Posts Tagged ‘Rozalinda Borcila’
May Day: On Peacekeeping and the Cops
The May Day March in Chicago was on Sunday, May 1st at 2PM Union Park. More info here, and a small video is here.
The day was joyful, warm and breezy. A mixed crowd of a several hundred people gathered at Union Park and marched to Pilsen. I think it gave us something of a sense of where the independent movement is right now. The march had a relaxed kind of anti-authoritarian vibe that can only come from a collective production. Kids made their own flags, people mingled and chanted, a train backed up to watch and blow its horn in support. The open mic was a definite hit, although the ending program lost the interest and passion of the crowd. There were only a few visible “blocks” in the march, few organizations large enough to make their presence felt – or to show up with mass-produced signs in an effort to establish a disproportionate visual presence. It was mostly just different kinds of . . . you know, people. Fewer national flags than had become customary at immigrant rights protests (except for the March 10 event, when they were entirely absent). From what I could see, hear, experience and touch, there is possibly a different culture emerging from this kind of organizing. Read the rest of this entry »
May Day: The Unexpected Joys of Flyering
May Day March in Chicago is Sunday, May 1st—2PM Union Park. More info here.
We have been organizing with no access to media or institutional resources, no logistical or financial support from big organizations or from anyone with weight to throw around. We also are not relying on social media—the impact of Twitter and Faceboook for the Egyptian uprising notwithstanding, we have seen how limited online tools really are, especially when it comes to self-organization within immigrant communities, and in cities as deeply segregated as Chicago. This means day after day of flyering.
May Day East and May Day West : From Both Sides, Now
May Day March in Chicago is Sunday, May 1st—2PM Union Park.
I grew up in Romania pre-1989, on the other side of the “iron curtain.” May Day was an official holiday in my childhood, which means that it was sponsored by the government. In a militarized, totalitarian regime, this was a lot like celebrating with a gun against your head. The official line proclaimed it as the day to celebrate the working class, understood as the class presumably in power. Of course none of it made sense. A regime that called itself communist was actually an extreme form of nationalistic state capitalism. And the class in power was actually the bureaucratic, managerial, and military elite. But language is funny like that: it has a way of shaping reality, and forming worlds both inside and outside our minds. And repeated enough, words create solid structures, and come to stand for reality in ways often hard to unmake. Sheer repetition, backed by the power to mass multiply or broad-cast (and a war machine underwriting it) makes anything done in the name of communism, or freedom, be equated with communism, or freedom; it makes cooperation mean friend of the repressive state apparatus, and “working class” mean a small powerful elite of fat men in tight suits with an endless appetite for power.
May Day! May Day!
Mayday March in Chicago is Sunday, May 1st — 2PM Union Park.
I am new to Chicago, and new to blogging, but here goes my effort at play-by-play reflection of my first ever experience helping to organize the Chicago May Day March. This is a subjective account of May Day in Chicago and of what, really, organizing in this particular situation actually entails. How do autonomous groups come together to build something, despite overwhelming media disinterest and without the support of the big players in the nonprofit industrial complex? What am I learning from the fierce, funny and incredibly lucid undocumented youth who are at the heart of the organizing effort? Or at least I promise to archive some of the contributions of my amazing 3 year-old daughter Liana to the organizing process.
