LA Diary 2005: December

December 1, 2005

New York City

A rally against global warming in the center of the city: Saturday, gusty winds, cold… badges, sticker anti-Bush propaganda materials spread on a table.

Only a few people show up, and most of them are taking the loudspeaker and screaming something… in LA more people would show, but I am not sure in LA the weather is amiable, and so are the pacifists. These New York guys are angrier and older. Nobody really cares. Maybe times are over for this kind of political activism. Steph’s band decides to perform after all: they didn’t expect so few people. The street livens with their trumpets, drums and flags, as well as funny colorful uniforms, but overall, it feels sad.

Meetup in LA

Boing Boing meetup in LA

LA Diary 2005: June

June 2, 2005

Srebrenica and Michael Jackson

Wars and pornography have a lot in common. Today the president of Serbia, Boris Tadic was shocked. He saw the film of Serbian paramilitary troops executing Muslim civilians in 1995, in Srebrenica, after being blessed by Orthodox priests.

LA Diary 2005: February

January http://jasminatesanovic.wordpress.com/2011/01/17/la-diary-2005-january/
1 February 2005
Today I received my first letter here in LA, from the local court, a citation to the court, bail $114, 6 months in prison or $1000 fine if I don’t appear or pay…to pay one has to use a credit card or a check, which I don’t have. I have two months time to bail myself out, I can’t believe it, I am furious. I don’t feel guilty, I was mistaken, yes, but not guilty and my even bigger mistake was not to show fear in front of the ridiculous policeman. I feel like writing a book to ridicule him and his xenophobic law, his tight pathetic leather uniform, his shiny bike instead of a girlfriend, his inability to spell my name properly: Jasmina Tesanobitch, his chicken handwriting on the yellow paper…and his law of fear and reprisal which is[??] called democracy: I always knew democracy stinks, Socrates told me so, and of course the silence of all those women at his time did, too…the political idiot from Serbia may as well be the global political idiot…

LA Diary 2005: January

The Diary of an American Idiot
Photos by Bruce Sterling

January 17, 2005

It is not true that nobody walks in LA. I do. There’s a metro I can reach on foot from my flat in Pasadena.

Off at almost every metro station, wasting time until the next train arrives. Not much to see, except real nice hippie hobos giving speeches almost everywhere, from trains to parks. They seem as if they know a lot, and have as much to deliver. They don’t seem neurotic or geeky. They do seem out of their time and in some particular political space.

Three days of holidays. One belongs to Martin Luther King. He was killed April 4th, but Americans don’t like death dates, I was told. So they celebrate him today, which makes no sense to me. Except that every day is good for pacifist marches. As a Woman in Black, I honor this date wherever I am.