Fear of a Bloomfield-Garfield Planet

Yeah, remember in 1990 when Public Enemy was ready to drop their followup to the massive bomb that was 1988's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Prevent a Few White-Catholic Stalwarts who Stuck Around During White Flight from taking credit for the Comparatively Recent in-flight of Young, Hip White Folks back into the same Neighborhoods that Are Now Pretty Dark?

Yeah, I was too young to remember when they dropped their followup, Fear of a Black Planet. I bet you thought I was going to do something with that album title to reference the title of this blog, which in turn references the progenitor of today's subject, which I will get to in a minute. I'm not going to name any names other than Bloomfield-Garfield Corp. and Lawrenceville United, but only because I don't want these people to do a google search for their names and find my blog and realize that I, in fact, was the young man that sat down with them last winter in the offices of Bloomfield-Garfield Corp. to discuss my and my lawyer friend's acquisition of a building that the corp did not even own at the time.

Well, now that we know the particulars and the players, let's proceed.
So, you know how when I was younger, I wanted to run the Pittsburgh Steelers? Yeah, I had to give up real quick, cause them Rooneys have been running shit like cracking cast iron drain pipes since the mid-30s. There's no way I'm going to get my head, chest or foot in that door, although I can show up and watch the fans watching the game from outside the stadium with no problem.
When I found out I could never own, operate and control all operations for my favorite football team, I had to set my sights much lower: Mayor of The City of Pittsburgh!
But then I realized that my Dad was never running shit like, uh, modern waste removal pipes that superseded cast iron pipes in both residential and commercial use; that is, he was never district magistrate of the people in wards 26 and 27; and he didn't bestow upon me the surname of Ravenstahl, which combines the root word, stall, a place in which to shit, and Raven, which is a delicate and dominant songbird/scavenger rare to the East End of Pittsburgh. Our current mayor's fake ass Indian name, when he was attending sucker-ass North Catholic High School in Troy Hill, was "Singing in Bird Shit." Mine was Tommy Jarvis.

And so I lost out to Luke Ravenstahl in the November Election, and he had Snoop Dogg perform at his victory party.
So, when denied rule over the Steelers and the entire city, I remembered: Pittsburgh has 90 unique neighborhoods. With that many separate groups of needy people, and just as much opportunity for neighborhood (re-, un-, and exo-)development in each set, who could deny me my god-given right to rule over, influence, and make decisions for people I might someday meet, whose names I will immediately forget, and whose feelings I will never care about?
So, with goals large and unhinged, I moved to Lawrenceville to step up and take care of a people that needed guidance. I even met some of them at neighborhood meetings and street cleanups. Now, I admit that I didn't give most of them a fair chance, but they need my guidance nonetheless, no matter how little they matter to the future development of our species.
I went to my room and started mailing out packages; the return address read: Tommy Jarvis, King/Mayor/Lord of Lawrenceville. With a little bit of cooperation from the mail delivery folks, I succeeded in my dream of controlling and influencing people whose hands I would never shake. The power tasted great, tangy with a bit of satiating umami even, but I wanted more. When then Director of Lawrenceville United Toe-knee Choffee announced his bid for District Six Magistrate back in early 2009, I realized this was my chance: I could take control of the neighborhood and help scared black people leave Lawrenceville, just like my precursor.
But I couldn't run my election campaign on the same principles as my predecessor: Sure, most of the black people in Lawrenceville own guns and can fend for themselves, but so do most of the white people. And the black people with guns in the neighborhood are much younger than the white folks with guns, which means the guns owned by black folks are much more likely to hit their targets than those owned by older, shakier, weaker white folks, who are likely to choose the wrong targets.
Young black folks are the wrong targets in this neighborhood, I thought. We've got to get them out of here, for their own safety. But what about the old people who make snap judgments about those living in their communities; whose own physical handicaps will prevent them from reversing their age, bettering themselves and moving out of the ghetto? Shouldn't we be running after-nap programs to make sure these latchkey elders aren't causing trouble?
Apparently not. I lost the battle of Lawrenceville. On December 15, 2009, Choffee sent out an excited email about his real successor, whose name will not be mentioned in text, but rather in jpeg. format.



She sounds cool enough, eh? Grants, budgets and community programming? Sounds like she would be just as qualified to work at a little more fascist-leaning public broadcasting station, but I hear they're all on hiring freezes anyway.


It wasn't until I sat down to Poop after waking up New Year's day that I made the connection: This Community Development is A Family Affair.


In the new issue of The BGC's publication, The Bulletin, the family tree is drawn out, limb by xenophobic limb.


And there it is. Grand daughter moves in to take control of the neighborhood down the hill from her grandmother's neighborhood. As Director of Lawrenceville United, she will assume control over all new real estate development, the welcoming of new, young white people to the neighborhood, and all editorial content on the neighborhood's wikipedia page. Her grandmother was responsible for the last third of the job description, which allows all to follow these tenets to bring with them the pioneering ignorance of encyclopedic tone and tense, the irrelevance of objectivity and the understanding that just because you say you serve the community in an online encyclopedia means that it's yours to shape into what you think a neighborhood ought to be in real life. All because of who you know, or who knew your grandparents before you were born, or who you were fucking in a previous life.

"Here, son, why don't you run this Football team? I'll keep it warm for you."
"Here, son, why don't you run this city? I'll keep it hilly for you."
"Here, grand daughter, why don't you run this neighborhood? I've established a precedence in my neighborhood up the hill and think you'll do fine with a completely different gang set down by the river."

Winter Pleasures

I tore down the closet in my room a few days ago. Unlike the preparations I didn't make for the wall I tore apart last year about this time, I actually covered my bed and furniture with blankets to avoid soaking the plaster and coal dust into my property.

My private property.

And I thought I had documented that wall. I guess not.

This is where this ends. Bye. No Pictures. No proof.

updates

I come back sometimes. Sometimes it's with pictures of my house and my new plans. Other times it's to pretend I'm an anarchist and complain about how my friends receive negative attention from the state while I burn the world and ask everyone why they're not looking at me.
This time it's neither.

It's almost a wish list or a Coming Attractions reel before the film. Or we'll call it what it really is: A Self-Aggrandized To Do List. (Look at me!)

+Rescue enough appropriate Pine from a sign-making business to recover my second floor's fucked hardwood.
+Get busy on finishing the insulation in the drop-ceiling area between first and second floors.
+Make the hype for a Winter To-Do list much bigger than the actual list.

Post-G20 Wrapup

I guess if Luke Ravenstahl can wait until the next official work week to talk about G20, then I can wait until the end of my G20 vacation from Cashiering to give up my feelings about a city's self-defense against unwanted visitors.

I'd like to compare our response to the G20 in Pittsburgh to Tim Burton's Mars Attacks!, but I'm not really interested in such pop-adventure metaphors. Thursday's illegal meeting and march was akin to a Parade for Pedophiles, except if we had been pedophiles on parade, the media would have at least let the scared folks inside their homes know about our politics.

After I stayed up all night into Thursday morning, I was ready to crash by the end of the unpermitted march. So I had some more coffee and went back to Oakland, where I had the misfortune of running out of real energy before everyone decided to smash the state after 10:00.
My tattoo artist friend went to jail. She was doubled over coughing on CNN, running up Liberty Avenue with tear gas in her eyes. I later found out another friend and neighbor was arrested, but for not much more than failing to pay attention with riot cops a few feet away.

But now Pittsburgh's seekers of social justice (and property damage) have to apologize to the world for not putting on a big enough anti-capitalist/globalization/free-trade display to burn down our own town. I'm not certain that comparing Pittsburgh to other globalization-focus party host cities that have larger populations is fair. Pittsburgh, as far as I can tell, is fairly local in its allegiance. PrestoGeorge in the Strip took place of Starbucks, which was around for a minute but was deemed inappropriate in such an intimate, familiar setting. Pittsburgh has its chains, and I don't know what percentage of businesses in an average city of over 500k is local or independent, but it could be that we value the local and appreciated it before it became a bumper sticker.


This is where the assumptions jump out: While Pittsburgh is a good home for anarchists because of its cheap living and sometimes empty neighborhoods, greenscape and rich history in class struggle, it doesn't really breed anarchists like the hipper locales across the nation. I've never been anywhere else for an extended period of time, but we're small, we're aging/old, and we have a very large transient student population. We've started to attract new anarchists, but only because anarchists here are starting to advertise Pittsburgh for what it is: Cheaper than where you are now and not what it was 25 years ago.

Maybe other cities with higher cost of living and less winter allow for anarchists to do more romantic training exercises, like, oh, running successful bookstores that compete with real businesses. Or maybe they're forced into being more successful within a slightly more predatory market than the less ambitious, less pricey rustbelt in which we reside, work, and fuck shit up.

But since G20 was announced in May and every anarchist across the country with access to national news had time to save up or request paid time off or hop a train and hitchhike to visit our town and wade in the riot cop moat protecting this summit, I shouldn't even have to come up with excuses as to why Pittsburgh didn't destroy more buildings, businesses and cops.

We didn't have an Alexandros Grigoropoulos to spark stronger resistance and endless riots. I'm happy no one in Pittsburgh had to die to release our hatred for the state.
We aren't appealing to anarchists because we don't really have the best climate; I'm not sure if that's all we don't have going for us, but it has to be a step down from Oregon.
And as much as I can tell, most of our anarchists are pretty busy with other things, even if our infoshop can't legally call itself an infoshop because it would prevent us from donating to prisons.
So while the G20 inconvenienced us without allowing us to inconvenience it too much in return, we really just wanted to act like it wasn't here, even though the itchy pitching shoulder in all of us was covered in poison ivy this entire week.

I will apologize for Pittsburgh's inability to end capitalism before Halloween 2009, but only because I half-promised it to a fellow cashier at work. But I will not apologize for our efforts.
Where were you when cops were running my city? I thought this was about mutual aid?

Oh, you were on the internet talking shit and reading the news. (Which is exactly where I would have been if I didn't live here, minus the shit talking part--I can't make focused, logical points.)

Veggie Dogs for Watch Dogs

I stayed up all night with Landslide kids. We sat on the porch with walkie talkies, looking down at the intersection of Kirkpatrick, Beelen and Allequippa.
This is all I saw all night.

View Larger Map

Nothing happened. There was a scare here and there, but when during a police state the biggest scare of the night comes from a suspicious delivery of the Wall Street Journal at 5 a.m., then I think we're all right.
Actually, when I followed a friend up to the woods after dawn to let the chickens out of their house for the day, two strange cars pulled in. Over the walkie talkies, which make everything inaudible except laughter (which could be maniacal or good-natured, it's never clear), all I could make out was that it was of my friend's concern to return from the woods.
As we were making our way back down the hill, we found out it was a false alarm: two men had pulled over and were having an altercation; the one in the rear smashing the other's back window and driving away before anyone realized that the cars weren't there to raid the house or step on pepper plants.
I ate two-and-a-half veggie dogs with saurkraut and pickled jalapeno peppers from the farm, drank one heavy cup of coffee and pooped at least three times.
I'd like to think I helped keep the farm safe, but I realized as the sun was rising that I had no clue what to do if confronted with a cop and a warrant. This week's special legalities equal total disregard for visiting friends: To anyone with a badge, a visitor is an out-of-town protester with a gallon of fermented piss and a five-gallon bucket of flingable shit.
I forgot to mention the welcome and supportive presence of several ACLU Legal Observers, one of whom is a new Landslide lawyer who was working earlier in the evening at the convergence space in Greenfield.
One could assume that the ACLU would have no trouble dealing with police, but it's hard to remember that while trying to stay up and remain comfortable perched from above the scenic violence.
Helicopters flew overhead once every five minutes before midnight, search lights getting lost in the fog like measuring scoops in a jar of flour. Every time a light on Fifth Ave. turned green, the anticipation for a cop coming up the hill quickly grew to a head, and then deflated just as quickly. If someone was walking up toward the bus stop at Kirkpatrick and Fifth, then it was worth pulling out the binoculars to see what they were up to, even if it really was just a plan to wait for the bus.
Every transistor box with a plexiglass cover and rivets around the edge is a scene-monitoring, electronic cop. Every vehicle without obvious markings is an unmarked police vehicle.

The moon was hiding from our vantage point on the porch last night, but it really wasn't what we were looking for.

A full step behind the Joneses

Other than the hungry, happy people in Friendship Park yesterday, no more of my friends have received visits. I made it to Landslide with a friend last night. I walked up their cobblestone street, past the porch where so much activity is normally common; in the night there was nothing. Signs with my former roommate's handwriting hung from each door of the duplex, instructing ex-inhabitants and visitors to stay out and to call a listed number for legal help if the cops show up and start absolutely destroying shit.
Farther up the hill, the six remaining Landsliders were making coconut pawpaw ice cream and planning ways to secure their entrances to prevent the kicking-in of their doors. Half of them were set on sleeping on the porch just to avoid sleeping in bedrooms that, after having so many people come and go with flea-harboring pets, are nearly as uninhabitable as 5401 Harrison.
I left when we gave up churning the ice cream and left it for a night in the freezer, and I walked back up a hill I normally pedal: The Bus Lane, while normally a quick shortcut up to Oakland from the South Side and Uptown, is worth avoiding when laws are actually being enforced, especially on bikers, since we're all probably anarchists who have seven other, non-local anarchists living with us this week.
We all do.
It's obvious that nothing good will come from another police visit to a friend's house, but I'm hopping back and forth from one cop+citizen rendezvous point to another in an attempt to find the most action. Some houses have watch shifts all night, midnight to four and four to eight, avoiding sleep to keep an eye out for the longest outstretched arm (is it even at full extension yet?) the law has ever had in these parts. This excites me because I never sleep anyway. I'm sure a target community could really appreciate the bags under my eyes providing support for a night's worth of warning call, but I don't belong out there because I'm too safe.
I'm admitting right now that I am jealous. I see a few different types of people right now:
1. People who aren't quite sure what the G20 is or what they're doing here, but are willing to talk about and try to understand it.
1a. People who seem to understand what the G20 is and seemingly disagree with it, but still won't or can't do anything about it.
2. People who have no idea what the G20 is or what they're doing here, but are unwilling to admit that they don't understand it and yet still act like protesters are the real reason our city has become a week-long police state.
3. Friends who have undeservedly been harassed, woken in the middle of the night, forced to leave their city-tolerated but not-yet-purchased homes; who have had to disperse, leave town and regroup in smaller numbers.
4. Friends who have been working hard with their independent media, legal defense, medical assistance, food preparation, hospitality for out-of-towners, writing, organizing, concern.

I have found nowhere to fit into this multi-faceted pinwheel of roles.
I've experienced fear and outright disgust about the stories from my friends. At my job, where political discussion does not come up, I've spoken with civilians, both ignorant and understanding, about these events, making sure they know just how close I was to getting arrested or just how integral my part in the story actually is.
"Oh, I play soccer there every week. I just happened to be gourging myself on an O Pizza with fries and ketchup as toppings during soccer time." A convenient alibi.
"Oh, I used to live with them. I knew them before they were squatters." Similar to, 'I knew the band before they signed to Warner.'
"Oh, I was just walking out when the cops were showing up. (Missed out again.)" Pathetic. It's one thing to have the cops come to you based on who you are; it's another to happen to be with people who the cops want to visit because of who they are.

I don't know how to save myself from wanting to feel watched or important. The admission of my crimes that may not be truthful would feel like a cry for attention. I don't even know if my crimes were/are actually illegal. But I do not want to feel left out when everyone else's rights are being taken away.

Asking for help in this situation of self-created desperation is just another temper tantrum, but a more thoughtful example than putting a "Happy G20!" banner across my front door. I don't know what my friends would do if they knew I was jealous of how much they matter to law enforcement this week. I hope they would slap me and tell me to wait in my house until the end of the week: "We'll be over with cookies when it's all over," they would say.

Because if we really want to be truthful, sitting in my house and waiting for something to happen is all I ever do.

G20 and Inconvenience

The G20 invades communities around the world. It turns poor villages into monocultures, forcing villagers to work for whatever corporation has been appointed to guide the village/town/city toward Western-serving development.
This is all a very vague critique of what I understand happens when globalization and its representatives enter the realm of the undeveloped world. I've got two sentences about nothing specific, when the voices in these villages could tell you much better, if they only had blogs.
I'm watching my friends upload audio and pictures to local G20-related, indy media sites; and then I'm turning around and waiting for another one of our houses to be raided, or another group of us to get accosted for looking or acting the way we do in public. Which, if you're listening, Pittsburgh, flies just fine for the rest of eternity, because this is Pittsburgh. We're scummy by nature, because we don't have to sell out too much to survive here.
And yet, all this inconvenience is a just a concentrated dose of what globalization can do to a community. A village in the undeveloped world is slowly being drowned by a steady flow of watered down orange juice, while Pittsburgh is getting sticky beause of these gobs of frozen orange juice that cops, Ravenstahl and Obama's guests keep throwing at us.

Just like these communities we don't have a choice in the matter. If your city is a bastion of green, with specks of economic stability mixed in, then you may be the next host of a predatory summit. You don't have any voice in it. Writing this blog makes me feel special, like what I say actually has an audience, or is somewhat controversial and worthy of attention from all of Pittsburgh's visitors this week.

But I know that I'm safe: There is no threat that I pose to this status quo. The G20 will be gone next week, and none of these global representatives will have read my blog.

And when the G20 leaves, then the Pittsburghers who packed up and left because of inconvenience will return. Their displeasure with a massive dose of globalism in our town results in a one week vacation. I realize that the precautionary measures that will turn ten-minute commutes into hour-long sit sessions are an inconvenience. I understand this. But leaving town to avoid the strongest representation of our privileged world's raping of those that serve our whims is a great representation of denial.

The G20 is in town. But I was here first.
Even if I know none of my neighbors, This is my community. And even if I help anarchists destroy Pittsburgh and take us back thirty years, I know I'll still be here.

I'm not going anywhere.