Venndiagrams of dissent, redux

There is something about the giant UN organizations that feels a little un-revolutionary. There is something about fancy conferences that feels strange. On the other hand, for the ministers of health, and environmental health, and the specialists in vector control, and our focal points in each member country, it must be much more useful, and practical, and help to build networks and relationships so that we can make the fighting-for-healthier-communities-and-environments struggle less fractured and more thoughtful. I like to think so anyhow, but maybe everyone is bored at every level, eating their fancy treats in their fancy suits.

It isn't that I think the bureaucratic and formal world of action has nothing to offer. I would have stayed a dirty punk activist if I thought it was enough for me. But so much of punk activism, or whatever you want to call it, seems to get bogged down in middle class whiteness and in old, over used tactics, in splits and cliches, in reputations and coolness, and I think I just don't have it in me right now to get too worked up on the home front. Not that I don't try- I work for a ton of DCs local groups, punk groups, labor groups, immigrant groups, all the groups, in solidarity and in support and it's awesome and occasionally inspiring and definitely less lonely and isolating. But working on "global issues", on the whole epic fight for a more just world, is central to my understanding of how to keep going.

It's hard to see just how to wage that fight though. Since it's impossible to just get up, walk out your front door, and "fight" for "justice" all at once and everywhere, you have to choose your way, I suppose. And I think I have come to dabble- in international health, with PAHO/WHO, in local organizing, in Latin American solidarity, and I hope that I am doing it in all these tiny ways but sometimes, often, it feels like I'm doing nothing at all. Which is the trick, I guess. So many people would like to make the world change for the better and it's hard to see how. We pick our little paths but ultimately we seem to be lacking in power and dynamic organization. Not that we never win, or see inspiring visions of success, but that it's rare and special and to be coveted. And even if, in the meantime, I live the world I want to see in my own life, that is also hard, and sometimes you just need to bake cookies and nap.It's hard when all the headlines are yelling.

I have been listening to new songs for this effort. New songs and new ideas. Sometimes you need to feel in some way, anyway, like you are going forward.

The UN does not make me feel young or powerful or fiery, and sitting behind my computer all day makes me tired. Even the most fascinating of position papers lacks a certain spirit. Is it a product of this age that I am starting to feel you can't possibly be innovative if you aren't in constant communication with your collaborators all over the world? The disarray of the big things we have been taught are well thought through is alarming. I need a job where I just coordinate the world. Perhaps it would spin better if we talked it through.


Related links/projects/people:
Global
http://www.uncsd2012.org/rio20/
http://rio20.net/en/
http://www.habitants.org/who_we_are/who_we_are
Democracynow.org

Local
http://october2011.org/statement
http://www.stopstreetharassment.org/ending/log/