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~Windchime: A Step Forward~ A Letter From a Most Concerned Wild One

by A Concerned WIld One Tuesday, Apr. 07, 2009 at 5:25 PM

The Windchime House is a residential infoshop. A flower working its way through concrete decay. A haven for eccentric and antisocial characters alike. We are the ones we once longed for. We are real people with real dreams. Real dreamers willing to fight for our dreams. We live for community, love, truth and respect while we lurk in the shadows, awaiting the perfect chance to strike.

~Windchime: A Step Forward~
A Letter From a Most Concerned Wild One

Forward:

The Windchime House is a residential infoshop.
A flower working its way through concrete decay.

A haven for eccentric and antisocial characters alike.
We are the ones we once longed for.

We are real people with real dreams.
Real dreamers willing to fight for our dreams.

We live for community, love, truth and respect
while we lurk in the shadows,
awaiting the perfect chance to strike.


Part One: The Awakening

It is the cause of inaction that makes me question the idea of organizing in a metropolis like Los Angeles. Why so many Cliques form within the idea of a "movement". That this Idea of any sort of Anarchist or Subversive, isolating themselves and dancing in line with identity politics. Well here is one simple statement: YOUR POLITICS ARE BORING AS FUCK.

Its not the cause for which this project was born, but out of the ashes of what this civilization has created. For those so unhappy with the world, latching on to an idea of being a revolutionary to my understanding is completely absurd. For it is the love of the planet and life that people strive to create a new world, free of coercion, domination, manipulation, ect. So how is it, that no matter how many discussions that go on, it seems that everyone has the answer, but everyone is afraid to go a step further. In retrospect to being a revolutionary, it's not an attack upon the meaning or even being one, but the stigma that was/is created within the social groups involved within the "movement".

So as an introduction, this is the point: Because of social cliques, lack of getting over drama between people and not striving to talk about it, because of inaction, because of distractions, because of the tremors caused by this whole system, the progression to even start breaking down the system here is hit and miss. Meaning that if you don't get over yourselves and learn to talk to one another and stop holding biases, you'll never get anywhere. I think thats pretty general.

Part One 1/2: Born With Dreams

The monotony of everyday routine is something that most folks i know despise. So how is it, that a simple action like food not bombs ceases to be inspirational? I think the common arguement is the idea of promises made between people, or the idea that people will always be here to feed and it's just some charity event. If your just doing food not bombs to "feed the poor", then I'm sorry. I feel you are vastly being misinformed. The point, in my perspective in the least, was to show that there is an abundance of food. Whether or not there is a food serving there is food for folks. THATS WHY WE DO FOOD NOT BOMBS. But others tend to think thats the only thing they can do. That's highly backstabbing. Meaning this, community building tools are all essentail, whatever you can do to bring folks together (to break class ideology, consumerism, other "isms" and "ions", patriarchy, forms of domination) is needed.

Food not Bombs was the first organizing I have ever really done. One of the frist big undertakings I've committed myself to, asking the question as why I helped start it? Because it was the easy thing to do for me and I like helping people. But it became so much more in the beginning. Of course, friends and I had posted fliers and told people about it. I was slowly gathering the pots and pans and the like to get the project up and running. We had weekly meetings, some of them didn't go as I had tried planning, people being all over the place and meeting at farmer's markets and trying to get a feel for what we were going to have to do. All the while I was also working on making the house, now known as windchime house, a radical space. Just making it feel good to live in. I never really intended it to be as badass as it has been these last 8 months. So out of it two things were born, FNB Whittier chapter and the Windchime House. I was just thinking of a nifty name to call it and Windchime kind of stuck.

Of course, it was my first real experience with living in a kind-of co-op/communal environment for longer than a couple months with people, and even with in the first few months there were issues of communication and comfort barriers that needed to be addressed. Between myself, my friends, and those who came over quite often and associated themselves with the space. It was a challenge and will always be a challenge, to learn to listen to one another; something I feel isn't done enough, even within radical circles. And coming to terms with the fact that assumptions are one of the biggest more threatening thing you could do with any relationship; because afterall, aren't our life experiences culmulative upon the experiences we have with people and our relationships to one another and our environments? To our Lovers? Friends? Non-humans? The Land?

Part Two: The Retrospectations of Expectations

Obviously, there is a backstory behind every house or home; every project or livestyle, how we came to be or where we're from. For Windchime House there is a couple.

The house used to belong to my family. My grandparents had moved over here from the Philippines around the late 1970's with my mother. She grew up in Los Angeles around the valley and then around the early 1980's moved into the house that her parents (my grandparents) had bought. I was born in 1989 and moved to the east coast then back here around the end of 1999. Moved back into this house, lived here with my whole family. I grew up with Modern/Traditional Filipino upbringing, I had lived with my grandparents, or moreso they lived with us, well the point is we lived together for periods of time.

Obviously I went through school, then a bit of college and I had dropped out and ran off. All the while my family had lived in Windchime House while I was gone. Coming back to Los Angeles after about six months of travelling had planted a seed of expectations within me, as well as some of my other close friends. We had been places with vibrant anarchist communities, radical communities where folks would commune and learn to live with one another. How could we bring this to Los Angeles?

Bussing back into the city after being gone for so long only gave me chills and expectations. Scared to be on my own, to be alone and learning to understand myself and expectations on an already vibrant radical community. But my expectations had been dashed unexpectedly. Friends and I had committed to initiating communty freeboxes, critical masses, really really free markets, shows, meetings, of course food not bombs, and other small projects here and there. All an attempt to find people locally who had be cast adrift, swimming about in endless water. not knowing what to do. and the giant and rather rediculous conclusion?
Los Angeles is so Decentralized that people have to travel all the way across town to support each other.
And even more so, with the advent of the Greek Riots this last december of 2008, coming to the understanding of NOT identifying with subculture or identity in general. Your neighbor should be thinking about dissent just as much as you, especially if they are older, or soccer moms all the way from the snobbiest office worker to the underpayed preschool teachers, from house maids to the folks that employ them. Everyone on the spectrum, class, race, gender, age, it doesnt matter who you fucking are, we need to work together.

So within this basin of unsustainable bullshit, was assumptions, non-communication, lack of interest, elitist
attitudes, ageism, patriarchy, sexism, discrimination between freegans and vegans and meat eating fast food lovers. No talking, no communication, no understanding points,-dogmatic isolated radical social cliques- Its a rather poor thing to say on my behalf considering we are trying to fight all that if I may say so myself. I am at fault for the same issues discussed, everyone is. We've all eaten meat at some point in our lives, made assumptions about one another, no one is innocent. So the idea of dogmatic purests dedicating time and energy to an identity is really fucking absurd because talk and action should go hand in hand, otherwise your just a communist pamphlet.

After coming back to Los Angeles, I had moved in to the house. My family had moved out and had asked I take care of the house and friends could move in. So an old high school friend moved in with me and right away there was a social rift, he did his thing and I did my own. Pretty soon though we integrated with one another. It was pretty fucking rad, he introduced me to things and I him as we learned about each others lives. Even though I didn't see it then, there was a practice of mutuality and respect, of consensus and deciding between each other, not majoritarian rule. Something that everyone should understand, if not everyone is comfortable, then no one is. That goes for anyone; obviously if someone isn't comfortable with something but there own beliefs are more intrusive or discrimanating against someone or something, then it up to the disgression of the people to come together and make a consensus about something. But other than that discluding individuals just because or menial bullshit that no one talks to each other about is really frustrating and gets no where.

Part Two 1/2: A Flaming Meteor

And back to where we were, organizing local community and poorly structured but yet good lessons in understanding how to structure and build momentum.

And months of depressed questions asking why were doing this.
Inspiration and staying alive is the lifeblood in anything we do;never give that up.

Since our projects yielded results not totally amazing but inspiring and quality experience, we decided to commit to anarchist cafe's. Now when it came to comfort levels, it was up to us basically to decide if we wanted a sober space or not. What kind of audience will it attract and what do we want the end results to be? Should we even use the word anarchist in anarchist cafe or just call it cafe, it could turn people away?
In the end it came down to sober space but being called Anarchist Cafe. It was an attempt to bring out local groups to do workshops, and have a fucking good time after with music, with local bands, and we even decided it to be acoustic which vastly changed the feeling of the events and made them really intimate, which is good, considering we want to build relationships, not the idea of escapism and isolated encounters with one another. We wanted this to go on throughout the hearts and minds of everyone who came. To be a step to something bigger, and continue subversive thoughts and actions outside of what we had created within this space.

And to some avail it had worked, and with this small bit of inspiration, the idea of the Los Angeles Infoshop was born. Which is a whole other project unto itself. The point of Windchime house though was to make something bigger. Not just hangout places to go to, not just venues to see shows at, not just even spaces for workshops, but to spark revolution, to create form a most destitue of concrete islands on this planet a living breathing entity spitting fire at every chain that came to enslave it. Partly I feel It has done that, but moreso the fact that maybe we have slighted ourselves with jumping right in. It took us eight months to even really feel the momentum we have felt in the past months, that I have felt at all living here for the years I have, from my family to my friends to my community, though sparse as it may be. And though, untimiley we have to pay rent, and with the economic collapse, though amazing as it is and how advantageous it is, the project may be shifting, from something physical to something mental and hopefully more physical.

I have hope that all those who came to the cafes and the workshops, to any event we have had to start thier
own projects and community building events. To create the tools and understanding neccesary to building a better world. The old world is dieing, and its time we start addressing that.

Part Three: The End of the Beginning-

Cast me Ashore for I am Ready my Love, My Dearests, I shall Delve deep into the belly of the beast and Strike with most silent but passionate and unrelenting fury.

Part One: ~You~

What is it in your life that you are looking for? Is it real exact happiness? A wanting to feel alive again? Is It when your whole life is a room, consisting of posters and cd's or of office supplies and glamour magazines? What is the point of your true self? The one you regard in the morning when your eyes first see the rays of light or the daunting hours late into the night upon streetlights and quite inflections of what you think you have become. The one ahead of riots or of rising revolution deep within the hearts of those you love. The one you think you are.


As of right now, The Southern Chimes are ringing. They are calling you beyond of what you perceive yourself to be. You need to realize who you are if you are to even think of another world, one that is capable of communication and of mutual trust. Of loving encounters that we've never even felt before or of afternoons of friends relaxing and realizing each others' company.


A crying call, a scream into the uncharted vast void that is the rest of this valley.


This city of Angels.



We need to learn to speak to one another, be hopeful for one another, never setting expectations and to our last breathe resisting the old order that is the greatest battle we are to ever fight. With our last ounce of strength let us Burn the old world with our hearts set ablaze by the things we say we believe. Let us Cry tears so Fiery that the concrete melts when they hit the ground. We are the future...THEY ARENT!

We must learn to work with one another if we are to ever transcend this illusion of domination and coercion.


And as we leap, we will scream to one another...

FASTER COMRADE! THE OLD WORLD IS BEHIND YOU!

-Kaleb
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Thank you Kaleb

by Anna Wednesday, Apr. 08, 2009 at 6:55 AM

Kaleb,
Thank you for this.Thank you for this wonderful, honest generous and inspirational history of how Windchime House and you have evolved.
Your story and the story of Windchime house is a true story of revolution ....and one way to live the world we want to create.
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