Category: Articles

Slingshot is a quarterly, independent, radical newspaper published in the East Bay since 1988.

This issue almost didn’t come out. We went into our layout weekend-hell with fewer articles than usual and weaker ones (we still cut over half the stuff we received) and with the number of collective members at an all time low due to bad luck and lots of valued people who’ve drifted away.

Then, at the most stressful point, a horrific, bitter argument about politics, philosophy and process stopped the critical meeting cold. Almost half of us walked out. At one point we wondered if the issue would ever come out much less if the Collective would survive.

Well, we’re not dead yet. We have a lot of processing to do but enough people came back that we finished this issue.

It’s ironic that the collective is this weak when the Organizer project is so popular these days (we’re working on the 2001 edition.) More than ever before, we need some new members and some new energy if we’re going to go on.

Earlier in our process, we had lots of great dreams about how we could expand and improve the paper: regular columns, more articles about what we want, not just what we’re against, better writing and more vision. It’s up to you.

Slingshot accepts unsolicited articles, art, photos and letters. No poetry! Please send a disk if you can. Also, this is expensive, send $20 now!

Editorial decisions about Slingshot are made by the Slingshot Collective. Articles do not necessarily represent the opinions of everyone in Slingshot. We welcome debate, discussion and criticism.

Slingshot Volunteer Meeting

Volunteers interested in getting involved in Slingshot can meet with us on September 10, 2000 at 4:00 p.m. at the Long Haul in Berkeley (see below).

Article Deadline & Next Issue Date

The projected deadline for article submission for issue #70 is October 5, 2000. Issue #70 is expected to be out on October 20, 2000.

Printed June 22, 2000

Volume 1

Number 69

Circulation: 10,000

Slingshot Newspaper

Sponsored by Long Haul

3124 Shattuck Ave

Berkeley, CA 94705

Phone: (510) 540-0751

Email: slinsghot@tao.ca

http://slingshot.tao.ca

3124 Shattuck

Berkeley

510 540-0751

People pass by 3124 Shattuck Avenue in South Berkeley all the time wonder, “What can be going on in that weird space with all the political flyers and colorful yet non-corporate storefront?” Yes, yes. It is a cannabis club during the day, but even more the Infoshop is one of the only radical community centers on the West Coast. Lovingly described in the April 17, 2000 issue of theNew Yorker as that “cafe/bookshop/community center run by an Anarchist Collective (we were, remember, in Berkeley).” In addition to exciting and inspiring weekly events brought to you by an all volunteer collective, the Infoshop also houses an astounding zine archive and lending library.

Our weekly schedule is jam packed with events you can’t miss. We frequently host the post-East Bay Critical Mass dinner dance on the second Friday of the month, the only monthly Food Not Bombs Goth Party Benefit in North America, and radical planning potluck brunches.

Mondays 6-9 pm Women only night. Come hang in a space that’s been dedicated to women for 7 years and enjoy insightful political discussion, videos, and an occasional book group. Women’s night is always looking for people to come down and make it a happening event.

Tuesdays 6-9 pm The night of the ever popular Anarchist Study Class (8-10 pm) running strong and going on 3 years. Join the enlightening discussion and don’t miss out on Infoshop superstar Margaret’s last summer as a staffer. Humane Services for the Mentally Crisesed meets from 6-8 pm.

Wednesdays 6-9 pm Come on down for the Anarchist Sewing Circle. Sew up some holes in your clothes or make a beautiful patch quilt while listening to critiques of the prison industrial complex and occasional fantastic tales. Food Not Bombs meets around 8:30 pm.

Thursdays 6-9 pm Berkeley Liberation Radio meets every other week around 8 pm. Alternate weeks infoshop staffers engage guests in a rousing game of Spin the Bottle. This night needs a serious infusion of energy. Make it happen.

Sundays 6-9 pm Don’t believe the unfounded rumors; Cafe Night is still going strong! Cheap, vegan, carbohydrate filled dinners ($3 suggested donation). Still the most unique community building event in Berkeley. Donations go to the organization sponsoring the meal. Come hang out with the radicals and listen to James Brown all over again. Note: We need groups to host cafe nights. There are many openings in the next couple of months. Contact an infoshop staffer for more details.

Now Recruiting We could really use a Cafe Night Coordinator to ensure there are fabulous meals happening on a consistent basis, as well as willing helpers to cook and chop. We’d also love more people to help us do some outreach.

Housing Box Don’t pay outrageous fees tot he corporate housing listing monopolies like e-housing, Berkeley Connections, or Homefinders. Come find a room or post your opening in our wonderful but compact housing box. Let’s start a permanent and free spot to find housing in the East Bay.

Ride Board looking for a ride to next big action or just to visit a pal on the East Coast? Need a companion for your bike ride down from Seattle? Post your intentions on the ride board located in the back of the Long Haul and get travellin’

NEFAC Founding Raises Questions

The Northeastern Federation of Anarchist Communists (NEFAC) was founded in April 2000. The organizers, based in Boston and Quebec, are still in the process of developing the federation, which will bring to the northeastern region an organization modeled on such groups as the Anarchist Federation and Class War of the UK and the Workers Solidarity Movement of Ireland.

The political perspective of NEFAC is based on three pillars: anarchist-communism, federalism, and platformism.

The first, anarchist-communism, holds that the social transformation of work is fundamental to achieving freedom in any meaningful way. Moreover, anarchist-communism recognizes that economic, state and social systems of oppression are structured in such a way as to create disparate classes. These classes are naturally in conflict with each other-the exploited and the exploiter-but without organization and a genuine understanding of social freedom, this conflict will continue to sap the strength of the exploited class without leading closer to liberation. Only with organization and a genuine understanding of social freedom will the bleak conflict turn into a true struggle for the life of freedom.

NEFAC declares that the anarchist movement today has a need for an energetic and strong element taking this direction, and I agree. However, anarchist-communism is not all that NEFAC stands for.

NEFAC’s members believe that anarchists — or at least anarchist-communists — need a unified and comprehensive political platform. In their first conference, NEFAC discussed a proposed platform. The conference ended without having a final draft of the platform; the draft will be discussed again at the second conference. There are some small problems with the draft. For example, the points tend to emphasize things-we’re-against (capitalism, statism, patriarchy, racism, nationalism, ecological stupidity, and so on) which leaves the whole susceptible to leftism. For greater effectiveness, the platform would need to provide a cogent summation of what-we’re-for.

However, even if the platform is redrafted in more confident and effective terms, anarchism and platformism may be mutually incompatible. Political platforms repeat the old hierarchical structure of political control. As anarchists, we easily enough detect the bullshit when the state forms think-tanks to transmit official ideologies via the press to the “masses.” That’s a one-way transmission of ideas and a monopoly on political action. It’s statism. The role of state propaganda is to maintain systems of oppression by turning people in their own perceptions into the objects of another’s thought. But anarchism, in contrast, holds that every person is and should be self-determining, and the subject of his or her own thought.

The strongest defense against statism, and the strongest basis on which to nurture freedom, is to transform the objectified “masses” into critical-thinking and socially-conscious individuals. Anarchism must not only achieve this, but it must lead the way in fostering a new kind of politics in which one-way communication can no longer exist.

NEFAC goals include both self-directed “study and theoretical development” and other-oriented “agitation and propaganda.” Until these goals are merged — until study and theoretical development are the basis of a two-way — dialog their liberatory aim cannot be realized. Political platforms and propaganda are structurally authoritarian; even the development of a perfect idea cannot make it less so, once enshrined as The Answer. But this is not cause for despair – it is the seed for transformation. Class struggle begins with genuine dialog, with the return of men and women to their authentic self-knowledge.

NEFAC also holds that the federation is a model of how society as a whole should be organized.

Federalism is a political system in which semi-autonomous collectivities (in this case affinity groups) unite for certain specified political purposes. At the moment NEFAC’s purpose is somewhat sketchy. Their documents state, “The activity of the federation is organized around three poles: study and theoretical development; anarchist agitation and propaganda; and intervention in the struggle of our class, be it autonomously or by way of direct involvement in social movements.”

Theoretical and tactical unity are major goals of NEFAC. Study groups and agitprop are intended to create theoretical unity, while the federation hopes (by providing a general framework) to attain a degree of consistency in the actions of its members. But what sort of action is intended? How is consistency possible, when the tactics are never defined? What are the implications or the limitations of intervention? At the present time, NEFAC’s Aims & Principles and Constitution are too ambiguous to serve as guidelines for unified theory or action.

Talking to NEFAC members, however, a simpler but more cogent picture of NEFAC emerges. Intervention may mean, as Mark Laskey says, “pushing for [a] more radical direction in the way of tactics and perspectives, [and] popularizing anarchist and anti-hierarchical organizing principles (such as decentralization, self-management and direct democracy).”

The idea that unity or even consistency are always liberatory is mistaken. Sometimes inconsistency and a bit of discord is exactly what’s needed to accomplish the work of liberation.

The problems which crop up with Federalism are very real ones. Rather than focus on NEFAC and Federalism, though, I would like to suggest some of the critical problems which concern any anarchist organization. These are my personal point of view, as indeed is the whole article; I do not pretend to speak for “anarchists in general” or “the editorial collective.” I, to the best of my current understanding, believe that any organization which is liberatory in structure and intent must include these basic elements:

First, it must allow and perhaps even foster dissent; the individual should not be supressed by any false need for unity.

Second, it must allow and foster on-going self-criticism. This does not mean a sort of self-flagellation, but merely an honest questioning consciousness. Social freedom in practice doesn’t look like a religion; there can be no “higher answers” or “ultimate truths” — and that can indeed be very scary to face. But there are higher questions — and seeing that relieves the fear; because higher questions are based on understanding; and understanding (in my personal experience) alleviates fear.

Third, the structure of membership and decision-making must be somewhat fluid. Whoever wants to do the work should be welcome to do the work. But what is “the work”? Whether it is organizing class struggle or putting out a newspaper, there is a certain degree of agreement necessary as to what the purpose of the group is. Beyond that modest basis of unity, however, suppressing diversity merely undermines the group’s growth — or the growth of its individual members.

Fourth, groups should understand and acknowledge that direct democracy, consensus and collective responsibility are simply methods of imposing a social order. They can all be used to suppress dissent. If they are enshrined as Sacred Principles of Anarchist Method, they become invisible structures of authority. This is not healthy in anti-authoritarian organizations.

In thought and action, the means are the ends. The means to freedom must be consonant with freedom itself.

An ongoing series of diaries by transsexuals taking pharmaceutical hormones

Andy

When it was first brought up that I should do an article about my experiences as a transsexual. I was not sure where to start. Lots of the time, my transsexuality is a non-issue for me (hell, I’ve been dealing with my gender my whole life… I would hope I would have gotten through some of it by now.) So I let it sit. Life went on and I kind of thought on it for a while, and eventually hit what I pretty much always hit with this sort of thing: there are really two issues here. One is estrogen itself, and what it does to me. The other is the fact that, as someone who by nature is a question to our culture’s gender constructs I go against it no matter what, and what do I do with that implicit potential for creating change?

First off: the estrogens (yay boobs??!!). This one is difficult. I am always rehashing the conflict. I have got no issues with changing myself to the world or whatever the fuck any god intended me to have. I trust myself enough to respect my understanding of who and what I a, as a transsexual and I know that that analyzation of myself is always changing. But I have a whole lot of trouble justifying taking those lovely little pills sometimes, anyway. On one hand, it makes sense to me to have a “girl’s” body. It would match my brain. And since I started taking chemical estrogens on January 14th, I have had some exciting developments. My skin has gotten a little softer, my belly is taking a different shape, and my fat’s starting to move to my hips as my body fat changes orienattion. My knees are looking a little less bony. I think my hair grows a little bit faster, I’m growing fangs (wait, maybe that’s not the estrogen?!?!), and, of course, my breasts are getting a little larger and changing in their manner of sensitivity (now I can get racked up in so many places and positions!!!). Now somedays maybe I just don’t give enough weight to my internal drives, but as I put these poisonous chemicals in my body, I have to wonder. Not all of theses changes are things I can see as positive.

Since January, I have been working that much harder at destroying my liver. Lowering my blood pressure. Changing my metabolism. Raising my risk of breast cancer. Losing a little muscle mass. Filling myself with chemicals built and tested by your friend and mine, the commercial pharmaceutical industry. Great plan? (sometimes I skip antibiotics because I’m a little weirded out by them, but taking Premarin seems dandy?) Some days it’s really hard to balance. My body isn’t me, so why should it matter? I need to communicate through my body, so it has to matter. Every problem in life is all about how you go about ingesting and understanding it, and am I understanding what my problems are well enough to be causing detriment to my body while I change it? On these bright days when everything but this little discrepancy between what I know I need to look like and what my body has a tendency to do is the only thing about me that isn’t moving at the speed of light and loving it, maybe it really does make sense (I mean, tits can rock). After lots of mulling it all over, I end up somewhere around this: when the rest of everything I do is either working well or something I can make work, then my gender presentation is no exception. It’s what I’ve got. I don’t want to be a girl any more than I want to be a boy. It’s not about that. It’s about making my body fit my mind. It’s about me functioning in a way that works best for me. Everything that results from how I present myself is only what I make of it. And if I’m anything to this world, I need to make something that changes it.

I have always been of the opinion that the shape of my body doesn’t matter; it’s only flesh. I have also long known that what I feel gets shown through my body (and it should). It’s that synthesis of seeming oppositions that makes “transsexuality” and the estrogens that I take such an amazing and interesting experience.

On another end of things, I simply hate the label “transsexual.” I hate all the constructs and limitations that come along with it. My transsexuality, to most people, makes me inhuman; it separates me.

In many arenas, TS is defined as a defect or an illness, but the label is where my disorder really lies. I’m just me. I am not a gender. I am a gooey amalgam of the experiences, choices, and instances of my life until now. I am a human. That is enough. That is all that affects anything I do or create until people start labeling me.

Labels hurt because they are not me. They destroy because they are not anyone.

Without labels, I am just a girl who happens to have a penis. A different shape to the bag of meat that is the human body. Depending on how I handle myself, that different shape can put me in a position to be a catalyst and a teacher. This excites me, and if I’m lucky, I’ll pull it off.

As humans we read symbols. It’s our nature. It’s what makes us human. We see a hoof print in the dirt, and we connect it to the past and the future and to events around it. A deer was here. It’s headed that way. It came from there, etc. We read the images that surround us and we tell stories as a means for survival. And despite what may seem our detached status in relation to our roots in “nature”, we still use those sorts of visual languages to manage our lives. Unfortunately, as with so many parts of our contrived and unnatural contemporary culture, we have come up with some pretty illogical rules around these languages, and that is where my disorder enters the picture. The way we portray ourselves physically is one of our oldest and most natural uses of visual language. Translations about the way something looks and moves can tell you myriad things about a being (What are it’s intents? What does it want?…) We all speak the language regularly. But we have also added to our vocabulary since the beginning of humanity, and not all of our new word and phrases are a positive advance. We’ve created meanings (mostly on little more than various governments; and cultures’ need to classify and divide) about all sorts of absurd notions like race and sex and what people of certain mindsets and entire walks of life look like, and transsexuality (and “race” and “sex”) is a problem because our definitions are skewed on several levels. “Society” is not out to get me, it’s just that I, as a full and intelligent person, don’t fit into our cultural definition of a full and intelligent person, yet I exist. That says to me that something’s not quite right with our system of meanings. This skewing is part of the roots of many problems, and it is why “transsexual” is far more than just a person bearing a different definition of self than the rest of the world perceives. Persona becomes not a choice or an evolution, but a physical aspect to be defined by everyone but the person themselves. This pattern of labeling and assumption affects everyone. A “man” looks a certain way. A “gay” looks another. A “child” acts like this. An “adult” would never do that. We are all both limited and taught to limit ourselves and others. It is part of why people are beaten down, raped, or harassed as they walk down the street. Its why Jews and gypsies were something to be wiped off the face of the earth in Germany sixty or so years ago. It is why the Civil Rights movement took place (the uncomfortable nature of it is why we want to believe it’s over.) It is also why we must remember to question everything we think we know — because we make the definitions that limit and destroy all of us. Who hasn’t, at some point in life, been stopped from doing something because it would be too girlie, boyish, gay, straight, black, white, rich, poor, or whatever? Who hasn’t done this constraining themselves? This matter of reassessing definitions is one of the many convergence points between my politics and my emotions. When I became a disorder, or a transsexual, or just a boy to people, it negates my existence because those things a
re not me. This is why it becomes so easy for me to end up on such a diatribe when addressing something like estrogen supplements as well. It’s all linked (we are all linked).

The system of living that kills us and this earth is the one that does this dividing and destruction and it is made of people, not just ideas or rulers. The “system” is us. When we do not support it, it cannot survive. It hurts us and we are brought up in a world that is told by its mother culture to ask for more of this abuse. We are saturated with the notion that it is not only the best, but the only way there si to live. But if we want to stop it (save ourselves, we need to start asking “why?”, instead (All we have to do is walk away). I hope that I can use my “disorder” to help people ask another “why”.

---

Sarik

The needle went into my left butt cheek and I became a new man. At least – that’s what I thought might happen. Gender is not black and white; in the two months since I began injecting testosterone into my “female” body, my position relative to our bi-polar gendered society has not gotten any less vague. Nonetheless, I’m excited and intrigued by the results of the testosterone. The changes themselves are hot, and the fact that I’m taking definite steps changing my body help me retain sanity.

As I biked home after getting my first shot, I felt twice as strong. My legs felt like pistons; my burst of energy was no doubt due partly to the excitement of the first shot, but it also felt chemically induced. Although my testosterone does was small, my muscle mass increased dramatically in the first few days following the injection. I felt a greater drive to do things, and increased physical stamina. The odor of my sweat changed. My brain was definitely a bit out of whack those first few days; I found myself taking action without clearly thinking about the situation first, occasionally with unfortunate results. (Fortunately all of my fuck-ups were on the same order of magnitude as my relatively small T dose.)

I was quite excited by my burgeoning arm muscles, but somewhat perplexed by my growing clitoris. The head quickly became more sensitive, and started to poke out more from the hood, resulting in much more frequent, intense stimulation. This made riding my bike extremely enjoyable, but made masturbation a bit tricky, rubbing my clit the wrong way resulted in a rather uncomfortable amount of overstimulation. I have since adjusted remarkably well to the heightened sensitivity.

My eager clit is well served by my intensified sex drive. Although hormone-induced, my new sexual energy feels natural and satisfying. With queer men I feel at home. With women however, my increased sexual energy feels out of proportion and overly aggressive. Although I write the above statements based on my experience, I shudder to define “men’s” and “women’s” sexual energy. Sexual energy is a personal factor that cannot be generalized, or so I would like to think; it disturbs me to realize the extent to which my energy is influenced by hormones. But I relish the energy itself.

Since going on hormones I’ve grown less passive and more reactive with my anger. I recently had a dream where I reacted more violently to somebody than ever before, literally beating them into the ground. Although the situation was within a dream, the sensation of pure, red-blooded violence shadowed me for days. Intellectually, I cannot accept this violent urge towards a random human. But something in my brain/blood drives me to desire the violence, or, more accurately, the adrenaline associated with the impact of a fist against a body. The desire is chemical.

My doctor warned me about intense feeling of anger. Anger fueled not by testosterone, but by the realization, as I begin to “pass” as male, of what I’ve been missing in a male-privileged culture. At this point, when I do pass it is as a weird adolescent boy, not as a suit-clad middle class man. Nonetheless, as I mutter “hi” to the man I pass on the street, extended from the other man towards me is a sense of recognition and, importantly, a lack of sexual objectification. As someone who was once sexually harassed as a woman and who is now perceived as male, I am acutely aware of the energy a woman can consume fighting sexual harassment. Men are in a poor position to comment on the extent of sexual harassment directed towards women.

What is men’s energy, vs. women’s energy? What is chemical and what is cultural?

To be continued…

The struggle to create a national micro powered FM community radio system in the United States is still too close to call, with corporate efforts underway in Congress to cancel the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) recent “legalization” of micro radio even while the FCC accepts the first applications for new micro powered stations. Urgent action is needed to fight this latest challenge to micro radio and save the FCC’s new legalization rules, even though evidence is mounting that the FCC’s new rules are seriously flawed because they don’t permit as many new stations as are technically possible.

In January, after years of radio civil disobedience by hundreds of micropowered “pirate” free radio stations nationwide, the FCC announced it would accept applications for legal Low Power FM radio stations (LPFM) operating at 100 watts or less with a range of 5 miles. The new LPFM stations are designed to provide an alternative to the largely corporate dominated radio dial. LPFM stations can be set up for as little as $1,000 and under FCC rules only non-profit associations will be able to apply for the stations. LPFM, if it goes forward, could serve as a significant “voice for the voiceless”-allowing local communities, activists, non-corporate musicians and regular people access to the airwaves.

The corporate radio industry, organized as the National Broadcasters Association (NAB), has always opposed cheap, community access to the radio dial. Given the corporate monoculture on the radio dial, with just a few “formats” replicated endlessly across the country, and with ever increasing corporate concentration of stations, the NAB has a lot to fear. Community radio, which would be relevant to local communities, innovative, and able to operate outside of narrow “formats”, is likely to draw listeners away from commercial broadcasts.

The NAB fiercely opposed the pioneering free radio stations that forced the FCC to legalize micro radio, pressuring the FCC to shut stations down by force. When the FCC proposed legalizing micro radio, the NAB spent thousands on biased technical studies to show that any new stations would cause interference. And now that the FCC has approved rules “legalizing” micro radio, which were passed after a year of study and after the FCC solicited and received thousands of comments from interested citizens, the NAB is again trying to kill micro radio, this time using big money and political influence.

On April 13, the House of Representatives passed the so-called “Oxley” Bill, which is designed to prevent the FCC from going ahead with its “legalization” of micro radio. The legislation, essentially written by the NAB, is a corporate attempt to go around the democratic process that, astonishingly, caused the FCC to “legalize” micro radio against all odds. There is no evidence that there was any public outcry demanding passage of the Oxley Bill-its of interest to corporate lobbyists, plain and simple. The NAB has a powerful lobbying apparatus on Capitol Hill, and corporate radio gives millions of dollars to Congressional candidates to ensure influence. Passage of the Oxley Bill is a textbook example of politics as usual-even where citizen organizations get reforms, their efforts can easily be vetoed by wealthy corporate interests.

According to the NAB, the Oxley Bill was intended to protect the radio dial from “interference” the NAB claims micro radio will cause. Their claims, disproved by the FCC’s own careful technical studies, were even further discredited when the NAB presented a falsified recording of “how the radio might sound if LPFM went ahead” before a Congressional hearing on LPFM. The tape was merely two voices mixed together. Interference is characterized by scratchiness and one signal being unintelligible, since FM receivers only accept one signal at a time. In response to the falsified tape, the FCC laboratories produced their own tape, which showed that under FCC rules, there would be no perceptible difference.

A Senate version of the Oxley Bill, SB 2068, is currently pending in the Senate. As Slingshot goes to press, it isn’t looking very good for the FCC’s legalization of micro radio. Only 11 Senators have gone on record opposing SB 2068, and micro radio advocates are strongly encouraging folks to write their Senators and urge them to vote no on SB 2068. (See end of article.)

It is ironic that the NAB is so intent on killing the new FCC licensing rules, because the FCC rules offer so little potential to micro broadcasters. When the FCC announced that California was in the first group of states where people could apply for LPFM licenses, activists commissioned an engineering study to determine where people could locate an LPFM station in the East Bay and San Francisco. The report came back with bad news: under the FCC rules, there was no license available in either area. The closest opportunity for a station was in Santa Cruz 90 miles to the south, Santa Rosa 60 miles to the north, and Stockton 80 miles east.

The FCC, hoping to head off exactly the type of NAB challenge now underway, enacted extremely conservative technical standards for LPFM. Under the rules, LPFM stations don’t have to protect other radio stations on the “3rd adjacent” channel, contrary to FCC rules for higher power stations, but they still have to protect other stations on the “2nd adjacent” channel. Or example, if there is a full powered station on 104.5 FM, the first adjacent channel is 104.3, the second adjacent channel is 104.1 and the third adjacent channel is 103.9.

The FCC decision to prohibit stations on the 2nd adjacent channel flies in the face of their own technical studies, as well as reality-there are hundreds of stations which were “grandfathered” in and are operating on 2nd adjacent channels with no noticeable interference. This restriction was clearly an FCC attempt to appease the NAB by prohibiting opportunities for “too many” micro stations, especially I urban areas. The real world result of the restriction is now obvious: there are no potential stations in the inner Bay Area. If micro radio advocates are able to save the FCC rules from NAB/Congressional extermination, the next step will be to pressure the FCC to expand the LPFM rules to permit stations to operate on the 2nd adjacent channel. The first task is saving the embattled, flawed rules.

What You Can Do

In response to the NAB attacks on micro radio, activists at the May 27 “War Council” adopted a five point program of action against the National Association of Broadcasters. Activists hope to shut down the NAB national convention which will take place in San Francisco September 20-23. Micro radio activists plan to target major advertisers on pro-NAB stations in communities across the country. In the Bay Area, KOIT, and the chairman of its parent company, Bruce Reese, are main targets. KOIT’s largest advertiser, Albertsons, is being asked to withdraw its advertising on KOIT. The War Council also called for the establishment of more micro radio stations as well as outreach and public education campaigns about potential LPFM.

People in the 40 states yet to have a chance to apply for LPFM license are strongly encouraged to immediately contact the National Lawyers Guild Committee on Democratic Communications, who can provide assistance in applying for a station. Based on experience gained in California and other states, it is evident that organizing an application has to begin early in order to be successful. Contact them at 448 Capp Street, San Francisco, CA 94110, 415 522-9814, www.nlgdc.org.

Finally, as distasteful as it can be, now is the time to write your Senator and request that they oppose SB 2068.

Let a thousand transmitters bloom!

Car Free Cities $29.95

By J.H. Crawford

International Books, 2000

90-5727-037-4

Imagine you live in a city free of the noise, stench and danger of cars, trucks and buses. Imagine all of your needs, from groceries to child care, are within a five-minute walk of your home. Imagine that the longest commute within your city takes 35 minutes door to door, by way of a cheap, safe and efficient public transportation system.

Carfree Cities us a landmark new text by J.H. Crawford which is sure to become a classic and a cornerstone of the movement to rollback the global cataclysm and tyranny of the automobile-starting at your front door. The book compares and contrasts Venice, Italy-the world’s premiere car free city-with Los Angeles, California-the world’s most automobile-addicted city.

Packed with design details and a sequence of summaries providing the argument for car free cities, the book may seem a bit dry and matter of fact at times, despite its exciting importance. Perhaps this is a result of writing the book in hopes of reaching not just those who are inspired to create a world free of automobiles, but for the audience which arguably needs it-the already infinitely dry and unsympathetic city planners and traffic engineers who will ultimately either embrace or reject this concept. Without winning that crowd over, expect a lot of problems when you try to see your dreams realized. As many bicycle advocates say, “never argue with an engineer”. Nevertheless, the book reads well and the ideas flow smoothly, and its wealth of information will more likely empower you should you ever have to argue city planning with an engineer or anyone else-let alone try to understand some of the gibberish they’re capable of spewing. After a rousing forward by the illustrious James Howard Kunstler (author of Geography of Nowhere, etc.), Crawford’s ideas begin with the premise that oil reserves are dwindling, that the automobile (whether or not it uses petroleum) is destroying not only our cities but our entire planet, and that cities are important human centers which are not going away and must become sustainable, livable cities. Crawford brings us textbook-style through a discussion of cities including sections on “Yardsticks for Cities”, loads about the potential for good public transport, and even the chapter, “Wicked Cars”.

Next he delves into the nuts and bolts of carfree design, including sections on design parameters, topology, districts, city blocks, buildings, passenger transport, and the ever tricky, freight delivery. These sections are graced with mandala-like diagrams of his reference design. From the sky, this dream city looks like a bead necklace allowed to fall into a supple shape. The beads are centers of human activity-dense, multiuse development surrounding a central transit stop, where many of one’s everyday needs are met. Most of these circles of development are residential, some are more commercial, and a few are reserved for “not in my backyard” activities like industry. For a small city, the necklace is folded once like a figure eight. For a very large city, the necklace looks more like a snowflake, with inner loops and outer loops organically unfolding like a flower. Everything else is green and open space.

Zooming in on the circles, we find a delightfully crinkly chaos of adjacent buildings, jaggedly patched together as if formed like crystals, similar to what one finds in many older European cities. Some streets are so narrow you can touch the building faces on either side at the same time. Others widen into major town squares and open space. Each block can have it’s own internal open space, which can be shared with the public, or closed to the street and either shared by all who live on the block, or parceled into yards like in everytown USA. I find the publicly accessible shared yard concept vastly more humane and inspiring than the chopped up little private lot model. Other blocks (especially closer to the circle’s center) may have as little as no open space.

Next, and perhaps most importantly, Crawford discusses the problem of actually implementing carfree cities in the real world. Three models emerge: one, to build a city from scratch; two, rebuild a city in decline (e.g., Cleveland or Detroit), making use of the infrastructure wasting away; and finally, three, phasing in carfree sections of existing cities. This last concept is most important from an ecological standpoint. We must stop covering the land with new cities, and instead make better use of what we have. “The greatest challenge in the development of carfree cities is the conversion of vast autocentric cities in the USA” writes Crawford. His plan calls for mapping the future development, increasing density near improved transit lines, and slowly demolishing buildings outside the carfree area. This concept is remarkably similar to Richard Register of Ecocity Builder’s plan for green Ecocities. Both Register and Crawford, while recognizing the value of the bicycle, design primarily for walking and transit, although Crawford includes a rough sketch of a “bicycle city”, saying that while such a city is more resource-efficient, he believes “that the reference design offers a better quality of life than this design”.

Facing up to the difficulty of convincing existing cities to change is the first and biggest step. Once there is political will-whether due to an ecological crisis, public demand, or developer’s incentives-everything can follow. Redeveloping cities is a dicey proposition-not only are developers generally swine, but every carfree area (after visionary activists have poured a pint or two of lifeblood into winning a project) will become potentially lucrative for private exploitation, defeating many of the benefits of carfree cities. Major real estate polls show the number one concern of new home buyers is to live on a street with little motorcar traffic. In places like the San Francisco Bay Area, where cities surrounding the booming Silicon Valley are being rapidly and heartlessly gentrified, maintaining affordable housing and diversity is at an all-time crisis.

But wait, there’s hope! Perhaps the most promising and exciting concept in the carfree cities proposal is that streets can be decommissioned for housing. The average urban street in the USA is capable of supporting a nice dense housing development down the middle, with room to widen the sidewalks for every need including emergency access. Because in general, municipalities own the streets (in Berkeley, almost 30% of the land is streets), the city can choose to license the land to non-profit developers, thereby achieving numerous goals at once: attractive, pleasant, livable areas of the city; affordable housing; increased density near transit (resulting in better working transit to meet increased demand); increased revenue base for cities; decreased cost of maintaining streets and private automobile use; and a potentially effective pressure on the corporate-ladder-climbing yuppie scum to actually stop consuming and be poor enough to be allowed to live in a stylin’ hip-ass urban epicenter carfree development! Why it makes my seat rattle just thinkin’ about it!

Without the incredible burden o supporting private automobile use, cities would have much more resources on hand for actual human needs (e.g., housing, healthcare, education). Environmental racism could be greatly reduced (e.g., freeways crisscrossing through poor/minority neighborhoods) because neighborhoods would be integrated. Poor families would be able to take public transportation to find jobs and to get services. Those that struggle with owning a car taking up to 50% or more of their income would suddenly be greatly relieved of that need. The “brain drain” of urban flight to the suburbs caused by the automobile, which decimated and ghettoized many minority neighborhoods, would be reversed, and people would learn to live together and solve basic human needs more equitably, for everyon
e’s benefit. Crime would be reduced not only by improving everyone’s quality of life but because in a carfree city, there are no “getaway cars”. Public spaces would begin to function in a healthy way and reverse the current trend of locking down the commons, rousting the “undesirables”, hiring more and more police forces, putting anti-sleeping devices on benches, etc. As people began to interact with one another again, the sense of value of human beings would begin to return to societies suffering from automobile-induced decline, and so social policies would become more humane.

Coalitions have been building more and more around related issues that carfree cities can help solve. Health workers, environmentalists, social justice advocates, opponents of globalization and more all have common ground here. Many groups work in relative isolation in hopes of reducing the many health, environmental and other harms of automobile use (whether they target sprawl and its destruction of farmland and habitat; asthma/lung disease; deaths and disabilities from crashes; cultural/aesthetic objections; social justice including opposing environmental racism/classism and increasing affordable housing and access to job and services locally, opposing ruthless genocide for oil globally; increasing affordable housing and access to jobs and services locally, opposing ruthless genocide for oil globally; increasing bicycling, walking and mass transit modeshares; and saving lives by getting people to exercise). Despite all this, the public has been disempowered by the extent of the monopoly over our everyday lives. But the potential for a powerful change is enormous. It’s time to organize hard, show that carfree cities can work, and begin to implement them around the world before the Los Angeles model (already being exported to China) takes their lands as well.

Ask your library and locally owned booksellers to carry Carfree Cities. Crawford has been touring around the world-invite him to speak! Check out www.carfree.com.

At the Ford Motor Co.’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, the company issued its first ever “corporate citizenship report”, which made some amazing and contradictory disclosures.

The report acknowledged that sport utility vehicles (SUVs) are a danger to people and the earth because they contribute more than cars to global warming, emit more smog causing pollution and endanger other motorists. However, as a sign of their “corporate citizenship”, Ford pledged to continue building SUVs because they are the company’s most profitable product.

The decision to continue manufacturing the socially irresponsible vehicles was reportedly a painful one for William C. Ford Jr., the company’s chair. He worries that automakers may get a bad reputation, comparable to that of tobacco companies.

But fear will not be allowed to get the better of the makers of the Ford Excursion, an SUV which gets only 10 miles to the gallon in the city, and 13 on the highway. “If we didn’t provide that vehicle, somebody else would, and they wouldn’t provide it as responsibly as we do,” Ford said.

How “responsible” the Ford Motor Co. has been in manufacturing SUVs is dubious. SUVs are three times as likely as cars to kill the other driver in a crash; but the SUV occupants are equally likely to be killed because the sport utilities tend to roll over and they lack “crumple zones.”

A how-to guide to the sport and science of SUV tipping

The Flatcats have struck again.

Somewhere in the East Bay Hills, in a very quiet, wealthy neighborhood, very early in the morning when all is still and cold and dark, a pair of hands work silently. Suddenly there is a slight hiss, and the front tire of a four-ton SUV with leather interior, tinted glass, 8 miles to the gallon, cell fax machine, goes flat. With 20 minutes, 14 SUVs have matching flat tires. Flyers denouncing fossil fuel use, driving, poor urban planning and corporate domination that make SUVs possible are carefully placed under windshield wipers. Another mission accomplished.

Cars, driving, too many roads, expanding suburbs, green house gas emissions: these things are destroying the earth and ruining life for its human inhabitants.

While the “above ground”, legal movement for less driving, more public transit, better urban design, more biking and other crucial social change is expanding, an equally important underground movement of sabotage and urban insurrection is quietly underway. The San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of Flatcats, which struck most recently on Bike to Work Day (May 16) and claimed responsibility for deflating tires on 20 SUVs, is taking up the challenge. The destruction of the atmospheric balance on the planet is at stake as hundreds of millions of vehicles world-wide emit ever more green-house gases, changing the earth’s climate and threatening the largest species extinction since the disappearance of the dinosaurs.

It is indisputable that the private automobile is the largest contributor to global climate change. For many 21st century humans, distant emissions targets negotiated by the largest auto producing nations which hope to reduce emissions to 1990 levels, which were already frightfully high, are not good enough. “Above ground” activists use public education and lobbying to bring incremental change. A few more dollars for buses and bikes, a few less for freeway construction. And these tiny changes are fiercely fought by powerful corporations with millions to corrupt public officials and buy the minds of the populace. Even if all the changes proposed by advocates were all implemented immediately, cars would still rule. More desperate measure are in order.

The art, science and sport of “SUV tipping” is expanding rapidly in many urban areas to combat auto domination, although to date these clandestine actions have been completely suppressed by mainstream media outlets fearful of encouraging greater numbers of participants in this do-it-yourself sport. SUVs are a convenient and symbolic target, since they are permitted to emit 5.5 times as much smog-causing pollution per mile as cars under federal law. But the real goal is drastically reducing everyday dependence on all types of cars, not just SUVs. And car-culture must be fought not just to prevent global climate change, but because car dependence destroys urban areas, crushes opportunities for community, and impoverishes the spirit.

Flatcats deflate SUV tires without destroying the tire or tube, aiming, or now, at annoyance rather than property destruction. Their website notes that “we are however sorry to target individuals in this manner”. But the auto culture is so entrenched, where to start? The authors of auto domination are many, powerful and disbursed: corporations of all kinds (auto, oil, road building, developers), the governments they dominate.

Following are some tips for becoming a flatcat in your neighborhood:

• Go to an auto parts store and buy a valve core remover. These are often fastened to valve caps found in most auto parts stores.

• Attach it to a ¼ inch dowel (found at hobby stores) or, for faster action, a cordless screwdriver. Out in the field, you remove the valve cap, put the core remover on and turn. You don’t need to completely remove the core to let all the air out.
  

• Acting in a tiny group is best, but only with trusted friends and as few as possible for security. One or two lookouts, plus a person on the valve is best. For added security, a person at home in case of trouble. The person at home doesn’t need to know what is planned.
  

• If the lookouts spot someone, pick an innocent signal, like yelling a common name. Don’t yell “cops!”
  

• NEVER talk or brag about actions, or discuss them on the phone, inside a building or near strangers. Folks bragging may be cops.
  

• Wear gloves. Any tools should be free of fingerprints.
  

• Make a flyer explaining what is going on. When making the flyer, don’t use unusual fonts (use Helvetica). Consider printing the flyers out at a copy store to make it harder to trace computer printer models. Never retain originals or computer copies of lfyers.
  

• Dress like you belong where you’re doing the action and have a normal activity you’re engaged in: walking the dog, jogging, etc.
  

• When finished, don’t head towards your home. Go in the opposite direction and then turn back after a while.
  

• Use a bike for transport. There is no license plate to trace.
  

• If caught, don’t admit anything, don’t talk, don’t argue or sloganize, try to get away before cops arrive. If caught by cops, say nothing and wait for your lawyer.
  

• Create beauty, have fun, don’t get caught.
  

Parking, or more accurately the campaign to stop more parking from being built, is increasingly becoming the focus of efforts to save the planet, cities and people everywhere from auto strangulation. And this isn’t the erotic kind.

As traffic congestion reaches a breaking point, trouble finding parking us one of the chief headaches for drivers. The reaction from business and government: build more parking to “solve” the problem. Unfortunately, more parking doesn’t solve the problem-it only paves the way for even more driving, more auto dependence, and requires the construction of still more parking.

In Berkeley, two struggles over parking are heating up: Mayor Shirley Dean’s plan to subsidize a privately owned parking structure for the 4th Street shopping district and the University’s plan to build 1,400 parking spaces on a lot 3 blocks from campus that could (and should!) be used for housing. The 4th Street garage is an obvious attempt to give “corporate welfare” on a local scale. 4th Street is an expensive, yuppie shopping district mostly owned by West Berkeley developer Denny Abrams, who made millions from the trendy shops and bistros in the once industrial district. The proposed parking garage, seeking $2-$3 million in city funding, is claimed to be necessary so 4th Street can compete with big box stores in Emeryville which are surrounded by acres of parking. The first attempt to fund the garage was recently defeated, but Mayor Dean is expected to keep trying.

The university parking plans center around the Underhill block, a huge parking pit jus NE of People’s Park. UC Berkeley wants to build a parking megastructure for 1,000 cars on a block directly between two blocks already containing dorms. Each dorm houses 1,000 students. This begs the question of why the university would rather build 1,000 parking space for people to drive to campus than 1,000 units of housing so people could live and walk 3 blocks to campus.

The project would mean big traffic increases right next to the main bus corridor on College Avenue (which is already congested) and on two proposed bicycle boulevards. With the gutting of rent control statewide, rents have already skyrocketing 40% this year. UC Berkeley’s own documents admit that the housing shortage for students hurts diversity (on top of the gutting of affirmative action).

Enter Rick Young, a UC law student, Rick formed PALPFLHUB (People Against Lots of Parking and For Lots of Housing on the Underhill Block) and used the University’s own documents to show that the university as lying about the “need” for parking: rather than losing 1,000 spaces in recent years as they claimed, they only lost about 50 spaces.

Rick realized it was time for direct action. He started an encampment at Underhill, demanding negotiations with the Chancellor on 5 demands. Rick stayed in the lot for three weeks, garnering lots of local media attention on the issue of land use. The Chancellor was clearly waiting him out, hoping the students would leave and Rick would go away. We declared it Palpflubia and seceded.

Meanwhile, a lot of excitement was generated for the possibilities of the ongoing campaign. “Let’s turn this into an ecological demonstration project! How can we best use the underutilized spaces?” One person wanted a goat herd. One person wanted to plant trees. Others wanted solar panels. I wanted windmills towering up from the vacant triangles.

To up the pressure Rick found a junkyard car and arranged for it to be delivered at the lot-where it was eagerly smashed to bits by loads of students and wingnuts, delighted for the break from finals. Early next morning, he was arrested along with all his possessions (and all of his friends’!) including his couches. HE got out and was rearrested twice more before he was banned from the lot by Court Order.

With Rick banned from the lot and the students gone, the campaign went into a whole new phase. To build community and fun raise, every Saturday night at 9 PM people descend on the pit with couches and carpets and treats to turn the lot into a living room and watch “cheezie Americana fliks and cool politico shorts”, all brought by bike cart, electricity powered by a boat battery.

Come fall, Underhill could very well turn into a tent city as students, angry because they cannot find a place to live, join the protest of subsidized environmental destruction for the wealthy at the expense of housing, diversity and mother earth.

For more information about Rick’s campaign check out www.geocities.com/rickisyoung/ or call him at (510) 666-8464. For more information about the Bike-In Movie Night, call (510) CREW-CUT (273-9288).