# Leelanau Talk Blog

because we need a safe place to speak

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Leelanau Talk Blog

## Welcome to the Leelanau Talk Blog

November 19th, 2008 | Tags: analysis, censorship, friley, leelanau school, speech, stir
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Wow! I took the site down for maintenance for a few days and in doing so I have caused quite a stir. I posted a note to the site explaining some of my current thoughts, misgivings, etc. about my time at Leelanau and the time I have put into Leelanau Talk. There was some good discussion from all sides, which leads me to why Leelanau Talk was started in the first place.

I had two goals when I started Leelanau Talk. The first was to foster an un-censorable discussion about The Leelanau School, what had happened in the past, where it was going, and what people should be doing in the meantime. My plan was to do this by releasing previously censored speech, providing a safe place for it, and supporting those at Leelanau who were under attack for their thoughts and words.

There is a theory across most of the industrialized world that the mere existence of a good idea would cause it to perpetuate itself. The typical thinking of the hippie-era in the 1960s was that by raising consciousness and by spreading ideas, we could change the world. In the third world, it’s clear that people think about things differently. One could spend endless hours debating whether this is because lives are at stake or that these people think about change differently.

…. regardless ….

This leads into my second goal of starting Leelanau Talk, which was to promote radical thinking among students and staff, support those who thought about the school situation in revolutionary terms, and use the evidence I had gathered to support my own arguments. I don’t mean radical as enforcing an anarchist/marxist/etc. perspective, but radical in the sense that I was asking people to think outside the box of what they took for granted and to attack the roots of the problems they saw through direct action.

Over the past few months I have had a lot of time to think about my own philosophy, the things I have been doing, the things I have been working with, and what it all means. Leelanau Talk never became quite what I wanted it to be because I didn’t put the energy into it that I had originally planned and because I was disillusioned. When I took down the site I put up a little note which talked about certain people and the groups those people belonged to. I think some people who read this also read into a deeper meaning which was that I saw a little of myself in all of those groups.

During my time at Leelanau, my political ideology was challenged, proven correct, proven incorrect, and changed quite a bit. I was a hardcore communist when I came to Leelanau, but when I left I had turned into a fledgling Anarchist. They seem the same to most mainstreamers, but they’re actually opposite ends of the spectrum. I think the main thing that happened to my ideology at Leelanau was that it was hardened. While this was good for getting through my last year of boarding school, it wasn’t so great in the real world. Mr. Friley said something to me towards the end of the year that I think really sums up something important and it went along the lines of “Black and white decisions are easy to make. It’s the decisions in the grey area that are hard and it is those decisions that ultimately decide our character”. I absolutely agree, and that quote says much more than is originally apparent. His words analyze the individual but they also apply to social interactions and systems. Diversity is what makes us unique. Challenges are what happens when those diversities meet. The results of those challenges are varied and depending on the outcome: beautiful. Doesn’t it then make sense that we would want to foster diversity and create safe environments for those challenges to occur?

Yes, but that’s not what I was doing here at Leelanau Talk. After having put some of my ideas about liberation into action, I wanted to help others do the same. I got really excited about the prospect of helping organize radical thought on campus, being able to finally speak my mind, and helping others with their own liberation. As often happens to people who are really excited about a cause, I tried to micro-manage everything. As people who checked the site regularly can tell you, I made a lot of comments and also corrected a lot of people when I saw them saying something I didn’t agree with. This was not only a beautiful display of my closed-mindedness caused by the hardening of my ideology, but also of my desire to micro-manage everything. Ideologies are like living things. They grow and try new things and explore and sometimes make mistakes. By constantly pointing out what I saw as mistakes and trying to guide ideologies, I ended up messing up that process. You could say the same thing of how people grow up. It’s all a process of trying new things, challenging yourself, and learning from your mistakes. This isn’t to say that having a third party analyze your thoughts about the world isn’t helpful, but that the best things happen when that third party steps aside and you have an opportunity to do it yourself.

That being said, after having much time to think about my own ideology and its practice, I have decided to take a new approach to Leelanau Talk. Of course, the cycle will continue and a while down the road I’ll probably try something different. Until then, I’ll try to stay out of discussions in the way that I’d been placing myself in them previously. I’ll still be here to support those on campus who are persecuted for their views, whatever they might be. I’ll still write occasional articles, keep an eye on the Leelanau School, and try and bring publicity to the cause — and maybe I’ll finally get around to sending some of those care packages.

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### Possibly Related Posts

- December 8, 2008 -- Bread Bar
- November 16, 2008 -- How to Beat the Filter
- November 14, 2008 -- My Prefect Resignation Letter

Sorry Adb, this site isnt yours… The Leelanau School Caught Censoring Wikipedia!
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