For Ginger
November 2019
This text began in a room in the sky. If I walked out the window I would drop 8 floors. There are no nets.
What does a neighbourhood look like when all its power relations are flattened? Is this even possible? Is the best we can do to strip them bare? Expose them to the light so that the invisible strings that choreograph our movements become visible and exposed? What does it take to create a reciprocal feedback loop with power? To pull or push back and have that gesture make an impact? What happens when we name the strings that guide us?
Physiologically agonists are muscles that apply force, in the form of a contraction, to create movement.
Cumberland is an idyllic town almost half way up the 460km length of Vancouver Island, the largest of the Islands that sit in the Pacific, off the west coast of British Columbia. Popular today with mountain bikers and craft beer enthusiasts, the hamlet’s main drag features cute turn-of-the-century structures, originally built to house workers from the local mine, now tastefully updated with ikea soft-close kitchen cabinets, and plumb-in espresso machines. Every July 27th, Cumberland residents gather together to performatively rebury its most famous adopted son, labour organizer Ginger Goodwin. Shot in the head by a 30 caliber rifle on a mountain that now bears his name on that day in 1918, ostensibly for dodging the draft – Goodwin had famously declared in the previous years that the workers of one country should not be employed to kill the workers of another country under the influence of a capitalist conflict – Goodwin’s death in this somewhat backwater mining town sparked a general strike in Vancouver, the first action of it’s kind in Canada. While the Vancouver strike lasted only a day; the collective action paved the way for the much longer Winnipeg General Strike – spanning 6 weeks in May and June 1919. Coming to a bloody and violent end with the brutal suppression of the strikers by police on July 21st the action won no immediate concessions, but has been credited with seeding the beginnings of the social democratic political tradition in Canada.
Dan Campbell, the officer that shot Goodwin on the slopes of the mountain that now bears his name, was charged with manslaughter over the affair, charges which where later dropped in light of his claims of self-defense.
In chemistry an agonist is an agent that causes an action, unlike it’s counter-part the antagonist, an agent that prevents or blocks action. Heroin is an agonist. Naloxone is an antagonist. Sometimes it’s beneficial to be antagonistic.
What does a neighbourhood look like when all its power relations are flattened? Is this even possible? Is the best we can do to strip them bare? Expose them to the light so that the invisible strings that choreograph our movements become visible and exposed? What does it take to create a reciprocal feedback loop with power? To pull or push back and have that gesture make an impact? What happens when we name the strings that guide us?
Who gets hurt? How long does it take for us to remember them?