The Counterpublic Papers vol. 9 no. 18

First off, thanks to everyone who came to the first For the Long Haul gathering yesterday—when I quickly sent out the newsletter yesterday I didn’t even give the event a name. For those who weren’t able to make it the general purpose was to create space for people who wanted to do something about what’s going on in DC but hadn’t quite found an opportunity yet. We wanted to bring people together, give them a sense of the stakes, energize them, and then give them an opportunity to meet in small groups with other like minded folk. 

These (blurred) pictures don’t begin to convey how powerful the meeting was. We knew that some people would likely have small kids, so we set up a room in the back for childcare thinking there would maybe be a dozen or so kids….and next thing you know there were 30. I don’t know how many people we expected…but as the pictures show it was standing room only. It was disproportionately older and white, compared to Baltimore. But I read that as a profound opportunity. I know that people are not just “interested” but actively pissed. I spoke at a virtual emergency meeting with our black faculty and staff organization. Called at the last minute.

FOUR HUNDRED PARTICIPANTS.

People are prepared to be of service.

Now there’s work to be done. Work in creating face to face opportunities. Work in figuring out how to durably get people to commit to just a little bit more. 

(Last election you voted. You talked to people about voting. Can you do a bit more than that? Last election you voted. You talked to people about voting. You went door knocking. You write a newsletter. Can you do a bit more than that?)

And then figuring out how to organizationally contain the resulting bodies.

It’s good work. It’s the type of work that staves off despair. It’s the type of work that builds and sustains community. It’s the type of work that generates alternatives.

And it’s the type of work that eventually wins.      

As an aside it was only fitting we held the event in 2640 Saint Paul. When we contested the first administration we met there first. When folks organized to create Occupy Baltimore, I’m pretty sure we met there first. When a group of us created the Baltimore Mixtape Project to contest an attempt to build a jail for “youth charged as adults” we had the final competition there. 

There will be another meeting on March 22 at around 4:30pm. I’ll send out a reminder. I know there are other meetings taking place—including really important out-county work. If there’s anything you think I should push out here please let me know.

….

The Maryland legislative session has begun. They’re considering voting rights, a suite of immigration legislation (CASA’s agenda), and a bill restricting free speech on college campuses. 

(A bit on that last bill, because it was brought up at the last minute. It represents an attempt to restrict student protest that appears to be driven in part by last year’s encampments. I haven’t talked much or written about this, but when the encampments appeared at Hopkins, I attended the emergency university meetings in my capacity as a faculty Senator. I fought against depicting the encampments as “outside agitation” for a number of reasons. But one of them was pure self-interest. In that meeting I told everyone that if the election results went bad, we were going to need students to protest without fear. One of the reasons the university response to everything has been so muted is because the one population that be best situated to use extra-ordinary tactics, has been suppressed. Here’s the text of the bill, and here’s the Baltimore Jewish Voice for Peace response.  If you know anyone who might be interested in getting to involved let me know because they’re moving relatively fast and introduced the bill at the last minute.) 

 ….

One of the problems mainstream comic books have, a problem that’s cut into Marvel and DC’s ability to profit from the movie/television turn, is the continuity problem. 

In order to become a comics regular, one has to wade through issues upon issues upon issues to know enough about the story to follow it. You can’t just pick up a copy of Spiderman and then pick up another copy in a few months…you’d be lost. 

To solve this, Marvel created another comics universe, one with all of the characters that you’re familiar with, but more contemporary (and shorter) histories. The characters reflected increased heterogeneity (Spiderman was black and Puerto Rican, Nick Fury was black and looked a lot like Sam Jackson) and the stories reflected early 21^st century 9/11 politics. 

The universe was so successful that it ended up becoming the basis of the Marvel movie universe (which is one of the reasons why Nick Fury looked a lot like Sam Jackson). 

Fast forward.

Last year DC did something similar, taking its big bad (Darkseid) and placing him in control of his own “dark universe.” In this dark universe (“Absolute”), characters like Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman exist, but their origin stories are…different. 

Absolute Wonder Woman was raised in Hell. 

Absolute Superman’s parents were scientist-exiles and he has no adopted parents on Earth.

And Absolute Batman?

Batman has always been one of the more complicated superheroes politically speaking, because of his wealth. (The best way a billionaire can fight crime is to dress up as a bat??) 

Absolute Batman? 

First off he’s no longer a billionaire, but rather a civil engineer, a relatively low level city worker responsible for helping to maintain Gotham’s infrastructure. He didn’t lose his parents to a low level crook, but rather he lost his father to a mass shooter. 

This already changes the game significantly. His lack of wealth comparatively hamstrings him on the one hand, but roots him in labor on the other. And the defining moment of his life comes from political abdication.

And the Absolute Joker?

I don’t know where Lex Luthor stands on this—he hasn’t been introduced in Absolute Superman yet. But the Joker is now one of the wealthiest persons on the planet. A billionaire.

Here’s Absolute Batman writer Scott Snyder:

And:

More here.

We can and should understand trump’s tendency as a rearguard tendency fighting out of fear to preserve something that never really existed and to the extent that it did, was anti-democratic and heterophobic. 

(A word. When you normally see “heterophobic” in a sentence I’m betting that you usually understand that as being fearful of those identified as heterosexuals. I’m not using it in this way. I’m using it instead to refer to fear of heterogeneity itself. Trump and his tendency cannot understand the world as it exists because it is too heterogeneous. What the tendency wants is a world that mirrors what the tendency thinks is itself.)

One place many wouldn’t necessarily imagine resistance would appear is in the pages of a DC comic.

The resistance isn’t just “everywhere.” It’s here.

See you soon.