"Escape From No Future" : An update on the blog and the latest on OWS

"Escape From No Future" : An update on the blog and the latest on OWS


"I'm as much an asshole as I've ever been"- Titus Andronicus, "The Battle of Hampton Roads"


"Wall Street, demolish it! Student debt, abolish it! "- student chant during Occupy Boston march this afternoon


Ok, so I've been spending a lot of time traveling between Western Mass and NYC over the last few weeks which means that I've been slacking on the blog and life in general. I've been unemployed (i.e. liberated from wages but still working without pay/ hustling) for over a month and I'm slipping into what Michael Foucault once called "busy inertia"- a state of intellectual restlessness. The informal economy is a fun, relatively autonomous way to get by and virtually everyone is doing it, but it doesn't offer much of a future or a stable income. On a recent car ride back to Western Mass from NYC, I described my situation to my housemate in terms of a dead corpse: there's only so many times that you can poke it and stare at it before you get bored and hopeless. My life in Northampton is starting to feel a lot like that dead corpse- the initial sense of fascination and fun is starting to fade from these long days and nights. 


So I've been plotting my "escape from no future" as Titus Andronicus (themselves former members of the loser club) call it and I'm not finding any answers in Western Mass. Not that I haven't been enjoying hanging out with all the good people here, but I have no intention of waiting for the "opportunity" of spending four years as a dishwasher at The Roost so I can spend another four as barista. FYI valley-dwelling jobseekers: the partial owner of The Roost is a total trust-fund douche in a American Apparel hoodie. His pretentiousness levels are off the charts. I went to an experimental private liberal arts school so I should know a thing or two about pretentious douche bags and idiots.  To say the least, you know you are living in a sad faux-liberal college town when the top position on the hierarchy of low-wage jobs still only pays minimum wage (but mad subcultural status, bro); or nothing at all. But hey on the bright side the shitty post-apocalyptic  hipster haircut you need for the job doesn't cost much. So comrades please help me help myself, if you know of any collective/co-op/ cheap rent housing situations opening up let me know. If you know of a job as well, I'm willing to degrade myself in the wage system in order to pretend to be happy. Location is not really an issue at this point. In the meantime it looks like I'll be joining the other 85 percent as I struggle with chronic/intermittent joblessness, debt, and boredom at home. I guess for the time being I'll be joining up with the global contingent of fellow (radical) losers, precariats, freelancers and slackers. For what its worth, it's not so bad. And we all know work sucks anyway. Although, there is really no way to avoid self-management and self-exploitation when you spend as much time online as I do. But enough about me, I want to briefly address the latest OWS developments now that I'm back. 


First, a disclaimer for radical folks who have yet to make it to, or are en route to, OWS.  Today notorious defender of the right to protest, King (mayor) Bloomberg issued a royal decree informing his peasants and peons that he has permitted OWS to stay indefinitely. Before we all get down on one knee and kiss his ring, I think this is far from a victory. In fact, I think the King's advisers, including Goldman Sachs and Raymond Kelley, are having a ball ordering white shirts to club, beat, pepper-spray, surveil, and arrest OWS protestors so why stop now? And for their part, white shirts and blue shirts alike seem to be enjoying the workout, as well as the overtime pay. As I posted on facebook and twitter earlier this afternoon: "OWS is now a corporate-sponsored open air cop holding pen complete with real live folks practicing mutual aid and "freedom of speech" for gawkers, bourgeois tourists and other corn-fed idiots." Additionally, OWS offers King bloomberg and the rest of his blood thirsty capitalist thugs a perfect excuse to clamp down on direct action throughout the city since he was nice enough to give us a space to protest and all... As Research and Destroy noted today, "This is what building the new world in the shell of the old means today – an assembly ringed by cops." My advice: Don't get caught being a jester in King Bloomberg's court or a DNC cheerleader, break out of your cages and pens before the NYPD throws away the key! In authorizing the encampment (yes, encampment not occupation) at Liberty Plaza, king Bloomberg has officially declared OWS business as usual. Let's show him he's wrong before it's too late.  As crimethinc recently reminded us: ""We’re not just here to “speak truth to power”—when we only speak, the powerful turn a deaf ear to us. Let’s make space for autonomous initiatives and organize direct action that confronts the source of social inequalities and injustices." Stay tuned for a special slacker edition of the weekly roundup.