That's All Right, We Got This

View of downtown Manhattan after the Hurricane Sandy blackout showing only the Goldman Sachs building still lit.

At the height of hurricane Sandy on Monday night, lower Manhattan was plunged into darkness. As the wind buffeted the city and the waves overran low-lying coastal areas, electric power failed in many parts of the city. My Brooklyn neighborhood was lucky, surviving with only a few downed trees. In lower Manhattan, one building stayed alit: the headquarters of Goldman Sachs, the massive Wall Street firm legendary for corporate greed on a massive, should-be-criminal scale. This symbolic coincidence has not been lost on the people of New York City. Fuck Goldman Sachs. Fuck Wall Street. We don't need you.

Occupy Sandy Relief NYC: almost ten thousand likes on Facebook in 4 days translated into many hundreds of volunteers on the ground and significant real-world mutual aid.

While Mayor Bloomberg debated cancelling the New York Marathon with the tabloid press, while President Obama claimed to be sending massive amounts of FEMA assistance, as the Red Cross started cranking up its donation engines, the people of New York also noticed something else: nothing was actually happening on the ground to help the thousands of people either displaced by wind, flood and fire, or trapped in powerless, heatless homes no longer served by public transportation. Enter the Occupy movement, yes the Occupy Wall Street movement derided as dead by so many on all sides of the media. Occupy activists gathered together and quickly formed "Occupy Sandy Relief: NYC," simultaneously unveiling a Facebook page and going out to the ravaged Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook to see what was up with our neighbors and try and lend a hand. Fuck the liberals who are phonebanking for Obama this weekend. Fuck the smug pundits writing their contemptuous obituaries for Occupy. Fuck you Mayor Bloomberg and your private NYPD army. We don't need you.

Outreach for Occupy Sandy at a Brooklyn Church (photo by me)

Within a day the Occupy Sandy activists had a food kitchen set up near a blacked-out low-income housing project and were prowling the flooded streets reaching out to frightened hurricane survivors. In a few hours they expanded operations to the Rockaways, both to the middle-class neighborhood ravaged by a massive fire, and the working class areas full of people seemingly abandoned by the city and alleged relief agencies. They soon began to reach out to Staten Island, where angry residents were feeling ignored and forgotten. (While Staten Island is home to a notoriously right-wing white community it's also home to large working-class communities of color: A community of color which just lost two of its youngest sons, swept away in the flood to their deaths as their mother cried for help, ignored by cold-hearted neighbors.) Politicians started to tour the scenes of devastation. And yet, people were still left to fend for themselves. Grassroots organizations started to follow Occupy's lead and soon started helping to fill the void. But one thing became very clear: those who were most effected by Frankenstorm Sandy needed mutual aid. We would have to do this ourselves.

After my small neighborhood General Assembly meeting this morning, now held in the lobby of an apartment building on rent strike because of the machinations of a charitable agentocracy, we walked over to St. Jacobi's church and joined the hundreds of people arriving every few minutes to make donations of food, material goods, or their time to the cause of people's hurricane relief. We sat through a quick volunteer orientation where it was explained that this was not about saving other people it was about empowering communities to help themselves. It was explained that this was Occupy walking its principles of anti-oppression and horizontal organization. Racism, sexism and homophobia were condemned. We were advised to treat each other and members of the afflicted communities with respect, without being condescending or patronizing, to listen for what was needed. Each of us could be a leader in the relief effort. In a half hour I was leading volunteer orientations myself. This was Occupy's radical vision in action. Fuck the nonprofit industrial complex with its overpaid staff and its penchant for channeling people's rage into harmless nonprofit triplicate. We don't need you.

Altar for the Day of the Dead at St. Jacobi Church in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, in the recreation room being used by hundreds of volunteers to sort donations and prepare food for meals to be delivered to hurricane victims. (photo by me)

Tens of thousands of meals were prepared for people in affected neighborhoods. Carpools were organized to ferry goods and people between Occupy Sandy intake centers and those neighborhoods. Donations flooded in. People spread out to help neighbors support each other, help clean up, help find out who was in need. People were motivated and stayed enthusiastic and united. This happened under the leadership of a movement led largely by anarchists and social justice activists radically influenced by anarchist thought. An activist friend of mine complained on facebook that a "socialist" acquaintance had shouted at her, "we need solidarity not charity." Which is sadly typical of much of the left's sneering dismissal of Occupy. Because this is real solidarity. This is the real world. This is what it means to organize, to relate to real people. These downtrodden and oppressed people don't look like a history book, they look like your neighbors, surviving a hurricane. Fuck the social democrats waiting for an imaginary labor party they can make themselves head of. Fuck the trotskyists and their world of weasel-word formulations. Fuck the condescending saviors who think they know everything but don't even know who the workers are and won't lift a finger to be with them.

Time has moved on. This is not the world of 2008. This is not the world of 2010. This is why I am not voting for Obama. This is the future. This is hard work. This is painful. This is joyful. This is the not-so-slow-motion apocalypse that we can only stop if we get real busy now with our friends and comrades. This is the possibility of winning. This is the possibility of losing. This is fear, this is hope. This is how it's going to be, from now on.

Fuck the government, fuck the state. We don't need you. People's power is coming.

Hurricane Sandy Relief

Flooded subway in Brooklyn, from the Daily Mail UK

Those interested in helping victims of the Frankenstorm "Sandy" in New York City should visit the following sites:

• on Facebook, comrades of the Occupy movement have established "Occupy Sandy Relief NYC" as a clearinghouse. They've established food kitchens in the flooded neighborhoods of Red Hook and Rockaway.

• working with Occupy folks and established community organizations, recovers.org has established three relevant pages for hard-hit neighborhoods, which include portals for donations.
The Lower East Side Recovers
Red Hook Recovers
Astoria Recovers

• It's capitalism. Great article on Kasama, "How the 1% Created a Monster."

My neighborhood lucked out this time. Lots of wind but only minor tree damage. We've had electricity the whole time. But many of my friends in Manhattan have been flooded out or stranded without power or heat. 

Rick Perry's Plan to F*ck the Cr@p out of the Environment... (USA! USA!)

Rick Perry said it, but this is pretty much the platform of the entire Republican party:

"America has proven but untapped supplies of natural gas, oil and coal. America is the Saudi Arabia of coal with 25 percent of the world’s supply. Our country contains up to 134 billion barrels of oil and nearly 1.2 quadrillion cubic feet of natural gas....But President Obama and his over-reaching Environmental Protection Agency won’t allow American businesses and American labor to draw on even a fraction of this domestic energy from reserves on government-owned lands....

We will open several American oil and gas fields for exploration that are currently off limits because of political considerations. The current administration has restricted exploration in the Gulf of Mexico, Alaska, and the mid-Atlantic....I will work to open up Alaska’s abundant resources to oil and gas exploration, including the ANWR Coastal Plain and the National Petroleum Reserve of Alaska. In this one instance, we will need congressional authorization. But it is worth it when you consider we will create 120,000 jobs. We will initiate off-shore exploration in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas off the northern and western coasts of Alaska. This will create 55,000 jobs. We will resume pre-Obama levels of exploration in the Gulf of Mexico and create another 230,000 jobs. I will support the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline to take Canadian Crude to coastal refineries, which would create 20,000 direct jobs for American workers....And right here in Pennsylvania, and across the state line in West Virginia and Ohio, we will tap the full potential of the Marcellus Shale and create another 250,000 jobs by getting the EPA out of the way...." —Texas governor and 2012 Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry announcing his "energy" plan yesterday in Pittsburgh. Below, what Texas looks like today.

Yes, they actually think the Environmental Protection Agency is a chief cause of the economic crisis.

News from the Malabar Front: Job-Killing Ozone Regulations Halted! Job Creators Applaud! "Air You Can See" Restored!

"As president, I will restore the force of the Clean Air Act. I will fight for continued reductions in smog and soot, and continue my leadership in combating toxins that contribute to air pollution. Unlike President Bush, I will listen to my scientific advisers on air quality standards. And I will reverse the Bush administration's attempts to chip away at our nation's clean air standards and the integrity of our national parks. I will also protect roadless areas in our national lands."
— Presidential Candidate Barack Obama, 2008

"The Bush-era EPA's decision was immediately challenged in court.... The legal defensibility of the 2008 decision posed major challenges for the federal government given the strength of the scientific record at that time.... I decided that reconsideration was the appropriate path based on concerns that the 2008 standards were not legally defensible."
— President Obama's EPA administrator Lisa P. Jackson, July 13, 2011 on her office's strong recommendation to revamp current ozone/air pollution regulations

"What we need to do is pass the mother of all repeal bills, but it’s the repeal bill that will get a job killing regulations. And I would begin with the EPA, because there is no other agency like the EPA. It should really be renamed the job-killing organization of America."
— 2012 Republican Presidential Candidate Michele Bachmann, June 2011

"State and Local Officials Speak Out on President’s Commitment to Clean Air and a Strong Economy

Over the last two and half years the Obama Administration, under the leadership of EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, has taken some of the strongest actions since the enactment of the Clean Air Act four decades ago to protect our environment and the health of our families from air pollution.

On Friday, President Obama asked Administrator Jackson to withdraw the draft Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards at this time, as work is already underway to update a 2006 review of the science that will result in the reconsideration of the ozone standard in 2013...."
— bizarrely titled blogpost by "Cecilia Muñoz, Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Intergovernmental Affairs," apparently the most junior possible person to quote, on whitehouse.gov explaining President Obama's abandonment of new clean air rules

"I have continued to underscore the importance of reducing regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty, particularly as our economy continues to recover."
— President Obama, September 2, 2011

"[private-sector job growth] continues to be undermined by the triple threat of higher taxes, more failed ‘stimulus’ spending and excessive federal regulations."
— John Boehner, September 2, 2011

"I would like to say a few words in respect of the various other participants, besides ourselves, in the Munich Agreement. After everything that has been said about the German Chancellor today and in the past, I do feel that the House ought to recognise the difficulty for a man in that position to take back such emphatic declarations as he had already made amidst the enthusiastic cheers of his supporters, and to recognise that in consenting, even though it were only at the last moment, to discuss with the representatives of other Powers those things which he had declared he had already decided once for all, was a real and a substantial contribution on his part."
— British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, October 1938, offering sympathy for all the sacrifices Adolf Hitler had to make in the Bipartisan Munich Agreement. Chamberlain was shortly afterwards out of a job when German tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia and later, Poland.

Sometimes It's Not What You Expect

Above is the scene up in Margaretville, New York, on Sunday in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene. This was shot from the second floor of a commercial property owned by dear friends of mine. The building in the background is apparently now close to collapse...it housed a number of shops, a pub, and several floors of apartments. Margaretville is hundreds of miles away from me: I'm five long blocks from New York Harbor, and Margaretville is nestled safely up in the Catskill Mountains.

After the freak earthquake earlier in the week, we dutifully prepared to face nature's wrath this weekend. I stocked up on supplies, filled pots with water, shut windows and stayed indoors. Cut off from my boyfriend and others by the shutdown of the city's transit system, I waited out the storm. I listened to the mayor on the radio every once in a while sternly telling people to prepare for the worst.

In the middle of Saturday night I woke up and peered out the front door to a bizarrely apocalyptic sight: in the heavy rain water was flowing over the front sidewalk in a sheet as the trees shook and rustled in the furious wind. But shortly after I woke up in the morning the sun came out, the rain gone, the air calm. While the wind returned in the afternoon, there was no residual flood, and no trees had crashed onto our house. The feral cats out back didn't even seem to be wet.

The storm crashed into shore not far from here, and yet everything in the city had a pro forma feel to it. It took a day for the subway to be switched back on. I saw a neighbor airing out a wet basement. A friend photographed a tree that had split in two. But it was anticlimactic, a lot of wind and rain but it sure didn't feel like what we thought a hurricane would feel like. But in upstate New York, and neighboring Vermont, catastrophe.

Check out the Watershed Post website: amidst the heartbreaking photos is a live blog and a spreadsheet being used to locate survivors stranded by the wild uproar of the mountain rivers and streams. It's all broken roads and bridges and collapsed homes amidst brown water. I go up there once or twice a year to share the green tranquility of my friends' vacation homes: I recognize these familiar sights in disbelief. And the Metro North train line to my godfather's house in the Catskill foothills may be out for months, the trainbed washed completely away in many places.

The authorities had tried to protect something, whether the city or even merely their own reputations. We prepared for the worst, but the worst went elsewhere. We fool ourselves when we think someone other than Nature Herself is in control: by Her merest whim we survive. She moves on without looking back. Until next time.

Baked

Terrorism in Norway: the fruit of Islamophobia. Check out Mondoweiss.

The best possible result in the Washington debt game? Maybe it's no deal. Check out thinkprogress.

Amy Winehouse, RIP, sad, but her choices in life were pretty clear. She was a real talent.

The weather? Still impossible. Uh oh, out of iced coffee.

Ouch!

My computer is not in my air-conditioned room: Concerned about spontaneous combustion as the temperature inside at 10:30 pm reads 95 degrees fahrenheit, I'm going to go cool off and finish the third book of "The Game of Thrones" instead of write profound things about the debt game in Washington or the implementation of the DADT repeal or any number of things.

Man, it's hot!

"How To Survive a Plague"

This week marks the thirtieth anniversary of the medical establishment realizing that a new and virulent killer was in our midst. Back in 1981, HIV/AIDS was not yet understood, nor even accurately named. It would be years before scientists and doctors understood what they were dealing with, or could name it correctly, much less treat it; but back then they recognized that the disease killing a small number of gay men seemed to be something new and dangerous. Now, thirty years later, millions of lives around the world have been lost to the disease; millions more people live with the virus in their systems, and while expensive treatment seems to have greatly reduced its mortal danger, HIV/AIDS remains without an actual cure. I remember 1981 like it was yesterday. I remember the faces no longer here. I remember the fear that gripped us as AIDS spread.

"How To Survive a Plague" is the name of an exciting new documentary film being created by David France, a journalist, activist, and now filmmaker with thirty years of experience bearing media witness to the AIDS years. (He's also a dear friend referred to obliquely throughout this blog; our friendship began that same 1981, the year we both moved to New York City from the Midwest.)

Still in production, "How To Survive a Plague" uses archival footage and modern interviews to tell a truly miraculous story. It tells how a small group of activists not only waged a political struggle around the disease and its disregard by American political authorities, but more than that also: How they resolved to help themselves survive by pushing the scientific edge, leading an unfocused and uncaring scientific establishment to the medical breakthroughs that since the early 1990s have saved so many lives. The film reveals how central and crucial the activism of the gay community and people with AIDS themselves was to transforming HIV from an automatic death sentence to something that could be survived. The state of AIDS/HIV today is shown to be the result not of medical or scientific luck, but the result of the determination to survive of people the U.S. government considered entirely expandable.

A trailer for the film is not yet public; when one is available I will post it here. I can tell you what I have been privileged to see privately is absolutely stunning: it's moving and simply beyond inspiring. You can "like" the film's facebook page for updates and more information.

Tornado Season

When I was a child living in Chicago in the 1960s, there were a string of terrible tornado seasons. While the twisters didn't come for us in the city, we felt the same weather systems. The sky turned green and the air pressure did strange things; the air one minute thick and damp and heavy turned wild and windy the next. Neighboring Will County was struck hard. For years afterward, every time my parents would take me on a car trip out of town, I was seized by terror that we would pass through Will County and be attacked by tornadoes. My mother later recounted to me that if they saw a "Will County" sign they would try distracting me so I wouldn't notice it and freak out.

This year the U.S. has been struck by waves of killer tornadoes: a few weeks ago in the South, yesterday in Missouri and today in Oklahoma. Hundreds of people have been killed and thousands of people have been injured or lost their homes and belongings to the wind. In times like these it doesn't really seem useful to wonder — or possible to know — if these storms are just something nature is doing right now or if they're related to climate change (bizarrely we even had a small tornado here in Brooklyn a couple years ago and this is surely not tornado alley). But if I still remember the fear of being even a few dozen miles from tornadoes, I can't imagine how frightening it must be to live near where they're causing such suffering right now.

I know at least two of my regular readers live in prairie states right under those winds. Be safe, my prayers are with you. I sure hope you have basements!

Perspective

Oya-Yansa is the Yoruba Queen of the Winds of change. She is feared by many people because She brings about sudden structural change in people and things. Oya does not just rearrange the furniture in the house -- She knocks the building to the ground and blows away the floor tiles. She is the cyclone and the earthquake. Oya fans Her skirts and blows the branches from the trees; should She choose to cry, torrential rains fall on the earth. She is the Mother of Mind. She can impart genius, restore memory, or slap you with insanity. Oya opens Her mouth, flicks out Her tongue, and lightning strikes.... No one can be certain of Oya's movement; no one can capture Her smile. She is the mistress of disguises. yesterday Oya was a gentle lamb; today, a buffalo trampling the earth beneath Her feet. Tomorrow She'll be a rainbow -- maybe.
--Yoruba/Santeria priestess Luisah Teish in "Jambalaya"



I heard they exploded the underground blast
They say its gonna happen - gonna happen at last
That's the way it appears
They tell me the faultline runs right through here
So that maybe that may be
What's gonna happens gonna happen to me
They tell me the faultline runs right through here
Atlantis will rise, Sunset Boulevard will fall
Where the beach used to be won't be nothing at all
That's the way it appears
They tell me the faultline runs right through here
So that maybe that may be
What's gonna happen's gonna happen to me
They tell me the faultline runs right through here
--Mama Cass Elliot, "California Earthquake" 1968


When I behold the heavens in their vastness,
Where golden ships in azure issue forth,
Where sun and moon keep watch upon the fastness
Of changing seasons and of time on earth.

And when at last the mists of time have vanished
And I in truth my faith confirmed shall see,
Upon the shores where earthly ills are banished
I’ll enter Lord, to dwell in peace with thee.
--"Oh Mighty God" 1925 Christian Hymn



Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?
One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.
The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.
The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.
All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.
All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.
The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.
There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.
--Ecclesiastes


In a highway service station
Over the month of June
Was a photograph of the earth
Taken coming back from the moon
And you couldn't see a city
On that marbled bowling ball
Or a forest or a highway
Or me here least of all
You couldn't see these cold water restrooms
Or this baggage overload
Westbound and rolling taking refuge in the roads
--Joni Mitchell, Refuge of the Roads, 1976


(Photos of the ruins of the 1972 Managua, Nicaragua, earthquake taken by me in 1986.)

We Almost Lost... Tokyo

As of this writing Japanese authorities are trying to control a fire at the Fukushima nuclear reactor in the aftermath of a massive earthquake and tsunami. Radiation was released from the accident and thousands of people have been evacuated. It's not known how bad the situation is. While fortunately Japan has made great advances in preparing for earthquakes, this human byproduct of a natural tragedy reminds us of our complaceny in accepting the risks of nuclear power.

Gil Scott-Heron recorded "We Almost Lost Detroit" back in 1977 on his album "Bridges." The video above shows him performing the song in London in 1990. In songs and raps throughout the 1970s and 1980s Scott-Heron touched political and cultural issues like no one else: his biting commentary and social conscience stands out against the passing of time like Cassandra's very own words. In "We Almost Lost Detroit" he sings about the Fermi 1 reactor that narrowly avoided a catastrophic accident near Detroit in the late 1960s. Recorded before the more infamous Three Mile Island or Chernobyl meltdowns, he anticipated the anti-nuke movement and became one of its leading cultural spokespeople. He followed up this song in 1980 with the anthemic stomper, "Shut 'Em Down" (below).



Scott-Heron can rightfully be considered a kind of prophet. We ignore his words at our own risk. The earthquake was an unavoidable catastrophe. Any lives lost or poisoned by the Fukushima reactor are our own fault.

"Just thirty miles from Detroit
stands a giant power station.
It ticks each night as the city sleeps
seconds from annihilation.
But no one stopped to think about the people
or how they would survive,
and we almost lost Detroit
this time.
When it comes to people's safety
money wins out every time.
How would we ever get over
over losing our minds?
Cause odds are,
we gonna lose somewhere, one time."

Say Your Prayers?

This comedy video, "BP Spills Coffee," manages to capture the essence of the crisis of BP/Halliburton's Deepwater Horizon's Gulf Coast oil catastrophe. Somehow it makes me want to cry more than laugh.

On Tuesday President Obama gave a short speech from the Oval Office on the crisis and his plans to...pray for a solution to the problem. While I appreciate the complicated middle-fold in the space-time continuum that the President is trying to occupy, I found his speech cursory and confounding. The best critique of the speech I read was on the shrill and sensationalist Huffington Post, where columnist Jason Linkins suggested it sounded like a "mad lib written by [speechwriter] John Favreau."

Obama is of course right that the spill is a wake-up call about "our" dependency on oil. But not so much a wake-up call that he's advocating any specific new energy policies. Since the speech it does seem he's pushing the Senate to pass energy legislation already passed in the House, and that's a good thing. I'm sure betting Obama is regretting his ill-timed concessions to the "Drill Baby Drill" crowd just a few short weeks before BP's negligence allowed millions of gallons of crude to foul the Gulf's waters. I was excited that Obama in campaign mode focused so clearly on new energy sources like solar and wind (discounting his bizarre pandering fantasy of the imaginary "clean coal" technology), so I am glad to see him return to that focus. It will be a silver lining if this spill causes some second thoughts about new drilling and some much-needed regulatory and safety improvement.

I was fascinated to hear an interview after the speech with a local Louisiana politician who condemned Obama's words, because, she said, he was using the crisis to enact his overall socialist vision. She condemned him for his moratorium on deep water drilling, bizarrely insisting that such drilling was proven safe. As with the media's reporting of health reform, once again opposition to Obama from the right is conflated with opposition from the left. This trend reinforces the need for the "the left" to choose its formulations of critique carefully.

Halliburton, BP, and the regulators who inspected and passed Deepwater Horizons are now known to be proven cheats and liars. And this is where I think Obama is failing: he must seize control of the attempt to shut off the spewing well and clean up the Gulf. The oil companies are interested only in protecting their existing and future investments and profits. They should definitely be paying the full price of this catastrophe--the escrow fund ordered by Obama is a definite must--but they should not be allowed to lead what is actually going on there. While of course expropriation of the oil companies and nationalization of oil resources is the real solution...that's just not gonna happen for the forseeable future. Let me modestly suggest that US troops be brought home from the Middle East and Central Asia to perform the work of the cleanup. I read in the New York Times one expert suggest that BP is failing to shut off the spewing well because it's trying to preserve the well as a potential source of future income and is therefore rejecting methods that might ruin the well for the future. There is the obvious strategy of using explosives to seal off the well: if this is indeed practicable it's an example of something the government needs to do despite BP's wishes.

I'm all for prayer. It calms the mind. It connects you to spirit, to the energy of the universe. But it does not stop industrial tragedies or manmade environmental nightmares. The President's speech concluded on a hollow note; it's crucial that the full force of government be brought to ending this crisis sooner rather than later. Don't wait for BP to do it.

The prayer that seems most relevant right about now is the serenity prayer:
"God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference."

Focus on that third line.

What will happen?

I took these pictures of Bayou country on a visit to New Orleans in the 1990s. What will happen to this incredibly beautiful natural landscape should a hurricane sweep through the oily Gulf of Mexico on its way to shore?

As of this writing, though slightly reduced by a cap (with vents), the crude oil continues to gush into the Gulf's waters, and the massive quantities of polluted water are starting to reach Florda.

Somewhere I read the best common sense logic: if you can't fix a drilling leak at the bottom of the ocean, you shouldn't be allowed to drill there.

30, El Camaron

For mother's day I took my 78-year old mom out to Brooklyn's Chinatown. We ate a tasty meal at a Vietnamese pho restaurant. Looking for a complement to our bowls of soup and noodles I asked my mother if she'd enjoy an order of shrimp. "Oh yes, we should have some while we can still get it."

It's now a month since the explosion at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. In the interim an incredible volume of crude oil has spilled out onto the fertile gulf waters, so much that it is visible from space. We've been treated to the spectacle of the BP oil company, the sinister Halliburton corporation, and the Swiss company that actually owned the destroyed rig all pointing fingers of blame elsewhere, except at themselves, while testifying before congessional inquiry. We've seen BP offer estimates of how much oil and gas are leaking into the waters of the gulf that are a tiny fraction of what non-oil company sources estimate. We've seen politicians and infotainers deny that the spill is much of a deal--"accidents happen" says idiot/racist Senatorial candidate (Ayn) Rand Paul. And we've seen the US government seemingly place all its trust in the dubious ability of BP to clean up its own mess. Unbelievably, it's not yet about clean-up of this spill, it's still about turning off the out of control spigot on the ocean floor which BP has lackadaisically failed to figure out how to do. I suppose not surprisingly President Obama is talking about a commission of inquiry; what he should be doing is seizing all the assets of these companies.

I would like to know what will happen when the inevitable hurricane hits this oil slick?



Meanwhile the oil is beginning to wash up on the shores of the gulf, and commercial fishing has been curtailed in large areas. The wildlife of the area: birds, sea turtles, dolphins, whales, fish, shrimp and oysters face imminent catastrophe. The livelihoods of the local fishing industry (ironically including thousands of immigrant Vietnamese shrimpers) are deeply challenged, and the population of the region, already complaining about an unpleasant smell in the air, face unknown health risks.

So yes, 30, El Camaron, the shrimp. An ugly, insect-like creepy-crawling, scavenging little crustacean that God hates, yet sweet, plump and delicious. Soon to be endangered on these shores. But it turns out 90% of shrimp consumed in the United States is imported. So everything's okay, right?

May Day! May Day!

May First is, of course, "Labour Day," in the un-American sense of the word, as in the revolutionary international workers' political holiday, the occasion for waving around red banners and yelling a lot, as opposed to our own labor day, which is good mostly for barbecues. It's also, of course, the Pagan fertility holiday of Beltane, which I've written about elsewhere, where copious seed is supposed to be spilt upon the earth to ensure the fruits of the future. Yes, Pagans, that's you being admonished in the Judeo-Christian Old Testament. I didn't know which to focus on for The Cahokian, so I've elected this beautiful photograph of a Maoist/Naxalite revolutionary in rural India that I found on the net. Take away the hammer-and-sickle flags and this woman could pass for a celebrant in a fertility festival so I thought it captured something about the moment. I'm not sure what it says about America that neither of these holidays are much celebrated here; well actually I am pretty sure what it says but I'm not too happy with the answer.

Either way you mark it, May Day is a celebration of optimism. Optimism that the have-nots can get together in solidarity and determination to one day have, and optimism that the winter is over and the seasons are spinning around properly as they should, that our efforts today will pay off tomorrow, that future generations will arise from our own, carrying on our traditions. (There's this sort of joke one of my Pagan friends told me once: it involved a group of Native American shamans who performed a seasonal ritual every year for return of the warm seasons. Some scientist sits down with the shamans and explains the science behind the rotating seasons, the earth on its axis, the scientific inevitability of the return of Spring, etc. etc. in an effort to to persuade these shamans to give up their quaint superstitious rite. The shamans listen carefully, aheming and ahahing. When the scientists had finished they talk among themselves and after extended deliberation return to the scientists. "Well, we have listened to what you said. Your evidence is very compelling, but frankly, it's just not worth the risk that you're wrong." And so they returned to their ritual.)

That optimism of the human spirit is a good thing, because it's sometimes very hard to maintain a sense of optimism for the mundane world. As I write, what some are calling potentially the largest man-made ecological disaster in American history is unfolding as untold quantities of crude oil are spilling out against the coasts of Louisiana. Drill, Baby, Drill, fuck YOU. As Gil Scott-Heron used to say, "America is in shock." In Arizona politicians are instituting a draconian and racist immigration law straight out of an authoritarian nightmare, where authorities are required to demand proof of citizenship from anyone they might suspect of not being a citizen, and citizens are required to demand that authorities enforce the law against their fellow citizens on the spot. And America is in shock.

There are crazy racist politicians and TV entertainers and bigoted religious fundamentalists running around in an orgy of lying delusion all enabling other to spout unbelievable ridiculousness. America is in shock. There're pointless wars costing billions of dollars and thousands of lives, and there are unbelievably rich people earning immoral sums of money trying to rewrite laws to make sure they get to make immoral sums of money more. America is in shock. There are men dying in coal mines because of their corrupt bosses just like there were a century ago. There are millions of people with no jobs, and no hope of finding one any time soon. Shock. Shock. "America leads the world in shock," to quote our friend Scott-Heron again.

In Brooklyn where I live it's supposed to be a beautiful weekend. The plants on my stoop are in bloom, and there's a freshness in the urban air. I'm gonna open my windows and let the breeze sweeten the air indoors. Maybe I'll clip some of the plants in the backyard already threatening to turn the garden into a jungle of thorns and blooms. I'll feed the herd of feral cats who visit every morning. I feel personally lucky to be reasonably healthy with some semblance of employment. We don't have marriage equality in New York, but then I'm not liable to want to get gay married tomorrow: it will be enough to have dinner with my boyfriend. For a day maybe I can focus on the joys and tasks of life and not the trouble of the world; fortunately there's no drone aircraft circling overhead trying to GPS my cellphone location; not yet anyway. In truth I'm probably not going to run around a maypole nor carry a red flag nor chant any slogans. But I sure hope somebody does. It's just not worth the risk that nobody will.