Manifesto #1

The history of the 20th century was declared largely by manifesto:  The Manifesto of Futurism 1909; Dada Manifesto 1918; Manifesto of Surrealism 1924; John Cage’s Manifesto 1952; The Russell-Einstein Manifesto 1955; Second Declaration of Havana by Fidel Castro 1962; The Ten-Point Program of Huey Newton (Black Panthers) 1966; The Gay Manifesto 1970.   

Derived from the Latin manifestus which means “plainly apprehensible, clear, evident” by the 1640s in the Italian it had come to mean “public declaration explaining reasons or motives.” At its root it is derived from manus which means “hand” and a manifesto arguably is a physical object – words on paper – easily grasped or held, say, nailed upon the doors of a 16th century church or plastered on store fronts or tenement homes of 20th century inner cities. 

McSweeney is a nonprofit publishing house founded in 1998 by Dave Eggers.  To honor its 25th anniversary, the house published Manifesto, a hard bound compendium of the 20th century as declared by bold forward-thinking authors.  The book was given to me over the holidays, a cherished gift, which I am devouring slowly.  

The Introduction states, “[Manifestos] are often strange, ill-considered, and regrettable.  They are just as often brilliant and pivotal in changing government, art, and the direction of the human animal.  But always manifestos are passionate, always they command attention and use language for perhaps its most urgent purpose – the rattling of complacent minds.”

The books presents twenty-five manifestos.  “I want a president,” written in 1992 by Zoe Leonard, is strikingly powerful and refreshing, especially in these times where power is exercised as domination, in a culture increasingly split between the Have Much and the Have Nots.  

“I want a dyke for president.  I want a person with aids for president and I want  fag for vice president and I want someone with no health insurance and I want someone who grew up in a place where the earth is so saturated with toxic waste that they didn’t have a choice about getting leukemia.  I want a president that had an abortion at sixteen and I want a candidate who isn’t the lesser of two evils and I want a president who lost their last lover to aids, who still sees that in their eyes every time they lay down to rest, who held their lover in their arms and knew they were dying.  I want a president with no air conditioning, a president who has stood on line at the clinic, at the dmv, at the welfare office and has been unemployed and laid off and sexually harrassed and gaybashed and deported.  I want someone who spent the night in the tombs and had a cross burned on their lawn and survived rape.  I want someone who has been in love and been hurt, who respects sex, who has made mistakes and learned from them.  I want a Black woman for president.  I want someone with bad teeth and an attitude, someone who has eaten that nasty hospital food, someone who crossdresses and has done drugs and been in therapy.  I want someone who has committed civil disobedience.  And I want to know why this isn’t possible.  I want to know why we started learning somewhere down the line that a president is always a clown: always a John and never a hooker.  Always a boss and never a worker, always a liar, always a thief and never caught.”