Author: Slingshot robot #1

Radio Ava

mixcloud.com/AvaRadio
raaadioava@gmail.com

Since 2016, Radio Ava has been broadcasting from East London, giving us the world’s only radio show for and by sex workers and their allies. The quirky team of anonymous DJs are both sex workers and activists, and offer reportbacks from sex work rights scenes all over the world, interspersed with music, interviews, and advice segments. Each episode is totally different—one episode might be a discussion between academics about the history of sex work unionization, and the next episode might be folks spilling about wanker clients. My favorite segments are when sex workers call in and tell their stories—they are all so unique, and it really blows away any stereotypes you might have about sex work. I’m not a sex worker, but I consider myself an ally, and was excited when someone who works on the show reached out to me and said “Hey! Listen to this!” Listening to Radio Ava has helped me be a better ally, and helped me understand the struggle on the ground. Sex work is an art form, and it is also a way for many to stay afloat who wouldn’t otherwise be able to.  Right now, as legislators actively strip the rights from sex workers, Radio Ava stands in defiance and refuses to let sex work be invisibilized. (Teresa)

Making Spaces Safer:

A Guide to Giving Harassment the Boot Wherever You Work, Play, and Gather

by Shawna Potter (AK Press, 2019)

Shawna Potter is the lead singer of War On Women, and for the last few years, this Baltimore-based punk has been touring venues and community spaces to offer workshops on how to combat harassment. Topics she covers in this book include how to avoid harassing others, what to do if you’re being harassed, what to do if someone else is being harassed in front of you, and how to create solid safer space policies. She is victim-centered in her approach, and encourages us to do the right thing while understanding the trauma that victims of harassment go through, recounting some stories from her own life. Working to remove harassment from our spaces and to hold harassers accountable is a huge step towards helping members of marginalized groups feel safe and welcome. This is a great book to read as a group, and I highly recommend it for anyone who runs a venue, community space, or workplace. Time to give harassment the boot! (Teresa)

Carceral Capitalism

by Jackie Wang (Semiotext(e), 2018)

Jackie Wang is no stranger to the prison system. The Harvard PhD student is the sister to someone suffering incarceration, and she thinks deeply and passionately through the topic in this text that merges economic theory, poetry, and cultural analysis.

As Wang shows us, a horrible transition occurred in the United States in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, as public debt increasingly came into the ownership of the financial sector. In order to pay off this debt, the state has transitioned towards extracting money from the populace via policing and incarceration, and we now find ourselves in a situation in which the government that is more accountable to its creditors than to the public. As Wang explains, “this has a de-democratizing effect.”

Wang ends this revolutionary book on a high note, evoking speculative futures beyond the prison system. Abolish debt and smash the prison state! (Teresa)

“how [and] where to live better for less.”

AB #22, AUG 2018

PO BOX 181 Alsea, OR 97324

This zine and its cryptographic content drew me in and pushed me out in waves. Close jumbles of mostly incoherent text compelled my eyes to scan over them, and an attention-grabbing format or word would pull me back in. It irked me that these choppy semantic waters made AB very hard to engage with, because part of me wanted to crack its “code” by persevering thru the text and reading every last character. AB stands out to me above all as a pristine Dadaist publication. Sometimes you might not care about actually reading the whole text, but are intrigued and amused by its seeming unpredictability and ingenuity. But AB pushes beyond the meaninglessness of its Dadaist ties by conveying important information about things such as dietary requirements, carcinogens, the benefits of different fruits/vegetables, and the overall logic of eating raw vegan. This issue of AB goes from a very well-researched nutritional health journal in support of veganism, to an examination of toxins and carcinogens in daily life, and to the grim reality of humanity’s destruction. It simply cannot be defined. (Rachelle)

DWELLING PORTABLY

DP, SPRING 2019

PO BOX 181 Alsea, OR 97324

Continues to tell us the important stuff coming up on the cutting edge of experimental portable living spaces! A diagram of a large underwater structure kicks this issue off and it then dives straight into examining the miserable lives of Google employees dwelling portably in the Mountain View dormitories while critiquing the company itself. DP then touched on the life of Linda, a 64-yr-old grandma with basal-cell carcinoma who works as a campground host and dwells portably in her Jeep with a “tiny fiberglass trailer.” A review of CheapRVLiving.com and anecdotes of living and improvising on the road. DP shares a similar format with AB, a heavily abbreviated collection of summarized and analyzed sources loosely joined around a theme. The summaries proved informative and the analyses were vivid and incisive. These two zines could teach people a hell of a lot, they’re just pretty dang hard to read. Maybe the author added so many abbreviations to slow the reader’s eye down–force them to really look at and process the text….If that’s true, I don’t think they succeeded because I had a lot of trouble comprehending it due to those abbreviations.

Overall, AB/DP was a very refreshing and unique reading experience, and I will definitely be rereading these snippets of VERY USEFUL information to fully absorb it all. (Rachelle)

[Supplementary inserts]:

At first I approached these passage like computer code. Words seemed to be mere jumbles of characters and special symbols were abound. After taking ten minutes to read though the same number of sentences, AB/DP language started to make sense, and took form as a stream-of-consciousness interspersed with new information…like a very discombobulated yet passionate newscaster who covers everything from police corruption to debates on veganism. The inserts were designed as supplements to the longer printed zines, to update them with new, pertinent information. (Rachelle)

Fifth Estate

www.FifthEstate.org
PO BOX 201016 Ferndale, MI 48220

Long running, the Fifth Estate offers updates and stories from radical voices in our movements. In these pages we read about celebratory and commemorative anarchist ice cream socials to an article about Z (anarchist radio berlin) to words about the privatization of the welfare state. Clearly written, compelling voices draw us into global struggles as well as ones closer to home. Featuring lots of important information to digest, for 50+ years Fifth Estate has been an important piece of keeping us in the know (a kind antidote the head-in-the-sand approach so many favor). May this publication live on for another 50! (IMP)

If you want to help draw art or otherwise create the 2020 Organizer, contact us now. We include the work of over 30 artists from all over — it could be you this year. Please contact us by June 10 to draw a section of the calendar. Art is due July 25.

We’ll be editing and adding more historical dates during May and June so please send suggestions and let us know if you want to help proofread. (You can do so remotely.) We also need corrections and suggestions of new radical contact list spaces by July 25.

We will put the organizer together by hand July 27/28 and August 3/4 in Berkeley. Please drop by and join us if you’re in town.

For the 2019 organizer, let us know if your organization can help distribute a few extra copies we have on hand to youth, immigrants or others who wouldn’t otherwise have access.

By Anita De Asis Miralle, Program Coordinator at Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute and Co-founder of The Village in Oakland #feedthepeople

In the Fall and Winter of 2019, Housing and Dignity Village – a safe, sober, and self-organized tent village for unhoused women and children in East Oakland – filed a civil rights lawsuit against the City of Oakland to try and stop the City’s eviction of their encampment. A local civil rights advocacy organization, Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute, then created templates from that lawsuit for other encampments to use to broaden and strengthen the fight of unsheltered communities by challenging the legality of the City’s treatment of curbside communities. To date, three more encampments have filed lawsuits – bringing the total number of lawsuits filed by curbside communities against the City to four. More are in the works.

The first encampment: E12th Street and 22nd Avenue
On March 6, 2019, the City of Oakland backed down from evicting the residents of a homeless encampment on a plot of land at the corner of E12th Street and 22nd Ave in East Oakland in response to a lawsuit one resident, Michael Bowen, filed on behalf of himself and the six other residents.

Bowen, who has been occupying the land with 6 other residents since Spring 2017, said, “No one has cared about this land for decades. So why now in the middle of a shelter crisis and homeless state of emergency?” Bowen asks. “The City never offered us services though they provided porta potties and trash pickup to the former encampment across the street – and suddenly they want to evict us?”

The second encampment: Union Point
On March 19, 2019, residents of an RV homeless encampment at the otherwise empty and unused Union Point Park parking lot were scheduled to be evicted. Instead, they decided they were going to fight the City of Oakland in court over their eviction – and for now, they have succeeded: U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer granted the Union Point residents a temporary restraining order, which will halt eviction proceedings until their case is heard. Their lawsuit, Le Van Hung et al. vs Libby Schaaf et al. is set to begin in the summer of 2019.

The plaintiffs claim that the City’s past encampment evictions have violated the 4th, 8th, and 14th amendment rights of unhoused Oaklanders all around the city. Residents assert the City’s eviction process is cruel and unusual punishment for being homeless, violates their right to have private property protected from unlawful seizures, and ignores their right for due process and equal treatment under the law.

In a signed declaration to the judge, Union Point Park plaintiff Amanda Veta states: “Every time I have been evicted I have lost my whole life. I have lost IDs, pictures of my family I can never replace, paperwork cuz the City throws my stuff away. And with this eviction, we won’t just lose our little things. We all live in vehicles. We could lose our homes too.”

Veta’s concerns are not far-fetched. In the Fall of 2018, the City and Oakland the Oakland Police Department towed at least three dozen RVs, campers and vehicles from an encampment in West Oakland. More than 40 people lost their homes on wheels and all their personal belongings. Three weeks after towing and impounding all the vehicles, the City had all the vehicles crushed.

In November 2018, when the Housing and Dignity Village encampment filed the first homeless encampment lawsuit against the City, the City Attorney assured Federal Judge Haywood Gilliam that when an encampment is evicted, personal property is stored for up to 90 days for free and all residents are offered adequate shelter. The judge took the City’s word and lifted the initial temporary restraining order protecting Housing and Dignity Village.

When the City evicted them, none of the 13 residents were offered housing that could adequately suit their needs. To this day, four truckloads of their personal property have yet to be recovered despite the plaintiffs’ and their legal team’s repeated attempts.

Since the destruction of Housing and Dignity Village in December 2018, plaintiffs from Miralle vs. the City of Oakland have been collecting statements from other encampments who were evicted, and encouraging encampments facing eviction to file lawsuits. This has resulted in dozens of signed testimonies that counter the City’s false claims and two new lawsuits. “The city has never offered me housing the four times I have been evicted from my homeless encampment,” Veta said. “When I witnessed 6 other evictions, the city does not bag and tag anyone’s property or store it. They throw away everyone’s property and offer no one housing. The city has no remorse in what they do to us.”

Plaintiff Le Van Hung has lived at Union Point for two weeks. He has faced several evictions from the City, relocating to Union Point after being evicted from the E12th and 23rd Avenue parcel in late January. “It’s terrible to be moved around,” his signed testimony states. “It takes time to pack, clean and move. It takes a lot of time to find a new place to be homeless at. Every time I move I lose property because the city throws away our property when they evict us. We don’t move fast enough and they throw away our belongings,”

The plaintiffs at Union Point Park and homeless folks across Oakland also agree the evictions cause depression, stress, lack of motivation, instability, insecurity, and other major setbacks. “I am 61 years old and I am tired of being evicted and shuffled around. These evictions cause me depression that can last weeks or months. I have high blood pressure and these evictions make my condition worse,” Hung said. “The city said they have a Shelter Crisis and a Homeless State of Emergency. They have admitted there is not enough housing in Oakland and that has caused the homeless crisis. They have admitted they don’t have a solution. So why are they evicting people left and right when we are trying to house ourselves when the city can’t? The evictions cause so much hardship. They need to stop.”

By Brian Trott
It was my fourth stay in Morocco, in the fall of 2016. I was on my own, hopping around hostels and couches between Rabat and Casablanca, conducting interviews for my graduate research on the history of punk rock and heavy metal in the country. When I got there the punk scene was in decline, but there were enough participants to qualify a scene. Z.W.M., the patrons of Moroccan punk rock had relocated to Toulouse a few years prior, where they continue to perform and record. W.O.R.M., the first hardcore punk band in the country split up in 2015, as their drummer relocated to Beijing to teach and form bands there. Tachamarod was actively practicing and playing gigs. Riot Stones was on a hiatus, but still present in the punk community. Betweenatna was gaining ever increasing national attention. A bar-venue, B-Rock, had recently shut its doors, but Boultek, L’Uzine, and ABC Cinema continued providing space for alternative musicians to practice and perform. The DIY art and music festival Hardzazate had just concluded its second edition. Punk rock was not flourishing, but it was present and active.
I started listening to punk rock in middle school. After a brief nu-metal and classic rock phase, a combination of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and Rockabilia catalogs made me aware of some of the basic punk standards: Dead Kennedys, Black Flack, Bad Religion, and Bad Brains. I quickly immersed myself in the genre, branching off into various subgenres: street punk, crust, fastcore, raw punk, post punk, etc. I began participating in my local scene: playing and booking shows in the Sacramento area with my high school street punk band, and hosting a punk show at the UC-Davis radio station, KDVS.
DJing at KDVS since the age of 15 had convinced me to pursue my bachelor’s degree at UC-Davis. With a growing interest in the history of the Middle East, I began studying Arabic. In 2008, I travelled to Ifrane, Morocco, to spend an academic year learning Arabic at Al Akhawayn University. I was aware of the extent that punk rock had been globalized.
The fact is punk rock has never been huge in Morocco, but extreme sports have always been integral to the extreme music scene there. Skate videos and copies of Thrasher Magazine circulated among friend groups and across cities, which is how a particular five skaters in Rabat were exposed to punk rock. In 2004, these individuals formed Z.W.M., the first Moroccan punk band. Their main musical influence were the bands that were popularly played in skate videos at the time, generally Epitaph and Fat Wreck Chords bands: NOFX, Rancid, Satanic Surfers, and Bad Religion. They also integrated elements of local popular music, such as Gnawa, into their brand of skate punk. Unlike other rock bands in the country, Z.W.M. primarily sang in Moroccan dialect Arabic. It was widely accepted up to that point that rock music should only be sung in English or French and the idea of an Arabic singing punk band was met of with some skepticism. After two years of playing sporadic shows, mostly around Rabat, Z.W.M. entered the 2006 Boulevard competition and won. The band gained national recognition, but by 2010 left for France where they continue to play and record. They still periodically return to perform.
Following Z.W.M.’s departure, a second wave of punk bands spread across the country. Casablanca produced W.O.R.M. and Riot Stones, the first two hardcore punk bands in the country. There’s something about Casablanca and Rabat, two coastal cities roughly two hours apart by train, that produces very different artists. Rabat is a relatively quiet and small city in contrast to the aggressive density of Casablanca, and was the town that introduced punk to Morocco in the form of ska infused skate punk. Casablanca introduced hardcore.
Further bands formed in the early 2010s. Coming from the same neighborhood as Z.W.M., Tachamarod played a similar brand of Arabic skate punk. Featuring members of Riot Stones, the Protesters played a blend of ska and street punk. Blast, from Meknes, played politically charged pop punk, and remains one of the only punk bands outside of Rabat and Casablanca. In 2013, Tien An Men 89 Records, released Chaos in Morocco, a compilation LP featuring Z.W.M., W.O.R.M., the Protesters, Riot Stones, and the Casablanca fusion band Hoba Hoba Spirit. Prior to Chaos in Morocco, no Moroccan punk recordings had been released in a physical format.
Betweenatna resides in a musical grey zone. Fusion is one of the most popular genres in Morocco, generally consisting of a blend of popular traditional music, reggae, hip hop, and rock. Betweenatna is essentially a fusion supergroup featuring members of Immortal Spirit, Darga, and Hoba Hoba Spirit. Their brand of fusion blends some traditional genres with punk, metal, and hip hop. While they are essentially a fusion band, their sound leans heavily in the direction of punk and metal. They even perform an Arabic rendition of Pennywise’s “Bro Hymn.” Their narrative driven lyrics generally tell absurd stories of everyday life for youth on the streets of urban Morocco. Their whimsical performances, relatable lyrics, and scene clout has led Betweenatna to be one of the most popular bands in the country at this moment.
In 2016, I attended a Betweenatna show at Boultek. With limited opportunities for DIY shows at informal venues; basements, garages, warehouses, etc; the majority of concerts take place at cultural centers like Boultek. They generally have tight security, only tolerating some light moshing and no drugs or alcohol. Boultek is more lax than other such spaces. The venue is located in an office building in the parking lot of a mall in the California neighborhood of Casablanca, and the performance space connects to a parking garage where kids can sneak off to discreetly drink and smoke hash. The large space was packed with what I would estimate was well over 100 attendees, boys and girls mostly in their late teens and twenties. I saw kids with stick and poke Black Flag tattoos, wearing denim vests patched up with the logos of the Misfits and Ska-P, alongside individuals in Korn and Slipknot hoodies. Betweenatna played a rowdy set and drew an equally rowdy crowd. Moshing was tolerated.
During my last visit in 2018, I found little left of the punk scene I had documented in my graduate research. Betweenatna and Blast were the only remaining punk bands actively playing. My partner and I spent the majority of our time hanging out with Saad, the bassist of Tachamarod. He was hoping to join his bandmate in China, where they would continue to play as Tachamarod, but his visa application was denied, again. He was spending most of his afternoons and evenings hanging out in downtown Rabat with the regular crowd of punks, hippies, and skaters. Unable to find work, Saad had to return to his old gig, flipping used clothes in Rabat’s old medina. When we last talked, Saad was pessimistic about his future.
During the last week of our visit, Saad, my partner, and I took a trip to Casablanca. We hung around the new skatepark outside the old colonial cathedral in downtown. There we met a young skater who told us about the punk band she was forming, Reason of Anarchy. I have yet to hear anything more of that band, but maybe there is a future for punk rock in Morocco. For now, the scene appears to be in semi-hibernation, or maybe it’s dying. As a fanatic of international punk, I would like to see it grow and hear how Moroccan youth continue to grapple with, interpret, and localize punk. But also I’m cynical towards globalized popular culture. The youth of Morocco don’t need punk. Nobody needs punk, but it has long provided an alternative network, community, and performative outlet for young people across the world, myself included. I like watching the international punk scene expand and mutate, but maybe Morocco doesn’t want it and that’s okay. We can only wait and see.

Brian Trott currently performs in the hardcore punk band Curbsitter in Milwaukee, where he resides. For a more detailed account of the punk and metal scenes in Morocco, you can read his graduate thesis online here: goo.gl/mYDZV1. If you have any questions for him, or are in a band and are interested in playing in Morocco, please inquire at faoudawaruina@gmail.com.