Tales of Philly's young, educated and underemployed.
By Daniel Denvir
[Excerpted from the Philadelphia Weekly...]
Twenty- and 30-somethings are heading back to the basement in droves. According to a recent AFL-CIO report, about one in three workers under the age of 35 has been forced to move back in with their parents. Wall Street boosters and politicians may herald an economic recovery (despite the unemployment rate creeping past 10 percent or 17.5 percent if you include the underemployed and those who just gave up looking for work), but it’s more than clear that the so-called comeback has not trickled down to young people, who are more unemployed than at any time since the government started to keep track in 1948.
While people of color and the less educated are getting hit the hardest— 17.1 percent of black males are unemployed—things are quickly deteriorating for the college-educated work force. Experts say that one in five college graduates say they’re overqualified for their current jobs. It’s no surprise that I myself haven’t had the easiest time cobbling together a paycheck given that I’m somewhat blithely walking into a collapsing news industry. Many of my friends, however, young people with bachelors and graduate degrees and more reasonable goals, are struggling, too. Here in Philly, where the unemployment rate is just above the national average (11 percent in September), many of my peers—knocked way off their career paths—are joining countless others working in so-called survival jobs.
---
Daniel Denvir is a freelance writer independent journalist based in West Philly. He is a contributing writer at the Philadelphia Weekly and more can be found at http://www.danieldenvir.com/
Read the article in its entirety at: philadelphiaweekly.com
Thursday, December 03, 2009
Sunday, September 20, 2009
"Redemptive Moments Without Disaster"
"We devote much of our lives to achieving certainty, safety, and comfort, but with them often comes ennui and a sense of meaninglessness; the meaning is in the struggle, or can be, and one of the complex questions for those who need not struggle for basic survival is how to engage passionately with goals and needs that keep such drive alive...Much in the marketplace urges us toward safety, comfort, and luxury--they can be bought--but purpose and meaning are less commidifiable phenomena, and a quest for them often sends seekers against the current of their society."
-Rebecca Solnit, from her latest book A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster
-Rebecca Solnit, from her latest book A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Whittled Down Inspiration
I was delighted and honored to discover a really insightful post on my friend Libby Reinish's blog today. As you'll see below, she articulates her struggles (and recent breakthrough) with the dilemma that I have described here over the years, and graciously cites my old radio show and this project as an inspiration for her thoughts.
Libby was an early pioneer in the creation of Valley Free Radio before I joined the station's board of directors. She left the area to be the Prometheus Radio Project's full power-FM coordinator, guiding social justice organizations through the FCC bureaucracy to start their own radio stations. Now that I live 2 blocks down the street from Prometheus' office in West Philadelphia, Libby is Santa Fe, NM where she founded her own nonprofit, Santa Fe Community Gardens empowering local folks with the education and resources for growing their own food.
This self-described "community media activist turned urban homesteader" has also spent the last couple years, "[d]ocumenting my attempts at reducing the amount of trash I accumulate, the energy I waste, and the money I spend, while improving the food that I eat, honing some new skills, and learning to have fun without consuming so goddamn much," on her fantastic blog Whittled Down.
It's funny how inspiration works. After a few months of dormancy I have something to share with you all here, and an urgency to share more soon about my own experiences and observations. For now, here's Libby's...
-Matt Dineen
---
Passions and Survival
My friend Matt Dineen used to have a wonderful radio show on our local station, Valley Free Radio, called Passions and Survival. He still maintains a blog by the same name, which you should check out. His show explored what has been a central question in my life; how do we manage to follow our passions in life while managing to meet our needs for survival? I have struggled with this problem particularly since relocating to Santa Fe, where the job market was tight even before the recession and interesting organizations were hard to come by.
My initial solution was to separate passion and survival completely. I got a regular job so that I could make money to survive, and I endeavored to maintain my passions (which are outlined in detail on this blog) in my "spare time". As it turns out, this is a terrible plan. Being stuck in a chair in an office under the watchful eye of your boss, doing pointless work and getting treated like crap, is, as many of you are keenly aware, unbearable. It becomes more and more difficult to tend to your responsibilities at work because all you want to do is go home and plant things or play music or organize a gardening workshop or what have you.
My unhappiness at work was becoming so extreme and my desperation to escape so intense that I could barely stand it. What I did is probably a lot easier than for some people than it was for me. I quit. Without a plan (I really like plans). I had some savings that were supposed to go towards purchasing land, but I knew that if I didn't make this break now that before I knew it I would be a 30-year-old receptionist with a useless BA and no soul left in her body. I had no idea how much of this fund for my future would be exhausted as I held out for a job that meant something to me, but I was prepared to go the long haul.
As it turned out, I got lucky. Or the universe rewarded me for being brave. I found a wonderful new job that allows me to use my passions for history, media production, organizing, and even sustainable living. The position is part-time, and though that's a challenge financially, there are several benefits to working less than 40 hours a week. After a few months on the job, I can tell you that for me, running low on cash at the end of every pay period is much less stressful than feeling constantly drained at home and bored at work.
Working part time means that I always have enthusiasm and energy to bring to my job, because I don't feel overworked. When I need to put in extra hours to get something done, I don't think twice about it. Most days though, when 2 o'clock rolls around I breeze out of the office and find myself ready to get to work around the homestead by 3. Having more time and energy for projects at home means spending less money on stuff I can make for less, like bread, cheese, veggies, and household stuff like the bicycle wheel pot rack. Oh yeah, and there's more time for the nonprofit I run on the side. Are my savings growing faster than radishes, like they were when I worked 40 hours a week at a law firm? Hell no. Do I care? Yeah, it bugs me sometimes. But I think that I can find a way to save for my future without sacrificing my well-being in the present. With all this extra time on my hands, I just might be able to find ways to make a little extra cash without having to work for someone else. Now wouldn't that be nice.
---
Originally posted on Libby's blog Whittled Down which you can read here.
Libby was an early pioneer in the creation of Valley Free Radio before I joined the station's board of directors. She left the area to be the Prometheus Radio Project's full power-FM coordinator, guiding social justice organizations through the FCC bureaucracy to start their own radio stations. Now that I live 2 blocks down the street from Prometheus' office in West Philadelphia, Libby is Santa Fe, NM where she founded her own nonprofit, Santa Fe Community Gardens empowering local folks with the education and resources for growing their own food.
This self-described "community media activist turned urban homesteader" has also spent the last couple years, "[d]ocumenting my attempts at reducing the amount of trash I accumulate, the energy I waste, and the money I spend, while improving the food that I eat, honing some new skills, and learning to have fun without consuming so goddamn much," on her fantastic blog Whittled Down.
It's funny how inspiration works. After a few months of dormancy I have something to share with you all here, and an urgency to share more soon about my own experiences and observations. For now, here's Libby's...
-Matt Dineen
---
Passions and Survival
My friend Matt Dineen used to have a wonderful radio show on our local station, Valley Free Radio, called Passions and Survival. He still maintains a blog by the same name, which you should check out. His show explored what has been a central question in my life; how do we manage to follow our passions in life while managing to meet our needs for survival? I have struggled with this problem particularly since relocating to Santa Fe, where the job market was tight even before the recession and interesting organizations were hard to come by.
My initial solution was to separate passion and survival completely. I got a regular job so that I could make money to survive, and I endeavored to maintain my passions (which are outlined in detail on this blog) in my "spare time". As it turns out, this is a terrible plan. Being stuck in a chair in an office under the watchful eye of your boss, doing pointless work and getting treated like crap, is, as many of you are keenly aware, unbearable. It becomes more and more difficult to tend to your responsibilities at work because all you want to do is go home and plant things or play music or organize a gardening workshop or what have you.
My unhappiness at work was becoming so extreme and my desperation to escape so intense that I could barely stand it. What I did is probably a lot easier than for some people than it was for me. I quit. Without a plan (I really like plans). I had some savings that were supposed to go towards purchasing land, but I knew that if I didn't make this break now that before I knew it I would be a 30-year-old receptionist with a useless BA and no soul left in her body. I had no idea how much of this fund for my future would be exhausted as I held out for a job that meant something to me, but I was prepared to go the long haul.
As it turned out, I got lucky. Or the universe rewarded me for being brave. I found a wonderful new job that allows me to use my passions for history, media production, organizing, and even sustainable living. The position is part-time, and though that's a challenge financially, there are several benefits to working less than 40 hours a week. After a few months on the job, I can tell you that for me, running low on cash at the end of every pay period is much less stressful than feeling constantly drained at home and bored at work.
Working part time means that I always have enthusiasm and energy to bring to my job, because I don't feel overworked. When I need to put in extra hours to get something done, I don't think twice about it. Most days though, when 2 o'clock rolls around I breeze out of the office and find myself ready to get to work around the homestead by 3. Having more time and energy for projects at home means spending less money on stuff I can make for less, like bread, cheese, veggies, and household stuff like the bicycle wheel pot rack. Oh yeah, and there's more time for the nonprofit I run on the side. Are my savings growing faster than radishes, like they were when I worked 40 hours a week at a law firm? Hell no. Do I care? Yeah, it bugs me sometimes. But I think that I can find a way to save for my future without sacrificing my well-being in the present. With all this extra time on my hands, I just might be able to find ways to make a little extra cash without having to work for someone else. Now wouldn't that be nice.
---
Originally posted on Libby's blog Whittled Down which you can read here.
Sunday, May 03, 2009
Solidarity in Slowmotion
By Charles Hale
Between sips of Miller High Life I glance down the length of the bar: there is a twenty-six year old PHD candidate in mathematics; the assistant to the dean of the graduate school in her early thirties; a girl with more tattoos than fingers; our 53 year old elder statesmen, and me a window cleaner.
It is Monday evening and after we finish this round of drinks at The Jubilee we will begin our weekly shuffleboard tournament. More than likely these same people will be in the same bar at least three more nights this week. None of us are married, only one of us has ever been, and none of us seem to feel any pressure to do so.
Outside observers may accuse us of living a prolonged college existence or wallowing in some kind of slacker lifestyle. Yet these people have serious work ethics, spending our energy on personal progress instead of professional goals. This is a choice we have made and continue to make despite sacrificing things like financial security and health insurance. Throughout this night and other nights the people that come by and say hello, are people who have, like I have, chosen this life of quiet autonomy and solidarity over doing what we have been told for a lifetime we ought to do.
To really understand how this life that I and so many around me here live is so different than what the American public thinks life ought to be, I only have to look at my brother. He graduated college a year after I did; during his sophomore year an older friend from church suggested he get a summer job with his company. My brother took him up on the offer and by the time he graduated they had offered him a professional position. He’s been promoted and transferred several times. He’s married to the girl he dated in college, they own a house, and in August they had their first child. Most of their college friends are married and have ‘real’ jobs. The ones that don’t are whispered about when they all get together. My brother has a good life and is happy.
His social network is small and doesn’t really grow. He probably has a couple of Bud Light’s in the fridge but he couldn’t tell you when he last had more than three in one night. His life is as normal to him as mine is to me. These are the choices he has made and most days he is pleased with them.
This essay is not about how much someone in this town can drink and on how many consecutive nights without being ostracized. This is not an essay about the ability to work below your qualification level without whispers of a life wasted. And this essay isn’t about me saying that my life is superior to someone else’s. There aren’t any bras being burned in front of the courthouse here, and no one is sticking flowers in the barrel of a gun, but this doesn’t mean the way people are living isn’t revolutionary. Slowly, significantly transformative.
Like the clothes I tend to wear and my general approach to life, this is a casual revolution. One without organization or manifesto and certainly without membership dues, or listservs. One’s position isn’t changed by the quality of their employment or any external factors. Actually there are no positions whatsoever. No one at the weekly shuffleboard tournament wants to live differently, and these lifestyle choices that have been made are made based on the only criteria that matter: their own pleasure, their own affiliation and affinity.
Some Mondays there are as few as six players in the tournament and some nights there are as many as 16, but the number of participants doesn’t much matter. Neither does winning, as I am often a loser, but hate to miss a week. This doesn’t mean that I’m a terrible shuffleboard player; if there is a beer or tequila shots on the line I can take out most anyone in the room. But the point of the shuffleboard tournament is a good time, is friendship, which always extends longer than the actual matches.
Winning doesn’t necessarily mean I advance to the next round of the tournament, winning is a condition of fulfilling the standards and expectations I place on myself. This is how the shuffleboard tournament and life in this town intersect. The people around here that I associate with are winning because they are fulfilling the standards and expectations they place on themselves. We have chosen to place personal progress above societal standards. We are living here; in the manner that we are because we have found what we are looking for. Of course there are some living here that are living lives nearly identical to mine because they haven’t found what they are looking for yet, and the difference in the two is merely in attitude.
There are people around here that leave, marry and have children, or get ‘real’ jobs and don’t get out as much. In the same breath we envy and pity them. The only standard on which we base our judgment of their decision is their contentment.
As a window cleaner my status falls somewhere between glorified housecleaner and unskilled construction worker. But it is the job I have chosen and the job I continue to show up for. I could wax nostalgic about the Zen qualities of the window cleaning profession, because they are there, but there are more significant reasons why I like my job. Almost everyday is different and I am able to see inside of people’s homes and lives without feeling like a stalker or voyeur. It is a job that allows me to be outside and away from a cubicle, and it is a job that I can leave at the job site. I could tell you that I take pride in clearing the view to the outside for my wealthy customers; that I hope giving them clean windows will change the way they view the world.
These things are more or less true, but they are not the reason I go to work everyday. I go because I see a pane of glass differently than anyone else in this town. I go because I’m good at it, because it is something I do as opposed to who I am. I go because I know what a worse job feels like; one that strangles the life out of you and replenishes you with nothing more than a meager paycheck. I go because it allows me to enjoy the more important things in life; like Monday evening shuffleboard tournaments.
---
This essay is anti-copyright but republished here by permission from the latest issue of Fifth Estate. More info at FifthEstate.org
Between sips of Miller High Life I glance down the length of the bar: there is a twenty-six year old PHD candidate in mathematics; the assistant to the dean of the graduate school in her early thirties; a girl with more tattoos than fingers; our 53 year old elder statesmen, and me a window cleaner.
It is Monday evening and after we finish this round of drinks at The Jubilee we will begin our weekly shuffleboard tournament. More than likely these same people will be in the same bar at least three more nights this week. None of us are married, only one of us has ever been, and none of us seem to feel any pressure to do so.
Outside observers may accuse us of living a prolonged college existence or wallowing in some kind of slacker lifestyle. Yet these people have serious work ethics, spending our energy on personal progress instead of professional goals. This is a choice we have made and continue to make despite sacrificing things like financial security and health insurance. Throughout this night and other nights the people that come by and say hello, are people who have, like I have, chosen this life of quiet autonomy and solidarity over doing what we have been told for a lifetime we ought to do.
To really understand how this life that I and so many around me here live is so different than what the American public thinks life ought to be, I only have to look at my brother. He graduated college a year after I did; during his sophomore year an older friend from church suggested he get a summer job with his company. My brother took him up on the offer and by the time he graduated they had offered him a professional position. He’s been promoted and transferred several times. He’s married to the girl he dated in college, they own a house, and in August they had their first child. Most of their college friends are married and have ‘real’ jobs. The ones that don’t are whispered about when they all get together. My brother has a good life and is happy.
His social network is small and doesn’t really grow. He probably has a couple of Bud Light’s in the fridge but he couldn’t tell you when he last had more than three in one night. His life is as normal to him as mine is to me. These are the choices he has made and most days he is pleased with them.
This essay is not about how much someone in this town can drink and on how many consecutive nights without being ostracized. This is not an essay about the ability to work below your qualification level without whispers of a life wasted. And this essay isn’t about me saying that my life is superior to someone else’s. There aren’t any bras being burned in front of the courthouse here, and no one is sticking flowers in the barrel of a gun, but this doesn’t mean the way people are living isn’t revolutionary. Slowly, significantly transformative.
Like the clothes I tend to wear and my general approach to life, this is a casual revolution. One without organization or manifesto and certainly without membership dues, or listservs. One’s position isn’t changed by the quality of their employment or any external factors. Actually there are no positions whatsoever. No one at the weekly shuffleboard tournament wants to live differently, and these lifestyle choices that have been made are made based on the only criteria that matter: their own pleasure, their own affiliation and affinity.
Some Mondays there are as few as six players in the tournament and some nights there are as many as 16, but the number of participants doesn’t much matter. Neither does winning, as I am often a loser, but hate to miss a week. This doesn’t mean that I’m a terrible shuffleboard player; if there is a beer or tequila shots on the line I can take out most anyone in the room. But the point of the shuffleboard tournament is a good time, is friendship, which always extends longer than the actual matches.
Winning doesn’t necessarily mean I advance to the next round of the tournament, winning is a condition of fulfilling the standards and expectations I place on myself. This is how the shuffleboard tournament and life in this town intersect. The people around here that I associate with are winning because they are fulfilling the standards and expectations they place on themselves. We have chosen to place personal progress above societal standards. We are living here; in the manner that we are because we have found what we are looking for. Of course there are some living here that are living lives nearly identical to mine because they haven’t found what they are looking for yet, and the difference in the two is merely in attitude.
There are people around here that leave, marry and have children, or get ‘real’ jobs and don’t get out as much. In the same breath we envy and pity them. The only standard on which we base our judgment of their decision is their contentment.
As a window cleaner my status falls somewhere between glorified housecleaner and unskilled construction worker. But it is the job I have chosen and the job I continue to show up for. I could wax nostalgic about the Zen qualities of the window cleaning profession, because they are there, but there are more significant reasons why I like my job. Almost everyday is different and I am able to see inside of people’s homes and lives without feeling like a stalker or voyeur. It is a job that allows me to be outside and away from a cubicle, and it is a job that I can leave at the job site. I could tell you that I take pride in clearing the view to the outside for my wealthy customers; that I hope giving them clean windows will change the way they view the world.
These things are more or less true, but they are not the reason I go to work everyday. I go because I see a pane of glass differently than anyone else in this town. I go because I’m good at it, because it is something I do as opposed to who I am. I go because I know what a worse job feels like; one that strangles the life out of you and replenishes you with nothing more than a meager paycheck. I go because it allows me to enjoy the more important things in life; like Monday evening shuffleboard tournaments.
---
This essay is anti-copyright but republished here by permission from the latest issue of Fifth Estate. More info at FifthEstate.org
Monday, April 27, 2009
Honest Living
This is from Isabell Moore about her project Honest Living which is asking some of the same questions as Passions and Survival. Please post and forward...
Hey Friends,
I've been working on a project called "Honest Living" throughout this semester, as my final project for school. Its about how people who care about social justice and radical social change figure out how to make a living. A lot of folks I know (myself included) struggle with what direction we want to go in our lives, and how to make a living within a system we don't agree with, in a way that is personally sustainable.
Please check out this new blog that I started and get involved in the conversation!
http://honestliving.wordpress.com/
I'm hoping that through the blog, we'll be able to have some conversations about processes that help people figure out issues of vocation, and that I'll be able to share some of what I've been learning as I've done research for school.
Also, I want to learn more about your experiences with work, money and social change. Please visit my survey at:
http://www.kwiksurveys.com/online-survey.php?surveyID=HLJKM_198ea0e5
Thanks!!!
Your pal,
Isabell
Hey Friends,
I've been working on a project called "Honest Living" throughout this semester, as my final project for school. Its about how people who care about social justice and radical social change figure out how to make a living. A lot of folks I know (myself included) struggle with what direction we want to go in our lives, and how to make a living within a system we don't agree with, in a way that is personally sustainable.
Please check out this new blog that I started and get involved in the conversation!
http://honestliving.wordpress.com/
I'm hoping that through the blog, we'll be able to have some conversations about processes that help people figure out issues of vocation, and that I'll be able to share some of what I've been learning as I've done research for school.
Also, I want to learn more about your experiences with work, money and social change. Please visit my survey at:
http://www.kwiksurveys.com/
Thanks!!!
Your pal,
Isabell
Friday, April 17, 2009
Chasing Windmills (Revisited)
Recently, I have thought about an article I wrote 7 years ago. Not so much the article itself but larger issues it addressed. Inspired by a 1960's antiwar activist's charge of living one's life in a way that "does not make a mockery of one's values," I reflected on the prospects of continuing to lead a principled existence after college--in the compromising, shark-infested waters of the so-called "real world."
The article, first published in the student newspaper and then in Clamor, told the story of my interaction with an alumna of the college and her thesis which I discovered on the life of the legendary anarchist and feminist Emma Goldman. I contacted her through the alumni association and soon learned that she had become a high powered, corporate lawyer working in the Manhattan office of one the nation's largest firms. This experience forced me to address the privileges of my idealism and negotiate a sense of self-righteousness with the complex implications of my own post-collegiate future.
After turning 28 last week, I now find myself in that future moment that I pontificated about as a student. About as far away from being a corporate lawyer as one could possibly imagine, I think that 21 year-old me would be proud of my resiliency in avoiding compromise or "selling out" over the past 7 years. But there's nothing glorifying about being in denial of student loan debt that still looms over me or being uninsured and unemployed. Or is there?
The title of my article was appropriated from the project about Emma Goldman: Chasing Windmills. Just as Goldman quixotically pursued her anarchist ideal after being deported from the US because of her incendiary beliefs, I pledged to continue to live in accordance with my politics.
What actually evoked the 2002 article was learning that someone I grew up with also moved to Philadelphia recently and reflecting on the vastly different paths that led us both to this city. He moved here to begin a career upon completion of a PhD. I moved here for love and to simply start over. In true 21st Century fashion, I only know this through the Internet, where we are "friends" on a popular social networking website. My old little league teammate has proudly documented his new life here through photographs of his upscale apartment and backyard patio along with brief life updates such as the recent gourmet meal he consumed at a ristorante in his neighborhood.
There might be a river that seperates where we live here but perhaps the social and economic barriers that divide us are more artificial than my initial reaction would indicate. Maybe not. We have both been invited to attend our 10 year high school reunion next month, to reunite with people that neither of us have seen since then; who, unlike us, have not left since graduation. I think about getting in touch with him and catching up. It would be interesting to see where our experiences and aspirations overlap and where they diverge. If nothing else, I could ask him for a ride back home for the reunion.
-Matt Dineen
The article, first published in the student newspaper and then in Clamor, told the story of my interaction with an alumna of the college and her thesis which I discovered on the life of the legendary anarchist and feminist Emma Goldman. I contacted her through the alumni association and soon learned that she had become a high powered, corporate lawyer working in the Manhattan office of one the nation's largest firms. This experience forced me to address the privileges of my idealism and negotiate a sense of self-righteousness with the complex implications of my own post-collegiate future.
After turning 28 last week, I now find myself in that future moment that I pontificated about as a student. About as far away from being a corporate lawyer as one could possibly imagine, I think that 21 year-old me would be proud of my resiliency in avoiding compromise or "selling out" over the past 7 years. But there's nothing glorifying about being in denial of student loan debt that still looms over me or being uninsured and unemployed. Or is there?
The title of my article was appropriated from the project about Emma Goldman: Chasing Windmills. Just as Goldman quixotically pursued her anarchist ideal after being deported from the US because of her incendiary beliefs, I pledged to continue to live in accordance with my politics.
What actually evoked the 2002 article was learning that someone I grew up with also moved to Philadelphia recently and reflecting on the vastly different paths that led us both to this city. He moved here to begin a career upon completion of a PhD. I moved here for love and to simply start over. In true 21st Century fashion, I only know this through the Internet, where we are "friends" on a popular social networking website. My old little league teammate has proudly documented his new life here through photographs of his upscale apartment and backyard patio along with brief life updates such as the recent gourmet meal he consumed at a ristorante in his neighborhood.
There might be a river that seperates where we live here but perhaps the social and economic barriers that divide us are more artificial than my initial reaction would indicate. Maybe not. We have both been invited to attend our 10 year high school reunion next month, to reunite with people that neither of us have seen since then; who, unlike us, have not left since graduation. I think about getting in touch with him and catching up. It would be interesting to see where our experiences and aspirations overlap and where they diverge. If nothing else, I could ask him for a ride back home for the reunion.
-Matt Dineen
Friday, March 27, 2009
Philadelphia Chronicles: Part One
I moved to Philadelphia on New Year's Eve with no safety net. Well, at least not economically. During the 3 months that I've lived here I have faced a number of challenges as far as following my passions while also managing to get by goes. Much of this has been related to the process of transitioning from one place to settling in somewhere new. From the bureaucratic nightmares of forwarding mail and opening a bank account to just figuring out how to frugally access resources in an unfamiliar city.
Before I moved to Philly I planned on structuring an independent work week in which I would get up every morning (at least Monday through Friday) and spend the days working on my own projects: Booking tours and doing publicity work with Aid & Abet, the activist booking agency I started with former Clamor editor Jen Angel, along with publishing my own writing. The idea was that if I worked on this stuff as if it were a full-time job then I could get paid enough to sustain myself, to at least be able to scrape by without an hourly wage job working for someone else.
The first challenge that arose involved my previous hourly wage job working for someone else, in Massachusetts. I was depending on my final paycheck being mailed to me in a timely fashion, as my former boss had promised, in order to get by during my first month in Philly. What actually transpired is a long frustrating story that, most significantly, involved that promise being broken/forgotten and me not having access to the money that I worked hard for until early February; over one month after the fact.
In addition to the immediate material problems that this situation posed, it affected me psychologically in terms of my ability to work on my own projects full-time. With no money in sight I was distracted from fulfilling this goal. The economic imperatives of survival trumped my motivation and desires. With basic needs like access to food becoming uncertain, I began to delve into the dark, disempowering world of job hunting. But because my heart was never in it, because I never intended to begin my experience here working for someone else, this process simultaneously impeded my own projects and only served to perpetuate my lack of income.
This brings up larger systemic challenges that I have been confronted with in this new city: The cultural and economic pressure to conform to the capitalist work ethic along with the dominant definitions of work and employment. Because our identities in the US are so shaped by our occupations, it's hard not to internalize a certain amount of shame around "unemployment." This is the case even as we struggle to redefine what work means by devoting endless hours to the things we are passionate about--often for little or no money. It can involve more risk than most folks are able to take though, as debts multiple or we become ostracized by family members and peers, among countless additional challenges. The system is designed to prevent many of us from even attempting to engage in new ways of living and working.
I continue to struggle with this especially amidst the economic crisis that seems to be profoundly affecting this city and the entire world. My work booking tours and writing still has not been able to provide me with enough money to live, but that continues to be the goal.
-Matt Dineen
Before I moved to Philly I planned on structuring an independent work week in which I would get up every morning (at least Monday through Friday) and spend the days working on my own projects: Booking tours and doing publicity work with Aid & Abet, the activist booking agency I started with former Clamor editor Jen Angel, along with publishing my own writing. The idea was that if I worked on this stuff as if it were a full-time job then I could get paid enough to sustain myself, to at least be able to scrape by without an hourly wage job working for someone else.
The first challenge that arose involved my previous hourly wage job working for someone else, in Massachusetts. I was depending on my final paycheck being mailed to me in a timely fashion, as my former boss had promised, in order to get by during my first month in Philly. What actually transpired is a long frustrating story that, most significantly, involved that promise being broken/forgotten and me not having access to the money that I worked hard for until early February; over one month after the fact.
In addition to the immediate material problems that this situation posed, it affected me psychologically in terms of my ability to work on my own projects full-time. With no money in sight I was distracted from fulfilling this goal. The economic imperatives of survival trumped my motivation and desires. With basic needs like access to food becoming uncertain, I began to delve into the dark, disempowering world of job hunting. But because my heart was never in it, because I never intended to begin my experience here working for someone else, this process simultaneously impeded my own projects and only served to perpetuate my lack of income.
This brings up larger systemic challenges that I have been confronted with in this new city: The cultural and economic pressure to conform to the capitalist work ethic along with the dominant definitions of work and employment. Because our identities in the US are so shaped by our occupations, it's hard not to internalize a certain amount of shame around "unemployment." This is the case even as we struggle to redefine what work means by devoting endless hours to the things we are passionate about--often for little or no money. It can involve more risk than most folks are able to take though, as debts multiple or we become ostracized by family members and peers, among countless additional challenges. The system is designed to prevent many of us from even attempting to engage in new ways of living and working.
I continue to struggle with this especially amidst the economic crisis that seems to be profoundly affecting this city and the entire world. My work booking tours and writing still has not been able to provide me with enough money to live, but that continues to be the goal.
-Matt Dineen
Friday, March 20, 2009
Update and 'Downward Mobility' Story
Hello everybody. First of all, I just want to announce that I will be updating this "blog" more often now. In fact, my goal is to post something new every Friday...starting today! So make sure to check back again next week for the next installment. It will be a mix of: my personal reflections on a variety of issues related to this topic of surviving under capitalism while simultaneously struggling to actualize my passions, what I truly want to be doing with my life; transcribed interviews with other folks discussing their experiences with this dilemma; and other essays and conversations that I find relevant to this project.
I have been living in Philadelphia since the final day of 2008 and have a lot to share about my experience here. That will likely be the theme of next week's post. For now, I just want to share one short story about something that happened recently...
In early February, I went back to Massachusetts with a friend who also recently moved to Philly from there. On the ride back we were talking about a cafe in my neighborhood here where a lot of punks and activists hang out and she mentioned the one time that she had been. She overheard a frustrating conversation some folks were having that inspired her to write some grafitti in the bathroom (where chalk to write on the walls is provided) about "downward mobility."
When I got back I discovered, and appreciated, what she wrote. Then a couple weeks later, I came across an essay on the excellent website Enough, written by its co-founder Tyrone Boucher, that was inspired by my friend's grafitti! I got in touch with Tyrone, who apparently lives in the same neighborhood as me, and shared this connection. We are meeting up for coffee next week to discuss issues around wealth, privilege, and "the personal politics of resisting capitalism." I'm obsessed with the potential of ideas spreading, and how they are like seeds being planted. We hope that they grow into something bigger eventually, beyond just words on a screen or a bathroom wall...
-Matt Dineen
I have been living in Philadelphia since the final day of 2008 and have a lot to share about my experience here. That will likely be the theme of next week's post. For now, I just want to share one short story about something that happened recently...
In early February, I went back to Massachusetts with a friend who also recently moved to Philly from there. On the ride back we were talking about a cafe in my neighborhood here where a lot of punks and activists hang out and she mentioned the one time that she had been. She overheard a frustrating conversation some folks were having that inspired her to write some grafitti in the bathroom (where chalk to write on the walls is provided) about "downward mobility."
When I got back I discovered, and appreciated, what she wrote. Then a couple weeks later, I came across an essay on the excellent website Enough, written by its co-founder Tyrone Boucher, that was inspired by my friend's grafitti! I got in touch with Tyrone, who apparently lives in the same neighborhood as me, and shared this connection. We are meeting up for coffee next week to discuss issues around wealth, privilege, and "the personal politics of resisting capitalism." I'm obsessed with the potential of ideas spreading, and how they are like seeds being planted. We hope that they grow into something bigger eventually, beyond just words on a screen or a bathroom wall...
-Matt Dineen
Monday, January 05, 2009
Final Episode of "Passions and Survival" on VFR
After nearly 3 years, Matt Dineen produced the final episode of Passions and Survival on Valley Free Radio WXOJ-LP in Northampton, MA on Monday December 29th. Since January 2006, the program explored the collective dilemma of following our passions while surviving and transforming capitalist society, mostly in conversation with amazing activists and artists in Western Mass. Listen to the recording here!
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Seth Tobocman Performance and Interview
Political artist and founding editor of World War 3 Illustrated Seth Tobocman performs pieces from his latest book Disaster and Resistance (AK Press) on the Valley Free Radio program "Passions and Survival" in Northampton, MA. Fellow World War 3 editor Rebecca Migdal also performs a piece. They were joined by musicians Steve Wishnia, Eric Blitz, and Andy Laties before a conversation with host Matt Dineen. Recorded on October 13, 2008.
Listen to the recording here.
Listen to the recording here.
Friday, July 11, 2008
On the Lower Frequencies: An Interview with Author Erick Lyle
By Matt Dineen
When I was asked if the community radio station I'm involved in would like to co-sponsor an event with legendary zinesters Erick Lyle (aka, Iggy Scam) author of Scam and Cindy Crabb (Doris), I enthusiastically signed us on right away. Before their reading at Food For Thought Books Collective in Amherst, MA, I was going to interview Erick on my radio show about his brand new book, On the Lower Frequencies: A Secret History of the City, and about the struggle to do what you love while surviving in a capitalist society. But that interview didn't happen. They were doing a late night event in New York featuring a performance by one of Erick's bands, Onion Flavored Rings, and my show is pretty earlier in the morning. So we just waited until after the event to chat.
Going into the interview I was inspired from their reading in which they took turns sharing stories from their books and zines. Cindy read about moving to the Ohio countryside and the challenge of talking about politics again without being dogmatic, while Erick told San Francisco tales of the city's most infamous 25 hour-a-day donut shop, transforming an abandon building on Market St. into a cultural center, and an April Fools Day "Pro-War" march right after the Iraq War began. I rode in their borrowed tour van back to Northampton, Ramones on the stereo, where Erick and I sat outside the local bowling alley off the freeway onramp and had the following conversation about writing, work, his book, and creating the kind of world we want to live in.
How do you usually respond when people ask you, "What do you do?" What does that question mean to you?
EL: What do I do? Well, I guess I've always felt like I'm a writer since I was a little kid. It's how I see the world—in terms of being a writer. I don't ever take pictures of things on vacations and stuff like that. I'm always just describing things in my head. I think writing informs my basic interaction with the world. And I've never thought of myself as an activist and all that, but I have always thought of myself as a writer.
Can you talk about living in San Francisco and not working a full-time wage job and what that means for someone who identifies as a writer?
EL: Well, it depends on what you call work. I haven't had a real, straight job in almost 20 years, but I live in one of the most expensive cities in the country to live in. So this is the paradox. I would say that I'm part of a community of folks in San Francisco—activists, writers, artists—that work harder than anybody, that are working like 80, 90 hours a week on their own projects. When I was at the Coalition on Homelessness working there, people didn't quit working until 10, 11 at night and then a lot of people slept in the office. None of those folks are really getting paid but it's their life's work to do this stuff.
In the book I talk about this street newspaper I used to do called, The Turd-Filled Donut with my best friend Ivy. We were putting out this skid row newspaper, living in welfare hotels and writing about the neighborhood, trying to highlight people's struggles: For tenants to organize against their shitty hotel owners, or for homeless people who were organizing to demand housing and things like that. We spent hours, all the time working on this paper, interviewing people, editing the paper, getting art for it, putting it out on the streets. It was a free newspaper. We gave it away. So that's work, but it's not work for financial remuneration.
That's kind of the subject of my buddy from San Francisco Chris Carlsson's new book [Nowtopia], how people are looking for community and meaningful work outside of, let's say, wage slavery. You know, most of the work that people are doing is completely meaningless and is not benefitting themselves or each other or the planet. It's just totally busy work and people are really dissatisfied with it. So there's all kinds of folks that are willing to work themselves to the bone 25 hours a day for what they believe in, but we're not working for…I haven't had a service industry job or something for a long time. The last real job I had was in 2000, I worked at a queer youth homeless shelter. That was the last "official" job I had. Since then, it's been freelance writing, crime, things like that…make ends meet. That's how it is. But always working on other stuff like putting on punk shows, protests, putting out a magazine that doesn't really pay for itself.
I think that element of community is so important, like the one in San Francisco you are part of, and relating that to the social pressure that a lot of people who don't have a community like that face. They can have these ideas, wanting to work on their own projects, doing things that aren't completely defined by a status job. But then they have pressure from their families, the larger society and just the economic realities of daily life. And that can be challenging even for people who do have really supportive communities.
EL: Yeah, I mean, things are awful right now with the economic situation…We're so far from changing things. We're sitting next to a freeway onramp. Everything is geared toward people having to drive everywhere they need to go. The food's being trucked in. The wage level is so low. The work is unskilled. People are working practically minimum wage. They need two or three jobs to make it. The economic situation in this country definitely makes it so that people are totally alienated and isolated. It's very cutthroat. It's an awful situation.
Some things you see are positive examples, like tonight we had an event sponsored by several collectives. People have come together to collectivize their workplace. That's one step in a positive direction. Is that gonna happen everywhere? I don't know. I don't think that invalidates the work that my community does, to say that we don't have an answer for how to get out of Wal-Mart or something. I know there are movements nationwide of people trying to hold these chain stores accountable for their labor practices, for their environmental practices...
Read this interview in its entirety at TowardFreedom.com
---
Matt Dineen is a writer and the host of Passions and Survival, a weekly program on Valley Free Radio in Northampton, MA. Contact him at: passionsandsurvival@gmail.com
When I was asked if the community radio station I'm involved in would like to co-sponsor an event with legendary zinesters Erick Lyle (aka, Iggy Scam) author of Scam and Cindy Crabb (Doris), I enthusiastically signed us on right away. Before their reading at Food For Thought Books Collective in Amherst, MA, I was going to interview Erick on my radio show about his brand new book, On the Lower Frequencies: A Secret History of the City, and about the struggle to do what you love while surviving in a capitalist society. But that interview didn't happen. They were doing a late night event in New York featuring a performance by one of Erick's bands, Onion Flavored Rings, and my show is pretty earlier in the morning. So we just waited until after the event to chat.
Going into the interview I was inspired from their reading in which they took turns sharing stories from their books and zines. Cindy read about moving to the Ohio countryside and the challenge of talking about politics again without being dogmatic, while Erick told San Francisco tales of the city's most infamous 25 hour-a-day donut shop, transforming an abandon building on Market St. into a cultural center, and an April Fools Day "Pro-War" march right after the Iraq War began. I rode in their borrowed tour van back to Northampton, Ramones on the stereo, where Erick and I sat outside the local bowling alley off the freeway onramp and had the following conversation about writing, work, his book, and creating the kind of world we want to live in.
How do you usually respond when people ask you, "What do you do?" What does that question mean to you?
EL: What do I do? Well, I guess I've always felt like I'm a writer since I was a little kid. It's how I see the world—in terms of being a writer. I don't ever take pictures of things on vacations and stuff like that. I'm always just describing things in my head. I think writing informs my basic interaction with the world. And I've never thought of myself as an activist and all that, but I have always thought of myself as a writer.
Can you talk about living in San Francisco and not working a full-time wage job and what that means for someone who identifies as a writer?
EL: Well, it depends on what you call work. I haven't had a real, straight job in almost 20 years, but I live in one of the most expensive cities in the country to live in. So this is the paradox. I would say that I'm part of a community of folks in San Francisco—activists, writers, artists—that work harder than anybody, that are working like 80, 90 hours a week on their own projects. When I was at the Coalition on Homelessness working there, people didn't quit working until 10, 11 at night and then a lot of people slept in the office. None of those folks are really getting paid but it's their life's work to do this stuff.
In the book I talk about this street newspaper I used to do called, The Turd-Filled Donut with my best friend Ivy. We were putting out this skid row newspaper, living in welfare hotels and writing about the neighborhood, trying to highlight people's struggles: For tenants to organize against their shitty hotel owners, or for homeless people who were organizing to demand housing and things like that. We spent hours, all the time working on this paper, interviewing people, editing the paper, getting art for it, putting it out on the streets. It was a free newspaper. We gave it away. So that's work, but it's not work for financial remuneration.
That's kind of the subject of my buddy from San Francisco Chris Carlsson's new book [Nowtopia], how people are looking for community and meaningful work outside of, let's say, wage slavery. You know, most of the work that people are doing is completely meaningless and is not benefitting themselves or each other or the planet. It's just totally busy work and people are really dissatisfied with it. So there's all kinds of folks that are willing to work themselves to the bone 25 hours a day for what they believe in, but we're not working for…I haven't had a service industry job or something for a long time. The last real job I had was in 2000, I worked at a queer youth homeless shelter. That was the last "official" job I had. Since then, it's been freelance writing, crime, things like that…make ends meet. That's how it is. But always working on other stuff like putting on punk shows, protests, putting out a magazine that doesn't really pay for itself.
I think that element of community is so important, like the one in San Francisco you are part of, and relating that to the social pressure that a lot of people who don't have a community like that face. They can have these ideas, wanting to work on their own projects, doing things that aren't completely defined by a status job. But then they have pressure from their families, the larger society and just the economic realities of daily life. And that can be challenging even for people who do have really supportive communities.
EL: Yeah, I mean, things are awful right now with the economic situation…We're so far from changing things. We're sitting next to a freeway onramp. Everything is geared toward people having to drive everywhere they need to go. The food's being trucked in. The wage level is so low. The work is unskilled. People are working practically minimum wage. They need two or three jobs to make it. The economic situation in this country definitely makes it so that people are totally alienated and isolated. It's very cutthroat. It's an awful situation.
Some things you see are positive examples, like tonight we had an event sponsored by several collectives. People have come together to collectivize their workplace. That's one step in a positive direction. Is that gonna happen everywhere? I don't know. I don't think that invalidates the work that my community does, to say that we don't have an answer for how to get out of Wal-Mart or something. I know there are movements nationwide of people trying to hold these chain stores accountable for their labor practices, for their environmental practices...
Read this interview in its entirety at TowardFreedom.com
---
Matt Dineen is a writer and the host of Passions and Survival, a weekly program on Valley Free Radio in Northampton, MA. Contact him at: passionsandsurvival@gmail.com
Saturday, April 05, 2008
Home of the Brave?
A Vision of the U.S. Beyond Money
By John Steinsvold
Economists concede that economics is an inexact science. What does that mean? Perhaps it means their economic forecast is better than yours or mine. Recently, economic indicators have been rising and people have their fingers crossed. Economists have given us reason to hope that the job market will improve and that the stock market will continue on a steady climb. Yet, the newspapers continue to report more layoffs and more jobs going overseas.
Meanwhile, our economy is getting more and more complex. We associate complexity with progress for some ungodly reason. The following problems, however, have become inherent in our economy. What does that mean? It means they will be around for a while:
Needless poverty, unemployment, inflation, the threat of depression, taxes, crimes related to profit (sale of illicit drugs, stolen IDs, muggings, bribery, con artists, etc.), conflict of interest, endless red tape, a staggering national debt plus a widening budget deficit, 48 out of 50 states in debt, cities in debt, counties in debt, skyrocketing personal debts, 50% of Americans unhappy at their work, saving for retirement and our children's education, health being a matter of wealth, competing in the "rat race", the need for insurance, being a nation of litigation, being subject to the tremors on Wall Street, fear of downsizing and automation, fear of more Enrons, outsourcing, bankruptcies, crippling strikes, materialism, corruption, welfare, social security, sacrificing quality and safety in our products for the sake of profit, the social problem of the "haves" vs. the "havenots" and the inevitable family quarrels over money.
Have we become gluttons for punishment? My college professor once said, "You can get used to hanging if you live long enough!"
We Americans love our freedom; yet, we have allowed the use of money to completely dominate our way of life. Indeed, we are no longer a free people. We are 7.4 trillion dollars in debt. We live in fear of depression, inflation, inadequate medical coverage and losing our jobs. Our freedom is at stake if not our very survival. Yet, we put our collective heads in the sand.
Yes, there is something we can do. We can look into ourselves for an answer. We may find that we have the strength to carry out our internal economic affairs without the need to use money. Yes, we will still need to use money when dealing with other countries.
There is no question that a way of life without money will alleviate if not completely eliminate all of the previously mentioned problems. Yet, we scoff at the idea. We are totally convinced that money is a necessity. We cannot imagine life without money. Perhaps the time has come to think otherwise. It is completely obvious our present economy no longer satisfies our present day needs. As individuals, we will gain complete economic freedom. In return, a way of life without money demands only that we, as individuals, do the work we love to do. It is a win/win situation. Let us consider the following arguments:
Can we learn to distribute our goods and services according to need (on an ongoing basis) rather than by the ability to pay? Why not? Poverty and materialism will be eliminated! Our sense of value will change. Wealth will no longer be a status symbol. A man will be judged by what he is; not by what he has. He will be judged by his achievements, leadership, ideas, artistic endeavours or athletic prowess; not by the size of his wallet. Yes, everything will be free according to need. All the necessities and common luxuries will be available on a help yourself basis at the local store. Surely, this country is capable of supplying the necessities and common luxuries for everyone in this country many times over.
The more "expensive" items, such as housing, cars, boats, etc. would be provided for on a priority basis. For example, the homeless would provided housing ahead of those living in crowded quarters. How will this priority be established? Perhaps a local board elected by the people in the neighborhood such as a school board. Or perhaps the school boards could absorb this responsibility in addition to their present duties.
Since cooperation will replace competition, can government, industry and the people learn to work together as a team to meet the economic needs of our nation as well as each individual? Again, why not? Yes, competition is great; but cooperation is even better. Cooperation avoids duplication of effort. Wouldn't it be more efficient to have everybody freely working together, sharing ideas, thoughts and technical knowledge? Patents and industrial secrets would be a thing of the past. Competition, however, will still be around. Individuals will still compete with their co-workers in ideas, achievements, leadership and getting promotions.
For example, Ford, Chrysler & GM would work together to build automobiles that are truly safe and efficient and environmentally friendly. Perhaps, with everyone working together, we can invent a car engine that would eliminate the need to import oil from the Middle East. (Note: Ford, Chrysler & GM would gradually become one entity.)
Unfortunately, what immediately jumps into the minds of most people is: "It simply won't work!" The idea of a way of life without money is then dismissed without further thought. After all, what motivation is there for people to work if there is no paycheck? How can we possibly satisfy the labor needs of our nation? The following reasons are offered why people would be completely happy working in a way of life without money: Today, only 50% of Americans enjoy their work. That will change. In a way of life without money, we will all be free to do the work we want to do or even love to do without any economic fear. We will be free to pursue our passion or as Joseph Campbell suggests we "follow our bliss".
Cooperation will replace wasteful competition. We will all work together as a team. Work will become a way to help people, to meet people or to be part of something meaningful. It is a proven fact that people like to help one another. An esprit de corps will naturally build up and make work more enjoyable. Even the most menial task becomes easier when people work together. Yes, work will become more of a "togetherness" thing.
The profit motive will no longer be a hindrance to efficiency. There will be no need to sacrifice quality and safety in our products for the sake of profit. We will, like in the olden days, take pride in our work. Yes, there is very likely to be a shortage of people volunteering to do the more menial tasks. One option is to offer "perks". A perk can be of various forms such as front row season tickets to the opera or to his or her favorite sports team. Can you imagine an NBA basketball game where the celebrities are sitting in the back rows while the dishwashers and janitors are at courtside? (My apologies to Spike Lee & Jack Nicholson!) Or the perk could be the latest model boat or sports car which would not be immediately available to the public. Another option is to draft everyone once in their lifetime, to do a half year or so stint at a menial task. Perhaps a humbling experience is in order for all of us. It might serve us well in the area of character building.
Also, consider the fact that perhaps millions of people will be freed from jobs associated with the use of money. Millions more that are now unemployed or on welfare will also be available to help fill the labor needs of our country. Thus, we will have the work force necessary to do the work which is not economically feasible in our present economy such as cleaning our environment (land, sea & air), conservation, recycling, humanitarian work, research in medicine, education, science & space and now we can include national security.
Perhaps the most difficult problem is in the administration of a way of life without money. Can we learn to determine our economic needs, allocate our resources from the federal on down to the neighborhood levels? Perhaps some sort of economic bodies must be created to coordinate, monitor and carryout our economic needs. These economic bodies would exist similar to our governments, one for the federal, one for each state and one for each local level.Yes, in order to administrate a way of life without money, economic bodies, boards or councils or whatever you wish to call them would be created to absorb economic responsibility from our various governments. They will interact and cooperate with one another to meet the economic needs of our country and of each individual. They will be empowered by Congress to tend to the economic needs of its constituents. Thus, a balance of power will be safely maintained.
Our federal needs, which would be similar to the federal budget we have today, will be resolved by an economic body comprised of representatives of the various branches of government, our industrial & labor resources, research (in medicine, education, science & space), our environment, conservation, importing & exporting, and now, national security and whatever facet of our way of life should be represented. This economic body will arrange for the labor and material resources necessary to meet the economic needs of our nation.
Similarly, the same will occur at the state and local levels. The economic body at the local levels will be responsible for providing services to the people in the neighborhood. If the labor needs cannot be met with volunteer workers, "perks" must be offered. Also, the economic body at the local levels will be responsible for keeping the stores stocked with food, clothing and the common luxuries which will be available free. Thus, the economic needs of the nation right on down to the neighborhood levels would be determined and satisfied by these economic bodies.
How much economic responsibility will these new bodies absorb from our federal, state and local governments? How much will be shared? Can a balance of power be maintained? At any rate, our federal, state and local governments will be relieved of considerable amount of economic responsibility. Thus, our various governments will be free to catch up on all the other domestic and foreign issues that face us.
Yes, we will still import and export goods with foreign countries as our needs dictate; but what money will be used in place of the almighty dollar? Would the dollar have any value if everything is free in the USA? Would that be a problem? We would, however, still be able to use the currency of the country we are doing business with. For example, if we export goods to Germany, we would accept marks or euros in payment. The euros would then be deposited in our national treasury for future use. The money could then be used to import goods or perhaps send Americans overseas on vacation.
Yes, a way of life without money could be compared to the kibbutz which now exist in Israel. Can you picture the USA as one big kibbutz? However, ownership of property will remain the same as it is today. Our government will remain the same. Our free enterprise system will remain in place as it is today. There will be no need for money or any substitute for money since everything will be free.
The advantages of a way of life without money stagger the imagination; but they are real and cannot be disputed. Perhaps it is time for us to grab the brass ring.
"The Human Race has improved everything except the Human Race." -Adlai Stevenson
---
Article republished from The American Daily.
By John Steinsvold
Economists concede that economics is an inexact science. What does that mean? Perhaps it means their economic forecast is better than yours or mine. Recently, economic indicators have been rising and people have their fingers crossed. Economists have given us reason to hope that the job market will improve and that the stock market will continue on a steady climb. Yet, the newspapers continue to report more layoffs and more jobs going overseas.
Meanwhile, our economy is getting more and more complex. We associate complexity with progress for some ungodly reason. The following problems, however, have become inherent in our economy. What does that mean? It means they will be around for a while:
Needless poverty, unemployment, inflation, the threat of depression, taxes, crimes related to profit (sale of illicit drugs, stolen IDs, muggings, bribery, con artists, etc.), conflict of interest, endless red tape, a staggering national debt plus a widening budget deficit, 48 out of 50 states in debt, cities in debt, counties in debt, skyrocketing personal debts, 50% of Americans unhappy at their work, saving for retirement and our children's education, health being a matter of wealth, competing in the "rat race", the need for insurance, being a nation of litigation, being subject to the tremors on Wall Street, fear of downsizing and automation, fear of more Enrons, outsourcing, bankruptcies, crippling strikes, materialism, corruption, welfare, social security, sacrificing quality and safety in our products for the sake of profit, the social problem of the "haves" vs. the "havenots" and the inevitable family quarrels over money.
Have we become gluttons for punishment? My college professor once said, "You can get used to hanging if you live long enough!"
We Americans love our freedom; yet, we have allowed the use of money to completely dominate our way of life. Indeed, we are no longer a free people. We are 7.4 trillion dollars in debt. We live in fear of depression, inflation, inadequate medical coverage and losing our jobs. Our freedom is at stake if not our very survival. Yet, we put our collective heads in the sand.
Yes, there is something we can do. We can look into ourselves for an answer. We may find that we have the strength to carry out our internal economic affairs without the need to use money. Yes, we will still need to use money when dealing with other countries.
There is no question that a way of life without money will alleviate if not completely eliminate all of the previously mentioned problems. Yet, we scoff at the idea. We are totally convinced that money is a necessity. We cannot imagine life without money. Perhaps the time has come to think otherwise. It is completely obvious our present economy no longer satisfies our present day needs. As individuals, we will gain complete economic freedom. In return, a way of life without money demands only that we, as individuals, do the work we love to do. It is a win/win situation. Let us consider the following arguments:
Can we learn to distribute our goods and services according to need (on an ongoing basis) rather than by the ability to pay? Why not? Poverty and materialism will be eliminated! Our sense of value will change. Wealth will no longer be a status symbol. A man will be judged by what he is; not by what he has. He will be judged by his achievements, leadership, ideas, artistic endeavours or athletic prowess; not by the size of his wallet. Yes, everything will be free according to need. All the necessities and common luxuries will be available on a help yourself basis at the local store. Surely, this country is capable of supplying the necessities and common luxuries for everyone in this country many times over.
The more "expensive" items, such as housing, cars, boats, etc. would be provided for on a priority basis. For example, the homeless would provided housing ahead of those living in crowded quarters. How will this priority be established? Perhaps a local board elected by the people in the neighborhood such as a school board. Or perhaps the school boards could absorb this responsibility in addition to their present duties.
Since cooperation will replace competition, can government, industry and the people learn to work together as a team to meet the economic needs of our nation as well as each individual? Again, why not? Yes, competition is great; but cooperation is even better. Cooperation avoids duplication of effort. Wouldn't it be more efficient to have everybody freely working together, sharing ideas, thoughts and technical knowledge? Patents and industrial secrets would be a thing of the past. Competition, however, will still be around. Individuals will still compete with their co-workers in ideas, achievements, leadership and getting promotions.
For example, Ford, Chrysler & GM would work together to build automobiles that are truly safe and efficient and environmentally friendly. Perhaps, with everyone working together, we can invent a car engine that would eliminate the need to import oil from the Middle East. (Note: Ford, Chrysler & GM would gradually become one entity.)
Unfortunately, what immediately jumps into the minds of most people is: "It simply won't work!" The idea of a way of life without money is then dismissed without further thought. After all, what motivation is there for people to work if there is no paycheck? How can we possibly satisfy the labor needs of our nation? The following reasons are offered why people would be completely happy working in a way of life without money: Today, only 50% of Americans enjoy their work. That will change. In a way of life without money, we will all be free to do the work we want to do or even love to do without any economic fear. We will be free to pursue our passion or as Joseph Campbell suggests we "follow our bliss".
Cooperation will replace wasteful competition. We will all work together as a team. Work will become a way to help people, to meet people or to be part of something meaningful. It is a proven fact that people like to help one another. An esprit de corps will naturally build up and make work more enjoyable. Even the most menial task becomes easier when people work together. Yes, work will become more of a "togetherness" thing.
The profit motive will no longer be a hindrance to efficiency. There will be no need to sacrifice quality and safety in our products for the sake of profit. We will, like in the olden days, take pride in our work. Yes, there is very likely to be a shortage of people volunteering to do the more menial tasks. One option is to offer "perks". A perk can be of various forms such as front row season tickets to the opera or to his or her favorite sports team. Can you imagine an NBA basketball game where the celebrities are sitting in the back rows while the dishwashers and janitors are at courtside? (My apologies to Spike Lee & Jack Nicholson!) Or the perk could be the latest model boat or sports car which would not be immediately available to the public. Another option is to draft everyone once in their lifetime, to do a half year or so stint at a menial task. Perhaps a humbling experience is in order for all of us. It might serve us well in the area of character building.
Also, consider the fact that perhaps millions of people will be freed from jobs associated with the use of money. Millions more that are now unemployed or on welfare will also be available to help fill the labor needs of our country. Thus, we will have the work force necessary to do the work which is not economically feasible in our present economy such as cleaning our environment (land, sea & air), conservation, recycling, humanitarian work, research in medicine, education, science & space and now we can include national security.
Perhaps the most difficult problem is in the administration of a way of life without money. Can we learn to determine our economic needs, allocate our resources from the federal on down to the neighborhood levels? Perhaps some sort of economic bodies must be created to coordinate, monitor and carryout our economic needs. These economic bodies would exist similar to our governments, one for the federal, one for each state and one for each local level.Yes, in order to administrate a way of life without money, economic bodies, boards or councils or whatever you wish to call them would be created to absorb economic responsibility from our various governments. They will interact and cooperate with one another to meet the economic needs of our country and of each individual. They will be empowered by Congress to tend to the economic needs of its constituents. Thus, a balance of power will be safely maintained.
Our federal needs, which would be similar to the federal budget we have today, will be resolved by an economic body comprised of representatives of the various branches of government, our industrial & labor resources, research (in medicine, education, science & space), our environment, conservation, importing & exporting, and now, national security and whatever facet of our way of life should be represented. This economic body will arrange for the labor and material resources necessary to meet the economic needs of our nation.
Similarly, the same will occur at the state and local levels. The economic body at the local levels will be responsible for providing services to the people in the neighborhood. If the labor needs cannot be met with volunteer workers, "perks" must be offered. Also, the economic body at the local levels will be responsible for keeping the stores stocked with food, clothing and the common luxuries which will be available free. Thus, the economic needs of the nation right on down to the neighborhood levels would be determined and satisfied by these economic bodies.
How much economic responsibility will these new bodies absorb from our federal, state and local governments? How much will be shared? Can a balance of power be maintained? At any rate, our federal, state and local governments will be relieved of considerable amount of economic responsibility. Thus, our various governments will be free to catch up on all the other domestic and foreign issues that face us.
Yes, we will still import and export goods with foreign countries as our needs dictate; but what money will be used in place of the almighty dollar? Would the dollar have any value if everything is free in the USA? Would that be a problem? We would, however, still be able to use the currency of the country we are doing business with. For example, if we export goods to Germany, we would accept marks or euros in payment. The euros would then be deposited in our national treasury for future use. The money could then be used to import goods or perhaps send Americans overseas on vacation.
Yes, a way of life without money could be compared to the kibbutz which now exist in Israel. Can you picture the USA as one big kibbutz? However, ownership of property will remain the same as it is today. Our government will remain the same. Our free enterprise system will remain in place as it is today. There will be no need for money or any substitute for money since everything will be free.
The advantages of a way of life without money stagger the imagination; but they are real and cannot be disputed. Perhaps it is time for us to grab the brass ring.
"The Human Race has improved everything except the Human Race." -Adlai Stevenson
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Article republished from The American Daily.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Happy Leap Day!
Leap Day Action
2008 is leap year -- a fantastic opportunity to leap into something new. Are you gonna to use your extra day like you use so many other days -- toiling away at your job to make the bosses richer? Using up more of the earth's resources while the forests, the oceans and free communities are being killed? Watching it all go on around you -- an "information consumer" -- feeling helpless to do anything to resist it?
Life is far too short to spend days, weeks, years just getting by -- getting treated like an object. How much of your life do you really get to control? How often are you really fully alive and free?
If you wish things were different and dream about a better world, you're not alone. Vast numbers of people from all walks of life realize that life as we know it isn't satisfying our real needs and has to change. But hoping and dreaming isn't enough.
Lots of people have developed and articulated ideas for how life could be transformed. We need to love each other, take care of each other, share and cooperate, live with the earth instead of destroying it, and embrace diversity, not hatred and violence. Social structures that promote power and inequality need to be dismantled, and arrangements that promote freedom and sustainability constructed in their place.
So if things are to change, how can each of us be part of creating these changes? Most people feel like they're too isolated as individuals to really do much of anything effective against a massive, entrenched system. This collective feeling of individual helplessness and inertia is a self-fulfilling prophecy -- but it isn't real -- it is just a collective illusion.
Those in charge encourage feelings of isolation, helplessness and passivity in a million ways. They want everyone to individually conclude that nothing very big or important can change -- that the big things have to be the way they are. They love cynicism, resignation and isolation. They fear community and discussion about alternatives. But most of all, they fear action -- the moment when individuals take matters into their own hands and stop just hoping for a better world.
Anyone and everyone can take action. Taking action means moving from wishing things would change to changing them -- in your family, in your neighborhood, in your workplace, in your school . . . in your own mind. Change in your mind is the most accessible change and yet often the most difficult -- we're all embedded in deep patterns that hold us back from building change out in the world. We've learned to feel powerless and take for granted lots of fucked up power relations. Working on changing our internal mental state goes hand and hand with taking action to change the external world. As we take action in the real world. we help liberate the parts of our mind that hold us back. Each new experience with action -- creating change ourselves -- helps open possibility for even more action and change.
Action in the world can mean living differently yourself in a variety of ways -- the way you relate to others, the way you communicate, the way you eat, the work you do, the way you move around, etc. And it can mean organizing with others to build new ways of living -- building community gardens, cooperative houses, alternative businesses, and revolutionary decision-making bodies. And action also means rising up to fight those who dominate power and try to prevent change -- joining protests, sit-ins, riots and strikes. The historical dates in this organizer chronicle all the amazing ways people have taken action through the ages: non-violently and violently; on a local level and on a global level; alone and together in every year across every place on earth. When you take action, you are far from alone! The key is for each individual to make the leap from hopelessness to action in as many ways as they can in any particular moment.
This leap day *February 29* imagine everyone who feels smothered living a mediocre life within the current insane system rising up to resist in whatever way they can. Take leap day off work and live life like it really mattered. Spend the day as a free and whole being. Maybe that means spending time alone, or maybe it means with friends, or with your whole block, or even the whole city. Maybe it means tearing down the forces that seek to force you back to work and back onto you knees on March 1. Maybe living free for a day means spending the day creating new structures, new ideas, new forms of cooperation and a whole new reality which make you happier and freer. You don't have to wait for tomorrow, and you don't have to ask anyone for permission.
Leap for it!
---
For more information visit: http://www.leapdayaction.org/
2008 is leap year -- a fantastic opportunity to leap into something new. Are you gonna to use your extra day like you use so many other days -- toiling away at your job to make the bosses richer? Using up more of the earth's resources while the forests, the oceans and free communities are being killed? Watching it all go on around you -- an "information consumer" -- feeling helpless to do anything to resist it?
Life is far too short to spend days, weeks, years just getting by -- getting treated like an object. How much of your life do you really get to control? How often are you really fully alive and free?
If you wish things were different and dream about a better world, you're not alone. Vast numbers of people from all walks of life realize that life as we know it isn't satisfying our real needs and has to change. But hoping and dreaming isn't enough.
Lots of people have developed and articulated ideas for how life could be transformed. We need to love each other, take care of each other, share and cooperate, live with the earth instead of destroying it, and embrace diversity, not hatred and violence. Social structures that promote power and inequality need to be dismantled, and arrangements that promote freedom and sustainability constructed in their place.
So if things are to change, how can each of us be part of creating these changes? Most people feel like they're too isolated as individuals to really do much of anything effective against a massive, entrenched system. This collective feeling of individual helplessness and inertia is a self-fulfilling prophecy -- but it isn't real -- it is just a collective illusion.
Those in charge encourage feelings of isolation, helplessness and passivity in a million ways. They want everyone to individually conclude that nothing very big or important can change -- that the big things have to be the way they are. They love cynicism, resignation and isolation. They fear community and discussion about alternatives. But most of all, they fear action -- the moment when individuals take matters into their own hands and stop just hoping for a better world.
Anyone and everyone can take action. Taking action means moving from wishing things would change to changing them -- in your family, in your neighborhood, in your workplace, in your school . . . in your own mind. Change in your mind is the most accessible change and yet often the most difficult -- we're all embedded in deep patterns that hold us back from building change out in the world. We've learned to feel powerless and take for granted lots of fucked up power relations. Working on changing our internal mental state goes hand and hand with taking action to change the external world. As we take action in the real world. we help liberate the parts of our mind that hold us back. Each new experience with action -- creating change ourselves -- helps open possibility for even more action and change.
Action in the world can mean living differently yourself in a variety of ways -- the way you relate to others, the way you communicate, the way you eat, the work you do, the way you move around, etc. And it can mean organizing with others to build new ways of living -- building community gardens, cooperative houses, alternative businesses, and revolutionary decision-making bodies. And action also means rising up to fight those who dominate power and try to prevent change -- joining protests, sit-ins, riots and strikes. The historical dates in this organizer chronicle all the amazing ways people have taken action through the ages: non-violently and violently; on a local level and on a global level; alone and together in every year across every place on earth. When you take action, you are far from alone! The key is for each individual to make the leap from hopelessness to action in as many ways as they can in any particular moment.
This leap day *February 29* imagine everyone who feels smothered living a mediocre life within the current insane system rising up to resist in whatever way they can. Take leap day off work and live life like it really mattered. Spend the day as a free and whole being. Maybe that means spending time alone, or maybe it means with friends, or with your whole block, or even the whole city. Maybe it means tearing down the forces that seek to force you back to work and back onto you knees on March 1. Maybe living free for a day means spending the day creating new structures, new ideas, new forms of cooperation and a whole new reality which make you happier and freer. You don't have to wait for tomorrow, and you don't have to ask anyone for permission.
Leap for it!
---
For more information visit: http://www.leapdayaction.org/
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
There is a Difference Between Life and Survival
Whatever medical science may profess, there is a difference between Life and survival. There is more to being alive than just having a heartbeat and brain activity. Being alive, really alive, is something much subtler and more magnificent. Their instruments measure blood pressure and temperature, but overlook joy, passion, love, all the things that make life really matter. To make our lives matter again, to really get the most out of them, we will have to redefine life itself. We have to dispense with their merely clinical definitions, in favor of ones which have more to do with what we actually feel.
As it stands, how much living do we have in our lives? How many mornings do you wake up feeling truly free, thrilled to be alive, breathlessly anticipating the experiences of a new day? How many nights do you fall asleep feeling fulfilled, going over the events of the past day with satisfaction? Most of us feel as though everything has already been decided without us, as if living is not a creative activity but rather something that happens to us. That's not being alive, that's just surviving: being undead. We have undertakers, but their services are not usually required; we have morgues, but we spend most of our time in office cubicles and video arcades, in shopping malls, in front of televisions. Of course suburban housewives and petty executives are terrified of risk and change; they can't imagine that there is anything more valuable than physical safety. Their hearts may be beating, but they no longer believe in their dreams, let alone chase after them.
But this is how the revolution begins: a few of us start chasing our dreams, breaking our old patterns, embracing what we love (and in the process discovering what we hate), daydreaming, questioning, acting outside the boundaries of routine and regularity. Others see us doing this, see people daring to be more creative and more adventurous, more generous and more ambitious than they had imagined possible, and join us one by one. Once enough people embrace this new way of living, a point of critical mass is finally reached, and society itself begins to change. From that moment, the world will start to undergo a transformation: from the frightening, alien place that it is, into a place ripe with possibility, where our lives are in our own hands and any dream can come true.
So do what you want with your life, whatever it is! But to be sure you do get what you want, think carefully about what it really is, first, and how to go about getting it. Analyze the world around you, so you'll know which people and forces are working against your desires, and which ones are on your side... and how you can work together with us. We're out here, living life to the fullest, waiting for you-hopping trains across the United States, organizing political protests in French public schools, writing beautiful letters at sunrise in Bangkok. We just finished making love in the corporate washroom a minute before you walked in on your half hour lunchbreak. And Life is waiting for you with us, on the peaks of unclimbed mountains, in the smoke of campfires and burning buildings, in the arms of lovers who will turn your world upside down. Come join us!
---
Reprinted from Crimethinc.com.
As it stands, how much living do we have in our lives? How many mornings do you wake up feeling truly free, thrilled to be alive, breathlessly anticipating the experiences of a new day? How many nights do you fall asleep feeling fulfilled, going over the events of the past day with satisfaction? Most of us feel as though everything has already been decided without us, as if living is not a creative activity but rather something that happens to us. That's not being alive, that's just surviving: being undead. We have undertakers, but their services are not usually required; we have morgues, but we spend most of our time in office cubicles and video arcades, in shopping malls, in front of televisions. Of course suburban housewives and petty executives are terrified of risk and change; they can't imagine that there is anything more valuable than physical safety. Their hearts may be beating, but they no longer believe in their dreams, let alone chase after them.
But this is how the revolution begins: a few of us start chasing our dreams, breaking our old patterns, embracing what we love (and in the process discovering what we hate), daydreaming, questioning, acting outside the boundaries of routine and regularity. Others see us doing this, see people daring to be more creative and more adventurous, more generous and more ambitious than they had imagined possible, and join us one by one. Once enough people embrace this new way of living, a point of critical mass is finally reached, and society itself begins to change. From that moment, the world will start to undergo a transformation: from the frightening, alien place that it is, into a place ripe with possibility, where our lives are in our own hands and any dream can come true.
So do what you want with your life, whatever it is! But to be sure you do get what you want, think carefully about what it really is, first, and how to go about getting it. Analyze the world around you, so you'll know which people and forces are working against your desires, and which ones are on your side... and how you can work together with us. We're out here, living life to the fullest, waiting for you-hopping trains across the United States, organizing political protests in French public schools, writing beautiful letters at sunrise in Bangkok. We just finished making love in the corporate washroom a minute before you walked in on your half hour lunchbreak. And Life is waiting for you with us, on the peaks of unclimbed mountains, in the smoke of campfires and burning buildings, in the arms of lovers who will turn your world upside down. Come join us!
---
Reprinted from Crimethinc.com.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
The Suspension of Fear: A Conversation With Sailor Holladay
By Matt Dineen
There's something oddly alluring to me about college towns. Perhaps surrounding myself in such an environment provides an illusion that my college years will forever live on and allow me to deflect the cold permanence of the so-called real world. Moving from one transient community to another, I found myself inNorthampton , MA Holladay , who like most people in this area, moved here for school. We lived together for the remainder of Sailor's time at UMass-Amherst. The following interview was conducted on my radio show "Passions and Survival" in May of 2007, just before thousands of diplomas were handed out, summer plans were actualized, and the population of this peculiar valley turned over once again. Our conversation covered the politics of debt and academia, traveler culture, the desire to desire, and the forging of practical ways to create and support radical projects.
There's something oddly alluring to me about college towns. Perhaps surrounding myself in such an environment provides an illusion that my college years will forever live on and allow me to deflect the cold permanence of the so-called real world. Moving from one transient community to another, I found myself in
Matt Dineen: Let’s start by talking about the de-politicization of the academy. Can you talk about how the Social Justice Education program at UMass-Amherst has differed from other higher education environments you have participated in?
Sailor Holladay : Yeah. What’s been interesting is, that while I’ve been cradled in this program within Higher Ed., I’m still in this huge research university that’s continually getting more and more elite. They say the average family income of UMass-Amherst undergrads at this point is $100,000 a year. So UMass is getting more conservative, more economically oppressive, however you want to put it. On the one hand I’ve been around some really radical, really amazing people in my program, but I’ve also been situated in the larger university and taken classes outside of my program. I didn’t come to the realization until maybe four months ago, in my third semester, that one of the functions of educational institutions, is two fold: Quarantine a small minority of radical or potentially radical intellectuals into tenured positions and push them farther and farther away from communities struggling towards a more desirable system; while the rest of us, public intellectuals—people who don’t need buildings to think—many of us who have fought to get here, we get saddled with debt, huge amounts of debt. I have undergrad students that I work with who are three years into their education with $60,000 of debt. So we internalize the belief that we have to get a job. You know, “there aren’t any other options.” That’s what we’re told. “What would you do other than get a job out of college?” And this process—getting the job, paying off the debt—serves to estrange us from the communities that we may have been connected to in struggle before we became indebted, or prevents us from being able to connect with those communities. That is why I’m so excited about the notion of having passions at all, of being in an incubator enough to figure out what my passions are amidst the system. To be able to survive in the system with our passions is one thing, but many of us don’t know what we want to begin with. So these processes, the miseducation and the debt that comes with them, is one complex way to keep us from even figuring out what we want, let alone act on those desires.
MD: Speaking from my experience, being out of school for four years now and avoiding this route of going back into academia, it’s been a political decision on some level. It’s the challenge of self-education, continuing to talk about ideas and create change outside of these academic institutions is a challenge because of these structures you’re talking about.
SH: Also, it’s not something that’s possible alone. We need other humans to do that with. There’s also the issue of fear. There are systems in place that are selling fear to us and when we buy into that we go down roads that may be comfortable to us, but they’re not things that are creating new alternatives.
MD: Well, let’s talk about the suspension of fear. After college there is this social pressure to go out and use your education to get a well paid job, to reap the material rewards. I think most of us who have been in this situation have realized that it’s not that easy, but there are also some of us who reject those values.
SH: In terms of the ease, both of us come from poor and working class backgrounds. Without the institutional connections it’s that much more challenging.
MD: That’s something we should get into: the privilege it takes to suspend fear. For me, coming from a working class background that privilege hasn’t come in terms of material abundance. It hasn’t come in terms of capital, or financial wealth, but by first taking the risk of applying to college. Most of my friends in high school who came from similar class backgrounds didn’t even bother applying, thinking, “Oh, I can’t afford that.” But I took the risk to go for it. I got financial aid, went to school, and jumping into it I accrued what some call social capital or cultural capital. And I think getting out of college I had that sort of privilege which helped me really suspend some of these fears, enabling me to not have a job for a while, leaving to travel and acquiring more cultural capital through experiences that I brought back with me and then figured things out.
And there have been so many challenges and struggles, but at the same time there’s been a lot of privilege involved with those decisions. But let’s talk about the present moment in our lives. We’re both at sort of a crossroads. Let’s look forward. Let’s talk about the trajectory that we may or may not be following. [Laughs]
SH: Yeah, I think that looking forward is possible when we suspend fear. I have a want to notice how much of those messages are coming from all over, at least in my world. They’re coming from the system but also from people that I care about, who deeply care about me and care about my wellbeing, who are locked in, who are afraid. They are afraid for me. They’re afraid for themselves. They’ve seen the ways in which people who don’t conform are ravaged in some way—economically, emotionally—by the current system. So it’s tricky. I guess, for me, the suspension of fear becomes possible when I’m in an environment where I’m surrounded by people who are interested in that, interested in suspending fear. That’s what I appreciate about having you as a roommate, Matt Dineen. [Laughs]
This is where identity becomes messy. Just because I share certain identities or backgrounds with folks, doesn’t mean that we’re going to be launching into the future together in a way that is more desirable. In fact, so much of these fear recordings are implanted specifically around identity—poor folks, LGBT folks, for different groups that I’m a part of, fear is a huge piece of keeping that identity in place. Choosing to mobilize around identity, and only identity, is something that I’m not interested in at this point. Mobilizing across identity, around desire, and the mutual desire to desire is what I find fun and worthwhile. Because these kinds of conversations are not encouraged in the current system they become challenging to have if we have the fear piece. So if we can shake it off or suspend it then we can get somewhere.
MD: Well here we are. [Laughs] Let’s talk about desire. In terms of incorporating my desires into this trajectory of what I’m doing with my life, I left a job and have been traveling off and on the last two months but am now committing myself back to this area, coming back to this piece of geography. So now for the first time since I’ve lived here I feel grounded and I want to stay here, but then it’s: what do I do with that? I do have a potential job opportunity that I’m pursuing right now that could lead me to financial stability for the first time in my life. I’ve been playing around with that idea and want to be very conscious of it. I’m not lusting after the material success. I’m more focused on getting rid of my debt and maybe saving some money, but most importantly doing what I truly want to be doing with my life. I want to be around people who are talking about these issues and this potential job could also help me incorporate my desire for participatory democratic organizing. I’ve been thinking about these possibilities.
You know, there’s that term “disposable income” and I think that term is rooted in this culture of disposability, and I don’t want income that I’m just disposing of. Any surplus income I have, I want to be redistributing to projects that I support. For example, the Catalyst Project in San Francisco
So for you, what are your thoughts about finishing school and leaving this area soon?
SH: It’s funny because I have spent many years being angry at young people who I perceive as coming from middle-class backgrounds, who I perceive as “living simply.” I’ve had rage towards folks who have made choices to not work, who have made choices to travel around and eat freely or cheaply. You know, eat my food and take showers in my shower…but now I’m turning into one of those people! [Laughs] So right now I’m trying to suspend the fear. I plan to spend the summer, as much of it as possible, traveling to conferences and gatherings. I came to the realization just a couple weeks ago that I don’t actually have to get a job as soon as I graduate. One of the things I’m interested in is the notion of—and this comes from Heinz Von Foerster—acting so as to always increase the number of alternatives. I come from a place where if you have one choice that’s good, to have at least one choice. But what I’m learning is that if I don’t have at least three choices it’s not a choice, whatever I’m choosing. So I want to act always as to increase my number of alternatives. So for me to say, I don’t have to work…Sure, I could say that I have to work, that I’ve got $48,000 of debt that I'm graduating with and that my choice, my one choice is to work. But as a way to move towards self-actualizing my own liberation I’m making a language choice to say that I don’t have to get a job when I graduate and to state that in language is to create another alternative for me. So yeah, I’m working against my internal patterns and also my external environment that tells me that my only option is to get a job. One of the other things about that is that in the last couple years, especially in the last year, I’ve placed so much emphasis on personal relationships and the idea creation that comes out of them. It seems as though, I’m learning, that when we place value upon relationships other things fall into place. If I am only placing value on, say my job and my housing situation—the things that get my needs met—I don’t leave as much time for relationships and those don’t automatically come into place. I’m noticing that I’m actually an inspiration for folks. I see people shake off their ties to the current system around me, just by simply existing and thinking in different ways, encouraging thoughts that happen with me and around me to be other than patterned thoughts.
MD: That’s definitely inspiring to me and I’ve been thinking about all of this over the past two and half months of not working myself. There’s this assumption in our society that if you’re not working a paid job then you’re lazy, but a lot of us our involved with many different projects. I think that some people can’t even imagine what their lives would be like if they didn’t have school to go to and than after school straight to a job. So there’s the politics of boredom, because without these structures to mold us, “what could we possibly do with our lives?” Part of it is realizing that desire, to go beyond this structure and remain productive in our own ways, doing a lot of work that’s not necessarily defined as a job.
SH: Yeah, it’s also pointing towards when we get ourselves out of the hierarchical structure. The idea isn’t to not have a structure. The idea is that look, we can create our own together. By creating our own structures we become accountable, not responsible, to them and ourselves. The more people that we can get to take a second glance at the structures we all find ourselves in, in those moments we can begin to create our own temporary structures together. That’s what I’m off to do. And those begin in conversation…Another thing that has come up for me lately is noticing that I have a new feeling of being able to receive. I definitely got it real young that I was to be valued based upon my labor, whatever I could produce. It’s been interesting to receive and be open to the potential of future receptions. And it’s funny because those folks who are making offers are people who are working really hard to survive in the current system. So, how can I support those people? One thing I’ve been interested in lately is acting without fear of future funding and actually recruiting funders into projects as collaborators—knowing that there will always be funders, but that we need more makers. We need more artists. We need more thinkers, more project participants. And so if we can act without fear of funding than those folks who typically see themselves as funders of projects can become co-conspirators creatively with what is being made.
MD: And that fear is often what brings us back to these jobs that steal so much of our time away from us, and prevent us from engaging in those projects. That’s also related to what I mentioned before: if we do find ourselves in a situation where we have surplus income, to really seek out who is doing important work that truly needs that funding. It’s what some people have called social change philanthropy—so not just these large nonprofit organizations, but really grassroots folks who are doing radical stuff.
SH: As opposed to, you know, “Well, I haven’t had a car in six years so I’m gonna go get that Prius now.”
MD: Yeah, exactly. Trying this mental exercise: What would I do with four times the income that I lived on last year? This is a similar exercise that people go through when they fantasize about winning the lottery, and oftentimes the response to that question is: more stuff. The term I thought of for this is acceleration of lifestyle. I’m interested in injecting into this mental exercise, or if I ever find myself in this situation, the challenge to resist that acceleration of lifestyle materially.
SH: And how much of the acceleration of lifestyle is brought on by the deep sadness that we feel as individuals when we are pushed away from our communities that we were a part of or never got to get in touch with? It’s what Kathleen Cleaver calls the ‘personal aggrandizement’ that happens: My community is left back here suffering and somehow I figured out how to do this thing. And so now I’m going to comfort myself with X, Y or Z… I like this notion of actually figuring out practical ways of “giving back,” supporting projects from the communities we have solidarity with.
MD: Yeah, it’s working towards a redistribution of wealth on that level too.
Matt Dineen did not get hired for the job that would have paid him a living wage, but he still lives in Northampton, MA. Dineen serves on the Board of Directors of Valley Free Radio, the low-power community radio station in which he also hosts "Passions and Survival." This show is part of a project exploring the dilemma of following our passions while surviving in a capitalist society. Dineen also books tours for radical activists and artists with Aid and Abet Booking. Write to him at: passionsandsurvival@gmail.com
Sailor Holladay spent all of Summer 2007 travelling and conversing and is currently living in Urbana , Illinois
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Call for Submissions: Enough
Dean and Tyrone met at the Building a Queer Left meeting that preceded the US Social Forum this summer, and began a conversation about the politics of wealth, poverty, being an anti-capitalist while living within capitalism, and more that is beautifully blossoming into a very special and potentially transformative web project. Perhaps you'd like to participate?
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What is the difference between financial security and hoarding wealth?
What are some ways we can share resources to support community and movement-building?
How can we talk to each other about personal money issues and politics without guilt, shame, and judgment?
What does a politics of wealth redistribution look like in the day-to-day, and what are the
obstacles to developing conversations about this in political communities we belong to?
These are some questions we've been thinking about, and we're interested in jumpstarting conversations about how we conceive of and live a politics of wealth redistribution. We'd like to invite you to contribute some writing to a website we're creating to explore this topic, called Enough.
The ubiquity of capitalism in the U.S. can limit our ability, even in radical communities, to conceptualize creative responses to oppression and injustice. This can manifest both in how we build movements (reproducing bureaucratic, hierarchical, business-type models; packaging and "selling" social justice work to foundations in exchange for grants), and in how we deal with personal finances in our own lives (defaulting to patterns like hoarding, excessive consumerism, and individualism in how we conceptualize our lives and futures and economic security).
We'd like to address some of the ways that class privilege and capitalist dynamics function even within communities and within the lives of individuals working to fight oppression and economic injustice. It can feel taboo to share details about things like income, inheritance, class background, debt, and spending. Silence and secrecy about money make it difficult for us to challenge ourselves and each other when classist dynamics arise. Social conditioning trains us to hoard money rather than share it and build community. We want to get people talking about building shared values and practices around wealth redistribution, because we think figuring out how much is enough, and when to give away money, are key under-discussed questions in anti-capitalist politics.
Some examples of the kinds of things we're looking for:
-Pieces about how your class position has changed over the course of your life, and how that has affected feelings of responsibility about wealth redistribution.
-Stories about cool methods of figuring out what is "enough" when it comes to making/saving money.
-How do class background, class conditioning, fear, guilt, and other factors influence how you think about this question?
-How do you figure out what you need versus what you want when it comes to consuming?
-Examples of (or ideas for) community-based support systems that serve as alternatives to individualistic models of taking care of ourselves.
-Strategies for redistributing wealth in your community, or to support social justice work.
-Discussion of how ideas about wealth, security, scarcity get reproduced in families.
-Diatribes on the politics of inheritance.
-Discussions of professionalism and salaries.
-Exciting models of people dealing with money ethically in activist spaces and organizations.
-Strategies for overcoming immobilizing guilt about class or money.
-Anti-capitalist/anti-racist/anti-imperialist analysis of personal choices about saving for retirement, buying real estate, taking certain jobs, supporting our community, etc.
-Diagnostic worksheets to help people figure out any of the following: My place in the economy (local, domestic, global) Am I rich? What sources of security do I have that I may not be aware of? How do I know if I need something or just want it? What are my resources besides money?
The two of us come from very different class backgrounds (Tyrone grew up in a first- generation owning-class family, and Dean grew up on welfare) and we're hoping for a specifically cross-class conversation about these issues. We think that the anxiety that can arise when talking about these things among folks with different experiences of class can be useful and productive, and we hope to create a space where we can learn by sharing our experiences and challenging each other.
Please send us an email if you have an idea you'd like to write about, a resource you think we should know about, existing writing you think we should post in this conversation. Your piece can be short or long, written in any style. Please send submissions to: tyronius.samson@gmail.com and/or deanspade@gmail.com.
--
Reposted from The Bilerico Project by Jessica Hoffmann.
---
What is the difference between financial security and hoarding wealth?
What are some ways we can share resources to support community and movement-building?
How can we talk to each other about personal money issues and politics without guilt, shame, and judgment?
What does a politics of wealth redistribution look like in the day-to-day, and what are the
obstacles to developing conversations about this in political communities we belong to?
These are some questions we've been thinking about, and we're interested in jumpstarting conversations about how we conceive of and live a politics of wealth redistribution. We'd like to invite you to contribute some writing to a website we're creating to explore this topic, called Enough.
The ubiquity of capitalism in the U.S. can limit our ability, even in radical communities, to conceptualize creative responses to oppression and injustice. This can manifest both in how we build movements (reproducing bureaucratic, hierarchical, business-type models; packaging and "selling" social justice work to foundations in exchange for grants), and in how we deal with personal finances in our own lives (defaulting to patterns like hoarding, excessive consumerism, and individualism in how we conceptualize our lives and futures and economic security).
We'd like to address some of the ways that class privilege and capitalist dynamics function even within communities and within the lives of individuals working to fight oppression and economic injustice. It can feel taboo to share details about things like income, inheritance, class background, debt, and spending. Silence and secrecy about money make it difficult for us to challenge ourselves and each other when classist dynamics arise. Social conditioning trains us to hoard money rather than share it and build community. We want to get people talking about building shared values and practices around wealth redistribution, because we think figuring out how much is enough, and when to give away money, are key under-discussed questions in anti-capitalist politics.
Some examples of the kinds of things we're looking for:
-Pieces about how your class position has changed over the course of your life, and how that has affected feelings of responsibility about wealth redistribution.
-Stories about cool methods of figuring out what is "enough" when it comes to making/saving money.
-How do class background, class conditioning, fear, guilt, and other factors influence how you think about this question?
-How do you figure out what you need versus what you want when it comes to consuming?
-Examples of (or ideas for) community-based support systems that serve as alternatives to individualistic models of taking care of ourselves.
-Strategies for redistributing wealth in your community, or to support social justice work.
-Discussion of how ideas about wealth, security, scarcity get reproduced in families.
-Diatribes on the politics of inheritance.
-Discussions of professionalism and salaries.
-Exciting models of people dealing with money ethically in activist spaces and organizations.
-Strategies for overcoming immobilizing guilt about class or money.
-Anti-capitalist/anti-racist/anti-imperialist analysis of personal choices about saving for retirement, buying real estate, taking certain jobs, supporting our community, etc.
-Diagnostic worksheets to help people figure out any of the following: My place in the economy (local, domestic, global) Am I rich? What sources of security do I have that I may not be aware of? How do I know if I need something or just want it? What are my resources besides money?
The two of us come from very different class backgrounds (Tyrone grew up in a first- generation owning-class family, and Dean grew up on welfare) and we're hoping for a specifically cross-class conversation about these issues. We think that the anxiety that can arise when talking about these things among folks with different experiences of class can be useful and productive, and we hope to create a space where we can learn by sharing our experiences and challenging each other.
Please send us an email if you have an idea you'd like to write about, a resource you think we should know about, existing writing you think we should post in this conversation. Your piece can be short or long, written in any style. Please send submissions to: tyronius.samson@gmail.com and/or deanspade@gmail.com.
--
Reposted from The Bilerico Project by Jessica Hoffmann.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
On Passion and Jobs
...If you are part of the corporate world, theres a constant refrain that is heard "I don't love my job" or "I would rather be doing something else". The corollary is "My job doesn't pay me enough" or "I am in this job for money" or "I wish I could sing/dance/teach for a living but it does not pay me as much as my job does."
Sitting in a cubicle trapped by three moulded walls and a boss, it is easy to take a judgement call on ones job. But the fact is that it really is your bread and butter (or chappati or idli). Most of us view our passion as an escapist route to get out of our routine mundane jobs. The sentences start with, It would be great if I could...
There are many who love their job - research, project management, accountancy, central excise (one of our old profs said central excise is his hobby), software maintenance, traffic policeman or even printing invoices day in and day out. For them their job is their passion. Every ounce of their energy they put in their work counts for them as an achievement. I have met people who can rave about the latest flexfield in Oracle apps or those who can look at a new software program and work spellbound until they crack the ultimate details of it. Look around you. There are quite a few of them. This is not to say that they are dull outside work. Usually they are not. They have interests outside of work and they cultivate it too.
There is a second set of people who have a great passion for something. Writing or music or driving or cooking or quizzing. They are the ones who quit their day jobs to be their own boss. Remember it is tough for someone who is passionate about, say, music to work for someone else. Because passion for music is an outlet of ones own creativity, it is difficult to alter some notes because your boss doesn't like it. Likewise, if I write something, I don't want an editor to come and prune my prose to a bonsai - I write it because thats how I want it to be, warts and all. These are the people who take the path less trodden and work on their own, for their passion. They work because they love it - the money is a byproduct and it usually happens. The road can be long or hard or both and many do make it - the gains in satisfaction are immense. Needless to say, this road is not easy and it involves a steep climb till you make it.
The majority of people see their jobs and passion as distinct. Out of these are people who do their jobs sincerely - accept it for what it is and do a sincere job of it. "My job brings me the money and I will do justice to it". If they do work on a passion or an art and craft, it is separate from their work. Some of them continue to work on their passion, while for a lot many it is lost along the way - while some expect their children to work on their own unfulfilled passion!
The last set of people are those who want someone else to infuse passion into their jobs. That, unfortunately, will never happen. Either you are passionate about your job or you seek your passion outside of work or you yourself go out and convert your passion into your work. There is no fourth option. No Robinhood or talent scout is ever going to discover you if you don't do anything. If you are a writer, you better write. If you are a singer, you better keep singing. Out of the mountains of paragraphs (or songs), one (or a few) could be diamonds (out of the mountains of coal) - the rest is just a process of discovery. As in cricket, you gotta keep scoring the boring singles, wait for the chances to hit the sixes and all of it totals to the magic figure of a century. All those boring singles and the big hits create a career.So what is the point of this post? Keep doing what you like, regardless of your job and as Raamdeo Aggarwal once told me, "If you are a star, keep working and you will be discovered" and I must add, if not by someone else, you will surely discover yourself.
--
Originally posted by Neelakantan on Interim Thoughts.
Sitting in a cubicle trapped by three moulded walls and a boss, it is easy to take a judgement call on ones job. But the fact is that it really is your bread and butter (or chappati or idli). Most of us view our passion as an escapist route to get out of our routine mundane jobs. The sentences start with, It would be great if I could...
There are many who love their job - research, project management, accountancy, central excise (one of our old profs said central excise is his hobby), software maintenance, traffic policeman or even printing invoices day in and day out. For them their job is their passion. Every ounce of their energy they put in their work counts for them as an achievement. I have met people who can rave about the latest flexfield in Oracle apps or those who can look at a new software program and work spellbound until they crack the ultimate details of it. Look around you. There are quite a few of them. This is not to say that they are dull outside work. Usually they are not. They have interests outside of work and they cultivate it too.
There is a second set of people who have a great passion for something. Writing or music or driving or cooking or quizzing. They are the ones who quit their day jobs to be their own boss. Remember it is tough for someone who is passionate about, say, music to work for someone else. Because passion for music is an outlet of ones own creativity, it is difficult to alter some notes because your boss doesn't like it. Likewise, if I write something, I don't want an editor to come and prune my prose to a bonsai - I write it because thats how I want it to be, warts and all. These are the people who take the path less trodden and work on their own, for their passion. They work because they love it - the money is a byproduct and it usually happens. The road can be long or hard or both and many do make it - the gains in satisfaction are immense. Needless to say, this road is not easy and it involves a steep climb till you make it.
The majority of people see their jobs and passion as distinct. Out of these are people who do their jobs sincerely - accept it for what it is and do a sincere job of it. "My job brings me the money and I will do justice to it". If they do work on a passion or an art and craft, it is separate from their work. Some of them continue to work on their passion, while for a lot many it is lost along the way - while some expect their children to work on their own unfulfilled passion!
The last set of people are those who want someone else to infuse passion into their jobs. That, unfortunately, will never happen. Either you are passionate about your job or you seek your passion outside of work or you yourself go out and convert your passion into your work. There is no fourth option. No Robinhood or talent scout is ever going to discover you if you don't do anything. If you are a writer, you better write. If you are a singer, you better keep singing. Out of the mountains of paragraphs (or songs), one (or a few) could be diamonds (out of the mountains of coal) - the rest is just a process of discovery. As in cricket, you gotta keep scoring the boring singles, wait for the chances to hit the sixes and all of it totals to the magic figure of a century. All those boring singles and the big hits create a career.So what is the point of this post? Keep doing what you like, regardless of your job and as Raamdeo Aggarwal once told me, "If you are a star, keep working and you will be discovered" and I must add, if not by someone else, you will surely discover yourself.
--
Originally posted by Neelakantan on Interim Thoughts.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Time Without Work Revisited
By Matt Dineen
For the past four months I have been unemployed. During this time I have intimately revisited the dilemma of time without work in a work-obsessed culture. Part of this obsession is the survival piece--under capitalism we are obligated to sell our labor in order to meet our needs, to "make a living." This makes it difficult and often impossible to live without a job. We need to earn money in order to pay for food, housing, and the less essential items that help us get through each day. Without a wage job one needs to be creative about fulfilling these needs, often relying on the kindness and generosity of others, or by carving out non-capitalist forms of cooperatively sharing resources.
The other dominant aspect of this phenomenon is the way this culture defines people by their jobs. What you do to make money may not be the most important thing in your life but it serves as a reflection of your social status when you inform people "what you do." You are defined by your work. So what does this mean for those of us who are unemployed? Because of the economic challenges of not working it is rare that people can joyously revel in this moment. Even if we are enjoying this time without work it is socially unacceptable to admit this. Rather, we have to defensively explain that this is a transitional period in our life and that we are vigorously looking for work--even if we are not.
Unemployment is also associated with laziness and irresponsibility. Many of us who are not working paid jobs, however, still stay busy with things that we are passionate about. Of course these things are devalued in a culture that emphasizes profit and power over happiness. I could spend a day writing articles, producing a radio show, going for a bike ride, interviewing a friend, cooking food, playing music, and dancing. None of these are contributing much to the GNP, but they make me feel alive.
--
Contact Matt Dineen at: passionsandsurvival@gmail.com
For the past four months I have been unemployed. During this time I have intimately revisited the dilemma of time without work in a work-obsessed culture. Part of this obsession is the survival piece--under capitalism we are obligated to sell our labor in order to meet our needs, to "make a living." This makes it difficult and often impossible to live without a job. We need to earn money in order to pay for food, housing, and the less essential items that help us get through each day. Without a wage job one needs to be creative about fulfilling these needs, often relying on the kindness and generosity of others, or by carving out non-capitalist forms of cooperatively sharing resources.
The other dominant aspect of this phenomenon is the way this culture defines people by their jobs. What you do to make money may not be the most important thing in your life but it serves as a reflection of your social status when you inform people "what you do." You are defined by your work. So what does this mean for those of us who are unemployed? Because of the economic challenges of not working it is rare that people can joyously revel in this moment. Even if we are enjoying this time without work it is socially unacceptable to admit this. Rather, we have to defensively explain that this is a transitional period in our life and that we are vigorously looking for work--even if we are not.
Unemployment is also associated with laziness and irresponsibility. Many of us who are not working paid jobs, however, still stay busy with things that we are passionate about. Of course these things are devalued in a culture that emphasizes profit and power over happiness. I could spend a day writing articles, producing a radio show, going for a bike ride, interviewing a friend, cooking food, playing music, and dancing. None of these are contributing much to the GNP, but they make me feel alive.
--
Contact Matt Dineen at: passionsandsurvival@gmail.com
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Wonders of the World: An Interview with the Missoula Oblongata
By Matt Dineen
You may not know it yet but the Pioneer Valley is home to a self-sufficient, experimental theater company. It’s called the Missoula Oblongata and it is run by Northampton residents Madeline Ffitch and Donna Sellinger. They proudly declare that their self-sufficiency means that, “the artists who write the scripts also perform, design, build, and light the play themselves.” I had a chance to speak with Madeline and Donna before they left for a nationwide summer tour with their new show, “The Most Mysterious Day of the Year,” a story revolving around a community boxing ring, the imminent demise of the Morse code, and a kaleidoscope convention.
Let’s start with the origin of your name and the route from Montana to Northampton where you’re now based.
Madeline: Well, Donna had been making theater on the East Coast for a long time, but I was living and going to school and writing in Montana. I really loved it there and when we decided to start collaborating, Donna moved there and we made our first show, “Wonders of the World: Recite” in Missoula, Montana.
Do you want to talk about that show?
Donna: Sure. I had just finished a tour that was from September through December [2005] and it ended in Idaho so I was able to move to Montana. We spent about three or four months building the show. We wrote it in about two or three weeks and then rehearsed it in a dark basement, just the two of us. And then we invited our friend Leo Gephardt to write the music and we had our friend Sarah Lowry, who is now the third member of the Missoula Oblongata, come up from Denver to direct it. And then we toured it all summer from May to August and then moved here and got a lot of invites and requests to come perform it again which we had not really anticipated. We did a January tour and some shows in February.
What brought you to Western Massachusetts?
M: We were really happy in Montana and we had a really wonderful community there. It’s a very regionally-specific area of the country where there are some true originals.
D: We miss it very much.
M: Yeah, we’re pretty homesick. But I got into grad school here in the MFA program at UMass for fiction writing. And so I decided to move here and since Donna’s family is from the Northeast it made sense for her to move back and for us to keep making theater based out of Northampton.
Donna, can you talk about what you’re doing in Northampton in addition to this theater group?
D: Actually, this theater group is all I do, and I’m very happy about that. It’s all I really want to do. It’s my ambition so I’m glad to just be living somewhere and having a life where I can spend all my time working on creating theater with my very favorite people and realizing all of our artistic dreams. It’s really fun.
So, has this been a balance for you, Madeline, being in this graduate program and doing the Missoula Oblongata? Has that been challenging for you in terms of time?
M: Well, I’m lucky because the program here is very supportive. So far, the faculty seems to just want and expect that you’ll be doing your own artistic work, and you have some pretty structured goals of your own and they try not to interfere. If they do have to interfere they’re usually pretty apologetic. They expect that you’ll spend most of your time working on your own things and for me that’s really true. Also, it’s all connected. Being in graduate school definitely gives me support, some time, and a little bit of extra money to be able to just work fulltime on creative work and that includes writing and also theater for me. So it’s pretty complimentary…Donna and I write together and the theater company is a fulltime job for us. We work on it everyday, sometimes all day and sometimes have to remind each other to have fun and go dancing, [laughs] and not just talk shop all the time. And actually this semester I’m doing an independent study which is making the new show. So I prioritize the Missoula Oblongata and I find a way to spend almost all of my time doing that.
D: There’s no part of what we do as a little theater company that is peripheral to any of us. We’ve really worked to simultaneously prioritize this and dedicate ourselves to it quite single-mindedly, to the point of pathology, and yet have our own lives where we can do other things.
You’ve mentioned this really great community in Missoula and I’m curious how this area has compared.
D: It’s a really interesting question because we spend a lot of our time here missing Missoula and wondering, “Is there even a niche for us here? What are we doing?” We’ve struggled a little bit to find a community here that we can feel really connected to and to make ourselves feel like an integral part in whatever scene is going on. But at the same time, the shows that we’ve had here were extremely well attended to the point of people having to leave because there wasn’t enough room. We’re really well received and it seems like people want more things to happen. All of the feedback that we’ve gotten from people in this community has been like, “Thank you for making things happen!” So that is a real blessing because though in Missoula we had a great time and people we’re really supportive of experimental performance, I would be lying if I said things were as well attended there. It seemed like people there were happy to have us and excited about it, but so far the reception here has been really warm.
M: Yeah, it was a little slow going at first, especially since I was the pioneer coming out here in September and Donna joined me in October. I really had just met people in my program, but now we’ve met other people in the community who we really admire as performers and seem to be doing some pretty experimental, interdisciplinary things. That’s exciting. So, I think it’s easy to move somewhere and just feel like, “Oh, there’s nothing going on. Remember how it used to be where we lived before?” But I think that just has to do with being on the periphery and then learning how to get involved, and find community and respect the groundwork that other people have been laying to create a scene. There’s some pretty amazing and gutsy experimental work going on here.
For more information and tour dates visit: http://www.themissoulaoblongata.com/
Matt Dineen is a writer and activist based in Northampton. Contact him at: passionsandsurvival@gmail.com
You may not know it yet but the Pioneer Valley is home to a self-sufficient, experimental theater company. It’s called the Missoula Oblongata and it is run by Northampton residents Madeline Ffitch and Donna Sellinger. They proudly declare that their self-sufficiency means that, “the artists who write the scripts also perform, design, build, and light the play themselves.” I had a chance to speak with Madeline and Donna before they left for a nationwide summer tour with their new show, “The Most Mysterious Day of the Year,” a story revolving around a community boxing ring, the imminent demise of the Morse code, and a kaleidoscope convention.
Let’s start with the origin of your name and the route from Montana to Northampton where you’re now based.
Madeline: Well, Donna had been making theater on the East Coast for a long time, but I was living and going to school and writing in Montana. I really loved it there and when we decided to start collaborating, Donna moved there and we made our first show, “Wonders of the World: Recite” in Missoula, Montana.
Do you want to talk about that show?
Donna: Sure. I had just finished a tour that was from September through December [2005] and it ended in Idaho so I was able to move to Montana. We spent about three or four months building the show. We wrote it in about two or three weeks and then rehearsed it in a dark basement, just the two of us. And then we invited our friend Leo Gephardt to write the music and we had our friend Sarah Lowry, who is now the third member of the Missoula Oblongata, come up from Denver to direct it. And then we toured it all summer from May to August and then moved here and got a lot of invites and requests to come perform it again which we had not really anticipated. We did a January tour and some shows in February.
What brought you to Western Massachusetts?
M: We were really happy in Montana and we had a really wonderful community there. It’s a very regionally-specific area of the country where there are some true originals.
D: We miss it very much.
M: Yeah, we’re pretty homesick. But I got into grad school here in the MFA program at UMass for fiction writing. And so I decided to move here and since Donna’s family is from the Northeast it made sense for her to move back and for us to keep making theater based out of Northampton.
Donna, can you talk about what you’re doing in Northampton in addition to this theater group?
D: Actually, this theater group is all I do, and I’m very happy about that. It’s all I really want to do. It’s my ambition so I’m glad to just be living somewhere and having a life where I can spend all my time working on creating theater with my very favorite people and realizing all of our artistic dreams. It’s really fun.
So, has this been a balance for you, Madeline, being in this graduate program and doing the Missoula Oblongata? Has that been challenging for you in terms of time?
M: Well, I’m lucky because the program here is very supportive. So far, the faculty seems to just want and expect that you’ll be doing your own artistic work, and you have some pretty structured goals of your own and they try not to interfere. If they do have to interfere they’re usually pretty apologetic. They expect that you’ll spend most of your time working on your own things and for me that’s really true. Also, it’s all connected. Being in graduate school definitely gives me support, some time, and a little bit of extra money to be able to just work fulltime on creative work and that includes writing and also theater for me. So it’s pretty complimentary…Donna and I write together and the theater company is a fulltime job for us. We work on it everyday, sometimes all day and sometimes have to remind each other to have fun and go dancing, [laughs] and not just talk shop all the time. And actually this semester I’m doing an independent study which is making the new show. So I prioritize the Missoula Oblongata and I find a way to spend almost all of my time doing that.
D: There’s no part of what we do as a little theater company that is peripheral to any of us. We’ve really worked to simultaneously prioritize this and dedicate ourselves to it quite single-mindedly, to the point of pathology, and yet have our own lives where we can do other things.
You’ve mentioned this really great community in Missoula and I’m curious how this area has compared.
D: It’s a really interesting question because we spend a lot of our time here missing Missoula and wondering, “Is there even a niche for us here? What are we doing?” We’ve struggled a little bit to find a community here that we can feel really connected to and to make ourselves feel like an integral part in whatever scene is going on. But at the same time, the shows that we’ve had here were extremely well attended to the point of people having to leave because there wasn’t enough room. We’re really well received and it seems like people want more things to happen. All of the feedback that we’ve gotten from people in this community has been like, “Thank you for making things happen!” So that is a real blessing because though in Missoula we had a great time and people we’re really supportive of experimental performance, I would be lying if I said things were as well attended there. It seemed like people there were happy to have us and excited about it, but so far the reception here has been really warm.
M: Yeah, it was a little slow going at first, especially since I was the pioneer coming out here in September and Donna joined me in October. I really had just met people in my program, but now we’ve met other people in the community who we really admire as performers and seem to be doing some pretty experimental, interdisciplinary things. That’s exciting. So, I think it’s easy to move somewhere and just feel like, “Oh, there’s nothing going on. Remember how it used to be where we lived before?” But I think that just has to do with being on the periphery and then learning how to get involved, and find community and respect the groundwork that other people have been laying to create a scene. There’s some pretty amazing and gutsy experimental work going on here.
For more information and tour dates visit: http://www.themissoulaoblongata.com/
Matt Dineen is a writer and activist based in Northampton. Contact him at: passionsandsurvival@gmail.com
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Intellectual Work and Economic Survival
By Ellen Willis
On the crudest level, the lives of American intellectuals and artists are defined by one basic problem: how to reconcile intellectual or creative autonomy with making a living. They must either get someone to support their work--whether by selling it on the open market, or by getting the backing of some public or private institution--or find something to do that somebody is willing to pay for that will still leave them time to do their "real work." How hard it is to accomplish this at any given time, and what kinds of opportunities are available, not only affect the individual person struggling for a workable life, but the state of the culture itself. This tension between intellectual work and economic survival is thoroughly mundane and generally taken for granted by those who negotiate it every day; but to look at the history of the past thirty years or so is to be struck by the degree to which the social, cultural, and political trajectory of American life is bound up with this most ordinary of conflicts.
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Exerpted from "The Writer's Voice: Intellectual Work in the Culture of Austerity," in Post-Work: The Wages of Cybernation (Routledge, 1998).
On the crudest level, the lives of American intellectuals and artists are defined by one basic problem: how to reconcile intellectual or creative autonomy with making a living. They must either get someone to support their work--whether by selling it on the open market, or by getting the backing of some public or private institution--or find something to do that somebody is willing to pay for that will still leave them time to do their "real work." How hard it is to accomplish this at any given time, and what kinds of opportunities are available, not only affect the individual person struggling for a workable life, but the state of the culture itself. This tension between intellectual work and economic survival is thoroughly mundane and generally taken for granted by those who negotiate it every day; but to look at the history of the past thirty years or so is to be struck by the degree to which the social, cultural, and political trajectory of American life is bound up with this most ordinary of conflicts.
---
Exerpted from "The Writer's Voice: Intellectual Work in the Culture of Austerity," in Post-Work: The Wages of Cybernation (Routledge, 1998).
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