Is it a crime?

On daily disobedience and rejecting what doesn't feel right

i tried to write this newsletter once every two weeks. it’s been more like once a month. that feels okay. the flow has felt nice. i’ve been enjoying writing these so thank you to everyone who has read it and everyone who has chosen to pay for these!! what an honour!! so in honour of rule breaking, guess my two week rule was broken.

april 26th

i love breaking the rules i don’t believe in. i always have. i’ve loved yelling when I’m supposed to be whispering. i love telling someone to shut up when they’re talking shit. i’ve loved stealing from big companies (allegedly). i’ve loved working less hours at corporate jobs and taking back my time. i’ve always love critiquing that which deserves critique. in our daily lives in the west, so much has become taboo, unsaid, hidden, and we play pretend every day. every day we pretend that a genocide isn’t raging so we can go to our jobs, see our friends, have sex, laugh, dance.

and I love doing those things (minus capitalism the capitalism part). it’s beyond me how we would survive in a world without music, without dance, without loved ones and sex and conversation and yelling and stealing and eating good food.

i’ve tried, quite honestly. i spent the last three years pushing myself and forgetting that joy and care will sustain us through the shit. i’ve been trying to remember to come back to myself. to my people. and to push. it’s not all on me. shockingly revelatory, i know, but over self-responsibilizing is the other side of the coin of avoiding it all. extremes have never worked for me for long.

i strive to break the rules in my writing too. it’s what’s made writing so exploratory, so fun, so new to me. i never want to do the same thing over and over. i have four projects on the go and no real timeline on them all. it feels freeing, when i choose to go back to those projects, rather than being obligated.

humans don’t work well with obligations that don’t make sense. a man burned down a factory and said, if only you had paid us enough to live. that broke my heart as much as it galvanized me.

breaking rules is also about asking for what you deserve.

and more importantly, i make and keep rules with the people i care about, because we’ve made them together. rules aren’t inherently bad. especially when they can bend and be flexible to accommodate change. but rules often go wrong. that’s one of the reasons why i’m a prison abolitionist.

April 28th

my mood has fluctuated more in the last month than it has in years. maybe since october 2023? then, my mood was sad, cry, angry, cry, angry, sad, repeat.

these days it fluctuates between all those moods and there’s also excitement and creativity and happiness and deep connection. and it’s hella confusing. one day i threw my phone at a wall in anger (and thankfully didn’t kill it) but hours later, i was laughing so hard with lee in my bed, smoking weed, decompressing. i have learned not to trust my moods or feelings right now, which is funny, because I spent most of my 20s trying to understand my feelings. as i’m typing this, love is everywhere by pharaoh sanders comes on. felix put it on recently and reminded me how much i love the song, having sent it to our friends whose mother passed very recently. i think about them over the last few weeks. it deepens my grief, knowing my friends are in pain, are grieving. how to feel excitement and love while grieving and dealing with heartbreak? i don’t know the answer. all i know is that when eli clare said, “we have to learn to think of grief and heartbreak as a long term condition,” on dean spade’s podcast, something clicked, and i knew, somewhat more thoughtfully, how to move through this period. a period i’m calling the everything, everywhere, and anything all at once period. a period of onslaught, good and bad. a period where i try to remain caring with myself and with others. cause… lo and behold, we’re all going through it.

one of those onslaughts has been these court hearings i’ve been involved in. i’m so sick of talking about it but i’m also happy to talk about it. so bear with my annoyance and my need to share.

here’s some more info about this action I was arrested at on April 15th, 2024 alongside 44 other people + a journalist. her charges were dropped because it’s illegal to detain press doing their job. the rest of us who conducted the sit-in? it seems they think it wasn’t illegal or bad that they detained us for hours, kettled us, lied to us, harassed us, and basically decided they could do whatever they wanted with us, not telling us for an hour and a half that we were detained, because we were quite literally sitting ducks. here’s a great article isaac peltz wrote about the proceedings.

everyone keeps talking about whether this sit-in was peaceful or not. it doesn’t matter. sure, you can say it was because we didn’t do property damage, we didn’t fight the cops, we just sat. it can’t really get more peaceful than that. but actions are important and right, whether or not they fit the definition of “peaceful”. that shit is used against protestors rightfully opposing monstrosities all the time. when genocide is being enacted against anyone, and in this case, and at the time, mostly palestinians in gaza, and lebanese people in the south of lebanon, it’s obvious you have to do something. peace be damned. they don’t have peace. why should we?

apparently it is illegal to enter a scotiabank, sit down, and scream in the lobby, despite the fact that, at the time, scotiabank was the biggest foreign investor in elbit systems, an israeli weapons manufacturer that builds weapons to kill arabs and steal their lad. apparently that is worth a mischief over $5000 charge (for those of you who don’t know, it’s the lowest criminal charge you can be charged with) and now we’re being caught up in a legal battle for the last year and a half.

the reason i mention this, even though i’m also sick of talking about court, is because we were silent for a long time about our court case. some people in our arrestees group wanted to keep things quiet. for security reasons, among other things i’m sure. for a long time, we respected their wishes, trying to find compromise. and i like to consider the importance of security culture as much as the next guy, but once you’ve been arrested, and your legal names are in the court databases, and the cops know your face, i think that’s the time to make a stink, to allow your community to support you, to ask for $ help because a bunch of us are low income, to bring this all back to the reason we had the sit-in in the first place.

and since we’ve told people, the whole thing has felt different. i’ve had so many people show up in court for me, for my co-defendees, offer food and care and hugs. it’s been easier to deal with the gas lighty feelings of court.

we are being dragged through these long court proceedings and it’s exhausting. if you want to support us, come to court during our (possible) last week of proceedings, may 11th-may 15th, barring the wednesday. you can also donate money to our gofundme or share the link with your rich friends.

April 29th

i read jamila bradley’s piece on “why you need a daily disobedience practise”. it’s great. bradley really dug into some of what I’ve been thinking about. the author suggests, “We are currently in a revolutionary crisis, and our nervous systems are wired toward compliance. Not because we’re weak. Not because we’re stupid. Not because we “don’t care enough.” Because compliance is not simply an attitude. It’s a survival strategy that gets trained into the body. It’s what your system does when it has learned, over and over again, that opposing an immoral society comes with social consequences. Sometimes legal consequences. Sometimes economic consequences. Sometimes bodily consequences,” and advocates for a daily disobedience practice as a way of working that disobedient muscle.

Why You Need A Daily Disobedience Practice

when it becomes important to be disobedient, you don’t freeze because you’ve learned how to act. you’re ready. this suggestion sings to me. one of my favourite little disobediences is not talking to cops more than i have to, never smiling at them, never saying thank you. it’s not that rad. it’s to keep me feeling grounded, to cultivate my hatred for the pigs, one i’ve had since i was a kid. and this isn’t me trying to be like, look at me, so cool, i hate cops (though it is cool to hate cops). what i mean to show is that i’ve been hating them from a young age. it’s second nature at this point. i did not have to actively practice. for some people, you’ve had to practise that disobedience. and that’s okay!!!! i’m just a hating cops nepo-baby. it’s cooler to come at it through hard work. and that hard work applies to any disobedience you want to partake in, against the state. it also means saying no when you want to, and yes when you want to. consent and disobedience? hell yeah, a little venn diagram. disobedience lets me live in the world a little more authentically. why should i follow rules made to protect billionaires and genociders and puppets of the state?

on a podcast i love, straightiolab, sam and george have julio torres on as a guest. my favourite part of the episode is julio asking, when talking about straight culture, and the obsession with doing things a specific way, he ask, why? why do we have to do that? why do people HAVE to wear deodorant? do you actually want to or is it society pressuring you? and deodorant is a sort of catch all for gender and smell and race etc, which feels like the perfect example of this disobedience. don’t absorb the rules that don’t make sense.

may 1st

i should be working on my taxes but i’m writing this newsletter. breaking my own rules. it’s more fun to write than to look for t4s i’ve misplaced. i often write when i’m not supposed to, and when i have to or feel like i have to, nothing comes out. but i think i should take a break and let this sit for a while. figured i’d bring you into my process. i love talking process. one of my favourite rules to break? not letting the process be part of the art. process is fun. it’s interesting. it lights up my brain. if anything, sharing my process with you all, whoever is reading, feels electrifying. i’m ready to continue my day. my taxes. i’m hoping to get back money. send me well wishes. might be too late once you’re reading this but it might recirculate. might bounce over to my court case. or my grant application. either way, wish me good things. i need it right now.

and if there’s any way to celebrate may day, it’s through civil disobedience.

in love and solidarity,
your fav disobedient freak xo

p.s. for legal purposes, this is all just a persona and of course i would never do anythinggggggg illegal, wow, no, not me