The Path to Resistance: Some Meetings
The first meeting, no one comes to. It’s not a surprise really: it was thrown together at the last minute.
I don’t know if I should go to the second meeting: it’s an immigrant rights teach-in at NYU law school and thousands of people have RSVP’ed. It’s at capacity, over capacity. There are people who need to know this more urgently than I do, and people who will do more with it, which makes me wonder if I should take up the space. But I told my friend Fran I would go, so I go. The auditorium is full, but there’s spillover space with a live stream
The third meeting is a follow up to the first one. One person says she’ll come, and suggests a location: a fancy cocktail bar. The day of, she says she hasn’t slept all night and won’t be able to make it, after all. I think this means the meeting will be canceled, but two other people end up saying they are coming: an acquaintance I met once at a party, and someone I had a class with in college over ten years ago and haven’t seen since. When they arrive, I feel embarrassed about having a political organizing meeting, a leftist meeting, a radical meeting (what is this, anyway?) in a place with $15 cocktails and apologize profusely. Secretly, I think the drinks are delicious. We talk about other meetings we’ve been to: I tell them about the teach in; one of them describes the disastrous, over-crowded Young Democrats meeting she attended; the other has gone to a more promising meeting of the New Kings Democrats, and recommends Showing Up For Racial Justice. At one point I get carried away and start shouting about the hypocrisy of opposing both abortion and social programs for people in poverty. This is exactly the kind of thing I worried other people would do at this meeting: animatedly rehash the same old ground, shout about the opinions we all already agree about in an unproductive way. The other meeting attendees stay focused, action-oriented. I’m the problem.
The fourth meeting is a Post Election Strategy Session for Librarians, Archivists, and Information workers. I think there will be about 10 people there, if that, and instead there are around 50. It feels strange being in a room with so many straight people, but it seems necessary to collaborate broadly now.
The fifth meeting takes place in the basement of the Sunset Park Library. It is a meeting of the Immigration Committee of Community Board 7, the community board that covers my neighborhood of Sunset Park as well as some of Windsor Terrace. There are maybe ten people there. We learn about the affordable housing units being added to the public library, and how you can apply for them regardless of your immigration status. You have to have been paying taxes, though. And paying taxes runs a danger of flagging your immigration status, if that might be a problem. People ask if it’s worth it, and the facilitator says she doesn’t know if it’s worth it. Next is a motion for the community board to affirm the sanctuary status of the city of New York. The head of the Community Board is there, and he gives a long speech about the necessity of doing real things and not just making empty statements. I worry this is an indirect criticism of the chair of the Immigration Committee, who strikes me as very organized and committed. Talk turns to the staff members at some local schools, who have made menacing comments to elementary school students about deportations, the wall.
The sixth meeting is a Queer / Trans / Feminist book club discussing Conflict is Not Abuse by Sarah Schulman.
Not a meeting: I go to Anthology Film Archives for a screening of documentaries at about the National March on Washington for Gay and Lesbian Rights in 1979. Barbara Hammer is there. Sarah Schulman is there. What I didn’t expect, and what catches me off guard is how carefree everyone looks at the march in 1979, happy and hopeful, and most of all, oddly calm. It takes my breath away. They wear loose clothing and carry signs: gays against capitalism, gays against nukes. I have never seen a gathering of gay people so casual and relaxed, only angry and determined marches or frenetically corporate pride parades. Maybe I’m imagining things, but I feel like the people on the screen are confident that their world is getting better, is going to get better. Not just that gay people will have an easier time of it, but that capitalism can and will give way to justice, nuclear arsenals can and will be disarmed. I wonder if Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign has begun yet, if HIV is spreading as yet undetected.
The seventh meeting is a protest monitors’ training at the New York Civil Liberties Union.
The eighth meeting is a follow up to the first two process and plan meetings, organized by one of the attendees. I was ready to give up, and I’m grateful to her for taking over. Most of the people there seem to be, like the organizer, graduate students and instructors in the NYU English department. I bring mangoes and a six pack of Modelo. There is also a bottle of red wine, and a number of black and white cookies. A lot of what is discussed is the creation of a document, an action workbook. Much time is given over to who will be the editors of the document (a rotating system is proposed) and how the content will be curated. It is decided we will continue to meet monthly, on an ongoing basis.
The ninth meeting is an Anarchic Sewing Circle and Radical Reading Group, organized by Jessa Crispin, someone who I consider famous. When I arrive exactly on time (7:30) to her friend’s apartment, meeting her leaves me unexpectedly dazzled and flustered. Only two other people are there at first, but more and more pour in, crowding on the floor, filling up all table space with pot luck offerings. We are discussing Revolutionary Letters by Diane di Prima, a book I find both inspiring and oddly reactionary with a hippie focus on returning to the land, leaving cities and science, turning back the clock. I realize I want my utopia to be an urban, technology embracing one. Someone says in the small town she comes from, everyone is involved in local politics, but that they all pay property taxes, they have skin in the game. I feel a desire to say something dramatic like, “It’s not property taxes but a human body a human body on this earth and a precarious life interdependent with others that means we have skin in the game!” I don’t want to seem to be shaming her though, so I don’t say it.
The tenth meeting is a breakout group from the Librarians and Archivists Post Election Strategy Session that I’ve agreed to facilitate, and jokingly named the Info Workers Info Working Group. Someone keeps reminding me to scroll the agenda.
