BY SUSIE DAY | Whoa! I just found out that the Left Forum – a conference attracting thousands of progressive activists and scholars – is happening this month in Manhattan. That means we pinkos and queers get one last chance to liberate society through thought-provoking workshops and panels. I sure hope the Forum's organizers snap up my cutting-edge proposals for world-shattering presentations! To wit:
Click Here! – Smashing US Empire With Email Petitions.
No time to get out on the street to protest? Never heard of HR 999.03? Too busy battling clinical depression to learn all the facts on nuclear annihilation, dwindling caribou populations, and US-sponsored torture?
Click away despair and alienation with online, crisis-driven petitions!
This workshop will help you whittle down your need for direct human contact and debate, while building a desire to fill corporate and government email boxes with attention-getting, prefab letters saying NO! to oncoming disasters.
Learn how groups such as MoveOn, Amnesty International, and Physicians for Social Responsibility, by telling you how to respond to pending legislation, give you the only democratic voice you have left. Except, of course, for rigged voting machines.
BYO laptop or mouse to explore the latest clicking techniques, software, causes! Rid yourself of the unsightly “clicker's callous” with a rigorous index-finger Pilates workout. A certified AP photojournalist, laid off because he can't find political street demonstrations large enough to photograph, will be on hand to snap newsworthy pictures of you and your classmates, as you click en masse on vital issues of the day.
Should LGBTTSIQQ Anarcho-Syndicalists Get Married?
Stooges of the imperialist bourgeois “Leave-It-To-Beaver” patriarchy have, in certain “liberal” quarters, deigned to give our lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender-two-spirit-intersex-queer-and-questioning community the legal right to marry.
Bite us. We don't want scraps from Ward and June's table – we want to shove the table through Ward and June's picture window, set fire to the drapes, piss on the divan, and start the Revolution!
We demand Independence – not Codependence! We spit on engagement parties and registered silver patterns! We spit on tax breaks and the odious rights to joint property, inheritance, and hospital visitation! Granted, Tupperware gifts and a whiff of societal legitimacy might be “nice” – but who wants to overthrow the government with some politically correct, same-sex spouse nagging you to death?
How many more letters must we add to “LGBTTSIQQ” before we say, “¿¡BASTA!?”
Let's use our white, middle class privilege to get rid of our white, middle class privilege! Come join our anarcho-healing circle and discuss how we can create a world where everyone has value and is free to do whatever s/he wants. Except get married.
A Revolutionary's Guide to “The People.”
Ever wonder why The Common People are so uncommon at radical events? Ever wonder why sensitive white people sit around for hours all by themselves, discussing how they can get more “people of color” into their groups, yet won't give up an ounce of their organizational power? Ever wonder why it's easier to buy a Hostess Ding Dong than a Tofu Pup? No? Then this course is for you!
Guaranteed authentic people from “The People” will be on hand to discuss a variety of issues, including shopping, Green Cards, abortion, THE FLAG, and what their lives are like when leftist journalists aren't interviewing them for documentaries.
Includes the radical walking tour of a beauty parlor, a Popeye's Chicken and Biscuits outlet, and the parking lot behind the candy store where drug deals take place. This is a workshop designed to enable the college-educated radical to get acquainted with the folks we've been using for years as oppression statistics. Come find out why The People United – Has Yet To Be Completed.
Das Kapital – In Story and Song.
How many of you leftists have read all three volumes of Marx's “Capital?” Volume I? “The Communist Manifesto?” Know the difference between Karl and Groucho?
Let's face it, most leftists haven't read much if any of Karl Marx's writings on economy and revolution. Is that because we're lazy and stupid? NO – it's because we're artistic! This workshop will help us understand the Great Man's world-shaking concepts through dance, film, and other creative what-have-you.
One can't really understand the Workers, for instance, until one can macramé them as mere knots of labor, constrained and exploited in the dialectical basket of surplus value that cradles the toxically-fertilized hanging plant of capitalism.
Or recreate an eloquently twisted 30-car pile-up out of junkyard metal, as a diagrammatic homage to Marx's tortuous sentence structure. We have many valuable prizes and a world to win, so bring crayons, finger-paints, maracas, and anything that resembles a carbuncle. You have nothing to lose but your leotards.
You may also look for such fine presentations as:
“How To Disrupt Panels With Angry, Inane Questions For Maximum Divisiveness;”
“Garnering Celebrity Speakers For Conferences that Celebrate Equality;”
“The White Left Diaspora – From the Baader Meinhof Gang to the Weavers – Diversity in Monochrome;”
“Is the Police State Already Here or Will it Arrive Next Tuesday? – Stupid Questions We Keep Fighting Over to See Who's the Smartest;”
“When Will the '60s End? – Plaintive Queries From Former Weather Underground Members Tired Of Being Interviewed;”
“If John McCain Is Anti-Abortion, Why Does He Look Like A Talking Fetus?”
