Poem for the Workers

          
Matthew Zapruder writes a poem for the Wisconsin workers.
           

Against Identity Politics

"By the time I went up to Cambridge I had actually experienced--and led--an ideological movement of the kind most of my contemporaries only ever encountered in theory. I know what it meant to be a 'believer'--but I also knew what sort of price one pays for such intensity of identification and unquestioning allegiance. Before even turning twenty I had become, been, and ceased to be a Zionist, a Marxist, and a communitarian settler: no mean achievement for a south London teenager.

Unlike most of my Cambridge contemporaries, I was thus immune to the enthusiasms and seductions of the New Left, much less its radical spin-offs: Maoism, gauchisme, tiers-mondisme, etc. For the same reasons I was decidedly uninspired by student-centered dogmas of anticapitalist transformation, much less the siren calls of femino-Marxism or sexual politics in general. I was--and remain--suspicious of identity politics in all forms, Jewish above all. Labour Zionism made me, perhaps a trifle prematurely, a universalist social democrat..."

Tony Judt, writing in The Memory Chalet

As For How I'm Doing

                    
I'm not sure.
I miss you, I miss my dad.
I miss my work, 
writing seems impossible here.
I am tired of thinking and talking
about politics and society,
yet it seems to be the only thing
I can think and talk about
these days.
I yearn for stories, images,
quiet moments.
I feel like I'm talking too much
and yet I can't stop.
I miss sex; sometimes it seems 
like the only thing
I can think about.
I miss your body.
I want to leave the Northwest
for a farm far away.
I walked through Whole Foods today
and felt like smashing things.
Instead, I bought an avocado,
black beans, whole wheat tortillas.
There was a woman 
who showed me 
where to find the things 
that I wanted.
After that, I didn't want to smash 
anything anymore.
Later, my family ate turkey tacos
around the kitchen table.
I think once or twice
we even laughed.
     
                      -- Alex Gallo-Brown

A Dangerous Business

"Democracy is a dangerous business; it allies itself with change, which engenders movement, which induces friction, which implies unhappiness, which assumes conflict not only as the normal but as the necessary condition of its existence. The idea collapses unless countervailing stresses oppose one another with competing weight -- unless enough people stand willing to sustain the argument between the governing and the governed, between city and town, capital and labor, men and women, matter and mind."

Lewis Lapham writing about Mark Twain in the latest issue of Harper's magazine.

Mother and Child

by Noah Gallo-Brown

3' by 5' Oil on Canvas
          

Let People Poems

              
I just found this great site called Let People Poems that allows anyone to post a poem after joining their contributors list (which you do by e-mailing the site). I just posted a poem about a dream I had about my eighth grade history teacher. Your turn?
                  

Straight Time

                        
I forgot how good -- and fundamentally sad -- this movie is:

I Shit You Not

                          
Poetry by Charlie Sheen.
                                        

Against My Better Nature

            
"I don't know, winning, anyone? Rhymes with winning? Anyone? Yeah, that would be us."

Charlie Sheen via a really silly site called "Live the Sheen Dream" that randomly generates thoughts directly from Sheen's brain.