el Infinito Tango

I’ve been making these zines for a little over a year now. Here’s #4. I brought 80 copies to SPX this past weekend and gave them to my dear friends. As a bonus I hand-colored all the covers for some bizarre reason

SPX was wonderful as usual. Congratulations to the Ignatz nominees and winners! I picked up a ton of books & zines, and I’ll enjoy reading them over the next few weeks.

You would need to rule with an iron fist, actively spreading art, fashion, and Hinduism throughout Europe through a massive campaign of Indian enculturation, thus altering the nature of colonial imperialism to such a degree that four hundred years later, a complete inversion of our current cultural hegemony has taken place.

I know it seems a bit extreme, but that’s really the only way you can change the way things are now. As an alternative, I suggest you wear bindis and traditional Indian fashion whenever you damn well please, because you are hot as shit, and fuck what anyone else thinks.

Nicole Soojung Callahan:

For those who truly believe themselves to be “colorblind,” there may be no person of color more approachable, more accessible, than a transracial adoptee. I’m not one of you, but I was raised among you. Who else could be more inclined to sympathize with, give the benefit of the doubt to, well-intentioned white people just trying to make sense of this perplexing “race” business? I can’t possibly have a chip on my shoulder if nice white people adopted me. I can’t be one of those angry hyphenated Americans if my assimilation began just weeks after my birth.

Push Pull - Purity Ring

Windshield - Greensky Bluegrass

Last night, a man with a pocket knife was shot dead by the LAPD on a bustling corner of Hollywood Boulevard. Of course, no officers were hurt.

"No officers were hurt."

I’m constantly reading that sentence these days. It’s the go-to closing line for every dry and dreary news report about some poor bastard being beaten up, choked out, or gunned down by the police.

The news that no officers were hurt is supposed to be a good thing. It’s supposed to be an assurance. For me, it’s not. For me, it’s an accusation.

If no officers were hurt, then tell me why another man is lying dead in the fucking street. If no officers were hurt, tell me how you can even begin to justify the use of all that lethal force.

"No officers were hurt."

Every time I read that line, it feels like further proof that police are trained to kill before risking even the slightest injury to themselves. I’m sorry, but I’m just not okay with that.

We give these men badges, and in exchange for that authority, we expect them to be held to a higher standard. We give these men guns, and in exchange for that power, we expect them to put the safety of others ahead of their own.

They aren’t living up to that standard — not in Los Angeles, not in New York, certainly not in Ferguson, and probably not in your neighborhood either. Time and again, all I see is evidence that the police aren’t putting anyone else’s safety ahead of their own.

Do you know how I know that?

Transcript courtesy of Andy Baio:

So, I want to talk for a minute about human beings and about riots.

This past Monday night, while we were all sitting there waiting for that blow that we all knew was coming and hoping that we might be wrong just this one time, I said on Twitter that, “The fundamental danger of a non-indictment is not more riots, it is more Darren Wilsons.”

And that thought struck a chord with a lot of people; it was linked to more than any tweet I’ve ever made. But later on that night, we saw some things happen in Ferguson. We saw some unrest, we saw things that you could call rioting.

And when that happened, a bunch of other people on Twitter were delighted by the idea that that heartache and grief and rage gave them a social media “gotcha” moment.

"So who’s the real danger now, Mr. Social Justice Warrior? You see all those thugs out there? You see how you people act? What do you have to say now?"

Well, here’s what I think now: I believe what I said. Now, more than ever.

And if you think what happened on Monday disproves what I said, you didn’t understand what I was talking about.

I wasn’t happy at all about what happened Monday night. I hate to see people pushed that far. I hate to see people’s community, family businesses destroyed. I hated seeing that.

But I’m also clear that if you ask me to weigh one against the other, we are weighing the destruction of property against the loss of a life. And if you value some people’s property more than the life of a black child, we’re not on the same team.

And regardless of that, for us to even discuss caring about one or the other is presenting a false choice because they’re not in opposition to each other. One is a byproduct of the other.

That unrest we saw Monday night was a byproduct of the injustice that preceded it.

This is not a choice, this is a cause-and-effect relationship. If you’re worried about the effects, you need to be thinking about the cause.

Riots are a thing that human beings do because human beings have limits.

We don’t all have the same limits. For some of us, our human limit is when our favorite team loses a game. For some of us, it’s when our favorite team wins a game.

The people of Ferguson had a different limit than that.

For the people of Ferguson, a lifetime of neglect and de facto segregation and incompetence and mistreatment by every level of government was not their limit.

When that malign neglect set the stage for one of their children to be shot down and left in the street like a piece of trash, that was not their limit.

For the people of Ferguson, spending 100 days almost entirely peacefully protesting for some measure of justice for that child and having their desire for justice treated like a joke by every local authority was not their limit.

And then after those 100 days, when the so-called “prosecutor” waited until the dead of night to come out and twist that knife one last time, when he came out and confirmed once and for all that Michael Brown’s life didn’t matter, only then did the people of Ferguson reach their limit.

So when you look at what happened Monday night, the question you should be asking is how did these human beings last that long before they reached their human limit?

How do black people in America retain such a deep well of humanity that they can be pushed so far again and again without reaching their human limit?

How do we keep going through this same cycle? Because that’s the thing, it’s not just these 100 days. It’s the 100 times this cycle played out before Michael Brown.

The thing about that tweet I sent out Monday night? That tweet wasn’t really from Monday night.

I made the exact same tweet a year and a half ago about Trayvon Martin. The exact same tweet, word for word, all I did was switch out the name.

And that’s how sick, that’s how predictable and sick this white supremacy Groundhog Day is that we live in. You can literally, word for word, have the exact same conversation, year after year, and just switch out the name of the black child we lost.

There is nothing more exhausting or more inhumane than black America’s eternal cycle of being shocked but not surprised.

When you have to go through your whole life with all your muscles tensed, waiting for the same blow to come again and again, knowing it will hurt a bit more each time precisely because you always know it’s coming. And then you have to teach your children how to go through the same cycle.

That’s the definition of torture. Those are not fit living conditions for a human being.

So when I see President Obama say he has “no sympathy” for people who destroy a car? I’m sorry, but I do have sympathy for them.

I’m not happy to see them doing it, but human beings have limits.

When I watch that footage of Michael Brown’s mother out there crushed and heartbroken and I see her family talk about burning this thing down, I’m not happy to see that, but I don’t think we should be making excuses for that. I don’t think we should be explaining that away.

I don’t think there’s anything to be ashamed of. That is real life. That is what happens when you treat human beings this way.

So if you hated what you saw on Monday night, if you hated seeing those human beings pushed past their limit, you need to do something about the government, and the justice system, and the institutions of policing that do not treat them like human beings.

If you watched the news Monday night and didn’t like the effects, you need to do something about the cause.