[News] Tito Gerassi's Class-Conscious Classifieds

[Anti-Imperialist News]

    *Tito's Class-Conscious Classifieds*
by Susie Day

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/day130812.html

In a recent PBS interview with Bill Moyers, journalist Chris 
<http://billmoyers.com/segment/chris-hedges-on-capitalism%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98sacrifice-zones%E2%80%99/>Hedges 
<http://billmoyers.com/wp-content/themes/billmoyers/transcript-print.php?post=11003> 
discussed protest for social change.  "Revolt," he said, apropos of 
salvaging a collapsing world, "is all we have.  It is our only hope."

I agree.  So would my friend Tito Gerassi 
<http://www.lemonde.fr/disparitions/article/2012/08/10/john-tito-gerassi-l-ami-americain-de-sartre-mort-a-81-ans_1744962_3382.html>, 
who believed all his life in revolution.  And, since rising unemployment 
is part of the collapse of our world, I think Tito would have enjoyed 
making occupying Wall Street, and other forms of social activism, into 
respectable occupations.  Think of the job market potential. . .

WANTED:/ Revolutionary Wackos/

Applicants must retain childhood ability to identify with the powerless. 
  Must have at least seven years' experience believing that humanity is 
capable of living by kindness and cooperation, rather than by greed and 
competition.  Applicants must not be inclined to laugh upon reading this 
last sentence.  (Those who did laugh, please refer to Form 1186 
regarding job openings for U.S. President.)

Applicants must enjoy out-of-doors activities such as marching, singing, 
chanting, blocking, sitting-in, dying-in, self-chaining, brick-hurling, 
and storming, either singly or in groups of fellow Wackos, to protest 
various social inequities and/or oncoming disasters.

Applicants must stay informed about socio-political crises, especially 
atrocities directly caused by U.S. policies but largely ignored by U.S. 
mainstream: invasions, kidnappings, torture, financing of foreign death 
squads, etc., etc.  Applicants must accept occupational hazard of being 
called "Wacko" by U.S. mainstream for caring about these things in the 
first place.

When explicating political positions, applicants must be able to fire 
off accurate data -- e.g., 80,000 U.S. prisoners currently held in 
isolation 
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/19/solitary-confinement-congress-prisons>; 
400,000 immigrants detained on U.S. mainland 
<http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-08-02/immigration-prison/56689394/1>; 
1,145 Afghan civilians killed by NATO in the first six months of 2012 
<http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/un-afghan-civilian-deaths-1493659.html> 
-- while maintaining Zen-like awareness that each statistic represents 
individual, unrepeatable human beings who would probably not appreciate 
being subsumed into a number for the sake of an explication.

Artistry with spray paint and/or computer graphics encouraged.  Poetic 
ability to compose refreshing updates for such time-tested rhyming 
couplets as "/Racist Sexist Antigay/first name last name GO AWAY!/" is a 
real plus.

WANTED:/ Movement Leaders/

The most important qualification for this job is that the applicant does 
not want it.  Applicants must be impervious to assassination attempts, 
long prison sentences, and lucrative book contract offers.  Must possess 
depths of humanity no less than 11,030 meters.  Must be informed about 
and critical of racist-patriarchal-homophobic-capitalist ruling class, 
while committed to delivering non-rhetorical sound bites.  Symmetrical 
facial features and ability to look good on t-shirts -- possibly coins, 
if revolution succeeds -- highly recommended.

At least 25 years experience as one of The Masses.  No imperialist 
oligarchs need apply.

While there is one soul whose house is in foreclosure, you are not free.

WANTED:/ The Masses/

Humanity a must.  Equal opportunity employer.  Women, people of color, 
queers, the poor encouraged to apply.  Must see own life as inextricably 
linked to nearly 7 billion other members of The Masses, within context 
of planetary ecosystem.  BYO drums, babushkas, machetes, tractors, smart 
phones.  Guaranteed lifetime employment.

WANTED: /replacement for Professor John (Tito) Gerassi/

Applicant must have been born in 1931 in France and called "Tito" 
(diminutive of "Juan" or "Juanito") from childhood.  Applicant must have 
grown up in Paris around artists and intellectuals, including Marc 
Chagall, André Breton, and Simone de Beauvoir, who were friends of 
Applicant's parents.  Atheist Jean-Paul Sartre must have been 
Applicant's "non-godfather."  Applicant's father Fernando must have been 
abstract painter who left for Spain in the 1930s to become a 
Revolutionary Wacko in the Civil War against fascist General Francisco 
Franco.  Applicant's mother must have acknowledged at the time that, 
although the war was already lost: "Fernando is not fighting because 
we're going to win.  He's fighting because one must fight fascism."

Applicant must have come to the United States as a boy, becoming one 
with The Masses, later a journalist for /Time,/ /Newsweek,/ and the/ New 
York Times/, interviewing the likes of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro.  In 
1965 Applicant must have written /The Great Fear in Latin America/, a 
book inspiring thousands of 1960s Revolutionary Wackos; then in 1966, 
/The Boys of Boise/, one of the first books to explore homophobia in 
America.  Applicant must then have become popular professor at San 
Francisco State College, where, during campus demonstration in 1968, 
Applicant's lower back was permanently injured by police.

Although Applicant was offered professorships at various prestigious 
universities, he must instead have chosen to teach courses on revolution 
and class warfare to poor and working-class students at Queens College, 
NY.  Eschewing the post of Movement Leader, Applicant must have spent 
years teaching, writing, organizing, and being increasingly adored by 
students and hundreds of friends, most of them Revolutionary Wackos.

At home, Applicant must have loved espresso, cute pictures of bears, and 
his daughter Lara.  Applicant must also have enjoyed occasional furtive 
smokes on his balcony in full view of disapproving loved ones and 
Western medicine.  Finally, upon turning 81, after years of courageously 
fighting cancer, Applicant must have lost his battle on July 26 of this 
year.  Applicant must be missed widely and mourned deeply by thousands 
of Revolutionary Wackos, Movement Leaders, and The Masses.

No one need apply.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Susie Day is a writer.

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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