Not so much the holes, but what we see through them.

If anything, the message of Occupy: ‘it’s all wrong’.

Knowing and being able to share the idea that there is something wrong is a crucial part of the process, and remains a great function of the vocal and visible Occupy movement. But while there is a perception that the system’s working too well for the top 1%, ideas on whether the system is actually even serving them well (in the long run), never mind alternatives are rather sparse.

There is a perception that Occupy represents a generational malaise (following those of Gen-X, Y, Z…) of misplaced envy and need for the good life that culturally, we can’t seem to muster up for ourselves; the feeling that there just isn’t enough to go around, abounds. And it is true, there really isn’t enough (oil, money, resources, forethought, positive action, talent, creativity and acceptance of limits) to maintain the kind of lifestyle we have been guided into thinking is normal and desirable. It’s a world where even adults don’t recognize where real food and water come from, seeing these as taxable commodities and not human rights. What does it even mean to not have everything you want, when you want it.

The word sustainability still pops into the conversation, but less than it used to; people are shying away from not only that misused word but the idea behind it; who can think about that when you don’t have a job, or decent pay, or even food on the table? We’re culturally perplexed, looking for meaning in lives inundated with garbage (or so-to-be-garbage), making it a dangerous time that the opportunistic are ready to take advantage of. And like those clowns, no need to send them in; they’re already here.

With our elected government openly colluding with private corporations (i.e. privatizing energy, water, ferries, enabling big oil and gas, mining, etc. with citizen dollars) or simply succeeding in not setting up infrastructures to enable a diversified economy with viable alternatives,  it’s time to try something totally new. That, or fall back and  finish off the job: squeeze whatever we can from the decrepit frontier-town models based on resource extraction and related service industries serving up imported not-so-goods.

This fall-back ‘option’ we’re presented with (by the same corporations that gain from this world view) as the only viable options around. We need to get ‘back on track’ to economic recovery, they say. This, of course, is an economy that’s to work this way: Boom, bust, look at the pretty colours. While it’s not really a conspiracy or a mistake, it is environmental, and Occupy has poked a few holes into that perception.

But what do we see through these holes?

My next post (in time for Skookum Food Provisioners’ Cooperative’s Social event) will cover how the cooperative model can offer some important mind-shifting solutions.

imminent crossover

2011 ended up being a charged up, go-go-go kind of year for me and for many around me. Personally, it was a year incredibly busy with the continued development of CJMP Community Radio and Skookum Food Provisioners’ Cooperative, that developed my technical and interpersonal/managerial skills and a somewhat steadier (and busier) work situation than in the past four years. Globally, lots of social change and much-raised awareness of the challenges we have in the face of levels of unimaginable inequality (the Occupy Movement), the lack of democracy (The Arab Spring, and its repercussions throughout the world) and facing up to the lies our governments and corporations tell us (Wikileaks). In many ways, these are inter-related in a general theme of reckoning– an awakening of the masses to ‘what’s really going on’. Add to this, the  further awareness of the environmental destruction we knowingly just keep heaping onto the planet through billions of tiny actions (and several huge actions– like our lovely full-steam-ahead Tar Sands projects); these addictions that we can’t seem to wrap our head around. We’re in a strange place where we know what we do cannot be sustained and we carry on, not in a (more honest) spirit of ‘live and let die’, but this is where it leads. We put on an extra sweater in the house to reduce the heating bill, while planning our next trip to Mexico or wherever… carbon footprint/climate change be damned. We’re convinced that the time for change was yesterday.

Sometimes I think of our society as really stuck in the past, where dreams of 60′s era expansion and the hope of the return to resource extraction-based ‘prosperity’ (while stage-managing a photo-op with Miss Millennial Sustainability) can get you elected, in desperate (and embarrassing) Reagan-era style.

There is an unspoken shrugging social agreement that says “ok, we’re screwed, and everything is obviously wrong, and we keep going in the wrong direction, and so many people are so unhappy; but what else are we going to do?– we’ve invested too much to change now”. The first part of this is where the Occupy Movement is now, I think. The lament is widespread and vocalizing it horizontally— without a top-down structure, and leader-less — makes it all the more potent. The disappointment (with Obama, with corporate responsibility, with all levels of government and their corruption as they respond to corporate wealth and power and not to the people) is very real. It’s the first step but it can’t stop there; next comes the restructuring of the widespread complaint into real action beyond politics and beyond petty changes to the system to make it just a little fairer. Major structural changes are coming.

There is no doubt in my mind that 2012 will bring a lot of change, and my hope is that the people who’ve been working on the sidelines, building local communities economies where people work together to serve a common end benefit, will see a lot more people on their side. 2012 is the United Nations year of the Cooperative — a viable alternative to the pyramid schemes the planet’s ’99%’ have suffered under for decades. The mind-shift that has begun in the realm of ideas needs to be reflected by the marketplace, where the concept of ‘value’ itself needs to explode and include instead value to the society, to the environment, and even value as an intangible benefit to the future generations alone– way beyond the dollar and instant personal gratification on a material level. This change may bring lots of residual conflicts as the 1% are revealed as sociopaths rather than our supposed role models.

the matrix

Well, it’s been a long while since the last post. It’s good to have a bit of time to reflecting back on the last year, as it has been largely guided by our efforts to revive community radio here in Powell River. As I have been writing on the cjmp blog (63 posts in just over a year), the trajectory has been steep, with the need to provide programming competing with the need to raise cash to be able to purchase the tech that will make the programming possible. Of course, with few live shows on at the beginning, it was all the harder to get listeners, members, sustaining members and sponsors. So, it was a bit of a ‘chicken and egg’ situation. But I think we got through the roughest patches. Enough people see at least the potential value in having an independent, non-profit community radio station to support it as its current level.

Apart from the big money-maker fundraiser this summer (A Conversation with Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis), one aspect of our fundraising that really hit a note with some people is our ‘sustaining membership’ option; small, regular, automated monthly contributions that 25 or so people have engaged in, that have meant so much not only in terms of dollars, but in terms of sheer commitment to the cause. Yes, there’s that S-word again, as much as I hate what it is often watered down to mean (by City officials and their sycophants): a Green™ lubricant, the sustaining membership has repatriated the word for me. It’s got staying power. Power in staying with the program, and holding it up and together for the long haul.

I have to remind myself that community comes from ideas, moments and organizations such as this, and maybe even especially this: a collection of individuals with dramatically different backgrounds, work ethics, social, technical, and artistic skills and interests, who value communication itself, and not so much what is actually being said.

This, in Powell River this week,  where in our municipal election, it’s a choice between a rock and a very hard place. With a vocal minority population that is this progressive (but poor), it looks like the 1% will be mayor, yet again. Or in this case, more than ever. I know the radio station is giving some hope for change, and the reports on Occupy Wall Street (and everywhere else) on shows like Democracy Now each weekday and progressive dj’s help to accentuate the global cry for change. But the vision is necessarily blurry and muddled, in a culture where crisp, snappy primary colours have proven so alluring and electable. It’s a starry-eyed nostalgia for 1960′s era expansion that negates everything we know about the effects of such. It’s not transition, totally infantile and criminally irresponsible under the guise of Business-as-usual 3.0.

And It really looks like we’re going to have to plunge farther down still, and that we will actually have to hit rock bottom (as we always suspected we’d have to), which is exactly when those who are hastening our descent will turn back and blame us for deficiencies, whilst racing back to their vaults.

On the importance of fluff.

It seems I often write about the importance of content. That content must drive form; how the vessel should fit the contents of that container (and not the other way around). As you’ve seen in this blog, I’ve started my own radio program: Sunshine Yellow on CJMP 90.1 FM in Powell River or streaming online anywhere with an internet connection — see http://cjmp.ca/listen) at 10 am to noon (Pacific Time).  I never really had the intention of starting a program when I first jumped into the ‘let’s save CJMP’ campaign, and subsequently became a director of the board of Powell River Community Radio Society (PRCRS). At one point, we as a board were given the task of discovering — at least for ourselves — what were our ‘hidden agendas’ in pursuing this monumental and necessarily collaborative task of raising CJMP from its stint in purgatory last year. While we haven’t yet shared these ideas due to the barrage of items on our to-do list, it may well come up again. I know that it has percolated up in my mind,  anyhow.

It’s obviously a worthwhile effort to periodically step back and evaluate what you’re doing and why you’re doing it, if only to redirect wasted effort, and at best find out more about yourself and your motivations. For me, this is what blogs are all about: thinking out loud in a stream of consciousness that may meander, but eventually comes to create a map of thoughts thought. My interaction with the radio society has meant volunteering between 12-24 hours per week, but to what end?

Our Society’s goals and agendas on that end of things are geared to community participation in the arts, culture and more political endeavors that challenge and provide an alternative to the narrow band that usually reaches us through corporate media. But even more than this, it’s the process of creating, maintaining and expanding our network of social collaborators that really interests me. It’s the volunteers— interestingly composed of an age group (late 20′s to early 50′s) that is not known to engage in formal ‘societies’ until later on in life, if at all — working together toward a common goal. The goal in this case is to make this station work as a community radio station, and that’s more than enough. But just looking at our community announcements the other day, it became clear that the movers and shakers at CJMP are also moving and shaking in other cultural realms, and are supporting each other. CJMP has become part of  how we are developing cultural capital here in Powell River, mixing arts events with important social issues like the waste water management debate, diversity initiatives and forays into more sustainable ways of living like the Bike to Work Week (coming up next week). So, while on the surface, hosting a music show on the radio may seem like a ‘fluffy’ activity, even a program devoted to the influence of fluff-meisters ABBA (like my last program), has a certain importance in that it can happen at all.

I have a program on CJMP to show others that it is a viable enterprise; that it’s possible to enter into a sort of conversation with the public, even if for now it consists of song and theme requests sent through Facebook. It’s coming to community in a round-about way; the content is the form in this case. It’s an unforced and pleasurable activity that makes community-building a perhaps slower, but more organic and richer experience — one with deep, healthy roots.

Come see who you’re listening to at the CJMP Public Gathering on June 10th at 6 PM at the Community Resource Centre (4752 Joyce Ave, Powell River, BC) More info? See our contact list here.

• Request a community announcement on air (free)
• Request a Public Service Announcement (recorded; free for non-profit orgs)
• Contribute to CJMP
• Get a show!
• Sponsor a program, the station, or place a paid ad on CJMP
• Find out all about CJMP

It's like dancing with your vacuum cleaner.

Sunshine Yellow, my new radio program LIVE on Saturday mornings 10 am – noon.
It’s radio on an upward curve. Clean your house, go for a run or stare at the sun (protective eye gear required).

Gardening, Eco-tips and general silliness, included.
Sponsors needed, see here

Live Brightly. A 2-minute film I made within the 24 hour limit of the Powell River 24-Hour Film Contest.

I dedicate this to Darnell, who inspired the piece, and who left us after a brief moment.

This was the winning film for this contest.

Bad news via the wires: We will always miss you, David Darnell. That a person who so epitomized being alive is gone, is a dark, horrible oxymoron. Impossible.

Just add nothing.