What is Radical Parenting?

Came across this article: Extreme Parenting: What Radical Parents Do Better Than You... and it got me to thinking about how I define myself as a radical father, and what's so radical about the way that I parent? So here are some thoughts, enjoy them:

I thought it was a little dumbed down... but I guess that's the point. At least its giving gender-neutral parenting a bit of limelight, even if its getting boxed as 'radical' when its more widespread than most folks would imagine.

To me, radical parenting means parenting for your child with their perspective in mind, with the knowledge and toolbox of an adult at hand to draw lessons from in a shared experiential mutually educational relationship. It means humbling and educating oneself in order to educate and raise a creature capable of changing our world for the better. In order to do this one must invariably challenge the given norms of our day and age, from rampant capitalist consumerism, to coercive schooling, cultural imperialism, and general apathy and ignorance.

Developing the ability to teach yourself these lessons in order to impart them to your child while juggling work and responsibilities and family and life and flying by the seat of your pants is the hard part.

thanks for the pic Microcosm!
I thought it was befitting

I attempt to hold these intentions in my heart and mind while juxtaposing them with the hurdles of generational poverty, corruption, crime, gender bias, domestic violence, and an increasingly authoritarian, militarized society and government in bed with huge corporate conglomerates waging wars on drugs and terror and effectively wiping out the bio-diveristy and general well-being of our planet at a rapid pace. Then I try not to scream, or you primal-screamers can scream at this part, and swallow my pride and fear and forge and forage ahead, into this future, hand in hand with our children.

And here I still have the pipe-dream of raising non-violent, anti-authoritarian little tree-hugging people without an evil bone in their bodies... when the sad truth of the matter is that I should probably ramp up their radical sustainable eco-activist herbal Ewok monkeywrenching training camp time so that they're ready to go out and kick the shit out of capitalism with a smartphone and a laser rifle by age twelve... (you got that Technoccult?)

I better get a move on.

Here's the Radical Parenting Reading List from wiki's infoshop. Check with the folks at Last Word Books, Olympia's awesome radical independent bookstore, they've probably got some of 'em in stock.

Parenting in the Occupy Movement, or Give That Kid a Megaphone!

I haven't personally spent much time at any of the Occupy Protests, though I do support the Movement's general principles and aims.  In lieu of joining in the festivities (we're more Direct Action advocates, I suppose, though both hands are necessary in a revolution) Last Word has donated $200 worth of gift certificates to Occupy Olympia, as well as sent down some clothes and blankets. And any cold philosophically inclined Occupiers are welcome to come down and Occupy Last Word Books' armchair for some stimulating conversation and some hot tea.

I am amazed and entertained by how divided people are on the issue of protests and children... and how quick to judge folks can be. It's either scabies, child-porn pushing police, random jack-offs and I-Can't-Believe-You'd-Put-Your-Child-In-That-Sort-Of-Situation mentalities, or it's the dawn of a new age, with ten year old labor organizers and soapbox speakers spouting anti-capitalist rhetoric with the best of 'em before joining in the drum circle. I have one thing to say to you people: the world is not this black and white. Go down to the nearest Occupy Protest, take some food and a blanket and a good book and have a few conversations. That's how minds are changed.

In the meantime, here's some interesting links regarding parenting and the Occupy Movement:

"OCCUPY" PARENTING: How Parents Have Been Sharing Occupy Wall Street With Their Children

"Occupy" Movement Parents Forum Post (Anyone can change their mind)

What the Occupy Movement Could Learn From Us Parents

Not All Movements Are Created Equal

Occupy Eugene Extends Reach to Children

'Children's Brigade' Joins Occupy Wall Street On Two-Month Anniversary

Occupy Denver: Protest With Kids

Occupy Children: Kids Night Sleepover at Zuccotti Park in NYC

Radical Fatherhood in the 21st Century

     I wanted to take a moment to congratulate my friend, editor, and fellow Rad Dad Tomas for all his hard work over the past several years on Rad Dad out of Berkeley. Rad Dad won Utne's 'Zine of the Year in 2010, Best of the Bay in 2011, and came to print as a book this year as well.

     I'm proud to have written for half a dozen issues of the 'zine. Keep up the good work Tomas!     

And this is a nice little project I just found recently:

Re-post from From the blog Cuntastic.org:

Just wanted to give a shout out to a fabulous rad-parent-zinester across the oceans over in Fiji, Lara at Tricycle Zine Distro!  We’re thrilled that CUNTastic is now being distro’d by Tricycle, along with other titles that are the backbone of any radical parenting library.

Here’s some info about her 3 new exciting projects:

Tricycle Zine Distro was created to distribute and inspire the writing of radical parent/ing* zines and other zines/resources useful to parents, caregivers and allies. 

Building Blocs Zine: parenting, movement and little folk is a compilation zine of radical parenting* challenges, experiences and reflections.  The zine is open to contributions from parents, caregivers, children and allies .The theme for the inaugural issue is “Firsts.”

Raising Rebellion is a zine I started writing when I was pregnant. I wrote the first issue to share with my unborn fetus, family, friends and friendly folk. My plan is to keep writing as life with Ruby unfolds.

*Radical Parenting is an imperfect term and is meant here as inclusive and diverse – an exploration of parenting styles that value respect, trust, autonomy, diversity, non-oppression, learning, love and revolution.

For more info, or to submit a piece for the upcoming issue of Building Blocs, or if you have a zine or resource you’d like to distro through Tricycle, email Lara atutopia@riseup.net.

Fukushima radiation fears: children near nuclear plant to be given monitors Dosimeters to be given to 34,000 children in city 45 miles from Tepco plan

Tens of thousands of children living near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant are to be given personal radiation monitors, as concern grows over the long-term health effects of exposure to radiation.

Dosimeters will be given to 34,000 children aged between four and 15 living in Fukushima city, 45 miles from the plant, after abnormally high radiation readings were recorded in the area.

The risks posed by radiation from the world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl have already driven 80,000 people from homes within 12 miles of the plant. Many of the child evacuees from communities that now lie empty attend schools in Fukushima, a city of 300,000 people.

Local authorities have provided monitors to schools outside the exclusion zone, but this is the first time they have been supplied to individual pupils. Data from the dosimeters will be analysed to assess the risks posed by cumulative radiation exposure.

The move, the latest concession to growing parental anger over patchy official information about the risks of radiation exposure, came as the company that operates the plant faced repeated verbal attacks at a rowdy annual shareholders' meeting in Tokyo.

More than 9,000 investors attended the meeting, held at a hotel under heavy police guard, with many berating Tokyo Electric Power [Tepco] executives over their response to the 11 March tsunami, which crashed into the plant and knocked out vital cooling systems to reactors.

The crisis has knocked 85% off the value of Tepco shares and resulted in annual losses of $15bn (£9.4bn). The company also faces a compensation bill that could exceed $100bn, while a government plan to help fund damages claims has yet to be put to a parliamentary vote.

Read More...

And, of course:

Child’s risk of cancer from radiation is 10-100 times higher than an adult who had same exposure (VIDEO)

Bill Ayers and Pirate Papa on Radical Parenting and So Much More

A slightly condensed version of this interview will soon be published in Rad Dad #17 on the eve of the San Francisco Anarchist Bookfair. Despite some continuity issues due to conducting an interview over the thankless medium of e-mail, I thought folks might enjoy the interview in its entirety. Please feel free to send me any comments, questions or advice on these pertinent subjects, take care of those kiddies and stay Radical!

_______________________________

PP: I’m chatting with Bill Ayers, Professor at the University of Illinois and former member of the infamous Weather Underground, which carried out a direct action bombing campaign against United States Government buildings in protest of the Vietnam War and U.S. imperialism. For a period of ten years Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn lived on the lam from the Federal Government, eventually having two children before resurfacing in early 1980. In 1973, after the existence of COINTELPRO, a covert FBI program used to gather information on, as well as discredit radicals, came to light, Ayers was exonerated, but remained underground with Dohrn for an additional seven years. Dohrn eventually was fined and served three years probation for her acts with the Weather Underground. Both are now highly regarded experts in their fields, Ayers in Education and Dohrn in Law, both with an emphasis on juveniles and families.

I use the terms “underground”, “counterculture”, “anarchist”, and “alternative” within this interview... but these are all just synonyms for the same group of outsiders who have always been around. I’m sure Bill got called a dirty commie or a godless socialist more times than I’ve been called a hippy or an anarchist. Good old labels, just got to live with them.

____________________________________________________________________

BA: Well, and resist them—in your own life and in the lives of others.

PP: Just to set the stage here for our readers of Rad Dad and Pirate Papa, charges against you were lessened in 1973, but when were they dropped or dealt with completely? Bernadine surrendered to the FBI in 1980... so that leaves about ten years that you two were on the run, three years with one child then the last year with two, correct?

BA: Zayd, our oldest child, was born in 1977, and Malik in 1980. We adopted a third child, Chesa, in 1981 when his parents were arrested and sentenced to life in prison.

PP: How did you and Bernadine come to the decision to have children while living underground?

BA: I’d been an early childhood teacher for many years, and we both had strong relationships with children. We reached a point in our lives when if we were to start our own family, it was now or never. We chose now.

PP: How did having children affect your eventual choice to turn yourselves in?

BA: I’m not sure. Certainly the rhythm of our lives became centered on the awesome responsibility we took on by choosing to bring new life into the world.

PP: As a father, what were your personal reasons for having kids and how did this decision alter or reinforce your political ideals?

BA: Reason isn’t the exact register. Passion, desire, ecstasy, exuberance, awe…But raising these children was the best thing we’ve ever done, the least conflicted and the purest, the most astonishing and energizing, surprising and humanizing (followed by the experience of caring for our elderly and finally dying parents in our home for many years after our kids had left home).

PP: What were those last few years like living underground with kids? What were some of the ways this affected your family? I would imagine you had strict guidelines that all parties had to live by, structured fictions to deliver under certain circumstances? What else? What was your support community like? What resources were available to you? Did you both have good, steady jobs and sources of income or were you relying on the help of friends and family?

BA: No, none of that. We were quite poor really, sketchy incomes, work in the shadow economy mostly. But we had lots of friends and family, many of whom knew our former identities, some who didn’t. We were who we were, living in the margins but with our values and commitments intact, avoiding political demonstrations, of course, but open about everything but a few delicate details. And being focused on the lives of your children does not require money or equipment or stuff. We hung out in parks and museums and felt we owned them. The only investment the kids want is emotional, thoughtful attention, and money can actually obfuscate that.

PP: Once you had resurfaced, did your children attend public school? Did you ever homeschool or unschool them at any point? Did you or they ever get denied certain resources or opportunities because of your radical past?

BA: They attended public school in New York City, and when we moved to Chicago, the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. Certainly our past has meant that Bernadine, for example, has never been admitted to the bar, but I don’t think it’s had any negative impact on any of us (who needs the stinkin’ bar to be happy?).

PP: What advice would you offer to young parents in trouble with the law, or forced to live in hiding for whatever reason? What resources are available to them without exposing themselves to watchful eyes?

BA: Breathe, hydrate, eat real food, sweat, sing, and then keep on breathing. The world is large, and most people are compassionate and decent. Be a full human being, active and participating with others, and don’t hide or slink around.

PP: Before you had children of your own, what were your views on kids, parenting, over-population and their inter-relationship with politics?

BA: I taught little kids starting in 1965. I oppose poverty, war, empire, capitalism. Those are problems that we can and must address.

PP: How closely has the government continued to follow your work since you resurfaced and became an upstanding citizen?

BA: Ask them.

PP: At one point in your book Fugitive Days you describe your lives underground as “extending childhood indefinitely.” I was hoping you could talk about that idea a bit more.

BA: I was being glib: we were going to live our Peter Pan complex forever. I still feel connected intimately to my childhood.

PP: How do you view parenting within the contemporary anarchist/alternative/peace/activism movement?

BA: What do you mean?

PP: How do you think this intersection has changed since you raised children within the counter-culture movements of the 1970s and 1980s?

BA: No idea.

PP: For young parents who have not yet built some sort of infrastructure to financially support their families within a capitalist society, it can be quite hard to remain an effective part of whatever social movements they may belong to. These voices and opinions are seldom heard due to hectic schedules, lives based on eking out a meager living for one's family, and a general lack of communal resources available for struggling parents. While small, dedicated groups of activists are working hard to combat some of the anti-breeder philosophies within these movements and provide child care at anarchist book fairs and other gatherings, what other strategies could we use to better include parents in our ongoing political dialogues and activities?

BA: Build your community—right here, right now, just this. Share everything. Pay attention. The greatest gift we give our children id the gift of integrity, and that requires authentic dialogue starting in the first minute of life: I see you, I hear you, I understand. Don’t let anyone—the school, the teacher, the neighbor, the comrade—disrupt that precious and irreplaceable thing.

PP: How can parents support their families and still find the time and energy and monies necessary to tune in, turn on, drop out or some combination of the three?

BA: Priorities—live your values, and include the kids.

PP: In your book A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court you make the simple but astute observation that “violence against children generates violent children.” Most violence, I would go so far as to say, is a direct result of poverty and the myriad difficulties which ensue. What, then, are some simple ways that we, as communities and as individuals, can support parents and children around us, as we strive together for lasting social change? How can we effectively combat violence and poverty both on a local level and on a national and international scope?

Your role within our educational system since the early 1980s speaks for itself and you obviously carefully chose which ways to re-engage the system, approaching matters from an educational standpoint with an eye on the juvenile justice system. What have you learned about social justice and creative ways to engage the system from within, as well as from the outside? How does this relate to the youth of today and their parents?

What are some strategies that you’ve learned for engaging with troubled youth? With young parents?

How do you see racism rearing its ugly head in the 21^st century and what anti-racist parenting tactics can we employ to combat its negative effects for future generations?

Do you think there is enough direct action being taken within the activist communities today?

BA: No.

PP: Armed in hindsight by your parental history and assuming you could turn back the clock, would you change anything? Would you still embrace direct action and the destruction of government property to prove your political points and draw attention to neglected issues?

BA: It’s quite impossible to make any causal claims in regard to something as massive, complex, and indistinct as “changing the world.” In the 1960’s a French journalist asked the Chinese premier Chou En Lai how he calculated the impact of the 18^th Century French revolution on the Chinese revolution of the 20^th Century. His response: It’s too soon to tell. Quite.

People make all kinds of quick judgments on history, and most turn out to be bullshit.

If you take perhaps our most straight forward and easily understood goals, you would have to say we failed to achieve them: we wanted to end a particular war, and even after much sacrifice and struggle and success at persuading people to oppose it, the war ground on for ten excruciating years, and 3 million people were thrown into the furnaces of death; and then we wanted to end empire and usher in a world of equality and mutual recognition, a world without war, and look where we are. We set out to create a society built on a foundation of racial justice, and decades later, massive disparities (life expectancy, infant mortality, incarceration, school success, employment) are still etched along the color line, still reflecting the astonishing power of white supremacy; and then we wanted to eradicate poverty and upend economic exploitation, and the yawning chasm between haves and have-nots intensifies.

From there it gets both murkier and lighter: We wanted to say goodbye to schooling that’s arid, dry, self-referencing and self-satisfied, to teaching as a trivial pursuit of the obvious, to deference, didactism, ego and complacency in a heartless world, to prisons and border guards and walls—whether in Palestine or in Texas—and to quarantines, deletions, and closures. Goodbye to all that. We wanted to welcome the unknown, to say hello to jumping off the edge, to endlessly learning how to live again and how to love anew, to the dance of the dialectic. We tried to embrace relentless curiosity, simple acts of kindness, the complexity of humanity, the wonder of it all, struggle and the poetics of resistance, history, and agency, world peace and inner peace. We wanted to embrace the surprising and contradictory harmonies of love at all times, stunning in all the hopes it held out for a better world. We wanted free love and free land, free food and free housing, dancing in the streets and daring to taste it all with a kiss...I guess we have a ways to go there as well.

So my expansive and expanding dreams are not realized, of course, not yet, not in my lifetime, but neither are they dimmed nor diminished. I’ve always lived with one foot in the mud and muck of the world as it is, and another foot striving toward a world that could be, but is not yet. Like other freedom lovers, I dwell in possibility.

PP: What advice would you offer to young activists flirting with the dangers of direct action? How about young parents? What can they do, short of taking risks that might endanger the safety of their children or their ability to provide for their familes?

BA: The world is as it is, a mass of contradictions and tragedies, rich with beauty and human accomplishment and possibility, vicious with human denial—an organism that both drains us and replenishes us, gives us life and kills us. What gets me up and going every morning is all the unnecessary suffering, the undeserved pain. I choose to love the world and embrace the moment, but my love is neither romantic nor blind. Rather it’s edged with horror and anger, charged with new discoveries and understandings.

It’s great to feel the energy of rising expectations, to hear the sounds of heavy chains dropping from our minds and our imaginations, to see the shining faces of hope everywhere. Like last year’s election, it’s a moment to embrace, a moment to hold onto in tough times. But as I said to students on election night, there’s no sense trying to read the new leader’s mind—it’s up to us now to get busy transforming ourselves, linking up to change the world.

After all, Lyndon Johnson, the most effective politician of his generation, was never involved in the Black Freedom Movement, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt wasn’t a labor leader. Abraham Lincoln didn’t even join an abolitionist political party, but reality forced upon him the freeing of an enslaved people. Each of these three in fact responded to grassroots movements and reality on the ground to do the right thing when it mattered.

And it’s to movements on the ground that we turn as we think beyond the election or the administration, and consider the problems and possibilities of building a future dramatically and decisively different from today. We must agitate for democracy and egalitarianism, press harder for human rights and a sustainable world, link the demands that animate us—for peace and education and universal health care and lifetime guarantees of income, against war and incarceration and surveillance—learn to build a new society through our collective self-transformations and our limited everyday struggles. We must seek ways to become real actors and authentic subjects in our own history.

In the heat of the primary battle, Senator Obama was asked which candidate he thought Martin Luther King Jr. would support, and he responded that Reverend King would not likely endorse any of them, because he’d be in the streets building a movement for justice. That’s a good place to begin again, both in the US, in Australia, and around the world.

Become radicals (go to the root of things), study, learn, organize, talk to strangers, mobilize, display your ethical aspirations publicly. On the important issues of the last two centuries, political radicals from Jane Addams and Emma Goldman, John Brown and Harriet Tubman, to Eugene Debs and WEB DuBois have gotten it right. The legacy continues with the work of Ella Baker and Septima Clark, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X 40 years ago, and on up to today. Of course as Ella Baker said, “Martin didn’t create the Movement, the Movement created Martin,” and it’s true: for every remembered leader there were hundreds, thousands putting their shoulders on history’s wheel. We might reflect then on the people as they make and remake history.

I have no nostalgia for the so-called 60’s, now thoroughly commodified and sold back to us as myth and symbol. It happened—and it was neither as brilliant and ecstatic as some would have it, nor the devil’s own workshop as others insist—move on. Whatever it was, it remains prelude to the necessary changes and fundamental upheavals just ahead. Let’s get busy living, loving, linking arms right now.

The tools are everywhere—humor and art, protest and spectacle, the quiet, patient intervention and the angry and urgent thrust—and the rhythm of and recipe for activism is always the same: we open our eyes and look unblinkingly at the world as we find it; we are astonished by the beauty and horrified at the suffering all around us; we dive into the wreckage and swim as hard as we can toward a distant and indistinct shore; we dry ourselves off, doubt that our efforts made enough difference, and so we rethink, recalibrate, look again, and dive in once more. Repeat for a lifetime.

Radical Parenting

Just noticed that my blog made it on the Radical Parenting Wikipedia page! Ahhh, fame and fortune are sure to soon follow.

But seriously, what's wrong with me? I thought I was a writer but these past few years have been rather pathetic. Stay tuned though, as I have an interview in the works with Bill Ayers, yes of the Weather Underground, on parenting, counterculture and educating for social justice. Between this and Last Earth Distro I'm sure to make it on some terrorist watch lists. I just hope they'll still let me fly to Hawaii.

Parenting as a Green Anarchist

I consider myself to be a pirate in some contemporary sense of the word. This is the lens through which I try to view our world. I am a nice pirate, where others rape and pillage I salvage and sow; where others sack and burn I liberate and grow. I pirate software, vegetables, herbs, bulk food aisles at corporate grocery stores, garbage, books, clothes, thrift stores, free boxes. I find homes for books lost on these high seas of a culture that, for the most part, doesn't read. I steal from the rich and give to the poor whenever possible. I try to be free in the fullest sense of the word and dream always of furthering that freedom.

I live with my twin three year old daughters on an old 250 acre farm outside of Shelton, Washington at the inner-most tip of Puget Sound. I try to live as a Green Rebel and a Pirate in this commodified world of disposable consumables. Does this mean I live a zero-sum harmonious existence with my local ecosystem, feeding wild animals by hand and growing or scavenging all my food while refusing to pay taxes and stockpiling an enormous underground arms cache of sustainably gathered weapons of creation? Well... not yet.

So I try instead to let these simple ideas bleed into my everyday interactions with nature and with the individuals around me. I try to be anti-authoritarian with my children for the most part, but every parent raises their voice or demands some sort of obedience from their kids, because that is the world we live in, try as we might to escape it. But I have become acutely aware of what a collaborative process parenting is and, as surely as I am raising two beautiful, intelligent, gentle girls in this crazy world, they are raising and molding a new kind of parent in me. And these new kinds of people we are helping each other foster and create and assemble from old bones will be the same people faced with solving the growing problems of tomorrow and bridging our polarized communities with what common ground we have: our children and our desire for them to be healthy and survive.

I vaguely recall mulling over possible titles for my fatherhood blog before settling on Pirate Papa: An Anarcho-Green Journal of D.(o) I.(t) Y.(ourself) Parenting. The ones I remember are: Running with Scissors , Don't Tell Mommy, and Hip-Pop. When I use words like 'Anarcho-Green' I am attempting to bend accepted norms by sheer use of language, I am attempting to lure in folks who are curious about these ideologies (even while I am obviously alienating whole other groups), I am attempting to extract everything I deem to be of value to contemporary parenting from both movements and synergize it into a harmonious, sustainable whole systems anti-corporate naturally organic approach to parenting and child-rearing in this day and age.

I relate 'Anarchism' to parenting in several very simple ways: I firmly believe that large-scale industrial capitalism is inherently bad for babies; I think all children are inherently anarchists and that these qualities need to be nurtured and respected rather than repressed; I advocate a refusal to follow accepted norms (without massive research) as applied to my children's diet, medicine, entertainment, education, etc.; I think that families are best served and children best reared by as much economic and political freedom as possible. I believe in creative problem solving, involving children in political activism, and being as anti-corporate, anti-capitalist and anti-standard as possible. I believe we need localized communities operating on a face-to-face basis in equilibrium with each other and their surroundings without official hierarchies and centralized establishments to arbitrate and rule our lives. We have learned from this system of coercion, capitalism, domination and patriarchy that it does not work, does not jive with the natural human spirit or bodily rhythms. Now it’s time to try something else.

I relate 'Green' to parenting thusly: I see today's generic diet and monocropped culture as definitely deadly to the kids and mothers and fathers of the future (that's all of us); I see lowering the ecological footprint of today's typical American family as a fundamental first step to saving tomorrow's children, as well as maximizing our own limited time here on the planet; I believe that, as a species, we require a healthy chunk of re-wilding in order to return to some sustainable balance with nature as well as with our own collective psyche; I believe that a resurgence to THE LOCAL for food and medical needs for our families and elderly and children will best sustain our communities and revitalize our economies with the inherently unique culture granted them by place.

If we don’t want a world full of standardized testing and rulers and competition then we need children who can live outside the box and be the most unique individuals they can be. If that is what they want to do. And I think it will be. If we want a world without bars on its windows then, more than ever, will we need children who are free.

Further Reading:

http://www.grizzlybird.net/greenparenting.html

http://motheranarchy.blogspot.com/

http://piratepapa.blogspot.com/2007/01/too-cool-for-kids-how-anarchist-bigotry.html

http://piratepapa.blogspot.com/2005/12/what-methods-of-child-rearing-do.html

http://piratepapa.blogspot.com/2007/02/revolutionary-parenting.html

http://piratepapa.blogspot.com/2007/01/taking-children-seriously-and-anarchy.html

http://piratepapa.blogspot.com/2007/05/taking-children-seriously-future-of.html

This essay was first published by Tomas in Rad Dad #7, July/August 2007.

My Anarchist Parenting Hero

Sorry China, my review is still pending. But I frickin' love the book! So here, I'm reposting this other review just for you. Come visit us again sometime. We're still here while you're shooting to stardom. You deserve it.

The Future Generation
China Martens Created Her New Book the Way She Raised Her Daughter--One Day at a Time

By Violet Glaze

If you went to a punk show in Baltimore in the early '90s, you remember Clover Martens. She was the only toddler in attendance, a wispy-haired imp in Goodwill sundresses darting in and out of the crowd of slam dancers and malcontents. Her supermodel-tall mom, China, was always with her, available for a quick snuggle or suckle but otherwise letting her daughter zip around at her own whim.

There was sometimes talk that China Martens didn't have a steady partner to help raise her daughter, that her anarchist principles meant she wasn't going to enroll Clover in school or immunize her. One of two things (or sometimes both) crossed the minds of the callow suburban punks who'd never seen this model of parenting before: That kid is going to have an amazing life, or Is she going to turn out all right?

She turned out great. Seated next to her mom at the dining room table at a reporter's house, the now 19-year-old Nadja (nee Clover) Martens is much curvier and darker-haired than her toddler self would have indicated, but you can tell it's her in the almond-y slant of her eyes and the unselfconscious way she owns the space she occupies, in marked contrast to the cringing unease affected by some teenage girls. She says "please" and "thank you" and asks to interrupt when she's got a good idea. If she's any measure of the validity of an anti-authoritarian rearing, there ought to be Emma Goldman memorial day care centers nationwide.

"This is my new realization of my parent stage right now--of how incredibly great it is," China Martens beams. Her voice is gentle and tentative--it sucks any intimidation out of her prodigious height and enviable slimness. "Like, when you have a baby they think you're the best, and they always want to be near you," she continues. "And then preadolescent--I can't speak for everybody, but I think it's pretty common you start to not like your parents and everything your parents like is not cool. And so when they become a young adult, for the first time in your life you experience [your child] kind of balanced. They don't love you too much, they don't hate you too much, you can have conversations, you have history and in-jokes. Nobody ever told me how great it would be to have a young adult for a child."

That realization is the culmination not only of China's experience as a parent, but as creator of the zine The Future Generation, one of the first publications dedicated to alternative child-rearing. This week, Atomic Book Co. (co-owned by erstwhile City Paper contributor Benn Ray) releases a paperback collection/retrospective of China's magnum opus, a two-decade endeavor that addresses the question "What is an anarchist parent?"

"That's a hard question," China acknowledges, addressing the common conundrum of defining a political movement that resists all dogma and decree. "When you are a parent, by nature you have some control and power over this person who's smaller than you. So [anarchist parenting is] such an oxymoron in some ways. But I think that's what's so interesting about it, because that's a very practical subject." In other words, there's no room for ivory-tower hypothesizing when kids in your care have immediate needs. China agrees: "Parenting is in-your-face, daily experience."

China, who herself grew up in a "very maternal, loving family" with her peripatetically employed government-worker dad and housewife mom, addressed that immediacy in The Future Generation's very first photocopied issue in April 1990, from how the struggle to snap one last button on a fussy infant's clothes can be a microcosm of military force vs. diplomacy, to a love poem to her infant daughter: "can't say it here/ but we are revolutionaries." It's heady with the unfettered spirit of China's first years as a young mom.

"I had this very romantic, different reasoning," she recalls. "I will have the perfect witch baby, she doesn't really belong to anybody, we don't belong to anybody and we're free."

The experiment showed fruit early. Clover grew into a gentle child who was better behaved than any other kid during story time at the library. But as the years went on, China, who dropped out of high school (a decision she still stands behind: "It was the first and best radical thing I ever did."), found it increasingly difficult to provide for her daughter. After staying on welfare for eight years until the Clinton-era reforms kicked her off (just as she had just gone back to college to earn a nursing degree) she worked a variety of low-prestige jobs that could never provide enough cash. By the zine's ninth issue, she documented a humiliating venture to the welfare offices, and the pang she felt at the now preteen Clover's ubiquitous question, "When we have money, can we (fill in the blank)?"

"This is intensely embarrassing," Nadja admits with a sheepish grin. "Because when your mom is this anarchist cool writer mom, then you become, `Oh, let's go to the mall, and get a crush on all those'--I don't know any of the cutesy guys names anymore, but you know, those heartthrobs. You want to be a cheerleader and date the captain of the football team." China says she knew her daughter had undergone a sea change when Nadja declared she would never shop at thrift stores anymore because "the clothes smell."

"I went through that phase and it was intensely embarrassing," Nadja blushes. "I was just outrageously bad."

"By 16, you were great," China assures her, with a mom's forgiveness.

After positive experiences in free alternative schools, Nadja experienced tremendous culture shock when China finally did enroll her in public school in the second grade. "I couldn't take those people bossing me around," Nadja recalls. "I went through a phase where I was totally the outlaw child." And she hit a rocky patch in adolescence experimenting with the same identity crises and chemical opportunities common to many teenagers. But due to the self-discipline instilled by her anti-authoritarian rearing, she curtailed her destructive activities when their benefits became dubious.

"You think about [drugs and alcohol], What has it really brought me? A whole bunch of bad memories? And then you just stop," Nadja says. "I think for my friends who live in a house where [the parents] don't want you to do that, you do it anyway. But you do it in a more irresponsible way, a more chaos-type way, whereas I did that and I learned. I didn't go to any other crazy drug, I didn't get pregnant, because basically, you just learn."

"I also think an anarchist parent offers more to their child of being alive and doing cool stuff," adds China, who let Nadja make her own decisions on nearly every front. "Every year it's like, `Do you want to go to school or do you not [want to] go to school?' So I feel like in [an anarchist] family you have more of a model of freedom of different opportunities you can do."

Like her mother, Nadja also dropped out of high school when its limitations became too frustrating. "For years [my mom's] telling me, `High school destroys you, why would you want to go to high school?' And [then] she was like, `Do you really want to drop out of high school?'" Nadja gently jibes.

"Because I had gotten used to her conservative self," China counters. "She was always talking about, `I'm going to go to college.' So I just wanted to make sure there wasn't some kind of problem. She seemed so different, so I was concerned." Sure enough, after a stint in an alternative high school, Nadja opted instead for a GED and enrolled at Baltimore City Community College, from where she's hoping to transfer to a film studies program at UMBC. She's also started her own zine, Dildo, subtitled "Masturbation for your brain," a serendipitous continuation of "the family business" that tickles her mom.

"It's been a long trip, this parenting thing," China reflects. "And I think that's why the book's going to be really exciting because it goes through all these different eras."

"I feel kind of like a movie star, because you can really see me growing up," Nadja concurs.

Compiling The Future Generation into a book was not China's idea. "I'm a very shy person." she says. "I feel like I'm a very--it's not the right word, but like an unofficial person. Not a person who's in the media. I like the informalness of zines. So I don't think I would have ever approached anybody on my own."

After China was invited to read with Ariel Gore (founder of Hip Mama, the most prominent alternative parenting publication) on a book tour, The Future Generation started attracting more attention from places like WYPR's The Signal and from Rachel Whang, co-owner of Atomic Books and the Atomic Book Co. "When I came back from the book tour, Rachel was like, `We want to put out your first book,'" China says.

With the help of Gore, activist/friend Vicky Law, and suggestions from Nadja, China sifted through 18 years of typewritten journal entries, original cartoons, birthing photos from compatriots, and culture-jammed ads for baby wares to form the book's text. "[The zine] just wasn't really meant to be a book," she says of the herculean effort. "It was before the internet, so I would reprint essays. I was researching things in the library and reprinting things from books. I was trying to foster a network, and communication, and stuff for us to share, and it's all Xeroxed and cut-and-paste goodness." The finished book preserves some of the DIY feel of the original but has a much snappier layout that impresses China to no end. "It looks so good," she gushes.

Nadja is grown and China says she's not as much of an "active parent." ("When you're the mother of a teenager, you're wiped out. It does a number to you.") So China is refocusing her efforts on building that kind of all-ages community spirit in the counterculture.

"We [alternative parents] can't do this on our own," she says. "We fall through the holes and we wind up struggling in more mainstream things. So that's been really important to me, to build community, to not focus on nuclear families per se." After all, she has no regrets about the unconventional path she's taken raising her daughter. "Being a single mom, I got to explore and grow on my own," China says.

"Well," Nadja says as a vulnerable smile creeps across her face and everyone in the room knows what she's about to say, "You were growing with me."

Alternative Medicine in Danger!

Speak Up For Health Freedom
by Owen Waters

You wouldn't think it could happen in the USA.

"The land of the brave and the free" is about to become a lot
less free unless enough of the brave stand up and voice their
opinions by April 30th.

The Food and Drug Administration plans to pass laws to
"protect" you from alternative health care, complementary
medicine and natural supplements.

If the FDA passes these proposed laws, you will no longer be
able to buy vitamins, visit a chiropractor, acupuncturist or
massage therapist... UNLESS you first obtain permission from a
medical doctor.

Now, I don't know how much your M.D. knows about natural
health care. Most of the doctors that I've met so far know
nothing beyond how to select the most capable, poisonous drug
to SUPPRESS the symptoms of illness. I have yet to hear one
talk about actually CURING an illness.

If this legislation passes, you will no longer be free to make
your own natural health care choices. The medical doctor from
whom you will HAVE to seek permission will have no knowledge
whatsoever of the many natural therapies which actually help to
CURE illnesses.

Make no mistake about it. While medicine has made great
strides in the last few decades, we are still very much in the
MEDICAL DARK AGES.

Alternative and complementary medicine IS the future. It is
from these fields that the miracle cures of tomorrow will
emerge... unless these emerging alternatives are squashed and
you are left in the tender care of the poisonous drug industry
and their Medical Doctor sales force.

In fact, this thinly-disguised ploy for power over your body
sounds more like the brainchild of a greedy drug industry
rather than the public servants whose duty it is to protect
you. With this legislation, they plan to protect you so
vigorously that, should you try to work around it, you will
face fines and prison.

Time is running out. The period for public comments on this
proposal ends on April 30, 2007.

The Health Freedom USA organization has made the public
comments process easy with a pre-defined petition to the FDA.
Just add your name to the list and you'll be joining hands with
millions of caring people just like yourself.

Either visit their web site at www.HealthFreedomUSA.org or,
better yet, use this direct link to their active campaign:

http://tinyurl.com/2u7ghc

Raising a Working-Class Culture

Building a radical working class culture is part of the aim of many activists, unionists, and workers. For us in the Industrial Workers of the World, that idea is part of our very preamble: we say that “By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.” But it is not only our workplaces that need reorganization and solidarity: it’s also our homes and families, no matter what they look like. Women and single parents are especially hard hit by the way in which capitalism considers childrearing a ‘personal choice’ with no bearing on employer responsibilities. Pregnant women are pressured to leave decent jobs, and after giving birth find it increasingly difficult to find a job that will pay their bills. No parent wants to give up their children, but our society makes it intensely difficult to both have children and care for them. This burden falls disproportionately on women. Working women are 41% more likely to live in poverty than men, according to a study published by policy research center Legal Momentum. Another way of looking at this same statistic is to note that of all the adults living in extreme poverty - defined as making less than half of the poverty standard - sixty percent are women.

Childcare is a part of this problem. Parents who need to work to pay for housing, clothing, and groceries need to pay for childcare, and the average monthly cost of childcare in 2003 was $340. Single women are again hit disproportionately by this problem. Although men like the author of this sentence may talk a lot about gender equality and feminism, we rarely pull equal weight in the home, whether the work involved is the raising of our own children or the doing of the dishes. Even in dual-income families, women still do the vast majority of this ‘reproductive labor.’ Increasingly, we recognize the importance of supporting parents and children in this culture. Once they have children, new parents - especially mothers - often find themselves marginalized and overworked by the very movements that they helped build. Dependable childcare is often not provided at events. This is a problem for all parents, but women are perhaps the hardest hit. Across nearly every category, women still do the vast bulk of childraising. While women are doing this most vital of labors, radical men tend to have more relative freedom to engage in public work, union organizing, or activism. By default, men continue to dominate our institutions, set our priorities, and find themselves as the most active members of our union... Read More at the Embassy of Arcturus

a-parenting@lists.mutualaid.org

An awesome discussion group I've known about for awhile now but just got around to joining. So I'm stealing their welcome letter and sharing it with ya'll. Makes me want to say: See we're not all commie-slackers, Louie! Louie is this guy who drinks across the street from my bookstore and ducks his head in to yell: "Godless Commies!" at anyone inside. This one's for you, Louie.

"Anarchist Parenting" is a forum dedicated to the sharing of practices and experiences which relate towards non-coercive parenting, child care and community support (or building such support structures) in a society in which strong emphasis is placed on hierarchy, domination and isolation of the nuclear family.

This is a place intended for the discussion of how parents and other child caregivers do and should treat and relate to children and young people, while focusing on the anarchist perspective. This forum also explores how various forms of hierarchy and domination, such as the State, capitalism and patriarchy, affect and relate to child-raising. This is also a place to exchange ideas on how to overcome the hierarchy and domination that exists in the area of parenting and child care.

Though it may touch on it, this is not specifically a forum for the discussion of schooling or educational approaches. Nor is this a forum for the discussion of anarchism or youth liberation in general.

This e-mail list exists to have an informative, respectful, and open discussion about anarchist parenting. With this being the case, it must be clear that anyone who persists in behavior contrary to this will be kicked and banned from the list. Here are some clear examples
of the behavior I am talking about:

- flaming or personally insulting other list members (including guilt-tripping others about their parenting methods)

- inhibiting a clear understanding of anarchism by continually insisting that anarchism is "pro-capitalism" or "pro-chaos".

- spamming the list with commercial advertisements
______________________________

___________ You may be interested in joining some other e-mail discussion lists that are indirectly related to anarchist parenting. Some of these lists are:

The TCS List, dedicated to discussing Taking Children Seriously and it's implications. To subscribe to this list, send a message to: listserv@listserv.aol.com saying (in the body of the message)

subscribe TCS your-first-name your-last-name

then follow the instructions to confirm your subscription.

The Radical Unschoolers List, dedicated to all families who choose to radically unschool their children. To subscribe to this list, just send a blank message to: RUL-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

The Anarchist Education List - "Discussion of various facets of anarchist thought as relates specifically to education." To join, send an email to: majordomo@boink.clark.net with the words: "subscribe anoked-l" in the BODY of the message.

The Anarchist Teachers list A list for anarchist and anti-authoritarian teachers, educators, schoolworkers, free skool instructors, and educational workers. You don't have to teach a class
in anarchism to join. If you teach math, but consider yourself an anarchist, please feel free to join. If you work in a school cafeteria, you can also join.

To subscribe, send an email to: lists@tao.ca with the message: "subscribe teachers" in the body of the message.

The Organise class struggle anarchist list, dedicated to discussing class struggle anarchism and related matters. To join this list, please go to: http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/org_list.html And read the Organise List Statement.

Revolutionary Childcare

Very interesting, thanks for the link Blog Green.

...Organizing themselves and imagining strategies to defeat the Architects of Despair was not an easy task for these mamas. They came from different places and spoke different languages. Sora was from Chile; Olivia was a black woman whose family lived in Bushwick for as long as she could remember; Celia was from Ecuador, and there were other mamas who came from around the world. Despite their differences, they created a new organization called Pachamama: the Bushwick Childcare Cooperative.

Pachamama means something like “Mother Earth” in Aymara, an Incan language. It was a good name because it reflected the Latin American roots of many of the mothers, yet still had the word “mama” in it, so people who spoke English could understand the name too. With a room full of toys and games in the Sista II Sista office, and with lots of determination, they invited more mamas to join them in raising their children together…Read More...

And another article on the same topic from Zapagringo.

More links and articles:

Regeneración Childcare NYC is a network of awesome childcare volunteers in New York City. We provide childcare to facilitate the participation of low-income mothers of color in building movements for collective liberation.

How Collective Childcare Liberated Women in Maoist China

Children of Che: Childcare and education in Cuba - An interesting book I came across awhile back.

Community Child Care Co-operative is a not-for-profit organisation established in 1978 to promote, support and advocate for quality children’s services, meeting the needs of children, their families and the community. - God, Australia is so cool.

Sustainable Sex Toys - A Revolution Between the Sheets

Now this is what I'm talkin' about. Living in Olympia, I know a lot of girls who have gone glass... but they usually espoused local economy or support-your-local-glass-blower reasoning, not enviro/health/what the hell am I putting in my cooter? logic. There are a ton of links on these various articles too for the blossoming green-kink in all of us. Solar vibrators? Sweet. Thanks to Treehugger, we now have a few alternatives to choose from:

How to Buy a Green Sex Toy - So you eat organic veggies, drive a hybrid, and use eco-friendly detergent? What about sex toys? Make sure you are sitting comfortably to learn about what chemicals you may be taking to bed with you. Do you dare to go green between your organic sheets? TreeHuggerTV gets the sweet lowdown with a report inspired by writer Emily Gertz. The phthalates found in traditional sex toys can cause cancer, damage our reproductive systems, impair sperm, and damage the planet. Watch the vox pops in the streets as people realise that the objects they’ve been using to pleasure themselves and their partners might have longer terms effects on their bodies than they wanted. Carolyn Riccardi, Education Coordinator at Babeland, gives us a tour of PVC-free green sex toys that keep us sexy and healthy. Love the earth while you make love!

Sustainable Sex Toys - For treehuggers, it can be hard to get through the day without guilty, pre-occupied micro-decisions. You might regretfully take a cab rather than the bus, or grab Styrofoam take-away instead of just sitting down and eating from a plate. In the bedroom, it can be an accomplishment to wade through all of the cultural pollutants and just enjoy ambivalence-free pleasures. So, once you’ve happily integrated one into your life, who wants to worry about a carcinogenic dildo? Or non-biodegradable paddles whose ultimate punishment will mean an eternity of landfill stink? Not sexy. We have assembled an array of toys and info for you and your partner(s) in crime! Be sure and let us know what we’ve missed.


How to Green Your Sex Life - Whether you’re single and playing the field, settled down with that special someone, or someplace in between, most of us consider good, satisfying, sexy sex an important part of this complete breakfast. It might not be the first thing we think of while working towards a sustainable and graceful life on this fragile planet, but there’s a lot we can do to make our sex lives greener. In the process of greening the ecological footprint of our love making, we might also open up some new doors to deeper pleasure, satisfaction, and romantic connection.

Naughty by Nature: Ever thought about the toxins in your sex toys? - Many popular erotic toys are made of polyvinyl chlorides (PVC) -- plastics long decried by eco-activists for the toxins released during their manufacture and disposal -- and softened with phthalates, a controversial family of chemicals. These include invitingly soft "jelly" or "cyberskin" items, which have grown popular in the last decade or so, says Carol Queen, Ph.D., "staff sexologist" for the San Francisco-based adult toy boutique Good Vibrations. "It's actually difficult for a store today to carry plenty of items and yet avoid PVC," Queen says. "Its use has gotten pretty ubiquitous among the large purveyors, because it's cheap and easy to work with."

Top 25 Censored News Stories of 2007

image reprinted with permission of Peter Kuper

I feel like this has direct bearing on all parents living in this friggin' solar system. Read on, thanks Project Censored!

#1 Future of Internet Debate Ignored by Media
#2 Halliburton Charged with Selling Nuclear Technologies to Iran
#3 Oceans of the World in Extreme Danger
#4 Hunger and Homelessness Increasing in the US
#5 High-Tech Genocide in Congo
#6 Federal Whistleblower Protection in Jeopardy
#7 US Operatives Torture Detainees to Death in Afghanistan and Iraq
#8 Pentagon Exempt from Freedom of Information Act
#9 The World Bank Funds Israel-Palestine Wall #10 Expanded Air War in Iraq Kills More Civilians
#11 Dangers of Genetically Modified Food Confirmed
#12 Pentagon Plans to Build New Landmines
#13 New Evidence Establishes Dangers of Roundup
#14 Homeland Security Contracts KBR to Build Detention Centers in the US
#15 Chemical Industry is EPA's Primary Research Partner
#16 Ecuador and Mexico Defy US on International Criminal Court
#17 Iraq Invasion Promotes OPEC Agenda
#18 Physicist Challenges Official 9-11 Story
#19 Destruction of Rainforests Worst Ever
#20 Bottled Water: A Global Environmental Problem
#21 Gold Mining Threatens Ancient Andean Glaciers
#22 $Billions in Homeland Security Spending Undisclosed
#23 US Oil Targets Kyoto in Europe
#24 Cheney's Halliburton Stock Rose Over 3000 Percent Last Year
#25 US Military in Paraguay Threatens Region

Beyond Primetime: Will Media Help Grow Healthier Kids?

The Kids And The Media Conference 2007 just finished in New York City, awesome info for any rational, intelligent parent raising children into this nightmare world. Below are some notes of mine from a media literacy workshop which my business partners from Last Word Books and I delivered at the Olympia Public Library several years ago. Thanks Dadventure for the link!

dictionary definitions of ‘media’ and ‘literacy’

media – plural of medium

medium – a channel of communication;

a publication, or broadcast, that carries advertising

there we go, as early as my 1971 Webster’s Dictionary, advertising is inextricably linked to media

literacy – the quality or state of being literate

literate – educated, cultured, the ability to read and write

media literacy is defined as “the development of skills to empower persons to be both critical thinkers and creative producers of an increasingly wide range of messages using image, language & sound.”

now we’ve all heard Marshall McLuhan’s famous aphorism: “The medium is the message.” So, how the message is conveyed is just as important, if not more so, than what it has to say.

now remember, media is a representation of reality, only one representation, not the representation. We are representations of reality, you and me and everyone here. And media is a constructed representation, a machine, not a human being.

one of my primary arguments is that the person sitting next to you is just as valid a source of news as a newspaper these days and they don’t cost $1.50 on Sundays. And really, what good is reading the newspaper if you don’t talk to anyone about what you’ve just read? Where does your media come from?

Check your sources. 1st hand info is more reliable than 2nd hand info. Like the game telephone, each conduit thru which a piece of news passes is a filter, a lens through which that piece of news can be distorted, whether it be by accident (misinformation) or on purpose (disinformation). Take everything with a grain of salt and research all sides of an argument.

Know this: Media literacy does not give you the answers. It gives you the ability to ask the right questions…and the left questions. How often do we question things as opposed to accepting them on blind faith?

Media Literacy is also defined as: “The ability to access, analyze, evaluate and communicate messages in a wide variety of forms.” The ability to communicate across cultural, social and economic boundaries, the ability to read and write and indeed begin to rewrite the world itself, and to be a good writer or reader, one must have a love for life as well as a love for language. Bad journalism can love language while disrespecting life, can be well written but distort the facts, be persuasive towards its points but ultimately dishonest. Rachel Carson, one of the most powerful figures on the Environmental Front throughout the 20th century said: “You must ask yourselves: Who Speaks? And Why?” What media sources do you find biased and how and why do you deem them so?

Context is crucial. Reported Israeli deaths versus unreported Palestinian deaths is a great example of media bias. What are the motives and political agendas behind the media? Who’s not being heard? Was anything taken out of context? To what end? Indeed, content and intent are two very different things. Look beyond the letters, look past the flashing lights, read in between the lines and listen through the sounds and background music. Media has ulterior motives.

In 1977, entertainment news averaged 15% of total content on televised evening news; by 1997 that number rose to 43% of total content. Celebrity gossip, movie advertisements, name brand clothing and products pushed on daily sit-coms.

Why is control of public information moved into the hands of the private sector? Why is our news controlled by corporations looking out for number one? How does mainstream media define patriotism? How do media and politics interact? If media literacy is about receiving information from a wide variety of sources, then why is our mass media controlled by eleven companies? I, for one, would rather receive my news from four million people as opposed to four.

Change starts small, understanding media helps you to better understand your neighbor’s point of view, regardless of whether or not you agree with them. Just talk to people, that’s all I ask. I know I’ve asked a lot of questions but we do have the tools to find the answers.