"This Month in NYMAA"

The New York Metro Alliance of Anarchists

A Bimonthly Bulletin, No. 1, June, 2007

Welcome to the first issue of This Month in NYMAA! This bulletin will be
coming out every two months or so, and we hope it will give the wider
anarchist movement a clearer picture of the types of projects that the New
York Metro Alliance of Anarchists is generating.

NYMAA was founded at our first General Assembly on March 4, 2006. We are
comprised of anarchists, antiauthoritarians, horizontalists, and
far-left-leaning individuals committed to changing the world through the
act of social revolution. Our ultimate aim is to eradicate all forms of
authoritarianism, hierarchy, and domination and build a genuinely
liberatory, self-managed, directly democratic society. To that end, our
immediate aim is to bring anarchists together on a common plane of
struggle for the purposes of growing and expanding the movement and
spreading our ideas.Remember, NYMAA is an open organization, and we'd love as many people as
possible to get involved with us and participate in what we're doing. Our
openness is reflected in our General Assemblies (held every three months)
and the below working groups, so if you want to start “doing” anarchism
with us, all you need to do is get in touch!

Global Networks

http://www.nymaa.org/global

http://nymaa.org/?q=contactglobalcomm

Locally, Global Networks helped mobilize anarchists to participate in the
February 19 IWW/460 march in Bushwick, Brooklyn, which expressed
solidarity with illegally fired EZ Supply/Handyfat food warehouse workers.
We have also been taking an active role in the formation of the nascent
North East Anarchist Network by sending delegates to organizing consultas
in Boston and Amherst, Massachusetts and Syracuse, New York. Finally, we
worked on and submitted a proposal for a continental anarchist gathering
at the 2007 US Social Forum in Atlanta, Georgia, to take place in late
June. We are currently in the process of preparing for the trip to Atlanta
by organizing rides and crash space for interested attendees from inside
and outside the NYMAA orbit.

Since we are a group concerned with strengthening ties with anarchists
outside of New York City, the one big item on our wish list is a
dependable car or van that group participants could use for travel. Let us
know if you can help us out with that, or with anything else.

Reading Group (English)

http://www.nymaa.org/reading

http://nymaa.org/?q=readinggroup

The NYMAA Reading Group is open to all those interested in studying
anarchism. While some participants have read widely in anarchist theory
and history, no prior knowledge of anarchism is expected. We have been
meeting monthly since November 2006, and we select readings collectively.
Check out the events listing on the front page of nymaa.org for details of
upcoming discussions. Come discuss, argue, learn, teach, and be inspired!
All are welcome--you don't have to be connected to NYMAA to take part in
the discussions.

For April's meeting, New York's own Marina Sitrin joined us for the
discussion of her book Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in
Argentina, which is a collection of interviews with grassroots activists
who took part in the uprisings in Argentina in 2001. The book presents a
fascinating account of the anarchistic organizing efforts to create
autonomy and democratic control of factories and neighborhoods. May's
discussion focused on Martha Ackelsberg's Free Women of Spain, which
recounts the history of the Mujeres Libres group that organized 20,000
women as part of the anarchist upsurge in Spain in the 1930s. In June,
we'll be reading Georgy Katsiaficas' The Subversion of Politics, which
tells the inspiring story of the Autonomist movements of workers,
squatters, anti-fascists, feminists, and anti-nuke activists that swept
Western Europe during the 1970s and 1980s.

Rock Dove

http://www.rockdovecollective.org/

rockdovecollective [at] riseup [dot] net

Rock Dove has been steadily upgrading our website, and we are close to
launching our public directory, which will allow you to see some of the
services we have available. This has been in the works for a long time,
and we're grateful to Josh, our web guru, for his help with it. We have
recently brought on new collective members and have also welcomed two of
our original ones back from time spent studying Spanish in Guatemala, so
the majority of our collective now speaks Spanish in addition to English.
We're looking forward to offering bilingual services and listings as best
and as soon as we can. In April, Rock Dove tabled at the New York
Anarchist Book Fair, while collective members participated in concurrent
panels on Anti-Authoritarian Responses to Harm; Religion & Spirituality
and Anarchism; Sex (Work), Support, and Communities of Resistance; and "In
a New York Minute," which was a panel discussion on current anarchist
organizing efforts in New York City. Rock Dove's partner, the Signals
Collective, will be hosting a two-day Consensus Training at the Brecht
Forum on June 16 and 17, 2007 (check www.brechtforum.org for more
information), and Rock Dove proper will be hosting several skillshares
over the next few months, so keep an eye out or write us with ideas about
what you'd like to teach or learn.

Rock Dove is growing, and we're looking for more providers to bring into
our network. We need your help, so tell us who you know and love. These
providers may be individuals interested in providing services at low cost
or for mutual aid. They may also be free or low-cost clinics where you've
had a good experience or know a good doctor; doctors who accept your
insurance and are likely to be down with Rock Dove's mission; or
individuals likely to have some good connections, insights, or leads. You
can direct any providers to our website (here;
select "service providers") or just send their contact info our way and
we'll be happy to do the reaching out ourselves. We're excited to be a
resource for you now and for the long haul, and we're grateful for your
help in making it happen.

Nuts & Bolts

http://www.nymaa.org/nutsbolts

nymaa-comms [at] riseup [dot] net

Nuts & Bolts is busy planning for NYMAA's next General Assembly, which
will take place in mid- or late July. Other N&B projects include
researching how to best generate and hold on to NYMAA funds, solidifying
the details of a media liaison position for the organization, keeping tabs
on the progress of reshaping the NYMAA office, and contacting the
Movimiento por Justicia del Barrio regarding possible joint activity.

People's Local Action Network/Project for a New Anarchist Century (PLAN/PNAC)

roberterler [at] erols [dot] com

The working groups PLAN and PNAC are currently in the process of merging.
The goal of the new working group is to offer proposals for projects that
anarchists in the New York metro area might find useful to pursue.
However, the working group would not seek to actually begin the projects.
Rather, it would seek to contact anarchists both inside and outside the
NYMAA "orbit." Thus, the larger vision is to see what needs to be done to
change the world, offer some useful suggestions on how to make it happen,
and bring together folks who are willing to work on projects that would
make the vision into a reality. These projects might be small or large,
but all would be connected to the anarchist worldview.

At the moment, because of family and medical problems, the group's point
people don’t have a date for our next meeting. But keep thinking about
possible projects, as we will probably have a meeting sometime before July
rolls around.

Antiwar/Ya Basta Tactics

http://nymaa.org/anti-war

http://nymaa.org/contactantiwar

http://orangeoveralls.net/

http://myspace.com/orangeoveralls

The NYMAA Antiwar working group continues its Ya Basta experiment on
Saturday, June 16, with a public training in Washington Square Park! All
are invited to uncover the history of Tute Bianche, Disobbedienti, and Ya
Basta tactics from the era of the so-called "antiglobalization movement"
to the present; and to participate in practice maneuvers with padding,
gusto, and those distinctive orange coveralls. A Ya Basta zine will also
be distributed at the training, and it'll be chock full of historical
context and liberatory proclamation.

Arts & Propaganda

http://www.nymaa.org/propaganda

http://nymaa.org/?q=contactpropaganda

The Arts & Propaganda working group, also known as the Props Crew, is
devoted to increasing the street-level prominence of basic anarchist ideas
and the existence of a revolutionary organization (NYMAA) through which
people can apply those ideas. Thus, our activities are divided between the
production of materials (pamphlets, flyers, one-sheets, stickers, posters,
t-shirts, buttons, banners, etc.) and their widespread distribution
throughout our city.

We're currently involved in producing a slew of items for summertime
distribution. These items include:

- NYMAA "builder" and "receding logo" mini-buttons

- NYMAA general banner

- NYMAA "xerox edition" palm cards

- Revised NYMAA "parody" parking ticket

- "This Month in NYMAA" working group bulletin

- "What Is NYMAA?" general organization primer

- Revised "Take Out" anti-electoral/pro-neighborhood council menu

We welcome all with an interest in writing, editing, translation, graphic
design, computer graphics, logo and typeface design, illustration,
filmmaking, animation, etc., to get involved with us. Let's show New York
City that anarchism is alive and well, and growing stronger every minute.

Bronx Local/Education/Reading Group (Spanish)

bachatero_bx [at] yahoo [dot] com

New York City Anarchist Bookfair

http://www.anarchistbookfair.net/

info@anarchistbookfair.net

Queer (Radical Homosexual Agenda)

http://www.radicalhomosexualagenda.org/

wewantyou@riseup.net

Website & Tech

http://nymaa.org/?q=tech

http://nymaa.org/?q=contacttech