Subcommandante Ricardo Flores writes:

We're Looking for a Few Good Clowns

Rebel Clown Army

CALLING ALL THOSE WHOSE INNER CLOWN IS DANCING AND WIGGLING AND TRYING TO GET OUT

Are YOU tired of humdrum protests and bored of capitalism?
Do YOU enjoy working in a team and ridiculing authority?
Do YOU long for extremely silly adventures?

JOIN THE CLANDESTINE INSURGENT REBEL CLOWN ARMY
To join, email circa-sd@riseup.net
For more info, see http://clownarmy.org

Join our anti-citizens brigade to help repel the invasion of the fascist Minutemen and similar anti-immigrant groups from our country! Our country of Laztlaugh, of course. We have seceded from both the US because of its genocidal colonial adventures all over the globe and from Mexico for its complicity in the plans of the US through free trade treaties such as NAFTA. We have created our own autonomous rebel clown territory, Laztlaugh here in the borderlands, but is is now being invaded by the endlessly dreary seriousness of the Minutemen. Join us and help us repel this invading menace from our precious country!

Of course, we are an anti-citizens brigade, and not a citizen's brigade, because until everyone can be a citizen, we don't want to be citizens. In fact, we want no one to be a citizen so that everyone can be a citizen and then we'll all be able to be treated humanely, with hugs and ice cream.

We will repel the invasion of the Minutemen with our powerful laughter, dangerous weapons such as feather dusters and with lots and lots of silliness.

Although, we really may just end up joining them. Clearly, what better example of a clown army has the world ever seen than the Minutemen and their tiny battalions? The Minutemen are truly an army of clowns and we could never hope to outdo them at what they do best, stupidity and idiocy.

Join us! If we want to defeat the Minutemen, or if we want to join the Minutemen, clearly we're going to have to do a lot of training! We have to do some serious training in being completely un-serious.

Of course, there are many battles for a good clown army to fight, so once our brigade is well trained, we can move on to fighting valiantly against the many other facets of capitalism that are oh so boring.

For a world where many worlds fit into a single clown car...

Justice! Dignity! Bubbles! Giggles!
From the anti-citizens brigade of CIRCA — Border Faction

To join, email circa-sd@riseup.net
For more info, see http://clownarmy.org

NOT BORED! writes:

Karl Appel, 1921–2006
Philippe Dagen

Born in Amsterdam in 1921, Karel Appel received his first lessons in painting from one of his uncles in 1936. From 1940 to 1943, he was a student at Amsterdam's Academy of Beaux Arts, where he became friends with another student one year younger than him, Corneille van Beverloo, who was already called [just] Corneille. In 1946, the two friends found themselves in Liege, hometown of Corneille. Then they showed their work together in Amsterdam in 1948. It was then that they met another Amsteldamois, born in 1920: Constant Nieuwenhuis, surnamed Constant.

Together, on 16 July 1948, they founded the Dutch Experimental Group. In common they had youth, their refusal of all academicism and their taste for Matisse, Picasso and Miro. Several weeks later, they were in Paris, in the company of the Belgian poet Christian Dotremont and the Danish painter Asger Jorn. On 8 November, in a cafe near Notre Dame, they drafted a manifesto of rupture, [entitled] The cause being agreed. Several days later, Dotremont came up with the name of the emerging group: CO for Copenhagen, BR for Brussels, [and] A for Amsterdam. Thus, COBRA. Appel was thus one of the founders of this essential post-war movement.

Fourth Annual People's Poetry Gathering
New York, May, 2006

Friends, Join us for

THE FOURTH PEOPLE'S POETRY GATHERING

Sponsored by City Lore and the Bowery Poetry Club

Featuring

The Wor(l)d of New York!

and

Poems from the World's Endangered and Contested Languages

Read and performed in their Mother Tongues and English

including the

“Festival within a Festival”

Harpsong: Celtic Poetry and Music

and

The New

New York City Epic Poem

and Poems of our Fair (and sometimes Unfair) City

Read by Twenty Poets Laureate of New York

From May 3rd to 7th, 2006, the People's Poetry Gathering www.peoplespoetry.org - a poetry festival unlike any other, rooted in New York City's hybrid sounds, rhythms, and histories - bursts into life for the fourth time to invite New Yorkers to consider and celebrate the inestimable value of all languages and the artists who sculpt, sing, rant, dance and breathe the Realm of Words.