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!