This past month has flown by so fast. I think one of the main reasons is that I've had an increasingly structured life, and with out the constant change, one week blends into another. And all of the sudden I come to this moment, two days since I've left Boston, and I can hardly believe everything that has formed around me during my time there.
A Weekly Schedule
One of the things that has grounded me most is having a fairly consistent weekly schedule around which I would schedule everything else. I worked full days on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and half days on Wednesday, but I worked in the afternoon so Wednesday morning was just a slow morning. Then I volunteered with Food not Bombs every Friday and Sunday from about 11am to about 6 pm or later. That meant I really only had Saturdays and Mondays off. That is pretty close to full time work, and those of you who have done that know how difficult it is to do much else in that time. Whereas in my first month I was always looking for cool things to do and spending hours at MIT student center more or less killing time, as my schedule stabilized I found myself rejecting invitations to event, sometimes because I was busy, but often because I was feeling burnt out from the day to day and just wanted time off, or time to meet up with friends. To me that signaled a big shift in mentality. It was one defining element that helped to establish that I was in fact settled.
An Update on Occupation
I talked a lot about the occupation last time and about my involvement in it. Since then I have been spending less and less time there, only stopping off occasionally to say hello or take a shift at the food tent. I did make it down at least several times a week to drop off food or pick up Cambros for food not bombs, but usually I was in a hurry and didn't stay any longer than to do the pick up or drop off. My path seems to be the path of many of the activist folk who originally got involved. The sentiment at first was "this is happening now, we don't know how long it will last, so everything has to get put on hold". As days turned to weeks, most of the activist types realized that they have many other things in their lives: school, work, family, friends, and a number of other things that they wanted to dedicate themselves to. At the same time, the weather got worse and worse, and so just hanging out at the occupation or sleeping there became increasingly less comfortable. Some people dropped off altogether or almost altogether like me, while others just scaled back to various degrees. Some people I know stayed extremely committed, which is part of why the camp still continues to function, but a lot of the energy is gone. GAs have gone from pretty big every night to only being held a few times a week and getting small crowds. Marches went from every day to only once or twice a week. So the energy started waning.
At the same time, word spread that there is a place where you can get free food all day long, where you can get a spot under a tent, where you can get free blankets, sleeping bags, socks, and many other necessities. So crowds who are often lacking in those items began to flock there. Some of these people were amazing in their dedication to the camp. Much of the construction around camp was done by folks who are currently homeless and unemployed. Almost the whole security team was and is made of of people who are homeless, and many homeless people take the longest shifts at cleaning or the food tent. However, many people who are homeless have a number of issues chasing them which cause them to land there. Drugs, mental illness, general social difficulties. So there was a new influx of folks who were more interested in the free stuff than in the movement, and brought all of these difficulties with them. As the balance began tipping between people who did not put too big of a strain on occupy resources and were invested their energy in activism, and those people who were just hanging out, the occupation grew less interesting as a place for political expression and became often more frightening and especially at night more dangerous. This in turn pushed activist types away even more.
That's how things are in Boston, I can't speak with certainty about anywhere else, but based on what I've heard, it sounds like most occupations are facing similar challenges (I just visited occupy Philly that seems to be the case there). I hope that as a movement we can some to think strategically about next steps. Many people have brought up that occupation is still very important for all of those who live there and rely on it. I completely agree, but I also think as the energy around it wanes and excitement for it from outside fades, the actual occupation becomes less and less sustainable. It is no longer that helpful for the political message, and just ignoring that it is fading is also bad politically. I just think it would be helpful to shift the activist focus from the actual occupation. Some creative things have come out already, like the daily mic checking of a big name speaker or some company meeting. As I prepare to leave the US and disengage somewhat, I am excited to see what will happen with all of the energy that has already been generated.
Some awesome things have already been achieved no matter what happens. Left/radical/anarchist forces have shown that they can get together and get a lot of attention and support. This has shown the great depth and breadth of disillusionment in society. It has also caused a lot of people to wake up. Many people who thought of the police first and foremost as there to protect us no recognize the degree of their brutalization, and realize that police are first and foremost responsible for protecting non-human people (previously known as corporations). Many people who thought things were more or less ok, perhaps needed a little bit of tweaking, have been exposed to how deep and wide the rotten elements actually go. I was talking to a friend the other day and he said that just last week, all of the sudden everything his anarchist friends have been saying suddenly clicked and made sense. In his words, he realized some small regulations (like raising taxes on the rich) would only mildly alleviate part of the problem temporarily, but that the real problem is much deeper. Finally, many activist were for the first time exposed to consensus process and civil disobedience, whether the philosophy behind it or getting to do it for the first time. I would say that if the occupations achieved nothing more, we can still say that they have been very successful and achieved a lot. And yet I hope to see so much more.
Growing Roots in the Community and Feeling at Home
One of the main goals of my travels is to learn community building. When I say community building I don't mean structuring or cementing communities for other people, rather I mean finding ways to build myself into a community. This involves making one-on-one friends, learn and adapting to the natural activities, flows, and language of the group, and somehow having that magic switch get flipped so that I feel a part of the collective and so that I blend in. I wanted to practice this because I think there is a decent amount of learned skill involved. I have moved to several new places in my life, and the challenge of reestablishing myself in a new location and around new people has been very real every time, and yet i always felt unprepared. These are skills that are always helpful because we are always moving, and that should can be helpful in subcontexts as well like getting a new job or going to a party with many people I don't know. So I decided to practice.
Boston was a very easy place to start because it was relatively safe since I already knew so many people there. However the place and the community where I ended up feeling most at home was not related to anyone I knew before I came there. I've talked before about having really good interactions in the anarchist community in Boston. This community, and specifically the people involved in food not bombs and at the food not bombs house became my group and my family during my last few weeks in Boston.
There are a number of reasons I can think of that helped affect this. One big piece is that starting in mid October, I began staying only at co-op houses that were all part of this community. I decided to stay only in co-op houses for a few reasons. I was still very busy with the occupation at the time, and staying up until four to record the cops busting down the occupy Boston extension or riding out to West Roxbury to do jail support late at night was not always conducive to my hosts schedules. I felt like I was being constrained by that and knew that I would have more freedom with my hours at collective living houses. Also, I was always worried I was burdening my hosts and making them feel like they had to do things for me or spend time with me. I too would feel a certain obligation to spend time with my hosts, but I was getting busier. The cool thing about a collective house is that I could be hosted by the house itself, which meant that no one felt responsible for me, and I didn't feel responsible to anyone. I enjoyed hanging out with people while I was around, but I didn't feel a need to coordinate with them. Doing some dishes seemed sufficient. Since I felt that I was less in the way, I also had less of a problem asking collective houses to take me in for one to two weeks, and that was really nice because I had grown very tired of moving twice a week. And finally I knew I would be surrounded by awesome people doing awesome things, so it was an opportunity to make new friends who are all connected in this community. I also started spending more and more time at the food not bombs house, to hang out with people, to do the regular meals, to do special occupation meals, or to just do other random stuff there. I went over a few times just to bake stuff, like a pumpkin dessert, and went over once to build a bike rack.
Eventually I felt really connected and really comfortable. The food not bombs house in particular, and the people who lived there and would come through it came to be my home. That's what made it so difficult to leave. But it also means that I was very successful in Boston. More successful than I had ever imagined. On my last day, some one asked me "what have you achieved?" while I was in Boston. More than anything this is what I had achieved. This community, being more integrated than I ever imagined I would be. Feeling in some ways more plugged-in than I had felt anytime while I was in Kalamazoo. And all of this in three months. It gives me a lot of hope for my future travels. It's also a little concerning because I have set the bar really high. But if I have anything like this to look forward to, my travels are going to continue to be great.
And that is how I hope to grow my wings, so to speak. If I can learn to integrate in a community somewhere or a few places, than I can learn to do so anywhere, and I can learn to do so everywhere. That means I can feel free to go anywhere, and feel able to know how to manage myself. It also provides me with the concept of back-ups, which is a powerful thing to carry with you. Many of you know that I often struggle with the concept of home. For a long time I used to say that I didn't have a home because I couldn't peg down one place that really felt like where I belonged, that I would naturally use as the answer to the question "where are you from?" Now I instead believe that I ave many homes. That anyplace where I have a strong community is my home. Boston was a place where I once lived and where I had some friends. Now it's another place that I would list among my homes.
Travel Details and Travel PlansAs you know from an earlier email, I have been keeping meticulous records of a number of things while I've been traveling, one of them being expenses. I'm happy to report that I'm still keeping a frugal life style, I've spent one the order of $600 in the last three months. It's important to reiterate that this is only possible because of a whole but of privilege and gifts and generosity from family and friends. You should look back to the earlier post/email all about this if you don't understand what I mean. Health wise things could be better. Considering my circumstances I have been very good at not getting sick, with only a minor cold for about two days. However I have been having some pretty bad back problems, so that for about a week I was barely able to walk or bike. I saw a doctor and went to some physical therapy but there was nothing very productive that came out of either. My back was getting a lot better until today when I was working on a bike and pulled it again. If any of you remember at the very beginning when I talked about how heavy my backpack is and mentioned that if I couldn't get rid of enough stuff I would probably suffer long term back pain. Turns out I was unfortunately too good at predicting the future. I also discovered that I got my first cavities and had to get some fillings.
As for my future plans, I am headed to Ecuador. My route there involved stopping off in Philly, Baltimore, DC, and Chapel Hill, each for a few days, mostly to visit friends, and then taking the train to Miami so I can fly to Peru where I will meet up with my sister and hike Machu Picchu and then fly with her to Ecuador to meet up with my parents and brother. Once there we have a packed itinerary for our family trip. I haven't actually been paying that much attention to what exactly it will be. I have faith hat my parents will choose great things for us and am mostly excited to travel around, be with my family, and not have to worry about taking care of myself for a few weeks. That takes me up to December 31st, when my family leaves and I stay. I have no idea what I will do at that time. I would stay in Ecuador, I could travel around South America, I could go to Chile. I am determined to make it to Panama and visit my host family there at some point. So everything remains open. I'm hoping to catch a birthright trip in the summer, so I'll have to be back in the US before then, but I have no real plans figured out. And that is exciting.
There is so much more that has happened during this time, but this email is already extremely long and if I only write once a month I'm going to have to pick and choose. This is the stuff that came to mind while I was writing, which probably means what I have been thinking about most during this time. I'm always happy to divulge more in personal emails, and am always curious to hear about your lives.
