Mark,

I personally get really annoyed when people create the personal vs. political dichotomy. Isn't that one of the key things to come from the feminist movement? - the personal is political and vice versa? You can't simply create all these neat little spheres and compartmentlise different parts of your own life!

I think deschooling is extremely political. School is one of the pivotal institutions to the running of capitalism. It reinforces the dominate/submit relationship that the nuclear family fisrt instills in us. School also teaches dominant ideologies, that is, the ideologies of our oppressors which stifles resistance. School also prepares us for work - it teaches us how to follow orders, how to behave and the skills necessary to enrich the fucking parasites.

The tree-climbing workshop was actually about direct action techniques for eco-anarchists/green-anarchists. That is directly political.

The natural contraceptives was about empowering the individual to help make her own choice over his own body. The alternative being relying on corporations and specialists selling us pills and synthetic "gloves" upon which we can come to rely on. That is also political to some degree.

I wouldn't brush stuff off like you seem to have done simply because it's not as political as you may think. It's dangerous to get so narrow in one's perspective and forsake the rest of life.

Besides, and most importantly, this was an anarchist gathering and I think it's a given it would be collectively run to a large degree (at least I was aware that this was the case before I attended the @TP) so if you weren't happy with what was going down you had every opportunity to come along and do "political" workshops of your own - which is exactly what me and Bobo did with our worhshop on "Clarifying Anarchism and Moving Forward". That's called taking control of your own situation and is exactly what the spirit of anarchism is all about!