Status Updates From Direct Action: Memoirs of a...

loving it ..

The parents of the punk kids were rude into complacency through slick marketing of the illusion that corporate America was moving towards a society free of pollution, with equal opportunities for all. Both men and women could drive to their corporate offices in their BMWs listening to the sounds of Bob Dylan or the Rolling Stones.

But the struggles of the 60s did not result in a revolution. Corporate America learned how to co-opt the opposition and fine-tune the capitalist machinery. A lot of money could be made by selling things the baby boomers wanted, like health food, blue jeans, recycled products, and rock concerts. A few sacrifices had to be made, but in the end the machine ran more smoothly than ever.

I truly believe that if there was a God and he or she appeared in front of me and said, “Ann, if you are willing to die, right now, no more animals will become extinct at the hands of men, horses will run free, no more rivers will be cesspools for factories, and no more Native girls will have to be prostitutes,” I would willingly have sacrificed myself.

All the articles I had read, all the TV programs I had watched, and all the destruction of nature I had witnessed had laid the unconscious groundwork for a compulsion to complete this mission to fight in every way I could a society that made this Native girl’s future inevitable.

Painful passage contrasting her life & continued decision to be a militant to this “poor Native girl” she sees, perceives as an addict & sex worker, and flattens to a statistic. It’s a brutally honest moment of whiteness and uncomfortable to read.

We are not Marxists, communist, or socialists. We are not rooted in the working class. We are rooted in the alienated youth, the older hippies that didn’t lose their ideals, intellectuals who dare to articulate a new philosophy that critiques materialism, technology, and asks “what the hell is progress anyway?”