Nonsense!

It's not hard to figure out the e-mail alias system employed by UCSC. Most of the time, grads@[deptname].ucsc.edu will send a message to an entire department of grad students all at once. So it's not a huge surprise that we get lots of useless mail. Most of it is spam from people looking to sell off goods or rent out rooms. Occasionally it's for political causes or personal crusades that end up starting an eruption of flamebaiting and vitriol that clogs up our series of tubes with invective and ignored calls for responsible use of mailing lists.

The final common use of the lists is to announce upcoming events, which are never in short supply in Santa Cruz. One such event produced the message reproduced below. I don't recall the source, having removed identifying information for the sake of anonymity, but I'm really leaning toward attributing this to the History of Consciousness people.

Italics are mine, used to denote particularly fruit-loop language. Feel free to drop me a line if you think you can make sense of any of it, but please realize that having been exposed to these mailing lists for five years now that I pretty much just delete everything unread if it didn't come directly from my advisor.


Imagining is the party. Dig it.

[an event], Brought to you by Radgrads, and by the letter W
Friday, 6:30pm till late
Oakes Learning Center (above the Hava Java Cafe)

DJ Demos will offer an upbeat set of funk, groove, reggae and hip hop to balance the mind body diet.

The coolest ideas never come from one person only. 'Cause imagining's a process, not a plan, which is why it's so fun to do. So, everyone's invited. Let's make a political party! Let's share some food and thoughts about ways that we can continue and affect change. Bring your disillusionment and resentment along with your creativity, brainpower, tofurky and baked
goodies.

How can we push our political imaginations? Parties offer one form of beginning to imagine the creation of temporary, reiterative, performative, transformative, and contingent, times and spaces for ex-centric intersections. We need not always just respond and react to rightwing/centrist/leftwing discourse.

How can we create movement-building that is not dependent on the vote? Parties are not the only form of fluxing response to de-humanizing events. By making the argument for the supplemental necessity of the party, we intend to provoke a process of active imagining of other and various enjoyable supplements to purely political activisms.

How do we sustain our energy and move forward? There is a long struggle ahead. Partying is a fun way to incite further instances of located and local productions of imagining communities.


Organizing Ideas:

A COMMUNITY ORGANIZING VEHICLE that could travel on a shoestring next summer into the "heartland" communities. We could talk about what democracy means. Staging performance art and posing respectful questions will be our possible methodology for encouraging critical thought about the meanings of democracy, morality, and freedom underlying people's electoral participation. We will teach about doing politics outside of the ballot box, empowering young activists to apply pressure in local communities on local issues. What can we learn from the large scale Democracy Rising a la Jim Hightower? How can we reach all those people in communities that are frustrated and have no organizations to turn to?

A LOCALIZED SOCIAL FORUM could bring people together and talk about how we can cooperate and create the possible world. This could be a big party. Really big. Close the campus for a day. Invite everyone in Northern California and beyond. Provide transportation. Have lots of free food and free music. Respond to de-humanization with the exuberant incitement of enjoyment.

COMMUNITY POWER. Working on ways to conceive of ourselves as having immense community power that is not dependent on political parties, lefty celebrities, or the non-profit complex. These are useful but should not be the defining institutions of a movement.

ENGAGE THE CHURCHES. How can we appropriate and rework the proselytizing language of the church? How many of us have actually attended a fundamentalist meeting? From the inside, how can we understand the psychological and social impact of these organizations? What about the long history of progressive churches providing one of the few places left to hold meetings in a public space? How can the tenets of the judeo-christian ethos be used for organizing and creating strong messages that challenge the Christian Coalitions zeal?

BRING OUT THE VOTERS. Reform-oriented organizing on mobilizing the 40% of eligible voters that didn't vote, educating on the electoral system, Diebold electronic voting machines, teach-ins on the ways elections can be manipulated, organizing in the workplace (unions or direct action), practical skills for engaging people through conversations, providing the history and the resources to enrich our memories of struggle.

ALLIANCES. Finding ways for the differing political viewpoints to agree on cooperative tactics that still allow autonomy. For the Zapatistas, the EZLN and the FZLN have separate mandates. How can direct action be in communication with more reform-oriented work? We don't want to reinscribe the hierarchy of one form of political action being more visionary/practical than the other.

Come join a broad conversation that invigorates and sustains our struggle while eating good food! Once we have eaten and imagined a new future, we will shake our booties to some fine tunes. All are welcome (even if ya don't bring food).



Friday, 6:30pm till late
Oakes Learning Center (above the Hava Java Cafe)

RADICAL POTLUCK, Brought to you by Radgrads, and by the letter W (In case you didn't see the lame Sesame Street joke the first time, I guess.)


I'm not sure what initially jumped out at me that made me read through the entire text, since I usually delete messages like this on sight. I'm also decidedly not glad that I read it because some of the language seems simultaneously so verbose and obtuse that it initially gave me vertigo trying to make sense of it. I half suspect that it's some sort of elaborate in-joke for lit or linguistics grads, and had I not been exposed to lots of people who take this sort of florid, substanceless political language absolutely seriously I'd insist that it's in fact the only explanation, especially given the tepid-office-humor tone that marks the rest of the text.

Anyway, there it is.
E-MAIL (DO NOT SEND) Home