Changes Slowly Coming

Due to some problems with my website - which turned out to be trivial anyway - I’ve finally gotten around to updating the look of the site. I think it looks cleaner and simpler, maybe a bit too simple, but I’m still tweaking it. Any excuse not to get started on the 10 page paper and presentation due Wednesday Or the 7 pager due next Monday, or all the Java programs I’ve been putting off for my CS class, etc…

The big “getting off parole” submission is coming in two weeks, and in the meantime I need to try to get this homework done and get ready for finals. Then I’ll be working with my dad doing deliveries before the “holiday,” so there goes the optimistic plans I always have at the end of semesters. Always end up working for my dad, and usually not getting paid. But I won’t find out about the parole situation till January probably, so I’ll have some time after xmas to get into the iPhone development I’ve been putting off. Did a little work on that the other day. But I’ll be in the waiting zone for the next 45 days at least, so after finals and deliveries, I should have time to do some shit before finding out what the hell is going to be the outcome of that. And nothing serious in the way of plans or actually moving forward with them is going to be accomplished until I find out if I’m getting off parole or not.

I was in the mood to try some new forms of expression, plus I don’t have anyone to talk to as usual, so I thought I’d try out the whole “video blogging” thing:

Don’t Dream It’s Over

My parole officer is going to put me in to get off parole again in about 30 days. He said the only thing that might stop me from getting off is the charges I went to prison for. So, another couple months of the waiting game before I can figure out what the hell I’m going to do with my life.

I really don’t see how I can waste another year on parole before I can start my life - I’ll deal with that if I have to. But if I do get off parole, it looks like I will probably move to New York. I mean, it seems like a great opportunity, of course revolutionary work is of paramount importance in the larger scheme of things. The only other thing, and the thing that presents a much more difficult challenge for me, is the personal.

It seems bitterly ironic that I’m trying to work towards a whole different world of social and economic relations, yet for all of my life I’ve had next to no significant interpersonal relationships with other people. And going to New York will just put me in the midst of an even greater number of millions of people surrounding me while I remain isolated and alone. I’ve really tried to struggle with this, social relations with others, whether or not its just in the nature of existence to have to fundamentally accept being alone.

I mean, I think yes, ultimately we all are alone and have to end this existence alone. But… does that mean that there can’t be or are no real, significant interpersonal relationships with other people along the way? And just because my experience in life has been devoid of much of any, that obviously doesn’t seem to be the case with other people. So… what the fuck?

Overall I think it will definitely be a good opportunity, but dealing with the lack of interpersonal relationships has really been troubling me lately. Then I would be going to a whole new city where I know next to no one - not that I really know much of anyone here. I just feel like I’ll be even more isolated then. Ha, its seems rather ridiculous to feel that I’d be more isolated in New York than I have been for all the years I’ve spent in seg in prison. But I’ve had this conversation before, and even though I was in a much more sensorily deprived environment in seg in prison, when I got out of prison and had to do a year on house arrest it was almost more socially isolating because at least in prison (for better or worse) I was surrounded by hundreds of other people. Not that I got to see them really, or interact with them besides hearing them, but I was around people. And while I was on house arrest, I was alone in my room most of the time, and the only “social” interactions I got were online, and then later at college when I started going there while I was on house arrest. And my life now isn’t much different - still only get some minimal interaction with other people in class, or online, or when I’ve gone out a few times with some friends to clubs or bars or whatnot, and while doing revolutionary work. I don’t know, even with some attempts to make some more significant interpersonal relationships recently, none of that has seemed to change.

Anyhow, 30 days, then probably a month more of waiting, then maybe I’ll finally be off this shit and can start my life - perhaps in New York. I just need to make some kind of significant interpersonal relationships, because being alone is getting rather old. And I’ve already been at the point of giving up on all of that altogether once. I’m not at that point now, but I’m really tired of being alone all the time…

- When I was 15 years old, and we were in the process of losing our house, I was sent to live with my cousin and aunt, where I had to either ride my bike or walk a considerable distance home from school most days - probably took over an hour by bike, close to 2 hours walking. The exact distance, according to Google Maps, is 6.5 miles. I promised myself then, after numerous days of riding that bike, sometimes in pouring rain, that I’d never ride a bike again. Since my car crawled to its final death on the side of the expressway last weekend, I found myself breaking that promise today. Riding that same bike, after 15 years without oil or grease, a fucked up and half-flat back tire, and half the gears that won’t shift, 30 minutes each way for the same purpose - to sit in a worthless classroom for several hours. It’s extremely hard to believe that I’m reliving that same shit 15 years later…

The only good thing to come of it is that I found out how atrophied my leg muscles were from sitting in a segregation cell for numerous years, and the house arrest and barely getting out of the house. Aside from throwing around some dumbbells over the summer, I don’t get much exercise, so giving my legs a good workout is probably the best thing to come of the experience. Wow, I can’t fucking believe I’m doing this again, especially since I know now exponentially more than I did then how much of a complete waste of time it is for me to be sitting in a classroom. And I’ve already accepted and decided that I’m done wasting my time in college after this semester…

Here is the promised Books to Prisoners tv show video. I was going to do some editing of it, but its up on YouTube already so I’ll just post that one here:

When Is A Change Really Gonna Come?

The latest round of the farce of the American “democratic process” is over. It was only fitting that my first and only time in an election booth (since I went to prison when I was 17 and have never had the opportunity to vote in a national election even if I had wanted to) was to cast my ballot for Stephen Colbert - a satirist for a joke of an electoral system. Not that I was under any illusions about this system going in, but I have to say it felt even more worthless and perfunctory to cast a ballot than I expected. I had to vote in a church, which didn’t make me too happy either - so much for that whole “separation of church and State” thing. In addition to voting for Stephen Colbert for President, I voted against all of the judges on the ballot and for a $30 million school project. Thus ends my one and only foray into the deadly distraction of electoral politics.

What I did do that was far more important than casting a ballot was to go out to the Obama victory rally in Grant Park and challenge people to take up a critical and revolutionary analysis of what this election means and what Obama represents - a “better” face on brutal imperialism. And not only to make that analysis, but to get involved in really changing society, in fundamentally eliminating the exploitation and oppression of capitalism. As Revolution newspaper posed the question, The Morning After the Elections… And the Change We Really Need… What Are You Gonna Do Now?.

I had quite a few conversations with people about the election, most rather brief but some of more substance. A lot of people really appreciated being posed such a serious question, with a number admitting that they didn’t even know or hadn’t even thought about what to do after the elections. Many people admitted that even though they voted for Obama, they didn’t really think that he was going to make the serious changes that are necessary in this society, and some just felt he was the “lesser of two evils.” Many, many people really loved the “Wanted For Mass Murder” t-shirts with the faces of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, etc. on the front. One gentleman really said he agreed that they needed to face prosecution for their war crimes, but when I asked him if he thought Obama would pursue that, he admitted that he wouldn’t.

It was definitely an important night, and being out there posing this challenge and question to people was great. It was definitely surreal to be surrounded by hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people in the streets of Chicago and at the victory speech in Grant Park who were so openly and uncritically supportive of Obama and not only what he represents for American imperialism, but these vague, amorphous, content-free assertions of “change” and “hope” and “yes we can.”

Contrary to what Obama asserted in his victory speech, his election does not represent the “dreams” of America’s founders - in fact, Obama himself would literally be a piece of property and not even considered a human being by America’s founders. His worth to this “democracy” would be 3/5ths of an electoral vote in a “democratic” election that would have excluded every Black person in this country, all women, and even most white males who owned no property. The “two wars, a planet in peril, the worst finanial crisis in a century” are not some kind of random “accidents,” but based on fundamental choices of those in the ruling class. These so-called “brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan” are not there to “risk their lives for us” - they are there to enforce and expand American imperialist domination of the globe. America’s supposed “ideals” of “democracy, liberty, opportunity” are as far from the material reality of the lives of the people as they ever have been. And Barack Obama is not going to change that. The American Dream that Obama represents does not need to be “reclaimed,” the American nightmare of capitalism-imperialism needs to be uprooted and a new social and economic order established, one that is fundamentally determined to eliminate exploitation and oppression and liberate humanity from hundreds of years of outmoded social and economic relations.