I think I’m going to have more interesting things to say about it later on, so the entry on lowercase can come later on. I’m going to say that it’s a very genuine place. I let myself in (the door was accidentally unlocked) and was pretty much immediately welcomed as one of the family. I ate some of the food on the stove (left some for my comrades), got a tour, and the guy who gave me the tour (sorry tour guy I really need to get better at remembering peoples’ names!) said I could use one of the computers in his room. Anarchy in action my friends! There’s a free store upstairs (take what you want, leave what you want) and It hink tomorrow when I get some light I’m gonna go up and change my clothes for the first time since I left Portland, and I just ate warm cake out of the pan with a spoon (it’s total anarchy in here!). Later we’re gonna go to the cunt (I have no idea but it’s apparently a radiqueer hangout. A radiqueer hangout!) and see some bands and stuff. I’ma go ahead and splurge on the public transit. Right now I’m down to probably around $80 or so, but that’s why money exists! Once I don’t have money, then I can start acting like I don’t have money.

On the way here, in a town called Okawville in Illinois, I went to a high school to ask if I can use the computer (to track down this place). They said no, so I started going door-to-door to ask people if I could use their computers. Everyone who answered told me that they didn’t even have a computer. They seemed actually pretty horrified over what I was doing, one guy even went so far as to go out into his yard when I was well down the street to tell me that he didn’t have a computer! So I decided that I wasn’t going to get much done there. I started thumbing down traffic, and within minutes it turned out one was actually a cop car, who claimed to have been called “several times” about me!

Figuring I couldn’t be in that much trouble, I decided I could probably get this over with (or at least a place to sleep if he took me in; it was getting dark) I cooperated after minor coaxing. He seemed pretty impressed, even told his radio buddies about how I’d hitchhiked in from Portland. I asked that since it was going to cause trouble and creep people out, if he knew how I could get back to the truck stop. He told me to hop in, and that he’d give me a ride. When we got there, he asked how I was going on money, and even gave me $5 for Burger King. I found my next ride while eating a Whopper Jr. It didn’t make me almost vomit like the McDonalds I got at the shelter, so thumbs up there!

The moral here I guess is that sometimes cops aren’t worse than Hitler.

For a little bit after I got there, and this is important, all I did was look around the halls for any interesting goings-on, maybe check out the GSA, and reminisce about my own time spent in the public school system. I figured it would take me a little while to find my friend, and it did: a little over two hours. We only had like a minute to talk between classes, but I asked her to lunch (she said sure), and she suggested I should get a guest pass.

Bad move. When I went to the office to get a guest pass, the receptionist went to get someone else (I think, but am not certain, that the term she used for that was “administrator”) who told me that they absolutely under no circumstances gave guest passes (despite the sign on the front door saying otherwise), but that I could come back later today and get a tour around the building, but that I had to leave right now. I went out to the side entrance, saying that my car was parked there, but she said I had to use the front entrance. …well, okay.

So I went out the front entrance as requested, and to the parking lot I claimed that my car was in. In the interest of full disclosure, I did not have a car, I was looking for the bus, which at this point I had only vague directions on how to get to. I was supposed to be looking for a pool, or something. Anyway, nobody knew this, and I repeat, nobody had any reason to suspect I was doing anything suspicious.

Anyway, almost immediately after I left the building, a man drove up to me and asked where I was headed. Being in the habit of hitchhiking, I assumed that he was genuinely interested in where I was going and spoke freely, telling him that I was just on my way to my car over there and etcetc, but then he started asking other questions, and like a scene out of a movie, I asked, “What, are you a cop or something?” He replied, “No, but he is,” and I am not kidding, a cop drove up right next to me. As soon as I got out of the car, I told him that I knew and planned to use my fifth amendment rights. Always do this.

The cop was very rude to me. He asked me a bunch of questions, including some that could never possibly be relevant. (Why are you here? Where are you going? Who are you here to see? Where are you from? How long have you been in Lawrence?) He tried to get me to name the person I was here to see so he could bring her out, and he threatened to take me in for questioning if I didn’t show him an ID. He even gave me a pat-down, with no announcement beforehand, he just grabbed my coat and started feeling around despite my objection, that I didn’t consent to any searches (always make this very clear). He said the supreme court said he was able to do that. He felt something and asked me what it was. I didn’t know, because I was wearing three layers of clothing and that means I have a lot of pockets to keep track of.

I just literally hitchhiked over 1500 miles from the other side of the country, and since leaving home, this is the only time I have ever felt unsafe or had my personal space violated. He was obviously and completely trying to intimiate and threaten me with being taken in for questioning, and even brought out the walkie talkie to use some police code words. Cops are allowed to bluff, lie, and intimidate you, but they are not allowed to charge or arrest you without some kind of evidence.

It was very important that I held my ground and didn’t tell him anything. There’s this idea that unless you have something to hide, you don’t use the fifth amendment. You can not be prosecuted on the ground that you took advantage of your fifth amendment rights. You can be prosecuted on the grounds that you’ve lied to cops, or that you just confessed to breaking some law you don’t even know about, or if you say something that the cop could construe to mean that you were maybe involved in some crime at some other point, or even if the cop doesn’t remember what you talked about and you might have said something falling into the above categories. As a traveller, I never know all the laws of the area I’m passing through. Your state probably has laws that are hundreds of pages long. Don’t make the assumption of thinking you know everything in them, either.

The cop was threatening, intimidating, and even insulting. he repeatedly chastised me for feeling uncomfortable with being patted down, with not knowing whether he had a gun on him (he told me he was), or with his line of questioning, he in all seriousness implied that he was there to protect my freedom. “This is what freedom looks like?” I asked. No answer. Apparently, his version of freedom didn’t involve the freedom to have lunch with a friend, or even to leave campus uninterrupted and unharassed. Literally all I did was just kind of go there. I didn’t do anything incriminating, or even really suspicious, and I definitely wasn’t a danger to anyone!

Anyway, he banned me from campus for life. I’m never allowed to go back on LFSHS. I asked for a written copy of that, but he didn’t give it to me. He insisted that I wasn’t allowed to go back to the other side of the campus where the bus stop was, and he didn’t give me reliable directions to the next nearest one. If the bus driver hadn’t stopped (he drove near me, but I wasn’t at a bus stop), I could have wandered around lost for quite some time. He didn’t, couldn’t, give me any formal charges because I didn’t give him anything he could use.

So remember kids! Never tell cops anything, your school’s security system is intentionally modeled after that of a prison, and there’s a man with a gun on your campus who can literally harass, touch, and even threaten you for no reason. Let freedom ring!

The ISO’s members have a lot of book smarts. They’re good at acting as an enlightened vanguard, if you can consider that a compliment. Its events do educate people on problems, but then what? How does the ISO help people solve the problems of their world?

The ISO doesn’t actually do anything. The ISO’s idea of a revolution is, and I’m paraphrasing from their own newspaper, to build an organization capable of a revolution. Well, okay, how are you going to do that? WIth your principles? With your successes… at recruiting people?

Ultimately, the ISO’s plan for a revolution amounts to “Join the ISO!” It amounts to “You’re discontent? Well now you can buy an identity that shows it!” The ISO is essentially a capitalist organization that relies on growth to sustain its existence with little thought of the long term, same as any capitalist organization.

When the ISO does do something, it’s on the basis of being agreeable and working within the terms set by the capitalist mainstream. That’s not how a revolution works!

As far as I’m aware, the Portland ISO is still working on a campaign for a ballot initiative with no visible opposition. A ballot initiative! This is working for the bourgeois state. It’s not even a very progressive ballot initiative, it’s a slight corporate tax hike.

The signs for 66 and 67 tellingly read “Protect the middle class.” And indeed, the ISO is a very middle class organization! One of my least favorite things about the ISO is that it charges a monthly admission fee of $20. Those who don’t pay are not given a voice or a vote during meetings, but are more than welcome to go help sell papers. In fact, despite the queer fraction of the ISO still having three active members, two of us were plainly told that we don’t count because we don’t pay the admission fee and the fraction was dissolved.

This isn’t a matter of whether the revolution should be necessarily be led by those who are most exploited by the current system, as a member tried to spin it to me. It directly excludes those who are the most exploited by the current system. Despite a nominal support for unlawful immigrants, the policies of the ISO explicitly exclude immigrants. Issues affecting communities of color were completely undiscussed. Law enforcement was completely undiscussed. In fact, the only thing that was discussed was war.

Which, great, but there really are other things going on too. There were riots in Greece around the time that we they were discussing 66 & 67. There were hundreds or thousands of homeless people sleeping on the streets that night. Uganda was discussing an anti-homosexuality bill that would mean at the minimum life in prison for homosexuals in Uganda. There were university occupations in California. Occupations! In California! This is amazing, it deserves AND NEEDS our solidarity! People ran through the yard of one of the men responsible with TORCHES AND PITCHFORKS! People were being radicalised, discussion is opening on whether universities even have a right to charge money at all! Tactics other than yet another “get out the vote” campaign are being openly discussed, the failings/foundations of democratic society are on display and up for question, my god!

And right across the border, socialists were talking about corporate taxes. The International Socialist Organization isn’t international. It’s not even interstate.

That’s all I need to know about the ISO. The ISO are Greens with an admission fee. The insurrection is not a book reading. For the ISO, a revolution is an intellectual exercise, not a matter of life or death or even of serious discussion.

I did more revolting yesterday with one hand when I took down a pretentious “Protect the middle class” sign and threw it in the bushes than the ISO has for the entirety of its existence. In order to smash capitalism, we must first abandon capitalist institutions like the ISO.

I’m going to continue fighting to change my society. It’s not going to come from the ISO. It’s probably not going to come from any organization that lists some dead Europeans from 70 years ago as its influences. It’s going to come from active participation in the world I live in and a destruction of the bourgeois institutions that keep us shackled. I call on other members to do the same.

Then he praises their efforts to elect politicians with similar values. Yeah, you like that, don’t you. He pledges allegience to these efforts, to thunderous applause.

He attempts to make an appeal to those who don’t believe progress has come fast enough, by refusing to tell them to be patient and instead comparing the terrible legacy of segregation and sharecropping and separate drinking fountains to gay marriage. Then he asks us to join him in helping to save capitalism and to get single-payer free affordable healthcare, and to help the challenges we face in Iraq and Afghanistan. He says other stuff is important too, basically saying that our concerns should take a back seat while he works on the big-boy issues.

He, of course, talks about some vague “destination we will reach”, because if he didn’t he wouldn’t be Obama. He says that we’ll probably look back on this time as a time when we end discrimination, really this time, whether “on the office, or on the battlefield”, and when we’ll start to see monogamous gay relationships as equal to monogamous straight ones. He pledges to sign into law an inclusive hate crimes bill named after Matthew Shepard that is set to pass through congress, that he didn’t do shit for, which will bring us one day closer to an America in which we don’t have to worry about walking down the street holding hands with the person they love, and perpetuating the stereotype that everyone in America is an anti-queer bigot and nobody should feel safe doing so today.

He says he’s working hard to pass an inclusive ENDA ^{[citation needed]} and hints at nominating a gay justice for something and pledges support for HIV/AIDS, including the (actually progressive!) intention to remove discrimination against HIV-positive applicants for citizenship.

Finally, he pledges to actually do something for the queer community, specifically, in repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Apparently, killing poor people in Iraq Afghanistan is a human right too. Who knew! Cue applause.

He reaffirms his support for committed gay couples to have the same “opportunities” as committed straight couples.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not blaming Obama, specifically, for his inability to do anything progressive for the queer community. In fact, reforms like this would actually be somewhat progressive… in, say, Saudi Arabia. However, there are parts of the US, especially places like Portland, where this is actually rather right of the status quo, and it becomes kind of a pathetic lipservice to affirm support only for bourgeois nuclear families, and a violent and opressive stance to militarise segments of the gay community by involving them in foreign wars and to answer anti-queer violence with more violence in the form of hate crime legislation.

This is only one example of allowing the so-called red states, the most backwards areas of the reich, to dictate the course of queer political debate. It’s a subject I’ll elaborate on further in future posts.

Obama also neglected entirely to give us the traditional pep talk about how we can do things at the grassroots level, instead asking us to wait indefinitely to pass hate crimes legislations and other nonsense. He mentions almost no issues that are actually important to the queer community who can’t just go home and forget about politics for the night, like the anti-queer violence in the state’s prisons or the discrimination we can face from our own parents, which could and often does cut us off from financial support parts of the rest of the population enjoys.

Thankfully, most of the queers I’ve talked to online are well aware he’s doing absolutely nothing. Unlike him and the HRC, though, there’s stuff we can do for the queer community.

Organise ourselves. Build grassroots support networks for victims of anti-queer violence, and their families. Educate parents on queer youth issues. Educate everyone on the fact that non-monogamous people exist. Go on a parade. Build social networks and just chill.

Don’t let Obama and the rest of the right dictate the course of our struggle.

-K. Lofori

^[1] My intention in bringing up the nuclear family model isn’t to criticise it, but to accentuate the narrow-mindedness of the Democratic party, the HRC, and elements of the queer community that seek assimilation rather than liberation – that is, not the ability to practice our love as we see fit, but to take part in a single long-term relationship just like a straight person. This kind of attitude completely ignores, alienates, or even persecutes growing parts of both the gay and straight populations with other lifestyles, like plural marriage or communal living or something else entirely.