Radical media, politics and culture.

Gathering Storms: A Team Colors Statement on the Upcoming 2008 Convention Protests Conor Cash, Craig Hughes, Stevie Peace & Kevin Van Meter | Team Colors Collective

The Legalization of Squatting Punkerslut

"The Worst and Best of Times" Grace Lee Boggs, The Michigan Citizen

My first column with this title appeared in the December 31-January 6, 2007 issue of the Citizen. We were living in the worst of times, I wrote, because of the Iraq war, the planetary emergency, the growing gulf between rich and poor, corporate takeover of the media, and a president who was acting like a king and losing all connection with reality.

ephemera 8.2. ‘Alternatively’ released

ephemera 8.2., ‘Alternatively.’ is now online: http://www.ephemeraweb.org. In its focus on alternatives, the latest ephemera issue addresses one of the main tasks that critique has (to) set for itself: to counter political paralysis of any kind, construed by the right and left, by pointing at the false logic behind it, indeed, by means of the formulation and practice of alternative logics.

50 Ways To Leave Your Love, Or, let's find a completely new art criticism Brian Holmes

Among all the buzz surrounding the upcoming convention protests in the United States has been a palpable silence surrounding the question we will inevitably face: after the delegates are blockaded from the conventions, after the tear gas, the arrests, the media spectacle, trauma and recovery, what will happen next? I am writing this essay with the hope that we begin trying to answer this question now and through discussion over the coming months, rather than wait for the day after expecting that momentum will carry us forward.

"Resistance from the Other South Africa" Neha Nimmagudda

"Leaders are meant to lead and to be led [by those who elected them]" — Lindela Figlan, Abahlali baseMjondolo movement

"Unfinished Business, The Cultural Commodity and its Labour Process" Stefano Harney

Comments

[Reposter's Note: S.H. is a sharp cookie. I first tipped to him through the video interview on the Edu-Factory website. This is a good rundown of the academic infrastructure of "anarchist management" techniques and theory, continuing the conflation of art and management very clearly limned by Negri and others in Radical Philosophy #149 ("Metamorphoses"). Harney teaches management in London, training anarchist bosses -- ;-).]

Me thinks this was co-written with Gerry Hanlon, who does not seem to be listed here although he should be. As for training anarchist managers, I'm not so sure about that. Seems to me more like taking students, many of whom aren't sure what they want to don't believe in anything, and trying to mess with their expectations and understandings of the world. So far from a revolution, although intriguing nonetheless.

"On the Pogroms in South Africa" Richard Pithouse

The industrial and mining towns on the Eastern outskirts of Johannesburg are unlovely places. They’re set on flat windswept plains amidst the dumps of sterile sand left over from old mines. In winter the wind bites, the sky is a very pale blue and it seems to be all coal braziers, starved dogs, faded strip malls, gun shops and rusting factories and mine headgear. All that seems new are the police cars and, round the corner from the Harry Gwala shack settlement, a double story facebrick strip club.