nettime May Day report
[This mail, orginally dated May 3, got stuck in a mail queue here @ nettime. Sorry for the delay. Felix] May Day, 2006 Chicago, USA Dear nettime, Today I went to the big immigrants' rights march/rally. I had enough to say about the day even before I received word, just after having returned home from the event, of an untimely loss for the Chicago art/activist world. Michael Piazza passed suddenly over the weekend. Michael was an artist and a local presence for many years, with a memory of radical Chicago that went back to the Seventies. I cannot speak about May Day in Chicago in 2006 without mentioning the concurrent passing of this colleague beloved by so many because Michael himself played an important role in keeping the observance of May Day vital in the city of its politicized birth, including having coordinated a number of projects that took place on the site of the Haymarket incident. I could say a lot more about Michael and the way he lived his life, but I'll keep it short here and simply offer the observation that much of what happens in this city in the area of cultural activism--the way our networks operate, the way people so generously support and collaborate with each other, the way productive exchanges between allies are made possible--bears the imprint of Michael's innovations and values. I think with time we will realize that Michael's work, in its own way, left as long a shadow in this city as did that of the late Carlos Cortez. Check out this interview with Michael on the colorful struggle over Haymarket memory, authored by Nicolas Lampert. http://www.areachicago.com/issue2/haymarket.htm To the immigrants' rights rally, then. It was huge. The New York Times quoted the Chicago police count at 400k while organizers claimed more than 600k. I tramped around the perimeter of the concluding rally site, stopping in different places to get a feel for the local view, observe neighboring clusters of demonstrators, catch fragments of sound and speech floating by. The composite impression I took from the experience was one of hope, but in regard to a very particular problem--what Badiou in _Ethics_ calls 'the problem of the same.' As opposed to the problem of difference. Because here difference was not only on display but joyfully announced, with creative signs, t-shirts, and yes flags doing the work of declaring origins. And yet the aggregate message was one of unity, of the common, of the shared--of 'the same.' When difference is not only tolerated but celebrated--ie the presence of more and greater difference literally applauded by the cheering throng (Organizer: And today the Ghanian community stands with us! Mexican throng: Yay!!!)--how can it be anything else but making visible the depth of the common interest, the common cause, the common struggle. A significant feature of this event (along with the first big one that took place here back in March) was the notable presence of Polish, Croatian, Irish, and Ukrainian immigrants, who together probably made up about 15 percent of the crowd. Unlike the actions in LA, this visible minority of white Euro-immigrants turns the local debate constructively away from racist undertones. The small but tightly organized block of young Irish immigrants, especially, echoes the immigrant history associated with the current city father (Daley junior). You don't want to be too crass about it, but in Chicago it never pays to err on the side of subtlety, either, so it must be said: this undeniably multi-racial character of the local movement has arguably dulled the easiest of the reactionary counterattacks. Seeing peoples normally (around these parts) thought of as 'white' not only joining a Mexican-led movement, but happy to do so, and furthermore, pleased and comfortable to be playing the role of minority...that, I'm guessing, is a complication of the default white supremacist narrative which immediately gums up the psychology of xenophobia. Chicago being the North American center for Polish, Croatian, and Ukrainian immigration, and one of the centers for the Irish arrivals, perhaps stands to render the local movement worthy of continued consideration nationally as the xenophobic reaction inevitably counters in the coming days. That all said, there were two groups underrepresented in bodies and yet still represented. The Black American and the Chinese shared this peculiar status. Neither were very visible as countable bodies, although the black folks seemed to be out in numbers greater than the media reports would have you believe. Nevertheless, considering this city is more than 30 percent black, the numbers seemed pretty small. I have no figures on the numbers of undocumented Chinese in Chicago, but I do know that a friend who was looking for a caregiver for an elderly Chinese woman got more than thirty calls in response to an ad that ran for one week in the lowest circulation local Chinese paper, and all of the applicants were middle-aged women
Re: nettime may day report
May 2006
Postcards from precarity (1)
[I] found myself re-reading nettime these days
almost frantically, searching and linking (for)
something, as if it (nettime) was (again) a window to
(the/a) World. Like when the (inter)net was new,
and when it (a modem) was a (hyper)alternative to one`s
own desk/room/books/boredom/limits.
Now the World appears to be everywhere,
at reach, yet so small. So frightening. And/or boring.
Hence- one turns to this list.
Again.
[you] made me think
with all your different languages*
and with your worries,and hopes,and fears,
identities, post-identities, migrations,
non-migrations, staying, excluding, fearing,
defining, asking, certainties, doubts, precarities
{*[language as expression/tool (in symbols)
of point(s) of view?] ,?}
[he/she/it ... them?]... it means what?
what made me think the most was the contrast
between two moods in nettime.discussion;
Mood one was that which I percieved as filled with some sort
of preocupation with various sorts of them ,
such as:
...all types of frenchoid youths
...the others of the world
...the cultures
...etc.
who can`t be understood, who need to be saved,
who can`t be saved, who can`t understand, etc.
(for example as in the cartoonist argument, the
Jean Buadrillard - The Pyres of Autumn
text, etc)
The other mood would be the one I read in
the more recent messages like this
mayday report from Dan S. Wang.
Made me think/hope. That maybe we
[we]
can still think, use our brains joyously and creatively
not to build barriers and fears but to weave
bridges, because networks exist also by
thoughts/ideas/languages we produce/express/spread.
Eurocentrism is such a fun term when
one is young and reading about it in books,
but then [one] realises that
it`s enough to move one step
in any direction and all changes, from us one becomes
[them]
and different forms of *centrism become
crude reality.
Maybe there is a difference, today, between who
is moving and who is staying, and more then anything
this happens also mentally.
Not only mentally.
The physical migrations are fundamental,
and I am tired of reading about them from the point of view
of who is staying.
Who is afraid.
Who thinks they (and basically most theys
exist only in our imaginations) shall never understand.
All our cultures are all ours. Everyones.
Background. Karma. Burdain. Riches.
Experience. Ideas. Language. Identity.
Interface.
divenire europa
divenire france
divenire i/you/he/she/it/we/they/...
Roots are always interconnected (rhizome?)
that is, if we were to really seek deeper,
we`d come out on the other side
(Earth is still round, maybe?)
--
we`re living in pieces, I wanna live in peace sonic youth
# distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission
# nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
# more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body
# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
nettime may day report
May Day, 2006 Chicago, USA Dear nettime, Today I went to the big immigrants' rights march/rally. I had enough to say about the day even before I received word, just after having returned home from the event, of an untimely loss for the Chicago art/activist world. Michael Piazza passed suddenly over the weekend. Michael was an artist and a local presence for many years, with a memory of radical Chicago that went back to the Seventies. I cannot speak about May Day in Chicago in 2006 without mentioning the concurrent passing of this colleague beloved by so many because Michael himself played an important role in keeping the observance of May Day vital in the city of its politicized birth, including having coordinated a number of projects that took place on the site of the Haymarket incident. I could say a lot more about Michael and the way he lived his life, but I'll keep it short here and simply offer the observation that much of what happens in this city in the area of cultural activism--the way our networks operate, the way people so generously support and collaborate with each other, the way productive exchanges between allies are made possible--bears the imprint of Michael's innovations and values. I think with time we will realize that Michael's work, in its own way, left as long a shadow in this city as did that of the late Carlos Cortez. Check out this interview with Michael on the colorful struggle over Haymarket memory, authored by Nicolas Lampert. http://www.areachicago.com/issue2/haymarket.htm To the immigrants' rights rally, then. It was huge. The New York Times quoted the Chicago police count at 400k while organizers claimed more than 600k. I tramped around the perimeter of the concluding rally site, stopping in different places to get a feel for the local view, observe neighboring clusters of demonstrators, catch fragments of sound and speech floating by. The composite impression I took from the experience was one of hope, but in regard to a very particular problem--what Badiou in _Ethics_ calls 'the problem of the same.' As opposed to the problem of difference. Because here difference was not only on display but joyfully announced, with creative signs, t-shirts, and yes flags doing the work of declaring origins. And yet the aggregate message was one of unity, of the common, of the shared--of 'the same.' When difference is not only tolerated but celebrated--ie the presence of more and greater difference literally applauded by the cheering throng (Organizer: And today the Ghanian community stands with us! Mexican throng: Yay!!!)--how can it be anything else but making visible the depth of the common interest, the common cause, the common struggle. A significant feature of this event (along with the first big one that took place here back in March) was the notable presence of Polish, Croatian, Irish, and Ukrainian immigrants, who together probably made up about 15 percent of the crowd. Unlike the actions in LA, this visible minority of white Euro-immigrants turns the local debate constructively away from racist undertones. The small but tightly organized block of young Irish immigrants, especially, echoes the immigrant history associated with the current city father (Daley junior). You don't want to be too crass about it, but in Chicago it never pays to err on the side of subtlety, either, so it must be said: this undeniably multi-racial character of the local movement has arguably dulled the easiest of the reactionary counterattacks. Seeing peoples normally (around these parts) thought of as 'white' not only joining a Mexican-led movement, but happy to do so, and furthermore, pleased and comfortable to be playing the role of minority...that, I'm guessing, is a complication of the default white supremacist narrative which immediately gums up the psychology of xenophobia. Chicago being the North American center for Polish, Croatian, and Ukrainian immigration, and one of the centers for the Irish arrivals, perhaps stands to render the local movement worthy of continued consideration nationally as the xenophobic reaction inevitably counters in the coming days. That all said, there were two groups underrepresented in bodies and yet still represented. The Black American and the Chinese shared this peculiar status. Neither were very visible as countable bodies, although the black folks seemed to be out in numbers greater than the media reports would have you believe. Nevertheless, considering this city is more than 30 percent black, the numbers seemed pretty small. I have no figures on the numbers of undocumented Chinese in Chicago, but I do know that a friend who was looking for a caregiver for an elderly Chinese woman got more than thirty calls in response to an ad that ran for one week in the lowest circulation local Chinese paper, and all of the applicants were middle-aged women without work permits. So they are certainly around, but with the exception of handfuls, they weren't a
