Anna’s Adventures

http://www.debbydoesntdoitforfree.org/

Randy, have my baby.

Last night, Kate lead a burnout workshop at NewQ. Unlike the last series of workshops, people did attend, and people did donate the suggested $5 toward the space. Oh joy!

I learned a lot from the 15 (yes, 15!) people who attended. About half left before the end, but that was due to the time, and not because of content or participation.

Lots of the people who came were younger than me - in the thick of it in uni politics, queer activism, womens organizing. A fresh crop of interesting young idealists, about to fall out of the uni bubble into the “real world”. Burnt out from activism, about to lose that supportive, smothering, cloistering community.

The discussion was really ripe, and there was lots of input from everyone. As Kate remarked afterward, we did find some answers, but also created more questions.

We looked at what burns us out; how we can’t say “no” to tWe looked at what burns us out; how we can’t say “no” to thankless tasks, but rarely say “yes” to thankless tasks, but rarely say “yes” to our own personal errands, or social engagements. We talked about nurturing ourselves, and our groups - having fun while organizing. Most importantly, making sustainable groups and sustainable projects. A couple of people articulated this very well, saying “you need to define your boundaries and stick to them”, and another person said “if it won’t get done unless I do it, then maybe it doesn’t deserve to get done; maybe that means it isn’t that great a project”.

Such a good workshop!

We also managed to raise heaps of $ for NewQ. We made about half the week’s rent in one night!

Shoot.jpg
Originally uploaded by AnnaAniston

APEC is coming to Sydney. Their slogan is “21 World Leaders, 1 Great City”. I think that is fucking stupid, so it is time to think of a better one.

So far we have:

* 21World Leaders, 1 Great City, Wanna Play?
* 21World Leaders, 1 Great City, 0 Democracy
* 21World Leaders, 1 Great City, 7 Days without habeas corpus
* 21World Leaders, 1 Great City, Police powers to kill for
* I have a brazilian, I’m not a brazilian, please don’t shoot me!
* Does my bomb look big in this?
* Don’t Shoot! Its only a backpack!
* Hey honey, wanna strip search?

Add your slogans!

This just in:

• What’s in your go bag?
• Shott! Its a Fitness First backpack

“House is not a hero. A hero is someone who has the courage to break a bad rule. House doesn’t break rules, he ignores them. He isn’t Rosa Parkes, he’s an anarchist”

Every time we hear the character Foreman say this, my housemates and I do a little jump and cheer.

A complete success.

We went in, grabbed my things and the wheely good sound system and left neatly. When it was pointed out that it was “not fair”, I just shut the fuck up. I resisted the urge to say “don’t you talk to me about fair”.

Trauma: averted.

Something that PM mentioned at Scabaret last night has stayed with me… in the scene, “work is only mentioned when its sex work”. While we both appreciate the need to push sex work to the fore, there is also space for us to bring up work. Work, work, work and its crappy requirements.

Amnesty International has this project going on called “Irrepressible”. The idea is that the banner will show a snippet of text that is banned somewhere in the world.

http://irrepressible.info

I saw it http://www.frob.nl/ - where the text was in arabic (which I can’t read). What I could read was the english tag “Someone doesn’t want people to read this”. The idea is that if text is banned on the internet, some more privileged person can republish that text and the censorship will be undermined, and hence (presumably) halted.

Um, no.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if that text exists on the internet or not. What censorship is about is preventing people with a stake in that information or analysis from accessing the information in a timely manner. So who gives a fuck if I can see some arabic text on a blog? Does the Chinese Government care whether I read that one of their citizens is talking about sex? (Probably, but then, they’re not knocking on my door).

This campaign is a bit silly coz it does nothing to help the people affected by censorship. It appeals to privileged people with hazy ideals of right versus might.

Ok, so we had the very first Icarus Project meeting in Sydney.

Its easy to relfect on how it went now, but at the time I was unreasonably nervous! Meeting new people. Having an ‘illness’ that I don’t even know how to relate to yet, and talking about the pros and cons of meds, of support, the crapness of the mainstream support system, going in and out of hospital (voluntarily and not), going off meds and the various attitudes of doctors - from supportive, to over-prescribing.

Next meeting is in 2 weeks on 1 May, 6pm, 22 Enmore Rd.

Tonight is the first meeting of the Sydney chapter of The Icarus Project. Rock on.

6 - 8 pm
22 Enmore Road Newtown.

All mad people welcome!