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I've become
obsessed with the F-word these days. Like every healthy, sentient creature
I want to be F'ed fully and frequently. Indeed, without F there could
be no life. And everyone truly alive strongly identifies with the pursuit
of F in all its peculiar forms the world over. But an awful disease
is killing our desire to F and be F'ed. AIDS is clearly one manifestation
but not the disease itself. The disease is really the fear of F and
our willingness to settle for something less than the complete, oceanic,
full body F we all deserve. I've always
been an outspoken advocate of free-love including the freedom to (sometimes)
be love-free. Now everyone seems to laugh nostalgic at that and misuse
the F-word so that it means the opposite of what it should. I say it's
high time to get the F-word out of the closet and proclaim loudly and
passionately: "FREE me! Yes, FREE me baby, FREE me good! Free me,
over and over again!!" I know this
sounds full of acne and adolescence, but I'm seriously concerned how
the word freedom has been fucked with. It has been seriously victimized
through a pattern of continuous abuse. In preparing for a trip to Eastern
Europe in April, 1990, every second word one hears is "free"
markets or "free" elections. What an absolutely vulgar, retrograde
use of language; what an absurd vicious joke. Please tell me one thing
that is free in the capitalist marketplace. Toilets used to be but even
that costs now. Has any U.S. senatorial campaign been waged for less
that $1 million in the last two decades? This kind of free-dom is precisely
that—dumb—just another word for "fuck you sucker."
It's curious,
but I stumbled upon this thorny doublespeak around freedom through reflection
on one of my most valued personal freedoms. Something unavailable to
probably 90% of the world's population. That is the freedom to travel
to distant places and different cultures. This desire to visit an exotic
people distinct from your own culture is a particularly American (western)
phenomenon. Foremost, we have financial/political opportunities very
few have. But it is more than that, we also have a singular cultural
flexibility and ambiguity. During a year stay in Africa, I'll never
forget how "Wye" Katende, a seventeen year old Ugandan living
in a remote village in the foothills of the Ruwenzori mountains, innocently
questioned the notion of freedom through travel: "Mr Mike, why
did you come here? You are so far from your home. You must cry
at night for your family." For better
or worse, family and other ties do not bind us, especially the traveling
types, as strongly as elsewhere. This was strikingly expressed by a
young Masai cattleherder I became friends with in Tanzania. By using
Swahili we could converse fairly well, and one day I asked him if he
would like to travel. He let me know he would never consider traveling
any further than he could walk with his cattle. He then asked me who
was taking care of my cattle back home. When I replied I had no cattle
he was incredulous. This was unimaginable. Since I was an American he
probably imagined I had dozens. At first, he thought I was joking; he
really didn't believe my story. When I convinced him it was the truth,
he started crying he felt so sorry for me. I've always
put great effort into finding ways to avoid being the casual tourist
who blitzes the local highlights while replicating the lifestyle of
home. I try to fit in and be up front that I'm an American visitor.
I've often made my trips "working holidays," partly for the
money but mostly as the best way to gain real contact in people's everyday
life. Getting a job certainly immerses you in the fray instead of the
role of culture vulture scavenging on local prime rib. But working is
impractical many times and undesirable in most places. Sometimes I have
posed as a student, once as an anthropologist, and both seemed to open
doors that would otherwise be closed. Over the years
I've moved away from the "working holiday" approach toward
the "political holiday." We're not talkin' work brigades to
Nicaragua here—which are long on work and short on holiday. By "political
holiday" I mean partly a vacation and partly an opportunity to
observe and participate in a time of radical social change. For me this
includes learning about customs and social interests that aren't (overtly)
political as well as the radical culture in contention with the powers-that-
be. The latter has usually been my primary interest. This means mostly
watching what's shaking down; it's also important to exercise a critical
eye and express your own opinions rather than just following the "correct"
revolutionary party or mass movement. This has some
qualifications, however. During a 6 month stay in South Africa in 1988
just after their second state of emergency (the inversion, "emergency
of the state" is the more accurate phrase) I quite willingly chose
to work uncritically with the ANC. I even temporarily became an Anglican
missionary, despite 32 years of devout anti-Christianity, since working
with their material aid programs (food, health care, education) was
the only way I could gain access to the townships. While I was (and
am) critical of the ANC, such criticisms made no sense within the context
of ruthless state repression. This is the usual problem; it is only
after a resistance movement has toppled the existing regime that
there is a space to make useful criticisms. For this is the true point
of departure in which real differences between oppositional groups concretely
emerges. I've been taken
to task for being that too-critical-radical-from-afar more than once.
The usual banter "How can you as an American, from a position of
privilege, not support the call by the homegrown opposition? They know
the situation best—if you don't uncritically support them you are
aiding their oppressors." There is some truth to this criticism
about being too critical. I am (globally, though not nationally) privileged
by the very fact I can choose to travel to such places and situations.
I am also neither directly a victim nor a natural outgrowth of resistance
there. Indeed, it is tremendous fortune to be an internationalist, not
just theoretically, but practically, by directly experiencing social
ruptures and change the world over. This is precisely why a "privileged"
outsider might have a fresh, useful view regarding what's coming down.
This will be
tested in a few days when I leave for a two-month stay in Eastern Europe.
Besides simply appreciating and learning from the different people and
cultures I am (and will be) disturbed about simply replacing authoritarian
communism with an equally (but less transparent, more diffuse) authoritarian
capitalism. As I tell friends and acquaintances, my desire to warn Eastern
Europeans about the sham of free markets, free elections and capitalism
in general, many let me know this is incorrect/inappropriate. For instance,
"They have materially/politically suffered for so long they just
want to make life better—(they) want the good things of the west.
It is wrong for you to tell them that desire is wrong." (There
is nothing wrong with the desire for a better, materially richer life.
What is wrong is believing the false promises that western capitalism
actually fulfills these desires.) This complaint
goes hand in glove with another common criticism: "Well if you're
really so damn radical stay home and help change the U.S. After all,
it is your turf and truly the world's worst enemy." True enough.
I'd be deceiving myself if I didn't acknowledge my initial attraction
to Eastern Europe was the speed and quality of change there is a helluva
lot more inspiring than the bleak vortex of social change in America.
Even though I was born and continue to reside in the U.S., I've never
identified with being an American but rather a world citizen
first. Admittedly,
the U.S. plays a dominant role in world aggression and deserves special
attention from radicals. So I definitely do a lot to try to change the
planetary work/war machine here—after all, this is where I live most
of the time. But I feel no special duty to entrench myself exclusively
in the American theater. This seems to be a peculiar kind of nationalism,
just as twisted and bigoted as the religious, ethnic, or statist varieties—if
you believe you must completely tidy up your own cave before stepping
out into the light of the world. It is one half a common guilt trip
for radicals. Either stay home or martyr yourself in some type of work
brigade. Both are based on heaps of guilt, work and sacrifice. Not exactly
the stuff real freedom is made from. The flip side
of this, one felt by the vast majority of Americans, simply says: "Have
a good time! Forget all that political shit. Just relax. Get a nice
tan. And by the way, bub, you might come back and entertain us with
an exotic slide show of natives spearing colored fish in a pristine
coral reef." Besides the goldfish bowl syndrome (you are the goldfish
looking out of the bowl at the surrounding world, while the locals gather
round to stare in, and each inhabits an environment the other can't
breathe in) I find it exceedingly alienating and boring to be isolated
from the political forces at hand. I am looking for full enjoyment and
radical deployment. This trip to
Eastern Europe will be my second "political holiday." I've
never planned a trip so much as this one. Two other PW'ers and
I sent letters and copies of PW to scores of independent radical
groups and individuals throughout Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia
and Hungary. We have also made our own personal Anti-Business cards
for each language to make ties with indigenous corporate insultants.
We also made similarly confrontational T-shirts to give away while there;
boxes of stuff have been shipped ahead. One fruit of
all this planning has been the response received even before leaving.
A radical from Szcecin, Poland, not only extended a warm invitation
("We could arrange meetings for you with greens, trade unions,
anarchists...") but also apprised us of what to expect: "I
don't know how much you know about Poland, but let me warn you that
even among so-called radicals or alternatives you can find strange minds."
Concerning popular Polish attitudes to the west and western leaders,
he warns that most people see George Bush and Margaret Thatcher as "great
politicians," explaining that "the slogan `Enemy of my enemy
is my friend' suits very well here." I also got a sense of the
ennui people must feel there when he quipped, "So do not wait,
friends, because we are waiting." We too are
waiting but in a different way. In the U.S., it's not only history but
the present that's a nightmare we have yet to awaken from. The speed
and degree of recent changes in Eastern Europe is inconceivable here
today. There is little fire, much fear and stability. A few on the margins
try to startle the sleep inmates. So while we wait, there is
time to share and learn from each other's struggles. This we do not
have to wait for. —Club
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