Archive for the ‘History’ Category

Graffiti: 29th Avenue Railway (Oakland, CA)

Posted: November 26, 2013 in Art, History, Politics
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You may have noticed me posting lots of photos. You probably don’t know that I went to the Academy of Art University in SF briefly for photography, or that graffiti has been my muse since before I could work a camera. Specifically, the graffiti along the Caltrain and BART tracks here in the Bay Area is what got me into photography. At this point I have about a decade of photos if you include my really old ones from my crappy film camera (not 35mm, a point and shoot).

I am working on a graffiti art book that is a history of Bay Area graffiti. This post includes some of the finished shots, not sure if and when I will get around to posting more. These photos were taken in 2008, I did not record the month but I would guess it was in the fall, by the overcast skies. These are my photos but the art is not mine, the art belongs to the countless graffiti artists of the world. I want this book to be a record of the amazing works they have constructed for our pleasure in the most uncanny and ephemeral of places. The beauty of graffiti art is its zen nature, it exists by creation and destruction. Without the constant painting over of old graffiti we would never get space for new works, thus it must be temporary, but that doesn’t make the loss of good work any more bearable. Someone, in this case me, should preserve the work before it is lost to the sands of time. That is why I am working on my book.

All praise to the artists.

The Maintenance Man

Narwahl

 

Fuego 64

 

Doorway

Don’t Wake Sleeping Dragons

Kulture Soldier

A Taste Of Oakland

PhotoPoem – Red & Black

Posted: November 23, 2013 in Art, History, Poetry, Politics
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In the stanza about Emma Goldman the word read is pronounced in the past tense (phonetically red), this is meant to be a play on words but I worry it may not read well.

Sup B (Anonymous)

Red and Black 

Red is the color of passion.

The kind of passion that spills onto the streets,

In a paroxysm of rage or a gush of blood,

The parting kiss of a billy club.

Black is no color, it is a shade.

We cloak ourselves in its cool shadows,

Covering swaddled black-blocked masses,

We stand united against the police state.

Read is what we have done to Emma Goldman,

To Marx, Kropotkin, and scores more.

Read is what they did not do to our letters and pamphlets,

Detached in towers of gilded ivory.

Black is what they will do to the images they dislike,

To the actions, thoughts and people too.

Black is what we cannot let happen to our memories,

They must be held for their crimes against life.

Red is the color of love.

The love for all beings united in struggle,

Even those not deserving of love.

We all suffer, we all face hardships.

Black is the refreshing shade of a desert oasis.

Sheltering all those who don its penumbral armor.

Even cops who dispense billy club kisses,

Stand strong in dark sunglasses, in funereal black.

Red and black are the color guard and shaded cloak of our people,

Find them wherever there is tyranny and rally to them.

Policing For Profit?

Posted: November 22, 2013 in Cannabis, History, Politics
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You may have heard of for-proft prisons, also called private prisons, but have you heard about policing for profit? I remember a time when cops proudly branded the motto “protect and serve” on the sides of squad cars and police stations. I wonder when that was amended to be “to protect our profit margins by serving us your property?”

This is not a new problem, it goes back years with some local police pioneering the practice as early as 2006. Tenaha, Texas, was one of these pioneers and recently lost a major class action lawsuit to the countless victims of highway robbery by the police. State records show the use of asset forfeiture in Texas going back to 2001, with totals seized in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Federally, the Department of Justice claimed $1.8 billion in assets in their asset forfeiture fund. This fund has had time to build up, a good 24 years that we have records, and over that time the Feds seized over $12 billion in property, largely related  to the war on drugs. But it goes back even further than that, all the way to the founding of this country; the 4th and 5th Amendments were created to protect we citizens from abuses like these that were commonplace under the crown. Now we have come full circle and are left with robbers marauding our highways in the employ of “the crown” of the imperial presidency.

You may begin seeing a common thread developing here, black and Latino people are stopped by (almost exclusively) white cops, and forced to turn over all kinds of personal possessions not related to crimes, especially since they are innocent of crimes. Take this case out of Tenaha, the individuals stopped were not breaking any laws; contrary to popular belief it is legal to possess a pipe (for tobacco or as a gift, like in this case). When they get to the police station they see a pile of watches, jewelry, and other valuables; that sounds like a Robin Hood-esque pile of plunder but perversed and reversed stealing from the unfortunate to give to privileged white cops.

I normally don’t use Privilege Talk, as I feel its often counter-productive, but the ability to legally rob someone under threat of pain or imprisonment is certainly a privilege, and it was clearly abused. Is abused, this isn’t over because one class action lawsuit was won. There are local police and federal agents across the country still doing this. A major raid of more than a dozen state-legal dispensaries and two private residences just happened in Denver, Colorado. While on paper the federal and local agents involve claim it is a hunt for connections to Colombian drug cartels, it is also an informal reason to confiscate over $2 million in jewelry and money as well as another million in cannabis plants. As someone who works in the medical cannabis industry I want the bad players out of the game more than anyone. Unfortunately it does sound like there are people with cartel ties in Denver, but more unfortunately it sounds like Feds used this as a blank check to smash and grab all over the place.

This issue of civil asset forfeiture feeds into related issues of racial profiling and stop and frisk abuse, like this extreme case in Florida which is also resulting in a class action lawsuit against an abusive local police force. Yet again it is mainly white cops harassing and abusing non-white folks.

Read for yourself:

“Earl Sampson has been stopped and questioned by Miami Gardens police 258 times in four years. He’s been searched more than 100 times. And arrested and jailed 56 times. Despite his long rap sheet, Sampson, 28, has never been convicted of anything more serious than possession of marijuana. Miami Gardens police have arrested Sampson 62 times for one offense: trespassing. Almost every citation was issued at the same place: the 207 Quickstop, a convenience store on 207th Street in Miami Gardens. But Sampson isn’t loitering. He works as a clerk at the Quickstop.”

I’m not sure what about that one can consider police doing their job. It sounds like they have a vendetta against Mr. Sampson and the 207 Quikstop. It wasn’t just Earl though, police regularly harassed countless customers of the 207 Quikstop, often abusing “Terry” stops to do it. A Terry stop is a stop and frisk meant to search someone suspected of committing a crime for a weapon. New York City police are famous for abusing this to practice to make NY’s legally decriminalized cannabis still illegal as long as you are poor and not white. In fact, the situation in NYC is so dire the courts have stepped in to block the practice.

This is not why we have police, they were meant to protect and serve the public, not brutalize and rob them. This is why it warms my heart to see more discussions of community policing and see police forces actively implement community policing policies.

Tea Not Prisons – Free Oshan!

Posted: November 20, 2013 in Cannabis, History, Politics
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As you may have noticed already with this blog I am strongly and decidedly against the War on Drugs. I’ve been a former chapter president of Students for Sensible Drug Policy, worked with the Drug Policy Alliance, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, the Marijuana Policy Project, Americans for Safe Access and more. I was a regional director for the Proposition 19 campaign to legalize cannabis in California, which came 4% away from passing in 2010 and paved the way for 2012’s victories in Colorado and Washington. Before you begin thinking, “this guy is a drug legalizing radical,” recognize that I am not alone, I am part of the marijuana majority.

I feel that the war on drugs is one of the most important proxy battles we can fight for freedom. While there are numerous battlefields, I feel that the war on drugs, and the Prison Industrial Complex it feeds, is one of the most insidious evils perpetuated by my government, making it my battle to win. Though not my only battle.

Now, if there is only thing  I like about as much as I love cannabis it is tea. I have always loved it, green, white, black, oolong, sencha, rooibos, chai, loose leaf, bagged – tea is tea and it is a wonderful thing. I do not personally know Oshan Anand, though many of my friends do. I only found out about his amazing tea house and all the work he has done for Bay Area tea culture after he was sent to prison for intent to distribute MDMA and psychedelic mushrooms; both charges he plead not guilty to and is appealing. If you weren’t aware, court isn’t cheap and running a tea house is not normally how one gets rich. Oshan needs our help if he is going to get his appeal and get out before his 12.5 year  mandatory minimum sentence.

If you are like me and part of a growing majority of Americans who feels that the drug war is criminally wrong please take after my example and donate to Oshan’s defense. This young man is not a criminal, we don’t have prison’s to lock up non-violent teahouse owners; prison is for hardened criminals like murders and rapists. If you can’t donate, Oshan is able to take letters; please write Oshan and help return the sense of community to his life that has been stolen from him by the state.

While this post has focused solely on Oshan Anand, someone who to the naked eye is “a white guy,” the vast majority of those incarcerated for drug crimes are under 25, male, and black or latino. The arrest disparity is so bad it has been rightfully called The New Jim Crow and led to the creation of Orange is the New Black, who’s title is a subtle shout out to all the inmates in orange working as slave labor for Walmart.

As a last comment, while I referred to Oshan as a “white guy,” I loathe that term. I used it because he, like me, passes as white to the naked eye and thus will get pigeon-holed as ‘an awful white male oppressor’ by strangers who can’t be bothered to learn who he/I really are. That whole logic of, “you’re X/Y/Z you won’t understand” is a way to keep people down and divided, while ignoring a myriad of diversity. Diversity, like how Oshan and I are Buddhists; or how I am white and genderqueer. One can assume by Oshan Anand’s name there is something non-white there, like my own smattering of Cherokee. There is more to diversity than skin-color, but when you are talking about prison it is ignorant of the facts to ignore race.

Please, donate to Oshan’s defense, help him and every non-violent drug offender get their Constitutionally guaranteed freedom.

A Nation Homeless

Posted: November 17, 2013 in History, Politics
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After my last couple of posts about my literal run in with a member of the local homeless community I feel it fit to make a post about my broader views on homelessness in America. I worry that I may have came off as callous to the plight of homeless individuals, which is most assuredly not the case. I’m always one for small charities like giving food or money whenever I can. I have also been involved in larger efforts to help the homeless community and plan to continue for the rest of my life. Through Occupy Santa Cruz and over a decade spent in Santa Cruz I met many homeless individuals, even dated some. I met world famous hackers, local rabble rousers, LGBT youth fleeing abuse, and eloquent veterans with rich lives who sometimes rage at the heavens. That last one, the eloquent veteran, his name is Norman and from what he tells me used to be special forces before things went wrong. Norman lived by the bridge near my house in Santa Cruz for roughly two of my three years at that house and we developed a good rapport, I even called an ambulance for him once and waited with him for the paramedics to come. For me homeless people are people first, whereas I imagine most Americans get caught up on the homeless aspect and forget they are still people. I have always felt this way but much more strongly after nearly becoming homeless myself when I graduated into unemployment, student loan debt, and the Great Recession.

I do not blame the homeless individual who caused my crash for being were he was when he was, I blame our society. The culture of American Capitalism breeds neglect and this man was a product of that neglect. Perhaps he was a veteran (13%), maybe he suffers from an untreated mental disorder (25%) or drug addiction (35%); all of these demographics are neglected in our culture and pushed towards homelessness. Those percents are the aggregate totals across the US, some states and cities have even higher rates. This individual was definitely under the influence of something, either drugs or in an altered mental state for other reasons. It is not his fault he cannot receive proper mental health care or addiction treatment in this country, it is our society’s fault. America could prioritize harm reduction and preventative care, instead we put punitive measures in place to criminalize drug use and homelessness.

In all likelihood I had ridden my bike past this same man before without ever seeing him. I frequently ride down the Guadalupe River trail in San Jose, which was the site for a 100+ person tent city with an annex across the river in the woods (photos to come). Unfortunately, in an act of great compassion, the San Jose city council evicted all the homeless to downtown San Jose, to better resemble San Francisco. This is not the first nor do I expect it to be the last time that particular location will have a camp and the police will clear it out. There is a lifecycle to homeless camps, like with graffiti art; first one small tag or one tent goes unnoticed, then that grows into a larger piece, a larger camp, and then it becomes hard to go back to the way things were. It’s an example of the broken windows theory. San Jose is home to many homeless camps, including the largest in the US by size. While the city council admits that San Jose has a problem with homelessness, there seems to be little political will to do anything about it, other than bicker over the cost of cleanups and evictions.

Members of the homeless community that I have spoken to have mixed views on camps. It is generally felt that if you are a single man the chances of getting into a shelter are slim, they are better for women and those with children. Some individuals feel homeless camps provide safety in numbers, others feel they are breeding grounds for drug abuse and crime (I see this same divide with my homed friends as well). The current trend seems to be towards homeless camps with city support and rules, you can see efforts to do this in Santa Cruz, Sacramento, and Eugene. I certainly feel these camps better alternatives to wandering alone and risking being burned alive or killed by a samurai sword.

Let me return to a previous point that I glazed over, my issues with American Capitalism. Only in America, or maybe China, do we have enough empty homes to give every homeless person five and still have some left over, yet those homes remain empty and the homeless remain freezing to death on Chicago streets. Seriously, there are enough empty homes in this country for every homeless person to have a main house AND a summer house. That doesn’t include foreclosed businesses, like the dozens of abandoned Walmarts around the US who existed only to drive competition under and make room for a Super Walmart in the next town over. At least one Texas town has found a good use for an empty Walmart and filled the husk of evil with the glory of a giant library. Some individuals I knew involved with Occupy Santa Cruz, tried something similar, yet more radical (read: without consent). People often claim capitalism to be the most efficient economic system, I fail to see what is efficient in nearly 19 million empty homes and trillions of dollars of wasted resources now rotting away unoccupied. I fail to see what is efficient in people needing mental health services, scientifically effective rehab, and homes; yet not getting any of it when it should be in abundance. Homes clearly are in abundance, but America is woefully lacking on harm reduction policies like needle exchange and mental health services.

The power is ours to change the world, but power without action is meaningless. In San Jose we have a homelessness problem and a foreclosure problem, just on the street where I work there are a half dozen vacant businesses who have been empty over a year. That is lost revenue for the property owners, the City should step in and convert some of them into homeless shelters. Rather than spend millions of dollars on a “phase one” where they clear out the camps and plan to move the homeless into shelters for “phase two,” why not just jump to phase two and let the camps dissipate on their own? That seems logical to me, if given the option of a new shelter or a camp it’s a fairly easy choice. There clearly is more to it, zoning and other bureaucratic nonsense, but if there was enough political will in the public to put pressure on the city council we could do this.

Burning Man – Finding Truth in the Dust

Posted: November 4, 2013 in Art, Bike Culture, Burning Man, Fashion, History, Politics
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You may or may not have heard of Burning Man, growing up in the SF Bay Area I’ve known about it and suspected I would end up there since middle school. Most people think of Burning Man as a giant RAVE in the desert, like Coachella (only cheaper than Coachella and it lasts a week instead of four days). But Burning Man is so much more. You could spend all week out there and listen only to live music or at least not electronic, or even no music at all. There is a TEDx out there as well as the Palenque Norte lecture series and countless other talks and classes on nearly every topic you can think of. Simply put, there is something for everyone of all ages in that desert, from the very young to the very old.

There are art cars, vehicles of all sorts transformed into living art projects.

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While music primarily is electronic there was still live music to be had, namely this badass drummer.

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Along with music Burning Man is riddled with philosophy and thought provoking works of art.

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Burning Man honors many American cultural landmarks…

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And at the end of the week everything burns, even the Temple.

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One thing I have learned from years of researching Burning Man it is that no one knows exactly how or why it was started, either that or people know and are unwilling to come to a consensus on the facts. This has left the event’s origin shrouded in rumor with an elaborate mythology. Stories range from the tragic death of a friend or pet, to an explosive divorce with an awful wife, to the mundane desire to just burn a man on the beach. I’ve developed my own theory about the roots of Burning Man, and choice of current location. I call it a theory but it is meant more as a humorous observation, rather than something taken with the weight of actual science, and it meant to be seen as inclusive (not mutually exclusive) with all other theories. You may call this the Dune Origin Myth for the starting of Burning Man.

If my first post didn’t make it clear I love Dune, the David Lynch movie not the book. I have not read the book yet, which I’ll admit is a failure on my part because books are awesome. In Dune, there are several planets, including Caladan and Arrakis; I will only be discussing these two as the only relevant ones to this post, as well as a small bit of the plot without spoiling anything. The main characters, the royal family of Duke Leto Atreides, live on Caladan, a planet covered in a vast ocean. They are instructed by the Emperor of the Known Universe to go to Arrakis to take control of the spice mining operations. Arrakis is also known as Dune, it is a dry desert planet where nothing grows and there is no life other than giant sandworms and the hardy Fremen people. The only thing of value on Dune is the spice Melange; this spice is vital to space travel and expands consciousness. Over years of using the spice people can evolve to be more than human, as is evidenced by the Spacing Guild navigators.

Now that you know the relevant literary context let me address how this applies to the founding of Burning Man. I was born in San Francisco, and the furthest I have ever lived from there is Santa Cruz; being a lifetime Bay Area resident the ocean is the salt in my blood. Burning Man was started by Bay Area residents, artists and crafters, as well as a fair few jolly pranksters, in my hometown of San Francisco. In a quick four years, it grew too big to be housed on Baker Beach in SF and they had to find somewhere new to burn a Man. They found the Black Rock Desert, a geographic feature known as a playa, which coincidentally is Spanish for beach. Burning Man had now found a beach big enough to hold countless many more free spirits and pleasure seekers.

Thanks to help from John Law of the now mostly-defunct SF Cacophony Society, the 1990 Burn was moved to the Black Rock desert, where the virgin BMORG effectively co-opted the Cacophony Society’s Zone Trip #4: A Bad Day at Black Rock making it the first Burning Man. I use the term co-opted rather lightly here, Larry Harvey and Jerry James were invited by John Law and Michael Mikel of Cacophony to come along to burn their Man. The co-opting happens in history where the event is solely remembered for being the first Burning Man in the Black Rock Desert, part of this posting is keeping the history of Cacophony alive in the wake of a dominant countercultural force like Burning Man. History is written by the conquerors, even the history of counterculture movements. I guess you could say I have a soft spot for Cacophony.

Like the Atreides family these brave adventurers embarked on a grand pilgrimage to a place they had never gone before, a place radically different than the world they were leaving behind. Duke Leto comforted his son with some sage advice before they set out for Dune, “A person needs new experiences … Without change something sleeps inside us and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.” Larry Havery also recognized the vast potential for change out there in the desert, “I drew a line on the ground, and I said on the other side of this line everything will be different. And everything has been different.” On the other side of the line is a desert and deserted world, void of plants and animal life, a place of nothing but dust. In Dune the spice is said to be in everything on the planet, to permeate all life there, just like the dust in the Black Rock Desert saturates all things brought onto its alkaline expanse. While in Dune it was a spice-dust that expanded consciousness for us Burners in the Playa there isn’t anything spicy about it, though it is alkaline.

Despite Burning Man being a global phenomenon, according to 2011 census over half of Burners still came from California with over a third from Northern California. While we are beginning to see more participation from inland areas as Burner culture permeates deeper into humanity’s collective conscious, it remains primarily an activity of us coastdwellers. Like Arrakis in Dune, Burning Man exists as a context where ocean people, or put broader people that are not of the desert, can go to the desert and learn how to survive out there in its harsh and unique climate. Whether you go to Burning Man as a survivalist, you will leave the Burn as a survivalist. This event trains you to survive in one of the harshest environments out there, which for me is part of the appeal; testing my limits to further my personal growth. The great thing about the Burn is that there is something for everyone, no matter your age or personal background; nothing is forced on you and nearly anything is permitted that doesn’t violate relevant state or federal laws. It is a blank canvass for each individual to paint their masterwork, before burning it away and starting fresh.

A Beginning Is A Very Delicate Time

Posted: November 4, 2013 in Art, Bike Culture, Burning Man, Cannabis, Cooking, DIY, Fashion, History, Internet, Politics, Science
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For my first post permit me to humor my love of the movie Dune.

A Beginning Is A Very Delicate Time. Know then that my name is Mitchell Colbert and it is the year 2013. The Known Universe is ruled by a panoptic technology that is enmeshed in everything we do, called The Internet. In this time, cool kids write about what they do and post it on the Internet for complete strangers to read it, and maybe laugh, and perhaps expand their consciousness. The Internet is vital to modern life and available even during space travel.
Humanity, and a subspecies of Trolls who have been mutated by thousands of hours on /b/, use the Internet to read the news, watch funny cat videos, and post 140 character updates to Twitter. We can stay connected to any part of the universe without moving from our chairs.

I’m done paraphrasing Dune for now, but I felt it an appropriate way to start things off. Now that I have gotten the ball rolling permit me to tell you why I have decided to create this blog and join the ranks of those illustrious cool kids who tell people about what they do on the Internet.

This blog is not a political blog, it is not a photography blog, cooking blog, DIY blog, or any sort of themed blog, but it will probably include all those topics and more. This blog is about things that stir up my passions so much that I need to share them with the world. Expect political posts to keep you up to date on the news the networks don’t cover, expect me to share life hacks to make your life easy mode, and expect me to post plenty of recipes/photos/poems. I am a person who views knowledge as a communal good that should be shared with as many people as possible, this blog is my means to that end.

I will be trying to post with some regularity, once or twice a week. That may not always happen since, unlike professional bloggers, I don’t get paid to write this and work a real job, at the world’s largest medical cannabis dispensary, Harborside Health Center. You may now be wondering how much of a real job working at a medical cannabis collective actually is, read on, dear readers, and find out.

A beginning truly is a very delicate time, and how something begins can predict how well it will fair. I picked today

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