720 hrs of Resistance

I would like to apologize in advance. I was up all day and night anticipating camping out in a hurricane at the Campamento. My work may suffer for it as I try not to doze off.

On the 29th of July, the Campamento celebrated 30 days of holding space. That is 720 hours  of 80 degrees in the rain weather, organizing actions, sign and shirt making, three-hour assemblies, workshops on everything from civil disobedience to origins of PROMESA, heated debates around racism and patriarchy. 720 hours of disrupting traffic in the financial district. 720 hours of documenting pickets and feds patrolling with dogs. The day was celebrated with a picket, cake and some music performed by comrades.

How much sleep has anyone gotten in that 720 hours is hard to say but my impression is not much. I myself  get six very unrestful hours a night at best. In no way have I been the best participant or contributed the most or have worked the hardest. I do struggle with the balance of doing my job as a journalist and as a participant in resistance against colonialism and capitalism.

I have been planning this project for months. Days before I had even boarded my plane PROMESA was passed and the occupiers moved into the intersection of Chardon and Hostos. It took a few days before I approached anyone in the camp. I took some time to follow it on the local news. It was the minimum coverage of the mainstream media that gave urgency to my desire to go to the camp. Besides, I came to document resistance and there it was. My story had set up camp in the middle of the financial district, right in front of the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico

Boriken has a long history of government programs, such as COINTELPRO, where activist have been falsely imprisoned, tortured, killed. Some dude, that no one knows, with fancy audio recording gear and says he is from a radio station in Portland, Oregon that no one has heard of and speaks Spanish with a funny accent is going to look suspicious. I had to be open to rejection and make sure I asked for consent. Freedom of speech is cool but it only protects you from the government and it is not a license to be an asshole. Your subject could always tell you to fuck off and you may not get your story unless you fabricate from snippets of truth and your own hurt ego.

I had been treated nicely considering just the day before some guy with a similar story but none of the credentials waltzed and then suddenly disappeared. Still has not been back so who know what his deal was. If you take time to study the local history you may become just as paranoid. The federal government loves dirty evil tricks and the democrats like to make you feel good about it. Fascist have the advantage of access to people with marketing and advertising degrees.  They can make you get over the fact that your taxes paid for the bombing of schools and hospitals, or that agent orange was tested on the people that make all the world's Tylenol.

The space was only a week old and it was very organized and coordinated. No one seemed to be in any specific organization or just were not sharing that information with the press. Part of an organization or not, there was organizing happening before my eyes. There was a kitchen, it was clean and the food is on time and taste great, dishes get cleaned by everyone. There was a system that fell into place and expectations are constantly communicated. Sometimes I'll jump into the sink just to wash everyone's plates because I got time to kill and waiting for news is boring work. I'll get busted eventually and someone will ask to take over and share the labor.

There was one person I recognized when I started staying at the camp and became embedded with my subject. She was a poet I knew back when I used to read at poetry slams and poetry was my hustle to supplement my diet of lentils, chorizo and movie rentals. We spent the whole day working together and I was not sure if they had even recognized me. At the end of a long day of building revolution she shared with a group of us how she knew me from where we both would do open mike. She later confided me that she used to hate me with a passion. She reminds me of that  every few days. It may be a way of saying, “Oh boy did I hate your fucking guts but gosh you're one swell comrade!” It is a lot nicer than it stings. I am sure I deserved rancor. My popular work from that time was never the work I was proud of and would not dare duplicate now.

I have gotten involved in some organizing of projects around the camp. With an effort not to dominate, I have learning how to motivate, coordinate and mobilize with others. With maximum effort some of us put a proposal together to form an Intersectional Collective for people from marginalized demographics. Very broad but we got it passed and we are one step closer to balancing out the distribution of power.

The morning before the hurricane we got our hands on a newspaper and spent much of breakfast and part of lunch reading the paper out load and discussing current events. Even if you're using a mainstream capitalist piece of media, group discussion can help separate the bullshit from the real shit.

Later we started to prepare for the storm and secure books and tie down tents. At 3pm I saw no sign of the storm getting impressive so I retired to my tent. I woke up at 8 am to find everyone huddled under the tarp in the kitchen having discourse and playing chess. Someone made a quiche/pizza concoction. I am not selling it well but I promise it was delicious.

Inclimate weather was not enough deterrent to drive us away. The gods would have to do better. Palante, Siempre Palante!

If you enjoyed this article check out Through Our Own Eyes at KBOO 90.7 FM and get a post card from Puerto Rico when you make a donation to our project before the 1st of November 2016.

Work and Resistance

Are you working? Because I see you dedicate your time to protest. What about your stuff? Rent, bills, utilities, food, clothes, etc. etc.? While you protest who pays your bills?

That is the question I and many other radicals in resistance have confronted for a long time. It is tiresome but it is challenge given to us from our family, coworkers, critiques and often passerby at actions. “Liberals with no jobs just whining and complaining about the world only to make the rest of us late for work.”

I make time and try to organize my life around resistance and study. I try to be available to help others.I defy capitalism by my time to defeating it. I still need to buy minimal security from capitalism and all its ills. I pay rent, buy food and transportation. I hardly make enough to live but I do make more than some of my cousins back home for the same job.

Capitalism doesn't accommodate people in resisting it, you must accommodate yourself to resistance. We may have different priorities when it comes to free time, we may very well have different needs, Still, assuming that someone in protest and is organized, focused and hard working for liberation of others as well as themselves does not have a job is insulting. Or is it?

I try to take it as a call for help. The message for me is more like. “ I am envious that you can be out here fighting against the system that crushes us both, but how do I know you are real? How can you even make a living and fight capitalism? Are you rich or something, or on a trust fund, to leach off of social services. I want what you have. I want your freedom. How dare you flaunt it in front of me when I  can not afford it.”

The answer for me is that i steal time and my agency.  I am poor so I do not have much bills anyways,because I can not afford to have much in the first place. I do every thing I can to fix things that break so not buy it new. I pan my day out and organize around my work schedule. If I need things I ask my comrades  and friends. I also try to volunteer my time and labor to those that need it. I try to prioritize the people, things and projects I care about and even those I don't know.. Some folks take vacations, some people go out drinking, some stay home to stream movies or tv shows. I don't have a car so i can not go very far, i try not to drink and I think i have seen a everything in my queue. Mostly, I chose to help people the best I can and feed my mind. I enjoy long car rides when they are possible, I like spending time with folks, or just reading.

I like to be spending my time on what i think is an emergency. Boriken is being sold of bit by bit and so are the people, Afrika as a continent is being stolen by imperialist and capitalist forces, people in the philippines that need rice get bullets instead, children in Palestine for being too close to a wall, friends near me suffer from depression and are in danger just because people think their genitals matter, the environment is being destroyed to feed the trust funds of the elites, I am living in a crisis. I can numb myself or I can fight it but I can not ignore it, I refuse to ignore it all. I do what i do because standing by and watching hurts me. I resist because I have agency and will not work the fields only to end up feeding the fields for the benefit of a master.

You can get mad, you can curse out, flip off or just ignore some one that says that to you. Or, if possible, you can tell them that you work and it is because you work you feel the urgency to fight against the system that exploits you for your labor. You can tell them it is hard, maybe even harder than your square job because you make no money but run many risk. Working against capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism has required me to study, take notes, wake up early, stay up late, interact with hostile people, clean, serve food, plan projects write emails, run fundraisers, provide security, plan systems, write articles, my resume gets fuller and fuller every month.

As a radical worker I have to take some emotional abuse, do conflict resolution, check my own behavior and words, work with people I don't like, and get harassed by crappy people in authority. The only difference between my square job and my activist work is that I as an activist i chose my projects and production level. I chose without being threatened  with hunger and homelessness.. I feel I must do the work because I love the people in my life and want them to live a decent life without being exploited.

You owe nobody an explanation but try to take the opportunity as one for learning and relationship building. Do not appease to the person's logic but to their values. If their values are escaping or numbing themselves from capitalized all its ills then just let them. But maybe just maybe some of those folks are scared and want an alternative. Capitalism trains us to be in competition with each other, against each other. Capitalism teaches us to distrust not just others but ourselves. Capitalism clouds our minds with easy to understand lies and small empty gestures. Not all of us are awake and resisting, some of us are just awake but don't care. All of us started asleep or scared, some of us still are.

Don't be ashamed to work a square job, don't be ashamed if you are unemployed. Take pride in your acts of resistance and share power with people. Demonstrate if you find you can not convince people. Sometimes someone needs to see what you are doing and why you do it.

Resisting capitalism an organized way is hard work. Helping people around you is work. It can be very hazardous the more effective you are in dismantling a system of oppression. It scares some and makes other envious. Capitalism, keeps you late for work, capitalism threatens you with poverty, hunger and illness. Capitalism steals your tax dollars, ruins your schools and wrecks the environment. Capitalism keeps you depressed and unhealthy. Capitalism will dispose of you when you can not produce and eat your children. Resist capitalism in your free time. Do it on lunch, on breaks, before work after work, Friday to Sunday Monday to Friday.

PALANTE,SIEMPRE PALANTE!