Things are really starting to come together; basically I spent the whole day in meetings talking about the work that needs to be done surrounding K-dub's projects for this summer. I talked to Joe Strife, the guy who actually has access to the server, about doing daily updates from the road ... he said that we're going to use the July first-fourth tent city action to develop a good picture of how web coverage is going to be implemented.

The tent city is KWRU camping out on some as-yet-undisclosed (unselected?) abandoned lot owned by the city in order to protest the lack of affordable housing in Philly. This one is taking place in protest to the ultrapatriotic opening of the liberty center (or whatever) that's going to have all sorts of founding documents on display ... all the living presidents are invited to come, but it's still up in the air as to whether GW will be there. All us SSA kids will be camping out there, alongside other KWRU members and protesters from around the country. There's a Jackson Browne benefit concert on the first day (which I am secretly really looking forward to) and the whole thing culminates in a march to the Liberty Bell.

I went to the DC march planning meeting with Cheri Honkala and a bunch of the major organizers ... we actually met in the playroom of the hospital where her infant son is staying: about fifteen people and a baby in a twelve-by-twelve room filled with toys, sitting on chairs that are less than a foot high. The leadership broke down task forces for getting everything done for the march ... some people are working on the route, housing, water, medical supplies; some people on recruiting marchers ... I found myself assigned to convene the meeting of the media committee, for people working making a film about the march, dealing with the press, and the internet strategy. I think I really got a feeling for how responsibility is delegated and shit gets done around here ... an organization that sometimes feels very disconnected and haphazard really comes together (at the last minute) to make stuff happen when it must. I hope that I can come back to Swarthmore with some good ideas about how to organize / integrate Swarthmore Empty the Shelters and make SCDC into a coalition between more than just me and Nelson.

I hope to be able to travel to NYC on Thursday with Cheri; she's meeting with a whole bunch of national-level organizers to try to gain more support and committment to the Mississipi march. It's amazing to me that someone like her could go from being a poor single mother with no money and no respect to a poor single mother with an organization of hundereds of people under her in the space of a decade. We're supposed to focus on "plans, not personality," but her resolve and dedication really are inspiring.

OK: about this blog. I'm thinking that this fourth-grade journal style of what-did-I-do-today blogging might have been appropriate for the first week or so, but I think that I should try to have more focused entries surrounding a single theme that I pick out of the day's activities ... I'll try to do this in a way that will still be concrete and won't be too annoying. Of course, during the tent city and the march I'll be updating KWRU pages with (non-Luke-specific) daylogs; I'll link to those here. And again, my plea: keep in touch, people. I don't want this life to swallow me completely, at least not yet. I'd really like to hear from all of you.

So it was my turn to make dinner for the first time tonight; I fried some potatoes and onions in olive oil (a lot of olive oil; supposedly this was Naploeon's favorite food) and diced eggplant into some kidney beans. Large cans of generic beans and tofu are going to have to be our main sources of protein; we have a can of black-eyed peas that I think is actually a gallon. My stuff turned out alright, although I had my doubts about it at first. I think the day after tomorrow I'll make some tofu stir-fry with green peppers in orange sauce; I'm kind of excited about this.

We had a very illuminating educational today about various welfare programs and who qualifies for them; this will be useful tomorrow when I'm going to be helping to answer phone calls and do problem-solving work in the office. We also learned about how welfare reform, passed by Clinton in 1996, has imposed time limits and various other requirements. Essentially the idea was that welfare recipients were lazy and living large on their $300 a month, so the government had to force them to get to work ... this, of course, was complete bullshit; even before welfare reform, the average time spent on public assistance was only 1.7 years. Also, the kind of jobs available to people on welfare are often not sufficient to support an individual, much less a family, and they certainly don't have health benefits ... a national universal health-care plan would certainly break a lot of the barriers that keep people on welfare.

I'm looking into the purchase of a laptop for the march; if I (that is, the KWRU) got one, it might be possible to encode video on the road and do same-day updates in DIVX or something. I also figured out how to get the fax program working on the machine here at Jubliee; it involved plugging in the phone line (which had been put into the DSL modem instead of the 56k). Because of this I feel like I'm making myself useful, although I can't figure out what's wrong with the LAN at the KWRU office.

I've been thinking lately about how lucky I've been to stumble across this program, this little group of people ... I'm really having a good time, hanging out here in west philly. I feel like, despite the fact that I'm working for the summer, I'm kind of on vacation from all the other opportunities and relationships in my life that I seem to have ruined, or never been able to take advantage of ... I just hope that, at the end of the summer, I don't end up adding this experience to that ever-lengthening list.

I've been making some progress on the PHP class to print this log, but it's still not ready ... I intend to write a web updating system for it so I can make updates from any machine with Internet access at any point along the march. Daily updates could really help coordinate students and other people who want to join up, and photos could maintain a certain level of accountability as far as law enforcement is concerned (video would be better, but that will have to go through other channels, I think).

Today some of us went into an abandoned house north of Kensington and cleaned it out; there was supposed to be a family moving in today, but they backed out. This is really very understandable ... even after we cleaned out the trash and swept a little, it was still really dirty and dusty, and the toilet and the bathtub were filled with black slime. The kitchen floor was rotted to the point that it wasn't safe to walk there, and exposed carpet tacks were sticking up all around. No one would stay there unless they had absolutely no other options. Even so, there are some other people that may be moving in fairly soon.

On the drive back to Jubilee, stacked on top of each other in the back seat, we were flipping through radio stations and that one rap song was on; it's like: I know I can / be what I want to be / if I work hard at it / I'll be where I want to be. I'd heard it a lot before (haven't we all), and I got a kind of uncomfortable feeling that I never really pinned down. Today it struck me that the song, the whole idea of the American dream, is a huge lie. It's a way of blaming the poor for their situation, a way of framing poverty as a personal failing on the part of the poor. It's never been more clear to me that smart, responsible people can work hard their whole lives and still have nothing, even be homeless, yet we pretend that America is a place of infinite opportunity given enough hard work, strong values, etc. It kind of has to be that way; I mean, if being a poor person were socially acceptable, we wouldn't feel comfortable allowing them to be poor in the first place. Without the social isolation and marginalization of poverty, we wouldn't be able to let people die on the streets; therefore social success and economic success must remain in alignment.

Anyway, I think that's enough of this sort of stuff for now ... my personal political thinking is kind of a moving target right now, so I'm going to avoid putting too much in print ... maybe it will eventually collapse well enough to some idea that's already out there for me to accept a label. Really, though, I'm kind of distrustful of people who claim to operate on principle, and I don't think I want to become one; I don't think that anybody is really capable of working that way, and that's often a good thing ...

I guess I just want to provide sort of a snapshot of what's going on in my head, maybe for other students who do the program or anybody who's interested ... right now, I'm going to the Track & Turf.

Jubilee life just keeps getting better; last night was absolutely ridiculous. We decided that we needed to finish off that keg, so Celia introduced us to the power hour: one shot of beer every minute, on the minute, for an hour. Katelyn had a mix that changed tracks every sixty seconds; we all sat around the table in the living room and saturated the entire surface in rolling rock throughout the course of the night ... Celia was the only one who actually managed to do the whole hour. I only made it to like minute forty-five, and I couldn't even keep that down.

That morning we went flyering at the welfare office in Kensington. This was a sort of strange experience; a whole bunch of us white kids unloading from the elevator into a little waiting room where we almost outnumbered the people we were giving flyers to. We talked a lot about this, actually ... in the future, I guess, we're going to be more evenly mixed with other members, which I think would be a lot more effective at getting the message out.

We also talked a lot more about why the KWRU has chosen to use the language of economic human rights as its primary rallying point; one reason is that it's proactive, not reactive (not a "war on poverty"); another is that they feel that talking about the end state of their program, if there ever could be such a thing, isn't really productive at this early a stage in the movement. The phrase that Kerry used in the educational was "political pragmatism," which I really feel is a good approach. We also talked a lot about the way that sectarianism divides the left, with groups that basically are arguing for the same types of reforms quibbling over tiny political differences. Essentially the KWRU is arguing for socialism directly, with their demands, without going through the baggage that the label carries with it. They're winning real reforms on the ground right now, and there's no need for us to muddy the waters by getting ahead of ourselves.

Today I woke up essentially without a hangover, because people forced me to drink enough water (and the puking). We put on some Dylan and made pancakes, which was awesome, even though Celia cut her finger open ("the inside of my finger looks really cool!").

Our ideas for summer projects are shaping up pretty well; Garrett wants to work up some literature (like a student handbook, maybe), I want to put together a student movement site, we're working on (lack of) health care documentation, putting together a health-care reality tour ... today is kind of a relaxed day, though; we're staying at the house all day, doing different meetings and educationals. In honor of friday the thirteenth I think maybe we'll watch some freaky movies or something.

I think I'm also going to be working pretty closely with some people at the Drexel University TV station, and trying to get some documentary footage on the march and of the student activities leading up to it (using my digital8 handicam). I might also get the chance to do some production assistance work for the show that the KWRU produces there. This will be really, really cool.

The party was really nice; very laid-back, kind of quiet, but with a lot of interesting people ... I think I had more fun than at any of the Swat parties I've been to. I twirled fire a couple times, the second time after I had had a couple of beers; it turns out that this was a really bad idea. I didn't set myself on fire or anything; I really only messed up once, and I just lost a little arm hair. Still, an important lesson learned. Everyone was duly impressed; I met a lot of cool kids, including one girl who's starting at RISDe in the fall. I wish I had gotton Dance Dance Revolution working by then, but the event didn't seem lacking ... maybe I should really try to wean myself a bit from these little performances and gimmicks I rely on so heavily to interact with people, but I really don't know what I would replace them with.

The cops got called eventually, by this lady from across the street who thought we were being too loud on for a tuesday ... she was like "we have to get up in the morning, we're not in college anymore ...." Nobody really freaked out, though, and they didn't come inside, so it was ok. The party wasn't really much of a fundraising success (it was supposed to help pay fines for a bunch of people who got arrested at an anti-war protest), though; we only made about a hundred dollars, and the keg of rolling rock (still half-full, in the bathtub) cost about sixty.

This morning I had the hangover of my life ... I had my hand on the latch of the car door for the whole ride over to Tara's, ready to puke out the side of the vehicle at a moment's notice. (At this point Lee shared with us that she had once thrown up all over herself while actually _driving_ a car, in seventh grade, at the age of thirteen, after taking a hit off a forty. God damn.*) We had an educational at Tara's house, during/after which her tree kids climbed all over Chuck (who is trans) asking "are you a boy or a girl?" (They eventually reached a verdict of "heshe" and left it at that; Chuck really wasn't offended at all.)

That afternoon there was a huge debate surrounding K-dub's use of the American flag as a symbol. Mostly they do it because a lot of poor people have a strong emotional connection with it as a symbol of the people (rather than the government), and because it's hard to for police to beat up people who are carrying a flag. I personally feel that a symbol means nothing on its own, and that it would be stupid to cede that whole chunk of national symbolism to the right wing. Garrett feels that it alienates a lot of people who associate the flag with repression, which is clearly true. He's really not a reformist at all, though; in fact, he advocates an armed uprising against the government ... that's really not a place that I can go, I don't think. It's true, though, that the KWRU isn't exactly straightforward about its broader politics (basically socialism) but keeps the focus on issues surrounding economic human rights; this kind of bothers me, too, in some way, although I understand the political reasons behind it.

Anyway, there's a lot to be done around here ... I don't know how long this little honeymoon of daily entries is going to last. I'm also starting to think that maybe I'm going to have to do some editing before I give this to the Lang Center (who, incidently, hasn't made good on the grant yet). I think I'm going to go to bed.

* she says it was actually eighth grade, and vodka.

Today Peter, Katelyn, Garrett, Laura and I did the weekly food collection at the distribution center. I was actually the only one who had done it before (spring break), so I found myself explaining how to go about it ... the whole thing feels like sort of a scam: we break up into two teams, one for each side of this huge parking lot, which is lined with trucks backed up to produce stores on concrete platforms. Little forklifts are driving all over the place, lots of men bustling around, a lot of noise. Each team has one or two carriers and a girl to ask for the food; Laura (who is really very cute) would sort of meekly approach the manager, playing with her hair clip, and say something like "we're collecting for a soup kitchen, and, um ...." The more attractive the asker, the more / better food we get; this time we got a lot of stuff like peaches and potatoes that really hadn't gone bad at all.

Of course, the food doesn't ever go to a soup kitchen; instead we stood out on Rio's front porch in north philly and yelled for people to come over, handing out bags of food ... I was struck, as I had been last time, how the fact that there was something of a real community accessible to us (everybody was out on their porches to hear us) made the effort possible. Air-conditioned white people really don't have the same connection with each other in a suburban development.

This time we forgot to make flyers, which they normally pass out with the bags of food ... we just told people the name of the organization and to show up at the office if they ever needed anything, like help dealing with their case worker. It seems like a lot of what the KWRU does on a daily basis is try to get the welfare offices to give people ther stuff that they actually qualify for, helping people manipulate the system as effectively as possible. Really it's painfully obvious that the way that politicians talk about welfare makes no sense at all; so-called "welfare-to-work" reforms are killing people, literally.

I've also been falling in love with Ronald Reagan all over again ... it turns out that homelessness wasn't even really a problem in America before the 1980's, when he cut about two-thirds of the housing programs in America bit by bit.

Anyway, I finally went out to pick up a router in Garret's car; I'm starting to learn the highways a little bit better. The office depot was actually really far away, and it took me a while to find it ... frankly Philly driving scares me a little, but I think I'm getting more used to it. Yay parallel parking. My computer is now online.

I learned how to tap a keg today, which was exciting, and we're about to get down to the business of drinking it, which should be even more so ... seeing as I smell like potatoes, I think I'm going to take a shower.

Today we went on a "reality tour" of Kensington with Mariluz (a major KWRU organizer). Mostly we went over some of the founding events of the Union; starting a tent city in an abandonded lot at 4th and Lehigh, taking over an empty Catholic church, breaking into houses and getting arrested. I'd heard a lot of it before, but it really is a compelling story. There's real strength in these people, real practicality and concreteness, a sort of substance over style ... this is something I really admire.

Later we were called unexpectedly to help prepare a member's house for a HUD inspection tomorrow morning ... apparently they'd been housing a lot more people in the space than the law permits, and needed to move everyone out, put in some additional furniture, clean, etc. I found myself painting over chipped spots on the moulding while listening to a Bell & Sebastian CD that one of the other kids brought in from his car. It was kind of a weird scene ... a whole troop of little white kids descending on the house, washing the walls, hauling out junk, setting up furniture to trick the inspectors.

After a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich for lunch, we went back to the house and divided up chores, did "personal maps," and ate dinner (some cool puerto rican mini-pancake type stuff that Joanna whipped out). We watched a video with Willie (Education Director) which was pretty good; because the VCR wasn't working right we had to use my computer's TV-in, which was also fantastically validating. The discussion afterward was pretty intense, talking about welfare reform, the civil rights movement and King's assassination, universal health care ... Willie was saying things like "in the end, life is about your relationships with other people, and helping other people." This is cheesy, but its true, I think. More than anything this summer I want to learn how to escape the kind of self-obsession that's so pervasive in myself and at Swat, something that I feel is the source of a lot of deadness and sterility in my own life. I think it really helps to have something to believe in.

A lot of the kids here have been doing this kind of work for a long time (like organizing an anti-war protest that shut down traffic in Rochester for two days); it makes me feel a little out of my depth. I do feel like I have something to conribute, though, within my niche ... thank god for the Internet. Still no router, but we're working on it.

There's going to be a huge fundraising party here at Jubilee tomorrow night. I really wanted to play DDR, but it looks like I didn't bring the Playstation video cable I need. I'm definitely doing the fire-twirling, though. In fact, it turns out that at least one other person was planning on doing some kind of pyro shit at the party --- it would be really cool to have more than one person at once.

I have kind of mixed feelings about weblogs, but I guess I've always wanted to try it; the grant I got from the Lang Center requires me to keep a journal in including the "mundane details" of my experience, so I figured it was a good excuse. I've afraid that it's going to be extremely boring to read, but I guess no one's forcing you. I'll try not to write too much pure introspection (a "mood" icon implementation is not really on the horizon) and stick to what happens.

Right now this page is mostly static, but I'm working on some PHP to do it for me. XML support is really kind of messy (no direct-to-DOM-object parsing in the version on merlin, if you care) so it's not as easy as I imagined it would be. There's also more planned for this webspace than just my blog, but I don't know how quickly that's going to happen.

My grandfather warned me before I left Ohio to try to stay away from "bad influences," which he enumerated as "alchohol, sex, and drugs." I've already taken the first step onto that slippery slope of corruption; the first thing I did after moving in was sit on the front porch of Jubilee and split a forty with the other interns. Everybody I met is pretty cool, almost all from small liberal arts schools (Hampshire, Sarah Lawrence, Bard ...) and sporting above-average haircuts.

The house itself is huge, even cut in half ... looks like it was built in the nineteenth century, and it was definitely retrofitted for electricity. Zapatos (the cat) is the only permanent resident; he's been here longer than anyone else ... I think he might actually kind of like me now, after I let him out after he'd been locked in the basement all night. It's a lot cleaner than when I stayed in it over spring break, and it has DSL now, so I'm pretty happy. There's also a fantastic Thai place at the end of the street, a Radioshack not too far away ... Anne (the student director) says that she can find me a bike, so I should be able to get around. Maybe I'll actually get to know Philly this summer, now that I'm no longer in the Swat bubble, which is something I always felt guilty about.

My computer isn't actually connected to the Internet yet, awaiting the acquisition of a router, but I have it set up. I don't really know what I'll be working on at this point but it will probably involve encoding some video and doing some site revamps. This makes me feel validated in buying my dual 1900+'s and a gig of RAM, even if the damned thing does sound like a freight train ... if I can get some use out of my digital video camera, that would be awesome, too. I hope that their ISP gives them PHP and SQL support, which would let me do cooler stuff, but I haven't talked to the people that handle that just yet.

The official beginning of the summer program is tonight ... Celia, the main summer program person, is in the process of compiling intimidating binders for all of us. I guess the internship really is pretty intensive, with a lot of educationals, canvassing, protests, manning the phones, etc. I hope I manage to drop a few pounds with all this activity (and the extremely small food budget). Anyhow, I'm glad to leave my half-life in Sandusky and start doing something for a change. Keep in touch, everybody --- reading my blog is not an excuse not to correspond (the address here is 1014 S 47th, Phil. PA 19143; my e-mail is still lsmith1@swarthmore.edu).