landlords2dust

So here's my life....

Good things.
1. Still in Vegas.
2. I'm working hard, and making more money than I've ever made in my life...waiting tables.
3. I can't believe I'm still in Vegas.
4. Kate and I live in an apartment complex a block away from the Las Vegas Strip, specifically the MGM Grand. It's a nice working class family neighborhood, mostly latino and black families.
5. We're actually making friends here, and the city is growing on us. We have our haunts, dives, and strange hangouts that we frequent, so when we leave, there will be more las vegas in our hearts than we intended.
6. THe union local I came here to work for, but am no longer doing so ended up winning everything it set out to win this contract fight round, for thousands and thousands of workers. I'm very happy, and proud of my co-organizers and the fight they led.
7. I'm smiling a lot cuz I'm still in love with my honey, and will be more so every day.
8. My car works, and probably won't break down for some time. I love that kind of security.
9. I'm about to learn French. And I'm about to move to France. This fall.
10. I'm doing nice drugs often. Fun times. And I'm still being responsible. Nice.
11. It's nice to take a break from spending 90% of my time awake thinking about and being active building an international working class revolution. Now I do the thinking 89% of the time.

Bad things.
1. Still in Vegas.
2. I'm working too hard, and am not making the kind of money that I need to save to get to France.
3. I can't believe I still live in Vegas.
4. Our street is the one where all the city's taxicabs take people from the strip to the airport, a very dangerous road to live on. I caught a guy breaking into my car, trying to steal it, and he ran. I don't like cops, so I didn't call them. I caught a guy shooting up on my front porch, and at once felt moved to invite him into the foyer to do it safely, as well as pissed that he would it in a neighborhood that children are playing around in.
5. I'm probably never comign back to Vegas once we move from here, so we'll miss our good friends.
6. I miss union organizing, and wish I could organize my workplace now, but have to leave, so I can't.
7. My honey has a new schedule that makes it hard for us to see each other.
8. My car needs an air conditioner. SOon, it's getting fucking hot here already. It's not even spring yet.
9. I miss Philadelphia, and want to spend more time there before moving to France, but won't have time.
10. I need to take a break from drinking and other fun things.
11. There aren't many radical groups here at all, so it's politically stifling in this city for a liber-commie.

We don't live in a post-racist world, and judging from the posts on the threads in response to Michael Richards potentially paying his victims, white people still think they walk aroubnd innocent of this 400 year old tradition. Black people have not forgotten it.

Before white people pass judgement on a couple of guys looking for legal compensation for being verbally assaulted by "I'm-not-a-racist-Kramer," think about the 20-25 generations of millions of black people that generated the massive colonial construction of the industrial and agricultural might that the U.S. has become and have been compensated for the most part with ZERO dollars for 3/4 of the time blacks have been in the country. And the rest of the labor was compensated for in getting shot at by cops.

All the fucking "free speech" arguments are cold and pale, considering the rights you inherited through being a white american were silver-spoon fed, passed down through the blood, sweat, and tears of the people who gave birth to those two black men looking to be apologized to. We should be LYNCHING Michael Richards. That's not hypocritical, double-standarded, or "wah wah wah fight fire with fire wah wah wah. It's justice.

When white people do the enslaving and lynching for centuries, it's their idea of justice, now they whine when people demand even the slightest bit of compensation for being attacked after GIVING THEIR MONEY TO RICHARDS TO SEE HIM IN THE FIRST PLACE. It's time that racists were fucking shot, shackled, and forced to work for free. This is the only solution I can think of for now.

The social disease that white people are inflicted with is the idea that each white person, as an individual should be judged individually for the way they think, act, or the amount they take a stand on racism. THe problem with this way of thinking is that racism isn't an individualized problem, it's a social one, meaning the collective interaction of all humans that depend on each other, as we are a species of collective engagement. White people think, I DIDN'T ENSLAVE anyone, so therefore they are free of any interaction within the way that racism still affects everyone. It's not about white people atoning, or apologizing, or even giving money, those are only band-aids to a larger problem. We can't expect an anti-racist society to spring forth through simply scolding our coworker or neighbors for calling a mexican a wetback or a black person a nigger. We need to find a solution to a socialized and institutionalized problem and the psychological delusion that affects people by acting together to defeat the manners in which we perceive racism AS A SOCIETY. We must socialize and institutionalize anti-racism, by popularizing it, making it loud, confrontational, and weaving it into the cultural fabric of our communities for generations, so that children grow up understanding immidiately that racism should be shot down fast, hard, and fiercely, as this is the way to defeat it. When it becomes a part of the way we grow up, we create a new psychological framework with one another, one that goes beyond the way David Letterman mediates an apology for a racist outburst by a careerless commedian, and makes it common sense to everyday thinking.

The way that slavery became so imbedded as defendable, justifiable, and common sense to white people is because chains, shackles, and lynchings were no different to white children than going to a picnic, singing along at the church, brushing one's teeth before going to bed...racism became and still remains an instinctual relationship that is developed through training. Anti-racism must attack in this manner, we need to develop social patterns that are instinctual in young people for generations, by instilling in them the courage to beat the shit out of racism whenever it rears its ugly head.

One of the biggest problems we have in the U.S. especially is a lack of thinking about the society we live in now as a part of a lineage of social interaction that not only stretches through time, influencing the general nature of racial relationships in our country, but also the mindset that racism is something that is overcome by one person saying or not saying certain things out loud. Racism isn't a dialouge between two people, or the thoughts of a white person thinking about themselves right now, right here at the moment they're thinking of themselves and what they believe they are or aren't. Racism affects and is affected by the relationship between EVERYONE for EVERY second that has passed in which EVERYONE across the ethnic spectrum relates/related/will relate to one another. When we accept this fact, we can than deal with the problem in relation to the way power asserts itself through the endless myriad of power relationships that exists.

ETIQUETTE FOR THOSE EXPECTING GOOD SERVICE FROM WAITERS AND WAITRESSES

1. We posess very large brains with the capability of memory, so bottomline – you tip well, and come again, it will NOT be forgotten. We promise. Remember you didn’t come here just to eat, because you could’ve made yourself PB+J at home. You came here to get served, so show respect…we got bills to pay, and we most likely make less than minimum wage. If you have the money to go out and spend $20 on a meal that would cost you $5 to make at home, then bring an extra $5 to us for bringing it to your table. It’s common sense.
2. We bust our asses for you. We literally serve you, so be polite when you desire service. Ask nicely and you shall receive in timely fashion.
3. When we are busy, remember – you are not the center of the world. Sometimes we have to get drinks that include begging a bartender for attention, sometimes cooks are swamped and have to recook mistakes resulting from confusing orders, sometimes we have 10 other customers that demand the most time-consuming attention possible, so understand and be patient. We wait for you, so you can wait for us – it’s a give-and-take.
4. If a cook makes a mistake, it’s not like we fucked up, so relax, we can correct the mistake, give us a moment, and tip us well for fixing the problem.
5. We are not mindreaders! Some people dislike onions on their burgers, others expect it, so if you’re not sure if x comes with a side of y or not, ask! Speak up ahead of time or expect what we expect to order for you. There are house standards, and they trump the standards you think are normal. If you want something, don’t assume the world has the same tastes as you, just ask, because it’s more than likely an exception to the menu. It will arrive. We want to make things perfect for you.
6. Speak up. If the music is loud, don’t mumble or ignore us when we ask you for an order, let us know what you expect.
7. If you have a coupon for a discount or it’s happy hour, tip us for the amount you would’ve paid if you didn’t have the coupon! This is common fucking sense. Don’t expect us to not notice this. We will be doing the same amount of work as if you were paying full price.
8. If you pay your bill, but then stick around for 4 free soda refills, watching a band, or hanging with friends for an hour, we still work for you beyond the work we already finished. Tip us again. Duh. Also: We understand wanting to go out with your friends when you’re poor, but when you order water while sitting with paying customers, you still need to tip. I work less as hard to bring someone a $10 martini once, as I do to fill your glass with water 5 times in a row, and cut a lemon each time for your ass. It’s simple - recognize our labor.
9. We don’t own or manage the place, therefore we don’t design the rules and we don’t have control over our workplace. So say you don’t like the temperature, the lighting sucks, or the band is too loud, it’s not our fault, so don’t use this as an excuse to tip bad or treat us like we fucked up.
10. This one’s sooooo important, because it drives us nuts EVERY night. When it’s closing time, LEAVE. There is nothing more annoying to us then a group of friends that linger when the lights come up, and we are literally mopping around your fucking feet a half and hour after last call. After waiting on you people for 8 hours straight, with your bad manners and cheap tips, you are already skating on thin ice. So when you linger when most of us want to go home to loved ones and family members, your face gets etched into our minds as the people whos food will take that much longer to deliver when you visit next. When you leave, we have to clean for at least another 45 minutes, so go to an after hours club! (That’s why they exist) Maybe some of us will even buy you a drink there.

As a reply to another lj comment, I felt the need to repost this in my own journal. I've been thinking about individualism a lot, and how bourgeois youth tend to fetishize it in order to deal with their non-role in class struggle. In response to comments about indie rock kids in Milwaukee defending Nazis's right to express their opinion, and their free speech. I finally gave some time to respond ......
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One of the problems with Post-modern american white bourgeois youth is an obsession with their extreme appropriation of individuality which inevitably conflicts with the reality of collectivity. People who can't accept their place in collective life, mask their fears behind facades of individuality. It's a social disease that affects the collective mind. Folks build up a massive collective self-denial about their own collectivity, therefore making their defense of individuality and atomized society comical at best, and completely dangerous at worst. In this case, defending fascists, nazi ideas, etc. are easy to comprehend, it's a natural extension of this delusion of indivuality. In order for people to express their own personal niche within the collective society (which is only about aestheitc and illusion), they are forced to defend everyone's right to do so as well, even if the right to do so means the mass genocide of others. Including themselves. That's what happens when you have bored white middle class boys sitting around coming up with a zillion tendencies of social/anti-social ideas jsut to create their own cool and artistic space in a world of homogeny. THe problem with criticizing capitalism and totalitarian society by viewing its central ills as boredom, consumerist, and homogenous, is that the solution formulates into anti-boredom, anti-comsumerism (or alternacomsumerism), and crass spontaneity, none of which offers paths to heal social wounds, they're only cough suppressants to make us imagine that we're not sick just long enough to continue getting through the mess of life. It's creted such a problem that people actually see action against fascism as being fascistic. Liberalism has won over potential revolutionaries.

For those who have checked out my livejournal due to my writings about work, I apologize for not taking more time to write about my new job, even though I've been organizing with SEIU for almost 5 months now. Much of my work is so high profile, that I would balk at writing in detail about my activities online. Most of what I could write about would give much away to the employers, as the organizing I'm involved in is public, and a lot of it involves the weapon of intelligence. It's warfare, it's psychological, and it's dirty. The bosses have hired the best union-busting fuckers in the WORLD, because the campaign here is so important, that its outcome will greatly affect the balance of worker's power in the most profitable healthcare company in the world. It's a nasty fight, everyday is a battle, the bosses are putting out propaganda, they're pulling workers into captive audience meetings to scare and promise things to them. They are kicking out organizers and even off-duty employees that are in the hospital talking to other workers, even though we have a contractual right to be on the grounds in certain areas. This campaign has driven home for me how important it is to keep fighting the bosses, and to keep building the worker's struggle. This campaign has driven home for me the importance the labor movement will play in the future of this country.

As for the immigrant walkout, I plan on attending the rally tonight downtown after I get done with my organizing. Solidarity!

I haven't written too much about my new job as an SEIU organizer, simply because when you're learning new skills, it's hard to tell when you actually start to "figure things out." Through your whole life, you either think you know everything, or you know you'll never know everything, but that you'll learn some things by challenging your assumptions. This shouldn't exclude one's need to theorize, but theory is often based on a synthesis of experience and challenges of your assumptions. So after 3 months of organizing hospital workers, I haven't even touched the full experience I'll gather over the years as a labor organizer, and I don't want to pretend to know a lot about organizing, but some of the most basic principles I thought were important to hold onto as an anarchist for the last 7 years have been shattered. Here's the first of the few...

part one...
"DEMOCRACY" AIN'T SO SIMPLE

Democracy is a loaded word, it carries many meanings for many people, and it inspires different images in different people's heads. It could be a principal in how to make decisions on the basic level, or it could mean the system of political "representation" in bourgeois society. For some it means freedom, for others, it means imperialism. Many see democracy as a driving force in how they view their place in history, while others cynically reject it as a hypocritical shell of an idea that is used by the powerful to create facades of "choice."

As an anarchist, I have always rejected bourgeois, representative democracy in the political sense, but I've upheld the value of grassroots decision-making quite passionately as a model of a new society that would be just and equalitarian. One of the biggest itches I haven't been able to scratch about "democracy," and the problem I've encountered a lot as a union organizer, is that democracy as a form of decision-making doesn't neccesarily mean that justice will prevail in any given circumstance. The reason being is that PEOPLE CAN DEMOCRACTICALLY DECIDE TO DO UNJUST THINGS, either to someone else, or even to themselves. Even when building a strategy to win power for workers in the workplace, if there isn't a PLAN that works, one that will actually challenge the power of a boss, or has the potential to flourish into a movement that carries weight for other workers, than democracy is a joke there. People can decide democratically to work against unionizing, to not give a shit at all, or even do stupid things that trip up or even drag down a campaign that otherwise would have a chance to win. Organizing a union is a complex thing, because in America, where "democracy" supposedly flourishes, we are flooded with assumptions from the day we are born about WHAT TO EXPECT in life. When it comes to work, we are to expect what we are told to expect, and we can democratically expect low expectations, we can democratically let our fear of confrontation overcome our desire to better our conditions, and we can democratically decide that organizing a union to challenge the power of the boss is NOT in our interest. What use is "democracy" then?

As an anarchist that has organized within and alongside the anarchist milieu for more than a few years, I've seen anarchists romanticize "democracy" as the ultimate idea, the chance to have EVERYONE make collective consensual decisions. The problem with this basic formula, is that we don't live in a vaccuum, and that we are influenced by the daily struggles we face, and by the IDEAS we want to project. We only use democracy as a structure for individuals to place these ideas on the table, and decide on how to act on them. Another problem with democracy is that not everyone sitting at the table starts out at equal power. Some have more influence over others because they have access to resources, they're well-connected, they have cred, they're louder, they're a certain race or gender, they're "hotter" than others, whatever. The point is, building a classless society is what's MOST important. We can democratically decide to carry out the goal of an equalitarian and classless society or we can allow liberal ideas such as "democracy" hold more weight while the bosses laugh as we bicker with one another over the details of how to carry out action.

If a whole bunch of folks come up with a horrible plan of action, and they do so democratically, how is that different than one person with a horrible plan deciding things for others? If we don't win, who cares HOW we don't win, we simply need to come up with a better plan. Now if someone comes up with a whole bunch of good plans that continue to work consistantly, and that person wants to head the plans for the future, the only reason I wouldn't want that person to AUTHORATATIVELY design a strategy, is if the plan included that person acheiving personal power to exploit others for their own gain. I'd much rather have an experienced organizer run an organization top-down with brilliant plans that unselfishly help build other people's power, than have a whole bunch of people argue with each other over what a plan might look like, simply because democracy is more important then the plan itself.

In SEIU, there are no perfect plans, and the union isn't the one path to revolution, but in the local I work for, it is run by class war feminist women who have ran many strikes and winning campaigns over decades, and have fought to empower thousands and thousands of people. Too me this carries more revolutionary potential than anything I've encountered in my life, yet, I am unable to challenge the power of their decision-making. As an anarchist, does this go against my principles? For a long time I would've thought so. But I've had to rechallenge myself again - what's more important to me? Is it carrying out a plan that was decided upon undemocratically, a plan that organizes workers to build the kind of shop floor power where they can make democratic decisions themselves? Or is the concept of democracy itself that trumps all else, and plans that are made undemocratically should be rejected, simply because this an authoritarian principle?

After seeing the result of these plans that some (myself included for some time in the past) would simply label "leninist," or reformist, or authoritarian, I've decided that workers being able to fight their bosses and gain power is much more important to me. That little part in the "anarchist me" that screams out to be "against all authority," is becoming more and more equated with the shit about anarchists I can't stand, like "fuck shit up," and "anarchy, dude" and other individualist attitudes that encompass the anarchist movement.

This brings us back to what about authoritarian decision-making should anarchists be against? Should everything be decided upon in our social movements in a collective manner? I've seen people come to consensus and build beautiful actions and organizations, and I've seen people do stupid stupid stupid things through consensus, and even through a majority. I've seen people lead organizations top-down and make decisions all by themselves, and carry out ruthless fucked up plans, while sometimes they can carry out wonderful advancements for many. Are the concepts of democracy and authority so simple? Simple as most anarchists make the ideas out to be? Or are they filled with complex contradictions, filled with internal struggles and values?

I'd like to propose that in some organizations, the power of the membership of the organization could carry out certain structures of decision-making, while certain people can be mandated to carry out specific plans of action that are entrusted to make sense. The thing is, I can't propose this, because it already exists. I work in an organization like this one. The workers run this local. They WANT the director to come up with the strategy. I like the fact that I don't have a say. I don't want to fix something that not only isn't broke, but is a strategy that has been developed over decades of organizing experience. Experience That I can't even fathom.

I've talked a lot of shit about "capitalist unions" and "business unionism," and "union bosses," and whatever over the years, only because it goes with the culture and propaganda of the current anarchist scene. It's understandably so to a certain extent, BECAUSE the labor movement in the U.S. has a mainstream history of social exclusion, elitism, capitalist industrial peace, and passivity, corruption, and selling out. There are exceptions to this rule, as there are parrellel labor movements to the mainstream one, as well as internal struggles for justice and power for workers within the corrupt movements. Anarchist critique of the mainstream labor movement is generally filled with rejection of all movements that aren't based solely in syndicalism, direct-action, shopfloor decision-making only, sabotage, wildcatting, etc. The problem is that within the old guard laboer movement, there has been a breaking out of a new guard, with several currents within the new movements that include industry-wide responses to neoliberal capitalism, and plans on carrying out new organizing campaigns to fight the bosses. These plans aren't perfect, but the labor movement, like all struggles, isn't a binary system of right and wrong, top-down or bottom-up, grassroots or internationally run, it's a system of vying power struggles within it that offer opportunities to further the goal to a classless society. As revolutionaries, I believe it's our duty to recognize these opportunities, and apply the pressures through pragmatic and unassumptive means to move these pieces of iunstitutions closer to our libertarian communist goals.

There are no perfect programs, whether democratic or not, there are only opportunites to move ANY kind of great programs to empower the most people to own their own power.

I wen to a $10 show at the Trocodero to see "the faint." THe first band was "vhs or beta," which was basically "The Cure" doing DISCO covers of "Japanese Whispers" and "The Top." Excecpt the songs were original. While the show was excellent, we found out why it was only $10. The ciggarette brand Camel sponsored and swarmed the attendees. We were accosted by huge branding aesthetics, from glowing camels all over the venue walls, and images of people smoking spliced in to other images behind the bands. Okay, whatever, I can deal. I've been to plenty of rock show at arenas that were sponsored by Bud or Coors Light. BUt we attempted to go to the Balcony upstairs, and was stopped to take part in the Camel survey. You know that thing where they come into your local pub and scan your license, get marketing data, and give you free packs of cigs. This time, instead of free packs of cigs, you got to "pass." THat's right, even though I already paid for a ticket that clearly says "GA" on it, and every other show at the Troc was a no-boundaries show, we were held up at a checkpoint. Frustrated, we turned back to go see the show up close, and lo and behold, we ran into another checkpoint. We could go through an impossible mass of people around the "long way," or we can participate in the marketing collection to gain access to a roped off elite area, populated by maybe 2 actual members of the audience and a throng of paid "Camel ladies," dolled up and polished to resemble the Camel ladies in the ads they have all over the place. Within the ropes was a makeup artist and a Elvis impersonator to get your picture taken with.

Wow.

I wonder if the Camel PR people had this really gullible crowd nailed or what. Kate takes out a pack of cigs that won't scan because she bought them in Paris. I, not a smoker, was simply denied entry. Because I don't want cancer, I'm not allowed to enter a roped-off VIP section of Elvis impersonators and a makeup artist. Problem was, the area led to a shortcut to the front. So we broke through. At first they didn't catch us. We got bold though, buying drinks without an "x" on our hands, leaving to pee and coming back again. Finally, as the Faint was gearing up, I tried to pass through a hole in the fence, and got snagged by a Camel cop. She GRABBED MY ARM, explaining that I had to "have an x on my hand." I made a joke about having an x on your hand usually means you don't smoke. She didn't find it funny, so I yanked my arm away, she grabbed me again in vain, and I yelled go fuck yourself, "Camel sucks." Then I took off through the shortcut to get into the crowd up front, and I felt her hand on my back again. I almost turned around swinging, but I didn't want to go to jail that night.

I lost her in the crowd, and watched a great show. By the end of the night, the crowd was chanting "ciggarettes!!! ciggarettes!!!" Briliant. Camel lost customers that night if they even had any. I should've got taken to jail that night, sued Camel, and paid for an organizing drive to unionize the Camel workers.