CURRENT MISSION

I'm trying to figure out where and how I can most effectively implement my talents and experience to facilitate positive social change in the world. I'm also looking for some good vintage african funk records =)

ABOUT ME

For the past 5 years or so, I've been a community organizer in Los Angeles. I've done work with artists and activists from a lot of different communities, from the increasingly gentrified neighborhoods of Echo Park and Highland Park to the nation's largest homeless community in Skid Row. Right now I'm having a bit of crisis of faith in my work, so I'm taking a break and trying to re-assess what I am capable of doing in the world (seeing as I tend to be unnecessarily hard on myself about what I can and can't accomplish). This process began with doing some volunteering in Haiti back in April, which was fruitful, but it also left me feeling more perplexed about the work that needs to be done in the world. My hope is that I will get more answers as I travel through West Africa this summer. As an amateur highlife/palmwine/afrobeat/african jazz aficionado, I'm hoping to catch some great music while I'm out there as well.

PHILOSOPHY

Whether capitalism as an idea works or not, I think it's safe to say that its current manifestation (late stage capitalism or state-capitalism or whatever you want to call it) is unsustainable and hinges largely on the perpetuation of global inequality. I would just like to play a small part in curbing that inequality, which is a difficult enough task to take up most of my time and energy. I have also learned over the years that it's really important to take time to be with the people I love and pace myself in whatever work I set out to do, particularly when in the line of work that can never be truly finished.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

Being that I don't really have a stable living situation at the moment, I don't really have much of a couch to offer. Eventually, I plan on to settling down somewhere and hosting some people, but for now I'm just looking to meet some people around the world who can share their insight and inspiration and maybe help me out a little bit in my travels.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

None yet! I'm new to the site, but I've heard great things.

Interests

love (because as hendrix put it, "when the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace"), the struggle to create positive change in society for all oppressed and exploited peoples in all its imperfect manifestations, post-colonial literature, community organizing, writing and recording music and podcasts, trying to catalyze social movements that arise from and are based in dialogue and not dogmatism, acephalous and egalitarian group dynamics, collectivism, music and its relationship to social resistance (see: fela kuti, tropicalismo, folk music), teaching and learning, listening, developing workshops and lectures to raise awareness about the general ludicrousness of US foreign and domestic policy, the pursuit of happiness as opposed to the pursuit of property, persistent dedication to just causes in moments of extreme depression, the balance between the need to preserve indigenous cultural ideals and practices and the need to forge non-exclusive international movements that welcome all into the process of resistance (whitey should be able to join in the fun too, as long as he brings his own booze and/or apple cider), understanding the power of language and etymology, the ongoing discovery of new and inventive uses for electrical tape, education, actually using education, the elimination of false consciousness through the fusion of art and dialogue (thus my username: "artivism"), profound graffiti done by amateurs, honest concern for the well-being of strangers, ducks, obscure facts about historic people, maintaining a shamefully limited knowledge of theoretical physics but still having epic discussions about it anyway (the universe is swiss cheese containing an infinite number of infinitely large holes!... or something), zapatista coffee from chiapas, my nieces, economics (insofar as it relates to human living conditions, so nothing too esoteric), random studies on public policy that I find online.

• arts
• writing
• literature
• causes
• education
• cheese
• coffee
• traveling
• podcasts
• music
• folk music
• jazz
• economics
• teaching
• etymology
• physics
• public policy
• volunteering

Music, Movies, and Books

Movies: The Battle of Algiers, City of God, Do the Right Thing, In the Mood for Love, 2046, Amores Perros, The Lives of Others, Children of Men, The Corporation, Control Room, The Take (the one by Avi Lewis + Naomi Klein), Bus 174, Cinema Paradiso, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The Usual Suspects, Short Cuts, The Yes Men, L.A. Confidential, Grizzly Man, La Dolce Vita, Network, Y Tu Mama Tambien, Pan's Labyrinth, Lucia y el Sexo, Boyz in the Hood, Time of the Gypsies, The Holy Mountain, El Topo, Santa Sangre, Paradise Now, La Planète Sauvage, All the President's Men, Maquilapolis, Babel, The Divine Horsemen, Talk to Her, Bad Education, Who Killed the Electric Car?, Z, The Killing Fields, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Charade, North By Northwest, Rear Window, Chinatown, Citizen Kane, Dr. Strangelove, Voces Inocentes, When the Levees Broke, Goodbye Lenin, Memento, all non-butchered versions of Star Wars, any movies related to social justice, Evil Dead, Leprechaun in the Hood, Back to the motherfuckin Future.

Music: Music is in many ways the center of my life. I used to be a record store clerk before record stores became more or less extinct, and I toured around as a musician for a while before I got kinda burnt out. If you're interested in seeing what I've been listening to lately, you can check out my last.fm profile here... http://www.last.fm/user/artivism

Books:
Petals of Blood, A People's History of the United States, Things Fall Apart, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Watchmen, On Revolution, Guns, Germs, and Steel, Invisible Man, Death with Interruptions, Phoenix: A Tale of the Future, The Panther & the Lash, The Shock Doctrine, 2666: A Novel, The Dispossessed, Tropical Truth: A Story of Music and Revolution in Brazil, Collected Plays of Wole Soyinka, The Book of Questions, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Africa Is Not a Country, Harry Potter, Home of Sudden Service, Devil on the Cross, How the Mind Works, The Kingdom of God Is Within You, Brave New World, Stranger in a Strange Land, The God of Small Things, The Colonizer and the Colonized, The Tipping Point, Collapse, The Buenos Aires Affair, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Beasts of No Nation, We, Ficciones, 100 Years of Solitude, The Open Veins of Latin America, Orientalism, The Stranger, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Das Kapital, Resistance, Rebellion, and Death, Envy and Gratitude, The Tattooed Soldier, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Crying of Lot 49, The Social Contract, In the United States of Africa, On the Origin of Species, African Rhythm and African Sensibility, Hamlet, Interpreter of Maladies, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, Candide, Graceland, The Virgin of Flames, One Day of Life, Cat's Cradle, Slaughterhouse-Five, Homage to Catalonia, The Brothers Karamazov, The House of the Spirits, Gulliver's Travels, The Human Condition, Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, Brutality Garden, The Dark Knight Returns, The Fixer and Other Stories, God of Missed Connections, Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Under the Banner of Heaven, Heart of Darkness, Season of Migration to the North, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, The Bhagavad Gita, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Seeing, Blindness, The Wretched of the Earth, Black Skin, White Masks

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

During my days as a musician, I got to play a show with hip hop legends KRS-One and De La Soul, and that was pretty freakin humbling and amazing.

Teach, Learn, Share

I have a lot to teach and a lot to learn. I'm interested in anything to do with the arts or political organizing, particularly where those two fields intersect.

Countries I’ve Visited

Gambia, Haiti, India, Senegal, Spain, United Kingdom

Countries I’ve Lived In

Canada, United States

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