politics: my compass points left

things that rock: love, taking the bus, drinking with friends, beaches, forests with gnomes (or gnome-free if that’s the way you prefer them), stars and constellations, endless conversations, bike riding, politics, co-ops and credit unions, laughing while hung over, peasant food from around the world, travel, being euro-centric, music, simple things, complex things, drawing smiley faces in the head of guiness, rum and coke, espresso, gelato, pizza, afghans knitted by grandmothers (no matter the colours), lefty buttons, whistling, neon green.

concepts that rock: unicorns, proper and rigid grammar when speaking, intelligent life on other planets, comical fake religions starring floating italian pasta creatures, the end of bedtime as we know it, sasquatches, the loch ness monster, ogo pogo, dinozaurs, stuffed animals, childlike behaviour in 25 year old academics, speaking minimal numbers of words in maximal numbers of languages, wearing buttons for every political ideal one believes in, writing poetry that follows no real set agenda or purpose, attentive misuse of capital or lowercase letters, total indulgence in sweets, people who are okay with my mocking of their beliefs because I’m trying to show them I like them.

political ideas that rock: nutrition studies for poor people, class based analysis of the two main coffee brands of canada, the internal occasionally destructive practices of progressive organisations, pop ed, getting rid of fat cats in unions, labour-sponsored venture capital, micro-credit finance, decolonisation, race-motivated political behaviouralism, socialist ownership of the titans of enterprise, workers’ co-ops, sweatshop free fashionable and trendy clothing, vegetarian habits, public transit activism, reduced fare bus passes for people on social assistance, ethical and socially responsible banking, environmental justice that doesn’t require selling out to neoliberalism to actually occur, power grids that are structured around decentralised renewable resources, alternatives to massive centralisation that still maintain efficient and effective political representation, development actually based on respectful cultural, economic, political, environmental, and racial justice, creative commons intellectual property policies, the end of prohibition of drugs that have little external impact other than on the user, progressive mental health studies that recognise people with mental illness may be “crazy” but are seriously normal, queer acceptance, humanism as an encompassing term for feminism and men who want to take back masculinism as a progressive stance, secular relationships between people of faith and those of us of none, low footprint living, urban or otherwise, international aid that isn’t based on our guilt for colonialism, doing what we can to make peace in the world.