I have identified as an atheist from a young age, and have written about it a little on this blog.   My early adoption of godlessness was richly informed by the Christian zealotry that I encountered and was alienated by growing up in St. Louis.  Five years ago or so, when I first became aware of a nascent ‘atheist movement’, I felt powerfully affirmed.  Here was a social alliance not only to challenge the most visible harms done in the name of religion, but to break the hegemony of religious ideas that makes atheists and atheism invisible.   As I saw it then, the presumption of religion’s universal acceptance not only marginalized atheist persons, but also allowed religious ideas to stand unchallenged, ideas which in my view would lead people to making bad decisions.

In case it’s not yet clear: while I hold that atheism as a belief is a correct conclusion to draw about the universe, atheism as a social cause matters to me primarily in the context of a struggle for justice.  Even in 2007 when my political ideas were still relatively undeveloped, I was a sworn opponent of racism, sexism and all systemic oppression.  I also knew that these systems don’t exist in isolation, but intersect and uphold each other in complex ways.  Therefore, one couldn’t fight one form of oppression in isolation; there had to be a more holistic view for eradicating white supremacy, patriarchy and heterosexism together.  (I didn’t yet have the clear-headed critique of capitalism that I do now.)

It won’t surprise anyone, then, that I had serious misgivings about the politics of many of the New Atheists.  My main text of reference for this piece will be Sam Harris’ deeply Islamophobic “The End Of Faith” and a number of blog posts by Greta Christina, but my objections contend with the ideas of every modern atheist writer I’ve read.  My goal here is not to mount a definitive anti-racist or anti-imperialist critique of the atheist movement, but to ask the question: do the movement’s goals have any place in a comprehensive vision of global struggle against capital and white supremacy, patriarchy and empire?

The Fallacy of Idealism

Nearly all modern atheist writing and thought, in criticizing the actions of religious people, fails to address adequately that paramount philosophical question of materialism versus idealism.  They presuppose that the ideas people hold and espouse, and not their material conditions, are the principle forces driving both an individual’s actions and greater shifts at all scales of society.  Consider this premise from just the second page of Harris’ book: “A belief is a lever that, once pulled, moves almost everything else in a person’s life…your beliefs define your vision of the world; they dictate your behavior; they determine your emotional responses to other human beings…[they] become part of the very apparatus of your mind, determining your desires, fears, expectations, and subsequent behavior.”  It is ironic that Harris and many other atheist thinkers presume so readily the supremacy of idealism, which has its basis in religious thought.  In ancient philosophy, the ideal forms from which material reality was derived were often believed to have a divine origin, and priests were the earliest ‘mental laborers’ who advocated an idealistic view of the world.

In reality, people hold a wide variety of beliefs, frequently dissonant with one another, seldom all in play at once.  These contradictions are confronted often not through the mechanisms of reason, but through messy unconscious action.  A person victimized by domestic abuse may believe their partner loves them, but also know that violence and love are irreconcilable.  A downtrodden worker may at once want to please their boss, and also desire to defy them.  A conscientious citizen may express genuine horror at war crimes, yet also support a politician who advances such policies.  Sometimes the contradiction can survive years, lifetimes.  Even if the dissonance is finally resolved, the shift often occurs materially before it happens mentally.

Harris’ book is riddled with idealistic fallacies about the motives and behavior of religious people:

• “Once a person believes—really believes—that certain ideas can lead to eternal happiness…he cannot tolerate the possibility that the people he loves might be led astray”.
• “The only future devout Muslims can envisage…is one in which all infidels have been converted to Islam, subjugated, or killed.”
• “If you believe anything like what the Koran says you must believe…you will…be sympathetic with the actions of Osama bin Laden.”
• Rebutting an author suggesting other geopolitical explanations for suicidal violence in the Middle East besides Islamic faith: “[He] seems unable to place himself in the position of one who actually believes the propositions set for the in the Koran”.

All the italics are in the original, but all the emphasis in the world won’t change the facts that 1) the literal precepts of a religious text do not automatically become the actual beliefs of a nominal adherent to that faith, and 2) an individual’s professed beliefs do not automatically dictate their behavior.

These logical gaps are easily observed later in the same chapter, in which Harris purports to demonstrate Islam’s inexorable barbarism.  He reports statistics of a 2002 Pew poll of Muslim populations in various countries, gauging levels of sympathy to suicide bombings perpetrated “to defend Islam”.  In the most apparently egregious case, 73% of Lebanese Muslims polled responded that suicide bombings are ‘often’ or ‘sometimes’ justified, while only 21% thought they were ‘rarely’ or ‘never’ justified.  All that has been conclusively revealed here is the gulf between stated belief and action: if every one of the Muslim men and women polled really believed in the literal truth of the Koran—and if, as Harris asserts, “We are at war with precisely the vision of life that is prescribed to all Muslims in the Koran”—why wouldn’t the level of sympathy be one hundred percent?  Why was each of the respondents not a suicide bomber themselves?

Again, my point here is not to comprehensively expose Harris’ Islamophobia, but to highlight the mistaken assumption that ideas dictate action.  Quite often, they don’t.  Sam Harris is the most guilty of this, when he wholly discounts any other political or material motive behind an act of terror, but I haven’t read any atheist author who isn’t mute on the issue.  Simply noting that sometimes people do terrible (or wonderful) things in the name of their faith, and sometimes they don’t, doesn’t have any explanatory power.  Besides failing to meet a standard of empiricism for atheism’s own arguments, this mistake has grave consequences when attempting to place the movement within a larger fight for justice.  If atheists cannot recognize and account for the material forces at play with religion, how can they hope to comprehend historical forces and strategies for resistance?

The Value of Liberal Anti-Racism (and the Inadequacy of It)

It’s worth noting that religious texts say some crazy, intolerant, internally inconsistent and generally bizarre shit.  But it’s also worth getting over.  Because religion isn’t the text it’s based on, but an actual living practice.  Most of all, religion is a set of social relations.  Religious people will describe their private personal practice of faith (another subject worthy of scrutiny, in another post) but the principal religious expression I’m interested in criticizing is the one which produces power imbalance and domination within families, communities, and society at large.

Of all the atheist authors I’ve encountered, Greta Christina is the only one who at least attempts to reconcile this dissonance.  She describes why the predominant whiteness and maleness of the New Atheism is an urgent issue to be addressed before it bites the movement in the ass, and has been an advocate for a new online forum and ‘wing’ of the movement, Atheism Plus, that emphasizes social justice.  However, I find Christina’s main prescription of an Anti-Oppression 101 program—consisting mostly of items that essentially amount to ‘acknowledging that racism and sexism exist’ and ‘not immediately silencing or marginalizing any Other that enters this predominantly white/male space’—to be direly Necessary, but far from Sufficient.  It isn’t nearly enough to recruit POC to the atheist movement; the movement must develop cogent theory that can harmonize with struggles against global white supremacy and imperialism, or doom itself to being a transient white bourgeois philosophical fad.  To paraphrase Flavia Dzodan: our atheism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit.

Case in point: a few years back, Christina participated in Draw Mohammad Day, in which atheists all over drew the Prophet to challenge Islamist intimidation and violence towards their critics.  Anticipating my objection, she writes:

Perhaps you think that secular groups and others organizing “Draw Mohammad” protests are engaging in anti-Muslim or anti-Arab marginalization. Perhaps you think that deliberately breaking another religion’s sacred rule, with the sole and stated purpose of breaking that rule, is a form of religious bigotry. Or even just childish jerkitude.

She goes on to quote a commenter from another atheist blog:

The day drawing a bloody stick figure isn’t something you have to do while looking over your shoulder. The day cartoonists don’t have to build panic rooms in their homes (!!) for a rough picture of a dog with a mans head. The day dozens of people don’t die (again !!) because of some cartoons. On that day, I will agree that the secular group is just being immature and hurtful.

She concludes her defense thusly:

Is it hurtful to deliberately poke people’s sore spots with a stick, just for the sake of doing it? Yes. I don’t think it’s a very nice thing to do, and I don’t generally do it.  But is it far, far more hurtful — not only to certain individuals, but to every individual in the world, and to society as a whole — to use violence and death threats to frighten people away from criticizing your religion, and to force obedience to your religious views on the entire human race?  By a thousand orders of magnitude, yes.

This is a sublimely white-privileged perspective.  From Christina’s framing, you might never guess that this past August alone, over half a dozen mosques in the U.S. were vandalized or terrorized with lethal force, and one burned to the ground (on the second attempt).  One might be led to believe that it was atheists, not Muslims, who suffered a dramatic spike in hate crimes, harassment and employment discrimination after 9/11.  This is to say nothing of Islamophobia’s role in dehumanizing and invisiblizing Muslim and Arab lives being destroyed in Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries ravaged by imperialist warfare.

Yes, it is wrong that Theo Van Gogh was murdered, that news outlets and satirists are cowed by violent intimidation, and it ought to be criticized.  But Draw Mohammad Day does not, as Christina and Ayaan Hirsi Ali argue, “spread the risk…confront hypersensitive Muslims with more targets than they can possibly contend with”, as most of the sharing of the drawings happens only within peer circles.  The only time I’ve ever seen such drawings are on Facebook, and the blog everyonedrawmohammed.blogspot.com is viewable by invitation only.  What Draw Mohammad Day does do is give a bunch of white people an excuse to ridicule smugly a group which endures far more serious threats of violence and terror than most of them ever will.

Christina acknowledges that this tactic causes harm, but reduces it to hurt feelings, thereby erasing the real material danger Islamophobia poses to Muslims in the U.S. and abroad.  But her utilitarian calculus is even further skewed by her failure to account for how severely a mass action like Draw Mohammad Day alienates Muslims and Muslim groups who might have been collaborators on social justice projects.  Hell, it alienates me—as a person of Arab descent, as a person with Muslim friends and family, and as an anti-racist—and I actually identify with the atheist movement!

The Place of Atheist Activism

So, back to my original question: does the atheist movement have a part to play in a global struggle against all forms of exploitation and oppression?

A friend of mine recently wrote on Facebook: “The problems associated with religion are found outside of religion and it has more to do with gendered, classed, and racialized power than it has to do with the structures that give form to power.”   Before being presented with this framework, I had observed that religious oppression often appeared to collude with other systems of domination: husbands attempting to control their wives’ bodies, LGBTQ folks being ostracized and targeted in the name of religion.  But what if religion were not the source of the oppression in itself, but simply the vehicle through which another form of oppression were being expressed?

I’m intrigued by this concept, but not entirely convinced.  As Greta Christina has documented pretty extensively (but not exhaustively), there have been myriad cases across the country where atheist persons have been publicly humiliated and threatened, barred from political participation and representation, shunned and cut off by their family and community, and, most horrifyingly, denied custody of their children.

I’m not claiming that atheists are the only people affected by religious oppression, but the instances of victimization and marginalization at the hands of religion where race, gender, or some other social stratification wasn’t a decisive factor are too numerous to be discounted.  I contend that there are many spaces within this country where religious ideas, and religious people as a class (namely Christians), are hegemonic.  Here is a struggle that the atheist movement can and should lead in defense of its own—including atheists who are still ‘in the closet’.  And there are clearly many other good fights—against sexism, against homophobia, against subjugation of young people—where the atheist movement can play a valuable supporting role while also making their case.

But please understand, fellow atheists: this struggle is just one among many being fought every day, some of which are very much matters of life-and-death for the people involved.  If atheists are going to be on the right side of the fight, we are going to have to contend with the questions of white supremacy and empire.  We are going to have to ask, do we want to build a movement that forms alliances with other seekers of justice?  Or do we just want to win a philosophical argument against people whose homes and lives are being burned to the ground?  That hardly sounds like a fair fight.

This isn’t and couldn’t possibly be the definitive account of mine and Claire’s commitment celebration two days ago; it’s just a scribbling of some moments and thoughts that I don’t want to slip away.

I had been feeling super no-big-deal about the celebration for many months leading up to it, up until maybe a month ago, when all my family and a bunch of other friends started buying plane tickets.  That’s when I started to realize that this event–and this relationship–were bigger than us.  We had been a presence in people’s lives for the past ten years, and they in ours.  It started to become clear that this was actually a really big deal, a remember-for-the-rest-of-your-life, over 100 likes on Facebook kind of deal.  It didn’t belong just to us, but to a whole family and community of friends, lovers and kin.  It’s not often that one is fortunate enough to have so much advance notice for such a moment.  Here’s an incomplete list of some things I’ll never forget.

*   *   *

Claire and I had to come out as polyamorous to my mom’s extended family just four days before the ceremony, since my mom, for all her bravery in other respects, had avoided telling them for fear of their reaction.  Despite the discomfort, they were all very sweet and supportive.  My mother was later to redeem herself.

On Friday, my brother and his girlfriend Mallory hosted a roast of me and Claire.  It was my idea, and I have to congratulate myself.  I feel like the first person to think to combine sea salt and caramel: so simple and obvious in retrospect!  At the end of the night, despite my flushed cheeks, I knew that these were the people who really knew me.

*   *   *

On Sunday, we kept the program fairly short and sweet, but here’s what me and Claire had to say for ourselves:

Thank you all for being here with us today. As most of you know, we got together in our first year of college, and finally made the decision to get engaged on our ten-year anniversary last November. It took us longer than a lot of other couples to decide that having this commitment celebration was right for our relationship. We wanted to share a few thoughts about what this occasion means to us.

There are lots of reasons to be critical of marriage, from its patriarchal legacy to its current exclusion of many LGBT and queer folks. We are thankful to be a part of a radical community that looks closely at traditions which may have oppressive roots. We are also grateful that this same community has a proud history of reclaiming such labels, spaces and institutions, and transforming them into tools for liberation.

We recognize that we are specially privileged to be able to have a legally and socially recognized union. We are conscious of the injustice that many rights and privileges that often come with marriage are withheld from LBGTQ folks in most places, and indeed from many more people whose relationships and families deviate from a strict heteronormative patriarchal model. We would like to acknowledge that we are fortunate and reaffirm our commitment to fighting for these rights for everyone regardless of whom they love or what their families look like.

Traditional wedding vows often declare two peoples’ intent to commit to and cherish one another through good times and bad. Over the past decade we have weathered moving across the country, toiling long hours at rewarding but low-paying jobs, trips to the emergency room, and other trials that life has offered up. We have also shared the joys of making a home with one’s best friend; pursuing our dreams and aspirations together, Claire as an educator and Shareef as an artist; and standing side-by-side in the fight for social justice. No one who has known us over the past ten years needs proof of our commitment to each other. Today is as much a celebration of what we have already built as it is one of what we are going to build.

While we depend on each other for many things—help with chores, support and comfort with life’s daily stresses and long-term goals—we are ultimately individuals, each with our own distinct desires, ambitions, and personal journeys. Our ability to maintain and respect each other’s independence and individuality is one of the successes of our relationship. At the same time, it’s amazing to look at the people that we are today and know how much we each have been shaped by the other’s presence in our life over the past decade.

This is a chance for us to bring together the people who have been important in our lives and express our love and gratitude toward you, because just as we have shaped each other over the past ten years, so you have shaped us and our relationship.

To our families: You gave us loving homes that inspire us to make our own. You have supported us in pursuing our education and our dreams. You raised us to be honest, kind, curious, and unafraid to be ourselves and choose our own paths in life.

To our friends and lovers: You have enriched our lives beyond measure and the bounds of imagination. You tell us hard truths when we need to hear them. You celebrate our successes. You accept us as the imperfect human beings we are and give comfort and reassurance as we navigate our path. You have expanded our definitions of love, companionship, and family.

We wish to remember and hold in our hearts people whom we wish were with us today: Beatrice Levine, Julius Glaser, Taimoor Ali Elfiki.

*   *   *

We had family and friends read a few poems we selected, including these oldies-but-goodies by e.e. cummings (which was beautifully read by my dearest friend Lisa):

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

And Hafiz:

Even after all this time,
The sun never says to the earth,
“You owe me.”
Look what happens with a love like that.
It lights the whole sky.

*   *   *

And then we exchanged vows.

I pledge to always accompany you down your path of becoming and evolving, while at the same time accepting and cherishing who you are at the present moment.

I pledge to support you as much as I am able in your other loving relationships, celebrating the joyful moments and offering comfort and guidance in tough times.

I pledge to be your partner and comrade in this lifelong struggle against injustice and oppression.

I pledge to build a home with you, a warm, safe space for rest, nurturing creativity and inspiration, gathering our community, and creating a family.

I pledge to continue growing into the most excellent, ethical, valuable person I can be, for you and for the world.

*   *   *

Then there was music.  Everyone who played was fantastic–I picked them myself–but I think the moment that I’ll live again over and over was Erma singing “Unchained Melody” with Erika and Maia backing her up. Faces young and old lit up as they recognized the tune, and the floor slowly filled with dancing pairs, including Claire’s parents, who were married for some twenty years–but have been divorced for as many.

But as much as we contrived to create a magical, memorable day, the best moments were the ones we couldn’t plan, but only set the conditions for.  That is, the toasts, each more beautiful and humbling than the last.  My biggest regret is that none of these kind words were recorded, and already so many of the words can’t be recalled, only the feelings they drew out of me.

A few I do remember, though.  My brother telling an unflattering childhood story, then following it with, “I don’t know when it changed that I started looking up to my younger brother.  But it has.”

And my mother, with the sucker-punch tearjerker of the evening, reading this passage from The Velveteen Rabbit:

“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

*   *   *

Today I napped for four-and-a-half hours, and sleep is calling me again.  There is no way I could thank everyone by name, but I love you.  And I can’t wait to become the person that I promised to Claire, and to you, that I would be.

On Thursday I debuted a brand new song (my first of the year) at an Occupy 4 Prisoners screening of the new documentary Broken On All Sides (very good) at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland.  The song is called “Stone’s Throw (#J28)” and obviously is inspired by my own experiences that day.  My performance is right at the beginning of this clip:

I also highly recommend watching Elaine Brown’s portion, starting at 22:44.

Here are the lyrics to the song:

I had set aside all of this past weekend for the Occupy Oakland Move-In Festival, not making any specific plans because I expected to be busy, though I didn’t know what with.  Turns out I made the right call.  A fog of sleep deprivation and worn nerves is still somewhat upon me, but here’s my #j28 story.  Apologies if it’s scattered and incomplete.

I got to Oscar Grant plaza around 12:30 in the afternoon on Saturday for the first march.  It was such a beautiful day for a march.  We snaked our way through downtown and across the Laney College campus, a move that seemed creative but ultimately slowed us down and confused many marchers.   As we approached Kaiser Auditorium, an attempt was made to break into different flanks, but due to lack of clear leadership or preparation for that moment we were sluggish.  Still, there were at least four hundred in the flank I was in, so I’d have to estimate that the total number was at least twice that.  I was there when the fence came down on the Lake Merritt Blvd. side of the convention center, and when we beat our retreat back to Oscar Grant Plaza under a surreal hail of tear gas, flash bang grenades and other less-lethal projectiles.

I was just out of frame in the last segment of this video:

My first experiences with police mistreatment–getting shoved hard enough to trip over a fire hydrant and land on my ass–were only just last weekend at the #j20 #owswest actions in SF and the next day’s counter protest to the Walk For Life, and having things shot at me was definitely the next level.  I was already pretty dazed and overwhelmed by the time I got back to OGP.

The second march/building occupation attempt began shortly after 5 PM.  Though a lot of people had apparently left, there were still at least five hundred of us.  That’s an easy count to verify, as most but not all ended up in jail.  I was there when we were kettled and gassed at 19th and Telegraph, and when we escaped by taking down the chainlink fence on one side (a tactic that the November 19 one-night occupation of that park had prepared us well for).

In retrospect I wish we had declared our flight a victory and dispersed, but adrenaline was high and we kept marching; it’s unclear whether we were headed to another building or just avoiding police lines.  The thrill was short-lived as we were kettled at the Y a few minutes later.

Shortly after it became clear that all of us were being arrested, the occupation of City Hall (by some of our comrades who had escaped the kettle over a tall fence) was announced.  I was later to learn that a third march of a few hundred took place at 11:00 that night, not to mention the solidarity actions of over twenty other Occupy sites across the country.

I spent the next twenty-four hours in custody, which was as awful as you’d expect.  I slept maybe a total of three hours on the frigid concrete floors, got accustomed quickly to peeing in front of twenty other men, looked forward to any change of surroundings, from sidewalk to bus to cell, only to grow immediately bored with new but equally alienating setting.  I witnessed both a man with HIV and another who had blood in his urine denied medical care, despite the clear declaration of the right and imperative to seek medical attention in case of emergency posted prominently on the jail walls.  My own partner was denied her meds.  If cops are pigs, then COs are the shit they roll around in.  That you haven’t been either charged or found guilty in a court of law makes no difference to them; they are going to treat you like a piece of garbage because it’s the only worldview that can justify their inhumane profession.

Since Saturday, my social networks have been abuzz with discussion of the action, and while the main topic is the egregious actions of the police, there have also been a sizeable number of people quick to declare the day’s events a disaster and Occupy Oakland dead or at least hopelessly marginalized from the mainstream.

I disagree.

Yes, there were plenty of mistakes.  The confrontational letter to the city and OPD, while exciting to read and I’m sure satisfying to write, might have played a role in the pre-emptively robust police response (mutual aid from up to seven different agencies was present early in the day, unlike November 19 or December 12).  As I mentioned before, the lack of clear leadership and preparation for the first building target was a significant tactical blunder.

But we also had three highly visible marches in the course of one day, no small feat when you consider that the third happened after four hundred of our most active folks were already detained.  We have footage now of the OPD’s wanton use of force and blatant disregard for their own policies in broad daylight, with hundreds of first-hand witnesses.

Some have said that Occupy Oakland is losing the PR war, but I challenge the notion that this is the most critical front upon which we must prevail.  What is portrayed in mainstream media is important, but so is what happens within and between all of us.  There are scores of us who are being radicalized, who are seeing the true face of law enforcement and the state for the first time, who are turning away from electoral representation as a means of redress and embracing direct action.  I reject claims of substitutionary offense on behalf of some mythical, monolithic mainstream moderate, such as, “I don’t personally care that they burned a flag in City Hall, but it looks bad to…” whom?  When I got out of Rita, reactions from my middle American politically moderate family members ranged from “Thank you for standing up for our rights” to “I hope you gave them hell”.  Provocative symbolic acts like flag-burning or even throwing something at line of riot cops (and yes, it is a symbolic act, because you’d better believe ain’t no bottle gonna injure a pig in riot gear) that I might have found off-putting even a few months ago now feel empowering as sincere, authentic expressions of outrage.  I’ve heard from a few sources now that as many as eighty OPD officers have resigned since the beginning of Occupy.  We may be taking a beating, but there must be something we’re doing right.

It’s been over three months since I visited OWS in Manhattan and was inspired to join the nascent Occupy movement, and so much has changed and changed again.  I have to confess that I’ve also been a little distant from OO for the past two weeks, not for any principled reason, mostly just consumed with getting ready for Wednesday and other personal affairs.  Not that that’s stopped me from obsessively monitoring my Twitter feed.

This song was written so early in the process of what I now recognize as a profound political transformation which has still not yet run its course.  There are some ways in which a certain naivete is apparent, like the lyric “we ain’t settled on a story yet, ‘cuz the conch keeps going ’round”; clearly the voice of one disillusioned and disappointed by the current order, but lacking conviction in any other framework for justice.  Still, that’s who I was when I penned it, and it still seems apropos regarding the perennial tensions between forces militant and nonviolent, radical and conciliatory within the movement.  I am not bringing this up to pick a side, only to note that we are all a part of this, and no sect has sufficient clout to exclude another, nor should we.  Solidarity must be more than a slogan.

Download the song for free, share it with whomever you think might appreciate it.  If anyone wants to use it for some relevant purpose (video, etc.), just write me at shareef at shareefali dot com.

Lyrics:

Mic check! Mic check! 
Let me know I’m not alone! 
I’m a witness to this movement, 
Manhattan to San Anton. 
We ain’t settled on a story yet, 
‘cuz the conch keeps going ’round. 
Like Jesse said, we need a gathering, 
not just another crowd. 

Mic check! Mic check! 
You know there’s always been a war! 
Black, white and brown don’t wanna scrounge 
for table scraps no more! 
Best come up with what we ask for. 
Someday always comes too late. 
You wonder how to do it faster? 
Allow us to demonstrate! 

World keeps on swinging, and a mighty arc it makes. 
So no, I don’t know how long a revolution takes. 
But it’s better to burn long than to burn too hot or bright. 
Brother, leave a light on, we could be here all night! 

Mic check! Mic check! 
Hey, is this thing even on? 
Sometimes I can’t hear my voice, 
been screaming for so long. 
You say you don’t hear a message, 
but that’s ‘cuz you’ve plugged your ears. 
But I know my brothers and sisters 
all receive me loud and clear! 

Mic check! Mic check! 
Hate to occupy your time. 
Then again, maybe that’s one more thing 
you’ve taken that was mine. 
You’re scared you’ll topple from your totem. 
No, I don’t feel bad for you. 
I know you’ve got ninety-nine problems, 
but guess what? We’ve got problems too! 

World keeps on swinging, and a mighty arc it makes. 
So no, I don’t know how long a revolution takes. 
But it’s better to be misunderstood than to never make a sound. 
Sister, bring a blanket, we’re sleeping on the ground!

In my retrospective from last year, I declared 2010 to have been my best year yet.  I think I would have to say that this year topped it.  While some of my goals were met and some were not, it would be impossible for me to deny that I had taken huge strides in my music and in life that I wouldn’t have been able to at any previous year.

The biggest obvious accomplishment is the tour, which, despite some small setbacks and things to do differently next time, was amazing and incredibly reaffirming of my path.  In doing so, I met what was arguably my most ambitious goal of playing at least twenty out-of-town gigs.  I played twenty-four on the tour.

I succeeded in recording and releasing both a full-length album with the band, Holy Rock & Roll, and a solo EP, How To End The War.  While the latter was not a full-length as I had originally intended when I conceived of it last year, in truth I think I produced a better record than even I had envisioned, which was more of a B-sides/oddities/release-and-be-done-with-it effort.  Instead, the general trend has been that each release I’ve been as or more proud of than the last.  I also surprised myself by how much my voice has improved over the course of just a year from when we recorded The Once & Future Boyfriend (which I’m still totally proud of).

The most notable case in which I didn’t meet the goal I set–I won’t call it a failure, because I don’t think it is–is in songwriting volume.  I had set a goal of twelve songs, which is what I managed in 2010, and I only wrote half that.  However, I realized in May when I was planning the tour that the scale of my undertaking was such that if I wanted to be successful with it I had to put something else on the back burner, and from a practical point of view of having more than enough repertoire to gig with, I made a conscious decision to set songwriting to the side for a few months.  I got back into it in October on the train, and wrote a song for each of the last three months of the year.  Here are all the tunes I penned this year:

1. You Don’t Have To Stay
2. Tucson
3. The Tenderness In Me
4. Witness
5. Ain’t Nothing Sweeter (Train Song)
6. For The Rest Of My Life

Notable features about the songs I wrote this year:

• Two of them, “Tenderness” and “For The Rest Of My Life” were purely diatonic, and “Tucson” almost was too, save for a little chromatic run.  I think the last time I wrote diatonic music was in high school, but it took a decade of songwriting to figure out how to craft a song with other thematic elements strong enough that chromatic color didn’t seem necessary.  At the same time, “Ain’t Nothing Sweeter” is as tonally interesting as anything I’ve written.
• The last three songs of the year were all under three minutes.  As a writer who used to not be able to do it in under five, but has always admired concentrated brevity, I consider this a great accomplishment.
• In “Witness” I had my first purely political song.  And in case you didn’t see it, Amanda Palmer retweeted it, which pretty much made my year.

Not least of all, this was definitely my best year for updating this blog semi-regularly, with thirty-five new posts, more than I published in all of 2009 and 2010.  This is largely due to being involved with the Occupy movement, which for all its complications has been nothing short of transformative for me.

Goals for this year, then?

1. Tour the Northwest in the Spring again.  And maybe the Northeast in the Fall?  I have a three-quarters-baked idea about seeing how long I can couchsurf across the Eastern Seaboard.
2. Play more high-profile local venues.  I’ve got the drop on this one, with my upcoming first appearance at Bottom Of The Hill on January 18!
3. Record and release another album.  Because why not?  Release early and often, that’s my motto.
4. Get the fuck out of debt, completely, so I can  quit my job and tour forever and ever.

Okay, go!

I took Monday off work make myself available for every phase of the West Coast Port Shutdown.  I went into the day with equal feelings of excitement and dread: spirits and attendance had been flagging slowly but steadily at the GAs for a few weeks, and I think a lot of us were counting on this action to breathe some new life into the movement, both in fresh faces and in a renewal of our own vigor.

I was immediately heartened by the teeming crowd that turned out for the early shift starting at 5:30 at West Oakland BART.  I had expected a band of maybe 100; while I’m no crowd-counting expert, my good-faith estimate for the morning was more like 800-1000.  We shut that mother down, and then I retreated to my house to run my toes under some hot water in the tub and nap fitfully for two hours.

I got back to Oscar Grant Plaza around 3:30, in time to hear Scott Olsen address the crowd; I got to meet him later that evening, and stammered something about how we all admired him.  As we marched down to the Port for the second time that day, I became aware that this was our biggest showing since the day of the General Strike.  Though in actuality it was a bit smaller, it was nothing you could tell while in the thick of it.

In response to police repression of other #D12 actions, it was decided that we would shut down the 3 AM shift to which much of day’s work had been pre-emptively rescheduled.  So after dinner and another hour and a half of sleep, I returned again, this time to the Matson terminal at the base of Market Street.  There was no drumming or sound system, only a lone clarinetist screeching through “Misirlou” and “Walking After Midnight”.  Nobody chanted; while I think some entertainment or other participatory activity (other than walking in a circle) would have been appreciated, everyone seemed to know that the chants were not going to cut it.  Eventually, I broke off with a group of about twenty cyclists to block another entrance to the terminal.  We did a ‘biking picket’, and things quickly got very silly.

“Let’s do two concentric circles!”  “Going in opposite directions!”  “It’ll look so trippy from the chopper!”  “Let’s do a figure 8!”

I consider Monday’s action to have been a great success.  Of course the media has already settled comfortably into the narrative that just happens to maximally highlight tensions between the Occupy movement and our closest natural allies in labor.  Should anyone wish to understand these tensions on a serious level, I recommend reading the open letter from an autonomous group of port truckers; the excellent, even-handed summary from Labor Notes; and Hyphy Republic’s account of the Port Shutdown and micro-history of Occupy Oakland (be sure to read the comments as well).  But now that we know that we’re not dead as a movement, the question looms as tall as before: what next?

For the past several weeks I’ve been reading up on my Marxism, and really feeling the concept of dialectics (from Hegel et al): that reality is always churning with tension between opposing forces and only appears static for relatively brief moments, and that from these contradictions a new, synthesized reality is born, supplanting and even obliterating what was before, but nevertheless has a continuity with (and even a debt to) its predecessor.  Through this lens, I’m kind of awed by the unpredictable chain of developments the Occupy movement has gone through.  As I’ve seen it, Occupy has been:

• A highly collaborative compiling of personal histories of hardship, from debt to unemployment to unfulfilled economic promise.
• A disorientingly diverse outpouring of grievances and demands from activists mainstream and marginalized, serious and decidedly not.  Mostly leftist, but a few right-wingers and off-the-spectrum crazies.  Repeal Glass-Steagall.  End The Fed.  Legalize Hemp.  Forgive Student Loans.  9/11 Truth. Say Yes To Class War.  Sometimes I miss the creative signs.
• A squat turned ad hoc human services drop-in center, stepping in with little to no formal training to meet basic needs that capitalism and the state have both washed their hands of.
• An organic populist movement dangerously close to being tamed into a Democratic and/or non-profit industrial complex street fair.
• A heated, wounding internal struggle between pacifists and militants and their sympathizers.  As an aside, it’s remarkable how much of a non-issue this has become; apparently the number of folks who are philosophically amenable to property destruction far outnumber those zealous enough to engage in it.
• A heated, wounding external struggle with law enforcement over human rights to speech and assembly.  For all the radical charges from the earliest stages of Occupy, I mark this as the moment when the movement at large transcended itself and its fixation on only the most recent widespread economic injustices.  People were shocked not only at the degree of police violence but the logic behind it at all.  Eyes were opened, and questions asked about the true nature of the state and of our society.
• A splintering off into autonomous, only loosely affiliated contingents focusing on direct coordinated actions, forgoing the proposal process and official sanction by the General Assembly.

It should go without saying that I haven’t a clue where this going next.  Many of us are feeling weary, but that’s not to say that we won’t still come out in force for something we think is well conceived and orchestrated.  But as great of a success as the Port Shutdown was, I think most of us know that our target must be different next time.  No single direct action we can take will bring the 1% to their knees, though I like to think we ruined their day.

For my part, I would like to see a ball get rolling on some sort of national congregation of the Occupy movement, which could even be the germ for–dare I say it?–a revolutionary party.  This idea has floated around since at least sometime in October, when it was all so exciting and new, and despite the repression it seemed momentum was really on our side.  Still, I think a lot of us didn’t believe we would still be here two months later, yet here we are.  But I want to do more than just surprise our former selves; I want to dialectically evolve into an ever more empowered, conscious and potent force for revolutionary change.

Who’s with me?

I’ve been back from tour for over a month, and have laid pretty low musically for most of it.  Save for the Utah open mic I didn’t perform for all of November, but that’s changing with a number of fun gigs this month, starting with an Oakland house show this Thursday (email me at shareef@shareefali.com for details).  In some ways my re-entry to the atmosphere was a little rocky: annoying fallout with the person subletting my room, who left it a total mess and lost my trash can because she left it *outside* (I know, right).  As anyone who follows me on Twitter knows, I’ve also been putting in a good bit of time at Occupy Oakland, which is by turns saddening and inspiring–I’m trying to stay mindful of balancing my involvement there with keeping focused on my music, which so far feels okay.

So.  The tour.

I loved it.  Every bit as much as I thought I would.  The heart of the tour experiment was really, “Is this really the life you want for yourself?” and the answer is an emphatic yes.  Of course, it was much different that I expected in many ways.

Transportation was remarkably easy.  I loved riding the rails, even wrote a song about it.  Friends often helped me out with rides, but when that failed I could always figure out public transit, or just hoof it.  More than once I decided to walk more than two miles to my next stop, having nothing but time.  The biggest snafu of tour was of course the rail pass debacle, but I done sent in for my voucher and hopefully that’s all getting squared away.

I was very lucky to have friends in every place I visited, who were wonderfully hospitable with lodging and sometimes food as well.  And I got to reconnect with some folks I hadn’t seen in five, ten, and even twenty years.  It’s easy to talk shit about people today being hyperconnected to randoms from their past via social networks, but I think if we’re brave enough to actually engage with each other despite the gulf of time between our previous acquaintance and the present, it can be really rewarding.

I loved playing music almost every single day.  On one hand, playing to mostly strangers who don’t have any investment in you can be unnerving; you have to win it every time.  But this also makes the songs new to you every time you play.  I never got bored of my material.  It was interesting which songs I found I liked to play every night (there were four that made it into every set; can you guess?), which ones I liked to play semi-frequently, and which I only played once.  Bottom line, I think touring is the absolute best training a performer can get.

UPDATE: I decided to rank my 24 shows on this tour into three categories: Good, Fine and Janky.  I’m pleased to report that the most populous category was Good, which had 11.  There were 7 shows I’d classify as Fine and only 6 that I’d call Janky.   And even those were fun. 

I loved all the new places I saw.  Hands down favorite: New Orleans.  I’m particularly drawn to pretty cities: NOLA, Portland, Seattle, obviously SF.  But there was a lot of character in every town I visited, and every stay was too short.

There are a number of things I’d do differently.  I wouldn’t bounce around back and forth between cities on the East Coast like I did, even though it’s technically feasible.  Rather, I think next time I’ll just have my tour either stop or start with that whole region, and maybe spend a month or two on the seaboard.  I wouldn’t do any epic legs of travel, like New York to NOLA or LA to Seattle, mostly because it’s nearly impossible to get truly restful sleep on the train.  I did, however, get some great reading and blogging and writing done while in transit, though it was mostly all in the second half of the journey, and I had to make myself do it.

Here are some stats:

I spent a total of $641 on daily expenses over forty-eight days, coming out to $13.35 a day.  This broke down further to an average of $5.19 on food, $3.58 on travel and $4.58 on miscellaneous expense.

Between merch, cover charges and tips, I made $574 over 23 shows (I’m not counting the Amsterdam show, since 1) I was visiting with family and not yet spending my own money and 2) I didn’t make any money).  This comes out to an average of $10.78 on merch and $14.17 on cover and/or tips.  So, not quite breaking even on the day-to-day, but not bad.

I can’t wait to do it again.  I’m looking at either a Pacific Northwest or Southern California tour (or both?) in the spring.  Who’s coming with me?

Capturing a Wolf Larsen performance on tape seems like one of those simple yet impossible tasks.  On one hand, it’s all already there: the aching clarity of her voice, the spare yet elegant finger-picking on nylon strings.  I want for nothing.  But how do you convey the breathless hush that falls over a once-raucous barroom, the pristine stillness of  the moment?

I guess you don’t.  Instead, Wolf and producer Nick Stargu have created a very different sonic experience from her live performances.  Rich swells of chamber strings, gently whining electric guitar lines and other ephemera are woven through the songs, but her guitar and voice–that unmistakable voice–are always the centerpiece.  This extended palette also reveals a broader range of musical influence: far from just a folksinger, Wolf draws on the jazz, gospel and soul traditions as well.  If seeing Wolf Larsen live is scripture, then Quiet At The Kitchen Door is a canon of Renaissance paintings.  The beauty and poetry of the stories* is not diminished but transformed as it’s translated into a new media.

Similarly, many of the song-stories on Kitchen seem to be retellings of each other**, like a folk tale that has different endings depending on how far the storyteller has wandered.  In one version, the speaker wistfully leaves her lover; in another, she begs the beloved to stay.  Our hero longs for companionship; or perhaps he succeeds in resisting its charm.  In her first single “If I Be Wrong” Wolf follows in the tradition of Jeannette Winterson’s Written On The Body by defying gender, and in doing so makes the listener question what we think we know about the character or its creator.  All we’re left with is the bare essence of the song: a plea, not for love, not for forgiveness, not even for understanding, only for a shared presence.

Quiet At The Kitchen Door sounds terrific, and has remarkable balance.  Just when the serenity of long-form songs like “Kitchen Door” and “If I Be Wrong” seems almost too wonderful to bear, there’s the relief of a dainty, playful palette-cleanser like “Maybe, Baby” or a rough-around-the-edges romper like “Wild Things”.  My all-time personal favorite is “Jedi”, a lyric of which I once asked Wolf to write on my guitar.  A sword inside a song.  This is the weapon that Wolf wields, and Quiet At The Kitchen Door is the sound of her running you clean through.

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*As an atheist, I shamelessly reserve the right to invoke religious tradition whenever it seems rhetorically poignant.

**This is the part where I begin to wildly conjecture about the meanings of the songs.