What Time Is It?, Intro 3, After the Worldwide Women's Marches

Intro #3 to "What Time Is It," after a weekend of action and reaction--

“Women…all they say is ‘fuck it, we need housing, we need homes, we need food,’ and THEY LEAD!....and I follow!” –raised in various foster care facilities, homeless from an early age, Ronald (Newhouse) Casanova describing the transformation of his vision by Leona Smith of the Union of the Homeless and Cheri Honkala of Up & Out of Poverty Now during a 1989 March on HUD. For several years in the early 90s, this would lead to Casanova organizing the Kansas City, Missouri Union of the Homeless. This quote is taken from the 1991 Skylight Pictures film, Takeover.  

“Fight like a girl!”

“Left or right, we can all see wrong!”

“Silence equals violence!”

“Fem the Future!”

“You’re so vain; you probably think this march is about you!”

“Black lives matter; women’s rights are human rights; no human is illegal; love is love; science is real!”

“Science > Opinion!”

--a few signs from yesterday’s women’s’ marches that drew estimates of one to three million marchers in every state and every continent in the world.

“’One thing this election did for me is to empower me. The people at work will see a different person tomorrow.’

“Barr watched the women among a smattering of men. There were older women, younger women, children. People who had rarely, if ever, been to Washington or gone to a protest. People shaking hands and introducing themselves to one another. Some had heard that the crowds could be much bigger than what showed up for the inauguration; others talked about the marches that had happened the night before around the world.

“To Barr, who mostly listened, they didn’t look any different from the people she had always known, but somehow this felt different, as if something new and fragile was just beginning.”

--from a Washington Post portrait of Joanne Barr, 54 year old lifelong Republican from rural Pennsylvania, who took part in yesterday’s

“Time does not take place in a vacuum. Time is really about the motion of an object or process in time and space. Clock times is the measured motion of the earth rotating on its axis, or revolving around the sun. And we know that the tick-tock of time is not experience just as ‘one damn thing after another,’ ‘Time files when you’re having fun.’

“Or we kissed—‘and time stood still.’ Now that is an unforgettable moment! Everything changed in that moment. That is time experienced as a new quality.”

--from “What Time Is It?,” a statement about the qualitative change America faces today, written by the League of Revolutionaries for a New America

I was working during Friday’s marches, and I stayed home yesterday to take care of my grandson during the women’s march, but my wife was there, and so many of my friends—movement friends and people who have never marched before—were at marches in my home state of Oklahoma, my 30 year home of Kansas, my border state Missouri, and of course all of my friends in Atlanta and Chicago and New York and Washington and on and on…..I’m very proud of them.  

The events of the past few years have been increasingly overwhelming, frustrating and scary. But this weekend’s events—from Kansas City’s heartwarming and passionate rock concerts for women and refugees Friday night (led, btw, by women) to the marches Friday and Saturday—did for my heart was remind me how strong we can be when we rally to fight. To sustain that fight, I have more faith than ever that the great majority labeled “deplorable” and “nasty” can come together and study the times and sustain that fight.

I’m pushing this story. "What Time Is It?" like I push my book because it represents crucial work I deeply believe in to help us get where we need to go.

Fwiw, a fundamental reason I have this conviction? Women have led, and I’ve followed.

Danny

What Time Is It? - Rally, Comrades!

We need to talk. Do you know what time it is? We have just been through a wrenching election in which many questions were raised about the times we are in, and about the direction we need to go, from …

RALLYCOMRADES.LRNA.ORG

What Time Is It?, Intro 2, After the Inauguration Protests

What Time Is It? Intro II, On the Second Day of Marches...  

As of this semester, I've worked with about 5600 writing students. (This isn't counting summers or the literature courses I often pick up for extra cash and something different to do.) We don't talk electoral politics--except occasionally in a bipartisan way to emphasize the enormous displays of bad logic and dishonesty on offer--but each class is about what politics mean to me, in the small "p" sense. Writing is a way to reach people you wouldn't normally reach; it is a tool, and it can be a weapon, and by reading as many drafts as they want to give me, by meeting with each individually as much as they want to meet, I try my best to help each student use that tool to fight for their own power in relationship to the world around them.

For these reasons, I get to know them pretty well, at least as well as I know anyone but my closest friends. Years after my classes with them, I may not know their names, but I can remember the first story they wrote or the researched argument they made. I often remember their handwriting before the synapses sort through those 5600 names. I don't think this is anything special. I think this is the story of teachers everywhere, certainly ones in roles where they are coaching students one-on-one in various ways.

My subjective take on this is that I love these people I get to work with. When I learned one of my best friends died twenty minutes before class, I went to class anyway because a) my students were going to be there waiting and b) I had people I loved and respected ahead of me, and I wanted to spend that time with them. When I had a heart attack, I got back to class as soon as they'd let me mainly because I was worried about whether anyone would understand the condition I left my course in, BUT...the important part is I was glad I did it because those students, to a one, looked after me that semester.

On the whole, they are decent, caring people, and they are doing the best they can to make their way through this world, just like all of us. Some of them have lived very fortunate lives, but none of them are rich by any objective standard. Some of them have spent 12 years in refugee camps, some of them have seen their best friends murdered in Gaza, many of them have been abused--psychologically, physically and sexually. Many times, they have also come to sit in that classroom, in a state of grief, because they don't know what else to do.

My good friend and mentor Nelson Peery, a veteran who fought in the South Pacific in World War II, a Black man who fought segregation starting well before the Civil Rights Movement proper and every day of his life in his way, a man who never quit analyzing cause and effect in the changing world around him....over the course of the quarter century I knew him, Nelson always insisted on the fundamental decency of the American people.

At times like this, it can be hard to see. We are so divided on so many things, we feel paralyzed and conquered. But we are also moving more than usual in various directions, and even our fights over ideology and political actions are a higher level of discussion than we have perhaps ever had in this country. Of course none of that will change anything...in the long run...unless we find a basis for unity and a way to work together. We'll simply stay divided and conquered, and we'll increasingly be in greater and greater danger because of the objective changes happening in the transformation of our world.  

One of the luckiest days of my life was the day I, alongside Nelson and a great number of men and women leaders in the fight to end poverty (many who marched yesterday, and others who will march today, some who marched both days), decided to commit myself to building an organization dedicated to spreading an objective understanding of cause and effect and possibility in our world. We formed the League of Revolutionaries for a New America. If you read the attached piece, "What Time is It?" you can feel the same love and passion for unity that has kept me in analytic and strategic dialogue and action with this group since that day. Message me if you are interested in talking about what time it really is. I don't pretend to have all the answers; I know that nobody does, but collectively, I do believe there's a way forward, and the body of work developed by the League is crucial to that perspective.

As my friend Ron Casanova used to say, "Through Peace, Love and Understanding,"

Danny

A heartfelt thank you to the Progressive Youth Organization KC for offering these pictures from Friday's march.

The League of Revolutionaries for A New America (LRNA)

January 20 at 9:58am · 

As Trump enters office, many of us feel the need to move into action. We are taking to the streets. We are active in our communities. We feel the need to come together to talk, study, and discuss. We see that the only way forward is through a new kind of politics, a politics that puts people and planet first, a politics that doesn’t “go back” but fights forward in a whole new direction.

An organization of revolutionaries is needed, where we can create and share a vision, strategy, and tactics with the people. The League of Revolutionaries for a New America is working to build such an organization. The League works to build unity around the demands of those who have the least, to unite us in the struggle for a new society. The future is up to us!

What Time Is It? - Rally, Comrades!

We need to talk. Do you know what time it is? We have just been through a wrenching election in which many questions were raised about the times we are in, and about the direction we need to…

RALLYCOMRADES.LRNA.ORG

What Time Is It?, Intro 1, First Day of Marches

It's a long, long way from 1982, but it's still the right question.  

For the most part, I suppose my listserve posts and Facebook status updates have taken the place of my blog. Still, once in a while, they need to be both places because I'm saying something that sums up my experience in a way that I need to hang onto, that I need to be able to find, that I feel is a part of a worthwhile progression in what this blog means for me and those who read it.

Starting the day of the Inauguration, I began to write daily reflections connected to an article co-written by the editorial board of Rally Comrades, the newspaper that serves as a voice for my organization The League of Revolutionaries for a New America. This is the first of three I will repost here today. DA

What Time Is It? Intro I, First Day of Marches

At times like this, I think we find ourselves thinking about the times themselves and our roles in them. I certainly have been. I've been thinking and stewing and trying to decide upon the words to say just what I want to say. I don't have them, necessarily, but I know it's time to say something.

25 years ago, after years of activism helping to found the Greater Kansas City Coalition Against Censorship, helping to launch Culture Under Fire, using the paralegal work I was doing to help with the founding of the Kansas City Missouri Union of the Homeless, and holding the national Break the Blackout Summit of poor people's organizations and presses, and after writing about music and activism associated with music for just about every paper in town, I joined with longtime allies, some of them who had been together for decades in various organizations to found the League of Revolutionaries for A New America. It was then and has remained our conviction that the changes happening in our society were not mere ideological differences but were, in fact, objective changes in the way our economy produced goods that were eventually going to throw this entire society into motion. There was no going back, we had to study our history, study the conditions around us and collectively strategize ways to steer our society away from a world where a wealthy few controlled the lives of the vast majority who no longer had a role in the system. Nothing in the past 25 years has shaken my conviction that this is what is happening but much has clarified and heightened my understanding.

A number of personal setbacks, including a divorce and a near fatal heart attack sidelined me from much of the kind of action I used to be involved with, but I have never stopped contributing to the collective understanding and strategic development of the League. Most of the things I have written that really resonate with people would not have been possible without the clarity I've gained from this relationship with the League, yet I think I've failed to articulate that relationship as I could have and should have in the past.

At this moment in our history, while the entire country is thrown into motion in reaction to the changes confronting us, I know that the League is more important to me than ever, and I am rededicating myself to its efforts. Everyone in the League is an activist of some kind of another, but we join together in the League because we know we need to strategize a way forward for all of those who are being thrown out of a changing system. It is an organization of revolutionaries that doesn't tell people how to fight on the several hundred fronts where we fight, but it allows us to organize one another to raise the level of discussions and push these fights in a common direction--a society where humanity is truly valued, individual expression is respected and valued, and we work together to meet our common and distinct needs.

So, from here on out, I'm going to be tying my work much more directly to the work of the League so that this individualist writer illusion is traded for a clearer understanding between myself and my friends. If you do not want to engage with me about any of this work, that's fine....ignore me or unfriend me. Those who do, I want to talk.

My heart is with all of those who have long been hurt and scared in this changing world as well as those who just realized what this world was last year, last week or five minutes ago. I believe we all need each other more than ever, and, yes, I believe we can steer this ship away from destruction if we cling to one another, share with one another, study with one another, strategize with one another and support one another in the thousands of struggles that face us.

Love to all. I mean it.

Onward,

Danny

The League of Revolutionaries for A New America (LRNA)

January 20 at 9:58am · 

As Trump enters office, many of us feel the need to move into action. We are taking to the streets. We are active in our communities. We feel the need to come together to talk, study, and discuss. We see that the only way forward is through a new kind of politics, a politics that puts people and planet first, a politics that doesn’t “go back” but fights forward in a whole new direction.

An organization of revolutionaries is needed, where we can create and share a vision, strategy, and tactics with the people. The League of Revolutionaries for a New America is working to build such an organization. The League works to build unity around the demands of those who have the least, to unite us in the struggle for a new society. The future is up to us!

http://rallycomrades.lrna.org/2017/01/what-time-is-it/