Radical media, politics and culture.

In the Streets

July 20, 2005 - 10:04am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
In the Streets

Randy Walburger writes:

"Corporations, Poverty and Homelessness"
Randy Walburger


          Isn't this the richest nation on earth? Aren't we forever reminded how humane this country is? How can so many Americans be left out on the cold street at night to suffer, without homes or shelter, in hunger, sickness and death year after year in growing numbers in a nation that preaches 'justice and a humane democracy'!? Today here in Los Angeles County there are upwards of 100,000 homeless people on the street each night! That number has been growing every year since Ronald Reagan and the defeat of labor in the 1980's. According to the National Coalition for the Homeless, "Recent studies suggest that the United States generates homelessness at a much higher rate than previously thought." According to the Urban Institute in 2003 there were approximately 3.5 million homeless in the United States.

July 12, 2005 - 2:06am -- Rob Eshelman
In the Streets

"This is How We Do It"
by Kara N. Tina

From the beginning there was no well-thought-out master plan for shutting down the G8 Summit at Gleneagles. In fact, some of us even dubbed the march we were about to embark on "The Suicide March". At three in the morning, a large group of militants dressed in black slipped into the darkness of the night as the first rain of many days dumped down on them. The air was thick with the eerie presence of a thousand determined individuals beginning to walk along the deathly still road. Besides the occasional attempt at a chant the group was quiet, perhaps reconsidering the slim probability of success. Five miles and a heavy police presence stretched before us and our only destination in sight: Motorway 9 (M9). This motorway was one of the crucial motorways that delegates and support staff to the G8 Summit expected to travel down in a few hours.

July 7, 2005 - 1:08pm -- jim
Announcements
In the Streets

The following statement is the outcome of a Frassanito-meeting during the
Fadaiat-project in Tarifa, in the south of Spain last week
(Fadaiat).
best greetings,
hagen



"Conspire and Strike for a Free, Open, Radical Europe"

A Statement by the Frassanito Network for the Euromayday Process

Freedom of movement was the central demand on 2nd April 2005 during the
second day of migration related actions which saw both large and small
protests and demonstrations take place in more than 50 cities in 11
countries (NoBorder).


Precarious living and labour-conditions were the focus a few weeks later, on
1st May, when Euromayday parades and actions happened simultaneously in
18 cities in 13 countries (Euromayday).


We consider both mobilisations as successful and important steps in shaping
a movement with a true European dimension. We think it is important that
both networking-processes not only referred to each other in the respective
calls but that the actions themselves were also connected in most countries.


The strengthening of this interconnection in its European dimension seems to
be more important following the recent referendums in France and Netherlands
which — independent of any evaluation of the actual "Constitutional Treaty"
itself — signal the danger of a re-nationalisation of politics, not only on
the right but also on the traditional left.

July 4, 2005 - 11:42am -- stevphen
Analysis & Polemic
In the Streets

Event Horizon

The Free Association

June 2005

"And what is the phantom fuzz screaming from Chicago to Berlin, from Mexico City to Paris? 'We are REAL REAL REAL!!! as this NIGHTSTICK!' As they feel, in their dim animal way, that reality is slipping away from them." — William Burroughs, commenting on the police beating protesters at the Democratic convention, Chicago 1968.

1. DOCTOR WHO

We’re used to thinking of time as a straight line. When we look back at history it seems like all past events only existed to lead us to this point. And when we think about the future we can only imagine that line continuing. The future we imagine is really only the present stretched out ahead of us. Therein lies the truism that science fiction is really always about contemporary society.

But history isn’t a straight line. It moves in a series of uncontrolled breaks, jolts and ruptures. Every now and then we get events that seem to have popped out of an alternate dimension. Events that don’t seem to belong to the timeline we were just on. These events carry their own timelines. When they appear, history seems to shift to accommodate them. Funny how we couldn’t see it before, but now we come to look there’s a line of history that seems to have existed just to lead us up to this moment. Such events also seem to carry their own alternate future. Things that seemed impossible a day or two before seem irresistible now.

June 22, 2005 - 10:02am -- jim
Events
In the Streets

amoore writes:

"Lightwheels" Festival

Free Speech, Bikes, Transit, Public Space

New York City, June 24-July 4, 2005

New York City is the site of an 11-day exploration of cycling, free speech, public space, transit and community self-empowerment starting this June 24 th, continuing through the July 4 th weekend. The 49 East Houston Street home of LightWheels, Time’s Up and the NY Bicycle Messenger Foundation is the site of most of the activity.

Dissent and the law, regional rail and the MTA, police harassment of Critical Mass rides, privatization and loss of access to our own public spaces, will all be examined. All sessions will be free and some web-cast live. Attendance is on a first come, first served basis. Seating is limited for workshops.
As part of the event, a Town Hall meeting will take place at the Theater For The New City on Sunday the 26 th at 6pm. Plans and actions already taken by the city, in regards to gatherings in parks, billboards in schools and on sidewalks, and bikes on streets, are being done without real public processes and against the public interest. Many of these moves also seem intended to stifle expression, especially of a political nature. Such offenses to the Constitution, as well as our potential to improve our lives, can not be allowed to stand unchallenged.

June 21, 2005 - 2:16am -- jim
Announcements
In the Streets

Anonymous Comrade writes:

Project Xixax

Project Xixax is using the walls of New York City and is headed to Amsterdam and Berlin for exploration of the grey area of what constitutes public space. There is no destruction of property, no trespass, just using the walls of the city for something other than advertising.

June 19, 2005 - 6:21pm -- nolympics
Analysis & Polemic
In the Streets

stevphen writes:

"Transparency To Exodus"
Brian Holmes

On Political Process in the Mediated Democracies

"What is it that separates the left from the right?... Fundamentally, it is nothing but a processual calling, a processual passion." — Felix Guattari [1]

In October of 1968, in Rosario, Argentina, the artist Graciela Carnevale invited visitors to what would be the final opening of a "Cycle of Experimental Art" held in a storefront space in the city. Her contribution to the series consisted in luring the public inside, then slipping out to lock the door and enclose the crowd within the gallery. The visitors became the material of a social artwork. The question was: How would they react to this imprisonment? Who would finally shatter the glass to release the captives from the trap? "Through an act of aggression, the work tends to provoke the spectator to a heightened consciousness of the power whereby violence is exerted in the everyday world," wrote the artist. "On a daily basis we passively submit, through fear, connivance and complicity, to all the degrees of violence, from the most subtle and degrading violence that coerces our thinking via communications media broadcasting false contents provided by their owners, to the most provocative and scandalous violence exerted on a student's life." [2] In the event, the public submitted. After an hour, the blow that finally shattered the glass came from outside. A photograph shows a woman crouching down to exit through a jagged hole in the window.

June 6, 2005 - 9:35pm -- jim
News
In the Streets

"Bolivia's Mesa Appears Close to Resigning"

Luis Gomez, NarcoNews


I write to you a few blocks from the Palace of Government. While around
half a million people have mobilized in the streets of La Paz today, the
rumors in the streets and information coming to us from government
sources agree: President Mesa could resign at any time. If this happens,
the President of the National Congress, Senator Hormando Vaca Diez,
would have to assume the presidency, and will have already reached an
agreement with the Armed Forces to immediately decree a state of siege.


A little more history was written today, Monday, June 6, in the streets
of the seat of government, the city of La Paz: The most combative
sectors of the social movements (the urban and rural Aymara, the miners
and El Alto university students, among others) have expanded their siege
of the center of State power: there have been clashes with the police
for ours in attempts to take the Plaza Murillo.

June 3, 2005 - 4:07pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
In the Streets

"One Struggle, One Fight:

SHAC 7 and the Future of Dissent"

Pete Spina

Lining the sidewalk outside the federal courthouse in Trenton, NJ on
June 1, 2005, some of the signs they hold show pictures of
restrained, mutilated or tortured animals from experiments worthy of
the imagination of Dr. Josef Mengele, involving elaborate and brutal
head restraints on terrified primates, wired brain implants on
prostrate, living house cats and disemboweled beagle puppies. Other
signs call for the defense of free speech, invoking the First
Amendment of the Bill of Rights.

June 2, 2005 - 12:49pm -- jim
News
In the Streets

Total CHAos:

Guerilla Marketing in Public Housing

Jamie Murnane, New City Chicago

"Are tourists more important than the poor?" Mayor
Daley asks a few pedestrians waiting for the CTA. Dan
McLean, president of MCL, asks "Do developers deserve
a tax break more than you?"

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