Stuff, Stuff, And More Stuff

Tonight I went to my cross-class dialogue group, a pretty cool bunch of folks trying to wrap their heads around who they are and where they fit in relation to others. Class is the subject we don't know how to talk about. It's just not polite. So we gather in each other's homes once a month and politely transgress. Tonight's postprandial discussion centered on this, The Story of Stuff. A lot of information, brilliantly delivered.

A few hours earlier, I went on Kevin Cole's show at KEXP to talk about Real Change. We're their featured Audioasis group this month, which means we get a bunch of PSA's, a couple of interviews, and a benefit show this Saturday at the Sunset Tavern. The two-minute scheduled interview went on for ten. Kevin was cool, I was on, and the thing just flowed. I got to talk about the I-100 jails campaign, say we do "kick-ass organizing," and utter the phrase, "The more hell we raise, the bigger the checks people write." Which, actually, is true.



When I got back to Real Change after the interview, I found that a public defender had called about one of our vendors. He hasn't been around. Turns out he's been in jail for about two weeks after being arrested for standing while Black. Apparently, it's a criminal offense to loiter in a high drug crime area. You don't need to have drugs, sell drugs, or even be on drugs. All you need to do is have low enough status to get tossed in jail for nothing and be powerless to do a fucking thing about it. And no one has lower status than a homeless Black guy.

The volunter who took the lawyer's phone call gave me twenty bucks toward his $150 bail. Someone from my cross-class dialogue book handed me another twenty. I'm thinking that if I ask around, by noon tomorrow I've got his bail and we can spring him. He could, from what I understand, sit there for months over this matter of standing while Black. I think I'm starting to understand why Seattle thinks they need a new jail so damn badly, and why there are nearly ten times as many Black people on average jailed in King County than are represented in the population.

As I was writing just now, The Story of Stuff was playing in the background, and the narrator reached her conclusion:

There are people working on taking back our government, so it really is by the people and for the people. All this work is really important. But things are really going to start moving when we see the connections. When we see the big picture. When people across the lines get united, we can reclaim and reform this system into something new. A system that doesn't waste resources or people. Because what we really need to chuck is that old school throw-away mindset. ... Some say it's unrealistic, idealistic, and it can't happen, but I say the ones who are unrealistic are the ones who want to continue with the old path. That's dreaming. Remember, it didn't just happen. It's not like gravity, something we just have to live with. People created it. And we're people too, so let's create something new.

She was talking about stuff, but we throw away people as well. One leads to the other. And the mass incarceration system that has one in 99 Americans behind bars isn't mandated by natural law either. Just twenty-five years ago, that didn't exist either. We made it, and we can make it go away.

See A Show. Support Real Change. Febuary 7.

KEXP is doing a bunch of on-air PSAs for Real Change this month and a big benefit show on February 7. They tell me the line-up kicks ass. I wouldn't know. I'm old. But I believe them. I'll be there. Hope you can make it.

Sometimes, Only This Will Do

This'll tell you a little about where I'm at these days. My favorite new way to test my car's speakers on the drive home is to see how loud I can play Watch Out For This Thing, the new CD from Seattle's The Whore Moans. I heard them for the first time a few months back live on KEXP and have to say, their front man sounded even better with his voice all rasped out with a cold.

Last night I was trying to think of the right superlative, and it came to me this morning: utterly fucking primal. This guy's got a punk rock shriek that runs from the upper range of a three-year-old's scream to the lower registers of an accelerating F-15.

You can hear the whole album on CD Baby. Ten songs and not a single dog. Listen to Sweet As A Peach — my favorite moments are when the vocals first come ripping into the song and the split second of dead silence before the key change at 1:24 — or the anthemic Disappear, which rises to Fugazi-ish levels of awesomeness. This is one of those releases that, like Iggy Pop's Raw Power, Mission of Burma's EP, Fugazi's Thirteen Songs, or Gang of Four's Entertainment!, is destined to be a classic.

The video is from The Comet last February,

Boston vs. Seattle

It's been thirteen years to the day since I moved here from Boston to start Real Change. I no longer feel as though the ocean is misplaced. It seems normal that cops drink mineral water instead of Dunkin Donuts coffee, and that everyone else drinks coffee like water. Seattle is my home. I am damp, but happy.

Still, being in San Francisco this week made me nostalgic for a real city. Here's my scorecard:

Boston is better.

1.) The Boston Globe is a world class newspaper.
2.) Driving is a blood sport, and way more fun.
3.) WGBH kicks KCTS's ass.
4.) People on the City Council openly hate each other.
5.) The T.
6.) Used bookstores are better and cheaper.
7.) Triple decker apartments and gas stoves.
8.) Jaywalking is not a crime.
9.) The people and politics are aggressive, but not passive.
10.)They have the Statehouse.

Seattle is better.

1.) Mt. Ranier, the Cascades, the Olympic Peninsula.
2.) Generally overcast skies (yes, I like that).
3.) Coffee, everywhere.
4.) Greenness.
5.) Temperate weather.
6.) Real Change.
7.) Water, everywhere.
8.) Capitol Hill Queers
9.) KEXP
10.)ummm. Did I mention Real Change?

OK. I guess outside of the geography, weather, coffee, Queers, KEXP, and Real Change, Boston actually is better. Most of the best stuff about Seattle, even since I've moved here, has been eclipsed by yuppie monoculture.

As the density increases and average incomes rise, everything that makes Seattle feel like a real city — danger, excitement, diversity — is being lost. Faux urban, in all of it's coopted and commodified glory, is mostly what's left.

We're a long way from Cinderella Liberty.