The Garbage Disposal Unit
28th September 2010, 15:52
STOP WAITING!
Our society is organized by work. When somebody asks "What do you do?" they're not asking about what you value in your life - they want to know where you fit in to the scheme of production.
Work sucks.
No increase in minimum wage will make flipping burgers, or answering telephones, fulfilling "investments" of time and energy. Most of my generation doesn't expect anything from work - not adequate safety equipment, let alone pensions. We fill in the gaps in the machinery, and we're treated like it (programmed, used, maintained, and, ultimately, replaced).
Economies don't suffer - people do.
Why should we give a shit about the economy? Why do we slave away to prop up the economy that builds the prisons, puts cameras on the street corners, gives us cancer, and tells us, "Work! Or else!" Or else what?
What can they take that they haven't already taken?
We have no independence.
We don't grow our own food, heal our own bodies, build our own houses, write our own stories, make our own music, or decide what time we need to get up in the morning.
We have no voice.
We don't even speak the same language as lawyers, politicians, cops, and pigs-in-general. We can't vote our way out of this shit - the option isn't on the ballot.
We have no space.
The countryside and the city have given way to a sprawling factory - canola monocultures, business parks, condos, and truckstops. We can't move around without being ID'd, signed in, recorded, and traced.
Do we have each other?
We have hundreds of friends on Facebook, but no communities. We have identities, which mean that people can identify us, but we don't have our own stories. Instead, we bond over shared experience of YouTube videos. By schools, TV, and brute force, they've ripped away our cultures and histories. We have no sense of solidarity because we live surrounded by strangers. Honestly, who would you fight the police for? We're more ready to kill and die in racist wars on the other side of the planet than we are to stand up for our neighbours.
Well, what (the fuck) can we do about it?
STOP WAITING!
We don't need an organization to do it for us - we can organize ourselves. Offices, memberships, and dues are just distractions from what needs to get done. Being recruited is just as dangerous as being arrested, and, for that matter, it's all the easier to arrest us if our names and addresses are on some party's mailing list.
We can feed ourselves!
(You can feed yourself!)
We don't need to eat their processed crap, let alone be forced to pay for it. We can shoplift and dumpsterdive to survive while we make friends with farmers and learn to grow our own food.
We can shelter ourselves!
(You can shelter yourself!)
We can share rooms and split rent so that it only takes a day of temp labour (or panhandling) to pay (the less you work, the more time you have to find ways of not working). We can squat abandoned buildings, and we can camp. We can learn to build our own houses, and dig our own wells.
We can take care of ourselves!
(You can take care of yourself!)
Do any of us expect the law to protect us from the police, racists, global warming, or intimate violence? We can learn to build barricades, to throw a punch, to set a broken arm, or to perform an herbal abortion. We can confront abusive behavior, and support each other through abuse, addiction, depression, and long winters.
STOP WAITING!
If you're sick of being governed, be ungovernable!
Don't let them evict you. Don't let them evict your friends or neighbours. Don't let them arrest you. Don't let them arrest your friends or neighbours. Refuse to co-operate with police. Refuse to be harassed. Refuse to pay. Refuse to work.
Parliament in Ottawa doesn't control us - power is local. It's the landlord, the lazy dude who expects a woman to wash his dishes, the Walmart security guard, etc. We start by taking back our own spaces - our own lives. We just need to begin.
Our society is organized by work. When somebody asks "What do you do?" they're not asking about what you value in your life - they want to know where you fit in to the scheme of production.
Work sucks.
No increase in minimum wage will make flipping burgers, or answering telephones, fulfilling "investments" of time and energy. Most of my generation doesn't expect anything from work - not adequate safety equipment, let alone pensions. We fill in the gaps in the machinery, and we're treated like it (programmed, used, maintained, and, ultimately, replaced).
Economies don't suffer - people do.
Why should we give a shit about the economy? Why do we slave away to prop up the economy that builds the prisons, puts cameras on the street corners, gives us cancer, and tells us, "Work! Or else!" Or else what?
What can they take that they haven't already taken?
We have no independence.
We don't grow our own food, heal our own bodies, build our own houses, write our own stories, make our own music, or decide what time we need to get up in the morning.
We have no voice.
We don't even speak the same language as lawyers, politicians, cops, and pigs-in-general. We can't vote our way out of this shit - the option isn't on the ballot.
We have no space.
The countryside and the city have given way to a sprawling factory - canola monocultures, business parks, condos, and truckstops. We can't move around without being ID'd, signed in, recorded, and traced.
Do we have each other?
We have hundreds of friends on Facebook, but no communities. We have identities, which mean that people can identify us, but we don't have our own stories. Instead, we bond over shared experience of YouTube videos. By schools, TV, and brute force, they've ripped away our cultures and histories. We have no sense of solidarity because we live surrounded by strangers. Honestly, who would you fight the police for? We're more ready to kill and die in racist wars on the other side of the planet than we are to stand up for our neighbours.
Well, what (the fuck) can we do about it?
STOP WAITING!
We don't need an organization to do it for us - we can organize ourselves. Offices, memberships, and dues are just distractions from what needs to get done. Being recruited is just as dangerous as being arrested, and, for that matter, it's all the easier to arrest us if our names and addresses are on some party's mailing list.
We can feed ourselves!
(You can feed yourself!)
We don't need to eat their processed crap, let alone be forced to pay for it. We can shoplift and dumpsterdive to survive while we make friends with farmers and learn to grow our own food.
We can shelter ourselves!
(You can shelter yourself!)
We can share rooms and split rent so that it only takes a day of temp labour (or panhandling) to pay (the less you work, the more time you have to find ways of not working). We can squat abandoned buildings, and we can camp. We can learn to build our own houses, and dig our own wells.
We can take care of ourselves!
(You can take care of yourself!)
Do any of us expect the law to protect us from the police, racists, global warming, or intimate violence? We can learn to build barricades, to throw a punch, to set a broken arm, or to perform an herbal abortion. We can confront abusive behavior, and support each other through abuse, addiction, depression, and long winters.
STOP WAITING!
If you're sick of being governed, be ungovernable!
Don't let them evict you. Don't let them evict your friends or neighbours. Don't let them arrest you. Don't let them arrest your friends or neighbours. Refuse to co-operate with police. Refuse to be harassed. Refuse to pay. Refuse to work.
Parliament in Ottawa doesn't control us - power is local. It's the landlord, the lazy dude who expects a woman to wash his dishes, the Walmart security guard, etc. We start by taking back our own spaces - our own lives. We just need to begin.