Diary of a Walking Butterfly

(You can find my article archive here.)

So I decided to add a bit more about me on this page, for anyone that’s interested… My name is Brian Kelly. I grew up about an hour and a north of New York City in the Hudson River Valley of New York State, specifically Orange County, nestled amongst the Appalachian Mountains and on the banks of the Hudson River.

What do I do?

For the last two and a half years of my life, I’ve worked to help rebuild youth and student social movements in the United States, specifically helping to build the new Students for a Democratic Society as a viable national organization in the United States.
Issues that I’ve organized around include: working for an immediate end to the U.S. occupations - from Iraq, to Afghanistan and Palestine; fighting for youth and student empowerment, rights, and power; and working to build youth power to bring about comprehensive solutions to the climate crisis. Currently I’m working a lot with the Student Environmental Action Coalition.

Areas of Study

My main areas of study, though not usually in the context of traditional schooling, include: social movement history and theory; linguistics, cognitive science, framing, messaging, story-based strategy, and memetics; nonviolence action, direct action, revolutionary nonviolence, transformative politics; institutional and social vision of the future; revolutionary strategy; youth and student organizing; social networks and how viral/contagious/epidemic ideas spread through them, and how all of these fields can be applied to bringing about social change.

Books Recommendations

The Art of Warfare by Sun Tzu, Translated by Roger T. Ames (Ballantine Books).

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown and Company).

Parecon: Life After Capitalism by Michael Albert (Verso Books).

Remembering Tomorrow: From SDS to Life After Capitalism by Michael Albert (Seven Stories Press).

Start Making Sense: Turning the Lessons of Election 2004 into Winning Progressive Politics edited by Don Hazen and Lakshmi Chaudhry (Chelsea Green Publishing Company & AlterNet).

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown and Company).

Interests

Well I obviously love politics, social movements, and language, but I also like lots of other things. In terms of scenery, I like living off and on in both rural and urban areas. I grew up in rural New York, and have been in New York City for the last 3 years. I love New York City, and thats where lots of the people I’m close to are, but I need lots of breaks. Hiking, camping, swimming, and running area some of my favorite things to do outside - all of which tend to be hard to do in the City, or at least far less interesting.

Likes

I love warm weather. Spring time is my favorite. Nothing is more exciting than a period of the year when everything is waking up or being born all at once. The animals are coming out, the birds are flocking north, the trees are budding, and the flowers are blooming.

I like beaches, and forests, and hiking in the woods and in mountains in the Northeastern United States. Plants are an amazing part of life - especially vegetables, which are among my favorite foods. I love cooking and eating and, yes, I even love doing dishes.

Good movies make me really happy. While I love all types, ones with a positive political or social message really get me excited.

Goals

Currently I want to use the fields I’m studying to create practical toolkits and workshops for youth organizers fighting for a new society - specifically around communication, language, strategy, vision, and messaging. More on that will appear on this site soon. Stay tuned!

My Beliefs

I’m a revolutionary democrat. Contrary to what the government, corporate CEO’s, and news media tell us, there are other ways of organizing social, political, and economic life. We can escape the institutions which clip our wings. We can build an egalitarian economic system, a participatory democracy, and achieve racial justice, and gender and sexual equality. We can have international relations based on solidarity, peace, and cooperation, and have an sustainable relationship with with the earth and all of her inhabitants. I’ll be writing about that a lot on this site, especially under the vision tag. All in all, the whole site is about winning a new world - what it would look like and how we can get there.

Dreams

My biggest goals in life are to win a new world, attain happiness and contentment, and to see the day when children can grow up in a world worrying about realizing their fullest potentials - instead of whether their parents will have a job or healthcare, instead of whether their homes will be bombed, instead of whether they will be shot or arrested on their way to school, and instead of worrying about hunger, war, poverty, and disease.

I know a better world is possible. All we have to do is fly.

Wanna Meet Me or Contact Me?

Seem like we got similar interests? Well, I’m always looking to meet new people and love making friends. You can e-mail me at brian (at) walkingbutterfly.com or send me a message on AIM or Google Talk. My screen name for AIM & Google are both butterflywalking (at) gmail.com (I’m usually logged into AIM). You can also find me on Facebook and Myspace.

Thanks for reading!

all power to the people,

Brian

What’s a Walking Butterfly?

A butterfly without wings! DUH!… just kidding!

Its a metaphor about how society’s current institutions “clip our wings” and limit our potentials. Society numbs our minds, controls us at work, mis-educates (or doesn’t educate) us at school. They deprive us of food, culture, healthcare, housing, clothing, and jobs. They lock us away in prisons, they rape us, torture us, beat us, “disappear” us, they isolate and atomize us. They send us to war, or send their soldiers to wage war upon us. They pit us against one another - needlessly and against our self-interests - seeking more and more power for themselves. But those institutions - and the elites who run them - aren’t a static constant in history. They can be changed, molded, and even replaced. It has happened before and it can (and must) happen again.

It happened when slaves and abolitionists overthrew the Slave Power. It happened when women fought for the right to vote. When soldiers and freedom fighters destroyed the Nazi and fascist powers. When blacks and their allies waged a nonviolent revolution against Jim Crow.

It happened in Eastern Europe when nation after nation broke themselves free from the Soviet Union, in massive popular pro-democracy movements. It happened in South Africa when organizers broke the back of white apartheid.

And, most importantly, all over the world - in cities and villages, counties and hamlets, country sides and wooded jungles - it is happening again. Movements for democracy, racial and social justice, gender and sexual equality, and popular power are rising to the challenge presented by the undemocratic and unjust nature of our current society.

My friend Michael, in writing his memoir Remembering Tomorrow: From SDS to Life After Capitalism, put it quite eloquently, saying:

“We are all butterflies walking. We may wear gold shoes. We may wear no shoes at all. In either case, it doesn’t have to be this way. As in 1965, so too now. We can escape the institutions that clip our wings. We can bring the ship in. That’s how it seems to me, at any rate, looking forward to tomorrow…”

My biggest goals in life are to win a new world, attain happiness and contentment, and to see the day when children can grow up in a world worrying about realizing their fullest potentials - instead of whether their parents will have a job or healthcare, instead of whether their homes will be bombed, instead of whether they will be shot or arrested on their way to school, and instead of worrying about hunger, war, poverty, and disease.

I know a better world is possible. All we have to do is fly.