Black Boots Ink » Colt Peterson

Love Politics

Will Hortman — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 22:17:46 +0000

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Love Politics
by Ruby Cymrot-Wu

How can activism be a practice in love? I believe it must be, because activists need to learn how to love themselves and trust themselves to do the work that is necessary. Activism requires love to be sustainable. Whatever underemployed activist you are – an artist, a teacher, a community organizer – love can be the basis of your work. Not anger or frustration, but a passionate love of change, of your own self, and of the people around you.

As activists, our mission is to love the whole being of every individual, and work to improve each person’s quality of life by moving forward comprehensively and holistically. It is strange that many of us believe this, but forget to include ourselves. We are not pardoned. How can we fight for the improvement of the quality of life for others and simultaneously forget to leave room for our own feelings of elation and grief? As our society ignores the realness of emotional and mental stress for everyone, we feel that we must suppress our own experiences and struggles in order to be true, efficient leaders. There is a silencing of our needs, and we are forced to push ahead, perpetuating the cycle of our pervasive mental health crisis. Instead, we can combat the pandemic by doing our work passionately and forming our own practice of loving ourselves.

A fulfilling project, not to mention a paycheck, is a privilege not many are afforded.

And at the same time, we cannot take this privilege and turn it around into a guilt-ridden drive to ignore passions and needs that are not directly linked to an end goal. We cannot give and expect nothing in return. The work can feed you in some way.

How can we bring our whole self to activism? By loving ourselves as well as the people directly affected by our activism. In the old Jewish teaching from Hillel “If I am not for myself, then who will be for me.” We must perpetuate a sustainable model for activists, or else our actions and movements in the present will fail in the future. If we do not take this moment now, there will not be anyone to carry on the work, or even worse – no one to mentor the next generation of activists.

I charge each and every person to take a moment and reflect on what you can do to support yourself. Even if you take 10 minutes out of your day to drink a cup of tea, I encourage you to try it. It might just be the change you need to make change in our world.

Public Places

Will Hortman — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 23:00:55 +0000

Keeping IT Out
Why we should do away with all public places
by Greg Benchwick

I’ve really begun to hate everything public: Public busses with their surly drivers and sticky customers, candied seats and bubble-gum rails; libraries made for lounging street lizards and hypocritical intellectual hoods; parks with their goddamned fucking trees – so tall, so arrogant – the fucking sidewalks and public spaces with their skateboarding punks and gruesomely green grass. And of course there’s always the itinerant and frightfully exuberant youth in revolt that seems to grow out there like a germ. You must have to be young (or degenerate) to spend so much time out there with IT lurking around every corner.

I admit that IT chafes me. And that YOU terrify me. That’s why I drive a Hummer so big and burly you’d need to be 6 foot 4 and have x-ray vision to see inside. You can’t see past the walls of my 8000-square-foot McMansion; you can’t see into the marbled halls of my boy Bill’s private school; you can’t see into my country club or my doctor’s office. And this is how I like it. This is how I designed it from the ground up.

To keep YOU out! To keep IT out!

To protect my life, every second of it – from Lunesta-soaked dreams (why hello there Mr. Butterfly) to the 19th hole and the champagne and caviar cart at Chez Pierre. Each day I find a new layer of insulation in hopes that the putrid wind of the plebeians not waft over my fence or through my tinted window. But IT always manages to get in.

I say we privatize everything. Private parks so well manicured you could perform surgery out there. Oh wait, I guess I have the club for that. Well then, let’s do away with busses and libraries and the goddamned sidewalks with their never-ending booby-traps – cracks designed to break mother’s back and crap left with one sole purpose: to shit on my parade. If you can’t afford your own ride and a few hundred a year at Barnes & Noble than what kind of American are you really?

I got all this mafia-like protection – from the SUV to the towering walls of my gated community – with money. I suggest you get some sometime. Then I might even consider letting YOU in. But IT is not invited.

Mexico

Will Hortman — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 00:14:34 +0000

images by Workshop Mexico 2007 Participants :

The ‘REAL’ Mexico
by Lydia Gonzales

As a Mexican-American (very American), I was curious about what the real Mexico was like. Guadalajara was an introduction to a culture similar to my own upbringing and the experience of a traditional yet cutting-edge city vibe. Some residents say Guadalajara, in Jalisco, is like an adolescent that doesn’t know what it wants to be when it grows up. With a history going back nearly 500 years, Guadalajara should have surpassed adolescence by now. Yet, as growth continues, the urban seams of the city are bursting open even farther.

Litter, traffic and American corporations such as Coca-Cola, Starbucks, Burger King, Wal-Mart and 7-Eleven can be found in abundance throughout the city.Yet Guadalajara firmly preserves its historic city structures and traditions including churches, music, people and ways of life.

What many profess to love about their communities despite rampant urbanization are the generous, goodnatured and friendly attitudes of the people who reside there. From the youth of the city to the residents of the small towns that flank Guadalajara, many consider the good-will attitudes of the people to be the area’s greatest assets. People remain amigable or friendly, and the environment remains beautifully humble.

Workshop Mexico 2007

Will Hortman — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 04:13:07 +0000

Black Boots Ink | Workshop Mexico
June 17-23, 2007
Instructor/Photographer: Emilio Bañuelos

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Black Boots Ink is about the curiosity that makes you walk into a new situation. It is about wandering in the company of strangers, about stopping, walking, working, protesting, progressing–it is about all of us.

The first Black Boots Ink Workshop takes place in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, with photographer Emilio Bañuelos. The seven-day workshop culminates with a public exhibition of the final images and a selection of the images will be considered for publication in blackbootsink.com.

Workshop Mexico, participants will have the opportunity to make images that show relationships between people and their environment.You will learn to photograph people and landscapes while creating a visual narrative. Workshop sessions are designed for practical use with instruction for daily shooting, personalized working critiques and editing.

Morning workshops will be held at Instituto Cultural Cabañas a cultural center designed by Manuel Tolsá in 1810. The Instituto’s106 rooms and 23 flower-filled patios house art exhibitions and the main chapel displays 57 murals by José Clemente Orozco from1938-39, including The Man of Fire.

Afternoons will be set aside for daily trips to visit Guadalajara’s neighboring towns. We will travel by bus to visit the Basilica de Zapopan, which dates back to 1730, the Zona Rosa, and the village of Tapalpa, Jalisco, where you will have time to make photographs and learn about contemporary Mexico.

IAC 2008 | Landscape as Portrait: Mt. Shasta | Workshop Mexico 2007