Tag: activist

Rehearsing the Revolution @ Tolhuistuin

Rehearsing the Revolution @ Tolhuistuin


Vandaag deed ik mee met de storytelling game met Petra Ardai (immersieve storytelling), Jörgen Gario Unom (spoken word) & Esther Verhamme (online storytelling).

We waren met een selecte groep.
Naast de organisatoren waren er twee gasten die ook betrokken waren bij het warming up festival, een groot aantal aanmelders had zich weer afgemeld wegens ziekte en/of slecht weder.
Dus zoals het nu liep had ik praktisch een prive workshop!

We begonnen met wat lijfwerk:
Rekken, strekken…
Daarna gingen we in een kring staan, verbonden met anderhalvemeter-stokken, samen spontaan te bewegen, een bijzondere uitdaging!

Vervolgens liepen we elk voor zich de paden van onze herinneringen in de ruimte.
Omdat ik veel verhuist ben, heb ik weinig herinneringspaden uit mijn jeugd, maar wel recente routes die ik veel heb gelopen met diverse wandelingen sinds de lockdown.
Mijn meest favoriete route gaat langs magische plekken in mijn wijk, de liminale plaatsen: DDR-bouw naast Amsterdamse school, Old-school kapper naast yuppen-koffietent, nazaten van havenarbeiders naast bakfietsmoeders, krakers broedplaatsen naast upscale expat woontorens.
Het liefste loop ik langs de holle boom waar ik doorheen kan kijken naar de andere werkelijkheid, en de natuurtuin waar kinderen kunnen spelen en fikkie kunnen stoken in de vuurschaal.
Het schuurt op die plekken waar verschillende bubbels op elkaar botsen, en juist door dat schuren ontstaat een bijzondere energie!

Met een grote verzameling stokken bouwen we een gezamenlijke habitat voor ons verhaal, mijn favoriete plekken geef ik een plaats in het geheel.

Samen geven we vorm aan ons verhaal, een gemeenschap die bedreigd wordt door externe en interne factoren, vergelijkbaar met ‘the Quiet Year‘:
Een verzameling van hutten op palen, midden in de oceaan, restanten van een beschaving na extreme klimaatveranderingen.

Tot mijn verassing krijgt de holle boom een centrale plek in de gemeenschap, als laatste overlevende boom.

De gemeenschap staat onder spanning door een aankomende orkaan, iedereen schiet in de overlevingsstand, er ontstaan onderlinge conflicten door toenemend gebrek aan levensbenodigdheden.

De holle boom sluit de holte, keert naar binnen; de laatste nakomelingen van het geslacht van Adam en Eva verliezen hun gevoel voor veiligheid, de laatste dieren gaan zich te buiten in voortplantingsdrift in de hoop dat nog iets overleeft.

Hoe het tij te keren?

De holle boom herinnert zich een oud gebed:
“I must not fear.Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.”

Dan opent de holle boom de holte, geeft toegang aan vluchtende kleine wezens…
De mensen hervinden door dit gebeuren hun gevoel voor veiligheid….
De orkaan neemt in kracht af…

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Remember, remember eleven september….1973

Remember, remember eleven september….1973


Salvador Allende’ last stand against the CIA-backed fascist coup of Pinochet!


My friends,

Surely this will be the last opportunity for me to address you. The Air Force has bombed the antennas of Radio Magallanes.

My words do not have bitterness but disappointment. May they be a moral punishment for those who have betrayed their oath: soldiers of Chile, titular commanders in chief, Admiral Merino, who has designated himself Commander of the Navy, and Mr. Mendoza, the despicable general who only yesterday pledged his fidelity and loyalty to the Government, and who also has appointed himself Chief of the Carabineros [paramilitary police].

Given these facts, the only thing left for me is to say to workers: I am not going to resign! Placed in a historic transition, I will pay for loyalty to the people with my life. And I say to them that I am certain that the seeds which we have planted in the good conscience of thousands and thousands of Chileans will not be shriveled forever.

They have force and will be able to dominate us, but social processes can be arrested by neither crime nor force. History is ours, and people make history.

Workers of my country: I want to thank you for the loyalty that you always had, the confidence that you deposited in a man who was only an interpreter of great yearnings for justice, who gave his word that he would respect the Constitution and the law and did just that. At this definitive moment, the last moment when I can address you, I wish you to take advantage of the lesson: foreign capital, imperialism, together with the reaction, created the climate in which the Armed Forces broke their tradition, the tradition taught by General Schneider and reaffirmed by Commander Araya, victims of the same social sector who today are hoping, with foreign assistance, to re-conquer the power to continue defending their profits and their privileges.

I address you, above all, the modest woman of our land, the campesina who believed in us, the mother who knew our concern for children. I address professionals of Chile, patriotic professionals who continued working against the sedition that was supported by professional associations, classist associations that also defended the advantages of capitalist society. I address the youth, those who sang and gave us their joy and their spirit of struggle. I address the man of Chile, the worker, the farmer, the intellectual, those who will be persecuted, because in our country fascism has been already present for many hours — in terrorist attacks, blowing up the bridges, cutting the railroad tracks, destroying the oil and gas pipelines, in the face of the silence of those who had the obligation to act. They were committed. History will judge them.

Surely Radio Magallanes will be silenced, and the calm metal instrument of my voice will no longer reach you. It does not matter. You will continue hearing it. I will always be next to you. At least my memory will be that of a man of dignity who was loyal to his country.

The people must defend themselves, but they must not sacrifice themselves. The people must not let themselves be destroyed or riddled with bullets, but they cannot be humiliated either.

Workers of my country, I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Other men will overcome this dark and bitter moment when treason seeks to prevail. Go forward knowing that, sooner rather than later, the great avenues will open again and free men will walk through them to construct a better society.

Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers!

These are my last words, and I am certain that my sacrifice will not be in vain, I am certain that, at the very least, it will be a moral lesson that will punish felony, cowardice, and treason.

Santiago (Chile), 11 September 1973 

what you resist, persists?

what you resist, persists?


Just a nice excuse to look away whenever fascism reincarnates again, it worked in the past…

“I don’t know from what spiritual tradition the “what you resist, persists” slogan originated, but I often want to ask those who blithely repeat it, “What’s your evidence?
When it is so patently obvious that what you don’t resist persists like hell and spreads all over the place.
In fact, good, strong, solid resistance may be the only thing that stands between us and hell.
Hitler didn’t persist because of the Resistance — he succeeded in taking over Germany and murdering millions because not enough people resisted.”

Starhawk

Fighting for justice, what else?

Fighting for justice, what else?


Nonviolence is an ideal, as shown by Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Dalai Lama…
But sometimes I feel some fighting is needed to destroy structures of injustice!

We are all human and our belief systems regardless of their contents are polluted by the usual human load of crap.
The only straight-forward belief in this world is a feeling of justice, one that we can conceive by instinct, and express bluntly with no nuance. Only this is worth fighting for

Abou Jahjah comments تعليقات أبو جهجه » what’s it all about?

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the Palestinian version of Gandhi tactics

the Palestinian version of Gandhi tactics


Starhawk says:

As I write, my friend Tristan lies hovering between life and death in an Israeli hospital, shot in the head, hit with a tear gas canister at a nonviolent demonstration in the West Bank town of Ni’lin, protesting the wall the Israelis are building to isolate the West Bank.

Why don’t the Palestinians adopt the tactics of Martin Luther King or Gandhi?
And the answer is simply this—they do.
For the last six years, they have mounted an ongoing campaign of civil resistance against Israel’s apartheid wall, which snakes through the West Bank, confiscating Palestinian farmland without compensation, destroying the life and livelihoods of whole villages, literally setting in concrete the fractured geometry of Israel’s incursions, her illegal settlements that eat away the integrity of any potential Palestinian state.

Tristan Shot in the West Bank

Comment:
How many peaceful protesters have to be hit by the zionist Apartheids troopers?

..Sie erkennen’s nichts, haben’s nicht acht…(ps. 82)

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