Posted by grillcover on Jul 16, 2022
Reflections: (July/August 2021)
I've decided to combine months for the next few posts as things decompressed through the end of the year. Hopefully that’ll also help me catch up!
For these two months closing out the summer, I don't think I really recognized my serious burnout. Rather than taking time off, I just switched projects. The change in scenery and activity sustained me well enough through July, but it wasn't what I needed to heal. So trying to get back to organizing work in August was far more frustrating and demoralizing than it needed to be. The flooding didn’t help either…
Life & Art
While I'd supported the Broken Box project in June, it wasn't until July that I got back in the saddle for our BKBX Summer Series, a trio of outdoor performances around the city. This also meant, sadly, shaving my pandemic beard. I'd gone through this cycle before, but seeing my face again after a year and a half of trauma was jarring and dysphoric. But it was for a good cause!
Two of our shows, on July 9th and July 25th, were on Little Island, a newly constructed artificial island as a part of the renovated Hudson River Park. The tiny park is, admittedly, pretty awesome. But I have to say that its location, direct donation price tag, and limited entry made me a little uncomfortable, knowing other underserved and under-resourced communities around the city are unlikely to benefit from this kind of park. It felt like an almost absurd microcosm of our future: controlled populations on fake islands above flooded formerly prized real estate. The shows were a blast, though!
Above: Action shot of our opening scene. Photo by Toby Tenenbaum
Above: Our little amphitheater overlooked the Hudson River, and we were excited to have a packed crowd of families and park-goers for both of our shows.
The other show we did on July 27th was in downtown Brooklyn at Metrotech Plaza. This was a completely different kind of performance. Also public, in a park plaza, but under a makeshift staging tent and more for passersby and the weekday lunch crowd. Some people walked straight past, but a bunch of people stuck around to enjoy the stories.
Besides that I spent most of the rest of July catching up on work and trying to recharge, though I wasn’t always successful. But on August 2nd my luck started to turn around when I was selected for a generous grant through NYFA to join the City Artists Corp with a restaging of the Stuck Layer Players (read about the debut here) in New York in the fall. The program was essentially COVID relief for NYC-based artists and gave me free rein to reimagine the project as a roving street performance.
It was also in August that I started to really get some traction expanding the KRNL, which had languished over the years as a side project. I think it was the release of the new IPCC report and fighting waves of doom that compelled me to return to the task of articulating my moral and metaphysical code, to give myself something clear and positive to hold onto as my vision of the future clouded with dread.
Above: Through June and most of July my 50-60 chestnut saplings came up strong and were a constant source of pleasure. Every day’s growth was a reminder of the potential.
After a month or so of happy growth on my windowsill, my emotional support forest of chestnut trees was beginning to look a little wane. My plans to transfer them earlier in the summer to final destinations or caring homes hadn’t materialized, and they were starting to show their displeasure. But on August 17th I brought a handful of trees out of town to a suburban home where they could be potted separately. It was a good thing I did, because even these had a hard time surviving the winter!
Above: Chestnuts that were rescued and replanted outside of my apartment. These are among the only survivors from this summer’s crop.
On August 22nd I got hit by the first of two major storms of the season (Tropical Storm Henri), and though I was able to stem the flow of my geyser toilet it only underscored my housing predicament. I’d applied for the Emergency Rental Assistance Program to cover pandemic loses and protect myself, but my landlord was neglecting the building and unresponsive, the storms were getting worse – the IPCC report made that clear! – and the resurging rental market meant vastly compromising my living situation by leaving. Not to mention leaving another gentrified vacancy for my landlord to flip, as I’ve watched happen in the building these last six years. I decided to see how much relief would come through and turn more seriously to tenant organizing.
Also around then, and continuing through the rest of the month, were Broken Box Mime auditions. This was our first time bringing on new members in a couple of years, and it’s always a major decision. As an ensemble, we work very closely together over long periods of time, so we’re also looking for good matches for long-term collaborations. The process can often be fun and exciting, getting to meet so many artists and intentionally grow the company, but it was coming at a time when my attention was deeply split and emotions haywire.
Protest & Organizing
I shifted gears in July after the explosive and ultimately disappointing outcomes of June. I was still searching for ways to be involved, my mind still racing about next steps in every possible direction. But it was difficult to get any traction.
On July 10th I attended a training for the Red Rabbits, the official marshal team for NYC-DSA. By then I’d had a lot of on-the-ground protest experience, had been in some pretty spicy situations, had good instincts for keeping myself and others safe, and thought it would be good to formalize that knowledge and get connected to the people helping keep our actions safe. Red Rabbits also get called in from local coalition partners who need help safely steering crowds and blocking streets for marches and protests. I haven’t stepped up to officially marshal, but considering how often I’m on the ground, getting in the loop and being familiar with procedures has been very helpful.
On July 31st the #DefundNYPD campaign reconvened after a much-needed break to reflect on our work and the shifting political and cultural terrain. With a new cop mayor, establishment Democrats nationwide using our demand as a bogeyman, and members of our own org continually mischaracterizing or deprioritizing abolition work, we had a lot to think about. I wish I could say we built clarity and momentum but it would be some time before we found our stride on our next tactic.
Throughout the month I continued to stay active on the campaign and even tried to pick up where I could see comrades losing steam and morale. Unfortunately I wasn’t exactly in a position myself to be taking on so much. I attended some field meetings August 2nd and 16th to help think more about what’s next, popped up one last table in Crown Heights on August 7th, and stepped up as a Research lead mid-month to facilitate a meeting on August 23rd – but I’d become overcommitted again, and this time without the manic energy and irrational, infectious, psyche-saving optimism from the spring.
Amidst it all I joined DSA and Afghans for a Better Tomorrow on August 21st for an emergency rally outside of Chuck Schumer’s apartment, a place I’d now been many times, to demand a better plan to protect Afghan refugees and lay a real groundwork for peace after withdrawing troops and ending the disastrous decades-long war. Accepting all refugees and recommitting to humanitarian aid seemed like the least we could do after our occupation; instead we’ve gone with brutal sanctions and throwing our collaborators under the bus, emboldening the worst elements of the Taliban. Status quo for empire, it seems.
On August 24th I found out I’d been elected as an alternate delegate for the NYC-DSA Citywide Convention, the annual event to make big decisions about the work of the org. I wasn’t on any caucus or faction slate and hadn’t really whipped votes for myself, so I was glad to see that keeping my head down and doing work all over the org had earned me enough name recognition and good will (because, let’s be honest, how many people read all 90+ candidate statements?) to end up in the top half. But having closely followed the bitter personal dynamics and political infighting of the 2021 DSA National Convention, and the IWW GEB recall fight, I was feeling pretty down on the state of organizations and how this toxicity is endemic on the left.
Politics aside, organizing continued. That night, just two days after the latest flood, I attended a tenant support meeting organized by the NYC-DSA Housing Working Group. I’d looked through the tenant organizing materials but this was the first time I’d really talked to people about it, and got a lot of really good advice and leads on how to research my situation and potentially escalate. This planted the seeds of what would become a much (much) wider campaign.
Below: Action shot of the Racial Justice Working Group / Defund contingent marching through Manhattan alongside groups like Make the Road NY fighting to extend the eviction moratorium.
To close out the month on August 31st I joined the Housing Justice For All coalition and many more at a protest to extend the eviction moratorium. Our destinations were real estate firms and hedge funds reaping the benefits of the housing crisis, drawing a stark contrast with people facing eviction. One highlight was photobombing a City Council Member with the Defund crew as he was interviewed for the nightly news; you can see him above in the distant center.
I had to leave before the final stop to make it to mime auditions, but it was a powerful display of community solidarity that helped stay the executioner's hand one more time. But the chance to #CancelRent was honestly gone, the battle lines had been redrawn, and now finally in face of the eviction wave about to break, I can only look back at our demands as backpedaling.
Intentions: After a flurry of updates at the beginning of the year, these posts unfortunately resumed to a trickle. But now that I’ve soft-launched my Comradery page and have a little bit of time for my own projects this summer, I’m committed to getting caught back up by the end of the month (July ‘22). We’ll see how I do!