speach tree

I just re-read the first paragraph of the article I wrote for the College Hill Independent after I got back from visiting Zapatista communities in December 2005. Wow. Yeah. Anyway, I will spare you the self-flagellation and just give you the link so you can see for yourself. Here it is! http://www.brown.edu/Students/INDY/cms/content/view/125/73/ Part of the impetus to write this blog is to figure out how to bring what I've learned from the Zapatistas back to my every-day life. Which is wierd when my life feels less stable than hydrogenated oils in a deep fryer. How to be a politically responsible person when making less than $300 a week as a transplant in NYC?

from kundiman: c/o Regie Cabico ! This exercise helps you work on your comic timing! stand around in a circle one person starts by clapping her/his hands once while looking into the next person's eyes the next person must "catch" the clap by looking into the clapper's eyes and clapping in time to the original clap the person who catches the clap must then turn around to face the next person in the circle to pass on the clap. to shake things up: clapping twice sends the clap back to the clapper. another one from Regie: stand in a circle and each person has to say a letter of the alphabet, but in 3 totally different ways with three different dramatizations. from summer camp: This exercise is sometimes called "A Big Wind Blows" but I think that name is totally dumb. So I call it "Revised Musical Chairs," or if that doesn't work, " Shout Outs ." One person is in the middle and says "I love all my peoples who..." Anyone in the ci...

The Orange House, headquarters for Estacion Libre in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chis., MX, home base for all delegations to Zapatista Liberated Territory from the U.S. since 1998, safe-space for people of color... will cease to exist after August 2007. from the Estacion-Libre listserv: "Dear Sisters and Brothers, We are writing to you after a long silence to officially let you know that we will be closing down the Orange House that has served as our home in San Cristobal. The house has served as a container for beautifully frustrating and productive struggle. In the beginning, as you all may know, we opened our home to address the need for a People of Color space in a revolutionary setting. Our goal has been to learn from the Zapatista struggle about rebellion and how to bring these lessons to our communities in the United States and Canada. It served as a space for movement building, fostering connection, popular education, strategizing, refining our political analyses, transce...