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| who we be, humynifesto, mission statement of sorts... |
| (this will change as we do) We are a collective going around the world, slowly. Going against the grain and rotation of the world. We are haphazardly headed east until either we have circled the globe at least once, decide to die, or, more hopefully, the collective grows becomes autonomous of any of its specific members. Therefore, any of the humyns in the collective could take part in life away from the collective and the collective could still continue on whatever path of creation or destruction the current members desired. We attempt an understanding that not everyone can do this. Whether taking part in the revolutionary act of childbirth or not feeling able to balance travel and dedication to a community, there are countless reasons why a humyn can not and more unfortunately, choses not to travel, make music, and / or distribute information. We therefore wish to enable people to talk to us about distributing their information, stories, lyrics, music, anything possible and enjoyable. We travel autonomously whenever possible, hitchhiking or freight train hopping or canoe making, and lots of walking. We feel travel is a right not a privilege. There are two huge methods used to prevent people from travelling. There is the more direct and aggressive method of creating a class system where most people can not afford to travel. There is also a more invisible method, creating terrorism through tourism. Allowing people to believe they are travelling when in reality the hotels the stay at are owned by companies from their home countries and are designed to make them feel just as comfortable as home. The tourist destination are what governments have decided are appropriate portrayals of their country. It is difficult to stray from predetermined tourist paths and therefore actually experience the honest realities present outside of home. Although the collective was actually formed in Chiapas, Mexico while the members were partaking in a solidarity project with Zapatista communities, all the members have lived most of their lives in the United States. In the United States, the structures of our society (entertainment, church, school, workplaces) attempt to commodify relationships in order to mantain control through alienation. People form relationship on the basis of what they can aquire from them. Boundries are set by of the assigned labels (boyfriend, wife, boss, etc.) given to our relationships. These labels act as a frame for the limits of how intimate our relationships can become. Forming relationships outside of work, school, and sports can be an empowering revolutionary act in itself. By hitchhiking, trust relationships are formed with total strangers. Another benefit of autonomous transportation is not supporting war. There is not a single war the United States is involved in that oil is not the major cause. From Columbia to Iraq, the convenience of having this years model SUV has been so overly accepted by an earth-killing advertising campaign, that instead of sharing our privileges, like cars, we are bombing people who do not even drive, so we can steal the oil underneath their feet. We are anarchist. In regards to this website, we do not really wish to perpetuate life in front of a glowing screen. But we need balance between the smashed computers and our methods of communication. For us, being without permanent address, the internet makes an interesting place for us to update our collective being. |
| All our literature and music is free. If it is not available directly from a website we will attempt to make it so soon so if you wish you can make your own cd of any of our projects. All of our words, thoughts, actions, are free from the constraints which we do not desire, namely, the ideas of private property. If you wish to make a donation to help us along, please go find your local homebum and give him a dollar, even and especially if you know he is just gonna spend it on whiskey. We are a group of people with a simple idea: the symbiosis of the different methods and forms of resistance against the system, in all it's many forms: political, emotional, mental, and social. We chose the paths we found empowerment, struggle, and beauty in: activism, traveling, making music, art, and poetry and creating hope. We feel balance can exist between having the desire to experience the world in all of it's complexities whilst still maintaining the desire to change it, affect it and challenge it's injustices. There can exist a unification of freedom and responsibility, we believe this to be vital and can be a source for liberation. Just as the system is multi-faceted, so is resistance. A healthy resistance contains both struggling and dancing, creating and destroying. There are assets of the mix of traveling and activism (amongst others, culture jamming, info distribution, and not-for-profit media creating, from one on one conversations of our experiences to first hand journalism). The convergence of these two lifestyles can also offer more. Experiencing life outside the regimented paths chosen for us by the system and those who mean to enslave us can be one of the first steps in being able, emotionally and realistically, to resist it, and legitimately fight it. Our life and liberation must always stay alive and new, never commodified, or old, or jaded. Jaded(ism) being an enemy of our hope(ism). Change is good. Revolution happens daily with constant confrontation and analyses whenever positively possible, always forward with awareness of the existence of invisible tools like stress and madness. They want us to laugh at ourselves, ingest humor based on sorrow to dilute our anger. When we laugh at ourselves, we have no dignity, and they can fill it with false pride (consumer pride, nationalist pride, prejudiced pride). Separation is easy when society is so big we can not see it. We can make it smaller. Anything can become intimate. To do this is a struggle. The struggle is constant. The struggle is beautiful. You are beautiful. From the slow, autonomous mountains of Zapatistan respected Chiapas to the speed injected, smog-filled skies of Los Angeles, revolution belongs everywhere, to everyone, and we refuse to let one day slip by. In no way is this a complete definition of the Vagabond Collective. This is just a thought fit onto a piece of paper, we could write books, and will, but the only complete liberated "Who we be" resides within us and with us during our existence and resistance, feel free to talk with us. More importantly, just feel free. vagabondcollective@yahoo.com |