L.A. Anarchist Bookfair: Actions + Conversations + Intersections 2010
Sunday January 24th : 11AM-7PM : Barnsdall Art Park 4800 Hollywood Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90027
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NewsMarch 20 anti-war march
As revolutionary anarchist-feminists and anti-authoritarians, we see the expansion of US militarism and occupation into Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Palestine as the logical expression of a system built on racism, imperialism, and patriarchy.
By exposing the economic motives behind the invasions and debunking the myth of ‘liberation through occupation’, Anarcha-La is taking to the streets with an anti-racist feminism that can support the survival and self-determination of Afghan, Iraqi, Palestinian women and men! Please join Anarcha LA this Sunday, March 7, at 1pm to plan a Pink Bloc for the March 20 anti-war march. love and rage, Anarcha AWAF: on the Occurances the week of March 4th, 2010 at Arizona State Universities West Campus
From sowhatifallthecollegesburndown
Humpty Dumpty Sat on a Wall... Humpty Dumpty had a Great Fall... Orca Resistance at Sea WorldBy now most folks have heard the story about Tilikum, an orca currently held in captivity at Florida’s Sea World, who seized his trainer, Dawn Brancheau, and drowned her at the end of a performance early last week. Sea World has largely described the incident as a tragic accident, defending the practice of keeping wild animals in captivity for the purposes of education and entertainment, and claiming that accidents happen … and that trainers know the risks they take working with orcas, which are perhaps better known under the more common name of “killer whales.” Yet many animal rights activists have a different perspective on Tilikum’s actions: though the death of Dawn Brancheau is a tragic event, to be sure, some authors and activists, like Jason Hribal, author of the forthcoming Counterpunch book Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden History of Animal Resistance, suggest that Tilikum’s actions are a sign of resistance to captivity that Sea World, and other such sites, attempt to cover up by dismissing such incidents as “accidents.” Hribal actually profiles Tilikum, and his fellow captive whales, in the new book, due out this Fall. We’re pleased to reproduce an excerpt below, which originally ran on Counterpunch on February 25. ***** The Struggle of Nootka and Tilikum It was the first time that a trainer had ever been killed by a group of captive killer whales. There had been previous attempts, a great many actually. But the trainers involved, whether through rescue by other employees or a stroke of luck on their part, had always managed to survive. This attack, however, proved to be different and fatal. It occurred on February 21, 1991 at Sealand of the Pacific. That day’s final performance had just ended at the Victoria, British Columbia based aquarium and the audience was pleased. They got to watch three killer whales, Nootka, Haida, and Tilikum, perform tricks, including one trick wherein a young female trainer rode on the back of one of these great sea mammals. It seemed to be wonderful fun—that is, until that particular female trainer fell into the water. As she attempted to climb out, an orca latched on to her. “The whale got her foot,” an audience member recalled to reporters, “and pulled her in.” We do not know which orca it was that started it, but all three, Nootka, Haida, and Tilikum, took their turns dunking the screaming woman underwater. “She went up and down three times,” another visitor continued. The Sealand employees “almost got her once with the hook pole, but they couldn’t because the whales were moving so fast.” One trainer tossed out a floatation ring, but the whales would not let her grab it. In fact, the closer that such devices got to the young woman, the further out the whales pulled her into the pool. It took park officials two hours to recover her drowned body. Responding to the death, Sealand dismissed any claims that the whales had hurt the woman on purpose. “It was just a tragic accident,” the park manager lamented. “I just can’t explain it.” A few of the trainers speculated that Nootka, Haida, and Tilikum might have been playing “a game” that simply went wrong, and their coworker was mistakenly killed in the process. There was, however, precedent for a different interpretation. In 1989, there had been two violent incidences involving Nootka. The first occurred in April. A trainer was in the middle of a routine activity, scratching the orca’s tongue, when that orca decided to turn the tables. Nootka “bit her hand and dragged her into the whale pool.” The woman had to be rescued by a fellow employee. Sealand, for its part, chose not to notify the authorities or the press. It believed that, although the trainer received lacerations and needed stitches, Nootka did not really intend to bite the person, and the situation remained in control. The trainer thought differently. Citing “unsafe conditions,” she quit her job. Nootka struck again later that year. A tourist was taking pictures, when he accidentally dropped his camera in the water. The orca quickly noticed the object and put it into her mouth. When a trainer tried to retrieve the camera, Nootka used the opportunity to grab a hold of the man’s leg and jerk him into the pool. The trainer had to be rescued. Sealand administrators chose, once again, to deny that there was intentionality behind Nootka’s actions. No one needed to know about this incidence. Nevertheless, more trainers did resign their positions. Nootka, they believed, was purposeful and dangerous in her actions. Elsewhere in Canada, other theme parks were having their own troubles. About a decade earlier, the Vancouver Aquarium had its hands full with Skana and Hyak. Both orcas were described by their trainer as “moody.” Working with the former was particularly precarious, as the female whale could switch from an obedient disposition to a rebellious one “in minutes.” “Skana once showed her dislike,” a Vancouver employee explained, “by dragging a trainer around the pool.” “Her teeth sank into his wetsuit but missed the leg.” For Marineland, near picturesque Niagara Falls, it was the same but only with a different pair of whales. There was Kandu. She once yanked a trainer around the pool by the leg after the man fell off his back during a stunt. The employee was sent immediately to the hospital and a pale audience stumbled out of the stadium in disbelief. Than there was Nootka, a similarly named but all together unrelated orca to the one at Sealand. During a mid-1980s performance, she struck a trainer in the head with her pectoral fin. Aquarium administrators pronounced that it was an accident. Her trainers knew better. As one of them disclosed, Nootka often leapt out of the water in order to punch her trainers directly in the chest. She wanted to hurt people. Interestingly, to date, there have been a total of five orcas named Nootka. Sea World had one. Marineland had another. And Sealand actually had the other three. Its first was captured in 1973 off the western Canadian coast. She died after nine months. Sealand tried again in 1975 with another female brought from the same waters. She did not fair any better and died within the year. Less than a decade later, Sealand decided to make one more attempt and flew in a young Icelandic female. She, miraculously, survived. Indeed, the average life expectancy during this era for captive orcas stood between one to four years. Aquariums often went through a whole series of whales before just one of them made it into adolescence. Today, that life expectancy has improved: rising to about ten years. Yet it is still a far cry from the thirty to sixty years that orcas can live in the ocean. Sea World, for instance, has had fifty-one Shamus. The original was captured in 1965, after animal collector Ted Griffin harpooned the calf’s mother in Puget Sound. Betting with the odds, Sea World would only lease the animal at first. Who knows how long she would last? But, when the young orca made it through the year, the park bought her outright for $100,000. Sea World made Shamu the central figure in its operations. All marketing from this point forward was geared towards her. There would be Shamu commercials. There would be Shamu shows. There would be Shamu dolls and t-shirts. Shamu became, in the words of one director, the park’s “Mickey Mouse.” This orca did, however, have the power to disrupt these well-laid plans. In 1971, during a publicity stunt, Shamu was being filmed with bikini-clad women riding on her back. Suddenly, she tossed the woman off and began dunking the person underwater. There were two divers in the small pool, but Shamu shrugged them off like little insects. The chaotic scene continued for a few minutes: a hysterical woman, divers tumbling in the wake, and trainers at the poolside desperately holding out poles. The individual would, eventually, be rescued. But the deed was done and the images made the local news. Shamu, apparent to all, was not near as friendly or cooperative as the amusement park would have liked us to believe. Sea World had its first major incident. At the end of the day, though, the orca’s actions were not enough to bring down the park. Operations would continue and, fifty-one Shamus later, Sea World has thrived. It has become a flagship vacation destination with three current locations: San Diego, Orlando, and San Antonio. They have hotels, restaurants, roller coasters, merchandise, and special events. They have adventure camps for grade school and high school students. They have a multitude of animal exhibitions and performances. They have extensive breeding and research programs. Shamu has made Sea World’s owners very rich. Back at Sealand, the situation was not as rosy. The attack by Nootka, Haida, and Tilikum left the park in a public relations freefall. Administrators promised changes. New safety procedures would be initiated. Physical contact between the trainers and whales will no longer be allowed. Guardrails will be installed along the poolside to prevent slips or bites. But the public pressure would not let up. Between the daily protests at the park’s front gates, national demands that the orcas be released back to the ocean, and the city council’s entrance into the debate, Sealand’s will crumbled. In August of 1991, the park reached a startling decision. “After a lot of thought and discussion,” the director clarified, “it was decided killer whales should be phased out.” Less than one year later, Sealand shut down its entire operations. The twenty-nine year old institution had closed permanently. The three whales, including Haida’s newborn calf, were sold to Sea World for five million dollars. The decision was made in secret, and the export permits were granted behind closed doors. The public at-large was not allowed into the conversation. Tilikum was shipped out under the cover of the night to Orlando, where he still resides. Nootka would soon follow him. She died in 1994 at the age of thirteen. Haida and her calf, Ky, went to San Antonio. Three years after the death of his mother in 2001, Ky made news of his own. That July, during a performance in front a thousand people, the orca jumped on top of his trainer and repeatedly pushed the man underwater. Sea World, afterwards, tried to pass the incident off as rough play, saying that at no time was the trainer in danger. Witnesses did not buy it. As one of them explained, “the whale was staying between the [exit] ramp and the trainer and finally the trainer jumped on top of the whale’s back and leaped over him and another trainer caught him.” At that point, “the whale turned around and slammed down on the ramp and he was pretty upset that the trainer got out of the pool.” Yesterday, the trainer did not escape. Jason Hribal is the co-author of The Cry of Nature: an Appeal for Mercy on Behalf of Persecuted Animals. His new book, Fear of the Animal Planet, will be published this fall by AK Press / CounterPunch Books. About the arrests of February 15th in Paris and the alleged serial-ATMers
Translated from Non Fides
Last February 15th, at six in the morning, seven people were arrested and their houses searched, for an investigation concerning the agitation around the Vincennes detention Center revolt and trial, and against the deportation machine. Several details on these arrests and their immediate consequences… House-Search and waking up at 6 o‘clock No doors were broken, and in general, it has been possible to gain time before cops entered ( and before they threatened to use their ram). All in all, fifty Antiterrorist Section cops(SAT), of the Criminal Brigade ( followed with the DCRI-secret information police-, Financial Brigade, computers specialists…) were mobilised for this arrests raid. Mainly, they were looking for specific clothes ( scarfs, hats, jackets, sweat-shirt, shoes), but also flyers, brochures and posters- about all subjects, and especially those against deportation machine. Of course, they seized computers, mobile phones, diaries and other notebooks, and spray cans and banners ( „November 2005-December 2008, the arson is spreading“; “ No NATO, nor Taliban, let’s desert the powerful war“) as well. Cops took many pictures of different documents and books. Finally, cigarets and tooth-brushs were seized for DNA sample; some people were „asked“ for their underwear, but in vain. And, being over zealous, cops passed „DNA“ cotton buds on the bed sheets. New Publications from the Kate Sharpley LibraryOur pals at the Kate Sharpley Library have been busy, First, they’ve just published the February/March edition of their Bulletin: KSL: Bulletin of the Kate Sharpley Library No. 61, February/March 2010
They’ve also got a new pamphlet out: New pamphlet on the resistance to Francoism by Antonio Téllez The Kate Sharpley Library are pleased to announce our latest publication: From the end of the Spanish Civil War, the anarchist movement fought to undermine the Francoist dictatorship. Solidarity actions in Western Europe aimed to isolate the regime, and bring pressure to bear in defence of militants inside Spain. Determined to avoid casualties, their campaign of armed protests saved many activists from the death penalty. Contents:
ISBN 9781873605851 Anarchist Sources series 13. 25 pages $3/£3 (£2 to subscribers) And they made a ton of new documents available online in February: To stay up to date, check out their feed here. And for a complete list of KSL publications available from AK Press, go here. Towards a New Situationist International
“Perhaps he has secrets for changing life? No, he’s just looking for some, I told myself.”
(Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell, 1873) 1. It is a brutal fact that the defining quality of proletarian life at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, the foundation on which the everyday thought and action of ordinary people rests, is a craven acceptance of the separate commodity economy and the state as unchangeable givens. This practical submission exists everywhere in the advanced capitalist countries. It is not just a matter of the unthinking obedience of the many good children (of all ages) who have nearly always confined their thoughts, actions and desires to the obviously submissive conventions of their times. It is equally ubiquitous in the endless impotent complaints about fragments of social life, in the many varieties of contemporary cynicism that sneer as they obey, in the swaggering search for status and money of the urban gang member or the petty criminal, in the myriad campaigns for the reform of this or that unseemly fragment of everyday life, in the search for the cool, the spiritual or the perfect state of wasted oblivion; and in your life and mine, amongst many others. Bash Back!ers in Support of Autonomous Animal Action Call For Trans-Species Solidarity With Tillikum
An autonomous cell of Bash Back! is calling for solidarity with sea criminal Tillikum, the orca responsible for killing a trainer at Sea World Orlando at the end of February. We consider the attack on Dawn Brancheau to be an act of social war, as Tillikum gave new breadth to the waves he monotonously created through his awe-inspiring splashes. Tillikum destroyed what destroyed him by transforming his commodified body into an organ of the war-machine; thus, enacting an orcan-strike. For too long he had been confined as a spectacle for the American populus to consume. The affect of his bodily revolt has aided in helping us all realize the potentiality of reifying our underlying desires. Members of the American Family Association have come out in favor of stoning Tillikum to death for this strike against systems of domination. In response, the nonhuman political prisoners at Sea World Orlando have organized the first chapter of Splash Back!, an insurrectionary tendency of sea animals dedicated to destroying all forms of oppression. Bash Back! must be allies in the struggle for animal liberation, as well as against the religious right which has sought to criminalize the bodies of queers and orcas for so long. We are calling for solidarity actions with Tillikum across the country to support animal autonomy and resistance. Orcas have been criminalized for too long; the time for sea animal liberation is now.
Solidarity with all Trainer Killers! Reflections on the 2010 Olympics Resistance: the purpose of demonstrations & transcending the police
From Liberty Unchained
So, this past weekend the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver came to an end. This is, no doubt, the only certain ending for a variety matters that have coalesced around this year's games. Future iterations of the olympic games will continue to serve as a spectacle to celebrate the state and an occasion to expand global capital. And, perhaps equally depressing, is the prospect that the next sizable mass protest will inevitably touch off another round of the circular firing squad that seems to accompany any radical demonstration nowadays. Broadly speaking, our internal discourse tends to break down in three ways: militancy (destroying and/or taking), pacifism (obstructing and/or occupying), and conciliation of the prior two positions. Alongside the obvious political messages found in the signs, costumes, and chants of the demonstrators, the tactical approaches themselves convey political messages. The militant seeks direct physical confrontation with the oppressor both to undermine his power and force him to exert it, though there is the danger of validating the power he possesses and thus the "order" he provides. The pacifist attempts to demonstrate (prefigure?) a response to the oppressor that will provide a stark contrast to his naked power, unfortunately the pacifist's "tactics" do not confront the oppressor at all and actually respect his power. The conciliatory position is that of respecting a "diversity" of tactics (i.e.: allowing and promoting militant and pacifist action). March 4 Strike and Day of Action To Defend Public EducationIt’s almost here, so a quick overview… —- March 4 Strike and Day of Action To Defend Public Education On October 24, 2009 more than 800 students, workers, and teachers converged at UC Berkeley at the Mobilizing Conference to Save Public Education. This massive meeting brought together representatives from over 100 different schools, unions, and organizations from all across California and from all sectors of public education – Pre K-12, Adult Education, CC, CSU and UC – to “decide on a statewide action plan capable of winning this struggle, which will define the future of public education in this state, particularly for the working class and communities of color.” After hours of open collective discussion, the conference democratically voted, as its principal decision, to call for a statewide Strike and Day of Action on March 4, 2010. The conference decided that all schools, unions and organizations are free to choose their specific demands and tactics – such as strikes, walkouts, march to Sacramento, rallies, occupations, sit-ins, teach-ins, etc. – for March 4, as well as the duration of such actions. We refuse to let those in power continue to pit us against each other. If we unite, we have the power to shut down business-as-usual and to force those in power to grant our demands. Building a powerful movement to defend public education will, in turn, advance the struggle in defense of all public-sector workers and services. We call on all students, workers, teachers, parents, and their organizations across the state to endorse this call and massively mobilize and organize for the Strike and Day of Action on March 4. Let’s make this an historic turning point in the struggle against the cuts, layoffs, fee hikes, and educational segregation in California. To endorse this call and to receive more information, please contact march4strikeanddayofaction@gmail.com and consult _____________________________________ MARCH 4 Strike and Day of Action REGIONAL EVENTS (http://thirdworldjournal.co.cc/?p=140) Regional Events Los Angeles Regional Rally • 3 pm Rally @ Pershing Square (5th & Hill) in downtown L.A. East Bay/Oakland Regional Rally • 12 pm-4 pm Rally @ Frank Ogawa Plaza (in front of Oakland City Hall, 14th & Broadway) -UC Berkeley: 12 pm Rally @ Bancroft & Telegraph, followed by March -Laney College: 11 am Rally, followed by March -Fruitvale BART: Assemble @ 11 am, March @ 11:30 am San Francisco Regional Rally • Rally at Civic Center @ 1:30 – SF State Students will be marching to meet here Sacramento/State Capitol Rally • 11 am-1 pm Rally @ State Capitol (North Steps of Capitol) San Diego Regional Rally • 3 pm Rally @ Balboa Park, followed by March to governor’s office San Fernando Valley Regional Rally • 3:45 pm gathering @ CSU Northridge Sierra Quad Local Events Oakland Unified District (OEA) • 7:30 a.m. Informational picketing in defense of public education and against cuts (San Francisco, San Lorenzo, Dublin and other districts are holding mock drills.) UC Berkeley • 7 am-12 pm Pickets UCLA • 10 am Pickets (UCLA invites high schools and community colleges in the Westside area to join) UC San Diego • 11:30 Walk-out & Rally @ Gilman Parking Structure UC Santa Cruz • 6:00 am Picket at the entrances to campus UC Riverside • 1 pm gathering @ UCR Bell Tower DVC - • 12pm Walkout : Other events on campus TBD City College of SF •12pm (main campus) Rally and events all day on campus Skyline/Cañada/Peninsula College • Walkouts @10:00am other campus events Ocean HS • Teachers and students to march and rally along California Highway 1 De Anza CC •12pm to walk out and rally in SF at 5 p.m.. Skyline CC, San Mateo County, • 11 a.m. Rally San Francisco Sate • 7 am Campus Shutdown; Pickets from morning till 1pm; all day campus events TBD Sonoma State • 11:30 am Student Walk Out CSU Bakersfield • 11:30 am-1 pm @ the Student Union Patio (rain: Stockdale Room in Runner Café) CSU Channel Islands • Students, faculty, workers and campus community will travel to the San Fernando Valley to participate in San Fernando Valley Regional Rally @ CSU Northridge (See regional listing above) CSU Chico • 8 am sendoff for students, faculty, workers and campus community traveling to State Capital Rally (See regional listing above) CSU Dominguez Hills • Students, faculty, workers and campus community will travel to Wilson High School Long Beach and Los Angeles Regional Rally (See Long Beach details below or regional listing above) CSU East Bay • 8-10 Pickets on both entrances Fresno State • 10:30 am March from NW corner of Blackstone and Shaw, go down Shaw to Fresno State CSU Fullerton • Students, faculty, workers and campus community will travel to Los Angeles Regional Rally (See regional listing above) Humboldt State • 3 pm-5 pm Rally @ Humboldt County Courthouse-Eureka with CSU and K-12 faculty and students Cal State Los Angeles • 9:30 am Rally @ the USU area (Free Speech area) CSU Long Beach • 12 pm-1 pm Rally @ South Campus, Upper Quad, Long Beach: Wilson High School • 4 pm Rally @ Wilson High School Gymnasium (4400 E. 10th St.) California Maritime Academy • Students, faculty, workers and campus community will travel to San Francisco Regional Rally and Sacramento/State Capitol Rally (See regional listing above) CSU Monterey Bay • 11 am-1 pm Rally/March CSU Northridge/San Fernando Valley Regional Rally • 3:45 pm gather @ CSU Northridge Sierra Quad Cal Poly Pomona • 1:30 pm- 2:30 pm Send off Rally @ – as CFA members, students and campus community board buses for Los Angeles Regional Rally (See regional listing above) Sacramento State/Sacramento/State Capitol Rally • 11 am-1 pm Rally @ State Capitol (North Steps of Capitol) CSU San Bernardino • 11:30 am March @ Marquee entrance (NW corner of University Pkwy and Northpark Blvd) San Diego State/San Diego Regional Rally • 11:30 am-12:00 pm collect video testimonials from students and campus community next to Aztec Center (Large “scoreboard” showing the loss of students, teachers and classes at SDSU due to budget cuts) SANTEE HIGH SCHOOL, LOS ANGELES RANCHO COTATI HIGH SCHOOL, SONOMA COUNTY SAN DIEGO CITY COLLEGE MT. SAC COLLEGE, LOS ANGELES COUNTY RANCHO COTATI HIGH SCHOOL, SONOMA COUNTY SAN DIEGO CITY COLLEGE MT. SAC COLLEGE, LOS ANGELES COUNTY San Jose State • 11 am gather at San Jose City Hall Cal Poly San Luis Obispo • 3:30–5 pm Rally @ Office of state Senator Abel Maldonado (1356 Marsh St., San Luis Obispo) CSU San Marcos • 10:30 am-11:30 am Teach-in on State Budget @ Academic Hall (ACD) 102 (simulcast to other classrooms) CSU Stanislaus • 11:30 am-1pm Rally @ campus Quad Nationwide See www.defendeducation.org. DETROIT (Wayne State University) •4pm Rally at Gullen Mall on WSU Campus Alabama University, Montgomery Statewide event 10:00am – 2:00pm Alabama State House, Montgomery, AL Students, faculty, staff and other supporters to visit Montgomery and take part in a huge Higher Ed Day Rally that allows rally participants to voice their support for Central Connecticut State University Louisiana State University University of Massachusetts, Boston NEW YORK CITY REGIONAL ACTIONS ON MARCH 4 NYC region events listings Rally at City Hall: Shut Down City Hall Not Our Schools! March 4 Protest: Governor Patterson’s Office to the MTA Headquarters On Facebook: Walkout at Hunter College Rally at Queens College Rally at CUNY Graduate Center MICHIGAN REGIONAL ACTION ON MARCH 4 MINNESOTA RHODE ISLAND REGIONAL ACTION ON MARCH 4 S.O.S. Save Our Schools Coalition 3-4 pm Rally at Providence School Dept., 787 Westminster Ave. 4 pm March through downtown and 5 pm Rally at City Hall Contact: Bill Bateman 401-837-7663 / 401-572-3740 Providence College University of Texas, Austin UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON International Portugal Public sector workers in Portugal have called a one-day national strike on March 4 in protest over a wage freeze. *Compiled by Jonathan and Juan, www.calfac.org/march4.html A (Very Exciting) Day in the Life: AK Press Does InventoryIn case any of you dear readers were under the impression that AK Press is any sort of glamorous place, check out what we’ve been up to this weekend! Those of you who have worked retail are no doubt familiar with the tedious yet essential task of doing physical inventory. Well, this weekend, your intrepid AK Press Collective (along with our trusty band of volunteers) has once again risen to the task! I won’t get into the details, because contrary to the title of this post (I was lying to draw you in, see!), it’s really not that exciting. It’s basically three days of counting every copy of every item on every shelf by hand (and that’s, you know, several thousand items). The more acrobatically inclined among us spent a couple of days hopping around between raised pallet shelves, digging through cases of overstock. There was a lot of sneezing and a few minor injuries, but mostly it went pretty smoothly. Then Lorna entered all our counts and had a big beer to celebrate our success. At the end of it all, we are exhausted but we have a database (hopefully) full of nice, clean data. We love it! One kind of fun(ny) thing about inventory is that we always seem to rediscover things in the warehouse that we’d all forgotten we had. So, keep an eye on our sale page, cause I bet some of this overstock turns up there soon. Inventory is also a pretty good chance for those of us who deal with these books all the time (and sometimes forget how much good stuff there is) to actually get up close and look at all the stuff we’re selling. There really is a lot of good shit in our warehouse, and I encourage those of you who are local to the bay area to come and poke around for yourselves. Better yet, come and start volunteering at AK… then you can help us with all the warehouse organization we’ve just been inspired to do, and next year you can do inventory like the cool kids! Zach counts pamphlets. Macio climbs the pallet shelves. Lorna celebrates…and expresses herself.Mountain Justice Dispatch #2(The next installation in our ongoing series of dispatches from the mountains of West Virginia, where the battle against mountaintop removal continues to escalate. AK Press will publish Mountain Justice: Homegrown Resistance to Mountaintop Removal, for the Future of Us All, by journalist Tricia Shapiro, this Fall.) Escalating Sanctions against Mountaintop Removal Protesters “Protesters Occupy Marfork Coal Co.’s Office in Response to Mounting Violations,” said a press release from the protesters’ supporters at Climate Ground Zero on Thursday morning, Feb. 18. A news release from Massey Energy, Marfork’s parent company, told rather a different story: “Environmental Terrorists Invade Marfork Coal Company Office…. Three criminals clad in fatigues and carrying chains invaded a company office and chained themselves to chairs in the lobby. A terrified receptionist went into shock and was transported by ambulance to a local hospital…. One of the criminals, Mike Roselle, was a founding member of Earth First!, which is considered by many to be a domestic terrorist group…. These domestic terrorists are part of an anti-coal group that wants to shut down mining in Appalachia and destroy West Virginia’s economy.” Massey’s “news release” doesn’t specify who those “many” are who consider Mike and his colleagues to be “domestic terrorists.” But even right-wing activist Ron Arnold, who’s written an entire book on “ecoterrorism,” asserts that “Roselle may be a terrible pain in the ass, but he’s no terrorist.” Writing shortly after Mike’s first trespassing arrest on Massey property, at Marfork’s Bee Tree strip mine site a year ago, Arnold scolded those who would “dilute” the meaning of the word terrorism by applying it to nonviolent protest. “Face it,” he wrote, “what he did was civil disobedience, not terrorism.” The claim that “a terrified receptionist went into shock” is equally puzzling. “She was definitely startled when we came in,” says Joe Hamsher, one of the three protesters arrested that day. But soon “she calmed down. She was even laughing.” Protests are not a new experience for Massey workers. Since February of last year, more than 130 arrests have been made at civil-disobedience actions protesting mountaintop-removal (MTR) strip mining for coal in West Virginia. Several of those actions have targeted Marfork, which has begun blasting at its Bee Tree MTR site a short distance from its enormous Brushy Fork impoundment, which holds billions of gallons of liquid coal waste up above the Coal River valley. Anti-MTR activists and local residents are concerned that blasting so close to the impoundment, which is built over abandoned underground coal mine tunnels, risks catastrophic flooding that by Massey’s own estimate could kill close to a thousand people. The only violence or threats of violence at any of these actions have been directed at the protesters, not vice versa. For example, at a protest rally at the front gate of Massey’s Goals Coal facility last June, a Massey supporter slapped anti-MTR activist Judy Bonds hard enough that she couldn’t move her neck properly for days. Most recently, in January, workers at Marfork’s Bee Tree site blared multiple airhorns, day and night, at three protesters sitting in trees there, risking permanent damage to the protesters’ hearing. At a previous tree sit, last summer, a sitter was threatened with gang rape. “We were definitely not much of a threat to her,” Joe Hamsher says, referring to the receptionist at the Marfork office. “I mean, we were locked down.” Joe, the first of the three to enter the building that morning, announced “this is a protest,” then immediately sat down and locked himself to a chair. (That’s why they were carrying chains.) Meanwhile, Mike Roselle posted a sign reading “CLOSED: Stop the Blasting!” on the building’s front door. A Marfork employee tore the sign down, while the third protester, Tom Smyth, took pictures. Then Mike and Tom entered the building and sat down near Joe. Tom chained himself to his chair. The three protesters had brought with them a “citizen’s arrest warrant” for Marfork’s president. “Since 1994,” the warrant read, “the Marfork Coal Company has committed over 100 documented permit violations…. Marfork’s continued operations in such close proximity to both Marsh Fork Elementary and the Pettus Head Start Program are not only endangering, but also assaulting the children at these locations with coal dust and other particulates floating off of the mine sites owned by Marfork Coal…. Marfork is continuing its operations on the Bee Tree Strip Mine, placing nearby communities in imminent danger. As President of the Marfork Coal Company, you are responsible for the illegal practices of Marfork. Given the absence of any intervention from West Virginia or federal law enforcement, a citizen’s warrant has been issued for your, Christopher L. Blanchard’s, arrest.” Two hours after the protesters arrived, state police took them away to jail. (When they left, the allegedly terrified receptionist was still at work, showing no ill effects, Joe notes.) The three were charged with trespass, obstruction, and conspiracy– all misdemeanors. Bail was set for Joe and Tom at $5,000 each, for Mike at $7,500. The magistrate specified that the arrestees would have to raise the entire $17,500 in cash, rather than paying a bail bondsman a small fraction of the money, typically 10 percent. (Nice, artsy video from Climate Ground Zero of the occupation.) The Massey “news release” cited above quotes the company’s chairman and CEO, Don Blankenship, saying: “These criminals have been allowed to become more and more aggressive with little repercussion.” In fact, the “repercussion” against anti-MTR protesters in West Virginia has escalated dramatically over the past year. Early on, protesters arrested for trespassing were simply ticketed and released. Now, they’re sent to jail and required to raise large sums of bail money. Even accused murdererers and child molesters are typically permitted to use the services of a bail bondsman, to reduce the amount of cash they have to muster to get out of jail before trial. But West Virginia magistrates are now typically specifying large cash-only In addition to these escalating sanctions in criminal court, Massey lawyers have filed multiple civil suits against protesters arrested on their property. Lawsuits demanding injunctions and so-far unspecified money for “damages” have been filed against dozens of these protesters: one suit in Raleigh County against participants in several protests there early in 2009, one suit in Boone County against participants in an action there, and a separate Raleigh County suit against participants in a tree-sit action last summer. Protesters not actually named in any of these suits have been found in contempt of a court’s injunction for “acting in concert” with one of a suit’s named parties; that ruling is currently being appealed. In addition, Massey recently filed suit in federal court against participants in the January tree-sit protest at Marfork, requesting at least the minimum of $75,000 in damages that would make such a case eligible for federal At a hearing for the federal lawsuit on Tuesday, Feb. 23, Massey attorney Sam Brock said that activists protesting against Massey “just have to live by the same rules as everybody else.” Sitting in the courtroom that day, I remembered Massey’s 2008 settlement with the federal EPA for thousands of permit violations related to the Clean Water Act: Massey agreed to pay $20 million, although given the number and nature of the violations the EPA could properly have assessed $2 billion or more–100 times as much. (Massey’s own estimate of this prior to the settlement was $1.5 to $7 billion.) Furthermore, just a few weeks ago, in January, a coalition of environmental groups announcing their intent to sue Massey cited documentation that the company’s permit violations had become even more frequent since the EPA settlement. Would an even-handed application of “the same rules” allow protesters to commit, say, 99 (or more) civil-disobedience actions with impunity before being arrested for one of them? “While Massey’s lawyers were in court today trying to enjoin anyone anywhere from trespassing on Massey operations,” Vern Haltom, co-director of Coal River Mountain Watch, noted later that day, “Massey was spilling black water [coal waste] from their Martin County, KY, operation. And Pioneer Fuels (NOT a Massey subsidiary) was spilling black water into Clear Fork,” which empties into the Coal River near Marfork’s headquarters, upstream from the town of Whitesville’s public water intake. “Unfortunately,” Vern says, “our regulators don’t escalate the enforcement of Massey’s repeating violations that are endangering the community with the same vigor that prosecutors and Massey attorneys are suppressing the voices of endangered people,” CRMW’s other co-director Judy Bonds, 2003 winner of the Goldman Environmental prize and a lifelong resident of Coal River valley, puts it more bluntly: “I believe the justice system in southern West Virginia is discriminatory in favor of the coal industry. I think keep screaming about it is all we can do.” —————————— Tricia Shapiro has been covering anti-MTR activism as an embedded freelance writer since 2005. Her book Mountain Justice: Homegrown Resistance to Mountaintop Removal, for the Future of Us All will be published by AK Press this fall.Colin WardThe Guardian printed another obituary of Colin Ward earlier this week. A nice tribute to a wonderful man. — Colin Ward obituary Writer, social theorist and anarchist who believed in self-sufficiency, allotments and better town planning. Colin Ward, who has died aged 85, lived with the title of Britain’s most famous anarchist for nearly half a century, bemused by this ambivalent soubriquet. In Anarchy in Action (1973), he set out his belief that an anarchist society was not an end goal. Following Alexander Herzen, the writer and thinker known as the “father of Russian socialism”, Colin saw all distant goals as a form of tyranny and believed that anarchist principles could be discerned in everyday human relations and impulses. Within this perspective, politics was about strengthening co-operative relations and supporting human ingenuity in its myriad vernacular and everyday forms. One of Colin’s favourite metaphors—adopted from a novel by Ignazio Silone—was the image of the seed beneath the snow, which suggested to him that anarchist principles were ever alive and prescient. He thought it was the work of politics to nurture such beliefs and to support them through small-scale initiatives, avoiding the temptation to replicate or scale them up to a level beyond which professional bureaucracies take over. He was fond of contrasting the vocabulary of self-organisation, with its friendly societies, mutuals, co-operatives and voluntary associations, with the nomenclature of the state and private sectors with their directorates, corporations, boards and executives. Colin was the author of almost 30 books on subjects that ranged from allotments, architecture, self-build housing, children’s play, education, postcards and town planning to water distribution and anarchist theory, many of which gained him an international following. His book The Child in the City (1978), frequently reprinted, influenced planners and teachers from Liverpool to Latin America. Arcadia for All: The Legacy of a Makeshift Landscape (1984), written with planner Dennis Hardy, opened up a whole new field in 20th-century social history around self-organised communities and the Lockeian belief in the democratic importance of experiments in living. Another book, The Allotment: Its Landscape and Culture (1988), with David Crouch, held the line for this uniquely friendly form of local self-sufficiency during the barren years of centralised land use planning, making Colin a hero of today’s environmental activists, including the young George Monbiot. Colin was born in Wanstead, Essex, the son of a teacher and a shorthand typist. Both were Labour supporters and Colin remembered hearing the anarchist Emma Goldman speak at a 1938 London May Day rally, and attending the 1939 Festival of Music for the People, in aid of the International Brigades, featuring Benjamin Britten’s Ballad of Heroes. On leaving school aged 15, Colin went to work for the architect Sidney Caulfield. Conscripted in 1942, Colin was posted to Glasgow, where he fell in with the city’s lively anarchist movement. He was then transferred to Orkney and Shetland for the remainder of the war. In 1945, as a subscriber to the radical newspaper War Commentary, Colin was summoned as a witness at the Old Bailey trial of the paper’s editors, John Hewetson, Vernon Richards and Philip Sansom, who were accused of promoting disaffection and received prison sentences. Throughout the 1940s and 50s, while working for the architect Peter Shepheard, he wrote and edited articles for Freedom, the anarchist newspaper, where he developed the abiding themes of his life. He subsequently edited the journal Anarchy from 1961 to 1970. In his editorial and political work, he befriended and cultivated younger activists and writers such as Hugh Brody, Stan Cohen, Ray Gosling, Tony Gould, Richard Mabey, Carole Pateman, Kate Soper, Laurie Taylor and Jock Young. Many of these went on to write for the newly established weekly, New Society, an intellectual home that came ready-furnished as a result of Colin’s widening influence at this time. In 1966, he had married Harriet Unwin, a young widow with two children, Tom and Barney, and in 1968 they had a son together, Ben. Colin also acted as a guardian to two other boys, Alan and Doug Balfour, after the Balfours’ mother died. This companionable, happy marriage of kindred spirits was longlasting. Colin and Harriet subsequently established a network of international friendships, first from their home in London and, latterly, in Suffolk—Colin spent a small fortune on photocopying in the local public library—as well as by telephone. While working as an education officer for the Town and Country Planning Association between 1971 and 1979 he wrote Streetwork: The Exploding School (1973), with Tony Fyson, and established the Bulletin for Environmental Education. The point of both initiatives was to help get children out of school and into their communities, to talk to local people, and explore their neighbourhood, its amenities and utilities, and understand how buildings, streets, landscapes and social life interact. This led to Colin’s focus on the unique world of childhood which, in the end, may prove to have been his—and anarchism’s—most enduring contribution to social policy. There were many other collaborations. With the novelist Ruth Rendell, Colin wrote a Counterblast pamphlet in 1989, Undermining the Central Line, in favour of a revitalised local democracy; in 1998 he produced Sociable Cities: Legacy of Ebenezer Howard, with the urbanist Peter Hall, to commemorate the centenary of Howard’s seminal work on garden cities. In 2003, the film-maker Mike Dibb recorded Colin in conversation with the writer Roger Deakin, at the Wards’ home in Debenham. This is available on DVD. To see Deakin (who died in 2006) and Colin together, talking freely of the delights of the natural world and the varied people in it, is to be reminded of a politics of life and possibility that stubbornly refuses to go away. Colin is survived by Harriet, his son, stepchildren and wards. • Colin Ward, author and social theorist, born 14 August 1924; died 11 February 2010 Another AK Special!Hello one and all, In our infinite wisdom, we here at AK have decided to offer a rotating special on different AK Press published titles each month. It is what I like to think of as the “You should have bought this when it came out, but you put it off, and now you are being rewarded because it is finally on sale” Sale, and other people think of as “A Sale on AK Backlist.” Whose is more appealing? (This is a rhetorical question so please don’t tell me what I don’t want to hear.) Each month we’ll be offering a selection of titles at 50% off the regular list price. (Yes, stores, for you too!). We’ve announced these titles on sale in a couple of emails, but I just realized that, though you should be, some of you may not be signed up for those. There’s still a week for the discount! February’s little beauties are, in alphabetical order (to avoid the appearance of favouritism): A New World in Our Hearts: 8 Years of Writings from the Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation, edited by Roy San Filippo This book keeps alive the many key political contributions Love and Rage made to debates surrounding anarchism and organization, race, white supremacy, and the national question, as well as documenting the rise and fall of an important political movement. Now just $6! Controlled Flight into Terrain: Stealworks Anthology 3.0, by John Yates John is a San Francisco Bay Area independent designer, whose work has appeared for years within the underground music and political scenes. Through such work as his “Democracy We Deliver,” “Officer Friendly?” and Mom, We’re Home!”, Yates has gained a somewhat precarious notoriety within both the counter and over-the-counter cultures. Speaking of which, we’ll have some new shirts of his by mid-March! Now just $5.50! May as well get 2! For Workers’ Power: The Selected Writings of Maurice Brinton, by Maurice Brinton (Christopher Pallis) The most prolific contributor to the British Solidarity Group (1961¬1992), Maurice Brinton sought to inspire a mass movement based on libertarian socialist politics. Attempting to blow away the bad air of the “Old” and “New” Left alike, Brinton used the past as a guide to his visionary writings. Highly recommended!! Now just $11! Granny Made Me an Anarchist: General Franco, the Angry Brigade, and Me, by Stuart Christie Oh, what can we say about this! Love this book. Stuart Christie became Britain’s most famous anarchist in 1964 when he was arrested for smuggling explosives in a plot to assassinate Spanish dictator, Francisco Franco. Charged with “Banditry and Terrorism,” he served three years of his twenty-year sentence before international pressure (from Bertrand Russell and Jean Paul Sartre among many others), as well as a note from his Mum, secured his release. Five years later, he stood trial in London for alleged involvement with Britain’s Angry Brigade. Now just $10! Subversion of Politics: European Autonomous Social Movements and the Decolonization of Everyday Life, by George Katsiaficas The Subversion of Politics fills in the gaps between the momentous events of 1968 and 1999. Katsiaficas presents the protagonists of social revolt—Italian feminists, squatters, disarmament and anti-nuclear activists, punk rockers, and anti-fascist street fighters—in a compelling and sympathetic light.. At the same time, he offers a work of great critical depth, drawing from these political practices a new theory of freedom and autonomy that redefines the parameters of the political itself. Now just $9! Suffled How it Gush: A North American Anarchist in the Balkans, by Shon Meckfessel Shon Meckfessel, AKA “the fourth hiker,” appropriates the peculiar slogan of an Albanian mineral water company as the title for this uniquely intellectual book. Equal parts journalism, history, and personal memoir, Suffled How it Gush records Shon’s travels throughout ex-Yugoslavia and the greater Balkans region, chronicling the beauty of an area too renowned for its ugliness. Now just $8.50! What is Anarchism, by Alexander Berkman You thought it was just going to be books by young whippersnappers, didn’t you? A reprint of perhaps the first and best exposition of anarchism by one of its greatest propagandists (by both word and deed) and thinkers. In a clear conversation with the reader, Berkman discusses society as it now exists, the need for anarchism, and the methods for bringing it about. Necessary! Now just $7.00! Academic Repression release parties plannedThe editors of AK’s brand-new Academic Repression: Reflections from the Academic Industrial Complex have started promoting this important new critique of modern-era McCarthyism on our university campuses, and are calling for all folks concerned with the preservation of the freedom to speak and think as an autonomous individual in higher education to organize events around the book. If you’re on the East Coast, you might want to check out one of these two events organized by editor Anthony Nocella. Or, if you’re interested in organizing your own release events for Academic Repression, get in contact with the editors here: http://www.myspace.com/academicrepression. You’ll find a full list of contributors to the book on the MySpace page, plus info on other events coming up in the next few weeks! Be sure to check it out! “This courageous and chilling book reminds us that the Academy is always a context for intellectual exchange and political struggle. Don’t miss it!” –Cornel West, Princeton University *** Book Release Party: Academic Repression: Reflections on the Academic Industrial Complex Thursday, March 4, 7-8:30 p.m. Grewen Auditorium, Grewen Hall, Le Moyne College, NY Contributors to the book who will speak at the event include: Anthony J. Nocella, II of Le Moyne College, Peter Castro, Ph.D., Micere Githae Mugo, Ph.D., Mark Rupert, Ph.D., and Liat Ben-Moshe of Syracuse University, and Caroline Kaltefleiter, Ph.D. of the State University of New York at Cortland. Following the event, copies of the book will be available for purchase and signing. This event is free and open to the public. It is sponsored by the Center for Urban and Regional Applied Research, Department of Anthropology, Criminology and Sociology, and the Office of Service Learning. For more information, call (315)657-2911. ——————————————————— Saturday March 6th 7:00PM Since 9/11, the Bush administration has pressured universities to hand over faculty, staff, and student work to be flagged for potential threats. Numerous books have addressed the question of academic freedom over the years; this collection asks whether the concept of academic freedom still exists at all in the American university system. It addresses not only overt attacks on critical thinking, but also–following trends unfolding for decades–engages the broad socioeconomic determinants of academic culture. This edited anthology brings together prominent academics writing hard-hitting essays on free speech, culture wars, and academic freedom in a post-9/11 era. It’s a powerful response to attacks on critical thinking in our universities by well-respected scholars and academics, including Joy James, Henry Giroux, Michael Parenti, Howard Zinn, Robert Jensen, Ward Churchill, and many more.. “Essential reading for anyone concerned about the stifling of dissent and free expression in academia and beyond.”–Uri Gordon, author of Anarchy Alive! Anthony J. Nocella, II, author, activist, education, is a professor in Sociology and Criminology at SUNY Cortland and Le Moyne College. He also is a life skills teacher at Hillbrook Youth Detention Center promoting nonviolence and group-building skills. He is a co-founder of more than fifteen active social/political organizations, four active scholarly journals, is board member of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), has published more than twenty-five scholarly articles and is working on his eleventh book, Global Industrial Complex (Lexington Books, coming soon). His other books include A Peacemaker’s Guide for Building Peace with a Revolutionary Group (PARC, 2004), co-editor of Terrorists or Freedom Fighters? Reflections on the Liberation of Animals (Lantern Books, 2004); and co-editor of Igniting a Revolution: Voices in Defense of the Earth (AK Press, 2006). www.anthonynocella.org You Heard It Here First! A brand-new season of AK Press Books!In the world of publishing, it’s sometimes kind of staggering to realize how far in advance we have to announce a new season of books. The book trade generally works 8 - 12 months in advance … which frequently requires a lot of creative thinking about how a list of books that’s going to be ready for printing might come together, and, frequently, a really big leap of faith, and a lot of crossed fingers, that a manuscript that is close to being finished will actually be finished on time. As you might have noticed on one or two occasions, we’re sometimes overly optimistic on that front! Nonetheless! The collective agreed on an awesome list of books for the Fall 2010 season (books to be released between September 2010 & March 2011), and over the course of the past couple of weeks, Zach and Charles and I have been driving ourselves crazy pulling together covers, page counts, prices, release dates, and advance descriptions. And now you get to see it first! Even Amazon doesn’t have this info yet … don’t you feel special? Seriously, some great books in here. We’re excited about the Fall season - and the rest of the Spring 2010 season! - so read on below, and be sure to keep an eye out for these titles as they become available throughout the year! The AK Press Fall 2010 Season Mountain Justice: Homegrown Resistance to Mountaintop Removal, for the Future of Us All, by Tricia Shapiro Mountain Justice tells a terrific set of firsthand stories about living with MTR and offers on-the-scene—and behind-the-scenes—reporting of what people are doing to try to stop it. Shapiro lets the victims of mountaintop removal and their allies tell their own stories, allowing moments of quiet dignity and righteous indignation to share center-stage. Includes coverage of the sharp escalation of anti-MTR civil disobedience, with more than 130 arrests in West Virginia alone, during the first year of the Obama administration. “Shapiro is one of the few writers on this subject that actually understands the strategy, the tactics, and the internal politics of a dynamic and growing movement. This is environmental journalism at it best.”—Mike Roselle, Earth First! founder and author of Tree Spiker Tricia Shapiro has been closely following and writing about efforts to end large-scale strip mining for coal in Appalachia since 2004. She now lives on a remote mountain homestead in western North Carolina, near the Tennessee border. September 2010 | 360 pages | $17.95 *** “Yellow Kid” Weil: The Autobiography of America’s Master Swindler, by J.R. Weil Bilked bankers, grifted gamblers, and swindled spinsters. Welcome to the world of confidence men. You’ll marvel at the elaborate schemes developed by The Yellow Kid and cry for the marks who lost it all to his ingenuity—$8,000,000 by some estimations. Fixed horse races, bad real-estate deals, even a money-making machine, were all tools of the trade for the Kid and his associates: The Swede, The Butterine Kid, The Harmony Kid, Fats Levine, and others. The Sting (1973), starring Paul Newman and based largely on the story of the Yellow Kid is entertaining, but no match for the real deal. The triumphant return of the much-beloved Nabat Series! February 2011 | 352 pages | $17.95 *** Flash: A Novel, By Jim Miller A chance encounter with a faded Wanted! poster in a San Diego library sends journalist Jack Wilson on a wild adventure through southern California’s radical past. As Jack searches for the truth about I.W.W. outlaw Bobby Flash, he uncovers a hidden history of real-life revolutionaries … and learns a powerful lesson about the importance of family in the process. The very first title in AK’s brand-new fiction line! Keep your eyes peeled for more great fiction titles coming your way in future seasons. Jim Miller is a labor educator and activist in San Diego, California. November 2010 | pages | $13.95 *** Marshall Law: The Life and Times of a Baltimore Black Panther, by Marshall “Eddie” Conway Forty years later, still incarcerated for a crime he didn’t commit, Eddie Conway continues to resist. Marshall Law is a poignant story of strength and struggle. From his childhood in inner-city Baltimore to his political awakening in the military, from the rise of the Black Panther Party to the sham trial, the realities of prison life, escape attempts, labor organizing on the inside, and beyond, Eddie’s autobiography is a reminder that we all share the responsibility of resistance, no matter where we are. Marshall “Eddie” Conway is the former Minister of Defense of the Baltimore Black Panther Party. In 1969, he uncovered evidence of the FBI’s infiltration of the Panthers as a part of the COINTELPro initiative, and found himself locked away, just one year later, convicted of a murder he did not commit. Currently in his fortieth year of incarceration in a State of Maryland correctional facility, he has played a leading role in a variety of prisoner support initiatives, including the formation of the Maryland chapter of the United Prisoner’s Labor Union, and the ACLU’s Prison Committee to Correct Prison Conditions. February 2011 | 232 pages | $15.95 *** We Are an Image from the Future: The Greek Revolt of December 2008, edited by A.G. Schwarz, Tasos Sagris, and Void Network On December 6, 2008 the city of Athens exploded as people took to the streets to demonstrate their rage over the murder of fifteen-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos, bringing business as usual to a screeching, burning halt for three breathtaking weeks. This is the first book to delve into the Greek December and its aftermath, in the words of those who witnessed and participated in it. Interviews and personal reflections run alongside the communiqués and texts that circulated through the networks of revolt, shedding much-needed light—and dispelling destructive myths—on the real fabric of the Greek left that made December possible. Note that this book will actually be available in just a few short weeks … and is available for preorder on our website! But, it’s officially a part of our Fall 2010 season. March 2010 | 360 pages | $17.00
*** Fear of an Animal Planet: The Secret History of Animal Resistance, by Jason Hribal “Until the lion has his historian,” the African proverb goes, “the hunter will always be a hero.” Jason Hribal fulfills this promise and turns the world upside down. Taking the reader deep inside the circus, the zoo, and similar operations, it provides a window into hidden struggle and resistance that occurs daily. Chimpanzees escape their cages. Elephants attack their trainers. Orcas demand more food. Tigers refuse to perform. Indeed, these animals are rebelling with intent and purpose. They become true heroes and our understanding of them will never be the same. The latest title in the ever-popular CounterPunch Series at AK Press. Jason Hribal is an independent historian and adult educator. December 2010 | 280 pages | $15.95 *** Uses of a Whirlwind: Movement, Movements, and Contemporary Radical Currents in the United States, edited by Team Colors Collective From housing struggles to food politics, from poor people’s movements to radical art projects, from the Right to the City Alliance to the U.S. Social Forum, Uses of a Whirlwind explores the current composition of social movements in the United States. With equal emphasis placed on movement history and movement-building, Whirlwind is a call to action for a new decade of organizing. Contributors include Robin DG Kelley, Grace Lee Boggs, Michael Hardt, Chris Carlsson, Take Back the Land, Domestic Workers United, the Starbucks Workers Union, Brian Tokar, Dorothy Kidd, and Ashanti Alston. The book launches this June at the US Social Forum in Detroit! Team Colors is a geographically-dispersed militant research collective. The present collection is edited by Craig Hughes, Kevin van Meter, and Stevie Peace. June 2010 | 352 pages | $19.95
*** Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures , 1960s to Now, edited by Dara Greenwald and Josh MacPhee Drawn from an exhibition at NYC’s Exit Art, Signs of Change is a visual archive of more than 350 posters, prints, photographs, films, songs, and ephemera from over twenty countries. From the rise of the reproducible poster to today’s digital instantaneity, it tackles the themes and representation of international struggles for equality, democracy, and freedom—as well as basic human rights, like food and shelter—and illustrates the incredible aesthetic range of radical movements over the past 50 years. Long-awaited! Signs of Change won’t dissapoint … Dara Greenwald is a doctoral student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Josh MacPhee is the editor of Realizing the Impossible. September 2010 | 178 pages (full-color!) | $28.95 *** Autonomy, Solidarity, Possibility: The Colin Ward Reader, edited by Chris Wilbert and Damian White “Britain’s leading anarchist philosopher.” —Anne Power, London School of Economics Drawing inspiration from the everyday creativity of ordinary people, Colin Ward long championed a unique social and environmental politics premised on the possibilities of democratic self-organization and self management from below. This collection provides a wide-ranging overview of Ward’s earliest journalism, with seminal essays, extracts from his most important books as well as examples of his most recent work. Chris Wilbert is a Lecturer in Geography / Tourism at Anglia Ruskin University. Damian F. White is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Rhode Island School of Design. January 2011 | 375 pages | $21.95 *** Property is Theft!: A Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Reader, edited by Iain McKay “An indispensable source book for anyone interested in Proudhon’s ideas and the origins of the socialist and anarchist movements in nineteenth-century Europe.” —Robert Graham, editor of Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas Published in honor of the 170th anniversary of Proudhon’s first use of the term “anarchist”! Iain McKay is the author of An Anarchist FAQ. December 2010 | 670 pages | $24.95 Your Own James: A Review of You Don’t Play with RevolutionThe erstwhile Indypendent, the organ of the NYC Independent Media Center, recently ran an interview of our (fairly) new release, You Don’t Play with Revolution: The Montreal Lectures of CLR James. You can read it below…and you should also check out the Indypendent’s web site here. They’re produced by a large network of volunteers and they do great work, producing a true alternative to corporate media, and reaching more than 200,000 readers! Check ‘em out. ***** Your Own James: The Montreal Lectures of C.L.R. James You Don’t Play with Revolution: The Montreal Lectures of C.L.R. James Martin Glaberman, a longtime associate of C.L.R. James, once observed that the staggering scope of James’ writing often meant, “Everyone produces his/her own James. People have, over the years, taken from him what they found useful, and imputed to him what they found necessary. James as cultural critic, James as master of the classics, James as expert on cricket, James as historian, James as major figure in the pan-African movement….” A cursory glance at You Don’t Play with Revolution: The Montreal Lectures of C.L.R. James, mostly a collection of talks delivered to a group of West Indian students living in Montreal from 1966 to 1967, shows the breadth of James’ interests (the book is supplemented with interviews with James and letters from, to and about the scholar). Among the topics discussed are Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire as it relates to the Caribbean; the Haitian Revolution, Shakespeare’s King Lear, the making of the Caribbean people, and Lenin’s views on labor unions. James, a Marxist journalist, essayist and social theorist, is perhaps best known for his 1938 masterwork on the Haitian Revolution, The Black Jacobins. He made it his life’s work to examine the movement of historical forces from below and the response of those in power to these efforts. Lectures “The Making of the Caribbean People” and “The Haitian Revolution and the Making of the Modern World,” both included in You Don’t Play with Revolution, revisit this theme, which, given the current tragedy in Haiti, is as important as ever. James ties together the ways slaves organized themselves in order to run the West Indian plantations, the amazing defeat of the British army at the hands of the Haitians in 1791, the Haitian revolution and its importance to the French Revolution. He extends the analysis to emphasize the role of the creative resistance of American slaves in inspiring the abolitionist movement. A close study of Black Americans had helped James, who was born in 1901 in Trinidad and Tobago, then a British colony, arrive at some of his most important theoretical breakthroughs, particularly his rejection of the Leninist concept of the vanguard party. In 1938, at the behest of Leon Trotsky and his U.S. lieutenant James P. Cannon, James came to the United States from London largely to help the Socialist Workers Party determine its stance on the “Negro Question.” He came to the conclusion that American Blacks didn’t need to have a Leninist organization imposed on them and soon rejected the entire notion of the revolutionary vanguard. James grapples with Lenin’s writings on labor as well. The book dedicates three chapters to James’ views on “Lenin and the Trade Union Debate in Russia,” which lays out a close reading of Lenin’s public statements on the need for workers’ autonomy. This view directly contradicted that of Trotsky, who argued for more bureaucracy and increased state control over workers’ organizations (and later for the militarization of the working class). It’s impossible to accept Lenin’s proclamations at face value — in practice, Lenin and the Bolsheviks beefed up the power of the Bolshevik party at the expense of the Soviets (workers’ councils) and other workers’ organizations. David Austin, the book’s editor, could have provided a note to clarify James’ apparent Lenin paradox — even though James rejected Lenin’s idea of the vanguard party, he believed that Lenin only used that organizational form out of necessity. Kent Worcester explains in his excellent C.L.R. James: A Political Biography, “A pronounced sympathy for Lenin’s own method and practice did not, it seems, preclude a break with a core proposition of Marxist-Leninist politics.” Many of those James worked with or directly influenced attained some degree, however compromised, of state power — Kwame Nkrumah, Eric Williams and Jomo Kenyatta, the first prime ministers of Ghana, Trinidad and Kenya, respectively, maintained close contact with James throughout their political careers. None of these figures is dealt with uncritically here. Throughout the volume, James’ jabs at Williams, like his digs against Trotsky, Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre and Isaac Deutscher, never come across as petty resentment. Through debating and arguing against these characters, he earned his stripes (and his snipes). The spectrum of these lectures can be a bit daunting, but the book’s breadth makes the collection useful to both novices looking for a starting point and initiates alike. Still, the inclusion of a much-needed index at the expense of some of the correspondence between some of James’ obscure acolytes would have made the book easier to digest. [You can find Rico Cleffi's original review here.] Anarcha-LA Meeting Sunday at 1pm at ECO-VILLAGEHi Anarcha, Please come out for our next meeting on Sunday, February 21st at 1pm. It will be held at the Eco-Village in the back yard: 117 Bimini Place, Los Angeles CA 90004. Here’s a link for directions: http://www.facebook.com/l/db1db;www.laecovillage.org/ Directions.html From 1-2pm we will conduct a study group and from 2-3pm we are planning the Anarcha contingent at the upcoming anti-war march on March 20th. Please come out and participate for the full two-hours of the meeting. Academic Repression — Book ExcerptOh, and did we mention there’s yet another AK Press title on its way from the printer to our warehouse? And I mean that literally: It should be in a truck and nearing Oakland as I type. The book is Academic Repression: Reflections from the Academic-Industrial Complex. According to Cornel West, “This courageous and chilling book reminds us that the Academy is always a context for intellectual exchange and political struggle. Don’t miss it!” Sure, a lot of books have addressed attacks on academic freedom over the years, but this collection asks whether the concept of academic freedom itself still exists at all in the American university system. It addresses not only overt attacks on critical thinking, but also—following trends unfolding for decades—engages the broad socioeconomic determinants of academic culture. It’s full of hard-hitting essays on free speech, culture wars, and academic “freedom” in a post-9/11 era. It’s a powerful response to attacks on critical thinking in our universities by scholars on the front lines of this ongoing battle, many of whom have experienced academic repression first-hand, including Michael Bérubé, Joy James, Henry Giroux, Michael Parenti, Howard Zinn, Robert Jensen, Cary Nelson, Ward Churchill, and many more. And, for the next month, you can get it for 25% off! To whet your appetite, here’s an excerpt: two, actually. One lifted from the beginning of and the other from near the end of the editors’ Introduction. —— Introduction: The Rise of the Academic-Industrial Complex and the Crisis in Free Speech Given that the academy is a microcosm of social life in the US, and this nation—as a hierarchical, exploitative capitalist society—has never been free or democratic in any meaningful way, we should not be surprised to find higher education to be a place of hierarchical domination, bureaucratic control, hostility to radical research and teaching, and anathema to free thinking. Since Socrates and the earliest inceptions of the university system in the teachings of Plato and Aristotle, Western states and universities have attacked critical minds and kicked controversial and subversive figures out of the hallowed halls of learning, betraying the very mission of education and critical thinking that demands freedom of inquiry and speech. Perhaps the largest myths to expose in our culture today still are freedom and democracy—institutional and personal conditions that are not only in steep decline in the current post-9/11 era, but in fact never existed in any significant form. The revolutionary experiment in democracy and equality launched in 1776 never had a chance, taking place as it did amidst the backdrop of the slavery of African people, the repression and impending genocide of the Native American peoples, the disenfranchisement of women, the institutionalization of people with disabilities, and the exploitation of working classes. The Founding Fathers never intended “democracy,” “freedom,” and “equality” to benefit anything but their own elite propertied interests, and history stayed faithful to their design. Despite the subversion of monarchy and aristocracy with the brash and impertinent notion of equality, the concept mainly functioned as an ideological smokescreen to mask a new form of hierarchy based on class domination, coupled with patriarchy, racism, and every other repulsive form of discrimination, subjugation, and violence. Notions such as “freedom” and “equality” hid the fact that the inherently hierarchical and exploitative corporate-state complex of capitalism was a system run by and for capitalists, corporations, and wealthy property owners. Big business and monopoly corporations commandeered the state—the oxymoronic institution of “representative democracy”—to advance and protect their own minority interests, to suppress majority opposition, and to quell dissent by any means necessary…. *** Neoliberalism and Academia It was not paranoia that led John Dewey in the 1940s to warn that a corporatization process had begun whereby universities learned to shape and pattern themselves on a business model driven by the need to compete and turn education into a profit-making enterprise. Nor was it delusional when, in 1961, President Eisenhower warned that the “military industrial complex” posed a threat to the balance of powers and to civil liberties. The fusion of warfare, capitalism, science, and technology cannot take place without knowledge, advanced technologies, and a low-cost labor base, such as one finds ready-made in universities and their graduate student labor pools. Where science, engineering, and technology are crucial to capitalist militarism and militarist capitalism, universities form the third leg in a triadic system of postmodern power. It is a telling fact that the US spends more in the military sector than the rest of the world combined. Consequently, deconstructing fictitious humanist ideals, describing the real goals and imperatives of “higher learning,” and delegitimizing the power systems that actually run universities, many theorists during the last two decades understood that the boundary lines between universities, corporations, and military/warfare/social policing systems were dissolving. They no longer saw three separate, unrelated entities, but rather one gigantic industrial complex. The term “academic-military-industrial complex” is shorthand for the intersection, overlapping, and implosion of universities, the corporate private sector, the Department of Defense and various armed forces services, and the security and regulatory apparatuses of the State—all knotted together in a vast, predatory bureaucratic system developed for social and geopolitical domination.1/2 By the 1990s, certainly, the questioning of scientific epistemology took on a far broader and more consequential term with critical scrutiny of the university institution itself, by charting the transformations of the mission and function of universities in the post-war era. Building on attacks on the politics of knowledge driving university research, a number of radical theorists, such as Stanley Aronowitz, Henry Giroux, Peter McLaren, Sandra Harding, and numerous contributors to this book analyzed how the nobler purposes and missions of universities and institutions of “higher learning” became corrupted and degraded. Hence, a spate of important new critical works emerged deconstructing the mythology of higher education and the academy as an institution. As capitalism changes, so must education, and the rise of science and technology to dominant “productive forces” in the postindustrial phase of capital transforms education increasingly from a focus on humanities to narrow functional knowledge. The noble functions of higher education such as inculcating critical thinking skills, identities as citizens and members of interdependent communities, and the ability to meaningfully participate in and shape a democratic form of government gave way to reconfiguring the university as a corporation, ideological state apparatus, and technical school for training laborers. Universities had become part of the “one dimensional society” (Marcuse), they had the potential to devastatingly criticize and overturn in favor of richly educated, highly cultured, autonomous citizens. Increasingly, the humanities and liberal arts were eclipsed by science, chemistry, mathematics, agriculture, geology, engineering, marketing, business, accounting, advertising, and other fields including sports. The economic rationale to increase university profits and functional purpose of producing individuals trained for science, technology, and business had the ideological bonus of homogenizing thought and stifling critical thinking. And under conditions of economic recession such as began to devastate global markets in 2008, universities have to tighten budgets and reduce or eliminate “superfluous” knowledges. Simultaneously, students increasingly turn toward practical realities of careers and economic survival and forego the “luxury” of studying literature, philosophy, or art, fields that regardless are grossly underfunded as they occupy the bottom rung of budgetary priorities. As the 2008–2009 crisis worsened, plunging much of the globe into recession and depression, worried students fall in line with corporate academic policies that reduce or eliminate “superfluous” humanities requirements in order to peddle degrees in marketable careers. Partly due to economic constraints and partly because of the growing hegemony of technoscience, it is hard to miss the implosion between universities and vocational schools that eliminate liberal arts requirements and do little more than job training and indoctrinating students with capitalist values of competition, individualism, materialism, greed, and so on. Vocational schools such as Phoenix University are themselves corporate behemoths with branches spread throughout the US like fast-food chains. Indeed, on the neoliberal-consumerist model of education, knowledge is nothing but information to be consumed as quickly as possible, a sugary pabulum as injurious to the health of the mind as Whoppers and Big Macs are to the life of the body. In a society organized around work, productivity, and maximal exploitation of labor, no one has time for a satisfying meal let alone a genuine education, and the “slow food” movement ought to be linked to a drive toward a “slow education” that allows students the time and leisure to think and mature as human beings in pursuit of autonomy rather than in the service of capital. As corporations, universities were interested in buying materials, investing in research and projects, inventing and patenting new technologies or advances in science and medicine, and competing on the marketplace. In fact, by the 1980s and 1990s, universities and society as a whole were becoming increasingly corporatized, marketized, and globalized. Acting like capitalists committed to the tyranny of the bottom line, universities began the cut-and-slash tactics that Reagan took to social programs in the 1980s, for a profitable enterprise cannot have excess costs, and labor expenses must be minimized. The dynamic that led to the restructuring of universities along corporate lines stemmed from aggressive neoliberal policies. The laissez-faire spirit of early capitalism was revived as neoliberalism, in order to dismantle welfare states, trade barriers, environmental regulations, and anything that stood in the way of trade. Universities moved in consort with the social, political, economic, and military systems that were changing the nature of the world through an aggressive neo-imperialism policy that was part and parcel of neoliberal attempts to subjugate the entire world to corporate power and market logic, while hopefully reviving a moribund American Empire. Following the dominant corporate model, universities initiated a “de-skilling” of labor, and replaced the skilled labor of faculty with technology.3 Compliant with the needs of businesses and an overworked labor force, and updating higher learning for the age of the Internet, universities began to offer “long-distance learning” such that students could earn a degree at home through correspondence, with “teachers” reduced to functionaries who grade quantitative exams, raising the specter of a future university system that dispenses with teachers altogether in favor of computerized grading machines.4 “Increasingly,” Ollman writes, “university life has been organized on the basis of a complex system of tests, grades, and degrees, so that people know exactly where they fit, what they deserve, what has to be done to rise another notch on the scale, and so on. Discounting—as most educators do—their negative effects on scholarship, critical thinking, and collegiality, these practices have succeeded in instilling a new discipline and respect for hierarchy.”5 As universities implemented the neoliberal model, and economic realities became more pressing, particularly in the global economic crisis of 2008, universities, like automobile industries and other businesses, continued a trend of downsizing that led to replacing tenured and full-time faculty with part-time, adjunct, and contingent instructors viewed contemptuously as an army of cheap surplus labor.6 Increasingly inadequate state funding due to fiscal crises led many to advocate for the privatization of public education institutions, a shift perfectly consistent with the neoliberal trend toward gutting social services and privatizing public institutions. Serving the political-economic-ideological conditions of capitalism in one fell swoop, universities began their attack on the system of tenure in an effort to hire less-expensive, wage- rather than salary-earning part-time instructors with few benefits and even less influence, dropping tenure positions after professors retired, and moving toward renewable three year contract systems, such as those at Florida International University.7 In fact, this is only one of over forty institutions around the country—including Florida Gulf Coast University, Evergreen State College, Bennington, Bradford, Hampshire, and the University of Texas of the Permian Basin—that hire teachers only on annual or multi-year contracts. Downsizing and de-skilling not only saves universities salary costs and makes them more competitive (an economic benefit), it also creates a highly precarious faculty who, without job security, tend to be docile and afraid to speak out (an ideological benefit). Corporate apologists think that the tenure system is a relic from the industrial era that is outmoded in a postindustrial, neoliberal, post-Fordist, “flexible” labor economy. In this world of hyperflux, people typically have numerous careers; it is unreasonable, neoliberals argue, to expect security, stability, and permanence. By this thinking, academia ought to open itself up to this dynamic market and change its institutional patterns before the market changes it. Faculty, however, reject this argument as market fetishism and fatalism, and insist that while post-Fordism may be fine for the automobile industry, it is anathema for education, which demands the kind of system that can protect free speech, the heart of higher education. There is a direct connection between the quality of research, teaching, education, and the university system as a whole and the strength of academic freedom, tenure, and faculty governance. Academic freedom is a win-win for everyone but repressive corporations, controlling bureaucrats, and right-wing zealots. Unfortunately, the fast capitalists are winning over academics who seek job security, and the statistics are alarming. For the last seventy years at least, there has been a clear pattern in the academic race to the bottom. As Roger Bowen notes in his mournful eulogy for the tenure institution, “Since 1940, and most particularly over the past 15 years or so, tenured positions have been on the decline, as more colleges have relied on less expensive part-time and non-tenure-track faculty members—even as those same institutions professed fidelity to the principles of academic freedom. The reason for the change is simple and brutal: To enhance their own economic security as institutions, colleges have enhanced the economic insecurity of professors by hiring more and more contingent faculty members—that is, cheap, part-time laborers who enjoy few prerogatives of the profession while suffering low pay, few (if any) benefits, and flimsy contractual rights.”8 By 2003, 43 percent of all faculty were part time teachers and a massive 65 percent of professors held non-tenure positions.9 Thus, “Today two of every three new faculty members hired across the nation are not on the tenure track, up from about 50 percent in the early 1990s.” The economic and ideological benefits are enormous to the capitalist system, and right-wing culture wars play a crucial part in drowning the embers of critical voices before they spread like a bonfire. Notes 1. David N. Gibbs, “Spying, Secrecy and the University: The CIA is Back on Campus,” April 7, 2003, CounterPunch, http://www.counterpunch.org/gibbs04072003.html. 2. Henry Giroux, The University in Chains (op. cit.). Also see Nicholas Turse, “The Military-Academic Complex,” TomDispatch.com, April 29, 2004, http://www.countercurrents.org/us-turse290404.htm. 3. On the impact of computer technologies and “deskilling” of the labor force, see Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1998). 4. See David F. Noble, Digital Diploma Mills: The Automation of Higher Education (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2001). 5. http://www.nyu.edu/projects/ollman/docs/academic_freedom_content.php. 6. On the decline of the tenure system, see Alan Finder, “Decline of the Tenure Track Raises Concerns,” The New York Times, November 20, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/20/education/20adjunct.html. 7. On the increasing use and abuse of adjunct instructors, see “Breadth of Adjunct Use and Abuse,” Inside Higher Education, December 3, 2008, http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/12/03/adjunct. For statistics on the growth of the contingent workforce, see http://www.aftface.org/storage/face/documents/national_data_sheet.pdf. A critical response is given in Joe Berry’s book, Reclaiming the Ivory Tower: Organizing Adjuncts to Change Higher Education (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2005). For recent alarming statistics, see Audrey Williams June, “Who’s Teaching at American Colleges? Increasingly, Instructors Off the Tenure Track,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 12, 2009, http://chronicle.com/daily/2009/05/17970n.htm. 8. Roger Bowen, “A Faustian Bargain for Academic Freedom,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 3, 2008, Volume 55, Issue 6, A36, http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i06/06a03601.htm. 9. http://www2.nea.org/he/freedom/images/WVCC06cm.ppt#284.26.ContingentFaculty. SDAC Eats Racists.
AmRen found another hotel to host their biennial hatefest. We're gonna shut em down again.
SHUT DOWN THE RACISTS! BOYCOTT THE CAPITOL SKYLINE HOTEL!
IF IT IS NOT CANCELED, THEN ACTIVISTS WILL CONVERGE ON SATURDAY! Youth Harassed by Campus Cops for Passing Out General Assembly Flyers in Modesto
Youth Intimidated by MJC Security
Today while engaged in passing out fliers at Modesto Junior College for the campus' first-ever General Assembly for Students, Faculty, and Staff to talk about the Budget Cuts and the International Day of Action for Education on March 4th, a youth was approached by several security guards (failing to identify themselves as such), who then proceeded to question the youth about their intentions, what the fliers said, etc. The primary guard eventually threatened the student: Ok [name withheld], now I know what you look like, and if I ever see you here again I'm going to arrest you." An observer was told by security that the administration would not allow the general assembly to happen, as it wasn't sanctioned. They then asked one of the security guards: "Well what about you guys? Aren't you facing budget cuts too?" 
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