My focus as an activist was not just physical space; I was interested in making imaginative spaces, social and democratic spaces where grassroots democracy might flourish. I was a facilitator as well as a breaker-and-enterer. The huge groundswell of anti-capitalist protest that surged forth in the late 1990s, in answer to movements which began in the global south, following the lead of the poor, was a romantic time, but it was also serious. I was passionate about a movement which held itself accountable, which sought to find better decision-making structures than had got us into this global mess.

Watching the ways that the various Occupations have been organising, I am heartened that this part of the struggle continues to be taken very seriously.

But watching the police violence around the world over the last fortnight I was reminded forcefully of Carlo Giuliani, the young man who was killed by police in Genoa in July 2001. His death broke all our hearts, somehow snapped us out of our hope. And then September 11 stunned the USA for ten years. Well, it looks like that country has just woken up, again following other, more urgent voices, this time in the Arab world.

Perhaps because I am older than I was, perhaps because I am not in the city fighting, I have been thinking less about this specific movement and more about what kind of story it is telling; and I have been considering what the work of storytellers might be, what our responsibilities could be to such a movement.

The problem with using stories to escape is that everything is story. I bounce between retreating into my work – in several stages of a book, that retreat is absolutely necessary – and sinking up to my elbows in present politics and meaning. Sometimes I am caught up in journalism and commentary, current reading and research; sometimes it becomes essential to burrow. It doesn’t help that I am trying to write fiction about capitalism as it shifts and falls around me, as I do battle with poverty and privilege, aware of the luxury of writing as much as I am aware of its necessity.

It is a truism perhaps that fiction does the empathic work of allowing us to imagine another’s life, without which cruelty is so much more possible. I have written before that writing can be a form of political action. I don’t mean that we should write from a place of ideology, which fixity would deaden the imaginative impulse, but that it is political to write fiction: to write from a place of figuring-out, a place of listening and witness. That through books we are able to imagine others, but also other relationships with the world. Our own lives changing, our escape from absurd circumstances, the possibility of working together. I don’t mean we should all write revolutionary utopias. I simply think that revisioning the world must be a matter for constant, conscious work.

But an interest in narrative also frames the world in a very persistent and patterned way. Narrative becomes a lens to everything. And seen through that lens, the Arab Spring and now the Occupy movement have given me more optimism than anything in the last ten years.

The funniest part of all of this Occupy business is its ability to flummox idiots who own newspapers. The sites where meaning is made have very visibly shifted away from old, centralised media. The hollowed-out Murdoch empire, having shattered its readers’ trust, hears noise in the street, having never noticed peoples voices before. The newspapers glance down at young people gathering to protest glaring poverty and the imminent ruin of the planet, and miss the message. For days and days all we heard in the mainstream press was ‘we don’t understand it; we don’t know what it means’. That wasn’t just lazy journalism (see this Slate article). It was centralised media throwing up its hands and admitting it is out of the meaning-making business. It is lost. And the rest of us, give or take a few clicks and a few conversations, are not. We knew fairly quickly what was going on; were even able to interact with it, challenge its shortcomings, educate ourselves and others, plan our roles in determining its future.

Democracy, the revolution, whatever you want to call it, isn’t formed in institutions; it breaks out in our relationships. It is in the patterns we live, which are in turn determined by the narratives we choose. If we permit corporations to control our narratives – be they of progress, superiority, border security, or terror – then we are lost.

I am watching from a distance, but with much pleasure, as democracy goes viral. Social meanings, which grow and fester over networks, prove themselves stronger than centralised ones. I am watching the large-scale refusal of a story. People are no longer buying the narrative that capitalism benefits democracy. We are active, not passive; creators, not consumers. We are no longer surrendering to controlled meaning, to the performance of mock-dissent which happens daily in the mainstream media, where childish taunting and fake arguments attempt to distract us from the real potential of democratic engagement and enforce a culture of exhaustion and indifference.

Fiction is no escape at all, because we are living in a world of fictions: the delusions that sustain the dominance of financial capitalism. Fictions like the gambling of imaginary money being progress, the necessity of war, the laziness of the poor, the idea that we might be consoled with flat-screen TVs and football matches funded by the poker machine losses of people fuelled by another story, the story that they can win in this system.

The media, the two-party system, with its performance of fake democracy, is a trap as Kafkaesque as the Queen of Hearts’ court in Alice in Wonderland. A children’s story, a work of pure fiction, which ends with its heroine declaring as she wakes that her oppressors are nothing but a pack of cards. A great story can be a form of refusal.

We won’t put up with vested interests hijacking our narratives any longer. We are too interconnected to be fooled by that mass-media message. We know by practice how meanings and ideas grow through networks. We do the work of making them ourselves. And we make mistakes, and argue, and say things we regret, but despite that I think we already have the structures at our fingertips by which we might reclaim our democracies.

It is easy to be overwhelmed by the proliferation of voices, of stories, of people trying to make themselves heard, and wonder how on earth you might manage to write. But I would rather all these voices than just one. I’d rather hear seven billion stories than only the story of the 1%. So this week, as more and more workers are striking, I’ll be taking up my tools, and adding my voice.

And I’ll be supporting this fine journal. Because more than ever, we need places, real and imaginative places, which bring these voices together.

Sean Love’s smile is infectious. The grin spreads as he introduces me to the inner entrances of Fighting Words: two bookshelves which rotate to reveal secret doors, one adult, one child-sized. ‘It’s very Man from UNCLE’ he says, with obvious delight.

Inside, there are plenty of real bookshelves lining the open space: a couple of large rooms, an office, and a courtyard. The purpose-built centre was designed with play and magic in mind. This is a creative writing centre determined to foster the joys of storytelling in a whole new generation.

In eighteen months, Fighting Words has settled into a simple routine which aims to maximise the access of a broad range of kids to the programs offered. During term time, the mornings are given over to younger kids aged 7-12. So far, 12000 have gone through the program. They work in small groups. First, a teacher helps the kids brainstorm their ideas. This is written up as a collaborative story which is then put into a book format which each child can finish independently.

‘The class writes an original story which they see being projected up onto a big screen in the Fighting Words centre as they write. The children decide on the characters and plot and go through the story together sentence by sentence, editing as they go. An artist is illustrating the story as it is being written,’ the website explains.

The only rule is that everything has to be original. To enforce this, there’s a door in the wall marked ‘Editor’s Office’. The hatch leads to the admin office, so whoever’s at work that day gets to play the part of the mean editor who hates copying. ‘We stole the idea from 826 Valencia,’ Love says, ‘but the American children aren’t so tough. Here we can be as horrible as we like. It’s great fun.’

The afternoons are reserved for older kids, who work more independently in smaller groups with mentors to help them flesh out their ideas. Specialisation happens here: groups might focus on writing for genre, writing for performance, or even sports journalism.

On Wednesday nights there’s Write Club, a group for 15-18 year olds, attended by the occasional ‘real’ writer. Last year the club put out its first anthology, Fighting Tuesdays. The book is a thoroughly professional publication and must count as an excellent accomplishment for aspiring writers.

For younger children, getting a book to take home with their picture and ‘author bio’ on the back is also empowering. The possibility of becoming a writer never seems real until you meet one. Even two books in, I get an injection of aspiration myself in this place – and a little regret that nothing like it was around when I was growing up.

Fighting Words is situated in a new development in the old working-class neighbourhood of Dublin 1, near Mountjoy Square. The neighbourhood retains a grimness which the rest of the city has lately polished away. Ireland is struggling from the effects of the GFC. As I write, the 90 billion Euro bailout package is causing turmoil internationally, protests at home, and strong calls for the resignation of PM Brian Cowen. It is rescue money for a state which has spent every last cent in bailing out the banks.

When I visit Dublin, the city is in a kind of shock after ten years of economic growth ended badly. The Liffey is lined with glass-fronted apartment blocks that no-one can afford to live in. The Celtic Tiger is an extinct species.

The return of hard times has only made the workers at Fighting Words more fervent about their passion for storytelling. My visit takes place during summer camp. A group of teenagers are about to perform the musical they have been writing all week. None of them knew each other before the course but now they have formed quite a gang under the mentorship of a musician and a playwright. The show is a cynical and funny story about a sham marriage – my favourite part is when the politician father of the bride gives a shallow speech at the wedding: ‘I just want to say that this champagne is organic and I support local businesses.’

This healthy cynicism is reflected in the organisation. Fighting Words is entirely privately funded, and hesitant to seek government donations given the insecurity of arts funding in the current climate. Bank debts are written off by the hundreds of millions, but arts funding has been slashed. There’s not much in the way of public education funding either. 93% of schools in Ireland are still run by the Catholic Church, which has had its own very public breakdown in recent years. But with little incentive for the Church to relinquish control over the schools, the idea of independent education is still a deeply radical one.

Fighting Words is not set up to be a school, nor to replace one. The space is open-plan, light and colourful, with no clear ‘front’. It resembles an alternative classroom or a miniature art room. In the backyard there is some donated art and a small tree covered in keys which Love tells me the children are ready to believe grow there. This week there is the addition of a few musical instruments leaning against the stationery shelves.

Love tells me they don’t teach writing, but rather make the space available to share it, and provide mentors who can offer advice. They don’t offer literacy unless the kids specifically request help. They are there to nourish stories, encourage budding writers, and open up the possibility of a creative life to a new generation. They are not necessarily looking for new talent. But the centre acknowledges a need to bridge the gap between institutional learning and an increasingly specialised creative writing industry which can end in the development of an out-of-touch creative class.

At Fighting Words, they see their work as urgent and necessary. The optimism of a decade of Celtic Tiger politics has been lost. Many Irish people I spoke to professed regret about the growth years which they now see as a rush of blood to the head, an embarrassing episode of greed. The decade of unsustainable growth is now widely acknowledged as having failed. It has certainly failed to bring the lasting prosperity it promised. Along with the horrifying persistence of Catholic sex abuse scandals, the country has suffered a triple betrayal.

‘The banks have failed us, the church has failed us, politicians have failed us. What Ireland has left is its artists and writers,’ says playwright and regular volunteer Una Kavanagh.

It’s a win-win for the volunteers, as artists, to give something back to the community and find replenished energy here. There are 300 volunteers on the roll already, but the centre is always welcoming to visiting authors. The programs are booked out 12 months in advance.

Says Love, ‘We could easily be booked out for the next 5 years. We had to say stop, to give everyone a go. It’s safe to say it’s working.’ Kids come from all over the country, as far away as Limerick, Kerry and Donegal. ‘There would easily be room for three or four similar centres in Ireland,’ says Love.

There is certainly room for more such centres in the rest of the world. Like many a good idea, the 826 Valencia format has gone viral. There are now nine or ten centres in the US and a similar number in Europe, with the newest in London and another about to open in Milan. It’s becoming clear that there is plenty of energy in the writing community to make these places work.

There has been a lot of discussion over the last few years about the rise of creative writing programs in universities and whether their impact is making our writing culture too homogenous. Perhaps the bigger problem is that these programs are not accessible. It is not that we are teaching writing badly. It is that this possibility isn’t open to everyone – least of all the kids who need it most.

The week of my visit to Fighting Words, Dublin was recognised as the world’s fourth City of Literature. Perhaps the resources that become available will be able to aid programs like this to continue.

It’s time we started one here. It makes sense there should be a similar project in Australia – perhaps in our own City of Literature – which takes the possibilities of creative writing to those most in need of a life of the imagination, the least privileged among us. Because if we are going to foster a diversity of new voices in Australia it is not just important to support our journals and our existing emerging writers. It is essential to nourish the next generation of human beings to see themselves as creative. This model is recognition – no, proof – that exposure to art and writing can radically change the life trajectory of young people who aren’t being given the chance in school, or at home, to expand their horizons. I would be honoured to donate my own time to such a project in Australia.

The publication has gone from strength to strength in every other way, with readership doubling every year for the last three years. NM has consistently tackled the issues that are being overlooked, and rapidly become one of the few outlets for investigative journalism in a changing media climate.

I started writing for NM in its early days around 2005, and have always felt very loyal to the site. Not only because the editor, Marni Cordell, is a friend, but because the editorial vision, genuine support for media diversity and quality journalism, and humour have been such a wonderful staple in my media diet. I have also appreciated the fearlessness and willingness to take risks – with content, structure, and delivery. Plus they paid me. Which is important as hell.

As a writer, I have appreciated and certainly benefited from the opportunities to grow and develop offered by newmatilda. I have found writers there who I can trust to challenge me, make me think, or make me laugh. I have found a conversation there which I could not have found anywhere else.

There are now a few more kids on the block, with the drums and punches and whatnots. There is plenty of space for opinionated writing. I hope some of that space is staked out for a bit of depth too. Whatever the future of independent journalism, newmatilda has made a definitive mark, taking a strong stance for independence, investigation, accountability, and diversity. In the online world, where so much is about our preferences making profits for others, it has been wonderful to be a part of a project which has survived on integrity and ingenuity.

Of course, NM published the horoscopes. Because we didn’t see this coming, I have already moved them off this site. I might find a new home for them come June 25th, or I might stop writing them. Ideas appreciated.

It has been a great 5 years for me with newmatilda, and I don’t want this post to be an obituary – I want it to be a thankyou, and a call to arms. Let’s keep writing the difficult stories. Let’s take what works and learn from what doesn’t. I look forward to the next experiment.

This post has been cross-posted from jennifer mills.

If you can synergize with institutions, do so, but don’t sit around waiting for them to recognize or rescue you: they can offer you everything but initiative. This is the best path I’ve found for resisting the otherwise inevitable alienation from one’s own creative labor that comes from permitting oneself and one’s work to be processed by workshops and editors and tenure committees.

The possibilities of initiative are exciting at the moment in terms of self-promotion and potentially having so much more control over our means of production, at least in the brief window before Amazoogle takes over our very brains.

I’m curious what folks here think about the possibilities of ‘DIY’ (or is that entrepreneurialism?), and whether your work can or should be liberated from institutional gatekeepers? It seems to me that the academics don’t have as much of a stronghold here in Oz, but I don’t spend any time with academics or established poets. (Corey’s post is itself quite academic in tone and I had to read it a few times to get the threads.)

How do we avoid conformity and marginalisation? Perhaps I have misunderstood the concept of ‘strategies of failure,’ but I would like to think we have more strategies of resistance up our sleeve than bad writing.

It is an old problem of the Left in capitalist societies to embrace failure as a form of resistance. Can we have radical success instead? What do you reckon?

At the risk of sounding like Grandma Marx, by crikey, why don’t the young people rebel?

Because there’s nothing to argue with when Australia and the flag have become brands. Rebelling against brands is a pointless exercise. Most brands targeted at the young already associate themselves with rebellion. To rebel, all you can do is associate yourself with a different brand – one of the wet-blanket, non-rebellious ones. But then you just look weak. If there is another option (like DIY? Find your new punk look in K-mart) it would take a strong teenager to go there.

Is the Aussie flag a brand associated with rebellion? Definitely. But what kind? The racist free-for-all of Cronulla. The cheap bogan rebellion of drinking so much you require medical attention. Underlying that there’s a lot of loyalty to a purified white history – and to the brand’s parent companies, the USA and Great Britain.

It’s particularly embarrassing that this happens in Alice Springs, where racially motivated violence is part of everyday life for many people and most of the Aboriginal population have a funny kind of citizenship of this country with special rights to be discriminated against. Kids, flaunting your white power is a mite distasteful around here.

National branding is nothing new, of course. I went to the Powerhouse in Sydney a few weeks ago and was uncomfortably reminded of the Ken Done phase Sydney went through in the 80s – a global marketing strategy-cum-urban identity makeover which successfully transformed the city’s self-image. So every generation has its tacky nationalist aesthetic. (and I wasn’t immune to it either.)

But I miss John Howard because it was so easy to point at him at this time of year and howl about flag-waving and racial profiling and asylum seekers. This week in Darwin there’s a coronial hearing about the asylum seekers who died off Ashmore Reef in 2009. Before their boat exploded they mimed slitting their own throats to show the naval officers that sending them back to Indonesia would probably mean death. We might have a new man in Canberra but we still live in an Australia which would happily ‘bypass’ human beings in that situation. I’m just not comfortable associating myself with a brand like that. The trouble with nationhood is there’s no-where else to shop.

callout up for proposals for the Salt on the Tongue festival in Goolwa in April 2010. I heard great things about their 2008 festival in Castlemaine, so i’m definitely programming myself in for this one. Get your ideas in ASAP!

Lurking philanthropists, take note: there’s also a polite request for donations. the 2009 festival had to be cancelled because feddo funding fell through, so the APC relies on you to make this happen.

I am very disappointed to hear that the National Archives will be closing their offices in Darwin, Adelaide, and Hobart over the next two years due to budget cuts. As an author I find this objectionable. The planned closures will make it harder for regional authors to research primary material. Will we have to fly to Canberra to conduct research? Because the NT was administered by the Commonwealth between 1910-1978 I understand the NAA also holds the records relating to the Stolen Generations. As well, the Adelaide office of NAA holds significant records relating to child migrants from the 1940s to 1960s – part of the ‘Remembered Children’ to whom the PM apologised recently (and promised to help with link-up networks). This move is disastrous for Indigenous people, archivists, librarians, genealogists, historians and many others and goes against all principles of equity in access to Commonwealth records. I am asking for your assurance that all NT records will remain in the NT, to be administered by NT Archives or another heritage body. Similarly other regional archives must remain in the regions to which they belong.

Sincerely,

Jennifer Mills

Alice Springs

Please register your condemnation of this decision with your local MHR or Senator and/or with Senator Joe Ludwig, the Minister responsible for National Archives, who may be contacted here

received said reader in the mail yesterday and have already laughed out loud, nodded serious assent, shaken my fist, copied a quote into my notebook, and read a paragraph aloud to the other person in the room. it’s that sort of book.

more info here.

i love it when the academics catch on. ‘wait up, you guys! i’m coming too, i just have to get my pencil case!’

what do people think of the rhyming=populist theory?

in the murder capital of australia, it’s still safe to be a racist:

NATIONAL, September 10, 2009: An Alice Springs resident has responded to the alleged bashing death of an Aboriginal man by five young white men by selling “Alice Springs White Power” t-shirts and caps from his car.

And it’s all happening outside the Alice Springs Town Council offices, with local police and council officials refusing at least two requests by local residents to shut the man down.

The t-shirts and caps were yesterday on display in the passenger side window of a 4WD ute parked directly across the road from the council chambers. The number plates on the vehicle read ‘GANGSTA’, and a hand-written sign was taped to the back passenger window advertising the shirts and caps.

The sign included pricing – $25 for a shirt, $25 for a cap or to [sic] for $35. The shirt includes a Nazi swastika symbol, and the sign includes a mobile number, 0410 366 701.

writes Chris Graham in the NIT.

i would like to say that the majority of people in this town are not racist. but i’m afraid this is the extremist end of a sliding scale of opinions in a town where everyday racism is pretty banal. i have written elsewhere about the way the intervention has affected race relations here. more directly, the suspension of the racial discrimination act in the NT may have legalised this kind of vilification.

Macklin’s office sent out a gleeful announcement of ALP success on Wednesday, saying they had agreement from 16 town camps to the houses-for-rights swap. The “win” was reported enthusiastically in the oz (sorry, that’s ‘the squalid, violent, overcrowded newspaper The Australian’) and elsewhere. Hmm, seems to be premature, since there is a court injunction out against the deal.

“It emerged yesterday that the leases had not yet been signed.” Emerged from no less a source than careful reading of the original press release. And they say journalism is dead.

here‘s a piece from NIT giving details of the injunction

And the following is from ANTaR:

Professor James Anaya, United Nations Human Rights Rapporteur, will be visiting Australia during the second half of August.

After his visit, he will be providing the UN Human Rights Council with a report on his assessment of human rights in Australia. The Australian government will be expected to respond.

This is a unique opportunity for us to highlight our concerns about the government’s treatment of Aboriginal Australians in the Northern Territory.

Our government is now planning to reinstate the Racial Discrimination Act in the Northern Territory, but not in a way that will comply with human rights principles. Their intention is to impose ‘special measures’ on Aboriginal people living in the 73 prescribed areas of the Northern Territory.

http://www.gopetition.com.au/online/29768.html