Busking Zine pages 17-20

The zine's finally done! The rest of it will be up shortly! An actual paper version will be available by the weekend.
Woot!

A compromise, one of many, necessary?

So i've been sort of following this minor debacle in hfx where some folks had an offensively themed party and then didn't respond well to the suggestion that they were being shitty. (http://unbeatablehigh.blogspot.com/ march 18-21)

I recently had a similar situation where i tried to call someone out on using the word "faggot" inappropriately. It was a long, painfully drawn out conversation, which started with that person arguing that people just "shouldn't be so sensitive" and ended with him finally conceding my point and, hilariously, whining about how harsh i'd been with him. Apparently gay people shouldn't be so sensitive about him reclaiming slur words for them, but he's totally allowed to be sensitive about having his privilege and ignorance pointed out to him. Right.

So anyway, i've been thinking about this thing a lot, this "what is the correct amount of 'harsh' to use on people who are somewhere in the range of ignorantly offensive to blatantly and deliberately offensive?" question.

I think this is what i've got it narrowed down to:

1. People who are using oppressive language are not the ones who deserve sympathy. Everyone is capable of thinking about the consequences of their actions and they should already be doing that.

2. That being said, i think it's possible to tell someone clearly that something they've done is offensive or inappropriate without decimating them. I feel like there's times when i need to be reminded to think about my language (i had a good conversation lately about use of the word "crazy" in daily speech, ie) and i know that it doesn't take much to make me rethink my actions, and that a really harsh judgement would probably just make me feel really guilty and awkward and miserable when that's not necessary.

3. That being said, if you're gentle and someone doesn't get it, it's fair and necessary to step it up.

4. THAT being said, even if i think someone does deserve decimating, i've learned that the more you humiliate someone, the more reluctant they are to admit they're wrong. Especially in situations where the person you're calling out isn't a friend and their friends probably think their behaviour is fine, they might easily react by just disagreeing with you. If the goal is actually to make a person stop being a douchebag, this means that some degree of tact is necessary. All-out attack will probably just enable them to write you off as a psychopath or fascist or whatever.

5. So even though i sometimes fantasize about bottling people like that, i try to be as approachable as i can when i'm talking to them about their behaviour, even if i think they're being incredibly inconsiderate and deserve no sympathy whatsoever. The situation extends beyond me and them and i don't want to reinforce their already somewhat present disrespect or even hatred of whatever group they're disrespecting.

I think the conversation i had (referenced above) barely managed to be a success, only because i barely managed to reformulate my rage into something more like bluntness. Despite the fact that this person didn't deserve to have their hand held through the process of admitting they were wrong, that was probably the only way to get them to admit they were wrong, which was my goal.

Typewriter: Icon of OPPRESSION

Dandy and i had a table at a "tea" at an old folks' home today. It was effin awesome. We spent the whole time making a list of things we wanna do when we get old. Like refuse to wear your false teeth even though you've only got three real ones left. Or make cozies for your walker. Or (admittedly probably unknowingly) pop the collar on your dress shirt/sweater vest combination. Or wear bright red lipstick. And, old folks are just great humans. They have lots of time. They care about other people and what they're doing. They appreciate craft and resourcefulness. Some of the people we met today looked over our stuff soooo thoroughly and genuinely and thoughtfully, and were so engaging.. awwwwww!

And, we had this really fascinating conversation with this woman about typewriters! We've got a few things we make that have typewriters on them, and i generally think of a typewriter as appealing as a symbol of creativity or whatever, and well, they're pretty hip, but this lady DETESTED them!

And rightly so, she says someone advised her as a girl never to learn to type, because once men figure out you can type that's the only job you ever get. And who wants to be stuck being someone's freaking secretary their whole lives? I never even thought about it that way. But there was a time when this was very true. Hmm!

busking zine pages 13-16!

also: things not to do while trying to draw tiny details: drink coffee, argue with people on the internet and get really angry at them, do chin-ups, play accordion. none of these things are good for delicate motor skills. and yet for some reason i did them all.

There is probably no hope.

This is happenning..
http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/14220
http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/14214

I feel like i need to educate myself, right now, about cops, how to deal with them, how to best act in solidarity with people being fucked with by them. Because while i wouldn't like to think of myself as one of the depressing majority that did NOTHING to come to the aid of the folks singled out in this case, and others, i could see myself being confused and sort of paralyzed and in actuality being one of those people.

Not that i like demos or have any inclination to go to them.

Lately i've been incredibly cynical about "awareness raising", public demos, etc. not that i condemn it all. But i can't bring myself to believe that a measurable amount of the general population notices, and if they did most of them would want the cops to crack down anyways.

Fuck society. Fuck social change.
I feel like the only remaining plausible courses of action might be isolationism and/or direct attack.

Anyway, whatever. back to the busking zine tomorrow.

Busking zine pages 9-12!

busking zine! pages 5-8

hooray!
sorry this took a couple days.. i ended up working 16 hours a day for the last two days and didn't really get anything else done. but here it is now!

Busking Zine! Issue 1!

After months (months!) of work, it's almost done. Here's the first four pages. I'll try and put four up every day for the next week.

in exile: busking

yesterday i had yet another shitty experience busking, which finally pushed me over the edge. i don't do that in this city anymore. on a good day i have a few nice interactions while being consciously ignored by the shitheads in suits that pass me on a daily basis and yet somehow still won't make eye contact. to be fair, i have a few positive interactions with people in suits. statistically, though, it's unlikely.

most of the time the weirdos and homebums, ie people who aren't suits, are really nice, and interactions with them are what keeps me feeling like a human being. but then occasionally they ask me for money, which is fine, or steal my money, which is not fine, or get up in my face trying to get me to kiss them, which is not fine, or leer at me and tell me that playing accordion is "hot", not fine, or pretend to shoot me in the face with their hand, at point blank, as they walk past, not fine, or give me a nickel "to wash my panties with", whatever the fuck that fucking means, not fine, or, yesterday, stand right beside me panhandling to people i'm trying to get money out of myself, and when i ask them nicely to give me a little more space than one metre, stand there and threaten/intimidate/insult me/threaten to take my money/take my shit/kick me in the face/etc, imitate me, mock me, say every nasty thing about me that they can think of to everyone who's passing by, and just generally demean me, until i finally left.

what frustrates me even more about it, aside from no longer feeling comfortable with doing the one thing that most reliably makes me self-sufficient, is that the only way i could have solved that situation was to get someone to call the fucking biz, who are a bunch of overgrown teenagers pretending to be cops, being abusive and shitty and having no accountability, and who generally exist to power-trip on homeless folks and panhandlers.

so i really wanted to be like, "you're putting me into a situation where the only way i can make myself feel safe is to validate these shitty people that will abuse you." which sounds like blaming the victim to me, but i don't really know how else to analyze this.

part of why this whole thing is so disturbing to me is it's instilled a genuine fear in me of native homebums, because that's who it is, every time. i don't really know how to deal with the fact that i'm developing a fear and hatred of a visible minority. it's not nice. i guess i can balance that with my understanding of the history that created this context. i'm never sure whether to put myself into the same category as someone who feels alienated by most of society and frequently gets treated like something less than human by most of society, or into the category of white privileged person who's making it even harder for this native lady who's already dealing with the infinite effects of colonization, and alcoholism, and probably a low/no income.

i don't want to feel oppressed by everyone including people who are even more fucked than i am, but i also don't want to play the role of "poor suffering white girl with an education from a middle class background who can't play her accordion because of all the panhandlers scaring her away."

i could go on about this forever. i don't know what to say. but i'm not busking in this city anymore.