A Little Irony in the Callout for the “Autonomous Gathering”
Posted by Richard S. on October 7, 2007
OK, so there is a Northeast Autonomous Gathering from October 11 to 14 in Quebec. I don’t think it has anything to do with the autonomist spinoff from Marxism; it seems to be more about autonomous survival – combined with a little anarchism, I guess. Anyway, the call begins by saying, “A lot of talk happens these days about an impending social collapse or apocalypse. This could be due to peak oil, climate change, etc.” Later on in the call, under discussions, it mentions, “Alternative communication and transport (anarchist traveling/mailing networks, free radio, non-motorized vehicles, DIY biofuels, other ideas?)” and ”Roadless urban travel and re/claiming urban space (guerrilla gardens, shanty towns).” The address that this call gives is “Auberge (hotel) Val Margarita 4350 Route 147″ and in the second call/reminder which appeared this week, it gives directions like this:
From New York/Montreal:
Take 87 North through to Canada onto Autoroute 15
From 15, take Autoroute 10 East toward Sherbrooke
Split off onto Autoroute 55 South
Take the exit in St. Catherine de Hatley onto Rt. 108 East
Follow 108 until it merges with 143 North
After a couple minutes, you’ll see signs for 147 South, turn right onto 147
It gives similar kinds of directions from several different locations, telling you what highway to take, where to turn off the highway and, sometimes, even where to park.
It gives the most detailed possible directions on how to get there by driving a car.
It doesn’t give any hint about any other possible kind of transportation one might take to get to this.
Maybe it’s just me, but I couldn’t help reading this without being hit by the irony in a big way. Maybe it’s because, unlike a lot of other people, I actually notice whether people drive, or are required to drive, fuel-consuming, polluting, environment-destroying cars. I mean, I’m not a big green type, but I’m proud to say that I never even learned to drive. And back when I used to work on anarchist or radical benefits, they were held deep in the innards of the city, with directions on how to get there through several means other than car.
erik said
hey, as one of the organizers of this convergence I thought I’d explain. Yes, the directions we gave were based on roads. this is because when you live in the butthole of nowhere outside babylon, there are no subways, buses or trains to get there. however, a big part of autonomous survival as you put it is learning to see and use our society and infrastructure, and the maps that accompany it, in ways other than those dictated by the ruling/building class.
for example, the only people that drove to the gathering were local. everyone who came from farther away hitchhiked there. you can also ride bikes, walk, or take other unconventional vehicles other than cars on roads. sure, it’s unfortunate that the location lowered accessibility, but for those who don’t live far outside it’s kind of hard to organize events deep in the innards of the city, especially multi-day events, especially if you don’t have money for a venue.
also, if you ever do orienteering you’ll learn about landmarks. roads are major landmarks, so even if you’re not travelling by road you can use the roads as markers to find your destination.
thanks for the criticism by the way, since this gave me a chance to explain the alternatives. I am a big green type and didn’t necessarily hope for lots and lots of polluting, environment-destroying cars, but a big part of why we had the gathering is because if we want to live ecologically we need to do a lot more than not drive. and if you wanted to come we could’ve picked you up from the bus, which is why we gave contact information.
wes said
ok,
well, what is your point? You never learned how to drive, therefore any and all events which endeavor to promote ecologically sustainable practices that are held outside of a city center, in a rural area perhaps, are inherently hypocritical? Maybe, instead of carefully picking apart something which attempts to foster community and sharing, albeit imperfectly, (as so much coming out of a capitalist patriarchal white supremacy of a culture, ) one could get out from behind their planar world of illusory digitized virtuality of self-importance, of seeming omnipotent criticality, and come share with the rest of us what is a better way to do it.
The directions that were offered were written by one of a number of people involved and the whole effort was shared. Often under these circumstances aspects of an event might seem contradictory in subtle ways. But does this mean, whining about small details and plastering your complaint all over a blog aids us in our effort towards relative self-sufficiency. It certainly doesn’t foster a loving and caring environment.
Again, what is your point? What did you expect? Teleportation? A fukckin space shuttle landing strip? The Appalachian Trail veers east in Vermont. How else are people gonna get there? Just because directions were given using highway systems, doesn’t mean you have to know how to drive or own a car. We bike to and fro a nearby town all the time, and often we hitchike to places we need to get to that are far away. In fact, the vast majority of people that came to the skill-share gathering either carpooled or hitchiked…
The issues that you point out that were listed in the call-out, although they did not come from me personally, are visionary. It is about learning and teaching one another in a free, unoppressive space that we might begin to learn how to implement some of these visions…
It is sad and somewhat pathetic cyberspace is peopled by those with vampire mentalities who surf the net to find a beautiful sweater with a loose thread only so they can pull the thread and ruin the sweater, and point to the mess they made and gawk and say look, see what a terrible sweater that was…
If 1/2 as much effort was put into making positive change rather than destroying others needlessly we would all be far better off. Attacking people needlessly is a waste of energy, and counterproductive.
Maybe you/your blog could look to someone or some group or institution that is truly based on hate, destruction, exploitation, or oppression and critique them rather than looking to people who are at least trying to do a little something positive, however humbly that may be.
As far as not knowing how to drive and living in an urban, metropolitan area, well that’s cool, but the sun rises and sets on us all, not just urbanites. You don’t have to drive to get to Val Margarita, but no, there ain’t no city buses that go there. Nonetheless, if anyone wants to come, they are always welcome, contact us and we will arrange transportation from the nearest bus station…
Alas, be well, criticality can be imperative and can bring a bout positive change. It can be a powerful tool. But it can be like a gun. Just be careful where you point it.
peace allwayz,
~wes
Richard S. said
Wes,
Here’s a little personal history that you might not know:
I put a huge amount of work into co-organizing several radical benefits and events between 2000 and 2003 (all in New York City). These included a 2000 IWW regional gathering; a 2002 event called the Intergalactic Anarchist Convention (where everyone who was connected to the thing knew that I worked harder than anyone else there – that’s right, harder than anyone, including some-of-you-know-who); and the 2003 Staten Island Eco Fest. After a few years of doing this, I came to the conlcusion that this kind of work was grueling and sometimes brutal, at least for someone with my particular personality. So don’t think I don’t have sympathy and appreciation for people who attempt this sort of thing.
My post was mostly simply about something that I saw as a glaring irony in your event. But also, maybe, partly a reaction to some primitivist types who go out of their way to condemn cities, even though I think people who live in cities probably live in a way that is, at least individually, far less destructive than people who live in the burbs or even the rural areas (at least in the U.S. and Canada). When I wrote this, I was thinking of some wearying arguments that had taken place on Infoshop.
As for my being a vampire, I do work the midnight shift, stay up all night and sleep all day, so what do you expect?
I don’t think anything that I do or don’t do is going to help to make the radical left or the anarchist scene a loving community. It is usually far from loving. (And by the way, if you want to see some real criticism, see this site, which I co-wrote with another blogger, asfo_del: http://www.geocities.com/collectivebook .)
I have no patience for the argument that I shouldn’t criticize political comrades or anybody who’s trying to do good things. That’s a good way of stifling lots of debate.
But, yes, I’m cranky. This blog *is* Commie Curmudgeon, after all.
All that having been said, I admit I am getting more and more sardonic and misanthropic here. I’m not feeling very driven to write anything constructive or supportive about politics and activism these days. I’m having much more fun on my music blog, and I think I’m doing a lot more good there right now.
So, if you wanted to have a big argument, sorry… You’re not entirely wrong, though you haven’t gotten all the details right.
Richard S. said
Erik,
Thanks for the good word(s) and clarification about things. Not much more I can add to that. (Once again, it’s the guy who wasn’t so nice who gets all the attention, I guess.)
alanna said
hi there.
thanks for your comments. i think its good to receive criticism – it keeps me humble, critical, and striving to do better. just to clarify, though, as one of the organizers of the gathering, i can assure you a lot of heart and environmental concern went into it and is a constant part of my/our lives. i bike and hitchhike as often as possible in this rural neck of the woods, and expected folks to do the same who were coming to the gathering using existing infrastructure. living in this heavily developed world of ours it is difficult to travel without these common means, but your comments have encouraged me moreso to seek out new ways of travel in the area i live in. there’s a river that runs by our place into some neighbouring towns, one of which i frequent often (its where our community garden is, friends, school, good dumpsters, and what not). i’m more inclined to find a boat. any other ideas? it would be nice to just free-style it into town, but the only ways to cross the river are by a conventional bridge and swimming through it, which isn’t too practical right now, given that its so cold out. there was talk this spring and summer of building a zip line across it, but we never got around to it. perhaps next spring. anyway, using conventional infrastructure or not, i hope you know that i do try to remain mindful of it and my usage/dependence on it when i do use it.
good luck with your endeavours. it sounds like you’ve done some great work.
~alanna
Richard S. said
Alanna,
Thanks for your comments. If you live in a rural area, of course, there’s just so much that you can do to get around there.
If it really was so difficult for anyone to get to this conference by public transportation or any means other than automobile, that’s an argument for having a conference in a more accessible location. That was my main point. I’m not saying any individual isn’t striving to be as ecologically conscious as possible.
Who am I to criticize any individual’s eco-consciousness? I don’t qualify to tell you what you should or should not be doing to live a more eco-conscious lifestyle. (I was once in a collective that put out materials about living simply and that sort of thing, but that wasn’t my main focus, that was soneone else in the collective. I was more involved in the “Collective Book” because of the issues that addressed about fairness and democracy, and I was also much more into the anti-poverty efforts that we were supposed to be taking.)
My main point was that it might be better to hold a regional eco conference in a city than in some neck of the woods. But a lot of green anarchist types, or just social ecology types, seem to think that it’s more “green” to have something out in the country, far from the pollution of the city, etc. And some primitivists even go out of their way to criticize cities, as though living in the city is somehow less ecological than living out in the burbs or the country. And I’ve always maintained that it’s exactly the opposite. Because of the density of the population (more people using up less space) and our methods of transportation, city dwellers probably have a much smaller ecological footprint than other people. Also, being somewhat “red” as well, I see a conference in the city as being preferable in class terms. Certainly, there are working class people and poor people out in the country, but the city is the place where more people who are not affluent, especially those who can’t or don’t own cars, can attend more easily. And it’s stil lthe place where most people have to go to sell their labor power in order to survive.
So, the issue that people have to take a car to get to a conference somewhere in the middle of nowhere is only part of the reason that I get cranky when I see that most of these conferences take place somewhere in the middle of nowhere, especially if they have a “green” focus. (And if it seems insensitive or biased of me to say that the location is “nowhere,” sorry about that. It’s just hard to figure out another way to describe an area where most people never go normally unless they’re among the relatively few people who live there.)
Anyway, there’s no need for you, individually, to be humbled by anything I’ve said or to try to tell me that you’re going to do better.
I’ve gotten quite disillusioned with the anarchist “communities,” so sometimes I just make some cranky remarks that have little to do with the real sources of my disillusionments. I think all of you have taken my little complaint a bit too seriously.
If this post really bothers you, I would be happy to remove it. I’m might be cutting a lot of stuff out of my archives anyway, so it’s not a big deal to me, just let me know.
wes said
Dear Richard,
i´ve been meaning to respond to your response for a while no, and finally i´´m getting around to it. Honestly, i see what you´re saying. Basically the blog itself was brought to my attention by the subject title “Random blog attack” and a little script suggesting that we should respond. i was in the middle of classes and not really wanting to be bothered by anything negative at the time, especially months after the actual event took place. In retrospect, i realize i wrote to your blog in a hurry, and somewhat irritated to have been confronted with this posthumous criticism that really wouldn´t have mattered to me at all under other circumstances.
So i would like to appologize to you for the ´vampire´ comment, and the sarcasm… That was out of line. You deserve better, and i was the one behaving like a curmudgeon frankly. I was writing to a ´´computer screen´´ that said stuff that, in that instant, perturbed me, and i responded personally and with emotion totally unnecessarily. Albeit, the vampirism i referred to was the act of feeding on others to gain power, and not to you as a person, which did not seem evident at the time of my writing.
Again, your criticism was directed at words that were not made by me at all. i didn´t post it on infoshop, and i personally had my own criticism of the call-out´s original excessive moralising and hyper-idealism, if i can say that… But i felt like the criticism was an attack on my friends so i sought to defend them. Erik, Alanna, me, and others all worked really hard preparing for the gathering and we did our best at the time, everyone having various ways of helping.
Personally, i do not consider myself an Anarchist with a capital “A”, if you will, but i do appreciate anarchism in it´s immanent, daily, spontaneous, & local aspects. But any group that forms an identity around specific ideology, especially political, social, economic, and/or spiritual even, potentially takes on ossified, unerring dogma that seems perfectly internally logical, but from the outside makes little or no sense, and because of its insularity and self-rationale, conflicts with a broader, more open reality.
Nonetheless, mass (anti-)culture fits aspects of this definition too, and appears normal only because certain mechanisms are hard at work prescribing and injecting humanity with a logoism (a way of understanding and being in the world) that normalizes thought-forms, hence behaviour, that are ultimately destructive, and lead to mental diseases and war, etc… Anyways, i know i´m preaching to the choir…
Anyways, most of the people that came to gathering from outside the region found out about it on infoshop and they all hitchiked and came with a really positive spirit, and i was really appreciative of them and their energy.
So i wanted to tell you… Don´t quit what you´re doing please! Its awesome what you do, and way cooler than a lot of cyber-detritus…
i will try and check out your blogs better too.
Also, we might have more skillshare gatherings at our place though… and it would be awesome if you came… We´ll probably do it during the summer or warmer months and you are more than welcome… i personally would love to learn about how to create a blog and websites in general!…
Maybe we can discuss ways of living that occur in rural areas versus cities and how the two can learn from one another.
and certainly alternative forms of transportation or walking could be discussed and/or created…
Peace, love, & Pandemonium,
>wes
ps… i LOVE New York man… every experience i´ve had there has been really cool, and i actually find it to be one of the friendliest cities i´ve ever been in.