"Disruptions" in Support of Mutual Aid Los Angeles Network (Part 2)

1. I was wandering the isle of my local discount home goods store when my brain looped over itself:
   
   Paper thin American flags that are manufactured overseas being used to backdrop equally paper thin Nationalist ideologies.
   
   And before I knew it my shopping cart was filled with them. I must’ve appeared to the cashier a suburban patriot of the highest order.
   

2. On the days when my brain needed structure amidst the daily chaos of 2025, I was more rigid with my rule breaking. My lines were clean and orderly. A system was to be followed- even I was the only one aware it. On other days (when worry would set in) my cuts become more irregular. Backed by the first 7 Wu-Tang releases, I shut my brain off until every scrap had been used.
   
3. A big part of my childhood was spent with my grandfather who we called “Pop.” He was a lifelong Marine- first a combat paratrooper; then after hanging in a tree with a broken collarbone for several days, he became an artillery drill sergeant.
   
   Pop was a tough, hard drinking, foul-mouthed Boston Southie who had little time for leftists, hippies or Jane Fonda’s antics in Vietnam. He was also a fanatical environmentalist, and to this day I’ve never met a man more polite and sensitive to the women around him. It was a stunning education on how to be a layered, and at times contradictory human being.
   
   Another lesson Pop taught me was morning “Colors” service. Every single morning we’d wake up at first light and perform the ritual of raising the flag. And every evening we’d perform the same ritual in reverse- ending with the elaborate folding ceremony.
   
   As I sit in my sweltering garage studio, surrounded by fragments of red, white and blue I can’t get him (or his beloved Country) off my mind. I’m searching for a moment of transformation; a reminder of all that’s possible.
   

Mutual Aid Los Angeles Network

Mutual Aid LA Network (MALAN) is a connector and information hub for mutual aid efforts, people and resources across Los Angeles. We’re building toward abolition and believe in an abundant world that can be freed of oppression through community solidarity.

SUPPORT HERE

See Part 1 here.