san francisco – somebody else's paradise

war

talking to sahar from a payphone in the mission and we decide to meet at the israeli consulate. the email from sarah in beirut yesterday. the news – hezbollah’s bold kidnap move yesterday, immediately met by the israeli collective /civilian punishment called “Operation Just Reward”, one of these nasty belligrent eufemisms meaning air strikes on Lebanon. yesterday, or perhaps it all happened earlier, this part of the world runs hopelessly behind…

on the BART i see a young guy with the imprint of a fatima hand dripping blood and “Jews for a Free Palestine” on his t-shirt. i ask him and yes, he’s going to the demo. on our way he tells me about the groups that took the initiative: Al-Awda (The Palestine Right to Return Coalition) and a Palestine Solidarity alliance in which his group participates. he also gives me the latest news: the airport in Beirut is bombed. and he mentions that there’s a pro-israel counter demo (strange how that possibility hadn’t crossed my mind…)

while the protesters denouncing israeli violence stand on the side-walk in front of the israeli consulate, people are facing the other side of the street, where israeli flags and peace signs prevail. traffic on montgomery street continues as usual – we are not many, perhaps 150, they are not many, perhaps a bit less, not enough to occupy the street. and then police makes sure both sides remain on their side-walk. so we shout at/against each other. (those who are there to denounce isreali violence have an advantage: we have a microphone.) meanwhile cars drive by and people on both sides ask them to honk for support. of course, a drive-in demo, why would you get out of your car for anything, after all this is america…

disheartening in many ways. the tiny small number of people. with a few exceptions, a striking absence of comments on the attacks on lebanon or the war-waging in gaza of the last couple of weeks. instead the same old slogans, with a dÃ©jÃ -vu feeling that didn’t give us much hope that a demo like this would change a thing. and most of all: the rhetorical monopoly on the word “peace” on their side. “Israel wants peace”, “pro-Israel pro-peace”. at some point the zionist crowd began to chant “Where are your peace signs?” accompanied by righteous attitudes and triumphant smiles. “No justice no peace” was the (amplified) response. which is very true, but it didn’t work to break the framework that a regime that causes so much violence is really about peace and security…

we were there because of this consuming urge “to do something”. but the whole spectacle made us feel even more powerless. still, there is no other option than to do something. but we’ll need all the brains and hearts and hands we can get to figure out what can be done…

for more on this and other actions over here in the bay area, see http://www.indybay.org/international/palestine

mission dolores

san francisco. une nuit n’est pas assez pour dire au revoir Ã cette ville qu’elle aime autant. on se tient dans les bras l’un de l’autre avant cette ligne que seulement les passagers peuvent croisser. giulia retourne dans son jungle urbain de londres. et je retourne Ã la ville avec un coeur leger, ou plutot soutenu, carried, par toute cette amitiÃ© et amour. avec chaque pas dans le mission je me sens plus remplie de ce bonheur qu’on partage. une journÃ©e merveilleuse, comme ce monsieur sans-abri me dit, et si je pouvais lui donner un peu d’argent (appellÃ© si ironiquement “change”…) pourqu’il ait un repas aujourd’hui. parfois on est si heureuse que tout le corps l’expire, que cela contamine tout autour. quelle promenade au mission, pleine de rencontres et de soleil. oh giulia, t’Ã©tais lÃ , tu sais?

can’t wait to share the mission with sahar. i go to the mission dolores park and install myself in the grass with a Jarritos limÃ³n, read the Olive Readers. the world of U.S. empire as we know it gets destroyed through ecological crises, and is re-shaped along the lines of economic power of different companies, dividing the territories and global production of commodities among them. No more countries or political entities such as nation-states and governments – the unities of power are The Companies and their boards and CEOs. People are not citizens but workers for a particular company, bound to that company. (uncannily non-science fiction for a science-fiction novel…)

“The old countries had disappeared a long time ago, their names and languages forbidden, their peoples and histories suddenly non-existent. Thousands of men, women and children were secretly sent out to space to form new colonies, but none survived. Countless others disappeared and were never accounted for, although rumours circulated that they had been sent to work camps to be retrained as the world re-created itself. Nationalities melted away, although some individuals managed to salvage tiny fragments of their old languages and their customs, drawing on a distant memory of oral histories and the subversively foraged books. Individuals were stripped of any sense of belonging, and torn from their communities and families at whim. There were mass transportations of people to camps where minds were altered, memories stripped and bodies trained to obey.”

The underground resistance in this world is grounded in finding and keeping books from before the take-over by the Companies, in reading and translating those books (the resistance is called the Readers), in reclaiming memory from Company fiction, in locating oneself in a secret genealogy working towards the moment when an underground movement has the resources and opportunity to overthrow power. Whether the underground resistance manages to transform this world or not, will be revealed in the last chapter, which i haven’t read yet…

gay pride SF

Do as the locals do, and as none of our friends were going to the main parade of the San Francisco gay pride, we skipped the event. Important note: Sahar and Rutvica should stop insinuating that this had something to do with the parade taking off (kind of) early (to me, at least…) in the morning. We were first enjoying the good company of Lydia and Sandrine (et de nouveau on se retrouve dans un endroit on parle francais…) in the magic house where now Giulia wants to move in, and then we were meeting MarÃa in a hipster cafe on Valencia street – things clearly more urgent than the main parade. When later during the day we went to Civic Center, where the parade had arrived and a bunch of activities took place, we were up for mixed surprises. So this is what it looks like when the LGBT movement becomes mainstream… sure, enough examples of that back in Europe, but somehow the picture here gets enlarged (as for so many other things.) In terms of visibility: the way in which the rainbow flag flies above the city is impressive, signs of solidarity everywhere, a giant pink triangle on one of the Twin Peaks, the sheer number of people in the streets for the dyke march. But also in terms of integration into structures of oppression. Like two of the stalls we came across at the Civic Center:

No pride, no pride in this at all… unfortunately i wasn’t in the “let’s go up to them and strike a pseudo-naive conversation” mood, always worth to try out what little poking here and there can bring about…

dyke march SF

enchanted city of SF

the city is my sweetheart

Arriving to San Francisco via the Bay Brigde is amazing.
As if the city were standing there to meet and welcome those who cross the bridge, with the incredible beauty of its skyscrapers.

So good to be in the city. A new friend Lydia gave me a small painting on wood she found earlier that day,
it says: the city is my sweetheart.

The emotions of seeing Diana and Natascha after all these years. Emphasized by Diana’s impressive U-turn crossing a double yellow line, when she saw us standing in front of the bus station.

A beautiful weekend. A strange territorial ritual on Treasure Island, indecent exposure as Natascha prefers to say. Our most impressive supermarket experience (the biggest fruits and vegetables of all kinds and variations imaginable) so far, in Berkeley. Amazing food (ah the perfect risotto we made – despite what Diana and me were doing in the kitchen – the wonderful American breakfast, the delightful Taqueria Cancun Maria and i stumbled upon) and even better company.

Exploring and enchanted by the mission.

Watching the L-word with a community, in the Lexington Club. Ah Rutvica, you should have been there, you were there – Natascha and i got you a little something. This episode was a strong anti-Bush one – Bette gets to do an impassioned speech at a court hearing on how moral issues in this country are used as a smoke screen to avoid talking about poverty and economic injustice, the education system in ruins and the illegitimate war. I couldn’t help noticing that the lovely L-crowd only began sheering when the war was mentioned. A reflection of how much more difficult it is to raise awareness and mobilize politically around issues on the homefront?

Lots of visible poverty. Friends back in Europe haven’t really asked yet about the extent of the poverty in this country, as they sometimes do when i travel to so-called third world countries. Strange, these distinctions. This is the so-called first world, and the poverty in the streets hits you in the face. And while there are in fact many homeless people in Santa Cruz, it’s in an urban environment like inner city San Francisco that the extent of the break-down of social systems of security, welfare and care becomes clear. The extent and visibility of structural poverty makes you gasp for air. All those bodies marked and modified by not having enough good food to eat, by having slept in the streets too many times, by having been denied access to useful education.

And somehow i find it less tough to be here than the social environment of Santa Cruz cushioned with privilege. The truth of what Sahar wrote, about living in Harlem almost the Bronx: “Poor and dirty… but psychologically less alienating than let’s say Stockholm 🙂 or even East Manhattan. Kind of familiar… strange that one doesn’t feel best when in conditions next to “ideal” she imagines for all humans… Maybe due to knowing that most humans live way far from that…” This strong need to be connected to where injustice and inequality is not covered up: this is where we are, this is where we stand and must start from, and let nobody tell any damn lies about it.