David Solnit & The Art of Protest
David Solnit - Photo by Brihannala Morgan
I first met David Solnit in 1996, during the Active Resistance conference in Chicago. We became close after I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2006, and I’ve really learned a lot from him.
He’s spent the last 25 years organizing in a variety of movements, from anti-nuclear to anti-war, and I’ve come to really respect him as someone who has a wide and long-term vision for how change happens, directly influencing the nature and style of social change organizing in the U.S.
I interviewed him in November 2008. Because David was involved in the organizing of the 1999 WTO Protests in Seattle, I had originally conceived of this interview as a reflection to be published in the lead-up to the 10th anniversary of that moment. But the interview is much more wide ranging than that, covering, more generally, art and protest in the United States.
The interview has just been published online by the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, and you can read the full length version here.
Here are a couple of excerpts:
JA: Seattle was such a flashpoint for a lot of people, but it didn’t happen over night. Can you talk about the process of leading up to the ‘99 WTO protests and battling the myths that have come up about that organizing?
DS: Seattle brought together many of the movements that had been simmering; forest activism, sweat shop organizing, housing and homeless, environmental, workers, solidarity–all different kinds of movements– and it created a systemic framework in which people could converge and act in concert. There is a widespread activist myth that It was a spontaneous rebellion, which has led to a lot of badly organized mass mobilizations where people think that the Seattle recipe is you put out a call to action, set up a website, rent a convergence center, you know and people will miraculously come. Instead it was six months of creating organizational structures and building and strengthening networks, doing mobilizing which means face to face meetings and events, getting lists of people who are going, helping them get on busses and carpools, training people and preparing them for direct action and massive infrastructure, mass trainings and building alliances between movements. The mobilizations this year around the Democratic and Republican Conventions, while amazingly audacious and courageous, they lacked broad-based organizing and basic what and why strategy and the hardcore of activists who did step up got pretty beaten up.
Disposable Culture II
After my post the other day on disposability, I really loved visiting the Monterey Bay Aquarium and seeing all of the things they do to raise awareness about consumption, like these signs in the bathroom, or the dual flush toilets, the signs in the vending area saying to consider not using a straw or a plastic lid for your drink. They even had real plates and silverware there. Of course, next to the hand towels they could have put a dryer, but you know, at least they are trying.
The Barnard Zine Library
Here's Jenna (on the left) with some other Radical Reference librarians in 2005 at the Allied Media Conference in Bowling Green
While I was in New York in April, I had the distinct pleasure of visiting Jenna Freedman at the Barnard Zine Library. The library, which Jenna started in 2003, holds over 2000 zines. Many of them are available in the library and you can just pick one off the shelf and read it. Students of Barnard and Columbia can just walk in to the library – and the collection is open to the public if you call ahead and tell them to expect you (so they will let you in without an ID). You can get all the info on their web page.
I have known Jenna for quite some time but had never visited the library. While the last few months have seemed to kick off a year of meeting and interacting with people and things from my past (like meeting lots of old punks while living in Portland for 3 months, or doing an interview for Mike McKee’s book all about ’90s hardcore, or looking through all my old copies of Fucktooth), visiting this library was particularly nostalgic for me. The collection has quite a few zines by women, and as I flipped through old copies of Emergency, for example, I couldn’t help but remember reading those issues for the first time, and how important they were for me. There were so many zines that were so intimate and personal and important, they really had an impact on me and how I think about myself and interact with people. Of course I haven’t talked to many of those people in eons, and I wonder where Ammi is these days, or Travis Fristoe from America? or Theo Witsell from Spectacle or Mike from In Abandon. Maybe I just need to search Facebook until I find them.
There were tons of old zines that I hadn’t seen in forever, but there were also tons more zines I had never seen – maybe that is the best part of libraries and bookstores, that they give you access to things you would never find otherwise. I loved browsing the zines, old and new, touching and holding them in a way that satisfies like the Internet never will.
On the Road Some More (yes, another long post)
Yes, it is true, I have been back in the Bay Area for a few weeks. But honestly, a series of setback, such as my laptop completely dying, have prevented me from making any posts. Really, it was because all my photos are on my laptop and I really don’t like making posts without photos. And let me make a shout-out right now to Apple for how much I love love love the Time Machine part of their operating system. Time Machine is a super-simple back up program that means I back up my entire computer every day, sometimes several times a day. And what it really means is that when I get my new computer (tomorrow??) I will be able to completely restore everything from the old one. It makes me think back to those days when I was in college (15 years ago) and the technology was just not easy and how devastated I was whenever I lost something. Do you back up your computer? You should.
ANYWAY, I wanted to write the part 2 of my epic road trip story, and of course there are a dozen other things to blog about after that. So first of all, after leaving North Carolina, I traveled to New York City, Cleveland, Ohio, and Columbia, Missouri.
So, here we go:
- Clamor. I did a talk on the Clamor pamphlet at Bluestockings Bookstore in Manhattan. First of all, I love Bluestockings. It’s a great space and everyone who I’ve met who works there is awesome. They have a great line-up of events, so definitely a good resource for New York. The Clamor talk was probably my favorite of the whole tour because it was the first time in years that I had been in the same room as co-founder Jason Kucsma and consulting editor Josh Breitbart. That was a real treat, and I thought that they really added insight and depth to the conversation about the magazine, its history and its legacy. The discussion was really great. One of the threads that came out of it was how the pamphlet is really about organizational dynamics and how the project functioned, and doesn’t really reflect the political moment within which Clamor existed. I definitely agree that would be an interesting project, as a lot happened over the seven years we were publishing, and that would help give more political context. I’d like to publish a post of the essence of my talk, but that will have to wait until the new computer arrives. Read the rest of this entry »
