my world issue three

INTRODUCTION.
Welcome to issue #3. I'm doing these faster and faster all the time. It's probably because I don't really have a life. In the last issue it said there was art work in it but there wasn't, oops. This time I got some for real. I only had to go a thousand miles to get it. I hope you like it. If you don't please give it to someone who might.
BLAH BLAH BLAH.......

(11/28/95)
Today the city council of Berkeley is having an official contemplation on how they want to decimate Peoples Park. Yesterday Bill Clinton went about the business of initiating the charade that will create the illusion that a "democratic process" is happening and will decide to put 20,000 troops in former Yugoslavia.

This decision was made a long time ago. See when Yugoslavia split up, one group of people had the majority of the countries military hardware. After the split up, the US and the UN declared sanctions against everybody in the regions. This ensured that the Muslim(ie non-christian) population would be defenseless. From that point on the situation was a sure fire slaughter. My opinion is that this is just another example of our "leaders" making sure there is a continual way to justify our huge military budget. Creating conflicts for us to resolve on account of the current lack of Cold War enemy. So good old Bill is on the TV right now talking about how this action is nessecary because of the slaughter(that we created), the epidemic proportions of rape at the hands of the military(rape is sort of an epidemic back here at home too, don't you think?). Do you think 20,000 soldiers are going to decrease the violence? Do you think 20,000 soldiers will end rape in the region? If either of these was the case why haven't we used the same 20,000 soldiers to end the violence in our own country? If it were true why don't we use those 20,000 soldiers to END RAPE here? Could it be because ending violence and rape would be a matter of the halting of people violating each other, an idea pretty contrary to a military reality. The military can do nothing but violate peoples. To truly stop these things from happening, it would take all of the people who currently violate others to learn to stop and to not teach their children to do it in the first place. Sounds like too much to ask of some 18 year old kids whose only training has been how to kill. Somehow I get the feeling that if anybody says anything against the deployment of troops, they will be branded by the state/media, PRO-RAPE/PRO-MURDER in the same way they label pro-choice activists "Anti-Life". Lately I played a show in Croatia and we met KIDS who had to go to the war the next day. This time it's your friends.

NO ONE GETS OUT OF HERE ALIVE.
In the last two years we've lost a couple of handful of people. The first one was Rosebud Denevo. She was overpowered by her resentment and anger. She put herself in a bad position and the police/univercity took advantage of it, broke all their own rules and procedures and killed her.

The next one was a guy named Chris. He dabbled too often and too much with hard drugs and isolation and depression. He jumped in front of a subway train in NYC.

The next one was his ex-girlfriend Charlene. She used heroin to deal with the pain brought on by past sexual abuse. In the world of needles there are no take backs. She did an overdose of Heroin and died.

The next one was another kid named Chris. He was in Austin, TX. He was trying to stop a fight between one friend and another group of friends, who were all drunk. The single guy freaked out, was too drunk to realize that Chris was trying to help him out of a screwed situation, and stabbed Chris in the stomach, he died.

The next one was a guy named John Michael. He was an epileptic. I'm not sure but I think that means your not supposed to drink alcohol. Anyway he was living in a hotel room, drinking, had a seizure and died. It took about a week before somebody even found him.

The next one was a 15 year old named Blyth. I've already written about her in #1.5, so I won't repeat myself, but her death was at the hands of a heroin overdose.

The next one was a guy named Jonathan. His kidneys gave up on him. I couldn't honestly say what caused it(cuz I didn't know him as long as the others), But I do know that kidneys clean the blood and the easiest way to ruin kidneys would to force them to process large doses of poisons over a long period of time.

For all the words our activist/punk/homeless/etc. community speaks to the effect of throwing patriarchy off of our consciousness, we seem to still idolize some sort of tuff guy thing. Our friends are dropping like flies from PREVENTABLE causes and instead of questioning what's going on around us, we take this pretentious stance that says "I'm tuff, I can take it, these things happen, the system did this to them and I'll get revenge and that will make everything better." Revenge never resurrected anyone. Part of having both halves of ourselves would entail admitting that I/We/You can't take it(the unessicary loss of a loved one). Too me the most important part of what has transpired is that there is a deadly serious lesson to be learned from these peoples deaths. Most of us aren't learning from these things. Most of us are still engaging in these behaviors that killed our friends.

I knew how to direct Charlene to places where she could have received help with her problems with heroin and abuse. I was too concerned with getting loaded to tell her about it. The only way I have to respect and honor her life+death is by not ever, not even for one day, forget what killed her, and what will kill me if I let it be part of my life. Her death, in a sense, is the most important gift I've received in my life because since I have received it, I get to choose life over slow death.

Thank You Sister.

YOU HAVE THE...
These are the things that I have been arrested for, I think they are more or less in order.
1. Obstructing a public thoroughfare. When I was 14 I cut school one day to go to an anti-apartied demonstration. The cop with the bullhorn announced that if you sat down you would be arrested. I thought that sounded funny so I did it, and you know what happened? I got busted.
2. Runaway. That's right I got arrested for going to school 12 hours early, go figure.
3-312. Sleeping. You know, I thought that sleeping was a biological fact too, but no, it's a misdemeanor.
313. Malicious Mischief. This one was a little tricky. Me and Claude and some other dude were hedge diving on UC campus one night, jumping off of a car into these bushes. We tried to look into the car window first to make sure nobody was in it but the windows were tinted black, so we just assumed that no one was in it. Of course there actually was someone in it, as it turns out. So anyway, the cops caught us a little later in a building and they ask me to fill out a statement, so I write that I jumped off the roof of the car to get over the hedge to find a place to sleep. When I talked to a public defender he said they couldn't convict me of anything because I didn't willfully intend to damage the car. But when I ended up in court the judge neglected that part of the law and my public defender didn't care enough to mention that they aren't supposed to be able to convict me without willful intent, oh well.
314. Petty Theft. I was shaving my head one day on UC campus and the razor I was using got too dull to cut. I went to the ASUC store next to sproul plaza to steal a razor blade. I went into the store and found a razor blade that was supposed to cost 7 cents+tax. I stuck it in my pocket. What I didn't realize is that I was the only person in the store who wasn't an undercover security person. Needless to say they jumped me on the way out. I spent three days in juvenile hall for stealing what was worth 7 cents.
315. Runaway. I refused to be put in a mental institution. I hid in San Fransico. Later in this piece you will understand whey I am mentioning that they caught me at band practice.
316. Trespassing(misdemeanor). Me and my friends Jack and Adrienne were wading in the fountain next to the edge of Niagara falls on the American side. We did it to get the change so that we could eat. Incidentally they arrested us, released us to East Bay Mud for no bail and fined us $25 each with out a trace of paper work anywhere, no receipt, nothing. Can you say EXTORTION.
317. Littering. One day me and a friend saw a cop jack a guy up for a nickel bag of weed. We stopped to tell the cop that he was collaborating with a racist scheme to destroy the black community(the vast majority of drug convictions are blacks, the vast majority of users are white. Crack carries double the sentence that powdered cocaine does), and that we thought he was a creep in general. Due to our presence the cop decided against arrest and wrote the guy a ticket instead, so we left. As I walked off I set a sandwich which I had half eaten on top of a newspaper stand so that some one else could eat it. Half a block down the street I got arrested for littering.
318. Being in A Public Park After Dark/Warrant. One day while I was living in the Fifteen van, parked on the south side of People's Park, and I decided that I had too many books. So I went and got some wood and nails and a hammer and proceeded to make a bookshelf for the park. I did in such a way that it was connected to a tree not by nails but by leaning and rope. It took me quite a while to make it. I finished it's construction about quarter to ten, which meant I had 15 minutes to clean up the mess before park curfew took effect. My friend Jesse Manycolors came by and was helping me clean up. Apparently we took a little longer than 15 minutes because the cops showed up and arrested us both. It seemed a little ironic that Jesse is a Native American and was the only person there who had a moral right to be on the land. Nonetheless we were both arrested for Trespass and warrant for failure to appear on the above paragraph and Jesse's warrant was for trespassing or something like that.
319. Obstructing A Public Thoroughfare. One day I was helping my friend fix his car so he could sell it. He lived on Univercity Avenue which is an exit off of I-80 in Berkeley. After awhile of working on his car we went up into his apartment to drink a beer and smoke cigarettes and take a break. While in his apartment we started to hear faint chanting getting louder. It got louder and louder, after about a minute it was so loud that we ran outside. To our amazement we found a thousand people running down the street on account of the innocent verdicts that were giving to the four cops who were charged with the assault on Rodney King. We ran with everybody down the street and straight onto the freeway. It quickly became apparent that there were too many people going too fast for the cops to keep us from getting on the bay bridge. They eventually surrounded and arrested all of us about 1/4 of the way across the bridge to the city.
320. Obstructing a Public Thoroughfare/Trespassing(a couple other charges I can't remember). During the first few CRITICAL MASS bike rides in the East Bay the cops didn't really know what was up. On the third or fourth ride we got a little out of hand and took the ride(about 100 cyclists) through 2 Safeway's and a gas station and a McDonalds and a Burger King. Towards the end of the ride we were trying to burn a McDonalds Flag in front of the Albany police station. Unfortunately the flag was flame resistant and didn't burn, we spent too long trying to get it lit and the cops started trying to surround us so we took off down the street. The street we ended up going down had a turn off to I-80(dejavu) so we did it. This was probably the single biggest thrill of my life, pedaling down the slow lane on the freeway, sticking my arm out to indicate that I was going to move one lane to the left and praying for a long enough break in traffic to get over one lane. And then doing it again and again until the entire four lanes were taken over by bikes. Then looking back at the miles of stopped cars knowing that we had demonstrated in the physical world what OUR future could be like if we work for it.
321. NOT. One day, about 2-3 months after my last cigarette, I was jonesing really bad so I went down to the Berkeley Police Department cuz I figured they could help me. See I had a warrant for Failure to appear and I figured if I turned myself in and spent the night in jail then I wouldn't end up smoking. However when I told them I had a warrant and that I wanted to turn myself in they claimed that there was no warrant in the computer so they couldn't take me. Something about just going there relieved me of the obsession to smoke anyway.
322. Trespassing. This latest one wasn't really an arrest, it was just a ticket. But I thought I should include it to demonstrate how everything goes in circles. This ticket was given to me because I was sitting on a sidewalk, just like the first one. Of course it wasn't that I was just sitting there. It was also because I refused to move to the other side of the sidewalk and then proceeded to tell the cop that he was standing on land that belongs to the Ohlone People(the original inhabitants) and he had no jurisdiction there and that according to the Ohlone People there was no such thing as property so trespassing was not even possible, and then I asked him repeatedly if I could get a ticket. So it's not always as easy as you think. So I wanted to illustrate what the reasons for my being considered a criminal: from the top; Sitting on the sidewalk. Going to school too early. Sleeping. Hedge Diving. Theft of a 7 cent razor blade. Band Practice. Stealing Wishes. Sharing Food. Building a Bookshelf. Jogging. Riding a Bike. Sitting on a Sidewalk.

FURTHERMORE:
I've actually done some real crimes but they never bug me about that stuff. I'll write you stories about that stuff once the statue of limitations is up and I'm off probation.

INCEST.
On my 24th birthday I received some gold. See I was born on the 24th. There's an old tradition of giving a person gold on the birthday which corresponds to the date of their birth. So anyway on my 24th birthday I received only one thing. A book about men recovering from incest. My friend who gave it to me thought that it might apply to me. She was right. I didn't open the book for quite awhile. I was struggling to get off of dope/alcohol/obsessive casual sex for quite awhile. One of my attempts to avoid my problems was a trip to Mankato. As soon as I got there I knew it wouldn't work to just change my external circumstances because my problems were inside of myself. I bummed a ride back home off of a band called Dog Day. I got to withdraw for alcohol/pot/speed/endorphins/etc. while being roadie guy. Needless to say it was kind of crazy. A couple of days into it I opened the book and started reading it. It had lists of symptoms and after effects of childhood sexual abuse. As I read through these lists there was no way to deny the fact that I exhibited all of the symptoms listed. The only problem is that I don't remember anything. Nothing. The book said that people usually block out memory of sex abuse until the perpetrators are dead or far away. So it kind of made sense that I still don't remember anything, because I've lived in the same place all my life. It's really frustrating, though, not remembering anything cause it makes me not want to talk to anybody about it because I always think they will think I'm lying. This would be a normal fear for a person with memory of the abuse, because perpetrators usually tell victims they are wrong, crazy, at fault etc. The fear of being told I'm lying gets a little compacted with me though because sometimes even I doubt that anything happened, even though I know that's not the case.

So a while later I saw my sister in Berkeley and I ate lunch with her. Somehow we got to talking about our brother and how she was distressed about having to be around him on thanksgiving. I asked her why that was. She told me that he had molested her when we were little. I couldn't think of any incident that she was talking about, but I could tell she was telling the truth. Besides my brother was exceedingly abusive(violence wise) so it wasn't too hard to believe. The day that I saw her was her last day in the US before she went to school in a foreign country.

Months later I remembered sitting on my floor. I was about eight or so. My room was right next to my brothers. My mom was screaming at him to open the door. He wasn't doing it. She went back down the hall and came back with something that she picked the lock on his door with. When she got the door open she went in and got my sister and her friend out of the room. The thing I remember the most was how they weren't just crying but there bodies were almost convulsing. No one ever said anything about it ever again. Nothing.

Lately it's been bugging me because I used to share a room with my brother until I was about 5-6. I don't know what it all means. I got to find out first hand that an idea I read in the book is definitely true. It is as follows:
IT IS WORSE TO TALK ABOUT INCEST THAN IT IS TO DO IT.

THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME......
(Fall 1991)
After being homeless for a handful of years I got sick of it. I was sick of sleeping on other peoples couches and floors and feeling like I wasn't really wanted there, or that I didn't have a right to be there(like any white person has a right to be here). I got sick of not getting a place to sleep sometimes. I got sick of trying to sleep outside and waking again at every temperature drop.

I got sick of it all. I was wandering aimlessly around the MacArthur bart station. I went up 40th street and sat down in the island in the middle of the street. I knocked four times on the ground because someone had told me that four was the number for the earth. I took out a knife from my pocket and cut a line through my palm and let some blood spill onto the earth. Then I asked the Earth for a place to sleep. I sat around for a little while longer and then got up and walked up the street. I had gone no more than a block and a half when I noticed a big building with part of the roof burned up. Upon closer inspection(looking through the windows) I found most of the rooms to be empty. I didn't realize at first that this place was the thing that I asked for. I didn't know too much about breaking and entering at the time, but I got this silly idea to just try the first door I found. The first door I tried opening was actually unlocked. I went inside and picked one of the 40 or so non-fire damaged rooms to be mine. It was pretty scary for awhile being there by myself cuz every sound that the building made, made me think that someone was in the building. After a few months there I received my first visitor. A guy who lived in a park down the street. He just walked into my room and started talking to me. He was pretty nice at first until he saw my books. Some of them had titles referring to mysticism and, god forbid, witchcraft. The guy started asking me if I was a satanist. I explained to him repeatedly that I wasn't a satanist. He didn't seem to understand what I was telling him and he up and left. A couple days later I came home in the evening to find all my stuff, but especially my books, torn, burned and covered in paint. I guess he thought I was a satanist. Anyway, I know when I'm not wanted so I left. The fucked part is that I totally offered for him to live there, when he first showed up.

Next issue I'll write about the second Free house I was given.

JERROLD HALL.
(Stolen from the Slingshot.)
On the night if November 15, 1992 bart police officer Fred Crabtree shot Jerrold Hall in the back of the head with a shotgun.

Jerrold Hall was from Union City. He came from a "middle class" Black family. He was 19 years old, out of high school, spent a good amount of time around, in the streets, here and there. Jerrold got in trouble now and then, his friends say he was really pissed off about racism all around. He met up with John Henry Owens at the mall on Nov 15 and they took the bart train home. Someone on the train called the driver and said that two black men had stolen a $60 walk man.

Jerrold hall and John Henry Owens were walking across the parking lot at the Hayward bart station. Bart police officer Fred Crabtree got a radio report about two black men, possibly armed, who had committed a robbery. Officer Fred Crabtree(who lives at 1045 Coronado Way, Livermore, CA 945500) is a seventeen year veteran of bart police. Bart officials will not release his personnel record. He is big, 6'5", 250 pounds, white, middle aged. He was armed with a shotgun, pistol, truncheon, knife, mace, flak jacket, automobile and radio. His partner was Wodan, an 85lb. German born and trained attack police Sheppard.

Officer Crabtree confronted the two. Both Jerrold and John Henry were small, 5'6", 135lbs. No one knows exactly what words were spoken that night but, from some witness accounts, this is what happened:
"GET DOWN ON THE PAVEMENT, PUNKS, NOW!" John Henry Owens got down immediately, but Jerrold, he said "Fuck you cop, what for?" Jerrold approached the cop and verbally challenged Crabtree, told him he was a racist mutherfucker. Crabtree called his dog. Wodan ran to Jerrold and bit him, then stopped. Jerrold pet the dog's head saying, "See, animals like me." The dog walked away, and Jerrold approached Crabtree. Crabtree says Jerrold seemed to be going for his shotgun. There was a struggle. Crabtree hit Jerrold across the face with his shotgun, so hard that it broke the gun stock. Then Jerrold turned and walked away from the cop. He said, " What are you going to do, shoot me?" Jerrold walked about 25 feet, hands outstretched.

Crabtree racked his shotgun and fired twice. One shot went directly over the head of John Henry. The next shot hit Jerrold square in the back of the head. Tore the back of his skull and brain apart.Jerrold dropped about 25 feet away from the cop.

Backup cops arrived within 5 seconds of the shots. Witnesses stood and starred at Jerrold's bleeding body as Crabtree spoke to the other cops, "Yeah, it would be nice if someone finds a gun." They never found any weapon. Jerrold died 12 hours later.

John Henry Owens was arrested on felony robbery charges, and spent the next two months in maximum security at Santa Rita. He is still facing robbery charges, despite the fact that no weapon was ever found and that the "victim" of the "robbery" has presented extremely dubious testimony. Crabtree claimed he fired in self defense. He said he thought Jerrold might have been armed,he could've "escaped into the darkness, come back and shot him." Crabtree was given paid administrative leave for a few days, was absolved of any wrongdoing by an internal police committee, and was given his guns and patrol back. He is back on the streets, working armed plainclothes duty on bart trains.

When the cops murder or beat someone, the cover-ups, lies and justifications begin. The cop becomes the victim, the victim becomes the criminal. Racist stereotypes label people of color, particularly young black men, as armed and potentially violent. Cops get away with murder when they convince the public that the suspect "deserved it."

Three years later:
Nothing ever happened to officer Crabtree. I went to a memorial service at the bart station where he was killed. Someone there pointed out to me where Crabtree was standing and where Jerrold was standing. These two points made a line that also hit a palm tree.

Crabtree------------ Jerrold------------------ Tree

The official police story was that Crabtree fired the shot in the air and the one that hit him in the head was a fluke. The person showed me that since Crabtree was about 6'5" his gun must have been about 6'2" in the air, it had to be aimed, down, at Jerrolds head because the first shot hit the palm tree at a height of about 5'10", right over Jerrolds head, yet under the level of the gun. The next shot had to be even lower because it hit Jerrold in the head, 5'6".

He got away with it. For now.

I wanted to reprint this because as learned more of the story I had a realization that Jerrold got taught somewhere in his life that if someone is trying to fuck you up, you leave. That's what I was always taught. It makes sense. What happened was a lynching. He got away with it. For now.

His address is listed above, do what you know is right.

IT'S GOOD TO BE THE KING!
When I went to high school I noticed something about how the boys/girls or men/women related to each other. There was a predetermined ideal. This ideal was the tough-guy/quarterback/overly-scholastic dude, coupled with the dingy/non-assertive/"beautiful"(anorexic/bulemic) girl. They win the homecoming king/queen positions which proves they are superior to everyone else. I was most pleased to have the handful of punks at Berkeley High take me in. I thought we were so superior to the rest of the kids because we ignored football, homecoming, prom, etc.

Later on a thing called the Gilman Street Project started happening. We punx had a place to socialize all of a sudden( besides the streets that is). I didn't notice how quickly we started emulating thier(the jocks) behavior. I guess I didn't notice(or want to notice) because I got special privileges out of the equation. See, in our scene, instead of having quarterbacks we have singers. Instead of "beautiful(anorexic/bulemic)" women in expensive clothes we have "beautiful"(anorexic/bulemic) women in ripped clothes and funny colored hair. Since I played quarterback, er... I mean since I sing in a band, I received unspoken payoffs. I got valued higher than the other boys/men. On the other side there were certain women who had that certain look, you know what I mean(anorexic/bulemic) who got valued higher than the other women/girls.

The only difference between us and the jocks(in these respects any way) was that we didn't have an official contest to determine who wins the social status game. Otherwise the structure, motivations and intentions are all the same, superiority and hierarchy.

Additionally, although it may be progress that I(the men) can expand thier options beyond being a sports figure. The equation works out the same for the women/girls. They are confined to the role of other/background/the OTHER part of the MAN. The only real choices allowed are style of dress and hair, and choice of boyfriend(by which she is defined). (Not to plug myself anymore than I already do but...)

(Not to plug myself anymore than I already do but...)
PROSTITUTION.
I used be really proud of the fact that I didn't work. I considered(still do) working for someone else prostitution. I figured that since I didn't work I was different than everybody else. Little did I realize, I was doing the same thing. Just about every crashing arrangement I had when I was homeless( except for staying with Jake Filth) involved someone I was sleeping with or used to sleep with, and probably would again. I didn't see( or want to see) the equation going on. Every time I gave; sex, a relationship, the allure of sex or a relationship, I got a place to sleep, food, drugs and eventually I ended up in a couple of situations where I was given something like an allowance. I always was able to rationalize it by thinking that it wasn't what is was because "she was my girlfriend" or the lie that "every boy/man wants sex any/every time he can get it. The stereotype says that a young girl runs away to the big city and gets preyed on by older men. I guess that's not always the case.

To make things more confusing I seem to have picked up this pattern from a form of incest that doesn't involve physical sexual contact. I don't really ever feel like talking to anybody about it because most people think incest only means Father rapes Daughter. What happened to me is a thing called emotional incest. I think that it is probably very common in America. It is when a parent uses a child to fulfill the needs of the parent, that are the responsibility of the parent or the parents partner to fulfill. In my case I had a father who was emotionally unavailable. My mother reacted to that by making me fill some of her needs. Emotionally I was her partner even though I wasn't sexually. I ended up smothered. So now I end up with a pattern where survival is tied to romantic relationships because survival was naturally connected to my mother taking care of me when I was too young to do it myself. Also I end up with a pattern of feeling like I'm being smothered if I'm in a romantic relationship. There is also another side effect which is mysogony(which means hatred of women), because it always felt like my mom was destroying my identity by making me her partner, which I think somehow translated in my mind to mean a threat to my life(if that makes any sense, I don't know else how to explain it). So later on in life when I get into similar relationships(because that's my pattern) I get the same feelings of being attacked(even though it's not what's happening) I ending up copping-out and deciding that all women are fucked/out to ruin my life. So as a result I keep distance from the people I'm romantically involved with. In the future I'll be just as emotionally unavailable as my dad, my childs mom will react the same way as my mom did, and the whole thing will keep going on endlessly. You might be able to now infer why I think it's a pretty common phenomenon. All it takes is one guy to close himself off emotionally and it perpetuates itself all over the place. To me most men in America(and the other places I've been, Europe/Mexico/Canada) are emotionally not there. I guess it will take a whole generation of men to turn over there own inadequacies, in order to turn the whole thing around. So I don't know much but I still don't work for nobody and I have my own room in my own house now.

TOUGH GUY, EH?
I've noticed since I got into punk rock how heavily we rely on "Macho". Style of dress, speech and body posture mannerisms, attitudes, etc. Sometimes people say that all the violence and machismo is a way to mirror society. I don't know but I've never met anybody who saw violent/stupid punks and suddenly realized that society is violent and proceeded to drop out of it.

I've noticed lately that I can get a lot more accomplished when I am working for something, because when I am working/fighting against something there is always resistance.

So what I was thinking is that if you want to be a tough guy, please leave that sort of behavior outside of shows and other places where community happens, we don't need it there. If you need to do things to prove your masculinity to everybody, try doing it to the cops, do it to the IRS when they demand your money on the 15th, do it when they expect you to passively sit and watch them rape the earth and destroy small countries in the "third world".

As far as I can figure out humans have engaged in an on going process of passing the buck(the buck being Abuse). I'm not too clear on my history but I think it started with emperors, who were replaced by popes, who were replaced by kings, who were replaced by presidents/prime ministers(who are not exactly replaced by, but rather directed by the multi-national corporations. The only things that have really changed are the emperors titles, and the increased technological ability to spread thier fear, intimidation, greed, abuse, etc.

Whatever the guy on top of the pyramids title is makes no difference, the relations between people are all the same.

The guy on top abuses the people directly below him, his workers, accomplices, his family, etc. Every one below him seems to be oblivious to the fact that we all wield a great deal more power than him alone, but we've been brainwashed to think that we have no power at all, so we let him get away with it. Anyway, since were all so hung up on our ego/pride/manhood we all internalize anger when "higher ups" abuse us. As soon as there is someone around who we can get away with abusing(because thier "under" us), we dump our internalized anger and rage on them. This happens between all the different levels of the status/power/wealth hierarchy. Where people have the smallest amount of wealth and power is where people have to accept the most abuse just to get the things they need for thier and their families survival. In all the different levels the abuse filters down to the point where the parents abuse the children. Now that this phenomenon has permeated everywhere, coupled with the extreme conditions found in places like the inner city, we have reached a breaking point.

The weight of passed on abuse from millions of Americans over 500 years has landed squarely on the head of the African child/Latino child/Asian child/American Indian child/Poor White child. The current level of youth gang activity/violence/homicide/rape is just a drop in the bucket of what's in OUR very near future if we don't drastically alter many things right now. As usual waiting for the government to take care of these problems will probably be as fruitful as it has been waiting for them to create peace in the world, solve world hunger, clean up the enviorment, etc. This is obviously our responsibility.

So I guess the original point was that maybe it would be better to define Manhood with adjectives like compassion, Nurturing, Fair-Mindedness, Calmness, Gentle, Responsible and Peaceful. And to stop defining punk rock with the negative aspects of masculinity.

CREDITS.
The first part of the piece on Jerrold Hall was taken without permission from The Slingshot. The Painting of Jerrold Hall was painted and photographed by Elvijo. Font cover by Pamela C. Smith. Drawing of naked guy with flower by Josh. "I Stand Alone..." by Alisa. All else by me.