Rebel Friendships: “Outsider” Networks and Social Movements

238 Pages·2015·2.167 MB·English

by  Benjamin Shepard (auth.)

Rebel Friendships
Rebel Friendships
“Outsider” Networks and
Social Movements
Benjamin Shepard
rebel friendships
Copyright © Benjamin Shepard, 2015.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-47931-0
All rights reserved.
First published in 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United
States— a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York,
NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the
world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers
Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-57071-3 ISBN 978-1-137-47932-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137479327
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Shepard, Benjamin, 1969–
Rebel friendships: “outsider” networks and social movements / by
Benjamin Shepard.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Social netw o rks.
2. Social movements. I. Title.
HM741.S54 2015
302.3— dc23 2015010783
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Scribe Inc.
First edition: September 2015
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
List of Figures vii
Acknowledgments: On Beer on the Sidewalk ix
Notes toward an Introduction: Friendship as a Way of Life 1
1 Toward a City of Friends: Affinity, Autonomy,
and Social Movements 17
2 Fred Mayer: A Tragicomedy of Sorts 35
3 Reviving the Tribe: Friendship and Social
Relations in the Work and Play of Eric Rofes 75
4 Not Quite Queer 85
5 Sylvia Rivera, Her Myth and Mentors:
On Support, Friendship, and Social Movements 101
6 From Drag to Occupy Wall Street: Street Protest,
Gay Marriage, and Resistance to a Neoconservative City 115
7 Do- It- Yourself Urbanism as an Environmental
Justice Strategy: The Case of Time’s Up!, 1987– 2012 129
8 Connection and Separation: Occupy
Wall Street and Friendships 141
9 Revolutionary Games and Repressive Tolerance 159
10 Friendship, Fighting, and the Need for Support 171
11 Surviving Plagues and Recalling Heroes 187
12 Notes toward a Conclusion: Activist Rituals
and an Homage to the Disappeared 199
References 217
Index 231
Figures
Figure i.1 Austin Guest at Occupy Wall Street 14
Figure 1.1 “We’re gonna fight #racism with
#solidarity” (Fred Hampton).
#Ferguson #BlackLivesMatter
#HandsUpWalkOut #mickeyz 18
Figure 1.2 Occupying the Robert Indiana
Love Sculpture 20
Figures 2.1, 2.2, 2.3 The site of the old Keller’s Hotel
at West and Barrow Streets as it
stands today 63
Figures 5.1, 5.2 Scenes from the 2014 Drag March 113
Figures 6.1, 6.2 Throngs of people in drag march
west from the East Village to the
Stonewall, where they sang
“Some where over the Rainbow.” 119
Figures 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4 Time’s Up! Occu- Pies of March
ride and pie fight, 2012. An abiding
sprit of silliness propelled the group’s
clown affinity group. 137
Figures 8.1, 8.2 Scenes from Spring Training and
Occupy Mayday 144
Figures 9.1, 9.2, 9.3, 9.4 Scenes from the Occupy Wall
Street Revolutionary Games
working group 166
Acknowledgments
On Beer on the Sidewalk
We all walk on the footnotes of giants, Robert Merton used to say. A book
is such a process. Writing this book, I engaged with my father about his
best friend, who passed my junior year in college. Dad shuffled off this
mortal coil while I wrote the final drafts of this text. “Seeing this finally in
print will be really special,” he said to me in one of our last conversations.
This book really is for Dad, who inspired me to think about the practice
of friendship. These talks helped me see the ways in which rebel friend-
ships change lives, extending from my family, my mom and my brothers,
through networks of comrades. These friends have helped me understand
our lives in relation to each other. They include friends from Time’s Up!,
the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), Right of Way, and Public
Space Party, Barbara Ross, Brennan Cavanaugh, Keegan Stephan, Monica
Hunken, Steve Duncombe, Ron Hayduk, and so many others. Thank you,
Stacy Lanyon, Erik McGregor, Mickey Z., and Catherine Talese, and all the
other photographers who donated their materials to this book. This book
is about you and what we’ve done together.
Thanks also go to the anonymous reviewers as well as those such as
Peter Nardi, Rob Smith, and Steve Duncombe, who read multiple drafts of
this book. The book incorporated many of their suggestions, but it could
only be one book. Friendship is the cornerstone of human life. There are
a thousand ways to write on this topic. With their work and thoughts in
mind, along with a few interviews and reflections on my experiences, I
wrote this small volume, offering this highly idiosyncratic reading on the
topic.
My dissertation advisor, Irwin Epstein, constantly talked about his advi-
sor, Robert Merton, and mentor, Richard Cloward. His point, of course,
was that we build on the collective efforts of countless others. Finishing this
text, I am thinking of my mentors, including Eric Rofes, Stanly Aronow-
itz, Ray Buchanan, Bertram Cohler, and Irwin Epstein, who have given me
so much. Like Harry Stack Sullivan, Bert Cohler reminded us that we all
x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
need “essential others;” we all need “chums,” and not just as children, but
throughout the course of our lives. These connections can be the source of
profound connections and even social change.
In his retirement talk at Hunter College School of Social Work, Epstein
framed the end of a four and a half decade teaching career in terms of
friendships: “Bob Marley sings about ‘friends we’ve lost along the way.’ At
this moment and at my age, I can’t help but think of all the dear friends at
Hunter and elsewhere that I’ve lost along my way.”
“Only connect,” he explained, paraphrasing E. M. Foster’s message of
longing in Howard’s End, concluding, “Freud wrote ‘lieben und arbeiten’—
love and work with people you love—o n his prescription pad as the central
elements of the good life . . . I would add ‘lachan’ [laughter]. ‘Lieben und
arbeiten und lachan!’” I thank you for that as well Irwin and all the other
friendships known along the way.
Dad suggested the subtitle of the book be “Beer on the Sidewalk.” I
didn’t understand the meaning at the time. But he thought anyone could
be a rebel friend. When we brought his ashes to New Orleans, strangers
walked up to us and toasted to his urn, pouring beer on the sidewalk for
him and those who came before us. This gesture of remembering and hon-
oring our ancestors is what rebel friendship is about. Here’s some beer on
the sidewalk for you, Dad, and my other rebel friends everywhere.
This book is for you Caroline, Dodi, and Scarlett— my everything—
thank you for being there as we move forward through time together.
“Siamo Forte!”
Notes toward an Introduction
Friendship as a Way of Life
In late August 2012, I received an email from Wendy Brawer, a New York
environmental activist and the global director of Green Map System,
announcing a plan for a guerilla gardening action in the Lower East Side
of Manhattan. The action was planned to take place at 181 Stanton Street,
which had been listed on 596 Acres’ list of vacant lots in New York City.
In the Lower East Side, 181 Stanton Street was one of the last vacant lots
that could be turned into a garden. On Sunday August 19, I met a group of
activists, including many of my friends, standing outside a fence in front
of 181 Stanton Street. There they held clipboards with petitions, asking
people if they wanted a new community garden. Those walking by enthu-
siastically supported their efforts. The group dismantled a fence at the
entrance, and we all walked inside the dirty lot. Inside, my daughters and
I joined a half- dozen members of the Time’s Up! Gardening Committee
as well as other neighborhood members. We spent the afternoon digging,
cleaning, throwing away trash, and finally planting a few flowers. By the
end of the afternoon, the vacant lot had been transformed into a com-
munity space (Segel, 2012). Within a few weeks, many of the 250 people
who signed the petition in favor of a new community garden swayed the
Parks and Recreation Committee of Community Board Three to pass a
resolution of support for a green- thumb lease for the garden, now dubbed
Siempre Verde. Thanks to the work of the neighbors on Stanton Street,
members of Green Map System, and Time’s Up!, 181 Stanton Street
became the newest of a generation of gardens planted in the neighbor-
hood since the Liz Christy Garden was planted in the Bowery in 1974. The
work of this community of friends, their gesture of direct action, was not
an isolated event.
Today cohorts of people the world over are striving to create a better
life through the process of collective engagement. From bike rides to com-
munity gardening, groups of friends are disrobing alienating social rela-
tions in favor of affect, care, and connection. Each of these gestures forms
2 REBEL FRIENDSHIPS
a sort of “pocket of resistance,” suggests Subcomandante Marcos. And he
argues that they are multiplying. “Each has its own history, its specificities,
its similarities, its demands, its struggles, its successes. If humanity wants
to survive and improve, its only hope resides in these pockets made up of
the excluded, of those left for dead, of the disposable” (quoted in Merri-
field, 2011, p. xvi). Through such collective striving, nonantagonistic social
relations are taking shape as regular people, the world over, are refram-
ing a politics of everyday living, electing themselves and their friends into
their own imaginary parties (Holt, 2015). Here collective action, affective
bonds, and convivial social relations are favored over institutional social
arrangements, with collectives of friends striving for a common path to
realizing their dreams beyond the state, social class, or party affiliation,
disencumbered from competition, capitalism, or the modern grind of
improving one’s lot by stepping on others (Merrifield, 2011, pp. xvi, 64–
65). This “blurry, still unrealized realm of global friendship,” is viewed as
an outcome and extension of such efforts (p. 132). The practice of rebel
friendship, after all, reminds us there are other ways of living and being
(Invisible Committee, 2009).
This is not to suggest that the politics of friendship is simple or represents
some sort of substitution for effort or organization. “Making friends equally
requires perseverance and certain patience, taking time to get to know each
other, to enter genuine dialogue, talking as well as listening,” notes Merri-
field (2011, p. 133). Like family, these engagements contain their own messy,
often contradictory, approaches to love, care, and social relations. This is a
blurry space linked between love, affect, and efforts aimed toward social
change. Friendship informs such movements, infusing them with the social
capital necessary to move bodies of ideas. Such innovation is rarely wit-
nessed in formalized settings, few of which today’s social movement partici-
pants seem interested in joining anyway (Writers for the 99%, 2011).
Gerald Suttles (1970) suggests that friendships are social relations that can
exist across various strata of social groups. By their very nature, they lend
themselves toward deviance. “The logic of friendship is a simple social trans-
formation of the rules of public propriety to their opposite,” explains Suttles
(p. 96). “Friends can touch each other where others cannot. Friends can swear
or become exceptionally pious around one another. Friends can entertain cer-
tain utopian notions that would be laughed at in public circumstances” (p. 96).
As the nexus between individual and community, friendship glues the
social capital propelling organizing (Nardi, 1999). Yet when people think
of friendships and their links with social movements, theories regarding
social networks, weak ties, collective identity, and fluidarity tend to come
to mind (Juris, 2008; McDonald, 2002). The problem with these theories,
of course, is they leave us flat, rarely coming close to the feeling of working