On a hot September day Sascha and I traveled back to something both mythical and real. I took him to visit a giant old oak tree with articulate arms, poised in mid-dance under an even more giant sky. I had painted this tree years ago for an Icarus publication; it's the final image in a graphic sequence where a flock of birds lifts off the telephone wires, disappear as stars, and land back in the branches of this particular oak tree. The upper right panel of the graphic states in big capital letters “You Are Not Alone.” As we sat on the bench underneath the tree plotting out potential goals for the next 10 years of Icarus, a flock of doves alighted on the exact same branch as in the painting...

The Icarus Project is celebrating their 10 year anniversary. With this milestone comes the great realization that we, the groups that have come since, are the second generation of Icaristas. We have taken the foundation that Sascha and Jacks have laid and we have run with it. And run with it far we have!

When: Sunday October 14th, 2012, 7pm
Where: Blue Stockings Bookstore, 172 Allen St. (directions, map)

Facebook Event: http://www.facebook.com/events/229101523885574/

Maryse writes about radical mental health, healing justice, Icarus history, OWS organizing, peer support, and holding each other and our movements accountable with love.

--

There is a reckoning period, I think, early on in the political life of most organizers. It's a moment when we realize the enormity of the harm done, the systems that work to continue this harm, and the endless struggle required to uproot this cycle of oppression and violence. That realization hits us hard and heavy. For me, for years, I walked around with a weight, a hopelessness where my only defense was to keep fighting back. Where the way me and my friends dealt with George W. Bush, Abu Ghraib, the police state surrounding us during the 2004 Republican National Convention was to just keep moving, to bottle up all the pain and anger and let that drive us into more organizing, more meetings, more workshops. We worked from a place of deep suspicion of any system or institution, seeking to create our own alternatives rather than work within them.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

CELEBRATING TEN YEARS OF NAVIGATING THE SPACE BETWEEN BRILLIANCE AND MADNESS