freelansing in Seattle

Dear reader (hello? anyone still there?), I warned you that this would be “slow blogging,” but I never intended for my blog to go dark for more than a year. In the immortal words of Rick Perry, “Oops!”

I feel especially remiss since, in my postings right after the 2010 elections (here, here, & here), I was talking about the need for a progressive populist uprising. Well, 2011 has been the year for progressive populist uprising, and this blog has had nothing to say about it. Oops indeed.

To recap: This year’s uprising began, of course, in the hometown of progressive populism — Madison, Wisc. — when new Governor Scott Walker severely overplayed his hand politically. We can thank Gov. Walker and his far-right cohorts for having awakened a new rebellion among a working/middle-class fed up with indignities and austerity as those who caused the economic crisis got rewarded for their crimes. Well (over)played, sir!

Of course, as Madison heated up, uprisings were busting out all over the world. An unexpected Arab Spring gave way to a perhaps to-be-expected European Summer, as people at the bottom of the political/economic pyramid demanded more democratic control over their own lives. Those at the top who wielded power at the expense of the rest were put on notice — people would no longer tolerate hardship and austerity while those at the top grew richer, more arrogant, and more shameless.

This internationally shared sentiment took root in America for real in September with Occupy Wall Street & various spin-off occupations around the country. I wrote a lengthy essay about this uprising in Eat the State! in mid-October, and also assembled a list of existing organizations that have been already working to solve the problems that the Occupy movement has highlighted. I also put together a list of solutions to remind us that it is not solutions that we lack, but the political power to overcome the political power assembled by the 1% through their various enabling institutions. The power of the left-behind majority is what the Occupy movement is helping to build. (Much of the ETS! material is still timely, I think, if you want to check it out.)

I intend to write soon here about how this movement is morphing & expanding & diversifying tactics in the face of the inevitable backlash by authorities, and especially about how the movement is — and needs to be — so much bigger than the people actually participating in the encampments. When the movement for the 99% truly finds ways to engage most of that 99% in productive actions, then we will be too big to fail. We’re still trying to figure out how to get to that tipping point.

The problem I have with blogging is that I post a lot of stuff elsewhere that might otherwise go into a blog. I’ve reserved this blog mostly for longer essays that I don’t publish elsewhere — big thoughts that coalesce slowly. Not very blog-like, I know, but that’s just how I roll….

In the meantime — if you want to follow me around the interwebs — I’m tweeting, writing occasionally for Eat the State!, & posting a lot in Facebook, where I publicly post maybe 15–20 items per week on the topics I discuss in this blog, mostly links I find particularly interesting. I used to keep my Facebook acct private, but now that Facebook allows for public subscriptions I encourage people to subscribe if interested. (Note: I only respond to “friend” requests from people who are friends in real life. If you think I should make an exception for you, please tell me why. Thanks.)

Sorry this is one of those annoying blog posts more about the blogger than about anything particularly insightful. I’ll do better next time.