Adventures of a Gonzo Journalist
Posted in Archive, Austin, and Creative Commons
You don’t have to go to Washington, D.C. to resist Donald Trump. Here in Austin, we’ve got a full weekend of protest — and some fun events to round it out.
Heres’s a list of every protest, rally, or inauguration-related event I know of in Austin. You can jump in the comments with links if you know about anything else I’ve missed.
I’m not endorsing any of these events, but I’ll be covering them when I can. Keep an eye on my Twitter for updates and my Facebook for live coverage.
Posted in Austin, Creative Commons, Gonzo Notes, and Journalism
A vital part of preparing for the next 4 years is building broad coalitions, but lately I’ve been reminded that coalition building has a dark side too.
This is work we need to do, without a doubt. A coalition can mobilize thousands of people from diverse backgrounds, and illuminate the intersection between our struggles.
The trouble is that with every group you bring to the table, you have to accommodate not just another political agenda but differing tactics for achieving those goals.
Questions quickly arise: How far are you willing to go to resist the government? Will your coalition collaborate with the police and in what ways? Are all organizations committed to nonviolence and, if so, do they have compatible definitions of what nonviolence means?
Here in Austin, Texas, activists love to hold rallies at the state capitol building.
It’s a magnificent edifice of pink granite and the symbolic center of our state, so I can understand the impulse. Yet the grounds are so massive that all but the biggest crowds become visually lost among the monuments, and for about 18 months out of every 24 the building is empty (“a big pink tourist trap”).
I’m tired of attending protests outside an empty building. The bigger issue is that strongly worded speeches alone won’t solve the immense problems we face. Neither will petitions or angry letters.
Posted in Act Out!, Austin, Creative Commons, Journalism, and Video
Whenever you talk about terrible things happening in Texas, people start to tune out. You’re thinking, of course it’s fucking awful, it’s Texas. Why don’t we let them secede already?
It’s true, Texas politics seem like what happens when you apply dystopian novel “The Handmaid’s Tale” as an instruction manual BUT everything that happens there is a test balloon. The University of Texas at Austin motto is “what starts here changes the world.” And with most states and the U.S. Congress united behind that shit stain Trump, you can bet we’ll all be eating the same shit-filled Texas chili soon enough.
Now, the Texas government is full of low-life scum, but due to the peculiar whims of Texas politics, the Lt. Governor is a scumbag who stands above all the rest. The Lt. Governor is not just president of the state senate, but also sets the agenda for the entire legislative session. The senators and reps have a lot of politics to get through in a short amount of time, because the Texas State legislature only meets for 140 days every other year. Lemme say that again but slower: A hundred and 40 days EVERY OTHER year. The rest of the time, that massive building is just a big pink tourist trap.
Posted in Creative Commons, Gonzo Notes, and Journalism
During the first meeting of Occupy Austin, the general assembly agreed that the movement would “celebrate every victory.”
It’s an idea that I’ve often returned to in the years since OWS ended, and I was thinking about it when the water protectors of Standing Rock won an unexpected but hard-fought victory last weekend.
On Sunday, the Army Corps Of Engineers refused to grant a permit for the pipeline to continue under a river that passes through sacred lands in Sioux territory, temporarily preventing completion.
As thousands of veterans streamed into Standing Rock, promising to put their bodies in between cops and Native Americans, “the power structure itself blinked in the face of our unity,” Kelly Hayes wrote, eloquently, on Monday.
