Autonomedia announces that its new

2002 Wall Calendar of Jubilee Saints;

Radical Heroes for the New Millennium

is now available. Click here to see or buy it on-line: 2002 Jubilee Saints.

Here is the "Greeting" from the 2002 Calendar:

Welcome to Autonomedia's new Jubilee Saints Calendar for 2002, rounding out a first full decade of its history! Hundreds of radical cultural and political heroes are celebrated here, and, as in previous years, we want to place our greatest emphasis on the present and the immediate future of the animating ideas that continue to guide this project -- the proper invitation to our new Millennium! But a few words about our recent history may be in order first, to unpack for those just finding us for the first time some of the terms and concepts that informed this project from its inception.

GET THE JUBILEE SPIRIT, THE SPIRIT OF OUR JUBILEE

For our inaugural Saints calendar, starting exactly on "anti-Columbus Day" of 1992, we stole the then-current use of the term "Jubilee" from the United States government's official Christopher Columbus Quincentenary Jubilee Commission, which was charged with the task of planning and co-ordinating nation-wide celebrations of the 500th anniversary of the "Christ-bearing Dove's" first landing in the New World. We shared in the widespread disgust with the official Quincentenary hype, patently designed to celebrate one of Europe's premier imperializing cannibals, but we took some ironic pleasure in the fact that the U. S. government unwittingly settled on that far more convivial tradition: the "Jubilee" celebration.

It's quite likely that the Christian conception of Millennium -- "The End Times" -- evolved out of ancient Hebrew practices of Jubilee. Biblical historians identify Jubilee as an ancient prerogative of kings, a kind of social safety valve that eventually became codified as religious law. The Old Testament books of Leviticus and Isaiah and other sources provide the basic concept. Every fifty years, with the sounding of the sacred ram's horn (the jubel), all slaves were freed, all debts were cancelled, all prisoners released, all taxes were suspended, all fields lay fallow, and all laborers observed festivals and feast days of Zerowork. According to some interpreters, the well-known and historically influential Jesus of Nazareth came to proclaim "the acceptable year of the Lord," or the fulfillment of the tradition of timeless, eternal Jubilee.

HELP THE OPEN REVOLT OF THEIR OWN MACHINE

With credentials like these ("The Bible said it! We believe it! That settles it!"), we rushed in this calendar project to affirm our affinity for a reprieve from the 500-year-long sentence to life-at-hard-labor that the European colonization of the "New World" and the ensuing devastations of the rest of the world has represented. It is increasingly clear -- as our own "Third Millennium" advances -- that the Planetary Work Machine will not rule forever! In fact, so sympathetic is this idea that the very machinery of capitalist rule is itself rebelling! The Y2K Millennium Bug and the DotCom Meltdown were very expensive foreplay, and last year we were treated to a lottery-odds powerball of electoral stillbirth: presidential selection by judicial coup, coup de des!. (See, it can happen here! How clarifying!) But no matter. Things have turned to high-mimetic synchronicity... has it come this time as tragedy, or as farce? Too soon to tell, perhaps, but let us help the story to its proper climax.

GROW YOUR OWN AUTONOMOUS ZONE

In the cracks and on the margins of this work-diseased world, Autonomous Zones flourish like never before. We wageless and waged-slaves worldwide, brothers and sisters together, are in open and jubilant revolt! So sound the ram's horn! It's time we call for a real celebration of another New World's discovery, and since we have missed proper celebrations for a full five hundred years, we are proclaiming a Grand Jubilee -- of ten years' duration, or maybe forever! Smash all the time-clocks! End all soul-death in the social factory! Steal back your own and every life from the forces of immiseration! Hit that delete key! Throw that off switch! Get lazy and forgetful! Get out now, and take all your loved-ones with you!

HELP SUBSTRUCT THE PLANETARY WORK MACHINE

Of course, we can't be so bold as to pretend that we have worked out all of the mundane details of this new world of permanent celebration, particularly in a reality which appears to have lost even its imaginative alternatives to the control mechanisms of the Planetary Work Machine. Certainly there will be people all over the world quite unable to hear and heed the trumpet of Jubilee, unfortunates so caught up by the machinery of work and war that they mistake the ticking of the time-clock for the beating of their own hearts. They might continue the toil of the wage-slave, oblivious to the theft of everyday life and the alienation perpetrated upon them. Much of the work they might continue to do is quite useless -- often even harmful, socially and ecologically. Perhaps they might be subtly steered toward more suitable uses of their machines? As for the rest of us, so as not to further contribute to their exploitation, a certain self-reliance is called for. Who knows, in a more convivial and harmonious social environment, many of the activities we think of as hard labor might become "attractive labor," a kind of playful celebration for those inclined toward them. Who has more energy than the child at play? What is "work" itself if not a communal relation strangely gone bad? In any event, the goal of full and egalitarian Zerowork is what we call for -- and certainly not the "trickle-down" variety of aspiring well-connected first-world yuppies on the make.

SHAPE YOUR OWN JUBILATIONS, SHARE THEM ALL

To assist us in our religious jubilations, we have produced this calendar of Festivals ("Everyday a High Holiday!") and Saints. Again this year, many of our new Saints come from calendar readers, and we invite you once more to nominate your own candidates for next year. Ideally, every year could bring us a full new saintly pantheon. But we still suffer from our own myopia and ethnocentrism -- the ignorant afflictions of the very diseases we oppose -- so we do need your help! (The last page of this calendar is our nominating form.) Meanwhile, if you are less than completely enthused with our choice for some day -- we take a decidedly lax and latitudinarian attitude toward the sanctification process -- go ahead and paste in your own Saint.

BOOK A STOP FOR THE AUTONOMADIC BOOKMOBILE

This year, once more, our full list of Autonomedia books is included in this calendar, with new and forthcoming.titles listed below and our older titles in two pages near the end. Many of these titles expand and amplify the founding ideas represented here. Please send for our new Autonomedia catalogue! Keep an eye out for our (still-forthcoming) Saints trading cards. Watch for our companion Sheroes and Womyn Warriors Calendar. Schedule a visit to the new Autonomadic Bookmobile, a roadshow gypsy wagon of subversive media that travels with one of the finest media ever -- a circus! (The Bookmobile itinerary may be found at www.bindlestiff.org). We particularly seek connections to radical student groups on campuses everywhere to build our network of visits and performances.

COME VISIT US AT WWW. AUTONOMEDIA.ORG

For more information on all of these and more related activities, we heartily encourage you to visit our own website -- www.autonomedia.org. There you will find some additional tools for assisting in our grand plan, including an organized linkbank to thousands of other groups and individuals similarly engaged. We also host on this site a full-featured news and information exchange and a global radical events calendar, for which we invite your direct participation. You can also examine our booklist more completely in our on-line bookstore, and place secure orders by credit card for anywhere in the world.

Let us know how we can help share in celebrating and circulating your own utopian-promoting activities for the inaugural few years of this, our own new Millennium! No time like -- none other than -- the Present! Peace be with you!

The Sacred Congregation for Universal Jubilation