My Mother Wears Combat Boots
I was excited to get the announcement recently that Jessica Mills has published a book on punk parenting, called My Mother Wears Combat Boots.
Jessica published a 3-part story in the first few issues of Clamor about her baby-making, “Oh Baby! Reflections on a first pregnancy.” She was one of those people that trusted Clamor early on, and I appreciate that.
Congratulations Jessica! I’m looking forward to reading it, though I suppose I am not planning on having babies myself anytime soon.
Our vision for the world: can you give me a suggestion?
I’ve become more convinced recently that one way to reinforce social-justice or radical ideas about culture and society is to inject and then reinforce those ideas into society by using popular culture. Movies, novels, TV shows, etc not only to introduce new concepts and allow us space to suggest how they might work out in real life, but allow us as consumers as media to first consider the possibilities, and second, process how it would affect our individual lives.
Can you help me think about what movies and books already exist that do this? While books like Ursula LeGuin’s The Dispossessed are classics (and she is one of my favorite authors of all time), books like this one represent anarchist ideals in a removed and detatched way – in a future/distant world that is not the world we have now, and would be difficult to get to. What books represent things like consensus, mutual aid, cooperation, non-nuclear family structures, or care for the environment as “normal” (i.e. not in a marginalizing way, or viewed as exception but viewed as the way it should be or the way everyone does it) and in a realistic way? What books posit a positive, good future, as opposed to the nightmare of Orwell’s 1984?
Although this example comes from prose and not from fiction or film, the thing that really comes to mind is Rebecca Solnit’s essays. She often off-handedly mentions being at a protest or being an activist as if every one does it, and it’s the thing to do. I love that.
Any ideas?
Job openning at WRL
WRL is doing some amazing work these days, this is a great opportunity for someone who wants a paid organizing gig.
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Job Opening
War Resisters League National Office
New York, NY
Position: Organizing Coordinator
The War Resisters League seeks a strategic, self-directed, and experienced Organizing Coordinator to help build and develop our work on a national level. The Organizing Coordinator is based in our national office, and is responsible for implementing our national programs, developing new materials, and facilitating coalition and partnership based projects. As one of the leading radical voices in the anti-war movement, we challenge military recruitment and war profiteering, organize nonviolent direct action, support conscientious objectors and GI resisters, and offer on-the-ground education. Our current projects include the Not Your Soldier Project, the Bite the Bullet Network, and a number of local and regional anti-war organizing projects. We also work closely with conscientious objectors, veterans organizations and advocates to help build and sustain a national movement supporting GI resisters. Read the rest of this entry »
