A quick goodbye to my beloved grandfather (Pop Pop) a loyal worker for NASA (which poisoned his lungs with Asbestosis) a lifelong farmer, an all around good ‘ole boy, a recovered alcoholic and my only real father: Raphael S. Lowe.

And hello to the thousands of you still checking in from Google images. I left that last post up as a kind of welcome and hello.  Say hello in more detail at amovingtrain@gmail.com

Since my unexpected return to the suburbs I have been reminded of how seductive this insane culture is.

I was talking to my best friend a few years ago on the phone; we were talking about the stress of daily life. Something I often say when thinking about the stress of working jobs we hate, sitting in traffic and so on is, “I’m just going to run away and join the Indians.”

Which he responded within one second with, “Yeah, if you want to freeze to death in the winter or starve.”  As if indigenous people were just rolling around in near freezing mud eating their own finger nails before the glorious liberators of Europe came to “Civilize” them!

Another moment with my buddy was when we mutually witnessed the sight of automated check-outs at his local grocery store for the first time. I sighed and said, “Another job and life down the drain.” To which he said, “No. It’s progress. Things are getting easier everyday.”

And he’s right. Ish. It is more convenient…if you can afford to shop there. I’ll have to finish this train of thought tomorrow night.

Back to my slide back to the suburbs:

No matter how horrific the obvious reality of the world is, suburban, “middle class” culture spins it all as an undeniable, positive march towards a dreamland. Where, “WHAT APPEARS IS GOOD;  WHAT IS GOOD APPEARS.”–Guy Debord

So back while I was daily driving to work through Bethesda Maryland, I heard this song almost everyday and thought of my friend’s response to our moments together. Here is the song and after my response:

Everything is going to be OK, you see, suddenly I see

Sea to shining sea, a hill and a shining city, always new always free

To view the march of Progress everything is out of sight!

And out of mind. The experts say that there’s plenty of time so I’m gonna get mine

So suddenly I see, so free, just me; and you just me

Just “gimmie gimmie!”

Just don’t look in the periphery

MUCH more tomorrow.

I’ll be back with my own stuff soon.  I haven’t mentioned Iraq in along time:

Full confession: I didn’t know that much about Dr. Chomsky. However, I must pay respect to the unknown (and known outside of me) contributions that her very existence has given to the common good and our (now) higher knowledge. The Chomsky family has given the world of the upper-classes a window into how to live a life of grace, solidarity and to attempt a sincere commitment to justice.

And as a gift to us in the working classes, we’ve been given (for almost nothing) a frame of reference, history and a language to help guide our liberation. Mrs. and Mr. Chomsky could have (with their intellects and positions) chosen very different lives for themselves. They stayed (and stood) with us. This is inspiringly unusual.

Others will write more detailed tributes. I want to offer this small tribute to the Chomsky family in their time of horrible pain and say thank you to the memory of Carol Chomsky and to Noam Chomsky and family. We’re all sorry for your pain and thank you all for your collective dedication.

In Solidarity

Maxwell Black

As many of you know I ventured up to New York City late last week to put my new camera to good use filming “Radical America’s Homeboy” Mickey Z in Astoria. I’m so happy I went. I got to meet actual “expendables” Keir and James in the human freaking flesh! I met up and coming folk machine Val Turner (Bonus alert: mega-cute!) And, yes comrades, I met Michele and Mickey Z. I can safely report that Mr. Z is in fact the real deal and seeing the two of them as such a revolutionary, genuine and yet tender duo was an inspiration.

[Warning: don’t ever fuck with Zed in Michele’s presence. Yes, Mickey is like a ninja or whatever, but every time someone got too loud upstairs during his talk she turned into like a mama freaking Grizzly! Viva.]

As goofy as the above imagery is, I request that you watch all of the following videos in there entirety and straight through. It builds nicely. It is funny, tragic, heartbreaking and inspiring, (he didn’t call it “Stand-Up tragedy” for nothing!) So here it is and I’m incredibly proud to be a part of:

“Myth America: war, elections and our way of life”

View part 3-5 by clicking below
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Since I’ve declared this “Political Prisoner Fun Week” over on Rejection08 I’ve decided to focus on my favorite political prisoner David Gilbert.

He’s been shunned and mostly forgotten by the Left but I just think he’s the bee’s knees! While many of us obviously want the immediate release of Mumia Abu-Jamal because he is more than likely innocent, the problem with Gilbert is that, well…he’s guilty as sin! After a life in the Civil Rights movement, SDS and then the Weather Underground he joined up with the Black Liberation Army. Here is a basic explanation of the BLA from Wikipedia:

The Black Liberation Army (BLA) was an underground, black nationalist-Marxist militant organization that operated in the United States from 1971 to 1981. Composed largely of former Black Panthers (BPP), the organization’s program was one of “armed struggle” and its stated goal was to “take up arms for the liberation and self-determination of black people in the United States.”^[1] To this end, members carried out a series of bombings, robberies (what participants termed “expropriations“) and prison breaks.

FUN!

Follow the arrows and read more!

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As many of you know I’m a big Zed fan. However I’m also incredibly envious of him! Not only is he a better writer and seems to have his shit much more together than me, he also has lots of cool moving objects on his blog that I don’t have dammit! In an attempt to “sex up” this page with my own cool moving objects I scoured the internet to no avail. So today I’ve decided just to steal his for the day. Yippee! Here we go:

See what happens when you rape a baby in God’s land

See what happens when you burn an SUV in the land of the free

Watch out for psychopaths

Speaking of the ‘Urban Caveman’

Here’s the good news, the Bad Days Will End

Emma Goldman sez, “Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think.”

More cool moving stuff!

Oh Humans…

If you like what you see here, then make a “donation.”

Teehee! xoxo Max

Happy Monday! Here is a little taste of the piece I’m working on “O’ Joyous Treason”:

“Tonight let’s steal the Liberty Bell and smelt it down. Of course we gonna make plowshares, but first we must fashion the swords! We gonna get free officers, thats my fuckin’ word.”

Fun! I’m taking my time with it. Those of you who had the misfortune of reading my “Pitchforks and Torches” piece know what happens when I rush. In other news I just picked up the Stephanie McMillan and Derrick Jensen comic book “As the World Burns: 50 Simple Things You Can Do To Stay In Denial. It’s a real hoot! You can pick it up here.

Here is a little sample of McMillan’s work:

Be sure to come by tomorrow!

Whenever I’m feeling uninspired or down I know it’s time to bust out the Ginsberg! I ran this on MySpace a couple of weeks ago when I was going through a bit of a rough patch and people seemed to really enjoy it, so here it is. The first is a four minute film of him reading a poem he wrote in a plane coming from Prague–after being kicked out–on his way to England. It’s fantastic! He takes shots at Capitalism and Communism. The Second thing is the entire text of his famous poem “Howl.” If you’ve never read it put on your seatbelt! If it’s already one of your faves, read it anyway, it’s different each time. Here is the film:

[Note: This is my first Transmission from work! During nearly the entire existence of this website I’ve been blocked from the internet. Well, me and my co-worker finally found a way around it. Expect much more consistent work here from now on! Oh, it’s on. P.S. with all of this extra time I should now be able to finish a new essay.]

To read “HOWL” click read more now:

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This is an excerpt from Ken Knabb’s online work at www.bopsecrets.org. There is plenty to debate about here, but it is an outstanding critique of the radical world in 1972. Have fun!

Critique Of the New Left Movement

By Ken Knabb

The Movement in General

. . . With all too few exceptions the “democracy” of the New Left was a myth. . . . As for a participatory democracy that would break down the separation between decision and execution, this was present only among a few small groups (for example, some of the earliest agitational experiments in the South) and, very briefly, in such massive actions as the spontaneous surrounding of the police car during the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. Usually whatever democracy there was lasted just long enough to elect a steering committee. . . .

Such democracy as did exist in the New Left organizations cannot be separated from its lack of subversive content. The early SDS maintained a democratized marketplace of ideas which were only the ideas of a democratized marketplace.

This plethora of fragmentary issues finds its echo in the desire for decentralization and leaderlessness (which is less the absence of leaders than the creation of the conditions for leaders to take over) within SDS chapters. . . . Many . . . militants have seen in the relative autonomy of SDS chapters not the early forms of another hierarchical organization — which it is — but a healthy rejection of hierarchies, cell bosses, party chairmen, secretaries. [Robert Chasse, The Power of Negative Thinking, or Robin Hood Rides Again.]

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Endgame: Volumes I and II

Whether one agrees or disagrees, is comfortable with or not comfortable with Jensen’s work, as Mumia Abu-Jamal wrote:
“Jensen raises vital questions that must be asked, and, moreover, must be answered. In this mad venture we are all complicit, if only in our silence. Jensen shatters that silence.”

Endgame: 20 Premises

Premise One: Civilization is not and can never be sustainable. This is especially true for industrial civilization.

Premise Two: Traditional communities do not often voluntarily give up or sell the resources on which their communities are based until their communities have been destroyed. They also do not willingly allow their landbases to be damaged so that other resources—gold, oil, and so on—can be extracted. It follows that those who want the resources will do what they can to destroy traditional communities.

Premise Three: Our way of living—industrial civilization—is based on, requires, and would collapse very quickly without persistent and widespread violence.

Premise Four: Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims.

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