bevedog

Birth of a newsletter?

Happy day after election day 2020 everyone. Also known as my fiftieth birthday.

Of course I voted for Biden and of course I hoped to wake up to find out that everything had broken his way overnight and that Trump had conceded. Instead things are (at 8:45 a.m. MST) much more as I’d expected, with no clear victor and Trump doing Trump things.

It probably helps me that I have spent much of the pandemic reading leftist and anarchist works that make me much more skeptical of electoral politics to begin with. I want a democratic president and a democratic Senate, but I won’t pretend that I think that would make everthing better.

I have been worried about this election all year, which also probably helps me not be even more worried right now. I have been assuming all along that we may need mass protests and general strikes and so on to end Trump’s reign. Crimethinc recently published EVERYBODY OUT! Resources for a Season of Post-Election Unrest which has some links to resources for organizing, protesting and so on.

Back in March, right before Colorado College told the students not to come back from spring break and the country started taking various lockdown measures, I went to a CC senior art show. The student, Annabel, included a zine workshop as part of her show, and I made this mini zine. It’s set today (though I realize now that I had it backwards: I turn 50 the day after the election, not the day before) and in the days following my birthday.

Here it is as a PDF if for some reason you want a printed version: I was a middle-aged anarchist.

Shanon sometimes asks me if I think things are going to get better. I usually dodge the question and say “whatever happens, we will take care of each other.” Because I think that’s the important thing. We can’t control much, but we can look out for one another. And that’s what I plan to do.

So anyway, this is my newsletter, I guess? Since I discontinued my old blog in 2012 (archived here, missing most of the images) I have tried to start a few new blog-type things and none have really lasted beyond a post or two. If you want to see how this one turns out, I guess smash that subscribe button? I’m unlikely to fill up your inbox.