DETROIT IS A SPIRITUAL BATTLEFIELD


RESPECTFULLY IN:VOK:ING ALL PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE MEMBERS AND ALLIES VARIOUS HANDS, LOCAL 23, DETROIT CHAPTER – DETROIT PROMETHEAN SOCIETY – DETROIT AREA DEPROGRAMMING ALLIANCE & SPIRITUAL WARRIORS OF ALL DENOMINATIONS FOR INTENTIONAL, NON-HIERARCHICAL,  COLLECTIVE RESISTANCE THAT RECOGNIZES THE POWERS AT PLAY & WHAT IS REALLY AT STAKE

FACT CHECK: WE LIVE IN A MAGICKAL UNIVERSE

THE GEOGRAPHIC AREA CURRENTLY KNOWN AS DETROIT IS, HAS BEEN & WILL BE SACRED GROUND. The matrix, the grid, which many will recognize as the tree and the pillars, used here is an attempt to mediate the energy that thrives here into systems of control, consumption and death. DETROIT IS A SPIRITUAL BATTLEFIELD, you know this in your bones.

Proposal: Let us, together and apart, continue the historical practice of many groups and individuals here, to do ritual, say prayers, chant and throw curses to shift power. The vision that was planted in my brain still remains. Hesse’s “For Madwomen Only” remixed. If I were to put all my heart and my all being into the struggle at hand it would look and feel something like this.

This is my expression of the voice that silently wakes me every morning at 3am. I inuit that some of you know this voice. This is a call to the madwomen, shamen, mutants, healers, prophets, clerics, street sorcerers and medicine women. If nothing else, this, maybe more than anything else, this will scare the shit out of them. If they are still men, in the middle of the night it will creep up on them. It scares me. I’m not at my strongest, in some ways I’m more broken than I’ve ever been. Maybe that’s the sweet spot.

Maybe this is where I share what I know more than I have, without the veneer. I’ve studied the Book of Job and the story of Faust for the majority of my time here. If, in fact, God and the Devil play dice with the universe, I intuit that people of both faith and science are invited to influence the roll with our thoughts, actions and deeds.

THE VISION THAT WAS PLANTED IN MY BRAIN STILL REMAINS. 

FOR MADWOMEN ONLY

IF I WERE TO PUT ALL MY HEART AND MY ALL BEING INTO THE STRUGGLE AT HAND IT WOULD LOOK AND FEEL SOMETHING LIKE THIS. THIS IS MY EXPRESSION OF THE VOICE THAT SILENTLY WAKES ME EVERY MORNING AT 3AM. I’VE SENT THIS TO YOU BECAUSE I INTUIT YOU KNOW THAT VOICE. THIS IS A CALL TO THE MADWOMEN, SHAMEN, MUTANTS, HEALERS, PROPHETS, CLERICS, STREET SORCERERS AND MEDICINE WOMEN. 

THE SIGN SAID THE WORDS OF THE PROPHETS WERE WRITTEN ON THE WALLS I SAY THEY ARE WRITTEN IN OUR DNA. WE ARE INFINITE BEINGS HAVING A FINITE EXPERIENCE THAT WE IS DETERMINED BY OUR LIVES. THIS IS NOT OUR CITY, BUT WE ARE ITS CARE TAKERS AND WE MUST STAND UP TO PROTECT IT.

©EschatonLife

An excerpt from “l’anathème de la naine rouge”

The Anathema of the Red Dwarf;
A Sermon to the Hypocrites of Detroit

A poetic drama in seven parts based upon a conversation overheard, August 2013

The Call

The Magician/Fool: I call upon Le Nain Rouge, my friend, the scourge of the land, to rise up with us and reclaim THIS land, for people, animal, vegetable, mineral, for those who came long before and will come, amen. The settlers have returned to settle the score, take back the isle, the water, and so much more. I fear their souls as my own.

Of course they designed not to know that this IS their intention, only the handful who are directing the show, the one’s with the dough, are in the know. it is not their intention, they’re cleaning the place up. The problem, my old accomplice, is that they are using your name, to move forward their lot, I know that you know they’ve been burning you yearly, a state sanctioned festive riot of fire and glut.

They’ve mangled your story, and marketed everything from beer to bacon with your name. What is worse, they’ve linked you with something I’ve yet to understand, they have rendered you in serve to the ruler of this, your own land. I know not to trust you, I know the score, this is not the first time I’ve stood at your door. We all are children of this white plague, but I think at this time there are more than enough things upon which we agree, not to take up the cause and dispose this lunacy.

Nain, my old friend, I ken you’ve spoken through me time and again. My vitriol, my spite, my fear in the night, my mother, my father, my brothers and sisters, along with their lovers. I do not know my own power lost friends. Nain, you are a slice of the fire, the Promethean light, that stings and sings in me, what do you say to my proposal today?

Can you speak to the people, speak in a way they can all understand, the white and the black, all the manufactured pawns in this multi- fronted attack? I know you’ll be harsh, pointed in fact, by no means do I wish to censor your ballast, but ask that you keep it well rounded and not spare anyone venom and their moment in the light of your night.

©EschatonLife

Operation Mind Fuck #173

Operation Mind Fuck #173
RE-Created June 13, 2013

This is a new Poem in the TIMEFIX series. (My attempts at PKD, before reading his works.) If you’re lucky enough to still have the scars, you hero… dig out your goggles, get some tape or string or something, and strap ’em on. 

Note: My life is the disclaimer. My successes, other’s failures, some folk want/need to be turned up, some folks want/need to be turned way down. Pretty complex architecture on the want/need border for most of us these days. 

While I’ll be held accountable to the tune of offering preflight support through this poem, and possible banter upon return, I must point out that this is a Mind Fuck and if you elect to hit play you, whatever your motives, you are willfully entering into realms I have absolutely no influence in.

Put frankly, if it gets deep, no one is going to be able to wade out and get your ass because your coordinates will be dictated by the timing of your breath, the speed of your internet connection, the varied neurological distance between your decision to hit the link and your hand. I would also suggest influence from the location of the sun and moon, your level of hydration and mood or emotional/energetic state. 

So, all that to say, there’s a great deal going on that will influence whether this is a blissed-out industrial angelic choir or demonic dystopian cacophony. I try not to judge though, maybe today is the day I need a demonic cacophony to see what I need to see. I don’t like to lead, but my personal Mind Fuck sweet-spot, where I gain the most in the way of insight, is the quite tangible dance between the two. 

Archival: 

This is a RE-Creation of the ritualized experiments I performed on myself with cassette decks and cd player ‘boom boxes’, a handful of buzzing TV’s and a hand-crafted freestanding Dreamachine. I smile, a little tongue in cheek, when I share that many of these experiments were played out in an underground ‘bunker’, an unfinished sauna in what could be considered an abandoned suburban Bloomfield garage. The people who lived there seem ghosts to me now, the depression so deep, we never cut the grass or went into the garage. My rig is probably still there, rust and mold. I’ll never forget how the room used to fill with water and/or fire.

These are not and will always be ‘new’ ideas. I have no idea where the line can be drawn between my influences and my original expressions. I still intuit that my influences practiced and held the same perspective. This round of experiments was deeply influenced by my exposure to William S. Burroughs, Bryon Gysin and their ilk, through vengefully purchasing an LP by an unknown to me band called Throbbing Gristle. As much as I oft deplore that my entrance is through consumption, therein lies the birth of my personal culture war. While it surpassed it’s vitriolic intention, I didn’t care for the LP musically. I was in the midst of a fall from new wave into punk and, shudder, goth, and quite frankly the noise that came out of my speakers freaked me out quite a bit. Yet somehow it resonated with me, it only took my OCD mind a short amount of time to connect to their influences which included many of the folk I was researching in an attempt at the self-guided mental surgery that this poem documents. I know in some realms it still exists, so forgive the nostalgia, but I used a very different means of gathering information back in the day that required leg work. I’d sell plasma to raise the funds to get a rare book shipped from overseas, all the while praying that it wasn’t shite. I’d get rides out to U of M without means of getting home so that I could spend days in their half-floor stacks, pouring through books attempting to make a map of the stuff the Surrealists were channeling. 

The RE-Created Experiment:

Sit down comfortably, breathe mindfully, put on your headset and/or turn it up a bit,- open these three links, one each time you exhale, sit back, close your eyes and keep breathing mindfully. thanks for playing and good luck. You’re getting one small piece of pretty massively detailed system that I designed for self-guided mental surgery. 

Zos Kia / Coil Here to Here (Double-Headed Secret), Transparent, 1984

Boyd Rice and Frank Tovey, Easy Listening for the Hard of Hearing, 1984

Chris and Cosey, Haunted Heroes, Techno Primitiv, 1985

©EschatonLife

T6

Written in 2013, recorded in the family temple.
A banishing of sorts and call for clarity in writing and self expression. Music: Bloom – ‘Divine Users’

T6

This AM
I write for me
not for
him
her
sun
moon
mother
father
in-law
infinite repressed
but now,
me
she
he,
warrior
monk
fool father
always to be

Two-bit
illusion of infirmary
psychosis of sin
original
or third-hand
discarded undainties exposed finally
as the smell coming from the
woodshed

This am I
write for me
not for
bullies
banks
or movements building
all-weather friends
enamored and amused
abused by my train-wreck obscurities
Trite notions
if I did not
I –
I would not be grasping
for conspiracy,
for meaning
for calm and chaos
rooted
in the same breath,
breathe

This I am
write for me
for ancestry and progeny
for father land
mother sky
for crystals below
and above
me – a conduit,
I see

The span of 40 years
behind
before
me cycles
lines
dimensions un-folding
in
up-
on
themselves
I am this
write for me

Detroit 11.20.2013 e.v.

© EschatonLife

Time Traveling Power Analysis Justice takes Detroit Future City

Strategic Proposal, Concept Paper, Narrative Disrupter, Culture Hack
Time Traveling Power Analysis
Justice takes Detroit Future City

This is a very rough draft, I could have spent more time on it but had to get it out. I request the patience of the initial readers. Though I have attempted to edit mindfully and critically, I recognize some aspects of my expressions here are hung up in my privileged attempts to bring meaning to what appears meaningless and logic to what appears illogical. Emphasis on the value of lived-experience often becomes a double-edged sword when wielded by privilege.

“Anti-racist is a code word for anti-white”
Earlier this week, I received an email from the organizers of the annual White Privilege Conference. They’ve been receiving hate mail recently and included a snippet in the email. As I read the words “Anti-racist is a code word for anti-white” I reflected on my personal intentions here in Detroit. I sincerely asked myself, based upon the fact that I’m outspoken about race and class based oppression, if it were possible that I’m anti-white? I have received this push back from new privileged Detroiters who passively support the dismantling of Detroit. 

One of my personal intentions for Detroit, even in the face of economic and cultural changes, is that it remain a majority black city for a good long time. I see American austerity as racism and classism coded in the language of business and finance and the current political and economic coup d’etat unfolding in Detroit as part of a long term strategy for resource extraction and redistribution of power. The same strategies are being used globally. 

Reconnecting to the Ethical and the Urgent
Why does a “creative class” white male, who is raising a family want to live in a black majority city? There are many cultural reasons for this, but thinking strategically about narratives and communications, the most prevalent one I’ve come up with is both ethical and urgent. In order to remove the number of people they are talking about removing in the amount of time they are talking about, even without tacking on the historical atrocities that are well-know, we quickly approach an inhumane reality. The privileged push back around gentrification typically cites shifts in populations as a natural and uncontrollable side effects of development. I propose that if we bring in some reality-based numbers and visuals around displacement they may inspire an ethical shift or answer immediate material concerns.  

Respectful Intergenerational Strategy
The reason I propose we not reference the extremely relevant historical aspect is that folks with privilege seem to perceive the passage of time differently (money tends to speed things up). Many think that the 90’s are ancient history and that issues have lost relevance over time, like trends. After a recent discussion with Andrew Newton where he shared that a number of youth were put off by Rev. Sharpton and Rev. Jackson I began to consider a commonality between this privileged perspective and feedback I am getting about movement building from intensely disenfranchised twenty-something Detroiters. 

As heretical as it sounds to my ears, he shared that many consider civil rights leaders passé. While resisting the urge to shake them for not seeing the relevance of the civil rights movement I think that it may reveal an intergenerational communications strategy and one that may intersect campaigns for youth and creative class, self-identified progressives. 

I’ll need to posit this more, but it may suggest parsing our messaging to include a historical narrative that is appealing and calls to the “boomers” and write a ‘why is this relevant to me?’ narrative that answers the immediate concerns that I perceive may be more appealing to youth and those who may be more motivated by material rather than philosophical concerns.

Reverse Engineering Detroit Future City
I’ve been ‘in-deep’ writing strategy and positing narratives around the EM and while this is morbid as can be, I think with collective vetting it may serve as a valuable tool for internal and external undoing. I don’t like being hierarchical, and def do not like to draw lines, but this what I perceive to be a rather ‘advanced’ discussion that refers to a potential technique that should be kept internal and if considered, only inform public strategy, not be a part of it.

I’m suggesting that we create a safe space to consider what a non-majority black/POC Detroit would look like and then reverse engineer it. The process of reverse engineering basically walks us back through time to consider the policy changes and political shifts necessary to render this fantasized white Detroit possible within a particular time frame. A big huge chunk of our work on the fantasy has been done already by Detroit Future City.

For those of you familiar with a power analysis, what I am suggesting is like going forward in time, doing a power analysis and then stepping back to the present while considering and documenting the shifts in power that had to occur to get us from the present (point a) to the future (point b).

Once reverse engineering hypothetically documents the policies and programs that it would actually take to achieve a white majority Detroit, which I perceive would be utterly damning and, given a certain level of humanity (still crossing fingers, I know), hard to accept. This process could inform a critique of the narrative that reveals the coded racism in the plans, policies and politics that people are currently embracing under the banner or progress and mantra “there is no other way”.

It’d be like building an argument that clearly states that in order to get the Detroit these folks are looking for, they will have to do this, this and this. They would need to remove X many people, in order to remove X many people they would need to institute a, b, and c. Then succinctly point out how a, b and c have been historically and globally used to extract people from their land. Maybe this reveals a personal desire to be able to say, if you support this or even passively let this happen then you are standing with the banks, supporting the expansion of corporate domination and most importantly, IMO, that they are supporting efforts to extract certain people from the city while inviting others in. 

A very rough example
Experiential acknowledgement of need for research assistance

I’m doing rough math here and I’m hoping a data-abled person can check my thinking here. I’m also assuming that when population increase is factored in, we will still see evidence of a removal program. There are still assumptions abound here. I’m attempting to get at the gist of something that needs serious detail and fact checking that is beyond my ken when visioning.

If Detroit’s black and people of color population is 90% (630,000) of the city’s population (700,000) and a comfortable visual representation of race for suburban white folk (my estimates based on personal observation, inquiry and discussions with others around such concerns, I’m thinking I can find a few academic studies to back this up) is 60% black/poc folk (420,000). Note: many whites will still feel slightly threatened in this racial environment, but they’ll swallow through it, give themselves an ethical merit badge in diversity and donate more to the police officer’s foundation next year.

That means that, let’s say they even take 10 years, they are going to have to ‘lose’ 30% of the population. That’s 210,000 people that they need to “inspire” through, political, economic and cultural tactics, to move on. Even if the population increase takes this down to 15% that’s 105,000 people. 10,000 people a year being escorted out through various means. I’m sure we can connect to some studies and numbers about school to prison here.

Other Strategy Revealed?

In addition, through this deconstruction of Future City Detroit we may gain further insight into economic and political strategy they have yet to roll out, their time frame for implementation, and to develop potential strategy, not only to counter but to be preemptive in our work.

©EschatonLife

Challenging assumptions about progress in the face of Emergency Management

This was originally published in The Michigan Citizen, March 5, 2013

This is the final column in our series discussing the Environmental Justice Principles drafted and adopted by delegates to the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit held Oct. 24-27, 1991. EJ principle 17 requires that we, as individuals, make personal and consumer choices to consume as little of Mother Earth’s resources and to produce as little waste as possible; and make the conscious decision to challenge and reprioritize our lifestyles to ensure the health of the natural world for present and future generations. (www.ejnet.org/ej/principles.html).

We come to the close of our commentary on the environmental justice principles as we approach the close of the 10-day timeframe to appeal Governor Snyder’s financial emergency declaration and the announcement of an emergency manager. While it is challenging to rally behind the ideals of ‘personal choice’ and ‘conscious decisions’ that EJ principle 17 embodies when confronted with the long-threatened reality of emergency management, it does present an opportunity to consider how we may be able to ‘challenge and re-prioritize our lifestyles’, our own thoughts and deeds, in the face of this political and economic shift.

Lottie Spady closed her recent column by asking, “what does it look like to choose in our own best interest?” Making personal choices to consume less, while a privileged option, seems and may be beneficent. But currently, the lines between truth and marketing are often intentionally blurred. Whether we are considering products on a shelf or a strategic framework for urban development, deception and misinformation have become acceptable terms of engagement in a free market economy.

To make informed, conscious decisions we have to become vigilant in deconstruction and analysis. Frankly, we have to cut through many, often imperceptible, levels of bullshit and distortion to determine what’s going down around us and to determine if we’re acting in our own best-interest, in the interest of the greater good or in the slippery degrees of otherwise. Case in point being the State Financial Advisory Board’s findings on Detroit’s economic status. While the Governor and those who would benefit the most from emergency management endorse the FAB’s findings, existing and hopeful candidates in the November election have suggested the State books are cooked and that Detroit is not as destitute as we are led to believe.

I hesitate comparing Detroit’s financial status to packaged food, but as I look at the spin and distortion I am reminded of how deceptive and manipulative food marketing and labeling can be. It took me years to teach myself to stop reading the bold letters, NEW, IMPROVED, HEALTHY, NATURAL on the front of packages and to start looking at the actual ingredients and nutritional content listed in small print on the back. Many cite the deregulating trends of the 80s, but somewhere along the way, companies began taking liberties with facts to promote products and influence spending. They began to market to what their research determined to be our wants, rather than our needs.

This approach, justified by profit increase, served to reinforce the already powerful mantra that ‘what is best for the company’, as a job provider and revenue generator, ‘is also best for the people’. If it is profitable then, without regard for the health and well-being of individuals or society, it is framed as not only as ethical, but also as the best and/or only option. The goal in this, as far as I’m able to discern, is to move profitable products, ideas and ‘isms’ into the realm of indoctrinated assumptions that promote the ‘best and only’ into ‘the way it is’. It both infers and blatantly states that to do otherwise would be counter-productive, obstructionist, insane and even pestilent. The disconnect between the marketed information on the front of the package and the reality relegated to the back mirrors the discrepancies and contradictions found in the supposed options, personal and consumer lifestyle choices, given across the board.

The players in the economic and political coup d’état unfolding around and between us make use of these marketing and culture shaping strategies to great benefit. The notion of being progressive, for example has shifted from a term used to denote ‘forward-thinking” leftist to a generalized dedication to ideological progress across the spectrum. How is it that many who self-identify as progressives can support, through irony, apology, or silence, economic and political efforts that are antithetical to meaningful or substantial benefit for all Detroiters?

In a recent Huffington Post article economist William Black called out progressives who often unwittingly support austerity measures. He cites college-level indoctrination into the neoliberal economic mythology, “that austerity is the answer and that mass unemployment and prolonged recessions are small prices to be paid (by others) to achieve the holy grail of a balanced budget.” (http://tinyurl.com/afnpqea) Austerity economics promote polices that meet the demands of crisis by taking the most from those with the least and that place emphasis on abstract market-based concerns, like balancing budgets, over root issues like public education, safety, and poverty reduction.

I no longer consider it conspiracy theory or paranoid delusion; in Detroit and other contentious geographies across the globe, things as they appear to some are simply not as they are for others. In geographies where the majority live at or below the so-called poverty level, austerity economics and politics render hinterlands, in-between spaces, that exist as juxtapositions mixing objectivist dreams made flesh and unprecedented, justified yet demonized efforts at obstructionism. In these ‘spaces-between’ notions of progress, creativity and innovation can be used to promote agendas that stand in stark contrast to notions of equity, democracy or meaningful community resilience. After all, we all want Detroit to have less blight, to progress right?

An example rises in the recently rolled-out and frequently referenced billionaire’s commonwealth proposed for Belle Isle. Presented in the press as novel, yet undesirable, it sounds like a fantastical shot in the dark, but the plan is actually a rather overzealous local spin on so-called “progressive” development strategies being proposed globally. Specifically, a proposal for two ‘charter cities’ in Honduras has been gaining traction through political interventions, coup d’état, the removal of judges opposed to the project and the like. (http://tinyurl.com/d4kozft) Proposed on contested land occupied by indigenous peoples, the promotional video for these Honduran charter cities bears an eerie resemblance to the Belle Isle proposal. These charter cities are promoted domestically and abroad as an example of how progressive, creative, innovative and of course, business-friendly Honduras is. Just don’t pay attention to the dismissal of democracy or the displacement of the people who currently live there.

Again, the lines are blurred, progress is good, right? The two divergent yet interconnected and relative realities emerging around us, one deemed progressive and the other anti-progress seem similar to this scenario in Honduras. The dystopian, dehumanized and corrupt reality of disaster capitalism making way for what is presented as a mandatory homogenized development framework that calls out citizen voice or anything other than the company line as obstructionist. While choice and lifestyle change are foundational in any personal or cultural paradigm shift, for me EJ principle 17 introduces many contradictions that are important to consider as we move forward, as we truly progress.

As our principle encourages us to make conscious decisions and challenge ourselves, are we also willing to challenge our own indoctrinated assumptions around what is possible and what is acceptable when it comes to economics and politics? Sadly, I’ve shared with many Detroiters I consider ‘progressive’, you know, creative and innovative folk from all walks and talks, who remorse that gentrification is just the way it goes in urban spaces. They think it’s a shame we have to remove democratic representation to ‘save’ Detroit and believe unflinchingly that balancing the budget is part and parcel with saving the city in the first place.

I perceive that a gauge of progress in Detroit is directly related to our demand for democratic representation especially in the face of it’s threatened elimination, our strong stance against the displacement of peoples, foreclosures, cuts in services and security, and upon our ability to frankly address inequities and disparities through systemic transformation.

– END-