END:CIV

What’s worse than driving for 20 hours with a lot of personal shit on your mind?

Driving for 20 hours with a lot of personal shit on your mind without music.

Yep, my van’s stereo broke somewhere between Flagstaff and Austin. But I’m being a little over dramatic, because I only drove for a few hours without music, before digging out some headphones and dutifully rocked out while breaking state safety laws. Fuck it!

One of the things I can always count on when I feel my personal life is in shambles, is how truly fucked the world is. As soon as I was able to download some news into my ipod, I suddenly realized that even though I felt pain in my heart, my problems are puny in comparison.

Yep, Japan has been in my mind. How many more nuclear accidents must we endure before we end this insane way of generating energy? I know the answer to that question. Nuclear energy will not stop unless we stop it ourselves.

As I was listening to a podcast about the meltdown, I was driving past an area of Texas with thousands of windmills, and I mean as far as the eye can see. Every so often I could see an old oil pump chugging away. Out with the old, in with the new.

Wind and solar are the new saviours of our lifestyle because they are “clean.” But when evangelists of new “green” tech, pump out press releases, they never mention how much resource extraction must be done in order to build these new energies. Mining has to be one of the most destructive activities man is perpetrating on the planet. And it’s usually poor brown people who take the brunt of the work or the decimation of their land.

Nope, there are not panacea’s to our current clusterfuck. So with that said, instead of depressing the shit out of you, here’s a list of what’s been keeping my ears happy during my long lonely drives.

Calle 13, Flying Lotus, The Fugees, Amon Tobin, Radio Ecoshock, Al Jazeera, Learn French with Michel Thomas, Democracy Now!, The Arcade Fire, Neko Case, Ice Cube, Bill Hicks, David Cross, Blackalicious, Rage Against the Machine, Miles Davis, Radiohead, Common, The Smiths, Damian Marley, Portishead, Eminem, Erykah Badu, Gotan Project, Holy!Holy!Holy!, John Coltrane, Stephen Williams, Mads Jacobsen, The Pixies, The Pharcyde, Pink Floyd, Promoe, POP Defect Radio, The Roots, The Streets, Test Their Logik and Tricky.

Peeps have been sending me music and mixes and it’s helped a lot. If you got some hot shit hip hop, audio books or anything that will help me pass the time on the road just upload to sendspace.com and send me the link.

I’ve been in Obama land a little over a week and I extremely pleased with what has gone down. After a weekend of warm goodbyes (and tacos) by my comrades from Vancouver, my heart felt a bit sad that I was leaving for this tour. I love my peeps and I know they’ll be just fine without me, but fuck, I already miss them. Never the less, I got in my van with butterflies in my stomach and crossed that ridiculous imaginary line without a problem. As I drove Rage Against the Machine blared in the single ancient speaker above the dashboard: “FREEDOMMMMMMM, YEAH RIGHT!” reminding me of my mission on this tour. Not to find the perfect taco (that’s the secondary mission) but to add to the many voices that are working to pull the wool from people’s eyes. As my first screening showed, this is not going to be an easy task.

The Bellingham gig was packed. About 80 people filled a large classroom at Western Washington University. The event was organized by Fertile Ground, a promising example of people putting Derrick Jensen’s ideas to work. During the Q and A, a passionate Iraq vet took issue with the film’s critique of pacifism. I’ve come to expect this at every showing, but tonight’s was a bit different. The vet had experience with violence. His concern was the old “violence begets violence” and used his example to exemplify this. Apparently he went to Iraq and killed a tortured people. I told him that his context was not what I was talking about, and that he was given orders to do such barbarous acts, which is not what I am suggesting at all. He did not like my answer, and very much like the gentleman in Nelson, continued to disrupt the session until I raised my voice and pointedly asked him to leave. People tell me that if people are having such “violent” reactions to my work, that I am doing my job. I’m still not sure about that, but from now on I’m taking questions on written pieces of paper. Heh!

After the session I found him and he apologized and we had a good discussion. At this point a woman cornered me and asked me why I had chosen to “attack” the environmental groups criticized on END:CIV. I told her that I chose Greenpeace because they are the most visible and some their greatest transgressions have been analyzed and reported on by comrades of mine. I think I bruised her ego some more because she works for Forest Ethics. Her beef was that she felt that environmental groups should not be criticized by “allies.” I understand why she would take issue with the criticism of her employer, and it’s clear she believes in the work that she’s doing. But Greenpeace, Forest Ethics and others are not my allies. What they did to the Nuxalk and the way they co-opt struggles in unconscionable. After ten minutes of back and forth it was clear she just wanted to talk in circles and try to get me to put my foot in my mouth and “get me”. I told her that I’m an anti-capitalist, and that I’ve looked at Forest Ethics and Greenpeace’s websites and literature and nowhere did I find critiques of the capitalist system. All I found was evidence that those groups facilitate the “greening” of capitalism and further industrialization. There’s nothing to show that these folks are interested in revolution and have no concept of class struggles. She now looked like deer in headlights and that gave me window to escape that joint and drink some Mescal.

The best parts of the week have been hanging with amazing people in concentrated doses. My hosts in Seattle are accomplished artists with excellent taste in music and Mexican food. Going to their place is like a mental retreat and I get treated to homemade beer, sauna sessions and a glimpse into their creative lives. RobZ creates unedited short films that when watched in succession, create a hilarious hypnotizing effect. Sarah is a painter, but her most recent project is something to behold. It’s called Industrial Harvest and it involved buying a huge amount of wheat from the mercantile exchange in Chicago, milling it into flour, bagging it and giving it away. What Sarah was trying to do is document how the commodification and industrialization of food has totally disconnected us from our sources of nourishment.

I can’t recount the rest of the interactions of the week because I have to go to breakfast, but of note: I interviewed members of the militant group “The George Jackson Brigade” and former “Infernal Noise Brigade” musician and DJ “Filastine” drinks with the sweet sweet anarchist crew in Tacoma, mom caliber Puerto Rican food at la Isla, and a beautiful farm community outside Olympia from where I’m typing this.

Next up, Evergreen State, Portland and Eugene.

To quote Borat, the first stop of the END:CIV 2011 Tour was a “Great Success!” Well that is if you leave out the flat tire that delayed our arrival to the beautiful Denman Island by several hours. I guess this is what I signed up for, and it’s a good reminder that machines break and can be broken. The analogy was not lost on me or the 8 insurrectionary anarchists that populated my gas guzzler on the way to the mythical anarchist paradise. You see Denman Island has no cops. The RCMP makes routing stops every couple of months in the winter, and a little more often in the summer. But for the most of the year. this community of old hippies, environmentalists, retirees, freaks, artists and like I said before anarchists, takes care of business themselves with almost no oversight from the state. I’d like to say there are no churches on Denman, but that’s not the case.

Yep, people move here to get away from civilization and live a simpler life. It does sound cliché, but once you sleep one night there you understand. Not only is it quiet, but the psychic noise of the big city is also not present. I had the best sleep I’ve had in weeks.

Our crew of trouble makers were hosted by Sheila Nopper and Ron Sakolsky, two anarchist artists and pirate radio enthusiasts who have been living there for 12 years or so. While touring the Island, our hosts informed me about the challenges that threaten their chill island living. Mainly an overzealous real estate developer and a proposed coal mine across the water in Vancouver Island. The developer has already sunk his teeth into a housing project that will attract a more affluent and unpleasant group of people to the Island, i.e. yuppies. I hope I don’t have to explain why the coal mine is fucked up. While not all the residents of the island are opposed to the expansion and densification of the housing market, the overwhelming majority are opposed to the coal mine. Like I said, the coal mine is the obvious problem, while real estate expansion is more insidious and a bit harder to explain away.

This is one of the reasons why some comrades from Vancouver encouraged Ron and Sheila and other residents organized the screening of END:CIV. Huge chunks of the island have already been clear cut, and if the folks who live there to start to nurture a culture of resistance with the quickens, the scourge of civilization will soon lay waste to this special place.

A great conversation came out of the screening and many of the people I talked to said the film had a positive effect on the radical community of Denman. One of the people I met after the screening is Neil Bockman one of the makers of one of my favourite films, Koyaanisqatsi. If you have not seen it, it’s a must and a film that provided much of the inspiration for END:CIV. Bockman was impressed by my film and encouraged me to continue looking for ways to get wider distribution for the film. All in all, I left Denman Island satisfied and convinced that making END:CIV was a worthwhile endeavour and validated that touring with the film will kickstart conversations that are sorely needed.

Changing the subject,

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by Waziyatawin, one of the people featured on END:CIV, has been marred in controversy. The short version is that one of the people listening to her speech in Minnesota, called her a terrorist. A follow up letter to the local paper caused some debate and got the attention of the FBI, who phoned Waziyatawin last week.

This situation is troubling but not surprising. Waziyatawin’s point of view, which I share, threatens the dominant culture. The protectors of the corporate state will attempt to intimidate and silence, those who deconstruct the systems that enslave and destroy the land and have the courage to say what we must do in order to preserve what’s left of the planet. At times like these is when have to show solidarity and unity and tell the people up top that we are not afraid.