Virtuality

 

Melody learned and worked, and learned and worked, and got our new Reject Raytheon website up and running this week. What a chore it was for her, a beginner at this, but what a beautiful thing she came up with. We've got plenty of text, video, podcast, and photos on it so far and now we just need to keep feeding it. Virtual reality has a life of its own and can be the tail that wags the dog. We need to keep our movement going so we can get new stuff online! 😊

Speaking of which, I've been working to organize our next demo. This time, we'll converge on the office of Biltmore Farms LLC, which gave the land to Pratt & Whitney for its 1.2 million square foot plant. The office resides in the private community and shopping area of Biltmore Park, so we will be trespassing on private property with our banners, signs, and flyers. And we might even make some noise. Just today, I talked with a member of the very cool radical band Brass Your Heart which shows up at various activist events in town. They will accompany us as we march into the Town Square. It should be fun, and a little edgy, given that we expect to be confronted by a private security agency as well as by the Asheville Police Department, which has jurisdiction there. But we don't mean to risk arrest and will just leave if ordered to do so. But we'll be sure to get as much video and imagery as we can, and hopefully a TV reporter will show up and do some filming as well. All good for virtual world, right? 

Today I was reading Christian Sorensen's great book Understanding the War Industry which chronicles in detail how the military-industrial complex runs the show in our country. It's very informative and well-documented and I'm learning a lot. Of course, Raytheon is mentioned often and sometimes I read the Raytheon info aloud to Melody. Once, she had me dictate a couple of sentences so she could post them on the website. Later, I typed out a couple of paragraphs that seemed really useful for the site. We are intent!

Taking on this new website responsibility takes up some time, but it's time we mostly have, old retired farts that we are. It does focus us on this movement we are trying to help birth and gives us a feeling (illusory?) that we are actually accomplishing something that might influence others. The work is not tangible like building a house, but it is still constructing something - a public place of shared vision and resistance, if you will.

Virtuality is becoming more and more a reality for us, it seems. Is that a virtue?