Mad Caddies
Punk Rocksteady
Fat Wreck, 2018

Published at Apathy & Exhaustion

The Mad Caddies have never done anything that made me think they were any more interesting than the sport of golf.  I’ve spent more time watching the anti-enclosure, class-warfare-tastic “now you’re gonna die wearing that stupid little hat!” scene from the Michael Douglas classic Falling Down than I’ve actively spent listening to Mad Caddies recordings.  But I’ll admit they’ve had some catchy club bangers, and down the memory hole comes this Punk Rocksteady album: a collection of reggae/ska/et al covers of well known punk songs.  Produced by Fat Mike, part of its appeal lies in its Fat-heaviness: Propagandhi, Bracket, Snuff, NOFX, Lagwagon, Against Me! and Tony Sly.  While a number of these artists have dabbled with the brass devil the Caddies have taken specifically punk cuts and removed all trace of that sound.  There’s golden oldies in the form of early Descendents and Misfits, the 2000s beauties of melancholy rebels like Sink, Florida, Sink and Bad Religion’s Sorrow, and a slew of 90s skate staples.

While the choices are not obscure deep cuts, they’re also generally not the most obvious biggest hits of the artists in question.  Let’s start with my favourites, the various politipunks.  Sorrow is a track with lyrics that seem like they’d lend themselves well to Jamaican-style peace-loving hippydom, and they do.  While this is a pretty interpretation of a pretty song, Sorrow was already more melodic than punk, and to me this offers little other than taking away the underlying groove of the original.  The band’s take on ...And We Thought Nation States Were A Bad Idea by Propagandhi goes on a more extreme turn, with a ska bounce that nevertheless holds on to some of the thunder of the original masterpiece.  Mad Caddies copy the adolescent humour mixed with the righteous, rollicking seriousness of the “shitrag hooray!” forerunner, with a quick version of Ska Sucks in the closing moments being cheekily changed to Punk Rock Sucks.  The skankers, after a mere quarter century, come out of their marijuana slumber long enough to exact some revenge.  Sink, Florida, Sink by Against Me! is pleasant, maintaining that singalong nature but putting a happy face on it.  Of course a band from California would deliver this message with inappropriate glee.  How are those giant fuck-off wildfires right now, dudes?

The newest cut on the album is AM (2010), a cover originally featured on The Songs of Tony Sly: A Tribute put out by Fat Wreck in 2013 in the wake of Sly’s death.  (His passing apparently ushering in an era where Fat becomes one of those legacy labels, content to re-release the same music in possibly slightly altered format ad infinitum -- see last year’s No Use For A Name compilation Rarities Vol. 1: The Covers).  Working appropriately as something of a reggae dub spin, it retains the forlorn mood of the original, with the keyboard that replaces the organ glowing softly behind the songs wintery foreground.  Fittingly, with Sly having often collaborated with Joey Cape, we then get an interpretation of Lagwagon’s Alien 8.  Already working against Mad Caddies is the fact that I’ve always enjoyed the Double Plaidinum album through a really badly dubbed cassette tape.  So a sanitised dub version -- as happens all too often listening to Punk Rocksteady -- finds me yearning for the grit with which I am familiar.  It works better on something such as Green Day’s She, the clean melody of which translates nicely into sways and reverb.

The cover of Some Kinda Hate by The Misfits has got a respectable spooky sombreness to it while being strangely quirky and attractive.  It’s so far from any kind of hate that it’s almost venturing into irony territory, which as we all know is a no-no.  Then again, I might care more if I cared more about The Misfits.  On the interpretation of Jean Is Dead by Descendents the speed is so drastically altered that it’s barely recognisable.  This sounds more like Sublime (a band who did several of their own legit hardcore versions of Milo Goes To College numbers).  The sadness of the song lends itself to the rocksteady sound, but perhaps a later Descendents track with a poppier flavour would have been more fun (maybe something from the Fat Wreck-released Cool To Be You).  Following this up is the ode to the English weekend, Take Me Home (Piss Off) by Snuff.  While I can appreciate ending the album by covering a band famous for doing a lot of covers, this, like Jean Is Dead, lacks the uplifting, album-closing excitement of the original, even forgoing the complete outro for some reason.

Strangely, it’s on their cover of Operation Ivy, the band that laid the blueprint for the third wave ska-punk that birthed them, that Mad Caddies dare to get their most experimental and thus interesting.  On Sleep Long, Joshua Waters Rudge of The Skints delivers a guest spot reminiscent of trip hop pioneer Tricky.  Jesse Michaels’ rapid-fire lyrics of social and cultural degradation lend themselves well to the grim spoken word style.  It’s a weird outlier, especially so early in the album when nothing else that follows is remotely like it.  If the goal was to give it a UK flavour, it certainly succeeds, but whether that makes sense for a California band covering another California band is questionable.  Ironically, The Skints’ most mainstream moment came when they did a dub-reggae cover of the hit single On A Mission by post-dubstep pop singer Katy B.  Aimee Interrupter of The Interrupter can be found making barely noticeable appearances on both Sleep Long and on NOFX track She’s Gone).

The lost potential heard in this one track is really where I find myself judging this album.  I love the idea of genres being forced to crash into one another, but is anyone on either side of the punk/ska divide really that unaware of what is happening over that garden fence, and unaware of whether they like it?  The two have been cousins since the 1970s.  Birmingham’s veteran protest reggae act Steel Pulse played here in St. Petersburg just this week (as are Steel Panther, at the same venue, oddly, but the less said about that sack of shit the better).  So that can’t be the impetus behind Punk Rocksteady.  I have few qualms with the choice of tracks.  I’d say I love a good half of these originals, which perhaps indicates that Mike and the Mads picked popular and easily enjoyable songs to cover, and that for better or worse, this is a labour of love.  The people involved and those who really enjoy it can do so without any wider artistic merit.

Punk Rocksteady may be suitable for a gathering of grown up punk kids looking for a respectable nostalgia, or with a good sound system that can pick up the right musical details: all things rarely within spitting distance of this critic.  For personal listening I’d preferably go with a compilation of these songs, which I have made as a YouTube playlist here, should you wish to partake.  A quality genre-changing cover of something familiar can work great in the closing scenes of a film, but a full length album like this is mostly unnecessary.  In this case, it’s not so much a hole in one, as ones failing to make up much of a whole.

You can stream Punk Rocksteady at the bandcamp player here.  Mad Caddies are doing American West coast dates between now and October.

Revenge Of The Psychotronic Man

That Was Just A Noise

TNS, 2018

Published at Apathy & Exhaustion

The Psychotronic Man finally gets his Revenge. 14 years after I saw them perform at The Attic at one of their earliest gigs, the Manchester punk band named in honour of a barber in Chicago who can kill people by giving them the stink eye is going into retirement. They recently released That Was Just A Noise, a mostly chronological compilation of material from throughout their lifetime, and so dedicated was I to approaching this historical document in the right spirit that I actually watched The Psychotronic Man (confusingly, also known as Revenge of the Psychotronic Man). Fittingly, for the incredibly prolific DIY people behind Revenge, TNS Records and Manchester Punk Festival, it is considered one of the first truly feature indie films. Not fittingly however, it is incredibly slow moving and incredibly shit. If I was into making up convenient lies, I’d tell you that the delay in doing this review (the album dropped quietly in May) came from watching that piece of utter wank in very slow increments. The young band must have been into Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Robots are probably the only way ROTPM could have kept the game going for much longer anyway.  Automation (AKA “the future of work” that is just around the Black Mirror-lined corner for all of us) could well have been the key to keeping up their 190 beers per minute sound as they aged.  In a genre typified by speed, Revenge seem to have always pushed the tactic along without slipping into heavier styles of music, a Benjamin Button bell curve that can’t go on forever.  For example, I have compared the 2004 CD version of their first ever track Rita, Sue And Bob Too from that early gig with the 2014 7” version included on That Was Just A Noise, and it is a clear 20 seconds longer, showing the kind of musical “growth” that’s respected only in the backwards punk universe.  It’s customary to mention a lack of songs above two minutes to denote speed, but on this 27 track album you must turn to remixes and covers to break the threshold.  You’re on fast forward almost all the time.  The oi’s never sit comfortably, and you’re fighting your own tongue to sing along with them.  It’s like Kid Dynamite slathered in lager.

Revenge soon moved beyond naming everything after awkwardly titled films, like Roger and The Eberts on the programme Love (Day For Airstrikes also named an album after Rita Sue and Bob Too.  Apparently Manchester acts just love depictions of working class Yorkshire).  Their messaging would spread, as depicted here, into drinking, animals, idiocy, drinking, songs titles destined for extended lives on T-shirts and TNS compilations, drinking, ravemixes, covers, Radio 1 sessions and drinking.  They stuck with the Alan Partridge title references though.  It skirts the right side of the line between fun and dumb for me personally, never winking at the listener like a dick and keeping the humour nestled under a cheetah’s running speed of instrumentation.

With such music there’s always the danger of it all bleeding together, which happens a little here on the surface, but contrast sprouts off in various directions, musical and thematic.  Is This Cool (from second album Shattered Dreams Parkway, 2012) has a fantastic breakdown of social media overload: “Stop fucking typing, it’s a load of shit/Life is so much better when you just get on with it.”  These moments when the frenzy slows just a tad are some of the most satisfyingly anthemic and attention-grabbing.  There’s The End of Everything, with “We don’t know what's coming next/So let's all get fucking wrecked.” I foresee it featuring heavily in the final minutes of their remaining setlists.  It’s one of many elements that teases at the wider scope thinking of Revenge, and that makes me think of last year’s freaky-animaled, philosophical exploration game, Everything.  The cut and paste album cover depicting beasts across time and space; Planet Earth II; I Know A Cracking Owl Sanctuary; Look At Me, I’m A Fucking Tiger; Fuck the Sea; I Wanna Be A Spaceman.  Vuz Lightyear is the really early lo-fi junk that ends many punk discographies, put in for the same honest self-deprecating reasons that I, in the first paragraph, linked to a laughable review that I wrote aged 19.

The other interesting oddities are deliberately placed at the two-thirds mark of That Was Just A Noise, conscious of the fact that naked punk rarely fares well beyond about 14 slices.  Beer For Breakfast (remixed here by the late Tim G) is that nuanced punk number embracing both the reckless, pseudoscience excess wing of the culture, and the straight edge-informed sensibleness found in this version’s looped closing line (“not every day or you’ll die”).  Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far gets the rapid beeping remix treatment out of Edinburgh “riotstep” band From The Cradle To The Rave, and Past Lives of Saints is off the track-swapping split Revenge did with “Country and Eastern” labelmates Bootscraper, The Bear and The Tiger.  Finally in the weirdo section is 15 Million Merits, a session track that they did for the Mike Davies Punk Show in 2013, the BBC riding that cutting edge wave as ever.  15 Million Merits is an example of the bands tendency to promote community over commodity (“Everybody wants something NOW NOW NOW!”).

Although I haven’t lived in the communities involved in nearly a decade at this point, the fact that I’ve remained quite aware of their activities speaks volumes about Revenge Of The Psychotronic Man’s contributions.  There are no other prominent UK collectives from my youth that I still hear about regularly, and that longevity counts for something.  Such a golden age are they leaving behind that that I apparently can't listen to a compilation spanning the previous decade-and-a-half from a Manchester act without being exposed to commentary about the steaming heap of distraction in a suit running my adopted country (Fake News).  They’re also breaking up just as the perfect skin-deep excuse for a mad tour comes up, with the impending release of a VHS appreciation documentary about psychotronic people, which sounds as utterly Fab Café friendly as the rest of the band’s imagery.

If you love well-executed, fast as fuck rock that’s casually presented but with some enclaves of intelligence and experimenting, you’ll want this.  If you’ve been a casual fan of the band and label over the years, far from following every release (like me), this will provide enough things that you missed to be worth your money.  And frankly, it would seem that they’ve earned any pennies you can give them.  The TNS/ROTPM crowd has always seemed to make their DIY punk work seem preposterously prolific and yet simultaneously direct and effortless (they achieve so much, they must be quite simply “just doing it”).  It’s impressive, and with the winding up of Revenge, perhaps we can expect to see even more out of their other organs.  The psychotronic man should be thankful, for his name is now attached to a much more impressive body of work.

The band has about 15 gigs left that you can see here, up to a final big one in Manchester in December.  You can buy tickets for that gig and buy the album from TNS Records here.  That Was Just A Noise can be streamed right here at Bandcamp.

Piss Ghost/Madison Turner/Yankee Roses/Gutless/Community Couch

Saturday, July 21st 2018

Lucky You Tattoo, St. Petersburg FL

In order to be punk, I have gone almost all of this year without working.  It’s allowed me to do a bunch of cool stuff, including write over twenty mighty musical manifesto morsels of the kind that you are about to enjoy, and go on several physically demanding activist benders.  The problem of course is that there are limits to how long most of us can live on the cheap, no matter our willingness to skirt around the long arms and “persuasive” messages of advertisers.  And so it is that I find myself missing tonight’s two opening bands due to a mass transit miscalculation, a ferocious lack of rideshare funds, and a level of social anxiety that -- if all the songs about it are to be believed -- appears to be widespread in our freakish community, leaving me with no-one I feel I can contact for a favour.

And of course they both sound really fucking good on record.  Local ukulele punk Stove is part of the anxiety-soothing Community Couch (presumably, the next project will involve the kitchen sink).  Listening to their tunes is part Brian Sella of The Front Bottoms, the ballads of Matt Pryor, and so much Daniel Johnston. The band have a Southeastern tour in mid-September, and they’ll be back at Lucky You Tattoo on August 30th to record a video.  I continue to be gutted with the lost chance of seeing Gutless, because they and their haunting, mid-tempo, Gainesville happy sad punk don’t appear to have plans to come back to our peninsula anytime soon.  Multi-instrumentalist singer V. Viana seems to provide some proper Off With Their Heads rawness.

My disappointment is thankfully short lived, with the delightful performance of Yankee Roses.  He tells us that the set will have “lots of G’s” because those are his initials (George Geanuracos).  Thankfully for our wimpy generation, it’s more Greg Graffin’s folk albums than the ghost of GG Allin.  With humour, charm, elegance, grit and many false endings, this David Rovics-like artist brings both bread and roses.  He expresses unhappiness with a company not well known for its labour relations, Wendy’s, and their behaviour on the internet (referring, I believe, to the fast food chains’ dropping of a crappy trap mixtape earlier this year, proving once and for all that corporations are people).  Having politely asked once, Yankee Roses bellows mid-song at us to “DO A SOLO!!,” to which we obediently baa baa like sheep in a nursery rhyme.  He’s currently donating his music profits to locales ravaged by climate change-charged hurricanes, which obviously includes his hometown of Miami.  Now living in Atlanta, the man’s gotten around, as showcased by the beautiful New England Grey about home being wherever you need it to be; a good message for this restless Flaux-ridian to hear (also reminiscent of my recent trip north, he then performs a song about heroin).  His brand new Summer 2018 EP is available for pay-what-you-like on bandcamp.

Yankee Roses migrates a few feet across the stage to perform with Madison Turner, someone who also knows a few things about moving.  The Tampa-born musician left the area 5 years ago for the healthcare-providing shores of Oregon.  She then spent eighteen months couch surfing, keeping herself punk poor (for the healthcare) and in that time wrote the album A Comprehensive Guide To Burning Out, which seems like a pretty decent description for a society where people are forced to make these sorts of decisions.  Turner’s opening song is Small Talk -- the first track from the album -- and its grand rock volume works fantastically in this small room.  For that I thank the presence of her full studio recording band, together for the only time on this tour.  At times they’ve got the low key but powerful delivery of The Promise Ring, at others, Yankee Roses on the fiddle mixed with Turner’s naked emotion provides some live Defiance, Ohio memories, and damn, they were a fun live band.  Perhaps if she’s been there, Turner could write something named after them, in the vein of Portland, Oregon and Richmond, Virginia (the latter of which is performed tonight).  And perhaps I could stop trying to live vicariously through other people’s tales like a car-despising sad sack.  As fortunate as I feel to have seen this unique presentation of the album, I’d like to see the stripped down version too.

Piss Ghost are living the mobility dream, spending the first week of August doing some dates in North Carolina, Georgia and northern Florida, and this headlining event -- their first gig in 7 months -- seeks to warm them up.  No doubt they’ll come back from this punk rock odyssey dreaming, as their new song states, of Simpler Times, like when you could throw out one piss-poor sentence describing a new band, lose the photo that the capsule review was written to accompany, and still call yourself a music journalist of some calibre.  When Piss Ghost aren’t inserting icy lo-fi sounds into their garage rock (particularly through Keeli’s bass lines), they’re delivering bits of summery guitar on a par with Beach Slang, with Laura’s middling volume vocals resting among it all.  They’re also being really funny, with any ghosts in the audience coming close to pissing themselves.  “Today I got injured playing hacky sack” Laura tells us, which explains drummer Susan’s colourful round earrings.  Audience call and response: “You Can't Piss On Hospitality/We won't allow it!”  Fuck Yr Queso becomes fuck yr crapitalism.  There is no way that in the face of such entertainment that there can be any pissed ghosts of any kind this evening, and that works in both senses, cause there’s no alcohol at Lucky You.  Which I bet is never a problem at their guitarist’s house: “I live in a converted refrigerator.”  Sounds like a good place to move.

Upcoming: Tommy Jordan

Ice Cream

Self-released, 2018

I scream, you scream, we all scream because of ICE.  Well anyone that recalls having a heart does, and Tommy Jordan’s debut album Ice Cream seeks to remind us of childhood’s innocent sensations, even if it is often by acknowledging that our adult lives are an activated charcoal black soft serve merely dotted with neon hundreds and thousands.  Originating in the appropriately frigid extreme Northern Tier of Bellingham in Washington State, Jordan scoops out contemplative hip hop that sits somewhere between sleepy half-confidence and woke self-awareness.  The living ghost of Ghostpoet appears amidst the pianos of Dear God, while the appealingly awkward instrumentals of early Gorillaz creep out of the cold on Rosie.  Between the fuzzy drums and chimes of Oliver Queen, the boxy, chippy electro of Ride On and the muted nighttime beats on the title track, Tommy Jordan understands that he doesn’t fully understand the role of the fortunate white man in building a world fit for everyone, acting in a scene built and sustained mostly by others that he nonetheless feels a profound connection to.  But he’s going to try and figure it out.  Injected with a healthy understanding of the unhealthy working grind and some killer soaring female guest spots, Ice Cream is 35 minutes of supposedly empty calories that leave you feeling strangely full.

Ice Cream will be available on Bandcamp and Soundcloud on August 13th.  Preview tracks can be heard here.

BREAKING THE ICE

“ICE’s criminal power does not make us powerless criminals”

-- Banner dropped on Department of Homeland Security wall

An Occupy ICE camp set up shop last Thursday outside Tampa’s Department of Homeland Security office (Immigration and Customs Enforcement is a component of DHS).  It joins the growing list of Occupy ICE campaigns looking to abolish the agency in Oregon, New York, California, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Georgia, Kansas, Michigan and Washington State.  The camp currently comprises around 15 tents stretching the full length of the front of the DHS building.  A memorial to victims of immigration enforcement violence of candles and flowers surrounds a tree, and many an icey pun seeks to cool participants down.  An impressively organised welcome centre is stocked with food, books and supplies, and the camp is by now well prepped for the Afghanistan-like conditions of wildly fluctuating Florida weather.  Maybe here we could also get a reputation for killing empires.

2017 saw a 76% spike in ICE arrests in Florida, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands over the previous year, the highest percentage increase in the country, up to a total of 6,192.  During the first Obama term, the same region experienced over 10,000 arrests every year and over 15,000 during two of the years.  Trump may be ramping things back up, but it was a man in a blue tie who laid the recent groundwork.  Over 2.5 million people were kicked out of the U.S. during Obama’s time in office, more than the total number for the entire 20th century.  Earlier this year a coalition of activist and civil rights groups issued a travel warning for immigrants and people of colour thinking of going to Florida, recommending particular caution at Greyhound bus stations and airports.  The state is also notably dangerous because Customs and Border Protection (ICE’s sister agency) operates checkpoints and stings within 100 miles of borders and coasts -- something Florida has quite a lot of.

Locally, Hillsborough County -- along with every county that surrounds it and 13 others in the state -- have made agreements with ICE to hang on to immigrants in local jails even if they are not charged with a crime.  This gives ICE time to come snatch the person up, and pay the sheriff’s office for their trouble.  Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri helped ICE to draw up the plans in a way that wouldn’t get them sued for civil rights violations.  If he did a good enough job the program is intended to be rolled out nationwide. When they announced all this in January, the sheriffs probably didn’t expect such a collaboration to be the political flashpoint that it has now become.

The Tampa camp intends to stay open until ICE agents -- currently earning an average of $61,600 a year -- are out on their arses.  If it seems unreasonable to demand the closure of a government department, consider that ICE has only existed since March 2003; life, and many deportations, went on before it.  Getting rid of them would at least slow down a machine that is acting with increasing impunity and at this point even going after green card holders.  There are also multiple other agencies making freedom of movement difficult in this corner of planet Earth.  Upon realising that the agency isn’t yet even old enough to drive (other than buses into Mexico), it’s worth extending the thought process when considering the legitimacy of the relatively new phenomenon of mass control on immigration and borders in general.

As of earlier this week, trouble and tension at the encampment seems minimal, although police have been using low-level intimidation tactics such as making late evening visits for no particular reason.  Local officials are likely considering the current political landscape in light of the Trump administration’s controversial “zero tolerance” policy at the border, not to mention the agreements sheriffs have already made with ICE.  The camp is technically on a strip of grass just beyond the DHS perimeter, lowering excuses for eviction, but it is clearly “occupying” a place in the public eye that the state would rather do without.  Employees in the building work from 7 - 3 during the week, so on select days the campers are using early morning “soft block” tactics on the driveway -- this involves continuously walking across it rather than stopping, so as to allow migrants through to their appointments. 

The protesters are always looking for others to relieve them as people come and go according to their abilities.  The more people present and staying overnight, the less likely the camp is to be broken up.  Non-perishable food, offers of transport and conversations beyond a car horn honk are also welcome. The building and camp are located at 5524 W Cypress Street near the airport. A Facebook group is here.

* * *

CRAP ARREST OF THE WEEK (ALMOST)

Here’s a postscript that shows the self-important mindset of some of the most powerful gatekeepers of our border system.  While at Tampa International Airport to catch a bus home from the camp, yer Radical Beat reporter was hit with a years trespassing warning for the crime of quickly and discreetly drying his feet in a quiet corner.  The situation could have easily snowballed into something more serious.  TIA is publicly owned by the county.  Tourists must be made to feel welcome (even as immigrants and local pedestrians are not) and god forbid that they see potential signs of poverty or bad weather here in magical funtime sunshine land.

We learned last year that masses converging on airports are politically feasible.  They deserve attention for their role in the deportation and border systems -- Miami International, for example, is one of the hubs used by Ice Air Operations.  This is to say nothing of the aviation industry's crimes on the climate and noise pollution.  Fuck the border, even if it’s located around an airport.

Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign
Thursday, May 31st - Thursday, June 13th 2018
Kensington, PA - Washington, D.C.

Diary, Part 4

June 9th
WE ARE ALL CAP(ITALIST)S

I can only imagine the amount of fantastic band names that have come and gone over the decades here in the heart of the empire. D.C./Baltimore quartet Capital Offender for example, who fit the fun colourful aesthetic of the surroundings right now with punk flavoured rock and roll. One song that I think is called We’re Gonna Fight is almost a 7 Seconds cover (latter day note: I might be talking out of my arse here, but what the hell). The good time death-themed flirtations continue with a second Virginia visitor, Torino Death Ride. Vocalist Richard is delivering his classically smirking post-hardcore vocals into a corded telephone. I like it, as it provides a good old muffle. After all the logistical mobile faffing this morning, going back and forth between here setting up this stage and our previous base in Baltimore, I’d be happy to carry such a forgivingly limited device around.

I didn’t come all this way to just listen to the excellent regional sounds though. Musician-activist Infinite Skillz is here with St. Pete posi hip hop (see also Shadcore, who recently released a new album). Skillz plays some of his strong numbers such as Black Burbon and Everything, but makes the decision to cut off the beat to one of my favourite songs by him (the high-fluting Headband Game). Our movement-supportive soundman Jimmy is also messing with his beats in a semi-amusing fashion. The crowd is not moving much but it sounds great to me. What I get is an impression of restlessness caused primarily by the winding down of Pride rather than apathy towards the artist himself.

Infinite Skillz would be the last scheduled performer of the evening. Unbeknownst to those involved however, the night would be far from over for some. Twerk stage invasions, vicious showers of both rain and cornmeal snacks, a completely trashed Dupont Circle following a consumerism-focused Pride, and a nightlong equipment guarding vigil (our original plan to occupy the park was delayed until the following day due to the size of the parade crowd), made for a wild end to yet another emotional day of the campaign. At least we’ve made it, in a manner of speaking. To “kind of” make it is the best most of us can expect to achieve.

* * *

June 10th
A DAY LATE AND A DOLLAR SHORT

For the second time during this trip I find a spider living in my hair while taking a shower. And for the second time, I spare its life. Empathy is a muscle that you must exercise, and these past ten days have been a boot camp in it.

Easing us further into an organic and tender day is Philadelphia’s Eddie Somerset. Eddie has more than earned his spot on this stage, having marched and done security with the Poor People's Campaign for the last 4 or 5 days. Now he’s letting loose from those necessary rigidities with a Barry White instrumental-inspired cover of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, a fantastic combination track that I had been enjoying on the march route without knowing it was from one of our own. His delivery is somewhat spoken word anyway, as found on other numbers from his Surviving The Struggle album. Somerset is followed by spoken-word stalwarts Leroy Moore and Tiny of Poor News Network, delivering representations of the Krip-Hop Nation (musicians and artists with disabilities) and the Poor People's Pun Party, soon to be celebrated in full in the ashes of crapitalism and gentriFUKation.

The Dischord family still cast a heavy shadow over this city, excitingly for a fanboy like me. The church helping us out while we’re here, St. Stephen and the Incarnation Episcopal, employs the services of Ian Mackaye’s dad Bill, and to this day still puts on punk gigs. I spent some time over at legit 80s-born D.C. hardcore store Smash Records (no affiliation with The Offspring), picking out the latest release from Red Hare, and I keep hearing excited murmurs from my punk associate Shea that members of The Teen Idles and Fugazi are all over the place, including in our next performers The Delarcos. Their bassist Nathan was in fact in Teen Idles and is one of the founders of Dischord.  And The Delarcos, it turns out, are very easy to mix up with their friends in Rise Defy, who were supposed to originally play today but pulled out, and whose bassist Klaus appears to have been a member of Dead Kennedys at some point.  Not that that is relevant, but this is a seamless correction of a case of mistaken identity, and you will never know there was an incision.  While The Delarcos boom out a cover of Jericho by The Clash, a bunch of us are frantically bringing in food, furniture and possessions from our illegally parked truck to occupy the park. Punk as fuck.

My most anticipated act of the weekend is the militant hip hop duo Rebel Diaz. They’re the kind of artists who delight whether they’re preaching the good fight or preaching the good rhymes. You’d never know they were a duo today, as they share half their set with friends, such as Ferguson organizer Tef Poe, King Capo on the likes of La Patrulla (The Patrol), and a singer who I think was from Jacksonville named Chi (sorry, journalist of the year here) who made use of a beautiful Miles Davis sample. The ensemble’s raw talent clearly connects with the more modest crowd that has gathered today. Viva Fidel becomes Viva Puerto Rico along with a declaration that the underarching hurricane is that of America itself. Rebel Diaz appear to have two upcoming releases: Multiply with Tef Poe, and América vs Amerikkka featuring lead song Y Va Caer, that I initially heard on Democracy Now! even if for some reason none of our two week protest was to be found there.

Karma comes quickly for Rebel Diaz when Yet More D.C. Hardcore act Never Submit invite them back onstage for a multi-ethnic, multi-genre crossover of defiance. I love seeing the political punk/rap convergence continue to spread, those founding documents of the Radical Beat. “Blank checks for bankers!” wails vocalist Scott. Babies With Rabies and The Screws continue the thrashing about soundtrack into the early evening, accompanied by the sound of incredibly makeshift structures being haphazardly hammered into place throughout Dupont Circle. The things that activists like to do to relax before a big action are really weird…

* * * 

June 11th
HEADS UP, HUD

We sweep the plentiful night rain out of our temporary village and head off to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Earlier this year the department announced proposed changes to subsidised housing rules, now waiting to be approved by Congress, that quietly kick the American poor in the face once again.

The Make Affordable Housing Work Act (named because presumably, kicking poor people in the face is complementary to Making America Great Again) includes some of the following ideas: increasing rent from 30% of a recipients post-deduction income to 35% of their total gross income; increasing mandatory rent minimums from $50 to $152; changing the definition of “elderly” from 62 to 65; allowing the implementation of work requirements; and removing a households elderly or disabled status if there is someone in the house who is neither, even if that person is a full-time student.

These proposals will affect the vast majority of the 5 million households that receive federal housing assistance. 89% of these households include seniors, children or people with disabilities. It’s already difficult to get this assistance due to a lack of funding, with an average wait time for Section 8 housing vouchers of 2 years. As usual, the reason for these belt-tightening facekicks -- as described by HUD Secretary and useful idiot Ben Carson -- is to give an “incentive” to poor people to get off their arses and earn more money. Because we unwashed masses hadn’t thought of that option before.

About 30 PPEHRC participants arrived at HUD to demand a meeting with Carson to point out that these measures are going to make more people homeless, miserable and sick, and to suggest that the department stop spending $31,000 a pop on dining room furniture for Ben’s office. A standoff began at the security checkpoint, and within a short time agents from the Department of Homeland Security arrived -- which is a reasonable response to residents wishing to speak to the government representative that is supposed to work for them.

Most of the crowd was eventually herded outside reluctantly, with PPEHRC National Coordinator Cheri Honkala sitting down and refusing to move. It took the guards an immense amount of time to figure out how to lock the door to their own workplace, suggesting that the concept of open government is more present in the bricks of the building than its inhabitants. Eventually, after a slew of false compromises, Honkala was hauled off to the cop shop for the all too familiar crime of existing in an inconvenient place.

At the exact time that this was happening (completely coincidentally, of course), the tent city in Dupont Circle was being visited by other fuzz, including a park ranger. We had a permit for the vigil that they demanded to see in physical form along with its holder (who was at the HUD action). They ordered us to remove the ground pegs from our tents, as that would ensure they remained symbolic rather than an encampment (which is illegal), and to comply with other basically innocuous things of little consequence. Despite being such good law-abiders, we were evicted from the park 10 hours later for not meeting the requirements of our permit. From beginning to end, the cops throughout this campaign made sure that all of our previous conceptions of them remained fully intact. At least we had Ian Mackaye's dad to help us out for the last night of bands.

Honkala was thankfully released that evening, but has as of this writing been charged with unlawful entry and a stay away order for HUD, with a D.C. Superior Court date set for August 7th at 9:30am. If you’re in the area, consider going to show your support.

* * * 

NO WAR BUT CLASS WAR

This Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign began in 1998, and has done bus tours, extensive marches and summits in most of the years since. But if you didn’t know any better (like me until recently), you’d think the modern “Poor People's Campaign” began about 9 months ago in the run up to the 50th anniversary of the campaign that Martin Luther King was organising in 1968 when he got mysteriously assassinated. In late May, a line was added to the older groups’ Wikipedia page that could have led an observer to believe it had been incorporated into the new organisation (though it was not stated outright, and seems unlikely to have been malicious). Grumbles abound in our camp that the new campaign is being funded by deep cooptation-oriented pockets rather than the poor themselves, and that the civil disobedience that resulted in over 2,500 arrests during its recent month of action was pre-orchestrated with law enforcement. I’ve not been able to find details of these charges though, even in the independent media.

It's hard to look at some of the coverage of the other campaign - which culminated in a huge rally on Saturday, June 23rd - and not feel small in several senses. The rhetoric of being grassroots, self-funded, legit, feels righteous, but the slickness of a big mainstream campaign hits different kinds of legitimacy buttons. Maybe we should just throw the towel in, do what the Wikipedia incident implied, and merge into their group, get shinier placards. It’s hard enough to fight capitalism without fighting alleged astroturf campaigns as well. It seems fair to say that neither approach has all the answers. We’re often good on the left at eating our own, looking for traitors while the right searches for recruits. It’s hard to know where to draw the lines. We’ll see which wing has staying power in the years to come. The intimate relationships that this group provides seems to have been priceless for many involved. And there will always be a place in social movements for that. In fact, you might say it’s fundamentally the main goal.

* * * 

BETWEEN HARD ROCK AND A HARD PLACE

The Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign is currently running an effort to raise post-march and pre-other-action funds. Anti-capitalists having to raise money: it might still be a juicy quip for the pinstripe crowd, but to us it’s a great indicator of the rock-up-a-hill backwards priorities of this sort of economy. You don’t see the people fucking the world up having to hold bake sales!

Anyway, in the spirit of empowering art, community, good times, symbolic support and physical support, we have the Keepin’ It 100 Concert Series. It’s a cool idea that will allow anyone involved in local music scenes across the country to support the PPEHRC. You take an upcoming event (or create a new one) and affiliate it with the campaign. You pledge to donate at least $100 from the event, 99 other musicians/promoters do the same, and the movement stays 100% grassroots. It’s advertised for July, but I’m sure they wouldn’t mind any later contributions.

Facebook event page // Band sign up sheet // PPEHRC donation page

* * * 

Part 1 of this series is here.

Part 2 is here.

Part 3 is here.

Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign
Thursday, May 31st - Thursday, June 13th 2018
Kensington, PA - Washington, D.C.

Diary, Part 3

June 7th
BOLLOCKS TO POVERTY

I wake up on the floor of another church gym coughing up some blood. Woke up in the night to some of the various horrific noises of the human body. More sore. More unable to open my eyes. Bollocks to poverty.

Although we aren’t walking the full 140 miles between our two goalposts, this daily trek is a physically demanding task for anybody. It’s a tragic irony that people who do physically demanding work are often de-incentivised from doing exercise on their own terms. “I spend all week pushing pallet jacks around, why would I need or want to work out?” That’s if they have the time outside of work to even consider the option. While employment can provide some helpful physical activity, it’s more often than not doing more damage to the individual than good, as their body is just a tool in someone else's financial portfolio. When you choose to do something for your own flesh and blood -- for the one thing in the world that you should, beyond all else, be able to call your own -- you can tailor the routine to what you need, not what your employer or landlord needs. It also doesn’t have to be the money pit that it is generally depicted to be. I like to run, partially because I can do it looking like a total slob. And I do. I can smell the roses and slump down on the couch after with a mild sense of satisfaction. I’m no health expert, but if working out helps me to get through my working day a little easier, I consider it a partial, individual and immediately deployable tactic worth pursuing.

* * * 

PARTY AND PROTEST

As alluded to in an earlier entry, among the many fashionable hats that our longboarder friend Curtis wears is that of official Naked Lunch absurdist narrator. These moments always have the potential to be both gut-crushingly hilarious and silence-shatteringly irritating. Frankly, the potential for him to decide he’s going to have an actual naked lunch never seems to be that far off. At least he is extremely attractive.

Emotions are something that are naked here often, both the euphoric and crushing. Hugs, tears of joy, apologies, mutual feelings of appreciation from those not often listened to. Painful family drama, intoxication, arguments and short tempers and raised voices out the arse. While putting forth efforts to avoid feeding negative stereotypes of the working class, we don't pretend to be beyond human. We demand human rights because we're human. These flaws prove it. These attributes belong to people of all social standings. All that is different is the details, such as tax bracket of drug choice and the square footage and privacy of the theatre.

On this voyage I’ve seen humans that are homeless, disabled, with addictions, and otherwise scuppered by society, being security stewards to keep us all safe from traffic, leading the march line, driving support vehicles, arranging and granting entertainment, picking up street rubbish, raising donations, forgoing sleep to guard equipment, risking eviction, providing childcare for one another, and every other thing that is necessary for a large group of people to survive on the go. That’s how you build community, where everything we desire begins.

* * * 

June 8th

I’ve been resisting subscribing to it to minimise goal-derailing drama, but there is a definite split in the group. I wanted to chalk it up to some activist ego and emotional parenting, however it is now undeniable that things have taken a bad turn. There seems to be an effort to ignore the fact that we left a vulnerable individual behind, to the point where no push is being made to share information about what happened despite requests. It is the opposite of the urgency that the situation should arouse. Almost needless to say, this sort of behaviour is exhibited by the economic system we’re struggling against. Bittersweetly, at least we are talking about someone that’s used to fending for themselves. We hope for Ezra’s safe return to St. Pete, or wherever he chooses to go.

* * * 

MARYLAND COOKIE CRUMBS

It’s certainly been no mistake by the route planners that we’ve seen a wide variety of neighbourhoods on this march. We’re not the ones that need convincing about the damage of an ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor (currently at its highest level since the 1920s, by some measurements). But it is a thing made more sobering when you see it as bricks and mortar and not facts and figures. The few miles heading into Baltimore sum things up perfectly. Million dollar houses with no visible signs of life other than the labourers doing the upkeep on them suddenly give way to a city where one of our participants’ wheelchairs gets stuck in wet tarmac because it wasn’t marked.

* * * 

June 9th
STONEWALL WAS A RIOT, NOT A BRAND

History will have to judge whether having our opening fest day on the same day as the D.C. Pride carnival was a misstep or genius. It’s definitely fun though! Thousands of people, issues intersecting, it’s nice to feel a semblance of solidarity after such a long week. The participants are supportive and enjoying our sound system but largely occupied (hah) here in the park. Even for Florida transplants, it is incredibly hot. The empty fountain in the middle of Dupont Circle laughs at us. Climate change is simultaneously a Chinese hoax and an anti-gay punishment from God. Don’t forget.

Conveniently sounding like The Queers with hints of the early hardcore of Bad Religion, the first of many consistently good bands today is Virginia’s No Dead Monsters. It’s hard to say how much of the crowd this applies to but those at the stage seem happy with the less typical Pride fare on offer. It’s not all about new wave and Europop. So it continues with locals XK Scenario, who describe themselves as a prog-hop act, coming with all the funky bass and foreboding heaviness of Rage Against The Machine and some H.R. from Bad Brains vocals. They get such a cool description because I’m also choosing to believe that they’re named after the website XKCD.com.

Speaking of Bad Brains, D.C’s own I Against Eye (they’re bringing the mantle back home since that Dutch band that was on Epitaph for a number of years broke up). A storm eye threatens to appear as singer Rael The Legend yells “Kick out the jams motherfuckers!” The Chinese must realise that they can’t compete with the power of an LGBT crowd moshing through bubble machines to the sound of grind metal, and the storm never materialises. “D.C. hardcore forever!!” The band hands the mic over to the participants, and a homeless man that we recruited to help us hand out flyers the previous evening is now letting you know what the fuck is up amidst the furious bedlam. I defy your band to have a more punk set than this.

The grassroots shakeup of Rainbow Capitalism rolls on like so many corporate floats, with more local hardcore in the shape of Ruin By Design (there’s a reason this place is Mecca for fans of this music). In between Circle Jerks stylings (fnarr) the band are bigging up PPEHRC, and the local Food Not Bombs group that has just arrived with free food for whoever wants it. I like to imagine that they were playing their track Decoys on Parade just as a giant float from our Black Mirror overlords at Facebook goes by. Amusingly, Ruin By Design are followed by speakers from the Socialist Workers Party, and a change of pace in the form of Curtis on the beatboxes of steel.

Why is VisitBritain -- the UK government tourism body -- handing out shit here? Is this part of Theresa May’s increasingly desperate Brexit strategy to keep the economy from being fucked?

* * *

Part 1 of this series is here.
Part 2 is here.

Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign

Thursday, May 31st - Thursday, June 13th 2018

Kensington, PA - Washington, D.C.

Diary, Part 2

June 2nd

I DIDN’T GO TO WORK TODAY… I DON’T THINK I’LL GO TOMORROW

It doesn’t take long without easy access to amenities to become dishevelled, grumpy, sweaty, sore, and in unclear ownership of certain possessions.  Other problems that I face when I am marching come to mind on day one: spending an introductory period formulating a super cool contribution only to talk myself out of giving it; finding myself right in front of march security guides shouting in my ears; the chanting, and the discussion about how damn corny it normally makes protesters sound (a discussion that rarely takes place).

We pass a poster for a hip hop festival in Philadelphia that night, Roots Picnic, with an enviable line-up: The Roots, Rapsody, Badbadnotgood, Sun Ra Arkestra.  I can’t wait until our own festival next weekend.  Like victory, it seems a long way off.

* * *

June 5th

ALARM CLOCKS KILL DREAMS

We wake up on the church floor of another American town named after a rich English playground (Oxford, PA).  The feelings of physical pain and fatigue that I have in my back, feet and calves at this point are similar to ones that I’ve had during particularly brutal employment periods (eg. Party City, the most evil company that its ever-widening market will allow.  If crude oil became a hot party supply beyond its use in endless plastic products, they’d be Chevron).  I have to wonder if the teens here, sleeping later than 6:30 or 7 even as the noise in the room rises, are partially doing so because “work” hasn’t yet trained them out of more natural sleep cycles.

* * *

CLASSICAL MUSIC

Not waiting until the artists meet us at Dupont Circle, the participants entertain themselves.  Music is everywhere here.  Folk singalong hootenannys take place of an evening, in measured doses.  Poor News Networker Tiny moves back and forth throughout the single file of marchers, streaming interviews and broadcasting hip hop.  A rendition of Rich Man's House by supporter Sandra Rivera becomes an unofficial anthem.  Rage Against the Machine and reggae boom from the support van at appropriate stops.  We listen to Flesh and Blood by OT The Real: the soundtrack for last years film of the same name starring Mark Webber, son of PPEHRC National Coordinator Cheri Honkala.  You might know her best as the Green Party’s Vice Presidential candidate for 2012.  It’s a good job for all of us, as Philadelphia’s OT says in the song, that money doesn’t equal love.  But it is nevertheless at the heart of everything in our current reality: a fundraiser to house participants of this march, and pay expenses from the march, is taking place on “independence day” in St. Petersburg, featuring certain-age childhood favourites P.O.D., Lit, and Alien Art Farm.  Capitalism: you’ve been struck by a smooth criminal!

* * *

June 6th

CLASS ACT

We’ve made it to Maryland.  Walking up and downhill on an increasingly narrow shoulder, with school buses and logging trucks on the left and ankle-breaking gutters on the right.  Marching is not always a fluffy activity…

* * *

We stop to rest on the highway by a billboard that says the average American wastes 290 lbs of food a year.  “I’d like to dispute that,” says our travelling comedian and wiseman Standup Steve.  It’s been a tiny scream in the mind of eco-warriors like me, but we’re wasting food on this trip due to generosity.  We have more than we need, which it’s fair to say is not a normal state of affairs for most here.  According to a recent study, those with healthier diets rich in fruits and vegetables tend to waste more.  That’s not particularly surprising, if you consider that healthier diets are linked to higher incomes, and higher incomes are linked to burning through more resources.

* * *

THE GLASSES AGAINST THE CLASSES

You see the need for a radical economic approach to environmentalism when you come to terms with the fact that, small conscientious choices aside, people generally consume as many resources as their incomes allow.  There are a few exceptions: currently, it’s only when you have money that you can regularly afford organic food or a non-leaking, remotely efficient house fit for human habitation.  But that house will still likely be bigger and thus filled with more stuff.  The bottom line is that any solution to the environmental crises that are currently converging to punch the global poor in the face is going to have involve much better levels of income equality and some form of wealth redistribution.  $15 an hour and lowered shareholder profits, for example.

We trudge along often busy roads breathing in the fumes of car culture.  So much of American activism is directed at getting the attention of motorists isolated in their vehicles, peering out from behind sunglasses.  The immediate damage of dead possums, turtles, other “roadkill,” and the obvious danger we face marching alongside them, is just one thing to hate these machines for.  Cars are directly linked with the capitalist system that makes us poor.  Look at the Reclaim the Streets movement of the 1990s.  Communal space is given over to places where folks sit alone, off to ruggedly get their own bacon, feeding the mindset that as individuals we don’t need other people to survive.  The private vehicle becomes your best friend.  It’s antithetical to the movement of empathy and love that many in this crowd wish to build.  When we aren’t marching on a sliver of land permitted for pedestrians, we are clawing back a sliver of space from both cars and capital.  Getting that pinky toe of interaction that slips through the atomisation - the supportive honk - should be just a start.

  

* * *

Part 1 of this series can be read here.

Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign

Thursday, May 31st - Thursday, June 13th 2018

Kensington, PA - Washington, D.C.

Diary, Part 1

June 1st

NO SLEEP TILL KENSINGTON

Being in this van at 4 a.m. is like being in Guantanamo Bay: loud as fuck music, blasting cold air, darkness, stress positions, no chance of sleep, and if things keep getting worse under the current administration, inside a metal canister hurtling at high speed across the landmass. As in the regular lives of poor people, we are fighting over limited resources such as space, our immediate interests are conflicting (the drivers need the bloodcurdling metal to stay alert), and we wonder why we got ourselves into such a degrading situation, before feeling guilty for thinking that way, because hey, this HAS to be done. I am not sure how I will get through this. I left home in such a rush I neglected to bring a sleeping bag, roll mat or even a coat. My immediate van buddy has spent hours grabbing at my hands and feet and knees and ignoring my clear discomfort. And if I have to carry these bags 140 miles in a week I'll reach D.C. looking like a white walker. But like working people always say to themselves in the brief respite between the end of one grind cycle and the start of the next... I made it. 

I should have taken the lack of visible basic details and logistics as a sign, and protested by not coming on the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign. It's too late now though. We are knee deep in the shit of it. It will either be a foul experience full of inspiration, or a total waste of my time. I'm mostly pinning my hopes on a larger crowd once we get to Philadelphia.

To the 8 person funk we now add McDonald's, acquired by creating huge drive-through lines behind us and confusing the hell out of a fellow poor person with a convoluted set of orders. Funding your class enemies is a necessary option a lot of the time. It is 6 a.m. and I still haven't slept. We are listening to Big Pun and Naughty By Nature, and I am wearing a ridiculous functional hat with dog ear flaps and a chinclip. Fucking hell.

* * * 

“It is patently ridiculous for the United Nations to examine poverty in America,” so said the US representative at the U.N. this week, Nikki Haley. Not to do anything about it, just look into it. It was in response to U.N. special rapporteur Philip Alston, who recently toured the country and reported that 40 million live in poverty and 5.3 million in Global South-style material poverty. That latter number comes from a metric developed by one Oxford economist earlier this year, with 6.9 million people in the EU in similar conditions. To acknowledge these people in what Haley somehow described as “the wealthiest and freest country” in the world is patently ridiculous.

* * * 

It is a rare moment where a hurricane of mad shit isn't swirling around Reverend Bruce Wright. After a 90 minute search for a very particular Philadelphia cheesesteak, we go on an extended manhunt for two people who’ve disappeared on an impromptu drug score. When a couple of cops shut down some young black men playing music and breakdancing in the edgy South Street district, an argument over how to handle the situation leads to Wright flooring our van in fury, and a 25 minute lecture from a longboarder who sleeps rough in downtown St. Petersburg regarding his vast and untapped economic, religious and political power. Arguments break out within and without the group all over, all the time. I say these things not to point and laugh at either Bruce or his Brucie Bonuses, but to demonstrate what a character St Pete has bred. He chooses to work alongside and associate with those who aren't deemed worthy of company by polite society. Despite his infamous short temper, he doesn’t throw people with problems out of the stroller as if they were worthless. We should celebrate him.

* * * 

June 2nd
JONESING FOR JUSTICE

In 1903 there were ten thousand textile workers on strike in Kensington, Pennsylvania. They were the young children of Kensington, part of a larger contingent of seventy-five thousand that were taking part in the action. The labour rights activist Mother Jones took some of the children on a week-long march to Oyster Bay, New York, home of President Roosevelt, to shed light on the terrible conditions of child labour. They slept in barns, bathed in rivers and relied on the kindness of those along the route for food and assistance. It’s eerie how much this echoes the march we made in 2018, from Kensington to D.C.

The fortunes of Kensington -- and Philadelphia in general -- don’t appear to have changed a lot since 1903 either.  There were 1200 overdose deaths in the city in 2017, one of the highest rates in the country, mostly from opioids.  Trash adorns every square foot, piles mount outside businesses and on sidewalks. Many sidewalks are so poorly maintained they are barely walkable. Drug users nodding out on corners are a common sight. Tent cities like the ones in St. Petersburg are visible and Kensington is home to multiple open-use heroin encampments. The trains and old buildings are cool though, rundown as they might appear. The still-funded police get in our space for the second time in twelve hours, this time almost literally. The cute terraced street where we are staying in an ally’s house - where kids are dancing in an open fire hydrant as we arrive in the summer heat - apparently has a lot of desperate people squatting empty buildings. After a neighbour makes a call to the cop shop, they’re threatening to throw us out or arrest us if the owner of the house doesn’t immediately show up with proof that we’re there legally. Heaven forbid she go out for a few hours. Thankfully she does return, but not before we’ve panicked and thrown all our possessions out in the street, and our reverend looks about ready to go Operation MOVE on some motherfuckers.

Incidentally, Kensington is named after a London borough that today has the highest levels of income inequality in all of England; it’s home to both the ashes of the former government housing block Grenfell Tower, where 72 lost their lives in a fire last summer, and also the palace that houses certain trendy young bloodsuckers of the Royal family, recently seen popping out welfare kings and queens worthy of the title. 

* * *