free digger
Thursday, May 08, 2008
My Walk with Chris
My friend Chris Carlsson is in town promoting his terrific new book, Nowtopia. The premise of the book is that there’s a new politics of work that has separated itself from the market. People are doing things because they need doing, and because they get creative and social satisfaction from doing it. Chris looks at “vacant lot gardeners” along with pirate programmers, outlaw bicyclists, bio-fuel developers and the like. It’s very fascinating and compelling. What I like about his premise is that it links what community gardeners are doing with renegades from the market to give a vision of an very vital, very anarchic movement.
So Chris came out to East Bushwick and I gave him a tour of the community gardens in the neighborhood. We also stopped by the Biko Center, which is the Afro-centric community and cultural center about a block from my house.