to submit video footage to network news stations. Over on Huffington Post, Nico Pitney is blogging about Iran, using sources from all over the web, and doing a bit of vetting to discount some fake citizen journalism.
As some of you may know, I have stencil work from Iran over on Stencil Archive. I don’t know the artist’s real names, nor any details about their lives. But I do understand that doing graffiti in Iran comes at a great risk. Larger than the risks that other artists face, since graffiti is considered an evil Western-influenced activity by some fundamentalist Iranians. Since the protests started, I have been concerned about the artists, fearing their safety and hoping that they’re keeping things real in the streets. They’ve gotten in touch and are OK. But extremely excited and concerned about losing their votes in the recent election. They have reacted by doing what they do best during these amazing times in Persia. They’re keeping art in the streets!
My data mining has dug up some blogs, and Dub Gabriel has started blogging for a friend in Iran who is telling his version of the story. Here’s a photoblog that I have gone to to look at photos. Here is a Flickr stream of some current art in the Iranian streets. Iran is blocking some major web sites (like YouTube), but Flickr seems to be available. And it’s easy to get around the government blocking: Dub Gabriel is easily helping his friend in Iran post information, probably via simple email exchanges. So posting some of these sites is a simple act that I can do to help the thousands of green-clad people in the streets of Iran.
Twenty years ago, Chinese students occupied Tianamen Square, and were eventually brutally crushed by the People’s Army. Last night at my presentation at Hallwalls, I showed some photos of the street art and stencil work in Iran. I made the comment that things might have ended differently in 1989, had the students used cell phones and cameras to let the whole world instantly watch and witness their experience with seeking freedom and democracy. I don’t know if today’s coverage in Iran will bring a huge change with their culture, but I know that our ability to witness it first hand is a sweet experience. CNN is showing international rallies supporting the Iranian democrats, and I am sure that those attending these rallies are snapping pics and taking phone vids of the scene. And they’re MMS’ing them to friends in Persia. And they’re instantly posting them online.
Together, we can witness what is happening half the world away, and thus our compassion expands for those who desire the basic freedoms we all should have. Hopefully, this will drive change in the world and bring lessons of unity and equality that we should’ve learned over and over again. If not, then we will once again have to see similar uprisings happen, and have to relive the painful images of oppression. That being said, don’t forget the recent struggles in Tibet, the ongoing pain in Palestine, and other suffering around the world of people who don’t have the technology to give us the first-hand experience.
