[iDC] It Doesn't Just Get Better, This Is Political

[Brian Holmes]

On 12/09/2010 09:42 PM, Margaret Morse wrote:

> Thinking about those who are excluded from the university as
> teachers--including yourself--requires even greater consideration and
> long term effort since it involves redesigning a system that relies on
> cheap, disposble labor.

This is so true, especially the "long term" part. Everything about 
dominant society is "long term," we can see it in the way that Obama 
turned out to be almost totally beholden to long-term Democratic Party 
strategies that have barely changed over the last five decades. The 
question is, how does our long-term process of change get started?

On occupyeverything.com, Micha writes:

"I am hugely inspired by the occupations currently occurring across the 
world, including the UK, Italy and tomorrow Puerto Rico. I just hope 
that as we all scramble for jobs or for a feeling of daily physical 
safety, that we can come together and talk about why we’re in this 
situation and keep in mind that maybe now is the time to stop scrambling 
until we get the changes we want. Hopefully we can create new 
environments and structures in which we can be safer and more supported, 
structures open to monstrous possible futures, but we have do it in a 
hurry."

Now is the time to blend the aspiration to deep change that Margaret is 
talking about with a collective mobilization. "It's urgent to take your 
time," as an activist group in France used to say. What that could mean 
in this case is: take all your time, not to "scramble" for a 
peer-reviewed publication or any other CV-builder, but take the time to 
listen to others and to create something (a text, an artwork, an 
application) that you can bring to a community of people who want to do 
something fundamental this year, now, while the ax is falling. All 
around the world, this is the year for public education, for public 
services generally. They don't just have to be defended (maintained for 
those who already feel like they "own" them), but reinvented. I'm not 
even at a university and still this whole thing seems fundamentally 
important. Who can we become in the future? The question is being 
answered by the ruling classes, right now.

love, Brian