I am back in the real world now, for the first time in over a week. Plugged back into the matrix. Going to the usual places to get my veggie juice and cappuccino. Pick up the mail and packages from the last week. Going back to the office. Talking to the average people on the street. Asking them how we did over the last six days. This is more of an anecdotal analysis. Which I think is important. Although in a few days we will all be briefed by Pyle with a very detailed media analysis which will tell us how we faired in the eyes of the people on a global scale. But from what I have gathered so far here in Miami from your average person is this: we succeeded in so far as we got the message across that “free trade or the FTAA” was a bad thing to some people and that people were protesting it. people also seemed to understand why it could be bad, danger to the environment, taking advantage of workers in poorer countries, and a potential of losing jobs in America. but people also walked away with the following perceptions that “it is a good thing that the protestors did not cause a lot of violence and disrupt the talks” [this is amazing when you break it down and think about it---aprox 35 to 50 men get together in a private, no-public-access meeting to discuss the future of over 800 million people and the average person on the street feels like it’s a good thing that “the protestors” weren't successful in shutting down the city and breaking the meeting up. this goes to show how easy it is to control people to feel exactly how you want them to feel but how they don't want to feel but they just don't know it—keep them uninformed and they won't know that they aren't on your side. And also continue to control the media to focus on the ideas of “protestors” and “demonstrations” rather than “the people” and also ideas like “violence” and “riots” and “anarchists” rather than “our rights” or “human rights” or “civil liberties” or “keeping our jobs” or “protecting our environment.”

Here is an example: a recent email I received from a friend on holiday:

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxxxx@aol.com
Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2003 xx:xx PM
To: xxxxxxxx@transcendence.com
Subject: Ola!

“>My dearest Fishy,
From Ixtapa ... relaxing and really enjoying being lazy and laid back ... hope all is well with you and that the riots have calmed down. I fly out to Orlando on Friday........”

And my response:

HI Love,

I am glad you are having fun in Ixtapa! Good times indeed. They were not riots. They were "the people" taking to the streets to try to defend all of our rights against the evil empire that is destroying the planet. Just so you know:) Same thing that happened in your beautiful city of Seattle back in '99.

Have fun in Mexico (where all the American jobs are going faster than you can say margarita!)
Love Me

Back in the office people are like “hey what happened to you? I saw you on the news? Are you o.k.?” I asked an associate in my office building “so Luis tell me honestly, did you get the perception from the last week that “the American people” were out there fighting for all of our rights against the evil empire? Or did you get an impression that there were just anarchists in the streets trying to cause riots and being trouble makers?” his answer? “Both. I think that it appears that there are some people that were there who cared about poor people and the environment. But the general perception is that they are freaks or hippies or anarchists and there isn't anything we can do anyway to stop what is inevitably happening.”

He is also telling me as I type that if we go your way and we don't have free trade structures around the world that we’d have to pretty much take back everything we own because most of it is made in some third world South American or Pacific Rim country slave labor factory already. Of course my answer is o.k. then fine, lets return most of the shit we have, or better yet, lets just demand decent labor laws in other countries as a pre-requisite for doing business with them, rather than what we do now, which is the opposite---we do business with them precisely because they don't have decent labor laws yet so we can take advantage of their people... something worth fighting for certainly. I just don't know as Luis and I keep talking if its something that we will ever win. Even Luis who is a pretty cool and kind and caring person is so hardcore capitalist that his attitude is hey man fuck it. if those people are willing to work for thirty cents an hour let them. and if that means I can buy this pen for 30 cents rather than 3 dollars then fuckin A. That's a good thing. let them smarten up on their own.

He continues. “The analysis is pretty profound. And I don't think to the average viewer that that complexity comes across. Protesting injustices is easy. Finding solutions to these injustices is not so easy. Protecting a kid who only makes 5 dollars a day is a great cause I have kids myself. But what does it mean? That means I have to take this shirt off. Return this computer, empty almost everything out of my house and my office, because it was made in china or Mexico by a twelve year old who is dead now.... Protecting free trade, making it fair, is a very complex issue. You start paying these people a normal wage, something commiserate with what we make here in America, we’d have a consumer crisis here in America that would be apocalyptic. We’d have to return everything we own. because that is how we are able to afford to live the lifestyles we have now in America. is because some woman works in a factory and makes only fifty cents an hour doing it. so it’s a very complex issue... America makes up 5% of the world’s population and yet it consumes over 30% of the world’s resources. So that has to come from somewhere...”

It is a few days away. now more than ever this movement, all the movements, that together create this kind of liberation revolution that is happening now, need strong, stable, mainstream voices to come forward and speak up. the perception is that its just hippies and freaks that are fighting it right now. you know that's the way it was a year ago when we were marching against the invasion of Iraq. And now all of a sudden it’s a mainstream thing to want to bring the troops back home. that's the way it always is. A lot of the causes that these activists are fighting for are just normal logical causes that anyone in their right mind would fight for if they knew what was going on. Its just that most people don't. so that's the immediate cause: to bring the causes to the average person on the street. To help your parents and your neighbors and your co-workers become aware of what's going on around them so they can have a chance to speak up and defend themselves as well.

Its not easy right now. you speak up and there's this feeling in the air as if you're doing something illegal. As if you're somehow not part of the pack. Especially now when on the cover of the new times they reported that the FBI is now starting to profile and compile information on peace protestors as potential terrorists. Its quite alarming. Peace protestors are potential terrorists, but guys who invade entire countries and kill thousands of people are the “good guys.” This is a crazy world.
 
On a more personal note, I still haven't been able to eat properly in months now. lucky to finish one meal a day. really, I never do. I just always feel full. Still recovering from the week’s events. Also seeing all those cops beating people up really makes you feel weird about them. normally you look at cops like they are such cool guys, like they are on our side. You know normally we tip them and give them gifts during the holidays in our neighborhoods, just as our way of saying thanks for being there. and looking out for us. But I guess its all in the way you look at it. when I saw these guys spraying peoples faces with pepper spray from like a foot away and shooting them in the face with rubber bullets at point blank range just because they could and thought it was fun, it really makes you wonder who these people are and how safe we really are as a people when the cops can just gang up like that and start attacking people. Like, whose side are they really on?

The funniest part about this is that I'm a singer. I mean its not like I'm going to lose my job to some South American country. So who am I to be championing a cause like Americans losing jobs? But thinking about tonight a little, you know, its just that when I was a kid I totally fell for that all American freedom and land of liberty stuff. I just really loved that stuff and still do. for a few years there, man maybe its been a decade all I did was read books about American history. I got so sucked into it. so for me I just want to see America become what it always claimed it was. You get to that certain age, college for a lot, high school for some, for others never unfortunately, and you have that huge realization that most everything they teach you in school about America is a lie, and if you’re lucky and maybe you went to some special school or had some radical teacher then about one tenth of it was a half-truth. And yeah that sucks, but it happens to all of us. this is our wake up call. Realizing that America’s ideal of itself is a lot better than it actually is. so maybe people work so hard at political and social activism in order to try to get America to be as great as it promises that it is.

Anyway just for the history books today it looks like the republicans got this supposedly unholy and abominable Medicare bill passed that just sold the rest of our health care to big corporations. So that was pretty much the last of it. America is one giant slave to a bunch of invisible masters. Hey at least that's what the democrats say. Who the hell really knows? I need more sex and more money, to get my mind off of politics and social reform.

Last screening: private parts, story of Howard stern. The guy is a pig but the movie is truly hilarious. And inspiring.