marike is always saying that it is important to watch the tv shows, movies, videos in teh mainstream so you can see, understand and critique how our society is being constructed.  From a cultural studies perspective I can see how watching these dating show, extreme make over, and trading spouces is interesting.  you can see the different ways that race, class and gender are being constructed.  you can see the accepted norms in our society, you can see changes in the constructions and therefore know what direction to go when trying to combat the stereotypes being developed through pop culture.  you are also able to inticipate political moves with the rhetoric being used through out pop culture. 

Yet I have seen enought and wonder how do I escape this society.  I can choose to associate with people who are activily trying not to be oppressive and working towards changing those structures, but I am not able to choice a society that is not oppressive.  With the combination of the horrible dirrection of reality tv, privitisation and the new right and nepatism without knowing anybody that is anybody I really feel some days that I want to escape this reality. 

When I was in amsterdam I went to this talk about privitisation of educaition, this guy from india was doing a talk on his experiences of fighting privitisation of universities in india.  He story saddly was so similar to every other story - regardless of the methods the univeristy has implimented the results are higher fees, less time to participate in activism and the decline of quality of student life and education.  While I was in the workshop I heard stories from mexico, spain, germany, norway, belgium, holland and I added in stories from Ireland.  I think the most striking moment was realising that this is not just a western problem - the neoliberalism and privitisation of public services and goods such as education seemed more and more universal. 

In this realisation there was a sense of solidarity and we were exchanging stratigies and success stories yet at the same time there was the feeling that these powers that we were fighting against were so extremely prevelant and even our small successes were only temperary.  We became aware that although our universities were saying No to privisation they were contracting out security, resturants, and other services on the campus.  Business building and computer labs were being funded by outside sources.  And all these supposed positive things that are being brought to our education were only there to make more money and minimalise dissent.

Having a better picture of this universal greed that we are up against was further cemented when we got into a discussion about cops and intelligence.  The conversation started after a group of people I was walking with in amsterdam noticed these cops chacing this guy.  They knocked him on the ground and without noticing that we were watching started to kick him.  The group of us moved in and our presence was noticed.  The no longer kicked him, he left you wondering what they would do to him once he was in there territory and there were no witnesses to stop there violence.

We started to exchange stories about cops and our experiences with them, these two people were in maimi this past year and were talking about that expereince.  Plus they were talking about this cop from what ever city they are from who five years ago didn't know how to handle protests.  But now is actually summit hoping and there is exchange of knowledge between cops from different states so ensure the repression of dissent. 

I remember fin saying that we had the benifit of having networks around the world with other protestors and that we have the surprise factor if we wanted to add in a new action to our protests to catch the cops off guard.  Saying we could only do a new action once before they catch on to us and contain the events once again.  I wonder how well we can use the element of surprise when the cops have the same level of networks and experiences that we do and they may be ready for more then we think they are.

There are days I feel like getting away from it all and living in a commune, creating a community that I feel good about - yet that would be an attempt at just escaping the problem and not actually doing anything about it-plus you cannot just escape from this world, regardless how many strategies you impliment to attempt to break all ties with this world you still have to be connected to it and something that you are doing is probably related to explotation or oppression at some level.  I suppose it is the hippy equivilant to crimethinc.  you are still living off the system even if you say you don't want to participate in it.