The Workshop continues to deliver the best birthdays I've ever had, despite my seven-year hiatus. I took seventeen kids out today for an elective I called Intro to Culture Jamming. I didn't have high hopes, because political stuff can be a shot in the dark despite the experimentations in the air here, but everyone got really into it. We marched in the street on the way over, chanting -- even the shy kids loosened up and shouted a little. Then they researched various culture-jam-oriented organizations -- they chose the Yippies, Barbie Liberation Organization, Billboard Liberation Front, Radical Cheerleaders, Food Not Bombs, Riot Grrrls, Guerilla Girls, and Robotic Objectors, passing up Reclaim the Streets, Robbie Conal, and other luminaries.

I was amazed. Whereas the critique in workshop tends towards I like it/ I don't like it most days, these kids talked about the tactics employed by each of these groups/stunts/artists, and decided all of it was effective. They were having realizations that politics doesn't have to be a deadly serious, full-time commitment; they were connecting these topics to things they've heard in history class. One of my students has decided that she's going to start an Extreme Freestyle Walking political movement to protest the banning of skateboarders and bladers from public places. She's sitting here next to me, in her beads and tye dye, and emailing her friends telling them about her movement.

Rock over London. Rock on, Chicago.

Other phenomena I would suggest if you want to look into culture jamming:

Adbusters

Billionaires for Bush or Gore/ Students for an Undemocratic Society

Bread and Puppet Theater

Burning Man

League of Radical Toy Airplane Pilots

Michael Moore

Radical Faeries

Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping

rtmark

Ruckus Society

San Francisco Mime Troupe

Surveillance Camera Players