My goodness, this is wonderful. Insurrectionist blather at your fingertips, modified slightly with every click of “Refresh.”

We live in amazing times.

I remember when this aired, if you can believe it. (Surely no one was alive back then!) I lived in a two-bedroom apartment above, respectively, a shop that sold first communion dresses and pinatas and an untrustworthy Chinese restaurant called “O’Tasty!” 

I remember watching it on this little, stupid television I’d acquired, in my bedroom. I almost certainly was intoxicated. I’d just started listening to Bright Eyes, so it was this huge deal, I guess. It was also my introduction to M. Ward.

All of which is to say, kids are dumb. Good song, though.

Fuck, I remember this, too. I’m old.

To cleanse your palate,

It has a blog.

Keep fighting.

Babes in Toyland:

Was my general response after last Sunday’s show at the Varsity. Carl Atiya Swanson’s review of the show on the City Pages blog sums up my reaction nearly perfectly (I was less impressed with Dearling Physique than the author): 

 It may have started early in the night, the first time that MC Tchaka Diallo, who was acting as host for the evening, thanked their sponsor Budweiser. The Converse sponsorship was tolerable — if you can get money to finance a tour, more power to you Afropunk — but Williams has never seemed like the kind of man who would endorse American light lager…

But before Williams and his guitar and keyboard player would come on, Diallo and KiDTRONiK would perform as Krak Attack, and at that point the show definitively went off the tracks.

Wearing a vest decorated with a ribcage and flexing his biceps, Diallo rapped about being the best, as rappers are wont to do, but then paired it with lyrics like “Al salaam-aleikum/I don’t eat bacon/I am not Jamaican.” As if that was not ludicrous enough, the hype act became downright derogatory as Diallo and KiDTRONiK pulled women up onto the stage to perform their single “Big Girl Skinny Girl.” For an audience who came to see Williams — an artist whose book of poetry S/HE was a fragile, fierce and honest exploration of the relationship between him and the mother of his daughter, who refers to the powers he sees in the universe as “goddess” and promotes art as a vessel for independence and liberation — having some stereotypically objectifying bullshit club grind open up for him was downright insulting. 

It was grotesque, for sure. And, as a friend pointed out, the fact that Williams walked on the stage during their final song — participating in it, in terms of spectacle — only reinforces the point that he could’ve made mocked it, or inverted it, or something … or made it never happen. He’s the headliner, for fuck’s sake. Dude is his DJ and co-produced the record. At some point, he could’ve been like, “You know, I’m just not really comfortable with ‘Fat Girl Skinny Girl.’ Or ’Black Girl White Girl,’ come to think of it. They’re both just awful and contradict most of what I believe and have said previously, everywhere. Fuck you, guys.”

But nope, he rolled on stage in Niggy Tardust regalia and slapped his DJ on the back. What the fuck. His set was alright — actually, a little off — but totally soured by the nonsense that came before it. 

In other news, No Bird Sing stole the night.

The Quad-City Times has a pretty decent article on Minneapolis resident Carrie Feldman and her refusal to testify before a Davenport, Iowa grand jury. The focus on the raid itself, rather than the undemocratic nature of grand juries (to put it mildly), is sort of unfortunate, but actually not that unfair, in my opinion. It was big, national news at the time; it would be virtually unreasonable to expect the local coverage to ignore or downplay the local hook. Still, Carrie’s quotes are strong, pointing to the absurdity of the inquiry and its politically-motivated basis, and the reporter does note that

[G]rand jury proceedings – used to determine if there is enough evidence to indict a person in connection with a crime – are secret. They are not open to the public.

It is, at least, conceivable that that same public might not be particularly enthusiastic about secret court proceedings where 20 year olds are interrogated about their high-school whereabouts by a prosecutor before a jury, in the absence of counsel or judge or stated evidence, and refusal to comply may result in detention ranging from the length of the grand jury (usually a year-ish) to, um, indefinite.

Even more locally (not quite Iowa, anyway), two activists with Bash Back Twin Cities had their first appearance in Austin, MN yesterday morning. Both face misdemeanors for confronting neo-nazis in Austin earlier this month; both pleaded not guilty, demanded formal complaints, and have a pre-trial in, well, June. A bunch of folks made the early morning ride to show support and accompanied them into the courtroom, standing in unison when their names were called in a gesture of solidarity. These defendants still need help with legal and travel fees, though, so stay tuned.

RNC arrestee Elliot Hughes, who was tortured in jail by St. Paul police, has a re-scheduled Omnibus hearing tomorrow at 1:00 p.m. (Ramsey County Courthouse, Room 1460). He’s asked for court support.

And, finally, as I mentioned, me and five others arrested outside at the public occupation/foreclosure protest at Rosemary Williams’ house have a pre-trial in early December in downtown Minneapolis. The seventh arrestee at that event had her charges dropped last Friday!

If you are one of the countless folks I’ve missed with, I apologize. (Or feel free to comment below with relevant info and I’ll update the post!)

So I was briefly in court the other day. I am not going to comment much on the reason for my presence, though you can get an idea here.

What an amazing thing it is to be in court, though. The system stands naked before you and gets all awkward about the shit.

The last time I was in court, a few months ago, we (me and my co-defendants) were preceded by three different cases. One was a public urination offense and the other two were trespassing charges lodged against rather sad-looking dudes who had apparently slept in an abandoned house and a trainyard, respectively.

This time, since we had acquired counsel, we weren’t really even on the agenda. We mostly hung out in the hall, reading the formal complaints we’d demanded a month ago and received directly prior to the hearing. The state offered us the same basic offer we got last time, which we refused. One of us got our charges dismissed for some reason. Hell yeah for that.

Anyways, sitting in the courtroom, here are the two other charges I heard against others on Friday:

Public indecency: A woman was arrested passed out in the passenger seat of a car with no pants on. The representative of the state asked her very serious questions about this. She was compelled to answer very seriously. The prosecutor was a young white woman and the defendant was an African-American woman in her mid-30s, I’d guess. Everyone found it awkward and distasteful and stupid. Still, that’s how the system rolls.

Trespassing: An old man — grizzled, looking pretty beat-up but mostly from the travails of street-life, I’d guess — stood in shackles in that little booth Hennepin County mandates for inmates. Turns out, he slept in a bus stop enclosure and got picked up. It was readily apparent that he probably had nowhere else to go. Still, here he was, jumpsuited, shackled, looking like someone who’d hurt someone. Fuck if I know if he ever had. He mostly looked dejected and sad. He answered questions like, “Did you know, on the evening of October xx, that it was illegal to seek shelter in a bus-stop?” And he was like, “Yes, m’aam.” And looked down.

We, me and my co-defendants, are charged with allegedly impeding — in various ways — the eviction of a 25-year resident from her house. Later, it seems, they will arrest those who sleep in the house they just emptied. Later still, they will arrest those who “seek shelter in bus-stops.”

This is madness.

This is absurd:

MINNEAPOLIS (Oct. 23) — Bong water can count as a controlled substance, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled Thursday in a decision that raises the threat of longer sentences for drug smokers who fail to dump the water out of their pipes.

In a 4-3 decision Thursday, the state’s highest court said a person can be prosecuted for a first-degree drug crime for 25 grams or more of bong water that tests positive for a controlled substance.

Update: In a worthwhile link provided in the comments section below, Thomas Gallagher deploys a helpful analogy:

We are all aware by now of the frequent news reports about the drugs in the rivers and most of our municipal water supplies (not concentrated enough to hurt us, we are reassured).  Type “in water supply” into your favorite internet search engine and you can read thousands of reports of scientific studies documenting this. As a result, if you have water sourced from a river, like we do in Minneapolis, then you could now be charged with a Minnesota Controlled Substance First Degree Crime (toilets tanks hold way more than 25 grams of water with illegal drugs dissolved).