Johannes Wilm - a blog on social science, activism, politics, programming, etc.

Johannes Wilm

Author: johanneswilm

  • Another reaction on “On the Margins”

    Niels S.Nielsen from Århus today had the following review of On the Margins in the Danish minority in Germany newspaper Flensborg Avis (they take stuff offline for a month after the day of publication, so I’ll paste it all here). It’s written in Danish:

    Folk i en grænseby
    Duborg-studenten Johannes Wilm (årgang 2000) er nok for mange Flensborg Avis-læsere kendt for sine tildels kraftige udbrud mod det danske mindretals institutioner i form af læserbreve sendt fra hans nyvalgte hjemsted Oslo. Man kunne derfor tro, at han ikke har meget tilovers for grænseområder og de deraf følgende problemer. Det er derfor overraskende at læse Wilms bog “On the Margins – US Americans in a Border Town to Mexico” om grænsebyen Douglas på grænsen mellem USA og Mexico. Han forsvarer her de overvejende mexicanske indbyggere, som i det meste af USA kun er kendt for at smugle narkotika og mennesker over grænsen. Socialisten Wilm forklarer, at byen, han har boet i i lidt over et halvt år, har en reel ledighed på over 50 procent, og at der for mange af de unge ikke er mange andre udveje end enten at smugle eller forsøge at få job som grænsevagt.

    Wilm har i sin tid i Douglas fulgt en mængde forskellige personer – fra elever på gymnasiet i Douglas, som han prøver at overbevise om, at de ikke skal melde sig ind i den amerikanske hær for ikke at blive sendt til Irak, til de mænd i halvtredserne, som har siddet i fængsel for bl.a. smugling af store mængder narkotika – som han prøver at hjælpe til at komme til penge. Når Wilm prøvede på at overbevise dem alle om, at der findes andre muligheder for dem, var han nok lidt for missionerende og for lidt forsker. Men billedet, han tegner af befolkningen, er dog interessant. Det er de udstødte, man ikke hører noget om. Det er dem, som ikke klarer sig i det amerikanske konkurrencesamfund.

    Når Wilm kommer ind på temaet nationalisme, er det klart, at han har baggrund i det danske mindretal i Sydslesvig. Kritisk prøver han at belyse, hvordan hver enkelt opfatter sig selv, når det gælder nationalitet og tilhørsforhold. Mange af hans teser er da også interessante: Det er ofte de hvide angelsaksere med familiebaggrund fra et andet sted i USA, som er mindst interesseret i at bevare de amerikanske traditioner, mens nogle af de ivrigste og mest konservative nationalister findes blandt andengenerationsindvandrerne fra Mexico.

    Om man politisk er enig med Wilm eller ej, er hans tema interessant, fordi der skønsmæssigt bor 11 millioner “illegale” indvandrere i USA for tiden, og fordi der i disse dage protesteres i store dele af USA både af dem, som vil smide indvandrerne ud, og af dem, som vil give dem opholdstilladelse. Man må håbe, at Wilms bog kan øge forståelsen for mennesker, som bor i disse marginaliserede samfund.

  • on blogging

    Yesterday I got a surprise visitor who came by to invite me to walk another couple of streets of Oslo that I had not seen before. Yes, you guessed it, it was the French walker who visits me every now and then. He is the type who does not like walking streets with bars and so we usually walk through residential areas instead. Those are not very hard to find in this city though. And with everyone gone and the streets not yet cleaned since the snow melted, much of Oslo certainly looked the closest to what I’d imagine the abandoned areas around Chernobyl t look like. One could stand right in the center of an intersection with 5-6 floor houses on all four corners and extending quite a bit in either direction. And there would be no-one. No cars, no person, no sound, no nothing. Amazing, quite amazing. My co-walker immediately commented on it as if it were some common trait of all Norwegians: “They don’t ever talk to anyone. They talk to their parents and their siblings and their boyfriend or girlfriend. But that’s it. You almost need to have known oneanother since kindergarden if you are to talk with oneanother.” He also commented on this blog (which he seems to be reading extensively): “You know the stuff you write is like a 16 year old girl. You write on where you go and what you think about this and that,” he criticized. “So what should I write then?” I inquired, “should I just write like these hard core political blogs that people like [ANONYMIZED] have? What’s the point with that? I can read the newspaper if I want the news, or I’ll post something on a news site if I now something new [in addition I’m discussing politics on various email lists]. You know, I’m trying to use the blog to try to give a ‘human face’ to the hard-core politicized Johannes who people tend to ‘know’ me as being. “But the things you’re writing, about what you feel and what you think about and so on; Norwegians would never write anything like that,” he continued, “they’ll think ‘what’s wrong with you?’ and ‘Is he lonely or something?’”
    ow to a certain degree he is of course right. This is not a very Norwegian styled blog. Most Norwegians wouldn’t write this kind of stuff. But the fact that I choose to do anyways is not that I do somehow not feel such standards or that I do not think it is weird to expose myself in this way — rather it is that I feel I have a mission to _change_ the way people think about these things. If we ever are going to establish a society with less privately controlled property and more held in the common (and Norwegian society anno 2006 is extremely focused on the private: even food at common meals are usually held in the private), we also need to be able to break down some of the unnecessary boundaries as what one can talk about publically and what one ca not. Of course, there will and should always be social boundaries on some level, but the concrete manifestation of these are much less ‘hard-coded’ into any culture than people tend to think, I am strongly convinced of. Just looking at the way the older student houses are built and how they must have been used with common showers and kitchen for up to 8 students — unthinkable to live in for many young Norwegians nowadays.
    So if you are one of those Norwegians wondering what the purpose of this blog is: view it a cultural experiment. View it as a way of trying to change the culture i am myself a part of.
    However, the fact that this blog is so infrequently updated is exactly that I do usually not have much spare time at all… so I guess that goes somewhat against the earlier mentioned theory of Norwegian generally being isolated. Oh well. How do you like the new header picture by the way? Also check the footer (there are only two of them though) I finally got the HTML/CSS fixed so that it shows correctly in IE, Firefox and Konqueror. Or it least it has done on all the browsers I’ve checked so far… please report any problems you might find.

  • Just found a record…

    of my past — and my future? Apparently I wrote it during my first three weeks in Norway (back in 2000). And it’s written in German — and I’m quite amazed at the level of proficiency I had in the language back then. It might have been writing as part of an email for a family member, but now I just found it in an old folder on my computer that I had not looked in for a long, long time. The things that amazed me the most are:

    – I thought 20 kr to be too much to use for the subway, so I walked for hours on end (with all my belongings on my back!) instead.

    – I was afraid of the students.

    – I was childish enough to knock on other people’s doors and swap around their key cards on the way up here (on a trip to emigrate to another country after having tricked German and Danish authorities into letting me go!)
    .
    – One of my main concerns was not “stay around nationalists” of various nationalities (boy, I managed that well), and it almost seems as if I’m on some kind of spiritual trip (well, getting close to saying one can “grow” by staying around the right kind of people, etc.).

    Johannes, May 2006 -- in need of an exit strategy?
    Johannes, May 2006 — in need of an exit strategy?

    Now you might wonder why I’m suddenly seemingly living in the past again. Well, fact is that May is the absolutely last month that I’m receiving my student stipend from Denmark. Since 1998 I have been receiving money from them, and now it finally comes to an end. And so does my education, at least officially. That is why gave up my room in the student house at the beginning of this month, and I’ll have to be moved out before the 1st of June this year. And then what? “Don’t do something silly like giving everything up in order to be ‘free’ and then storing all your books at some railway toilet the way your grandmother would do it,” my mother Pia already told me in fear over the phone when I told my parents that I’l be homeless in a few weeks. Although Pia is exaggerating, she probably is quite correct in terms of what kinds of ideas I actually might be able to get.

    Instead though, I currently have two alternate plans: either move into my tent back where I was when I had just arrived here. That might be a nice way to end my university career — although, as it would have no planned end to it, it might just be the right recipe for throwing myself into some large scale depression: “What have I done? What did I do these past 6 years? Where did my youth go? etc.” Another plan is that when I met Shawn/Sean the other day, I asked him for his address. Apparently there are quite a few other immigrant workers living there, and it’s cheap. Even cheaper than Berit’s place! I might want to check that out…

    German Readers read on for the entire letter I wrote back then (and remember: if you’re a government official, all of this is mere fiction)
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  • Are you a ZIP code spreading communist?

    Maybe you wondered why you have not head much about my book lately? Well, the thing is that I felt it was ready, and so did those I talked to here in Norway. As a last check, I send three test copies to key figures in Douglas, and all I got from them was nothing but high approval ratings. So I decided then to go ahead and publish. That was back in February and the book has been spreading since. Then suddenly, on March 21st, I got a mail from another Douglasite “[…] I am about half through it and am finding it entertaining. However, the English grammar and word usage makes it somewhat difficult to understand. I would rate your grammar and word usage as atrocious at best and possibly even horrific. […]”

    Ouch, bummer! He then went on to offer me to edit it, and as his rate was incredibly low, I went ahead and agreed for a second edition (which hopefully should be comming up in a few weeks). But do not be worried if you already ordered the book (see right column), according to my other native English speaking contacts, it is absolutely readable and entertaining.

    But the reason why I wanted to post on this is due to only a minor aspect of the editing: one thing that the editor pointed out immediately was that I had said that Douglas was on “US territory” — which of course technically is not true. The term “US territory” is usually used to describe those pieces of land which belong to the United States without being part of any particular state (Guam, Washington DC, etc.). My editor pointed out that a “fringe group” had actually given their US citizenship back and traded it in for “state citizenship,” which somehow means that they don’t need to pay (federal) taxes and don’t need to register their car.

    I could quite get it, so I researched it a bit more, and what i came up with was “The state Citizens Service Center” and their leader James R. McDonald. They argue as follows:

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  • The foreign working class

    I just met Shawn. He was picking out vegetables outside my favorite grocery store at Torggata, a street known for it’s immigrant family owned corner stores, and just a few blocks away from here. “Hey, hey!” I shouted from behind until he turned around, “remember me?” Shawn scanned me with his eyes for a while, trying to recognize any prominent features he might remember.
    So who is Shawn? Well, Shawn was my very first room mate when I moved to Oslo. Or rather one of them.
    But let me start from the beginning. it all started like this: the day when i received my draft card from the German military, I was to leave for Norway. That was pure coincidence. Another coincidence was that I hadn’t received my new passport yet. So I went to my parents’ village’s people’s registry and unregistered that very morning, before I took the train to Kiel where I was to catch a ferry to take me to Oslo. I told the registry office that I’d had a huge fight with my parents and that I was now off to go camping towards Russia — for 20 years…

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  • On being opinionated

    I discovered these two books reviews yesterday: one in Norwegian (Norwegian) by the student magazine at our institute, and this one (English) at a pretty good anthropology website. Although they write in rather different ways, they both focus on the fact that I was very much engaged in the world of my informants in Douglas and the latter specifically critisizes the fact that I concluded with what I thought needed to be done.

    Now I do agree that their criticism is valid, as far as we are speaking of liberal academic practice. This is what we today know as being the practice in “academia” and it is what gets you high grades: self-censor yourself to say absolutely nothing while showing how many books you have read so far.

    This contrasts highly with the ideals I am trying to follow: For a Marxist (and I am excluding the academizised version of it for now) the point of conducting and research or study is precisely to be better skilled to change the circumstances under whih people exist and suffer.

    The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it. (Marx 1845 Theses on Feurbach: II, VII, XI)

    and for a radical such changes will with necessity be huge and, uhm well, radical… 🙂

  • “CHICAGO WILL BE OURS!”

    Tears starting building up in my eyes when I read those words last Thursday. But I quickly wiped them away; I was in public. I had just finished reading Upton Sinclair ‘s The Jungle — a story about a Lithuanian family that immigrates to the United States and lives in the meat packing district of Chicago where they try to get along under the brutal reign of Capitalism. At some point earlier in the book, the entire family decide to unionize, but it does not last long as they start loosing their jobs and generally life is too uncertain for them to old on to the union for very long. Just about all family members end up either dying due to serious accidents that would have been completely preventable if they had had money, or going into prostitution, or both. The only one who survives through it all, after going through periods of hoboing, working under various brutal conditions, and acting as a strike breaker, is the family father Jurgis. And it is only in the end that he discovers the socialist cause and starts to organize with the socialists.
    The socialists are the most driven people around, and they are all described in terms like the Swede Nicholas Schliemann:

    About the first of July he would leave Chicago for his vacation, on foot; and when he struck the harvest-fields he would set to work for two dollars and a half a day, and come home when he had another year’s supply — a hundred and twenty-five dollars That was the nearest approach to independence a man could make “under capitalism,” he explained; he would never marry, for no sane man would allow himself to fall in love until after the revolution. (p.396-397)
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  • Vote for Venstrealliansen – And yes, I’m still Alive!

    Hi there, you guys haven’t heard from me for a while. Now you might have thought that the system finally got me, but the truth is that this is only the state of affairs temporarily. In other words: the teaching practice takesquite a lot of time that I could have used on other projects. That does of course not mean that it’s not fun any more in any way.

    And also, the silence here is somewhat of an exaggeration if you look at what I actually am able to get done. One of the things I did get done was to discuss the Muhammed picture case in Flensborg Avis (they do not let you find stories under one month old at their site). Now there are two reasons why I did it there: First of all it’s exactly NOT because I have any plans of ever going back to the wicked border area Germany/Denmark (where the paper is based), quite on the contrary: I know I can write stuff in that paper with a readership far far away from here without having to feel repercussions from my surroundings. Secondly, to a large extent I praised the Norwegian government’s handling of the case and asked for the resignation of the Danish prime minister for their extremely poor and confrontational imperialist-minded handling of it all. And what point is there in addressing a Norwegian audience telling them that they and their government are doing everything exactly right?

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  • H5N1

    So the newest scare is upon us.This time it’s the birds who’ll be coming to get us. After sheep, bees and cows, it’s about time for the birds to be trying their luck with ending human civilization. And the media helps us in explaining just where the battle man against bird stands at the time, while governments are doing just exactly what makes common sense when they send out experts in allbody dresses whenever a dead bird is reported anywhere within a few hundred kilometers of any known cases of the Avian Flue. It’s just as professional as it wasfor them to ask us to stop the car and walk through some chemicals whenever we were passing some border line during the heydays of the Mouth-and-Hoof disease (whenever someone goes to a farm, it’s very likely that he’ll wear the same shoes as he will wear when he takes an airplane some days later, right?).
    As far as I’ve heard, altogether three cats have so far managed to contract the virus — and that was on the Island where it was first found (Rügen). Now I’ve seen quite a number of pictures of cats eating various small birds in newspapers all across Europe after that, and the number of headline stories about how to avoid getting it yourself have risen immensely as well. Alone on that island, the German military collected 3000 dead birds. Frightening? Well, not if you consider, that under 20% of those found had the virus, and only a small percentage of those actually died of it. (On the 21st of February, when they had found 1000 dead birds, the number of infected cases was 79 — while the north-eastern part of the island houses 69,000 wild birds and altogether 400,000 chicken live on the entire island). And while world wide there have been no cases of cat to human transmissions yet, the German army was granted the right to use a Tornado fighter jet in order to find more bird carcases — of course without result — as one couldn’t tell the difference between dead and alive birds on the pictures they shot! In Russia, Deputy Speaker of the national parliament Vladimir Zhirinovsky is reported to have suggested to arm all males between Sochi and Crimea (both at the Black Sea) in order to stop the yearly bird migration to and from Turkey.

    Ts, ts, what can I say? Maybe this is a good time to go out and waste a lot of money on yourself at the mall — you know you might not live to see tomorrow.

  • Everlasting winters

    Hey,
    as you probably noticed, I haven’t written for quite a while. Now, how could that happen? Is it that nothing interesting has happened to me, so that I haven’t had anything to write about? Quite the opposite!

    Let me begin by updating you a little bit on what has happened since last time. As you can read in the last post, we from the Left Alliance made quite a fuss about the support of “democracy” in Belarus by quite a lot of Norwegian organizations. And it all ended up with them changing their mind, removing the main reference to the controversial candidate from their website and putting a disclaimer on the main page saying that those organizations that have signed their petition do not support the rest of whatever can be found on the webpage…. sounds quite bizarre to me, and I think it effectively has meant that they can’t go anywhere with that site.

    But that was not all…

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