The Nica Diaries - Excerpt

4/12/86
Saturday

We’re still in Managua, the charla with the economist fell through, so a bunch of us just went out for frescos instead. Vick, one of the guys in our group, started feeling sick. I’m one of the more fluent members of our group so I and another NICA student who is studying medicine but doesn’t speak much Spanish took him to the hospital. Turns out Vick was suffering from acute dehydration and was having some medical complications because of it. The service at the hospital was ridiculously fast and efficient, despite the obvious lack of medical equipment or adequate facilities, not to mention medication which is also scarce here. Vick had to stay at the hospital for observation so we left him there and we’ll send someone else from the school to pick him up in a few hours.

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Last night at Lobo Jacks I talked to a lot of people. Many of us have reached a point in this journey where we are understanding that it’s time to move past learning the truth, it’s time to start acting on it. I believe that truth compels us to act.

I’m so much more in tune with human beings down here. Talking to the internationalists, hearing about their work, I realize that I spend a lot of time in my head exploring ideas, looking for black and white truths instead of acting. Just communicating with other people can teach us as much about life as great philosophy books - not to diminish those great works but ideas should be utilized, they shouldn’t just rot in your head like uneaten fruit on a vine. I need to find a way to actualize my beliefs and I feel an urgency to do it now. I have to stop being stupid, thinking that planting tomatoes on an agricultural cooperative is going to make any great change in people’s lives. It probably only made a difference in mine.

I’ve been offered a teaching job in the mountains just north of Esteli. It’s dangerous territory because the closer you get to Honduras, the closer you get to the fighting but the children there have been in desperate need of a teacher for a while; there is a shortage of teachers, too. I’m considering it. I could be happy here. I’ve fallen in love with this country and these people despite the poverty and the hardship.

I still remember my first night, scooping newspaper out of a filthy toilet with my hand for fear of clogging up the whole neighborhood’s plumbing. Hearing the roosters crow in the middle of the night, being exposed to third world living conditions for the first time in my life, finding out that it wasn’t uncommon for people to live in shacks poorly boarded up with little or no plumbing. I remember my first week, getting used to the unexpected water shortages, seeing people riding horses down the streets right next to cars, getting used to not having a refrigerator or washing machine, learning to use a scrub board, learning to take cold water bucket baths, learning to tuck mosquito netting so the little suckers couldn’t sneak in under the net, learning what it means to be Nicaraguan. God, I love this place.

I love my own country too, and I miss home - my mom and dad, Bruce, my friends, my band… and there are things to be done there, too. I could also make a difference there, it’s just not as easy to see what needs to be done. There are children who need a bilingual teacher like me in Los Angeles and there is a shortage of them, but I can’t abandon Nicaragua. I don’t know what to do…

Why Pussy Riot Matters

Since January of this year, I’ve been following with interest the evolving story of a group of young women on the other side of the world. The punk feminist group Pussy Riot immediately captured my attention and my heart with their bold “flash concerts” in public spaces, their unapologetically pro-feminist and anti-fascist politics and their brightly colored dresses and balaclavas. I’ve had some experience with performing anonymously and I loved the concept that these women embodied: Pussy Riot is, above all else, an idea. If one member is captured, another woman will don the balaclava and take her fallen comrade’s place in line.

That idea is now being put to the test. Pussy Riot dared to publicly challenge not only the established symbol of patriarchal power in Russia (the Russian Orthodox Church) but the seat of military and political power itself: the Putin government. And they did it in an audacious, thrilling, punk rock way. In doing so, they risked everything - perhaps more than they could have imagined at the time. Maria Alyokhina, 24, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 23, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 29 stand accused of participating in that performance and all three are now paying a huge price. They have been held in prison since March and are  awaiting trial on charges which could result in sentences of up to seven more years behind bars.

I’ve signed the Amnesty International petition to protest the detention of these ladies. I’ve raised a few dollars to help support their legal defense team. I’ve performed a song I wrote for them and talked about their plight in various cities in the US and Canada where I’ve been on tour. I’ve Tweeted, Facebooked and Tumbled endlessly about Pussy Riot and yet part of me knows that the fate of these brave women is beyond my control. They are being made an example of what happens to anyone who dares to challenge authority in a repressive, authoritarian society. This is the real reason why Pussy Riot matters. If we truly support Pussy Riot, then we need to show the world that we absolutely refuse to learn from this particular example. Instead, we will pick up the colorful balaclava, put it on and take our place in line. We will not learn to give up and accept defeat!

Certain truths in life need to be screamed out loud. Not all superheroes wear masks and capes, some wear brightly colored balaclavas. The women are currently on a hunger strike and for that reason I urgently ask you to please help. Spread the word, sign the Amnesty International petition and show your support in any way you can.

The More Things Change

From an interview I did in October 2004. This question and answer has particular relevance to me because I see the same things happening in this country that I saw happening in the 1980’s, only now the mass media in this country is almost completely controlled by people with a ve$ted intere$t in maintaining the status quo. Even if you don’t agree with me, you should still seek out some news sources from outside of our country so that you can gain a different perspective on what’s happening here and abroad.

Q: You also went to Nicaragua in the early eighties to gain some new experiences, would you tell us something about that time and if it changed your views on certain things and how do you see the political situation in the U.S. in the moment…?

A: My trip to Nicaragua changed me forever. It made me realize how few material possessions a person needs to be happy and it put me back in touch with the values that living in a consumer society can deaden in you, basic human values like caring about your neighbor. I realized that the U.S. government has been bought by corporate entities that have little regard for Americans and even less regard for the rest of the world. Their sole concern lies in expanding their control over the economic systems of the world. Countries are either to be exploited for their natural resources or else they are markets for goods that are produced elsewhere and controlled by the corporations. These corporate entities only have one natural enemy and that is a well-informed citizenry focused on self-determination. As an American taxpayer and a corporate consumer, I am complicit in my own government’s efforts to block other people’s movement towards self-determination. That’s what my experience in Nicaragua taught me. I think we Americans need to get serious about taking back our country and making it responsive to our needs and goals. What’s happening in America right now could happen anywhere when people get too complacent.

Sign Language

The visual language of the Occupy movement set to music. We are waking up.


Sign Language from socially_awkwrd on Vimeo.

Beginning The World Over Again

My father used to justify his aversion to politics by saying that all leaders were corrupt, that no matter who won the election the poor people of the world would ultimately lose because politicians would always be in the pocket of the wealthy. He thought that big corporations were the secret hand that really pulled the strings behind the governments of the world.

In the early 1980’s, I went to Nicaragua to work with the people there and to learn about the changes that had taken place in that country after their revolution. Living there for a short time, I saw firsthand what my own government was doing to these impoverished people in the name of “defending our nation” against the threat of creeping communism. It really opened my eyes to the way our media and our government worked hand in hand to spoon feed the U.S. public the “official story.” I began to feel overwhelmed by the power of the invisible hand that my father had talked about.

I don’t know when it happened to me, but I slowly started to adopt my father’s hopeless and cynical view of politics. I still voted, signed petitions, and played my share of benefits, but for many years I had the feeling that any meaningful change was beyond what I could hope for. I can’t afford to have this attitude anymore. I won’t allow myself to go along with business as usual without kicking and screaming and raising a fuss.

Thomas Paine wrote, “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.” It has been a long time since I dared to hope that we could change the world. It’s time for involvement. Maybe we can’t change the world overnight, but if enough of us get involved, we can change the direction of this country and that’s a start.