and, what i'm saying is not merely a leftist diatribe.

it is actually a historical fact, that historians across the spectrum will agree to, if they've actually taken the time to look into it.

http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/17505/police_and_poor_people

if you think the pigs are there to make you safe, that's a statement of class and privilege.

for the vast majority of people, the pigs are not there to make you safe, they're there to create divisions and cause conflicts.

i also need to point something else out, as the situation unfolds, and i become more cognizant about it.

you may be hearing people say shit about me. maybe you already have. maybe you will in the future.

treat that as a litmus test: these people are undercover pigs. and, maybe you trust them...but, maybe you shouldn't.

and, i'm starting to figure out who they are.

i will reiterate: i'm harmless. i take heavy testosterone suppressors, and am actually in the process of getting my testicles removed, so any concerns about my motives are absurd and transphobic. i have no history of violence, no criminal record and actually have advanced clearance at the border. it is true that i was recently targeted by the transphobic windsor police, but i have no pending charges, i'm not under investigation, and the lawsuit i've been talking about to hold them accountable for a false arrest should be off the ground by mid august at the latest, and probably sooner. i expect a large settlement for the suffering i went through as a consequence of their open discrimination against me.

but, as it was with occupy, i'm going to stay quiet and just point it out. i don't want to get into a conflict with a pig, so i'm just going to take a mental note and an effort to steer clear.

but, what are some signs that somebody is an undercover pig?

1) in activist circles, the biggest telltale sign that you're dealing with a pig is agitation. if you're ever at an activist meeting of any sort, and somebody starts talking about making bombs or resisting violently, then that person is almost certainly a pig. we call them agents provocateurs and what they're doing is trying to entrap you. and, they're sneaky: when i was organizing with food not bombs in ottawa, i had one pig try to convince me to smash up a bar owner's car, because they were accused of sexual assault.

2) the general purpose of an undercover pig is to sow division. what they're trying to do is identify people like me that are some kind of ideological threat to the system - and when i say i'm harmless, i mean i'm harmless to you. i'm not harmless to them. they have good reason to fear me, because my deconstruction of their system is powerful, and subversive. - and turn the mass of people against them. so, with me, they're activating the crude, transphobic fears that the system pushes down from the top in order to try and scare you away from me. i'm happy to report that it isn't actually working, or at least not in the circles that i actually care about, but that's not going to stop them from continuing to do it. when you meet people that are trying to pit one group against another, or trying to single out a specific individual and attack them, that is a telltale sign that the person is an undercover pig.

if you meet an undercover pig that is trying to incite you to do something, entrap you in some way or turn you against something or someone, don't confront them. that doesn't help. you don't actually want the undercover pig to know that you know, because then you get on their list. you might imagine that it's a process of identifying them and running them out, but it doesn't actually work like that. rather, we all collectively need to be wise to them and who they are (and there's my anarchism, again) and work very subtly to undo what they're doing.

so, when you have an undercover pig trying to sow division and dischord, which is essentially fud, one of the best things to do is assert logic. is there evidence for the claim? no, listen - this is important, because the undercover pigs assume you won't do that. they assume they can just make shit up, and that you're too stupid to ask questions. the best antidote for divide and conquer is the reassertion of logic. even when you're drunk. always.

and, if the undercover pig is trying to incite or entrap you then you should get up and get out as fast as possible.

as mentioned, i actually don't think that anything that is being done is having any substantive effect. but, i'm becoming more and more aware that it's actually being done, and this is my official reaction: to know how to identify a pig when they're standing in front of you, and to be clear that this is what is actually happening.

"all good people are asleep and dreaming."

i just want to clarify what i said about mocad earlier, because we're increasingly living in a culture where we think it's ok to attack things for being different than us, and to a large extent that's actually what i'm trying to avoid.

so, i don't really like what's happening at mocad tonight: i think it's crude and greedy and bourgeois and pretty gross. this is apparently a part of a series that is going to feature foreign djs right in downtown detroit with inflated covers, over-policed spaces, over-priced drinks (no doubt) and gentrifying audiences, shut down before midnight. that's something i'd like to avoid, and i'd even use the word boycott. but, if i don't like it, and i don't want to be near it, does that mean i want to shut it down?

actually, i think it probably serves a purpose. and, i mentioned this in a previous post: let them have their own space. that is, if what they want is a place full of cops that caters to a more wealthy crowd that is afraid of poor people and their habits, then let them have it - and tell them to stay out of the dive bars, and to take the cops with them when they leave. because this is the exact opposite of what i want....

what i want is places in out of the way spaces - houses, warehouses, parks, etc - where the crowd mostly polices itself and the drinks are cheap, or brought by the patrons themselves.

because i'm an anarchist. and you're not.

so, if the kind of thing that mocad is doing tonight has the effect of keeping the kind of people that will go to a dive bar in an out of the way neighbourhood and complain that they don't feel safe out of those dive bars in out of the way neighbourhoods and in more wealthy neighbourhoods where they feel safer, then that is good for everybody. let them have their upper class spaces in the gentrifying zones; and let me have my lower class ones outside of them.

deal?

if i was concerned about wasting anything, it would be this nice warm weather, which is scarce, and not some worthless money.

they downgraded the 60% pop to 40% pop, but i usually rely more on the radar. it's more a question of where it's going to rain than if it's going to rain. it seems like the path shifted south, so the rain is coming through windsor rather than hamtramck.

what i'm missing is some potentially interesting noise in a basement, and a lengthy process of drinking while wasting time waiting for the bus, first at a dive bar and then in a park.

the thing is that i enjoy all of these things. but it's not like it's singular or anything. you could make the argument that i'm saving money, but i'd counter that i'm saving it to waste on something else, and it's actually not that much of a concern to me just right now.

i think tomorrow looks like a better night all around, though.

and, it looks like i should've gone.

*shrug*.

.......annnnd there's actually a flood advisory and major thunderstorm warning in hamtramck overnight. it's directly in the path of the system.

i had to really stretch to squeeze a night out of this, pulling together an experimental basement show, a sparsely attended techno night and an outdoor park party. if the weather's nice, it'll be great. if it's raining, it won't be.

my intuition is to stay in entirely.

yeah, i'm not doing bonobo. it's...

it's really overly co-modified. and, i'm not a detroit techno purist; i prefer idm from the uk. but, they're bringing in this kind of middling white instrumental hip-hop artist, setting the show up at 6:00 pm and shutting him down before midnight. for the not so low price of $25.

so, come to detroit and celebrate your independence by listening to a white brit appropriate your own music and sell it back to you for twice the price, in the complete wrong context? and, then you have to deal with the tight-ass security at the mocad, too. it's a bad deal. and, it's in some sense the new detroit: this is gentrification, and a lot of people aren't going to know any better.

if you're around, just go to marble, instead - they're open late, and in a very real way it's literally the exact place that a lot of this stuff actually developed out of.

i may show up there very late, but i'm doing something else entirely, if the weather co-operates. but, it's obscure. in fact, it's somebody's house, so, i'm going to avoid details until after the fact. it's one thing to invite you all to a bar; it's another to invite you to a house show.

it's actually a great night for bad music in detroit.

- snoop dog (lion? bear? dinosaur?) & bones thug 'n' harmony are doing an outdoor set, where all the potheads can enjoy the thunderstorms.
- jennifer lopez is playing the hockey arena

....and vanilla ice is in windsor. seriously. but, i'm not under much pressure to go. not even with both of them looking down on me, now.

this could be a really difficult conundrum for the kind of person of a certain age with absolutely no concept of taste, whatsoever. really.

there's a moderately well known dj, bonobo, spinning tonight, but it's in a weird venue and appears to likely be done before 11:00. it's at least outside, but it seems kind of lame to me to bring somebody in like that and tell them they're done before the bars open - unless there's a late party, and then that makes sense.

goth club is the same problem as always: they close at 4:00, if you're lucky. i need something going until 6:00 or 7:00. although it's friday, actually, so the saturday bus is early...hrmmn...

but, if there's a late party, i may rather go to the noise show at the old miami. i dunno.

or i may just stay in if the weather turns for the worse.i had to scratch a lot of things off to get here, and what's left is by default, and not all that compelling.