The Gathering Place Knitters Blog

My friend Anna just sent me a link to this amazing blog from The Gathering Place where women have been gathering to knit. What I love about this blog is that it shows the learning process in action! As a failed knitter, I'm super inspired to try again. The Gathering Place is a great resource in Denver--its a day-shelter for women and their children experiencing homelessness and working to rebuild their lives! Congrats to all the knitters and folks who have put this project together. Keep up the great work!

Bohemian Grove -- A Queer, Rich, Conservative Paradise

As an atheistic queer deemed 100% pagan by the Internet, I am often eager to hear about the creepy cult rituals of power-brokers in our society. Today, I watched a documentary about Bohemian Grove, a place where ruling class men get together for a couple weeks of Dionysian ritual every year. According to the documentary and a number of conspiracy theorists, Bohemian Grove is filled with homosexual debauchery, cross-dressing, gin-drinking, and paganism. The likes of Henry Kissinger, William F. Buckley, Richard Nixon, and the Bush family have been associated with this gathering of Presidents, Oil Tycoons, Foundations, Government officials, and others. Bohemian Grove's icon is an owl--an animal I happen to identify VERY strongly with. What I'm horrified by is that the conspiracy theorists seem to think that paganism and homo-sex are what makes these ruling class turds terrible people. For real? Perhaps owl worship, anal sex, and excessive makeup are the only redeeming aspects of these filthy rich shit-bags who bomb, dump on, and enslave brown people while murdering mother earth and compromising all of our well-being. The most disturbing part of the Bohemian Grove phenomenon is that if the allegations are true, I fear the Right-Wing is having better orgies, pagan rites, and homosex than me! What the fuck! Time to turn this shit around!!!

The Activist Studio

Not sure if you've had a chance to check out Free Speech TV's new, super amazing T.V. Show, The Activist Studio. Hosted by Podslam and Cafe Nuba founder Ashara Ekundayo, The Activist Studio features a variety of Denver-based activists talking about key social issues--everything from criminal justice and health issues in the African American community to immigration, ending colonial legacies, transform columbus day. So far its been super queer, dominated by women and people of color, and has featured incredible intersectional analysis. I hope TV like this continues to kick-ass into the future!

Larry Hales Press Conference -- Victim of Police Violence

Check out Free Speech TV's Online Community to see Larry Hales' 12/4/07 press conference about his assault and arrest at the hands of the Denver Police.

Trash and Burn

Perhaps its the deep-seated sense of failure, the horrific nod towards inevitable collapse, the unmistakable reality of state-sponsored murder and destruction that makes well-intentioned people from the Left treat each other badly, acting cruel in the name of critique. Remember Kronstat? Remember the Bolshevik assault on Ukrainian Anarchists who helped the Reds win against the evils of the White Army? The Left rips itself limb from limb as sectarian forces wrestle for prominence in a misplaced us-verses-them struggle that serves the right. Whatever the reason, working towards respectful critique, celebrations of victories, and joy is the only way to rescue ourselves from the self-destruction, the schizophrenic divisions that allow the ruling class to stay in power.

In the words of Freud, "Man is wolf unto man."

People, please, try to get along!

It's Our Web!

Free Speech TV just put out this video about Internet Consolidation and some hopeful solutions. Check it out and spread it around!

Anarchists Plan Direct Action Against the DNC/RNC

As the country gets invested in the electoral politics and is forced by corporate rule to choose between 2 sell-out parties representing the ruling class, some Anarchists are planning to use this as an opportunity to protest capitalist globalism and demonstrate that another world is possible. Current debates include violence vs. non-violence, appropriate targets, and appropriate actions. I am personally sick of some of these conversations when neither advocates for property destruction nor non-violence are engaging in the consistent long-term strategies of protest that are necessary for real victories. It is not enough to engage a few days a year--we need the streets every day. But not only do we need the streets--we need strategies to help people in great need--we need systems networked together to replace the state and bring power back to the people. How to do it? That's what those of us who care have to figure out.

Unconventional Action Prints Paper

For those anarchists out there looking to get organized around the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, Unconventional Action has just printed their paper outlining Anti-Authoritarian strategy from now till the upcoming elections! Whether you want to plant some trees or vomit on the coattails of the ruling class, Unconventional Action is a great resource and their paper, Unconventional Strategies looks awsome!

Police Assault and Arrest Denver Activist

According to a press release distributed on Colorado Indymedia, Denver Activist Larry Hales was assaulted and arrested by police as they forcibly searched his home. Check out Colorado.indymedia.org for the full story. There is going to be a Press Conference set for Monday, Dec. 3rd 7pm @ Denver Police Headquarters 1331 Cherokee St. Denver, CO 80204 720-913-2000. I have personally seen Larry deliver inspirational critiques of imperialism, colonialism, and capitalism. He deserves support.

Shutting Down Party Conventions Every Day of the Year

As we organize for the protests against the Democratic National Convention and Republican National Convention, its important to remember that a few huge direct actions a year will not create the necessary political shift away from this corporate controlled oligarchy, the two-party, colonial system. Every day we need to be engaging and sustaining direct action responses against grotesque corporate slime, the two-party system. As we discuss how to best shut down the conventions, lets find ways to shut them down in our own mind, in our own community, every time so-called representatives dance with capitalists and neglect communities. Before the conventions, lets escalate a series of direct actions, humorous interventions, radical reveling, and passionate protest that will inspire, educate, and reinvigorate each others sense of possibility, revolutionary desires, hope. The best way we can do this is by forming small affinity groups and creating spectacle at every turn.

Checkout Starhawk's article on Affinity Groups

Lets liberate Democratic Party members from Corporate Oligarchy and ask them to join us in creating a world we want to live in!

Transform Columbus Day: What Really Happened

The folks from Transform Columbus Day have put together a blog allowing poeple to post their own stories about police brutality at the Anti-Columbus Day Protests in Denver. This site has incredible stories about heroic activism and police brutality! Check-it out! What occured at TCD 07 is a prequel to the police violence expected at the protests against the Democratic National Convetion.

Colorado Indymedia and Local Media

I just got back to my house from a Colorado Indymedia meeting. Its inspirational to see people come together to try to create a media alternative to the capitalist media that is wrecking this country. Localized media projects, from community radio and tv stations to newsletters, and zines are such incredible examples of communities coming together in an attempt to prioritize their issues and bring them to the forefront of public discussion and debate. The Left has such hostility towards media projects--we rarely understand their importance because the bulk of media has so little for us. Articulating the importance of media creation in activist projects, community building, antiauthoritarian, antiracist, and anticapitalist work is critical to us forming an empowering, exciting vision of the world.

America - Predator, Child Violator

Last night, in a particularly grizzly turn of an otherwise good conversation, my friend and I began to talk about mainstream America's obsession with childhood abuse memoirs--particularly stories of incest, rape, and domestic violence. She argued that people who read such stories may very well be getting off on them, using them as child-pornography. We then proceeded to discuss the obsession with pedophilia, sex crimes, and rape in the mainstream media and how such reporting keeps the public distracted from naming a greater perpetrator of violence against children--the United States government. While a serial rapist may violate and even kill dozens of victims, the United States government is responsible for the death of millions of children--surely a crime greater than rape. While the news obsesses over Internet Pedophiles, corporations lobby for loser environmental standards that cause birth defects, cancer, lowered birth-rates, and premature death. Rather than assisting the victims of such corporate crimes, the current government argues that while billions can be spent regularly on war, health-care for children is not a priority.

The issue of state violence against children is not limited to the current Republican Party. It is important to remember Madelaine Albright's quote on 60 Minutes about the U.S., Democrat sponsored sanctions on Iraq:

Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it.

--60 Minutes (5/12/96)

The horror of our present political situation is that the crimes of America dwarf the relatively insignificant and personally brutal and devastating crimes of pedophile rapists. We must demand that the media prioritize attacking the perpetrators of global campaigns of violence against children, whether through sweatshops, bombs, sanctions, or environmental destruction, over the relatively less significant, quasi-pornographic reporting of every-day sex offenders.

Human Rights Video Portal: The Hub

Human rights video group, Witness, has just launched their new online video portal where people can document human rights abuses in their own communities and get those images out to the world. The Hub is a powerful place for people to share and discuss human rights violation documentation! Congrats to the good folks at Witness for succeeding in this ambitious project!

Couch Potato Revolution

House Passes Bullshit Version of ENDA

For those following the House attempt to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act that includes both sexual orientation and gender identity, I have some BAD BAD NEWS! The House passed a modified version of the bill that failed to include employment discrimination based on gender identity. This is a huge loss for the queer community and transgendered people in particular. 350 LGBTQ organizations refused to endorse a bill that did not include gender-identity discrimination. To those lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered organizations that refused to split gender identity and sexual orientation, you kick ass. The Democratic House has once again failed the queer community and faked having a civil rights agenda while simultaneously splitting sexual orientation from gender identity. To the single-minded people at the Human Rights Campaign who read this as a victory, shame on you for continuing to ignore the plight of transgendered people. Your lack of opposition to the sexual orientation only version of EDNA aided its passing. This is a loss. Stop celebrating.

Couch Potato Revolution

SWAT Teams Count Votes in Denver

According to the Denver Post, SWAT Teams were brought in at the last minute to count ballots in our local elections because our Elections Commission botched the job again. The city justified this exercise in police supervision of elections by saying that the police had underground background checks. I, for one, am a bit suspicious that the same overgrown thugs who beat and pepper-spray people in the streets practicing their first amendment rights have any business counting votes. Police are a direct threat to Democracy. Having them involved in the electoral process is a further example of America's confusion between Democracy and Police State--particularly in our "Democrat" led city.

Couch Potato Revolution

Beyond Waterboarding

As the Congress wets its pants over Michael Mukasey's ambivalence regarding Waterboarding and torture, I wonder if they are as critical of bombs, bullets, colonialism, and physical assault against Iraqis? I wonder if they think about the sanctions against Iraq, imposed by Clinton's Presidency, that literally starved the Iraqi People killing over 1 million? Do they condemn military maneuvers that attack water treatment plants and destroy the possibility of clean water for Iraqis? Do they consider it torture to dam and horde water to quench the thirst of Americans at the expense of Mexicans, Navajo communities, and others forced to die of thirst? Do they continue to back NAFTA and other free trade policies that have deregulated environmental protection laws and compromised the quality of water in the global South?

If the Democrats want to condemn torture, which of course they should, perhaps they would be well advised to condemn murder, ecological destruction and genocide as well.

Elections, Progressives, Stakes Too Low

Tonight, Election Day, (well, technically last night now...), I went to an election party with a bunch of electorally focused progressives at Tracks, one of Denver's gay clubs. Suspicious I wouldn't fit in as an electoral skeptic, I arrived. The dancing was fun. After a series of speeches on everything from comprehensive immigration reform, saving the rivers, reproductive justice, health care, labor and affirmative action, the dancing started up again and towering above the gesticulating progressives were huge images from corporate news. At first I thought I was watching a T.V. Sheriff-esque video mix. Sadly, I was wrong. It turned out the video images playing on the wall were the evening news. It struck me. All these progressive reforms and nobody was taking on the problems of media consolidation. The limits of contemporary progressive debate are being set by ABC, NBC, CNN, and Fox. Its pathetic. Until Colorado progressives fight for a just, fair media, we will continue to have irrelevant, politically reformist movements couched in shortsighted reforms and long-term continued capitalist exploitation without a media to set more pressing agendas, more long-term goals, more inspirational frames to debate contemporary issues.

How Can We End This War?

9/11 derailed the counter-globalization movement. The morning the planes smashed into the World Trade Center, the Financial Times reported that "the protesters are winning." This referred to the international movement against neoliberal economic policy--that of the Zapatistas, the protesters against the WTO in Seattle, the IMF and World Bank, and the G8 in Genoa. When the anti-war movement began to emerge against the wars in Afghanistan and eventually Iraq, conversations about violence verses non-violence that hardly touched the counter-globalization movement began to sorely disrupt large-scale organizing efforts. Years later, the war continues. The public has grown in its disgust with the war; however, its ferocious opposition has slowly subsided. A violent reaction against the war in Iraq has not shaken the country. Capitalism continues strongly, unabated by mass discontent. The non-violent anti-war activists continue to voice opposition without effect. Militants continue to use violent language and do very little. The police continue their campaigns of violence. The military continues its campaign of violence. The capitalists continue their campaigns of violence and people remain largely quite. Is our silence not a form of violence? Is our refusal to disrupt business as usual not a form of violence? Is our absence in the streets not a form of violence? Are we not complicit in the daily slaughter of Iraqis? How can we remind people that the war continues, that children continue to be murdered? How can we stand by as the United States continues to commit grand acts of murder? How can we gain the strength to march in the streets day after day till the atrocities stop? How can we gain the faith that our actions matter? How can we end this war?

Explosions of Joy and Liberation

Tonight, after a long day of waking up blissfully-crabby from a sleepless night, biking to get a coffee grinder to sustain my habit, pedaling back to my house on the North East Side, going to a Free Stuff Exchange (I'm sure there's a politically astute name for this in obedient anarchist circles), eating a delicious sandwich at City-O-City with my roomies and Jerrilyn, being blissfully dragged to a toy store where I tried on leather hats and got anxious looking at board games, cards, and dice and finally surrendering myself to my home, I had a good conversation with Jerrilyn about politics in which I expressed my extreme disappointment in the hateful and grumpy nature of movements. Furthermore, thinking, as I often do, I was having an original, snowflake idea, I said "I want nothing to do with politics if they are not informed by joy and liberation." Later, as we were sitting in my basement living room futzing with books, I came across one of my favorite Jean Genet quotes, a phrase that pointed me in the direction of "joy and liberation." He said these words referring to his collaboration with the Black Panther Party:

"In terms of the United States, and perhaps on an even larger scale, it is this party, this revolutionary movement that is most capable, when it succeeds, of provoking an explosion of joy and liberation, an explosion already prefigured in some ways by the events of May {of 68) in France." MY PARENTHETICAL

What Genet saw prefigured in Paris, May of 68 and what he hoped the Black Panther Party could create was what progressive politics should be shooting for--the continual struggle towards conditions informed by and allowing explosions of joy and liberation! Whether using anarchist, socialist, progressive, or even liberal and conservative frameworks, we should be moving towards this goal. To satisfy it, people need food, housing, safety, education.

In 2007, in the United States, our land is toxic, our people are starving and without health-care, our social services have been destroyed, inflation skyrockets as wages have stagnated and remain below a living wage. People are in prison, police brutalize communities of color, lynching remains on the table as a means of expressing racist disgust. In short, explosions of joy and liberation are hard to imagine in this dystopia capitalism has born. Rather than despair, we must dream and create the world we want--we must create the conditions for joy and liberation. We must live, critique, fight, and win with torches of joy and liberation illuminating our path.

Fundrace

The Huffington Post has this nasty, handy tool called Fundrace 2008 where you can search who gave how much money to which political candidates. Find out who gives capital to the capitalist candidates! Yuck!

From the Fundrace Website:

Welcome to FundRace 2008.

Want to know if a celebrity is playing both sides of the fence? Whether that new guy you're seeing is actually a Republican or just dresses like one? If your boss maxed out at that fundraiser or got comped? Whether your neighbor's political involvement stops at that hideous lawn sign?

FundRace makes it easy to search by name or address to see which presidential candidates your friends, family, co-workers, and neighbors are contributing to. Or you can see if your favorite celebrity is putting their money where their mouth is.

FundRace gives you the technology to do what politicians and journalists have been doing for years: find out where the money's coming from, see who it's going to, and solve the mystery of why that crazy ex-roommate of yours is now the Ambassador to Turks and Caicos.

Long Live Palestine! Long Live Jewish Resistance

In a conversation with a friend about the Israeli Occupation of Palestine, she said something that shocked me: "It's too bad Hitler didn't do a better job."

My disgust at such antisemitic, fascist sentiment has been sitting with me quite heavily. As a firm believer in ending the occupation of Palestine and as an outspoken critic of the Israeli government, I was mortified to hear a person I viewed as an ally harboring such fascist anti-Semitism. Furthermore, as a queer, anarcho-communist, German-American, I was disgusted to hear anybody wish for the success of Hitler whose campaign of genocide targeted disabled people, communists, queers, gypsies, and others including Jews. As someone who fits into several of these categories and would have been quickly killed in Hitler's regime and as a person with an iota of egalitarianism, I am incredibly disturbed by the reactionary, fascist sentiments lurking behind some people who parade as leftists and liberationists.

Because of this conversation, I think its important to reflect on the anti-Nazi resistance comprised of both Zionist and anti-Zionist Jewish factions that militantly fought the SS. The Palestinian resistance movement, like the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, has been comprised of people of various perspectives--some agreeable, some less so. Commonly united against an oppressive state, the Palestinian Resistance like anti-Nazi Jewish militants, fights united against an oppressor.

Instead of wishing one genocide for another, instead of celebrating fascism and resorting to the most vile forms of political reaction, lets couch our critiques of Israel in terms of Justice and Peace in a liberated Palestine. Lets advocate for the abolition of the Israeli Government and fight for the liberty and rights of Palestinians, Jews, and all others who work to resist fascism whether German, Israeli, or American. Whatever we do, let's not fall into the trap of glorifying fascism, racism, nationalism, and most grotesque, unjustified forms of state-violence.

For information about Orthodox Jews united against Zionism and Israeli violence go here!

Long Live Palestine. Long live the Jewish People! Smash fascism, tyranny, the state, and capital!

Visualized Update

I just got back from the first night of the Visualized Film Festival. Opening night was at the Mercury Cafe. The show went from 7pm-11:30 and included a number of powerful, informative, and engaging documentaries and short works from all over the world. Perhaps my favorite film from the evening was Contraimagen's Oaxaca: El Poder de la Comuna that looked at the 2006 protests in Oaxaca. It's a powerful testimony to the power of people's resistance to an oppressive state, bureaucratic unions, and military/police violence. There are 3 more days of the festival. I hope to see you there!

Friday, November 2, 7pm, Forest Room 5, 2532 15th St.

Protect the Wild Bison 7 min
Running Dry 20 min
Behind the Labels: Garment Workers on U.S. Saipan 45 min

Loud Color 6 min
Rights on the Line-Vigilantes at the U.S. Border 25 min
Argentina: Turning Around 38 min

Visualized Film Festival:

Visualized Film Festival is starting tonight and going through November 4th! Not sure if I'll be there tonight, but will be going some! Hope to see you there.

From colorado indymedia:

Come out this weekend to the 5th Visualized: Messages in Motion Film Festival, November 1-4, 2007.
Our schedule is now online at: www.visualizedfilmfest.org
11/1: OPENING NIGHT! with films, trivia and poetry! 7-11pm, The Mercury Cafe, 2199 California

11/2: 7-11pm, Forest Room 5, 2532 15th St.
11/3: 4-12 midnight, The Mercury Cafe, 2199 California
11/4: 2-6pm, Cafe Europa, 76 South Pennsylvania

The festival is free, but we take donations. The films are from all over the world! Come support the ONLY radical film festival in ALL of Colorado!

It's the End of the World

Check out Submedia's newest It's the End of the World and enjoy the stimulator's critiques of Gore!
GNN has some interesting tidbits on Al Gore as well!

Reviews/Interviews/Commentary

My friend Daniel Tucker from Chicago has just started up Reviews/Interviews/Commentary, a pretty great activist blog where he will be compiling his writings on art/activism/organizing. You should check-it out. He is also intrumental (like the editor or something...) of a Chicago-Based Art/Activism newspaper called Area which does an exemplary job of documenting local art and activist projects. Kudos Daniel!

Happy Halloween: Murder, Torture, and the USA

It strikes me as a bit grotesque that we live in a country that has legalized the death penalty and torturous practices like water-boarding. The top 2 articles on the New York Times website shows the horror-show nature of our country. Happy Halloween.

It shouldn't come as a surprise since the United States has over 2 million incarcerated people, refuses to sign the most basic environmental protocols, and has enormous homeless, ill, and mad populations the state refuses to assist. Our culture of death, torture, neglect is made more horrific by the enormity of homes, big box stores, loud-mouthed t.v. personalities, and cheap glitz. As we enter the election cycle in this colonial state born from the labor of slaves, exploited immigrants, and the poor, lets force candidates to answer for the historical, contemporary, and future violence a capitalist, colonialist, genocidal nation like the USA thrives on.

Rhetoric for the End of the Earth

Last night I had the chance to go out with my friend Cynthia from college. She's in town for a geology conference and is up to some incredible work. She and I had an in-depth conversation about the failures of scientists to convey the science of climate change, toxicity in the soil, water, and air, and other life-threatening byproducts of industrialization. We had a spirited, solutions-oriented debate in which she argued for lobbying and policy change and I entertained notions of industrial collapse. She made a point of ridiculing Gore's naive and simplistic movie, An Inconvenient Truth, and at the same time argued for election of Obama. Fearing the two parties commitment to capitalism, industry, and at-best, green technologies, I have enormous skepticism about the possibility of an electoral/political solution in a capitalist economy. Amongst ideas I floated I included decolonizing the United States and giving power to the people who successfully lived on this land for tens of thousands of years. As we struggle to articulate the grave ecological crisis we find ourselves in and struggle for holistic solutions, we have to determine the best ways of articulating the science, the damage, and the possibility. Two examples I find interesting include Derrick Jensen's Endgame and the most recent movie What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire. Both Jensen's book and the film engage difficult questions with more difficult questions, use heavy rhetorical flourishes, and deal directly with myth and action as well as science. If scientists what to convey the gravity of the situation, they are going to have to collaborate with storytellers, artists, filmmakers, and others who speak in a language that precedes numbers and that engages our deepest instincts and emotions. Until a truly interdisciplinary union of artists and scientists occurs, those studying catastrophe will hoard information and prevent the rest of the people from being able to act.

Polyamory and the Quest for Right on Modes of Lovin'

After a delicious pizza and a couple mugs of beer with my friend Mercy, I have arrived back at my nest and wanted to throw up a couple resources on polyamory! I love the idea of loving many people in a non-competitive and non-eternally binding way. What a treat! We can live to love so we can love to live (and at the same time kick the piss out of the capitalist bores, the racist pricks, the goober-sucking patriarchs, and those aggravating average joes who suck the pleasure out of the world without saying thank you.) But for once, we're not talking about them. We're talking about us: those queer-as-fruit, gender fuckers, gender suckers striving for new forms of pleasure!

Resource 1: The Ethical Slut! What a book. What candor. What pleasure. Perfect for queers and squares alike! A great tome on generosity, boundaries, and other traits of honorable folk.

Resource 2: Redefining Our Relationships: Guidelines for Responsible Open Relationships! Another great one! It briefly outlines an ethic of love and openess that can warm the heart of the most cold-hearted, emotionally shut off, drab, dull dog. (no offense to the canine folk)

Resource 3: Against Love! For those of you so sick of love that monogamy, much less, polyamory sounds like a drag, this book will warm your soul. It's a nasty diatribe against the political perversions of contractual love! Check it out!

Couch Potato Revolution

2 Great Tigers: Radical Nostalgia

I wanted to do a quick hat-tip (well, I don't wear hats but who gives a damn) to two of the great tigers: Paper Tiger Television and La Tigre!

Paper Tiger Television is celebrating some big-time anniversary (25 ass-kicking years)! They've just put out the documentary Paper Tiger Reads Paper Tiger -- a critical and celebratory documentary about all the incredible projects they've done from mainstream media critiques to slams on military recruiting! Congratulations to these tigerrrrrific media pioneers!

Le Tigre, who is apparently going out of style, is another quality tiger, a post-riotgrrrl, queer-ass, punk-electronica band with fabulous songs about everyone from the likes of Marlon Riggs to that finicky freak who put the bang in the chitty chitty bang bang. Check em out and find a revolutionary beat to dance to--even if they're already old hat!

What this movement needs are a few more tigers and a few less bores! Get dancin' and romancin'! Start making media. And for a quick change, growl like a beast!

couch potato revolution

Jews Against the Israeli Occupation

Check out Jewish Conscience, a blog by and about Jewish people against the Israeli Occupation of Palestine. Great photos, video, and text here!

Christy Road's Badass Graphics

I have two posters on my wall at work and I started noticing that when folks came in they would often comment on how awsome they are. Finally someone came in and mentioned that they were made by Christy Road. Not too long after, when I was at INCITE'S ENDING COLONIAL LEGACY CONFERENCE here in Colorado, I was handed a few totally kickass posters including a "Stop Police Brutality Against Women of Color and Trans People of Color" that were stunning. Turns out Christy Road did those too. Her work is amazing and if you haven't checked her stuff out, you should get to her website NOW!

While searching for radical prints, you should also check-out the butt-kicken' website Just Seeds where artists like Swoon, Nicolas Lampert, Josh MacPhee, Meredith Stern, and Kristine Virsis have put their incredible radical prints for sale.

Deep Dish Rocks!

So when you work in TV Programming, you get really excited when you have repeat producers doing amazing stuff. Deep Dish T.V., the first public access TV Satellite Network is a great example. They have been covering events, promoting radical programs, producing great documentaries, and working hard to cover the most pressing issues the U.S. is facing around the world. Their Shocking and Awful series, coverage of the World Tribunal on Iraq, and their short film Fallujah all exemplify the best of activist media! Rock On Deep Dish! Deep Dish's founder DeeDee Halleck is shown in the picture on the side. She's been an incredibly active media activist for decades and is an incredible supporter and critic of independent media at large. You can check out her webblog here.

Back from NAMAC

I just got back from the National Alliance For Media Arts and Culture conference in Austin, Texas. It was a super fun time. My sweet sweet friends from the Video Databank, one of the countries best distributors of video art, let me sleep on their floor! More importantly, they won a big award and Abina Manning, their leader/programmer/not sure what her title is delivered a great speech honoring video artists--she's such a badass and a believer in the power and importance of artists who go to difficult places (sometimes REALLY difficult) in their work. The conference had many panels--some fun ones, some less fun. Most importantly, there were incredible networking opportunities and chances to meet up and learn about projects all over the country from tiny cable access channels, to big Youth Media Organizations, to video artists, web geeks, policy freaks, and other badasses! I did a panel on Popular Cultural Aesthetics and Activist Media with Franklin Lopez of Submedia, Anne Elizabeth Moore of Punk Planet, and finally Cynthia Carrion of Manhattan Neighborhood Networks. The panel went well. The panelists were all badasses. Kudos to them all.

More to come later...

Zack Stiglicz

How do we learn to say good-bye to our heroes, our mentors, those who taught us most profoundly to be human, to live. Zack Stiglicz was a teacher and a mentor, one of the only people worthy of the title of artist I have ever met. He saved my life with his words, with his vigor, with his compassion and sensitivity at least once and every moment of my life I feel infused by the passion with which he lived. His death hurts. I miss him. I hope my life, my work, can follow in his legacy. Rest in peace Zack. Your life and work encourages us all in the struggle.

Dead Internet

So I have to apologize for the lack of posts over the last month or two. My neighbor with open web access moved and I've been screwed. The last couple of months have been quite intense. Denver has seen Transform Columbus Day, my friend, colleague and mentor Zack Stiglicz died, INCITE's Ending Colonial Legacies Conference took place in Denver, Anarchists and others have been organizing for DNC and RNC protests, and the grind of daily media activism has continued at Free Speech TV.

Ending Colonial Legacies: INCITE! Southwest Regional Conference

Folks in the Rocky Mountain Region should know about INCITE!'s conference coming up in October!

From INCITE!'s website:

INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, is a national activist organization of radical feminists of color advancing a movement to end violence against women of color and their communities through direct action, critical dialogue and grassroots organizing. Ending Colonial Legacies (ECL) is a Colorado based, women of color led initiative that has worked toward dismantling the legacy of colonialism & eventual abolishment of Columbus Day through non-violent resistance and political education.

Negri on the function of Multitudes

A brief quote from Antonio Negri's article in Constituent Imagination:

Today, democracy must be extedended into the relations between multitudes, and must construct new social relations and a new idea of rights in this way. We are not referring here to the abolition of rights, but rather to new juridical forms capable of establishing norms guided by the three principles described above (networks, the common, and freedom) There must be sanctions against those who wish to re-establish command and introduce criteria of property over or against the network, blocking its access or controlling its nodes. At the same time, there must also be sanctions against those who create technological and/or judicial tools to obstruct the circulation of knowledge and the great 'commonality' that can feed production and life.

Ontario Coalition Against Poverty

For you bad-ass direct action anti-poverty, social justice advocates--if you haven't gone to the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty's website to find out how our friends to the North do anti-poverty work, you are missing out big time!!! Go now!

If you happen to be in Ontario on September 26th, join OCAP in the streets! They do shit right!

SmartMeme

Yesterday I was talking to my friend Jessie who reminded me of the group SMARTMEME who helps activists and organizers learn to frame their struggles as compelling stories for the corporate media. If you are interested in this sort of thing, you should check them out!

Denver Zine Library

I spent the afternoon at a benefit BBQ for the Denver Zine Library, home of tons of great zines! Lots of fun to be had. For those who couldn't make it to the BBQ, you should still consider donating to this incredible, radical library project!!!

If you want, you can donate from here!

Dolores Huerta Comes to Denver

Exciting News! El Centro Humanitario is having its reopening celebration tomorrow night and low-wage labor activist Dolores Huerta will be speaking! If you're in Denver, come out!!!

Colorlines on Los Angeles Police Gentrifying Skid Row

Jessica Hoffmann's article in Colorlines called LAPD GENTRIFIES SKID ROW does a great job demonstrating how broken windows policing strategies, in LA called "Safer Cities Initiative," are working to criminalize poverty, push poor people away from social services, and wage campaigns of violence against black people and other people of color. According to Hoffmann, Skid Row now has a nearly constant presence of police on foot, horses, bikes, and cars.

As the state continues to escalate violence in poor neighborhoods by increasing police funding and presence, it simultaneously defunds social services. Taxes are spent waging violence against the poor, homeless, ill, and disenfranchised rather than helping people out. The barbarism of the state works to alienate people from each other and dissolve social unity.

Utopia is For Walking

For those of you getting frustrated with Utopian quests, don't forget Eduardo Galeano's beautiful quote, first shared with me by my friend Bettina at last year's Renewing the Anarchist Tradition and reappearing to me most recently in Constituent Imagination:

Utopia is on the horizon: I walk too steps, it takes two steps back. I walk ten steps and it is ten steps further away. What is utopia for? It is for this, for walking.

The strange thing about this quote is that it often floats around without an original source. It gets passed on like Emma Goldman's most famous quote, the one she never said:

If I can't dance, I don't want to be in your revolution.

Perhaps the best things people say are the things they never said. Perhaps, Galeano proves this point wrong. Either way, these two quotes work for me.

In the Beginning Was the Scream

The introduction to Constituent Imagination used one of my favorite quotes about revolution and theory from John Holloway. I've included it below.

In the beginning was the scream. When we talk or write, it is all too easy to forget that the beginning was not the word, but the scream. Faced with the destruction of human lives by capitalism, a scream of sadness, a scream of horror, above all a scream of anger, of refusal: NO. The starting point of theoretical reflection is opposition, negativity, struggle.

The role of theory is to elaborate that scream, to express its strength and to contribute to its power, to show how the scream resonates through society to contribute to that resonance.

Resistance as Democracy

Check out Resistance as Democracy, a video about grassroots struggles against global capitalism and for democracy in Post-War El Salvador!