I took it off upcoming, but just for the record, here's what I've done so far:

• July 11@7pm WHDH Release Party, Modern Times, SF
• July 14@5:30pm, Public lecture: "Private armies & the international war on healthcare," CNA/NNOC Oakland

WHDH/El Porvenir tour with Oscar Estrada:

• July 17@6pm, CARECEN, Monseñor Romero Hall, Los Angeles flyer
• July 18@7pm, AK Press, Oakland flyer
• July 20th@3pm, The Savant Project, Boston flyer
• July 21@7pm, Wooden Shoe Books, Philly flyer
• July 22nd@6:00pm, WOLA, Washington, D.C. flyer
• July 23@7pm, Bluestockings, NYC flyer

It was draining, but an incredible experience to meet so many great people in so many places with such different perspectives and insights.

I archived the KPFK interview with Oscar here. You can also find it by clicking around on kpfk's website. It's around 5 minutes 15 seconds into the show.

The Boston event had great people and interesting conversation, but we were held hostage by Boston's useless power grid, which threw the block into darkness after a little thunderstorm. Actually, it was a rather impressive thunderstorm, but it really put into relief for me the economic impact of our destroyed public sector on small businesses. A power grid should be able to handle a little rain, no? Not only did we have to cancel the movie, which meant that folks had to listen to me ramble on for much longer than planned while we waited for the lights to come back on; Ben had to cancel his Sex and Drugs Trivia night at the restaurant, for which he incurred a significant loss.

The next morning we headed to Philly on a Chinatown Bus, which left 1/2 hour before schedule. Luckily we got there that early. I had planned to take the train, but it cost almost $300 for two one way tickets from Boston. Holy oil lobbyists, batman! I couldn't believe it. Fhar explained to me that it was so much more expensive here because on the West Coast there's some sort of subsidization. I'm not one to rant about W, because there's so much to be angry at I wouldn't know where to start, and I don't want to be misinterpreted as someone who thinks that any of it will be solved by putting a Democrat in power. But his attack on trains is unconscionable.

James Generic from the Wooden Shoe posted pictures of the event there here. He and my other Philly friends did a wonderful job at turnout, and I had a great time hanging out with them afterward. I got some interesting questions and got to think about comparisons between Zero Tolerance policing in Honduras and Philly's stop and frisk policy. I loved the venue. We're going to try to make it for movie night on August 2, to watch Can Dialectics Break Bricks?.

Come to think of it, turnout was good pretty much everywhere—the only place where attendance was under 25 was Boston, and that's where the lights went out, so if it had to be anywhere...

A dear friend drove us to Seth's lovely house out by UPenn (who remotely coordinated our visit along with his lovely housemate and another friend), where I crashed for three hours on the couch before we had to get up and take the trolley to Chinatown for the bus to D.C. At breakfast (we arrived early) Oscar and I got into a rather heated, though not unfriendly, argument about whether the world could ever change through radical mobilization. I said yes. If I thought otherwise, what would be the point in living? In the heat of it all, I somehow lost my sunglasses, which caused me no small degree of consternation. In Washington we took the metro from Chinatown (where I was having serious déjà vu before realizing I'd been there the previous November) out to meet his friend who works as a producer for Univisión, where he gets paid like a dishwasher and denied lunch breaks. I've been hearing this about Univisión—apparently even their reporters barely make a living wage. It's impressive that despite that, they manage hang on to such great people. All the Univisión reporters who have interviewed me, whether for CNA or in the past few weeks, have seemed to have a comparatively good grip on the issues at hand, and good politics.

After visiting the studios, we took a cab to the WOLA offices, and found them empty. To my embarrassment, the address I'd put on my flyers is the one WOLA had just moved out of. Luckily, however, the new office was two doors down. I taped a note and we went over. I don't know what I was expecting, but the venue definitely exceeded it. The offices took up at least a floor of a pretty big building, and the conference room where we had the event was quite large. I immediately realized I was out of my element—interns, policy wonks, people who believe in electoral democracy...But despite my initial discomfort, it was a fantastic event with lots of good discussion and many business cards exchanged. Next time I go to Washington I'll remember to wear pumps.

I took the 1:00am Chinatown bus to New York. I just wanted to be in a place where I could sleep, and not have to travel the next day. In the little hole-in-the-wall station I sat next to a man who smiled at me. I smiled back, and watched the over-the-top Chinese opera on the t.v. for a while. I saw that he kept looking at me and then realized he was masturbating himself through his jeans. Rather than do what I did last time that happened, which was to grimace and then go home feeling violated, I shouted at him that he'd better cut it the f@#! out and that I was going to call the police. He stopped, looked nervously as I called Fhar on my cell phone, and meekly got up and left the room. He didn't get on the bus either. I didn't sleep on the bus.

I took a cab from Chinatown NY to Carrie's place, which is an oasis of beauty hidden in a basement apartment in the lower east side. We chatted for a while (it was 3 or 4 in the morning) and then slept until late. Basement apartments are conducive to that.

The next day I tried to go shopping, an activity I despise. I failed miserably, coming away with only a tank top to show for three hours of browsing (the next day I bought five more tank tops and a pair of $7 sunglasses). After that, I walked to Bluestockings to have a look and to meet a friend from CNA. Although I haven't been there for over a year now, it's hard for me to kick it. I have all these ideas for campaigns, for alliances, pedagogical strategies. You can take the Adrienne away from the labor movement, I suppose, but you can't take the labor movement away from the...that doesn't really make sense. Anyway, I realize that there are parts of it I really miss. Like the part about feeling that my work is actually leading to some sort of positive change.

I'm going to try to finish this without much more detail, since I now have several more talks to prepare for, one of which (at Penn) actually does require preparation—a pox, again, on my destroyed hard drive! The final joint event I did with Oscar at Bluestockings that night was really wonderful. People were actually there and ready to go on time. We were the ones who got going late. I was delighted to see Stanley there, and read a selection about drunks in his honor. It was a really large, engaged and diverse crowd—my student Sunny who did an amazing job putting the whole thing together, high school friends, folks from Fhar's bike messenger list, friends of family, family of friends, and a whole lot of people who came out of the radical lower east side woodwork.

Afterward, Oscar, Camille, Owen and I packed into a small car with Sarah Foudy, who I hadn't seen since high school, and two other nice people, to go to Brooklyn to visit Lee Hirsch, who I also hadn't seen since high school. Time warp. It was great to see them doing so well.

The car service driver on the way back from Brooklyn was listening to some good music. We chatted. He told me about his house back in the Dominican Republic, and his mom. Passing one section of town he mentioned that it used to be safe, until all the prietos moved in. But then Zero Tolerance came around and they all got cleared out. It was like having a conversation about the invisible genocide in Honduras, except that it has the added dimension of crazy racism.

Other highlights of NYC: walking back to the lower east side from a lovely dinner up at 55th street, Koreatown karaoke, roller derby at Hunter College, a Missile Dick Chicks fundraiser, the "Chef pants" graffiti tag all over town, and the fruit market in Williamsburg that was a gentrifying mix of processed Mexican food and hipster vegan organics.

To Boston in the Chinatown bus. I had dinner with a dear, dear friend who I hadn't seen since college. It was so good to see him. The internet really is good for some things.