Summer Jobs for the Environment
Ezra has a summer job for the environment. He answered a classified ad in the Ithaca times. Only 7 other jobs were listed that day, 2 of them for long distance truck drivers and another for a travelling vegetarian concession. That intrigued Ezra but he was afraid that, if he left town, something would happen. Something important.
Like, let's say Common Council votes to arrest Dick Cheney for high crimes and misdeamnors (more than jaywalking) if he ever steps foot in I-town. Show your bald conservative war mongering ass in this town, mister, and you'll be doing hard time in the callaboose with Sherrif Pete.. The first city to impeach a standing vp. Ya think Ithaca's finest, the donut squad, would go along with that? Arrest ole Dick Cheney like that? Or would ya have to make a citizen's arrest?
Come with me, Dick. You're taking a walk.Maybe Fay Gougakis would have a melt down at city hall. She did that once. Had to hauled out shouting and screaming by the poe-lese. Fay was once voted Ithaca's favorite political activist. That's when Ez decided to bury his Che Guevera lapel button in the back yard. He had a little ceremony, read from the Little Red Book of Mao-tse-Tung and a selection from Regis Debray. Those were the days, the days when people actually knew who Regis Debray was.
Don't get the wrong impression. Ez wasn't a big activist or anything like that in his day... he never had an opportunity to join a really radical underground organization like the Weatherman or the SLA. His face never appeared in a grainy photograph on a wanted poster all over America. It's not something he's proud to admit but he was never clubbed or tear gassed by federales. But Ezra knew which way the wind blew --he figured out pretty early that all that playing at revolution was just posturing on the part of middle class kids who would eventually tire of the "'class struggle' and settle down to make money in bonds and derivatives.
Baudrilliard, one of those clarity-challenged modern French philosophes, talked about the "'third order of simulacra'(from a dog-earred copy of
post modernism for dummies) whereby the copy has replaced the original. So watching Democracy Now or West Wing fulfills civic duty and political life has been reduced to talking about politics. There is a little guy in his 30's with a pot belly and a beard that Ez sees hanging out downtown. For some reason this dude always walks around with a perpetual catlike grin as if he knows something that is veiled to the less perfect. Ez has heard this guy rattle off on demand the latest in political discourse. I mean he knows what Dick Cheney eats for breakfast. At other times he can be found ingesting the New York Times like a line of blow. Can't get enough of this shit. News as drug. Here's a fool who, if knowledge was power, would head the CIA. Instead they used to put people like the current prez's dad in charge and we know he doesn't know that Rice Krispies comes from rice.
Talking about politics and the media... Ez caught part of Democracy Now this morning. Accidentally. He was switching over from Dr. Phil to the traffic report on Channel 10 when he found himself watching in awe as Amy Goodman browbeat a poor nun who had been tortured by Guatamelan paras.
OK, sister, who tortured you? Was it Dick Cheney? Come on, we'll
get it out of you. We have ways. Was George Bush involved? Suddenly Ez realized that Amy Goodman, except for a simple twist of fate. might have been that GI Jane whateverhername who was photographed with those prisoners at Abu Grav. (Spelling is optional in blogworld.)
So, you have to wonder why anyone would still think he or she could change the world. Are people. especially young people, still idealistic? Ez doesn't want to go near that question 'cause truth is that Ez himself is more idealistic than he was back when he was a whipper blogger. Some bigwig in Green politics, a guy who had graduated from college with a degree in Marxist labor theory and now works as a glorified bureaucrat for the State of NJ told Ez that maturity meant learning to compromise. Fuck that shit, Ez says.
Truth is, however, that most people today don't become activists, environmental, political, social, etc so as to be in a position to change the world.They become activists because a) they don't want to work a conventional job and don't have to, b) they want to acquire skills, experience and resume time so they can become bigwigs in the nonprofit industrial complex, bringing down 75K , running a foundation. Just like people never studied Marxist labor theory so they could do anything with a discipline that is as dry as a biscotti. You studied that shit to pick up women.
Back in Ez's day, nobody thought about becoming a professional revolutionary --well, no one Ez knew. No one planned a career in demonstrating -- or splattering blood on draft records for a living, or even deconstructing nuclear submarines as a trade. Hey, you wanted to change a rotten racist, imperialist system for cryingoutloud, not get a job. Things are different today. People are starting early, getting in on the ground floor of the transformative action industry.
Anyway Ez didn't get a job working for the environment this summer. He didn't qualify. The're only looking for 19 year old college students who want to ascend the ladder eventually to chair the executive committee at Greenpeace. Idealistic young people want to hang out with other attractive, Ipod -toting young people. Not old farts with challenged hairlines.
So Ez took a volunteer position, you know, in Ithaca that's still a job after all, working for the environment. He's a recycler. You can catch him any morning before he starts work at Satan's, going through the trash receptacles on the east side of the Commons. We all do our part.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 6:04 PM
