![]() Rechy’s account of that long-ago parade ends in violence, when the police, as is not wholly unexpected, move in. I remember Ma Joad’s proud speech of the Okies’ eventual triumph in ‘defeat.’ We keep coming, she said, because we’re the people.” It’s what Rechy is suggesting, too, as he acknowledges when he writes about “the itchy sentiment that signals real pride.” He goes on: “Here you are, and here they are, and here we are. ![]() I also think of Vaclav Havel, who back in the bad old days of the Iron Curtain posited what he called a “second culture,” in which to live as if one were free paradoxically made one free, because it unlocked the shackles of the mind. Defend it.” Or anarchist visionary Hakim Bey and his “Temporary Autonomous Zone,” a little piece of free space we each carry around, always. I think of Abbie Hoffman, who once declared, “The ground you are standing on is a liberated zone. ![]() This, of course, is the first lesson of liberation politics: Take charge of the future by reframing the present, defining it on your own terms. ![]()
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