Category: Articles

Dear Slingshot:

I was troubled by Daniel Dylan Young’s short essay, “The Year 2000 Problem, the Social Revolution & You,” Slingshot, Fall 1998. I felt it was dangerously simplistic and poorly thought through.

While I am not at all convinced the notorious “Y2K bug” will turn out to be anywhere near as devastating to the technology which virtually runs our society today as Daniel and others predict, I acknowledge with him the likelihood of significant political and economic disruption beginning around the end of 1999. And I also agree with the most basic tenet of his argument, that radical organizers should take advantage of the impending “crisis” and look upon it as an opportunity. But I do not share his utopian vision of the potential for the bug and its aftermath to spark “social revolution”; and by this Daniel actually seems to mean insurrection, the point at which the last vestiges of the state/capitalist system are torn down and replaced by liberatory alternatives.

My concern is that we have yet to develop those liberatory alternatives. Daniel asks “what better time for an anarchist revolution…?” and comments, “it’s always a good day for a revolution.” My response is that I can think of far better historical periods, in the future, for insurrectionary change. Daniel has fallen into that classical anarchist pitfall that pins our hopes and visions on a disastrously inadequate notion of spontaneous revolt. If we have learned nothing else from revolutionary history, it should be that we are not prepared for revolutionary changes unless we have already established alternative forms of social institutions and infrastructure, and unless we have developed the skills necessary to practice participatory, direct democracy and operate cooperative workplaces — indeed, a decentralized, democratically planned economy. In short, we simply are not ready for an insurrection. We have nothing with which to replace capitalism. Not to mention the spheres of kinship and cultural life which go entirely unmentioned in Daniel’s piece but are nevertheless an integral — as opposed to secondary — factor in social revolution!

There are two possible results of premature insurrection. The first is chaos. When old, oppressive social structures collapse “overnight,” the tendency is not toward immediate reorganization of society along anarchist principles. Instead, power vacuums are typically filled with violence, with economic speculation, with starvation, and so forth. And whatever can be said of the so-called “anarchist movement,” preparation to lead the reconstruction of society is not on our current list of attributes. The skills and institutions required to rebuild a new, nonauthoritarian society amidst the rubble of the old take decades, perhaps generations to develop. Some cultures, such as the Maya Zapatistas in Southern Mexico, live simpler yet more severe existences with far better developed notions and practices of democracy. In the North, we can boast nothing of the sort, so we can expect only to fail in an emergency, as peoples of many undemocratic societies have in times of social collapse.

Which brings us to the second possible consequence of revolting Unprepared “masses” of people (and I am not arrogant enough to exclude myself or anyone likely reading this from that group) tend to resort to dependence upon strong, charismatic leaders who present rhetorical plans for a new society and demonstrate a capability to implement such plans. This is the role of a vanguard, an elite group or personality cult which requires of the people not skills but committed support. The vanguard seizes power when the opportunity arises and then takes up the task of managing the revolution and educating the masses from on high.

My point is that we had better hope, ironically enough, that some aspects of the Establishment stay in tact past Daniel’s “numerologically significant” “Year 00.” I for one am frightened of the potential for competition rather than mutual aid. Should welfare and social security and WIC checks stop arriving, even for a few months, it is obvious who will be at a dangerous disadvantage. The military and FEMA already maintain stockpiles of emergency supplies and food, which they will dole out as per their wishes. In the absence of a cooperative infrastructure to carry us through any hard(er) times which might be brought on by partial technological collapse, there is legitimate reason even for anarchists to fear. Just because we don’t believe humans need hierarchical forms of government doesn’t so much as imply that we are not largely dependent upon them, in the here and now, for protection from still nastier predators in the private, market-driven economy.

I remain optimistic. If the Y2K bug does lead to widescale catastrophe, radical organizers should definitely be prepared to get involved in mutual aid efforts in their communities. But to do what Daniel is suggesting, which amounts to a ridiculous and unethical attempt to pray on people’s fears (“The emotions we can most readily capitalize on are the ambiguous anticipation lying in the back of the minds of the masses” [!]). Fear-mongering is never constructive. If we need to “capitalize” on anything, it should be people’s hopes, aspirations and strengths. These tend to come out during times of calamity, and surprisingly enough it doesn’t take any prodding from anarchist types to prompt one neighbor to help another. What we can offer, to the extent we have practiced it ourselves (and this is limited, let’s agree!), is the development of collective structures and processes for bringing about mutual aid more equitably and efficiently.

The main problem with Daniel’s view of the Y2K moment is that it is every bit as apocalyptic as the perspective of those peddling survivalist dogma and tales of Armageddon. It still looks at a historical moment as the creator of history, instead of acknowledging our role in it as people who bring about change slowly, cautiously, patiently and completely.

Brian A. Dominick Syracuse, NY

Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s “quality of life” campaign means a police state for ordinary New Yorkers outside the new yuppie class. More and more constituencies in Gotham City are standing up and fighting back.

Giuliani, barred from seeking a third term by term limits, is using New York City as a showcase for his national ambitions. He is no longer playing to his own constituents, but to the white racist subruban voters across the country who he hopes will sweep him to national office on his record of getting a dangerous city full of whining minorities under control. He’s trying to make New York like the rest of America–suburbanified, sterile and orderly. As Times Sqaure and other tracts of primo real estate are sold off to Disney, Giuliani, who grew up in suburban Long Island, is squeezing out everything that makes New York unique. He is the suburbs’ revenge on the urban center.

Giuliani ran on a symbolic platform of cracking down on the “squeegee men”–a policy which took a horrible turn this summer as a squeegee man was shot by an off-duty cop whose windshield he tried to clean, ending up critically injured.

Since being elected to a second term, he has selected targets a little higher up the social ladder, persecuting the city’s mostly-immigrant working-class sectors–bicycle messengers, umbrella hawkers (mostly Senegalese), street peddlers and cabbies.

The taxi drivers were the first to fight back. After Giuliani pushed restrictive new regulations through the Taxi & Limosine Commission, making operating a cab prohibitively expensive, they organized a series of protests. The biggest, planned for May 21, planned to block traffic in Manhattan. But Giuliani placed police checkpoints on all the bridges to the island, turning back all cabs with no fare.

Rudy Giuliani boasted in the next day’s papers: “They know that we broke their strike–destroyed it, really. Nobody showed up today. And that didn’t happen just because we allowed business to go on as usual. That happened because we had a plan to stop them from doing it.”

He then went on to quote from flyers calling for bringing Manhattan traffic to a standstill and says that if such a document had been found in the hands of a “terrorist” group, “then everybody would understand that you cannot allow that to happen.” This was a typical Giuliani racist allusion, a veiled reference to the fact that many cabbies are immigrants from the Middle East.

Bicyclists have also been the target of a new police crackdown, especially messengers and delivery workers, who are often recent immigrants, speak little English and function in a semi-legal “gray economy.” In addittion to supporting new legislation which would allow police to confiscate bicycles being rode on the sidewalk, Giuliani has unleashed the police in a harrassment campaign. A study in the New York Times noted that in the 19th precinct over a three week period, 1,168 summonses were issued to bicyclists but only 50 to motorists.

Pedestrians haven’t been spared the assault. Shortly after his re-election last year, Giuliani erected pedestrian barricades at every intersection along 49th and 50th Streets between Fifth and Lexington Avenues, making peds walk out of their way to free the avenues for vehicle traffic. These were protested in December by Transportation Alternatives activists, who dressed up as cows to drive home the point that pedestrians were being treated like cattle.

The city’s street food vendors also came under onerous regulations and are restricted from certain areas of the city, and held a half-day strike in protest in May. Curbside book and merchandise vendors are also being relegated to out-of-the-way blocks, forcing many out of business–despite the fact that courts have ruled that book vednors are protected by the First Amendment.

Street artists have also protested that they are being arrested under the new regulations. On May 27, they protested in front of Cooper Union, where the Mayor was giving a speech about his support of the arts. In Giuliani’s usual pre-emptive tactic against street protests, police had the place totally sealed off–the closest the protestors could get was the Cube, a small traffic island across a wide intersection from Cooper Union.

Street and subway musicians are suffering under the same wave of harrassment. Subway musicians have even been harrassed for playing in spots where they are legally allowed to with the Music Under New York (MUNY) program.

Curbside newsstand operators have protested Giuliani’s plans to have all the old stands replaced with new mass-produced ones, to be covered with big-bucks adverstising that the operators are responsible for any vandalism against but wouldn’t get a cut of.

Community gardeners on the Lower East Side saw two gardens–one named for the Brazilian rainforest crusader Chico Mendez–bulldozed to make way for a yuppie condo development last Fall. Four more neighborhood gardens, mostly built and maintained by Puerto Rican and Dominican residents who reclaimed vacant and rubble-strewn lots, were sold of to developers in July. Also included in the auction was the Puerto Rican community center Charas, which reclaimed an abandoned schoolbuilding 20 years ago, and was given a lease by the city. Charas is challenging the sale in court, on the grounds that the City illegally refused to consider the group’s own bid for the property. The City, meanwhile, refuses to even say who the new owner is. Charas leader Armando Perez vows to resist eviction to the end.

While harrassment of the homeless has of course escalated, low-income tenants are also meeting with totalitarian tactics. In January, a tenement on the Lower East Side’s Stanton Street was demolished by the city after the summary eviction of the immigrant tenants. They were not even allowed back in to rescue pets or collect personal belongings before a City-contracted wrecking crane destroyed their home before their unbelieving eyes. The tenants deny City claims that their building was in danger of imminent collapse. The previous February, a squatter building on East Third Street was similarly destoryed with no notice to the evicted inhabitants.

Police brutality survivors, and their next-of-kin, charge Giuliani with running a city where cops can maim and kill with impunity. Abner Louima, the Haitian immigrant who was tortured and ritually sodomized while in police custody last summer, is only the most prominent of a series of vicious police attacks on blacks across the city. The Louima case is being treated as outrageous only because of the twisted psycho-sexual angle. If the cops had merely beat Abner to death, or gunned him down when they first apprehended him, he wouldn’t be a household name in New York–he would have been a brief blurb on the news, if that. Norman Siegel of the New York Civil Liberties Union has stepped down from the special commission Giuliani was forced to form following the Louima incident, charging it with being a toothless propaganda charade.

Giuliani, meanwhile, dismisses as empty propaganda the recent reports by both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch charging the NYPD with systematic human rights abuses. The paramilitary NYPD “anti-drug” operations terrorize whole communities, especially in Brooklyn’s African American neighborhoods of Bedford-Stuyvesant and East New York.

The last year has seen a wave of no-knock wrong-address raids on black and Latino homes across the city, in which the apartments of unoffending citizens have been ransacked and children menaced at gunpoint. The mayor has refused to apologize for these violations. Giuliani defended the NYPDÕs record of 10 bogus busts out of 45,000 drug warrants last year. “I think 10 out of 45,000 is a very understandable percentage,” he told the press in early March. But records were not kept for warrantless raids–such as that which occurred just two weeks later at another Bronx apartment. Police battered down a door and charged in with guns drawn–to confront a g
randmother, her daughter and six-year-old grandson watching TV. “I was scared they were going to shoot us,” said the youngster, Jaquan Fulton. Police said they misunderstood an informant’s directions to the apartment.

Police video cameras have been installed in Washington Squaure Park for anti-drug surveillance. Smoking a joint outdoors has become nearly impossible in Giuliani’s New York. Those busted for toking on the street are no longer given desk-appearance tickets, but are put “through the system,” waiting up to 72 hours in “The Tombs” of 100 Center Street to see a judge. The legal limit that arrestees can be held in The Tombs was recently expanded from 48 hours due to the system being overloaded with petty Òquality-of-lifeÓ arrests.

Cultural space in Giuliani’s New York is shrinking like a sphincter. Sex retailers and performers are protesting Giuliani’s restrictive zoning regulations, which purges them from most of the city. In addittion to holding public protests, sex workers and business owners are challenging the regulations before the US Supreme Court on First Amendment grounds.

Salsa musicians on Amsterdam Avenue are up in arms over Giuliani’s enforcement of the outdated “cabaret laws,” which ban bands with horn sections from business with no “cabaret license.”

The East Village rock’n’roll clubs CBGBs, Continental Divide and Coney Island High were recently the target of NYPD raids. The raids were officially to crack down on drug use by patrons, but CBGBs, the historic birthplace of punk rock and an establshed neighborhood institution, was actually closed by police in the raid when management couldnÕt find a copy of their liquor license.

The Chinatown community was angered in January over Giuliani’s refusal to accomodate in any form the traditional Chinese New Year celebration on the grounds that fireworks disturb the peace. Community leaders offered to keep the firecrackers confined to certain blocks, but Giuliani wouldn’t give an inch. For the first time in Chinatown’s history, the traditional celebration was not held.

City employees are facing lay-offs as no-wage “workfare” workers are brought in for many jobs. Hospital workers have repeatedly held protests in Harlem over plans to privatize or close the only hospital in a community where the life expectancy is lower than that of Bangladesh. Giuliani wants to spend $600 million to move Yankee Stadium from The Bronx to Upper Manhattan (a move protested by Bronx leaders as racist) at the same time that he threatens to shut down Harlem Hospital in the name of austerity!. Workfare workers, in turn, protest that the city has refused to recognize their union, on the grounds that they are not really workers.

On June 30, thousands of construction workers, angered over the Metropolitan Transportation AuthorityÕs awarding a construction contract to a non-union company, held a militant march in Midtown, battling the police who tried to restrain them from taking the streets.

In April 1995, thousands of students from the City University of New York (CUNY) protested at City Hall against budget cuts. They were joined by many kids from the city’s public high schools, which are overcrowded and in disrepair, with classes even being held in bathrooms. Giuliani, as he slashed the education budget, complained that some of the protestorÕs signs misspelled his name.

The student struggle continues. This June, after surveillance cameras were discovered hidden in smoke detectors in student meeting rooms at City College of New York (CCNY, a part of the CUNY system), officials said they had been installed to combat burglary. But an affidavit by the college security director in a suit filed by students admitted that they were actually aimed at gathering intelligence on planned student protests against budget cuts.

Anger against Mayor Rudolph Giuliani is fast growing in New York City. Whether the various constituencies he is making life hell for will be able to unite in an effective multi-issue coalition remains to be seen.

A coalition of more than 30 public interest organizations recently served California’s Attorney General Dan Lungren with an unusual request: that he do his job. They asked that he use all the legal tools available to protect citizens from harm. Lungren enjoys using tools like 3-Strikes and the death penalty to punish individual criminal offenders, but what about those offenders that rampantly damage our health, safety, environment, and quality of life-the corporate offender?

More than twice as many people die each year in the US from preventable workplace diseases and injuries than from murder. Ten times greater property losses are inflicted by white-collar crime than by theft and robbery. We can’t even measure the consequences to our health and environment of industrial pollution. Worst of all, the fact that corporations have bought our political processes means we no longer feel empowered to do anything about these problems.

All states have laws that grant corporate charters, essentially business licenses, and provisions to revoke them. The California Code of Civil Procedure, § 803 and 1801 authorize the Attorney General to take action to revoke the charter of “any domestic corporation… upon the Attorney General’s own information or upon complaint of a private party, to procure a judgment dissolving the corporation and … forfeiting its corporate existence upon any of the following grounds: (1) The corporation has seriously offended against any provision of the statutes regulating corporations. (2) The corporation has fraudulently abused or usurped corporate privileges or powers… ” Just as the State revokes the operating licenses of hundreds of professionals each year for malpractice, corporations can be dissolved and their assets sold to others who will obey the law and protect the public interest.

On September 10, activists presented a 127-page petition in favor of revoking the corporate charter of Unocal (Union Oil of California). “After extensive reflection, discussion and research, those of us acting here as part of We the People ask the Attorney General and the Governor to use this tool that lies ignored in their desk drawers, a tool to keep giant corporations wholly subordinate to the sovereign people by whose permission and toleration they exist… If the information against Unocal… is not enough to galvanize them into action, then what in the world would be enough?” Their petition alleges 10 counts of crimes against humanity and the environment. They include:

Environmental Devastation, “contaminating land, air and water from San Francisco to Los Angeles, helping destroy rainforests in southeast Asia, and contributing to climate change while funding a researcher to throw doubt on climate-change science.”

Unfair and Unethical Treatment of Workers. After hundreds of OSHA violations that left workers sick, disabled, and dead, Unocal has now declared that “it no longer considers itself as a US company,” abandoning long-time employees for cheaper labor overseas.

Aiding Oppression of Women and Homosexuals; Enslavement and Forced Labor; Forced Relocation of Burmese Villages and Villagers; Killings, Torture, and Rape; Complicity in Cultural Genocide of Tribal and Indigenous Peoples… In the name of profit, Unocal has colluded with some of the most oppressive regimes in the modern world, for example Burma and Afghanistan.

Usurpation of Political Power. Unocal has legitimized brutal human rights abusers in Afghanistan and Burma, negotiating business deals that promise them major military support. This has undermined government sanctions policies, pushing instead for policies of “constructive engagement” that allow its business deals to thrive. “California authorized Unocal to be a business corporation, not to be an international policy entity working to thwart US foreign policy and to subvert the democratic process.”

Deception of the Courts, Shareholders and the Public. That’s right, lies, lies, lies.

Naturally, Lungren dismissed the petition, but it marks a major action by a growing movement to return corporations to the democratic control of the people by revoking the charters of corporations that violate our human and civil rights. Regulatory agencies and the occasional fine do nothing to stop widespread corporate abuses of power. Since corporations operate by OUR authority, it’s time to tell them to stop!

For more information about this project, contact the National Lawyers Guild International Law Project for Human, Economic, and Environmental Defense (HEED) 213-736-1094.

In the wake of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s denial of Mumia Abu Jamal’s last state appeal on October 26, the government is closer to executing a political prisoner than it has been since the Rosenbergs were electrocuted in the 1950s. Although attorneys have filed a petition for rehearing, Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge could sign a death warrant to kill the award-winning journalist, former Black Panther and radical at any time.

Mumia was wrongly convicted of killing a Philadelphia policeman in 1982 after a trial tainted by extensive governmental misconduct. Physical evidence and credible witnesses demonstrate that Mumia could not have killed the officer. Mumia has now been on death row for 17 years, during which time he has continued his work as a journalist despite the state’s attempts to silence him.

It now appears that Mumia’s last chance to survive is a final federal appeal, and more importantly, the Court of public opinion. Despite some publicity, including the film “Mumia Abu-Jamal: A Case for Reasonable Doubt?” which aired on national television, Mumia is hardly a household word and it is possible that an innocent radical will be executed without most Americans even knowing about it. Mumia’s case has received much more attention outside the US than here at home, and worldwide Mumia’s case is considered an example of America’s racist injustice system running wild.

Protests are planned worldwide soon after governor Ridge signs Mumia’s death warrant. In the Bay Area, meet the Tuesday after the death warrant is signed at 5:30 p.m., Montgomery and Market St., San Francisco (Montgomer BART.) To get involved in efforts to raise awareness of Mumia’s case and save his life, call 415-431-3594. You can also call governor Ridge and demand that he order a new trial for Mumia: Tom Ridge, Main Capitol Building, Rm 2225, Harrisburg, PA 17120, governor@ stata.PA.US, 717-787-2500. Or, let the State of Pennsylvania’s

Art & Revolution and the Prison Activist Resource Center (PARC) co-sponsored a March to protest the expansion of the prison-industrial-complex into downtown Berkeley. One of two marches held during the Critical Resistance conference at UC Berkeley the weekend of September 25-27, a crowd of 300-500 gathered Sunday in Sproul Plaza with large puppets, such as this one of Mumia Abu Jamal. The march made its way through the streets of Berkeley to the site of the new jail/police station being built at MLK & Addison Streets. People attacked the construction fence with paint and hurled their bodies against it. They had just managed to smash through part of the fence when Police arrived. No one was arrested.

Saturdays March to End the Drug War, was kicked off with a speak-but..T-he crowd then marched with a giant banner from Telegraph and Haste up to the conference site.

Off With Their Heads!

Movement Against Monarchy March

London – In October over 700 protestors (including a hooded executioner complete with noose, 20ft portable guillotine, and multiple Prince Charles’s ripe for beheading) marched around Central London and through the West End calling for the immediate end of the ludricrous Monarchy system. Backed by a dozen carnivalesque drummers the crowd chanted “The Ritz, The Ritz, We’re Gonna Get Rid of the Ritz” as confused tourists looked on.

Fuck the Cars, Let’s Play Volleyball! National French Car-Free Day

France – 35 cities banned cars from their central districts for one day in October, a move well appreciated by pedestrians. French Activists extended the official plan though a number of well-timed actions. In Paris the Champs Elysee was blocked by a tripod during the morning rush hour. Some in Lyon “borrowed” barriacades and “street closed” signs from the city council, blocked off a street and covered it with sand for boules and volleyball. Everyone brought apple tarts and cakes to enjoy while the police slowly circled round the festivities in patrol cars. There also was a Critical Mass in Dijon and a “Lorry-Free Day” in Chambery – the tunnel was blocked to trucks.

Eugene to NIKE – “Just Don’t Do It!” Impending NIKEtown Sparks Protest

Eugene, Oregon – On October 17 scores of anti-corporate activists and black-clad young anarchists took to the streets of the birthplace of NIKE to protest its highly problematic business practices. After speeches, leafleting and the destruction of a 12 foot long “Swoosh” symbol carried in by children (symbolizing NIKE’s child labor practices), the protesters became more demonstrative by tearing down a fence surrounding the yet-to-be-opened store. The police countered with riot-geared, pepperspray wielding cops, yet several people still entered the store, trashing displays and “product”, igniting fireworks, and dumping over-priced clothes off a balcony. A few days later, police raided the home of a teenage male that left fingerprints on a protest sign near the scene, holding his family at gunpoint on the floor in handcuffs, seizing computers and documents and searching the place for 7 hours. He wasn’t home at the time, and no arrests have been made yet, although ample police video tape exists of the protest.

Giuliani Must Really Hate Jaywalkers New York’s Finest Trample Memorial March

New York City – Over 4000 people marched down Fifth Avenue of October19th to protest and mourn the death of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student brutally murdered in Wyoming. As usual, the Major Giuliani police state quickly pounced into action, harrasing and assaulting those who strayed off the sidewalks. This turned the vigil and protest into a combative event – after people were randomly grabbed by police and thrown against cars or to the ground (as one pregnant woman was), or trampled underfoot by horses, some fought back by throwing their memorial candles. After 96 senseless arrests and innumerable police assults the march finally made it to Madison Square Park where shrines for Shepard were set up. The police justified their actions by stating that the marchers in the streets were endangering motorists and had to be dealt with.

Amnesty International Targets US Abuses

London – In October Amnesty International took the unprecedented yet entirely justified step of launching a year long campaign against the US for systematic and blatant human rights abuses. This is the first time in its 37-year history that AI has started a major campain against a Western country. Some of charges against the US outlined in its150-page report are “widespread and persistent” police brutality, “endemic” physical and sexual violence against prisoners, “racist” application of the death penalty, and the use of “high-tech repression tools” such as electroshock devices and incapacitating chemical sprays. In short, Amnesty International charges the US with a “double standard” of criticizing the rest of the world for abuse while not doing enough to stop the abuse it is overlooking, and causing, at home.

No Justice, No Oil Nigerians Take Arms Against Shell

Nigeria – Nigerians repeatedly attacked Shell Oil in October, seizing at gunpoint more than 10 stations, two helicopters and a drilling rig. Youth groups, fed up with their exclusion from the Nigerian political process and the general economic inequality of their nation, have recently taken matters in their own hands by hitting where it hurts – oil, the lifeblood of the region. Nigeria is one of the world’s biggest producers of oil, and Shell has a stranglehold on this production. Activists vow to keep attacking Shell and Agip Oil sites until they get a new local government, and at least 500,000 barrels of oil a day is now being lost due to their actions. Protestors also demand that a more equal share of the oil wealth that accounts for more than 90% of Nigeria’s export income should go to the people – many who live in makeshift homes where there is often no electricity or public water supply.

We all know that the world’s forests are on the brink of ecological collapse. Only 22% of the planet’s original primary forest cover remains ecological intact and even these areas are under relentless attack from transnational timber, mining and fossil fuel corporations.

For years forest defenders have been putting their bodies in the path of the destruction as well as targeting the big timber companies wherever they do business. This is important work and it needs to continue but if we are going to save the world’s old growth forests we need to open up new fronts as well. Since excessive U.$. wood consumption is the engine driving global deforestation, the time has come to target the companies who make millions retailing old growth forest products.

Top of the list of forest looting profiteers is The Home Depot, the largest do-it-yourself retail chain in the world. Home Depot boasts annual sales of over $24 billion and through its control of 20% of the home improvement market it is the largest retailer of old growth forest products in the world. Home Depot has over 700 stores in North America, has recently expanded into Chile and Brazil and plans to grow to over 1,300 stores by the year 2001. Currently they are building between 3 and 8 of their sprawl-mart mega stores every week! Each of these stores is filled with plundered old growth forest products. These include cedar, douglas fir and redwood from the temperate rainforests of North America; mahogany stolen from indigenous lands in the Amazon (a recent study by the Brazilian government found that 85% of all mahogany exported was logged illegally); lauana and ramin from the rainforests of Southeast Asia.

Home Depot likes to promote itself as an environmentally conscious company and has been saying since 1992 that it wants to go old growth free. Finally, in 1997 due to pressure from Headwaters activists they committed to stop selling old growth redwood. However, not only are they continuing to sell ancient redwoods but in negotiations earlier this year they admitted that they had made these promises merely to stop environmental protest.

Activists across North America responded to Home Depot’s role in liquidating the world’s last old growth forests with a day of action on October 14, 1998. Demonstrations were held at over 85 stores through out the U.$. and Canada including lockdowns to reclaim stolen rainforest products in New York, Northern California and Iowa. Many activists conducted guerrilla “Dead Rainforest Tours” in order to show customers the macabre truth behind Home Depot’s inventory.

While Home Depot scrambles to launch a PR counter-offensive, the actions continue. Escalating this pressure is essential if we are going to drive Home Depot out of the old growth business and stand in solidarity with the indigenous forest communities fighting to protect their homelands around the planet. So grab some friends and head out to your local Home Depot! Let them know that your not fooled by their greenwashing and that you want them to stop selling old growth NOW! For more information about the campaign check out www.homedepotsucks.com or contact the Rainforest Action Network at 415-398-4404 or via email at rags@ran.org.

One of the few pieces of good news in November’s elections came from Mendocino county, where DA Susan Massini lost her bid for re-election and Norm Vroman was voted in. Massini, besides having prosecuted many EF!ers and definitely not being a friend of progressives (much less radicals), had been rabid about prosecuting Bear Lincoln, the Indian man accused of fatally shooting a Mendocino county sheriff’s deputy in 1995. In fact, Bear’s friend Leonard Acorn Peters, another resident of the Round Valley Indian Reservation, was killed the night in April, 1995 by the cops in a case of mistaken identity. Most people close to the situation felt the partner of the deputy who killed Acorn did the shooting Bear was accused of.

Bear was acquitted by an all-white jury in a highly publicized murder trial in August 1997. He had spent over 2 years in jail without bail (after 4 months underground) awaiting trial, and the trial exposed corruption, cover-up and racism in the Mendocino county sheriff’s dept. Massini announced after the acquittal that she would pursue a second trial, and filed manslaughter charges. DA candidate Norm Vroman had said strongly and clearly early in his campaign that he would not pursue another trial for Bear Lincoln. So provided he sticks to his campaign promises, Bear Lincoln will finally be a free man, three and a half years after he watched his lifelong friend gunned down on a dirt road on the edge of the reservation in northeast Mendocino county.

Contact the Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters (BACH) Ecology Center 2530 San Pablo Ave. Berkeley, CA 94702 phone: 510 548 3113 email: bach@igc.org

To the governments, corporations, armies, chefs, bakers, and civil societies of the earth:

In response to the heroic actions of our colleagues in London, the General Command of the BBB–Ecotopia Cell met in emergency session, and decided to announce two new global campaigns in opposition to neoliberalism, corporate crime, and industrial technocracy.

The first offensive is called the “Pie Snowball,” which is a call to arms for revolutionary bakers and pie-slingers across the Western World. Modeled after anti-nuke and anti-genetics campaigns in Europe, the plan calls for an autonomous, diffuse, and widespread pastry uprising (so to speak). As the Zapatistas have made clear, in a global economy, we all live in Chiapas. The BBB would like to make the analogy that under neoliberalism, we all can throw a pie in the face of fascism. No bosses, offices, foundation grants, never-ending consensus meetings, or CFLA’s (Confusing Four Letter Acronyms) are needed: Just Do It! We are, after all, pie-throwing anarchists. There’s an oven on every street, and cooking materials in every watershed. The idea is for at least one flan-er (or “l’entarteur,” as Belgian pieman Noel Godin of the Patisserie Brigade Internationale is known) in a bioregion to make that first fateful throw, and then inspire others to do the same. May the proverbial snowball roll down the hill of struggle until an avalanche of ‘cream psychosis’ (Godin, op. cit.) buries the global corporate elite.

The second offensive, developed by a joint task force of disaffected computer geeks and GC/BBB–EC military advisors, has been code-named “Pie2K.” Operations will target computer industry executive and consultants, who are responsible for the Year 2000 computer bug (Y2K) mess. The people have judged them guilty of gross (disgusting, really) negligence over the course of several decades. In perhaps one of the most striking examples of the inherent flaws in capitalism, the industry has known about the problem since day one, but it has never behooved workers to fix it because it would be unprofitable for their bosses to spend the extra time and labor needed to put the problem right. In addition, Y2K reveals the inherent vulnerability of technology itself, as well as the hubris and short-sightedness of the technocrats who have computerized everything they possibly could in the short time computers have been in existence. The proper response, truly, is a shower of pies across the nighttime sky upon Silicon Valley. Let’s kick it off mates, freaky-styley!

There’s a pie in the sky when you die–that’s a lie!

-Decoded and Relayed by Agent Apple

Strawberry Pie

Preparation time: 35 minutes
Chilling time: 1 hour
Throw at your convenience

To make crust see Pie Crust Recipe.
To make filling, arrange points up on bottom of cooled pastry crust: 1 large basket of strawberries

Blend in blender:
2 small baskets strawberries
1/3 cup honey
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch

Cook strawberry mixture in medium saucepan over low heat, stirring constantly for 15 minutes or until mixture turns dark red. Place pan with strawberry mixture in cold running water, stirring until cool. Pour mixture over strawberries in pie pan. Refrigerate. Decorate pie with sweetened whipped cream. Decorate politician with pie.

Pie Crust

1 cup barley flour
1/2 cup oat flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup oil
4 tablespoons ice water

Prepare one 9-inch pie pan by brushing bottom and sides lightly with oil. Sift dry ingredients into bowl. Mix oil and ice water. Add liquid to dry ingredients using fork. Stir until a ball is formed. Press into prepared pie pan, or roll out between wax paper and place in pie pan, making a high edge around the outside. Prick with fork, and bake in 400 degree over for 10-12 minutes. Plan ahead to have crust prepared before any pie-throwing event.

Cherry Tart Pie

1 9-inch baked pie shell
3 cups pitted sour cherries, drained
1/3 cup cherry juice
3/4 honey
3 tablespoons cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
2 teaspoons tapioca granules

Combine cherries, cherry juice, honey, cornstarch, cinnamon and tapioca in heavy-bottom saucepan. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Simmer slowly for about 5 minutes until tapioca is clear and mixture has thickened. Cool and spoon into baked pie shell. Throw chilled or at room temperature.

Vegan Pumpkin Pie

2 heaping cups of cooked pumpking
2 10.5-ounce (300 g) packages of silken tofu, drained
2 pie crusts
1 1/4 cups brown sugar, not packed tight
dash salt
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground dry ginger
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon allspice
2 teaspoons nutmeg

Heat oven to 375 degrees F. Blend the tofu in a food processor or with a blender until smooth and cream-like. Add two heaping cups of cooked pumpkin and blend some more. The result should be a light orange-colored paste with no lumps of tofu. Put the paste into a large mixing bowl and add the sugar, salt, and spices. Mix well and spoon it into two pie crusts. Bake 30 to 40 minutes or until the crusts are dark brown (but not burned). Cool before throwing.