welcome to the year 2004 (in which i attempt to recall my actions)

gods year 2004 was an exciting one for me, evidenced by how little of it i can recall. i made it back to portland in december of 2003 or so, after spending time down in miami protesting and then coming north and seeing my family for the first time in awhile, as well as meeting my traveling friends family in ohio and going to michigan to rekindle some friendships i had made in miami. one of those friendships included emily, my current partner.

anyway, when i got back to portland i went back to my room at the mississippi house where i had sublet my room for a few months. i do not recall to whom i sublet to at that time, i sublet my room 3 or 4 times in the 5 years i lived there. i dont recall getting a job or even attempting to. i did sign up for unemployment and food stamps. both of which i received. my food stamps were coming in at $154 a month and my unemployment came to the tune of $80 a week.

beleive it or not that was more than enough for me to live on. i was working with food not bombs at the time and had plenty of free food around. i was able to pay my bills with my food stamps and i think my rent was around $180 a month. of course, i lived in a cooperative house with about 8 other people. but that was all part of the joy.

emily came to visit from michigan in april (i think). around that time we were kicking around the idea of starting a radical bookstore in the commercial space next to the house. eventually, and rather begrudgingly in the house, we agreed to start a radical bookstore. in would go on to be the blackrose collective bookstore and community free store. but it didnt come together that quickly. while emily was in town we worked on clearing out the space and setting it up to be the bookstore.

emily stayed for about a month and when she left i was happy. i know that sounds shitty to say, but i was a mover and shaker then and was happy to be able to explore and be on the town or do whatever i wanted without a guest to think about. that sounds like i would have actually had something to do but i dont actually recall doing anything. aside from working on the portland.indymedia website and other indymedia forums as well as doing a weekly food not bombs, which we proudly accomplished using only pedal power. (aside from the cooking and such.)

when june rolled around i was ready to go again. well, i dont know if i was ready, but i was going. the summer protest circuit was coming up and i fancied myself a good organizer and well versed in what it takes to make a convergence happen. the first stop was set to be san francisco for the 2004 biodevestation protest. my first protest was a biodev in sacramento, so i felt like an old hat. i wasnt, but i felt that way.

i had to figure out how to get down there. and i had to sublet my room again. and we were in the process of creating this bookstore. the sentiment in the house was that if i were going again i should just move out, because i wasnt contributing to the cooperation of the house. eventually was allowed to sublet my room again, this time on very short notice, and i guaranteed to the house that if they didnt like the person, they could kick him out and i would cover the costs of the room. also, i left my food stamp card with the house the lessen the burden. and then i found some clowns that were headed south.

and i got on their bus and went with them. i didnt have more than my messenger bag. i dont even recall if i had a laptop computer at the time, but i think i mustve. of the clowns i traveled with i only remember one of their names, waffles the clown. he had his face tattooed into clown makeup, a real diehard. we funded the trip by stopping in various places along the way to busk or spange or fly signs for money. since i didnt really have any skills for busking, i flew signs on the highway. we stopped in arcata, the redwoods, santa cruz, and maybe some other places on our way to the bay. while we were in santa cruz i did acquire my alter ego/new best friend. happy mr. clown head. a little doll that went over my hand, and we would talk to each other. he had a high pitched voice and mostly just laughed and repeated that he was happy mr clown head. he still exists, but he is packed away now.

eventually we made in to oakland, where we parked the bus. it was parked on some train tracks near an activist space that i cannot recall the name of. the night we got in, there was a large party. i spent the first few hours walking around oakland, just me and happy mr clown head. then i went back to the party and met some people and proceeded to drink. i drank alot in those days. i drank so much that i persuaded a fire dancer to allow me to dance with the poi for a moment. i assured the person that i had done this before. that was a lie. and it was all going really well for about 3 seconds and then i hit myself in the back of the head with a ball of fire. i hit myself hard too. and i had soot on my face, i gave the poi back. luckily i was undamaged.

i stayed with them in the bus (i think) that night and the next day i was shown how to sneak onto the bart and i went into san francisco. first i went to the activist convergence space and met with some folks there, saw how things were coming along and did what i could to help out. i didnt really have any technical knowledge to offer, but i had helped set two of these things up before and offered some insight. then i went to where the actually protests were to be held. i tried to look like a regular person and just walked around taking in the scene. i had a coffee or something on an upper deck of the building that the meetings were to be held in.

then i went to station 40, a space that was just being renovated by some friends of mine. i had planned to stay with them. i was there for a few days, and through the protest. i obtained a bicycle and cruised around the city, mostly between station 40 and the convergence space. i compiled some stories and published things to the internet to spread awareness of the events that were being planned and that were happening in sf. i didnt stay long, however. only a day or so after the protest i had to leave. and i know this because the next place i had to go was bowling green, ohio for the allied media conference. that started in mid-june.

i have no idea how i traveled between san francisco and ohio, i know i didnt fly because at the time i didnt have any identification so i couldnt buy or board a plane, i probably took a greyhound bus. i do know that i didnt have very much money. although i was collecting unemployment at the time the system was not as advanced as it is today. now they do direct deposit, but then they just sent checks to your address. so the checks were just piling up at my house. but i had to have some money somehow.

i came into bowling green in a storm. there were some issues flying around the united states indymedia network and portland was at the center of an argument that was mostly being waged in chat rooms and over email lists. i was going to this conference with a mission to represent the portland indymedia ethic and back up our position in a forum where, ostensibly, decisions were going to be made. i was like the vanguard. i made a few friends there and a few enemies. what is most memorable to me of the three or four days i was in bowling green was the last day.

the evens were playing a show to wrap up the conference. i had never heard the evens but was excited becasue ian mackeye formerly of minor threat and fugazi was one of the people int he band. and the venue (if you could call it that) was very intimate. it was just a room with a riser on one end. and about 300 kids packed in. i was in the back sitting on some stacked chairs, and when the evens started i was clutching my cell phone. i was expecting a phone call, from emily. she was in ann arbor only a hundred some miles away and on her way down to bowling green. i was excited to see her and had explained how to get to the room we were at.

she called when the evens were finishing a song and i answered it, happy. ian mackeye joked from the stage that i had something more important to be doing and everyone looked at me. i laughed and shushed him. then i left the room to go find emily. i think by the time we got back to the show it was over, but my joy came from seeing her again. from there, the end of june, things are kind of a blur. i had been working with some friends from olympia, helping to coordiante a march from boston to nyc in portest of the dnc and rnc conventions. so i was on my way to boston, but with little money and no transportation i dont know how i got to the east coast.

there was about a month between the end of the amc and the start of the dnc. i traveled overland, again probably by greyhound, but i really dont remember. i couldve easily caught a ride from someone at the conference. my destination was richmond, virginia. i had never been there before, but i had been working with the folks in the food not bombs movement there to organize a national fnb convergence. our idea was to have it just before the rnc in new york, but we were met with staunch resistance from the nyc fnb folks. so the idea was scrapped for the time being, but i was working hard on that convergence so i wanted to meet some of the friends that i had built up.

steve and i, on the march.

it was a fun time there, i met some people that have turned out to be great friends, and enjoyed richmond so much. from there i went to washington dc to hang out with some friends and to enjoy some of their vegan fare. i do know that i took the chinatown bus from dc to nyc. i spent the night in nyc, walking many blocks to nyu where i was meeting someone that i had been collaborating with online, she was going to let me stay in her dorm room for the night, and the next day i would catch the chinatown bus from nyc to boston. i had never been in boston before and was out of the loop a bit with the dnc organizing, i was working on the march but many of the people had been in the city for awhile working on the dnc directly. i met some people that would be firends forever and i met one person that i thought would be a friend but turned out to be an fbi informant. her name was anna.

i was attracted to her and started hanging out mostly with her and my friend adam with a host of other people that were in and about the house we stayed at in cambridge. that house was the headquarters for the dnc 2 rnc march and the black tea society there were tons of people in and out of the place, and there were benefit concerts a few times. basically it was a crazy cornucopia of anti-establishment activity. it was awesome.

the landlord of the house was a professor at boston college and for some reason he took a liking to adam and i. he invited to two of us to present to his class what the protests were about and why we were here. luckily adam went to college and was comfortable in the situation. i was a mess. nervous as i have ever been, to stand in front of a group of kids that were my age and talk to them about the anti-globilaztion movement and the futility of the two party system that has taken root in the untied states. mostly i just stood there.

he gave us $100 for the presentation and we went out to dinner at our local favorite restaurant, the pu-pu hot pot. george and a friend of his had taken us there before and it was close to the house we were staying at. eventually the protest happened. i participated in some actions, dressing up as a dnc representative and coralling a crowd of hooded protesters (abu ghraib style) in the protest pen that had been constructed. a literal cage that had armed soldiers on top that, in order to protest legally, we had to enter and then basically be locked in until the protest was over. needless to say, not many people protested inside the cage. i also participated in the critical mass.

at some point adam had met a person named sarah and she started hanging out with us when we werent hanging out with anna. it was fun. we were working on the march and participating in the dnc actions. when the dnc ended, i think the very next day, we kicked off the march from boston to nyc. the march was 258 miles long and took about thirty days. sarah was with us for portions of it and that was nice, she and i got along well. anna didnt spend anytime on the march. for me, i mostly rode a bicycle and helped cart water back and forth to the marchers from the cooking sites. it was pretty awesome.

but i was also regressing from the identity of the march. i was more isolated and spent much of my time drinking, i forget the nickname that i had achieved but it was based on the fact that i would lead a group of some people into whatever city we were in to go to a bar most nights. i do not know how i had money to support this. adam was with me for most of this and i think it hurt him more because he was a main organizer for this march and i was kind of a sideshow.

i left the mach a bit early to set some indymedia things up, including the space that many of the portland folks would be staying at in the bronx. i helped set that stuff up and sarah met me down in the city where we hung out some more. i didnt have much to do with the actual protests in new york, there were far more people organzing and protesting the rnc than the dnc. mostly i helped make media, i did participate in some street actions and some guerilla actions in the bronx. what that amounted to was me being bit by a black widow spider and taken out of commission.

this is my ankle, then.

this was a much more serious injury than i can say. it was a really ridiculous thing too, i after injury i sought treatment from the action medics and spent some time using charcoal and aromatherapy to draw out the toxins. i was advised to stay off of my leg, but i felt like i had too much to do to follow that directive. so i left and walked around to meet with some fnb folks and eventually i left to go somewhere else. and i got lost. i was walking through downtown with the a police state all around me, i was hobbling from the pain. eventually i sat in a subway fast food restaurant and called a friend of mine, explaining that i couldnt walk anymore and where i was.

she came and got me and took me to the emergency room. i checked in under a false name and was given antibiotics. a number of friends came to visit me there and it was really awesome. i was discharged after a few hours and again told to stay off my foot. so i took the subway back up to the bronx and our house. i camped out there for the rest of the action, compiling stories on the web and working with the radio folks as well as i could remotely. eventually the action tapered off and the rnc was over. there were 1000's of people in jail and the efforts of the activists were far from over, and i received a special visitor. emily visited me while i was bed ridden, but she was in town to see someone else.

we had a short meeting and then she was off. shortly after that my adam and my friend steve came to me and it was time for us to go. we were in someones car, the three of us and another friend, matt. i am not really sure what our plan was but we drove north into vrmont to visit a friend of adams, and we decided to travel overland through canada. mostly we just wanted to get out of the united states for awhile, the level of repression was so severe. but we were denied at the border, mostly becaue matt had a prior arrest but our names were probably on some list since at least adam and i had been working as organizers for events for the last year.

we ended up driving to indiana where i was deposited into the car of my parents. this was probably towards the middle of septmeber. i dont really know why i was deposited there, becuase the car was driving on to portland. while i was there, i used my parents to help me get a state id card. i didnt have enough identification to get myself one previously.

i mustve stayed there with them for a little while and then caught a flight back to portland. i had to be back in portland by october since that was when my sublet had run up. luckily when i returned i had a stack of checks worth $80 each and the house had promptly lost my food stamp card after i had given it to them. on there i had almost $800 and i was able to use some of that money to pay my bills and even part of my rent. because my house was cool like that.

i think i lived off of my unemployment for the rest of the year, and eventually got a job at the portland peace and justice center, as the outreach coordinator. i used my activist contacts to secure the job, but it turned out to not be the thing i was looking for and i was only there for a few months.

2004 had to be my most prolific year of traveling until now. i certainly participated in the most convergences and activist gatherings than ever before or since. i felt like i really grew alot as a person and met a bunch of new friends that would be around for quite awhile. but i was also very unfocused and that stretched me thin, leaving me with less of a sense of what i was doing. i also spent a great deal of time drinking and retreating. i am surprised right now that i recall as much of this summer as i do, which is why i am recounting it now. before i forget again.