The revolt of the Oaxacan people against their governor, Ulysis Ruiz Ortiz, has come to a critical stage in the last week. Oaxaca City is basically under siege by federal anti-riot police, and resistence is strong on the streets.
Last Friday an American Indymedia journalist was killed by police while standing with protesters and filming the assault. His name was Brad Will, an anarchist from NYC who'd been reporting on the whole insurrection for some time. Two other locals were also killed in the police assault. Their deaths are by no means the first.
Ruiz's state government has been paralyzed for quite some time due to the ever-widening solidarity in this struggle against his autocratic rule and current "dirty war", to the point where in the last couple of days the Mexican congress has actually voted that he should resign. This is a totally non-binding decision but it speaks loudly to the events of the last four or five months, especially the intimidation, killings, and disappearances of a number of the popular assembly's leading members, not to mention the fact of the police state Oaxacans have been generally confronted with since the teachers' union protest for better wages and educational standards began back in June.
Go to Oaxaca Indymedia to learn more, or google the Mexican newspaper La Jornada or the newsweekly El Proceso (if you've got the Spanish).
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Thursday, October 12, 2006
A road moment
Today was a good day on the road. Why? I didn't make any money, so the pace was relaxed. The air was brisk, the bike rolled around without any complications, minus the new front tire I threw on it the other day. Its a spongy piece of crap, the fourteen dollar result of riding the old one to the bitter end of its life in the middle of the day with calls on board.
Around 4:30, into the ninth inning as it were, the winds got especially gusty and white stuff was swirling around in the air - snow! I was hammering up Yonge street north of Bloor to pick at Price street when the stuff was all around me. It was one of those magic times as a messenger, when you can only really appreciate the raw force of nature in the middle of the city because you're doing a job on a bike.
Rush hour was well underway as I grabbed my piece and rushed out to get it down to a fancy cocktail bar on Bay street within thirty minutes, not a difficult thing to do in this case, but definitely a good excuse to be playing in traffic with snowflakes going sideways. I'd already had the good fortune to have been sent to drop a piece within a few blocks of my place the hour before, where I'd seized the opportunity to nip home and grab my other pair of gloves. For the first time ever I doubled up on cycling gloves, figuring it would be that much warmer. My old pair fit right over my newer pair so I went for it, and it worked as well as could be for half-fingered gloves in mid-October. That's bike courier thinking for you.
As I rolled south, this amazing thing was happening. The wind swirled madly, asphalt turning to wet and threatening slickness in the bumper-to-bumper rush hour traffic. In the western sky, the sun was shining a late afternoon golden glow that seemed to emerge out of nowhere, right in the middle of this crazy little snowsquall. It was like the city, split down the centre by Yonge street, was atmospherically split as well. It made sense if you were riding a bike down Yonge at the time, it was palpable for a few key minutes and made my little mission seem all that much more important and adventurous. Those moments are the kind that keep you getting back on your courier bike, the feeling of freedom that stays with you long after you hang it up and move on to other things in life.
Rush hour is an amazing manifestation of the feeling that right now is crucial. There is this real sense of drama, that people aren't just moving around as always, but are seized with an urgency in their movement, as though a kind of race were on. Well, a kind of race is on, the race to home, to beat the traffic on the expressways, to the next set of tasks and responsibilities at the end of the day, a release from the day's confinements at work.
Two office girls were waiting at a desk in the cocktail bar, which had no less than three wall- mounted large flat-screen televisions, all cheek by jowl. Even offices are starting to have these tv screens, with their perpetual supply of CNN rolling news keeping everyone preoccupied with nothing.
The one who was expecting a package signed with an excited smile, Desiree something, and took off towards the back. The other remained with nothing to do, so I asked her the time and wrote it on my waybill. Outside, it had cleared up and the sky was calm.
Around 4:30, into the ninth inning as it were, the winds got especially gusty and white stuff was swirling around in the air - snow! I was hammering up Yonge street north of Bloor to pick at Price street when the stuff was all around me. It was one of those magic times as a messenger, when you can only really appreciate the raw force of nature in the middle of the city because you're doing a job on a bike.
Rush hour was well underway as I grabbed my piece and rushed out to get it down to a fancy cocktail bar on Bay street within thirty minutes, not a difficult thing to do in this case, but definitely a good excuse to be playing in traffic with snowflakes going sideways. I'd already had the good fortune to have been sent to drop a piece within a few blocks of my place the hour before, where I'd seized the opportunity to nip home and grab my other pair of gloves. For the first time ever I doubled up on cycling gloves, figuring it would be that much warmer. My old pair fit right over my newer pair so I went for it, and it worked as well as could be for half-fingered gloves in mid-October. That's bike courier thinking for you.
As I rolled south, this amazing thing was happening. The wind swirled madly, asphalt turning to wet and threatening slickness in the bumper-to-bumper rush hour traffic. In the western sky, the sun was shining a late afternoon golden glow that seemed to emerge out of nowhere, right in the middle of this crazy little snowsquall. It was like the city, split down the centre by Yonge street, was atmospherically split as well. It made sense if you were riding a bike down Yonge at the time, it was palpable for a few key minutes and made my little mission seem all that much more important and adventurous. Those moments are the kind that keep you getting back on your courier bike, the feeling of freedom that stays with you long after you hang it up and move on to other things in life.
Rush hour is an amazing manifestation of the feeling that right now is crucial. There is this real sense of drama, that people aren't just moving around as always, but are seized with an urgency in their movement, as though a kind of race were on. Well, a kind of race is on, the race to home, to beat the traffic on the expressways, to the next set of tasks and responsibilities at the end of the day, a release from the day's confinements at work.
Two office girls were waiting at a desk in the cocktail bar, which had no less than three wall- mounted large flat-screen televisions, all cheek by jowl. Even offices are starting to have these tv screens, with their perpetual supply of CNN rolling news keeping everyone preoccupied with nothing.
The one who was expecting a package signed with an excited smile, Desiree something, and took off towards the back. The other remained with nothing to do, so I asked her the time and wrote it on my waybill. Outside, it had cleared up and the sky was calm.
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Back in the courier game.
29 September
A last Friday of the month completed. In the courier business, this day is always going to be a biggie, because a lot of bills are getting paid, and other business being concluded. In the mythology of the game, its a big payday with a good hammering pile of work to be done.
It was a classic fall day in Toronto with the sun shining and the air cool and gusty. What's considered great riding weather in these parts. For me, it was like one of those baseball games that goes to extra innings, becomes a kind of epic affair even though nothing spectacular is happening. In my case it was just that I had no money and no food or drink to push me onwards.
It's the classic bike courier scenario: so broke you need an advance to keep working, so i asked for one two days ago and got it yesterday, but it took all day to arrive so I couldn't bank it, then when I had the chance today I realized I had nothing to cover it, meaning it wouldn't clear till Tuesday and of course I'd run out of money last night. As I muddled through the situation while fully absorbed in the war of packages, pages, and waybills, I finally realized a plan: my old trick of taking the cheque to the very branch where it was drawn and cashing it there. In this case it was 20 King W., so I had the whole business coming together as I rolled into the core with a few Same Day calls in my bag.
Part of the fun of being a courier is trying to work your own errands in on company time, time that never belongs to you and is nearly always in short supply, so it takes all this logistical strategizing just to do something like go to the bank. In this case there was the added hurdle of getting the Royal Bank to hand over my miserable two hundred dollars; it was two o'clock and several trips to Eglinton and back later, quite badly needed. But desperation is rarely your friend in matters of banking or beaurocracy, and the tellers sent me away after I could only provide a driver's licence and health card as identification.
So having scrimped till the bitter end of the week (and for three weeks since returning from Mexico), I threw down my usual biking breakfast of hot muesli and a bowl of coffee, and tore off to my first call of the day. Eight or nine hours later I was walking to Money Mart to cash my advance, and saw nothing but veteran bike couriers, including the legendary Dogboy, or Stefano by his real name.
I've known him for years, as everyone does, an absolute hard man who rides with the most insane, kamikaze style ever seen - left turns into the oncoming lane at full speed - and never backs off for anything. Helmetless, headset blasting music, Stefano is a true soldier of the road wars since fifteen years, I think. He showed me a cheque for two hundred dollars or so, an advance off a two week commission of $689 he made at my old company, Turtle Express. He had already quit and joined the same outfit as me two or three days previously.
Stefano showed me his manifest of calls, pointing out the more valuable ones. I was stunned by the sheer tininess of his pay for such and absolute legend amongst couriers. In all my time back when I was first a courier, on and off for three years or so, I had never once seen him on standby. i had watched him make an brilliant comeback at the Courier Classic, an Alleycat race through Trinity-Bellwoods park, to win his leg of the team relay only to be hit full on by the second place finisher on a track bike, who couldn't avoid him as Stefano had stopped and dropped his bike immediately after crossing the line. Undaunted, Stefano picked himself up and raced the next round.
Legends of the man's behaviour have circulated for years. One time Stefano lost his temper and punched a guy in TD Centre, one of the bank skyscrapers. The police just monitered his wherabouts through his company radio and then sent about 8-10 cops to arrest him. The story perfectly captures all the elements of the man: the explosive temper at work, the fact that he's built thick as a brick shithouse so that you need eight times the manpower to bring him down.
One time Stefano was roaring down Yonge street at full clip and went into his lefthander on Wellesley in his usual mode, i.e., straight into oncoming westbound traffic, except that a car had stopped completely while turning and Stefano went through the windshield helmetless headfirst. He was working the next day.
What astounded me about seeing him today was his absolute lack of ego, no sense of his fame in the courier world. He jabbered on about busting through the next two weeks on $180, even showing me some of those peanut butter and jam packets you find at the Golden Griddle as a survival tip. He was all smiles about it, while saying things like, "At least I have a roof over my head", and "We're just like prostitutes, drug dealers, and those guys in Guantanemo Bay, we're nothing, nothing at all. Just call them something else and they don't have no fucking rights at all. Well, that's life man." He said it with a smile.
There it was, the awareness of the relentless exploitation of it all, driven home as a brutal truth, but Stefan didn't seem angry or even particularly disgusted by it. He was past all that. Now it was just an observation, a simple fact of life, unchangable. He stood there in the fading sunlight of a fall day, sunburnt in his crew cut, smiling away. He was the picture of blue collar addiction to work no matter how bad the deal, with his beat-up looking street-ified mountain bike seemingly all he had after years and years as a professional cyclist. It all shocked me a little, but only out of a naive assumption that things could somehow be better for a guy who rides so hard.
A last Friday of the month completed. In the courier business, this day is always going to be a biggie, because a lot of bills are getting paid, and other business being concluded. In the mythology of the game, its a big payday with a good hammering pile of work to be done.
It was a classic fall day in Toronto with the sun shining and the air cool and gusty. What's considered great riding weather in these parts. For me, it was like one of those baseball games that goes to extra innings, becomes a kind of epic affair even though nothing spectacular is happening. In my case it was just that I had no money and no food or drink to push me onwards.
It's the classic bike courier scenario: so broke you need an advance to keep working, so i asked for one two days ago and got it yesterday, but it took all day to arrive so I couldn't bank it, then when I had the chance today I realized I had nothing to cover it, meaning it wouldn't clear till Tuesday and of course I'd run out of money last night. As I muddled through the situation while fully absorbed in the war of packages, pages, and waybills, I finally realized a plan: my old trick of taking the cheque to the very branch where it was drawn and cashing it there. In this case it was 20 King W., so I had the whole business coming together as I rolled into the core with a few Same Day calls in my bag.
Part of the fun of being a courier is trying to work your own errands in on company time, time that never belongs to you and is nearly always in short supply, so it takes all this logistical strategizing just to do something like go to the bank. In this case there was the added hurdle of getting the Royal Bank to hand over my miserable two hundred dollars; it was two o'clock and several trips to Eglinton and back later, quite badly needed. But desperation is rarely your friend in matters of banking or beaurocracy, and the tellers sent me away after I could only provide a driver's licence and health card as identification.
So having scrimped till the bitter end of the week (and for three weeks since returning from Mexico), I threw down my usual biking breakfast of hot muesli and a bowl of coffee, and tore off to my first call of the day. Eight or nine hours later I was walking to Money Mart to cash my advance, and saw nothing but veteran bike couriers, including the legendary Dogboy, or Stefano by his real name.
I've known him for years, as everyone does, an absolute hard man who rides with the most insane, kamikaze style ever seen - left turns into the oncoming lane at full speed - and never backs off for anything. Helmetless, headset blasting music, Stefano is a true soldier of the road wars since fifteen years, I think. He showed me a cheque for two hundred dollars or so, an advance off a two week commission of $689 he made at my old company, Turtle Express. He had already quit and joined the same outfit as me two or three days previously.
Stefano showed me his manifest of calls, pointing out the more valuable ones. I was stunned by the sheer tininess of his pay for such and absolute legend amongst couriers. In all my time back when I was first a courier, on and off for three years or so, I had never once seen him on standby. i had watched him make an brilliant comeback at the Courier Classic, an Alleycat race through Trinity-Bellwoods park, to win his leg of the team relay only to be hit full on by the second place finisher on a track bike, who couldn't avoid him as Stefano had stopped and dropped his bike immediately after crossing the line. Undaunted, Stefano picked himself up and raced the next round.
Legends of the man's behaviour have circulated for years. One time Stefano lost his temper and punched a guy in TD Centre, one of the bank skyscrapers. The police just monitered his wherabouts through his company radio and then sent about 8-10 cops to arrest him. The story perfectly captures all the elements of the man: the explosive temper at work, the fact that he's built thick as a brick shithouse so that you need eight times the manpower to bring him down.
One time Stefano was roaring down Yonge street at full clip and went into his lefthander on Wellesley in his usual mode, i.e., straight into oncoming westbound traffic, except that a car had stopped completely while turning and Stefano went through the windshield helmetless headfirst. He was working the next day.
What astounded me about seeing him today was his absolute lack of ego, no sense of his fame in the courier world. He jabbered on about busting through the next two weeks on $180, even showing me some of those peanut butter and jam packets you find at the Golden Griddle as a survival tip. He was all smiles about it, while saying things like, "At least I have a roof over my head", and "We're just like prostitutes, drug dealers, and those guys in Guantanemo Bay, we're nothing, nothing at all. Just call them something else and they don't have no fucking rights at all. Well, that's life man." He said it with a smile.
There it was, the awareness of the relentless exploitation of it all, driven home as a brutal truth, but Stefan didn't seem angry or even particularly disgusted by it. He was past all that. Now it was just an observation, a simple fact of life, unchangable. He stood there in the fading sunlight of a fall day, sunburnt in his crew cut, smiling away. He was the picture of blue collar addiction to work no matter how bad the deal, with his beat-up looking street-ified mountain bike seemingly all he had after years and years as a professional cyclist. It all shocked me a little, but only out of a naive assumption that things could somehow be better for a guy who rides so hard.
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