direct action

The ceremony had gone smoothly. Ronald Reagan was given a crystal statue. His audience responded with warm applause. Then an obscure activist approached the lectern. What happened next is a modern parable of how we grant authority - and to whom.

It is the intense experiences that shape us and on June 1, 1997 I walked around a corner to see an angry group of Eugene (Oregon) citizens threatening to engulf a logging operation and police line. There is plenty to this story including my introduction to teargas. Check it out.

"IMMEDIAST projects are against all forms of coercive communication, cultural monologue and media control. We acknowledge non-violent public insurgence as a legitimate response to sustained violations by media and state. We recognize the air as public property, and the signals that travel through it to be the domain of the public."

In late 1997, I teamed up with several other people and toured the west coast, serving good, lovin' food to thousands of homeless and houseless people, from Eugene, Oregon down to the San Francisco Bay area, and ultimately to Tucson, Arizona. Living, loving, and cooking out of a thirty or so foot Winnebago was, perhaps, the most educating experience of my life, at least until that time. It was here that I learned what practical anarchy was - you know, the kind of anarchy that exists outside an academic vacuum - the kind of anarchy pleasantly devoid of anarchisms.