The UC Santa Cruz Treesit, Revisited

Why and How the Treesit Fucked Up: Takes One, Two, Five and Eleven thousand five hundred and seventy seven

1. It invaded student space that never belonged to woodsies in the first place, then tried to free itself of student input almost entirely.
2. most of the woodsies or so-called radical anarchist whomevers who participated had no experience actually organizing anything, never mind an action involving students they did not know.
3. most of the woodsies had no ties to the land other than as a safe place to sleep i.e. "home", like the kind you go to when everywhere else kicks you out.
4. the woodsies were practicing codependent forest-relationship behavior. they could not stand on their own two feet so while using the university
5. even Robin Hood took breaks to work the land and care for his flock.
6. Robin Hood is a boy's story of white people being led by one prince raised to be a thieving snob. Just because he chose to steal from the rich or pretend to give to the poor does not make him any less a thieving snob.
7. 'giving' somebody something they did not ask you to give them in hopes they'll let you stay under their roofs next time the soldiers come looking for you is manipulation at best, one-sided and intensely controlling at worst. Or maybe both-and?
8. remaining an adolescent forever is not noble, it is simply rather pathetic.
9. those folks who remain in the woods for their whole lives out of fear of society then justify their choices with phrases stolen from people of color's struggles is equally pathetic, and downright colonialist. Be ashamed of yourselves.
10. making students feel ashamed or guilty for wanting to participate in struggles is counter-productive at best, equally manipulative and controlling at worst.
11. refusing to have a transparent power structure is also manipulative and controlling, let alone being quite simply NOT ANARCHIST in the slightest.
12. Control and anarchy usually do not co-exist real well in the same damned spaces.
13. Do not exercise authoritarian control over a space then claim to be changing this world "for the better" in anarchist terms.
14. Do not claim to be using anarchist theory to control people's actions more "in our own best interests"...then fail to see the parallels between your actions and George Orwell's pigs in Animal Farm.
15. Criticizing others' struggles on their own behalf by opting to take a 'holier-than-thou' position towards these struggles and the people involved in them is beyond selfish--it's counter-revolutionary in the grandest sense of the word.
16. creating Subrosa or any other space around the need to build community when what you really mean is a space meant to cater only to your own community is just...lying. Publicly.
And very, very loudly screaming for the attention so many of y'all still fail to give yourselves, years after your parents' neglect could possibly still influence your lives in such a way as to make that sort of complicity requisite to any struggle with which you might identify.
17. White people who choose to avoid seriously searching their own souls or analyzing their own lives
18. Caravaning up to someone else's land every once in a while to her sheep does not equate 'fighting for anybody's freedom from oppression.' It's time to delink simple survival with 'fighting to change things.' In essence, you're actually fighting to keep things the same way they have "always" been...which clearly is not working as a long-term survival strategy.
Unless your so-called "solidarity acts" help you too in some way...and you feel READY TO EXPLAIN HOW, eloquently, without cutting off the voices of the women who participate--kindly refrain from talking at all. Thank you.
We have had enough white guilt running this country for about the next several decades.
19. Understand the difference between 'white guilt' as a phrase and where it originates, and compassion as a practice deep enough to turn iron bars into doors two people/s can choose to walk through together when we are ready.
20. You cannot refuse to take responsibility for your own early educations by attempting to run someone else's life for them, then claim to be freeing us all of the 'behemoth horror' that is our education system.
21. If you don't intend to actually listen to the words any woman or female-bodied person ever has to say to you, you're being sexist and need to retire the phrase 'feminism' from your vocabulary. Permanently.
22. Trying to engage somebody only on the ways their argument upsets you without truly questioning why is beyond impolite, it's racist. Shut up, white men. Learn to listen instead of use that flap between your ears as an excuse to run away from your feelings yet one more time.
23. 'anarchist space' ought not mean only men's voices and/or the voices of those loud enough to shout the men down ever get heard...and yet so often, like at the treesit!, it means just this.
24. obviously anarchists in town [or those who call themselves by that name] are unwilling or unable to bear actual criticism for their actions. Otherwise they might actually consider changing.
25. Those who refuse to enact any response to serious criticism need to avoid criticizing other people for their entire life's work.
26. people who have no life's work other than verbally criticizing capitalism are lazy. they are not "un-depressed"--they are simply spineless ruins of the reality of what a true person living freely ought to be like.
27. people who do not either sleep or eat regularly are notoriously difficult to be around. most of them
28. anarchism practiced in Santa cruz is a cult. especially by folks who live in the woods. it's time to let that particular secret out.
29. an action that goes on for almost an entire year
30. when the men get all the credit for an action seemingly run almost entirely on the work of women while primarily men sat around in trees all day doing nothing but eating what others so conscientiously provided for them...one wonders about whether anybody operating an 'action' is actually at all concerned with sexism or gender dynamics as they play out in real life.
31. people who invade others' spaces, defend it as "theirs", then act shocked when the cops come and clearly are unprepared and don't know how to handle it are stupid.
32. do not invite folks who will not know what is going on into that mess of cops and people doing ridiculous and honestly quite violent/instigating things [don't hit the cops, y'all, then act shocked when they throw pepper spray at you. for god's sakes.]
33. when people you have invited to an action according to those parameters get hurt, don't look shocked and stand around saying "beats me" and holding up your hands as though you bear no responsibility for their pain.
34. basically? don't take ABSOLUTELY NO responsibility for any living being outside your own personal [faddish, hipster in its own way, market niche] "group" then claim to have any sort of concern for your "community".
35. Don't talk like your middle-class white ass knows who the "common man" even IS, let alone what his struggle is about or what it's for. And what about the common woman? Or--as at Subrosa--couldn't you find any good posters with a woman's tits to match those Native men's penises to lure folks into struggles with the subtle threat of exotified [exploitative] sex? What, are those coming? No "free" [read: stolen] printing from "corporate" chains willing to exploit women alongside those men just for the sake of the justice you desecrate every day?
36. Most of all? Don't look so friggin' shocked when people of color outside your "cult" promising some version of whiteness in exchange for people's souls refuse to give you the time of day. Most folks are too busy, driven, motivated, and frankly far too intelligent to waste their time speaking with you. Get over it. Change and maybe one day you'll be worth talking to.
37. try experimenting with words like 'my racist capitalist money-grubbing ass believes'...and see where that takes you.
38. setting no rules in a space then punishing people for not following the implicit 'laws of anarchist organizing' ya never bothered to actually write down or in any way distribute to people passing through seems, well, cruel. But then again--for most of y'all, cruelty is your m.o., ain't that right?
39. if you are not producing art regularly you are a fool who is not only counter-revolutionary but downright racist. Where did ou THINK those repressed feelings got pushed, if not onto the shoulders and bodies of womyn of color and their children?
40. Most of all--don't constantly refuse to follow your own damned heart while loudly trumpeting the value of those who do, then act surprised when you wake up to find you hate yourself. Umm, there's a saying for things like that, where utter obviousness is concerned--it goes like this: like, DUH.
41. Oh, and p.s.? Don't call your action a "success" when after an entire year of action all you have to show for it is an empty lot filled up with trees, a campus clearly hostile to any further actions [the students with any backbone or intelligence, that is] , and a hell of a lot of your own bravado flung back at your face. You are a train wreck waiting to happen.
Thank God this wary and weary former "activist-anarchist-whatever-the-fuck-I-thought-I-was-doing" back when I often caught myself playing by men's rules knows now that I have better things to do than to be there when it does.