paytonalexandre-blog

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While traveling through Houston, I was welcomed into a small tent enclave; one of many peppered throughout the city. Technically, these aren’t “legal,” yet, strategically placed beneath interstate highways, they rest outside the jurisdiction of local police and state cops don’t bother with them. These are creative and resilient folks who’ve inhabited the cracks within the crumbling infrastructure of a city that had forsaken them. Through the storm they found solidarity. Pictured here is Marie, tuning her guitar. She used wood pallets to lift her tent and keep it above the muddy ground - a tactic common in the camps. She shared with me her visions of a just world; one where people would live in dignity and with minimal impact upon the environment. For more behind the scenes from the upcoming Mutual Aid project, follow along here. To keep the camera rolling, please consider donating to the paypal link below: https://www.paypal.me/PaytonMcDonald

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Illustrating Change

Wednesday, July 6th, 2016 - Ann Arbor, MI 

In 2011, Lauren Gucik & Rachel Cassandra set out out on a journey to Southern & Central America to create with local female street artists on their turf while documenting shared experiences. The two provided themselves as microphones for these women to express their struggles & their passions beyond borders. Birthed in 2015, Women’s Street Art in Latin America is the bi-lingual product of their adventure, refined by four years spent in gestation. The message is clear: through each stroke and every tag, female power & solidarity subverts patriarchal domination. Inclusivity, autonomy, passion, & play are their tools by which murals of expressive spaces are created. As Peruvian artist & activist, Monica Miros stated,

“...more than fighting with these people, we have to create our own space, our own discourse, coming from what we want.”

Upon the second floor of the book store in the Espresso Bar, I seated myself among an intimate group eager to hear about the creative pursuits of far-off females.  Walking into the space, an infectious smile cast by a short & energetic woman passed me by. A few moments later, this artist would be offering us a glance into the lives of diverse painters, muralists, taggers, & activists from their eyes. 

Within half an hour, Lauren Gucik presented us with an array of women; their creations & their stories. She didn’t hesitate to acknowledge the learning curves involved along a journey that two white, American women might expect to find in the streets of Latin America. Despite these challenges, the duo was accepted by tight-knit communities as they collaborated with new allies in the commonplace of what she describes as “a culture of inclusivity.” At the end of her presentation, Lauren entertained a quick volley of questions from an intrigued crowd:

“How did you establish connections abroad?”

“How did you navigate privilege as US citizens in areas still struggling with the results of colonialism?”

“Did these people all self-identify as women?”

“Are these people persecuted? Is it ‘legal,’ or do they have to hide?”

“Why Latin America?”

“How did your experiences translate back home?”

Each of these inquiries she mindfully navigated concisely & with humble honesty. She concluded in admitting that, “I sort of am still in self-reflection & hope to continue to be self-critical of everything I do, & in making sure the words I use are correct & respectful of these women & their stories. I welcome any feedback if anyone thought that they weren’t.”

Capital pending, I plan to purchase a copy. All of the proceeds are heading back to the featured artists & communities. This project represents an inspiration & a call to action for people - especially those marginalized by capitalism - to discover new & resilient ways to refurbish society.

To grab a book or keep up with the project, check out the links below:

http://artesinmiedo.net/

https://www.facebook.com/SinMiedo.FemaleStreetArtists/

http://www.juxtapoz.com/street-art/book-on-female-latin-american-street-artists/

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The DNC 2016

Monday, July 28th - Philadelphia, PA

The pale white spire grew closer as I approached the phallic structure centered squarely. City Hall was ground zero for the resistance movement throughout the duration of the Convention. After having heard Jill Stein promote her upcoming activities during an interview online, I made the swift decision to take a few days away from wage slavery and get a lift to Philadelphia on Craigslist.

A ride was offered. We rode through the night on Sunday. We slept in the car. We were eager for what was to come. Todd and I parted ways in the morning; he was off to an open mic at Marconi Park and I was heading to the March for Our Lives demonstration that would set the stage for the Green Party’s Power to the People Rally later that evening.

The city seemed, for the most part, to be operating like normal. Busses hissed, pedestrians milled about, no sign of civil unrest. Nearing the shadow of the monolith, I heard to buzz of countless demonstrators and identity activists entrenched around its base. My heart pumped faster. My feet stepped with conviction. With a 35mm camera and audio recorder at my hip, a black book in my backpocket, I dove into the socio-political swell.

The march didn’t begin for a few hours, so I killed time chatting with assorted people and their contested ideologies. I also got to witness Geraldo Rivera get is head soaked then run off by an unimpressed crowd. 

Publications were passed out, interviews were conducted, megaphones blasted, and an inflatable joint the size of a school bus was carried overhead by hopeful ganja advocates. 

Through the mob, a small band of young militants came marching. I managed to catch one and she gave me a taste of their propaganda. They were the Revolutionary Communists Party, an organization constructed by far-Left personality, Bob Avakian, to lead an “actual revolution” and “overthrow the system.” I entertained her reading of the party’s “points of attention,” which include non-tolerance for violence against or objectification of women, non-vengeful emancipation of the marginalized, and the quest for truth no “matter how unpopular;” and the party has had a deficit in popularity often met by condescension.

“Aren’t you the personality cult?” Interrupted another girl, this one representing the Socialist Worker’s Party. A brief exchange ensued between the two. Both defending their unique doctrines. Both advocating the end of capitalism. The Avakian initiate left to rejoin with her crew while the SWP cat and I rapped a bit longer after retreating into the shade. 

Democrats versus Greens, the Socialist Equality Party versus Worker’s World, Communists versus Anarchists. This experience left me wondering how the complex of problems we face on the world scale can be resolved by a body of people who find more difficulty in joining forces than in defining their personally subscribed ideologies...

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The Age of Trump Has Dawned

Incidentally, we’re witnessing a waking of the sleeping spirit within the people as intersectional movements are taking root and spreading seed. A radiant consciousness blossoms new color into the bramble-ridden garden of the American struggle against domination. Still, there’s an overwhelming amount of pruning and weeding to be done; a composting of the old and the companion planting of the new is required.

Webster’s Online Dictionary reluctantly admitted that fascism was consistently among the top words searched in 2016. Ironically, this may be positive. As the Sanders fire swept the hearts of hopefuls across the nation, the words socialism and revolution were added to the verbal palettes of many people hungry for change. However, these concepts are contested territories and, while exploring the socio-political wilderness, we should tread lightly. Navigating them mindfully, we’ll need to fill our packs with gear that keeps us healthy and on course.

Understanding what we’re facing and identifying our range of tactics are among the first steps to success.

Eyes wide, many have been galvanized by the shock of this phenomenon. Unfortunately, much of this reaction is the result of years of misdirection and historical amnesia. In order to address exactly what’s developed on the global stage, we’ll need to do the hard work of surgically dissecting the complex of crises we’re confronted with. In many cases, this requires us to introspectively address the ways by which we ourselves are oppressors, taking a step back, and rearranging our mental geometries from the colonial mindset we’ve been programmed with. 

Well beyond economic habits, we have to evolve our concepts of value altogether in order to achieve an equitable society.

Our consumer cult has rapidly become a self-devouring snake, wrapping and writhing upon itself while taking bite after greedy bite toward the tail end of its own demise. As individuals and communities that recognize this consequence, it’s our responsibility to demonstrate new means of autonomy apart from the narratives that we’ve been force-fed.

Fitting the theme of materialism, Donald Trump has risen to the occasion of a country in decline. He panders ornamentally to infectious insecurities within margins of the working class while advocating evermore disregard for both people and planet. No doubt, had this election cycle swung to the opposite end of the spectrum, we would nevertheless have been sold the calculating and commercialized doublespeak of the ruling elite.

Clearly, the issue is not these demagogues. Rather, it’s our belief in the systems that legitimize them.

In the First Nations, Ojibwe, language, the word sovereignty finds no meaning. The concept of ruling and being ruled is an imperialist ideal - one that asserts itself through imaginary borders; ethnic, gender, class, age, or otherwise. Through developing new ways of relating with our environments, we contest the notion that we can be ruled. After the hard work of establishing cooperative networks based in community organizing, we’ll have a platform upon which to stand firmly and say, “NO MASTERS!” Our identities cannot be bought or sold.

For more reading and insights into what steps we can take, check out the links below:

http://bigdoorbrigade.com/mutual-aid-toolbox/

https://crimethinc.com/tce

https://roarmag.org/essays/milstein-social-spaces-relations/

http://mijente.net/2017/02/10/community-defense-zone-guide/

https://rustbeltradio.org/2017/01/01/ep01/

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The Future is Blackness

Though a rainy night in the Renaissance City, stormy weather did’t precipitate Tuesday’s mood. In fact, loud booms and purple flashes from above complimented the announcement that inspired the evening’s festivities. With style and grace, Ingrid LaFleur is running for mayor.

Detroit native, world traveler, a curator of art, and social revolutionary, Ingrid embodies a diversity that compliments the wealth of culture unique to the area. Her Afrotopia project combines the revitalization of ancestral roots with the illustrative power of experimental installations. 

On Oakland Avenue, the local interdisciplinary artist venue, O.N.E Mile, hosted optimism. A tribute to P-Funk’s grand Mothership evoked cosmic thoughts. The general vibe was hopeful, yet some individuals expressed concern about the great challenges that lie head within the power structures predominating our society. Others said that, despite their distrust of politicians, they felt Ingrid represented a fresh perspective in the ways by which we navigate our social environments as a concerned public. 

Speaking modestly and with poise, addressing her inspirations to traverse the political wilderness, she introduced visions of a sustainable, inclusive, and transparent Detroit. Conjuring the city’s rich history of art and innovation, LaFleur delivered her incantation. 

“Together we can manifest new modes of living to make every neighborhood safe,” she assured. 

With “no intention of selling out to big business,” she critiqued the recent, isolated financial growth in the city and endorsed public reclaiming of the commons; a confrontation with private interests. 

Overhead, raindrop rhythms reverberated. Above us was a half burnt-out ceiling; reconstructed as a symbol of the power that comes along with collective dreaming. The O.N.E. Mile project was vibrant proof of this. Oakland Avenue itself is “sacred ground,” she reflected. Upon its legacy of art, funk, and community, she confidently exclaimed that “this is our time... not as Ingrid’s campaign, but as our campaign.” After a pause for applause, she added, “I’ll see you on the dance floor!”

The floor is a place of social experimentations; a laboratory of non-auditory communications. Music revealed the path, our steps led us into trance, then we tuned in and entered the dimension of blackness. Djs spun and libations were flowing. In that temporary autonomous space, delving down into the sub-conscious, we demonstrated co-creation at the nexus of art and solidarity. The night was sublime. 

As mindful beings, we have stock in what the future holds. This campaign asserts that a unified people maintain the power to prepare their soil for good harvest. Amidst storms brewing on the horizon, I believe that the vision of an intersectional Detroit is not only possible, but an imperative. 

To follow the campaign and learn more about the project, check the links below: 

http://www.lafleurformayor.com/platform

http://revolvedetroit.com/meet-revolutionaries/ingrid-lafleur

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Meditations on Standing Rock

A dramatic year is coming to a close. Throughout it, I’ve managed to spend time and resources traveling modestly while keeping my nostrils above the breaks and waves of economic distress. Each journey explored the fluctuating climate of what we have to work with as a society and asked the question of what we could potentially create.

First, I journeyed to Philadelphia for the DNC and joined thousands in direct action to contest the corporate duopoly. Next, a few comrades and I set out across three states to explore the concepts and practices of sustainability with the objective of not only defining the term, but also of questioning our lifestyles in relation to it.

My most recent journey lead me to Cannon Ball, North Dakota. In solidarity, a small crew and I drove about 2,300 miles round trip in the ballpark of 36 hours to the tune of something like 200 gallons of oil. Though we burned 5,000 times less than Enbridge spilled into the Kalamazoo River, our impact should be taken into account.

Through the night we made our way and, upon arriving, we were relieved to see both the vastness of the Oceti Sakowin camp and the level of organization within it.

“This is a matrifocal camp dedicated to prayer,” the gatekeeper informed us as we rolled in, “women and children are our focus and we don’t tolerate weapons or drugs.”

We settled in and made camp before scouting the area to grasp our bearings. Though the camp was winding down for the evening, a distant echo of drums whispered in our ears bewitching us along a trek through an open field into the cold and the black. We found ourselves at the Cannon Ball River at the bank of Turtle Island - a monolithic Sioux burial mound rested on treaty land, inaccessible under police occupation. To the east was where the sound came bellowing. Beyond our reach, another camp was chanting down the DAPL and its cronies.

We were met by a handful of activists bundled up and huddled around fires. We were silent. Silhouettes meditating on the rhythm and the flicker. No more than twenty yards separated us from Turtle Island. Within stone’s throw lied a number of canoes and rafts, each hacked up and guarded by a hedge of barbed wire. In attempts to summit the hill, activists used these while breaching the frigid gap, but the state had other plans. The distance was provoking. “In a few weeks, we’ll be able to walk over it,” a voice muttered. An otter swam beneath the ice.

What must have been an hour passed before we turned back. The bitter cold stung my toes as the radiant warmth left my boots. At the edge of camp, we were stopped by a shadow in the night. He held an authoritative light and flashed it in our eyes with the cadence and demeanor of a cop. I slowed my pace and considered bolting, calculating the ripples that could follow. I stopped. He approached us and asked for our names after blinding each of us. We told him our business - who we were, where we hailed, when we arrived. He softened up.

“There’s been a lot of shady activity around camp,” he told us before explaining the extreme level of surveillance we should expect. An ex-marine, he had travelled from Los Angeles only a week prior to lend his assistance patrolling the border for potential conflict and agent provocateurs. He gave us some parting advice and we returned to our spot, anxious for what was to come.

Mornings in the small village are met with a precession of women in prayer. 

From camp’s center, they lead a march to the banks of the river and make space for the sunrise. Echoic chants and the scent of sage haunt the crisp air. My comrades and I were fortunate enough to bring with us irregular weather from Michigan. Warm rays thawed the frosted ground and peeled layers off the fermenting bodies of those who braved the cold at the modest cost of hygiene. Our first activity was to attend the two-hour long, information-dense orientation required for all members upon arrival.

In a cramped sweat house of a  M*A*S*H* tent - which really was quite spacious save for the influx of out-of-state supporters - we were schooled on four principles. This is opened with prayer. The core values of the camp focused on maintaining an indigenous-centered frame of mind. The white savior complex would “not be tolerated.” This was due to the fact that the movement seeks to craft a new legacy. It uncovers the past while establishing new methods for confronting the future without losing sight of where we’ve come from.

In order to do this, each member is responsible to be of use. This point is stressed to eliminate the “festival atmosphere” that allures the fair weather idealist. Each individual is required to do their part in recycling into the sustainability of the camp’s flow. This particularly means the not-so-sexy work of picking up trash, washing dishes, chopping wood, and carrying water to the point of staying behind while long-term activists and First Nation people move to the front line.

Finally, we were encouraged to bring it all home. And by “it,” the instructors were clear in stating that only items, songs, terms, symbols, and practices that were given to us by the community were to be brought back. Cultural appropriation, born from the colonial sense of entitlement, is a detraction and a disrespect to the cause. But, celebration and the making of space for customs outside of our own is a force that contests the divisive agenda of corporate capitalism and its insistence that we fit into a mold; to buy or be sold. This is closed with prayer.

In tandem with orientations, there were decolonization meetings held in a public space for people to discuss and learn about the subtle ways in which the settler mentality thrives in our world. The topics covered a wide spectrum of controversial subjects including the politics of white passing (the social circumstances, privileges, or lack thereof for people who have native blood yet look “white enough”), capitalism and commodification of culture, dreamcatcher tattoos, the imperative of confronting our histories (no matter how blood-stained they may be), why we aren’t “all indigenous,” and many others.

To end our meeting, the advice was given for all people in attendance to find their meditations. To seek that silence within and connect to the world through means that respect the traditions of our pasts and bring new meaning to the ways in which we engage the world. We don’t need to shop the world market to find some new product or practice that “seems authentic enough.” We simply have to learn to observe and make space for the natural cycles of the life around us. Giving power to this, we find liberation.

With the pandemic spread of pipelines and resource extraction, there seems to be no escape from the effects of big energy. 

On that note, the Michigan camp was well represented. With the Kalamazoo River still suffering from the carelessness of Enbridge and the Great Lakes in peril, folk from the mitten have a heart for defending water. Circled in conversation one evening, we had the pleasure of meeting a culture protector from northern Michigan. A woman whose family had been assimilated into the boarding schools of white America. In her young adulthood, she began to uncover her past. Now, she teaches traditional plant fiber harvesting and weaving, spreading her knowledge not only to native youth, but to kids in the intercity as well.

As we sat, animated like shadows by the fire, our voices dancing to the ambient flame, she captivated us with stories of her past and visions of the future. Upon the subject of free will and self-agency, she shared some of her empowerment with us. In the Ojibwe language and culture, there is no word for “sovereignty. It’s a western idea - it just doesn’t translate. In this frame of mind there are no masters; no rulers to grant freedom or to take it away.

Our last evening in Cannon Ball, we had the honor of witnessing an action performed by the women of camp. After hours of preparation beforehand, they lead a silent march to the 1806 blockade and met some fifty police officers with prayerful discipline. Flags and large banners snapped in the wind, the occasional cough, a sniffle broke the hush. In the distance, the warriors, whose cries we heard our first evening, were confronting the police at the base of Turtle Island. On the fringe of audibility, “back away or you will be detained,” skipped like a broken record on the wind across the plains. After about an hour and a half of intention, the women stood, acknowledged the officers once more, turned, and proceeded to walk back.

Night falling, they brought us to the sacred fire and we gathered around it. The mood was light. A great display had been made. Peace had prevailed and the hours of training were proven effective. The spiritual surge swelling thought the group was intoxicating. Each of us quenched our thirsts on the fluid voice and thoughts of an elder. She gave us her admiration. Those who had journeyed, those who were at home, and all who made the space for a direct and pacific demonstration of resistance in the face of injustice. After discussing the imperative of revolt and the defense of the sacred, she left us with these words:

 “spiritual people need action, and activists need to find spirituality.”

The ride home was troubling. I found myself returning to a neglected place that’s long been tugging at my spirit and psyche. Raised within and eventually traveling outside the rhetoric of Anglo-American Christianity, my relationship to prayer has become stagnant. If there was one thing that Standing Rock awoke within me, it was the importance of prayer. The necessity of our communication with and reverence for the Universe around and inside us. 

I wasn’t intimately connect to the rituals and the practices I witnessed in my time at camp. Perhaps I’ve grown numb or jaded. Or, perhaps I’ve begun to understand the manufactured spaces and feelings that fuel the organized bodies of religious centers in this country. I actively resisted the desire to “have an experience.” I would rather watch and pay respects to a culture that is not my own than go through the fanfare of participating for the sake of inclusion.

Supporting the resistance might be trendy, but, if action is neglected in our own dimensions, our fears will become all too real. For those of us connected to the Great Lakes, our identities and securities are lost without our H.O.M.E.S. We lose everything if we protect nothing, and we participate in marginalizing the oppressed if we choose not to defend.

Thanks for reading all of this. Now, please. Get up and make some change in your community. Let’s co-educate ourselves to prevent and defend these sort of attacks in our own neighborhoods. There’s more pipelines in construction and many more battles to be won. 

For more information on the movement, check the links below:

Donations:

https://www.gofundme.com/mi-canoe-cold-water-rescue-team

Further Reading:

http://standingrock.org/

http://earthjustice.org/features/faq-standing-rock-litigation

http://www.oilandwaterdontmix.org/

http://www.foreffectivegov.org/blog/map-displays-five-years-oil-pipeline-spills