a longer respone for Joe
Over the past few months I have come to some pretty harsh conclusions on Nashville and the state of the “movement” or community here in general. Food Not Bombs is barely working any more. People don’t seem to care and few new people are surfacing to join in and help. We need to flyer. I am done with my Food Not Bombs phase but still enjoy going every once in a while because I should be able to do that. It should be the type of thing that after you’ve had your fill you can leave and not feel like its something your obligated to keep up because there really is no one else. Everyone in Nashville is so into the titles and labels of things as well. I think that maybe because Nashville’s anarchist community is so small (about 10 at most) people feel like they have to fit exactly into whatever stereotypical textbook anarchist does. Therefore they sling out harsh criticism and judge anyone who is not ‘all the way.’ This discourages people from wanting to join and help out with causes. Also there is this clique-y mindset makes new people that show up for the first time feel unwelcomed. I just started getting involved here in Nashville last year and I am less than impressed. When I first emerged on the scene I was less than welcomed and in fact ostracized. People just were not that nice to me. I don’t know if its because of my age or what… I don’t know why. An event later happened that broke the camel’s back so I just backed from everyone for a month and a half. I felt like when I was more heavily involved with the Firebrand that almost one actively doing fundraising. I barely got any help or thanks from any one for doing the This Bike Is A Pipe Bomb show. It could have been so much bigger if I had some help. I did a lot of the leg work and promoting for the zine tour and tried to get people interested in doing some community events just because. We should interact with the community. We should hold classes on things like bike repair and gardening. We should be actively teaching white and male privilege classes and holding art events for people who are marginalized by the current market. We need to do a class on the IMC soon too. Even our amount of more direct action against things has amounted to almost nothing. A new Wal-Mart is being built and nothing has happened. I tried to organize a queer kiss in on the motherfucking steps of the capitol. No one was into it. What the hell? Look at my old entry about that. No one has done any work towards creating a May Day Bike Parade. I have been too busy with RFN to really work on that. I wish someone would though. It needs to get done. Do you know how many kids turned out from our @ist community to help out with the WRFN barnraising? 4. Fucking four. This was such a big deal! Media activists came from all over the country to learn and teach and build one of the most powerful tools a community could have and almost no one from our activist community came out. Those that did come were not really even helping. Food Not Bombs was supposed to cook a meal and only one of the agreed people came out to cook for that. The ACLU-TN, where I intern, has been doing some powerful and positive legislation lately that could use some more community support. I am going to talk to the guys and see if they’d be interested in helping. Maybe they’d be into this. Most of these kids don’t even know about the horrible labor contracts that the people who work at Gaylord are signed into. We could do some action around that. Plan a critical mass. SOMETHING! Maybe people will actually come out to Road Block Summer or Mountain Justice. Maybe we will host some community classes and make a dent and presence in Nashville. So much needs to be done. We are in the Bible Belt! There is so much that we can accomplish if we’d only organize. I have found some nice patches of grass downtown that could use some vegetable gardening done to it. There are walls that are barren who could use to have a positive political message permanently affixed. Ahhhh, ok I have to go to class but that’s my five minute which is barely enough rant on the current state of Nashville. I know people do their own awesome things but we should work together. We need to organize and mobilize and educate. That sounds cheesy but it’s true. This glass is almost completely empty.
[edit: i just remembered that even when there was a strong pull with the firebrand and awesome jill got someone to help us get grants we just dwindled. i was part of that not doing enough, too. it seemed like people were too concerned with their cookie cutter opinion of how an a-space should be funded instead of actually getting started. everyone just wanted it to fit the perfect activist mold instead of actually getting a community center started that would really help the community. i am moving in september. ]