So last week I tried to buy my plane tickets to the ever-awesome Allied Media Conference in Detroit, June 20-21. I was really looking forward to being in the presence of so many radical media folks, building coalitions, hearing about the work other people are doing, and just hangin' out. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a ticket under $600, so it's not going to happen for me this year. A lot of people are surely in the same situation, so I figured I'd spend some of what I budgeted for travel on helping other folks get there; if you can, please do the same (and consider donating to Bitch, too, to help with our very own Debbie Rasmussen's costs).
In other not-entirely-unrelated news (I can't say I'm unhappy about the high fuel prices driving up the cost of flying and driving and making people reconsider their destructive habits), on Wednesday morning Jen Angel (one of the founders of the late lamented Clamor and the aforementioned AMC) convinced me to go with her out to Chevron's corporate headquarters in San Ramon, California, to take part in a protest at their annual shareholders' meeting.
When I moved to Madison to go to school several years ago, all I knew about the city was that people often referred to it as the "Berkeley of the Midwest" because of its history of radical politics. And while – like Berkeley itself – that intense thread of resistance is not nearly as palpable as it must've been back then, the vibe of the city is still very progressive. As one example, I don't know of any other city in the United States with as many worker collectives/cooperatives.
I knew I was close to home when I started hearing corn crop fungicide commercials on the radio.
I got into Minnesota a day early, because I took a wrong turn leaving Chicago and by the time I called the folks I was supposed to meet up with, they laughed (kindly) and told me to keep heading West, as it would've taken another two hours of backtracking to get there.
Clearly I'm not one of those people who can keep my blog up-to-the-minute, but I want to mention two more things about my visit to Detroit, even though I'm actually two states beyond at this point.
Before I left town, I had lunch with some staff members of Labor Notes, an incredible and radical organization/magazine that provides a forum for union activists to honestly examine problems within the labor movement (i.e., not just ever-weakening labor laws and employer offensives, but problems like weak unions and union leaders not doing their job). Similar to Bitch, they're a nonprofit organization that publishes a magazine. They also publish pamphlets and books (including one of my favorites, The Troublemakers Handbook: How to fight back where you work and win) and organize a bi-annual Labor Notes conference. I highly encourage everyone to read what happened at their most recent conference in April. There's some f'd-up stuff going on in union organizing these days.
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