Category: Articles

The struggle for liberation is going on all around us, all the time, in communities around the globe large and small, in a huge variety of ways — and yet it can be invisible. It is easy to get discouraged feeling that time is stalled, that individual people can’t make any difference, and that we’re doomed. I know I feel stuck like that a lot — watching endless traffic roll by, everyone marching off to work, stores full of shoppers and junk. Will people ever wake up? And yet, there are encouraging cracks pushing through the concrete.

While we were finishing up this issue, I kept searching for the “one big protest” of 2010 — some upcoming direct action or protest that would symbolize resistance to the corporate-industrial machine that is stealing our lives and killing the earth. But I decided maybe it would be better to adjust my focus and not get caught up in the same mega-thinking that is causing so many problems.

Centralization, gigantism and trying to reduce complex human interactions to alienated symbols are all part of the problem. Our minds and our activism have been polluted by the same thinking that creates multi-national corporations, huge media celebrities, global computer networks, and faceless government bureaucracies. To create grassroots radical change, we need to tackle the global problems on a local level as well as a global level and we need to realize how our local problems are connected with global issues. From this perspective, it is incredibly inspiring to see all the local campaigns going on all over — yet with common goals.

It seems to me that the process of social transformation invites us to work on a bunch of different levels all simultaneously. We can work on an internal psychological level to free ourselves from the cop in our head, our learned powerlessness, as well as our inability to appreciate ourselves, those around us, and the here and now unfiltered by corporations, consumerism and technology. We can struggle in our families and our communities to build alternative structures to meet human needs outside of unjust structures like the market system, the state, and the patriarchy. And at times, we can join with others to confront the systems that are killing the earth and constricting our freedom — using direct action and protest to target the activities, technologies, social institutions, companies and governments that serve the system.

There are so many folks resisting the machine this summer — here is a short list if you want to join in a particular action or organize your own action as part of an on-going campaign. The struggle for liberation is do-it-yourself — to the extent this list misses a lot of potential direct action targets, that is an invitation for you and your buddies to start something. Go for it.

• Mountain Justice Summer continues to use direct action to defend Appalachian forests and streams from destruction by coal companies that use mountaintop removal strip mining. There is a training camp May 27 – June 6 in Kentucky. www.mountainjusticesummer.org

• Campaigns and actions against police brutality and murder are ongoing all over. In Portland, there was a spontaneous riot March 22 after police shot and killed Jack Dale Collins. On April 8, Bay Area folks occupied a subway train to protest the transit police murder of Oscar Grant. Grant’s killer is going on trial in Los Angeles and the trial is sure to be met with continued protest. And folks are participating in Copwatch groups all over that monitor and videotape police interactions on the streets.

• The 2010 G8 meeting of the world’s most powerful leaders is set for Huntsville, Ontario, Canada June 25 – 27. Whenever a few governments get together to figure out how to divide the worlds resources between multi-national companies, direct action in the streets is the inevitable result. (Even when they locate the summit 2 hours from the nearest city to limit protests . . . Did anyone hear an Ewok up in those trees?)

• Croatan Earth First! in Virginia has been waging an on-going campaign against Duke Energy’s plan to construct an 800-megawatt coal fired generator at the existing Cliffside Power Plant. The generator would operate for the next 50 years, emitting 312 million tons of CO2 over its lifetime. Direct action has included blockades of construction activities. stopcliffside.org

• Critical Mass bike rides continue across the globe — a monthly direct action that reclaims streets for human uses. These spontaneous actions require no organizational energy and are even fun. In many cities and towns the ride happens the last Friday of the month.

• Grassroots protest network 350.org has declared October 10, 2010 (10/10/10) a global work party to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They are inviting folks to plant trees, harvest gardens, create bikepaths, insulate homes, and take other concrete actions to raise the question: “we’re working on this, what are the social institutions doing?” There will also be protests at the next United Nations meeting on climate change in Mexico in December.

• Guerilla gardening is a direct action in which a group seizes a vacant piece of land to build a garden — often over a weekend — so that it becomes too beautiful to remove without looking like a heartless bully before anyone notices what is going on.

• Direct Action in Humboldt County, California to preserve old growth redwood trees continues with an on-going tree-sit. See efhumboldt.org

• Numerous states (Utah, Nebraska, Oklahoma) have recently passed laws making it more difficult and unpleasant for women to get abortions. Seems like this opens up a lot of direct action / protest opportunities.

• Everglades Earth First! is engaged in a continuing struggle against Florida Power & Light’s construction of a gas fired powerplant. www.evergladesearthfirst.org

• Gay Shame creates a direct action each year during Gay Pride week to reject the “commercialized gay identity that denies the intrinsic links between queer struggle and challenging power.” www.gayshamesf.org

• Along the US/Mexico border, there is direct action to protect immigrants from armed right-wing “minutemen” groups and question the whole idea of borders. immigrantsolidarity.org

• Squatting and eviction defense is particularly relevant with millions of people losing their homes to foreclosure. Why are so many buildings sitting vacant when people need a place to live? www.homesnotjailssf.org

• Oh yeah, and there are still two wars going on! Code Pink has been conducting a campaign against the use of drone airplanes to kill people by remote control half a world away. They are also carrying out citizens’ arrests of war mongers at (paid) speaking events around and about. Almost everyone lives near a military recruiting station or weapons supply corporation so its up to us to protest the ongoing carnage. Codepink4peace.org

• Alberta, Canada is ground zero for the rapidly expanding and environmentally destructive oil sand industry — another last gasp effort to keep the fossil fuel system flowing while climate change looms. Efforts to block it are possible. oilsandstruth.org

• In British Columbia, Canada, there could be direct action to save a stand of unusually twisted old growth cedar trees named the Avatar grove that are scheduled to be logged. www.ancientforestalliance.org. There’s also action underway to stop the multi-billion dollar Gateway highway project in BC. gatewaysucks.org

• In Chiapas, Mexico there are actions to defend the rainforest.

• Outside North America, there is an on-going direct action campaign against coal in Mainshill, Scotland. There is community resistance in Rosport, Ireland against a Shell gas terminal that threatens to ruin the coastal environment and wildlife habitat. Forest defense continues in Tasmania. Folks in Iceland are str
uggling to block construction of a dam. In Catalonia, Spain there is direct action for forest defense and against BP fossil fuelishness.

This just scratches the surface of direct actions and protests going on around us, and there’s no way to know about all the amazing internal transformations and struggles at the interpersonal, family, or community level. Enjoy your 2010 summer!

Thanks to the Earth First! Journal for information about on-going eco-actions world-wide. Check out earthfirstjournal.org.

“Not all drugs are good… some of them are great.” – the late great psychedelically attuned comedian Bill Hicks

After backpacking around North America and the Pacific for several years, searching in part for a more entheogenically aware community, I had settled down in Berkeley just as the tree sit protest was reaching its climatic peak. I was visiting the oak grove in question frequently in the summer of ’08, so a lot of the UCB students were away, but of those who remained on campus, I observed that most who walked by the longest running urban tree sit ever did so without giving it any attention whatsoever, acting like those in the tree and those supporting them on the sidewalks didn’t exist.

Was this a symptom of a student populace that felt, “Ho hum, another radical protest in crazy hippie Berkeley,” or was something else going on? So I asked one of the ground crew who was distributing flyers and pamphlets about the Oaks, “How many UCB students, out of ten, stopped by your table and informed themselves of engaged in dialogue about the latest news in the trees?” She looked at me sort of incredulously; “Your question should be more like how many out of a hundred or even a thousand, care to notice what is going on here.”

I was taken aback (as only a newly arrived East Coast transplant/outsider could be, I suppose): How had the legendary radical student activism of the 60s deteriorated to such an apathetic funk? That these students walked like zombies with blinders, uncaring, wasn’t something I could easily comprehend.

As the protest progressed, I visited the grove more and more, as well as the campus at large, talking with a diverse cross section of people, trying to find an answer to that question and to come to terms with it (though by this time I was developing a sneaking suspicion). Eventually, I came across an old-timer who was a student at UCB in the 60s, and he told me tales of those wild radical days of yore. He even drew parallels to the protests around People’s Park of that time; how the park was also surrounded by armed police and chain link cages, but on one coordinated day, the students banded together and united, tore the fucking fences down and reclaimed the Park for the People.

Where was that kind of radical student activism now, I asked. “Well, there was a war on then,” was the weak response, as if he was not ready to critique the blight of modern student apathy. There are wars on now; there has to be something else, I probed. He gave a couple of other minor ideas, but I got to the point. I believe that the main reason for the lack of student activism is the absence of a psychedelically and entheogenically informed student body (and mind and spirit).

… I remember hearing a story like this: In the height of the 60s, there was a pretty square but very gifted science and math student at UCB whose journey on the straight and narrow had put him at the top of his classes and fields of research. His routine of going from his dorm to the lab and back was occasionally interrupted by people with flowers in their long hair, marching in the streets with signs and banners, protesting something or other; it seemed to be a new cause every week. Finally, one day, upon seeing his lab occupied by students demanding justice or some such thing, he asked one of these long haired dudes (it was easier to visually identify the radicals back then) “So, what’s this all about anyway?” And in one of the more profound moments of hippie wisdom (top five, anyway), instead of proselytizing about Marxism or socialism etc, or shouting slogans at him, the long haired dude replied, “Here man, find out for yourself,” and handed him a tab of LSD.

Well, the student took the acid and in the course of a twelve hour psychedelic experience, things like social justice, power to the people, nature’s splendor (etc to infinity) no longer were abstract concepts to him, but felt realities. The walls of culture promoting plastic conformity dissolved to open up to the colorful organic interconnected beauty of the world and universe at large. And far from toeing the unofficial hippie party line, when this student turned on, he used what he had tuned into to propel his scientific studies into new stratospheres of theories, eventually making him a world renowned scholar.

This kind of experience was repeated millions of times to millions of people and was the catalyst of revolutionary times, I believe. The flashing headline point then would have to be: Nature is Alive, and psychedelics (particularly entheogens) help you realize this in rather profound ways in the course of life changing visionary epiphanies, in the space of mere hours. A psychedelically enlightened mind can not continue to close its eyes (all three of them) to the destruction of the earth, the razing of our forests, the poisoning of our seas, and the influence of over two thousand years of unchecked dominator culture which uses hegemony, monotheism, monotony and monogamy as honed weapons of mass suppression and destruction of the free people of the planet.

Entheogens are our birthright, yet this most important rite of passage has not been passed down effectively to today’s students, to the sorrow of the world and the apathy of youth who do not know any better because the language of the dream hasn’t been spoken to them.

The use of psychedelics and the way they have been expressed culturally has fluctuated plenty in the past forty or so years, but to my mind, even the youth at the height of the “Just Say No” era in the 80s didn’t have such a profound disconnect to psychedelic awareness as do students today. In the 80s and 90s, the use of these plants and chemicals became more socially discreet, but their influence and impact were profoundly felt worldwide: specifically in the field of computers. Ralph Abraham, a mathematics professor at UCB and UCSC in the 60s turned on quite a number of his colleagues and students to LSD, and whose own experiments with DMT led him to be a leading developer in the fields of chaos math and dynamical systems theory for decades saw first hand how the use of some certain mind expanding substances inspired many in the computer and software industry. He describes a tale of a reporter for the San Francisco Examiner in the early 90s set off to disprove Timothy Leary’s theory of psychedelics interconnectivity with the burgeoning field: “She went to Siggraph, the largest gathering of computer graphic professionals in the world, where annually somewhere in the United States 30,000 who are vitally involved in the computer revolution gather. She thought she would set this heresy to rest by conducting a sample survey, beginning her interviews at the airport the minute she stepped off the plane. By the time she got back to her desk in San Francisco she’d talked to 180 important professionals of the computer graphic field, all of whom answered yes to the question, ‘Do you take psychedelics, and is this important in your work?'” —Ralph Abraham, In “The Evolutionary Mind—Trialogues at the Edge of the Unthinkable” by Rupert Sheldrake, Terence McKenna, and Ralph Abraham, 1998)

Yet as the years passed, the discreet underground psychedelic culture of the 90s became more and more unknown. The Rave Generation’s message of ecstatic dancing harmony and PLUR (Peace Love Unity Respect) has, due in part by the passing of some harsh anti-rave legislation in the past decade, now largely been assimilated by boozy nightclub ass-grabbing hookups. Burning Man (where the leading psychedelic scholars, artists, writers and all-around proponents of entheogens have presentations within the city), every year becomes more and more watered down by hipsters and tourists who want to play freak for a week and not engage in radical community possibilities.

All is not lost. The most psychedelic mainstream piece of art I’ve seen recently is the movie Avatar. The film captured not only the apex of where computer generated art has tak
en us, but combined that with a moving entheogen inspired story with epic themes of nature versus avarice. A Burning Man acquaintance of mine whom I saw the picture with jokingly made the comment, “Man, I wish I saw that movie on mushrooms!” Having just reacquainted myself with an old ally, cannabis, specifically for viewing Avatar after a long break, I found the synergy of the herb, the film, and myself an amazing otherworldly experience, I kind of scoffed at my friend’s remark. “I don’t know what kind of experiences you have, but when I have a committed mushroom experience, screw watching it in a theater; I AM Avatar! I’m on Pandora, taking that journey, feeling the epic themes of unbridled corporate/military greed versus nature and Her allies, reverberating through my entire being.”

In fact, I saw (and see) Avatar as an ayahuasca parable. The trees of the soul on Pandora, the vines of the soul in the Amazon where ayahuasca originates, the tribal consciousness and the aforementioned themes (not to mentioned the kaleidoscope of fluorescent colors and the 3D were nice touches/parallels) were all so prevalent in my ayahuasca journeys, I knew that writer/director James Cameron was giving the world more than a wink and a nod to the most powerful entheogenic tea. Terence McKenna, a psychedelic pioneer, had this to say about it years ago: “In the Amazon and other places where visionary plants are understood and used, you are conveyed into worlds that are appallingly different from ordinary reality. Their vividness cannot be stressed enough. They are more real than real, and that’s something that you sense intuitively. They establish an ontological priority. They are more real than real, and once you get that under your belt and let it rattle around in your mind, then the compass of your life begins to spin and you realize that you are not looking in on the Other; the Other is looking in on you.” That sounds a lot like what Cameron was trying to convey with the Navi on the living planet Pandora. And this is all but confirmed with the director’s latest activism. Cameron recently traveled to the jungles of the Amazon River and met with the indigenous tribal leaders and proclaimed his solidarity with the peoples in their fight against the Brazilian government and corporate interests in building a dam that would effectively destroy them, which mirrors the plight of the Navi in his film.

It’s more than just a case of art reflecting nature; the themes should be becoming more and more obvious to our counter-culture. To this end, I’m holding a space via the East Bay Free Skool, facilitating a weekly discussion to help continue espousing these ideas, namely that the realities reflected in Avatar (and in so many other fine works of art) are available to all of us, if not but for a cultural convention that would have us passively consume light beer and blue jeans. So that the next time students see activists living in trees, fighting for the survival of nature, instead of being apathetic to it, they can personally feel the themes and be more connected to that struggle. Ergoat ergoat@ergoat.com

It is great that California may finally legalize recreational use of marijuana this year by passing a ballot measure in November — The Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010 — even though the world needs more than just getting rid of silly drug laws so that legal drug companies can replace illegal drug dealers. Beyond legalization, we need to change the passive way we interact with drugs, the world, our consciousness, and each other.

It is too easy to relate to drugs as just another thing you can buy, sell or ingest — a social interaction that can easily be integrated into the dominant society with a legalization law without undermining the dehumanizing power relationships that are killing the earth. How can we remove drugs from the market economy, figure out cooperative, do-it-yourself production and distribution models, and harness the altered states of consciousness that can be associated with drugs to undermine and corrode mainstream institutions and cultural values? And why does it often feel like excessive pot use is actually holding back alternative communities a lot more than liberating us?

While the ballot measure permits personal cultivation for personal use meaning that people could theoretically create pot on a do-it-yourself, local basis outside the market, the last 15 years of experience with legal medical marijuana in California indicates that rather than promoting more activity outside the market, most people are going to want to buy their pot rather than grow their own. California medical cannabis patients have overwhelming sought to purchase, rather than grow, their medicine. In fact, the November initiative was put on the ballot by Richard Lee, founder of Oaksterdam University in Oakland which is the flagship of the highly profitable medical marijuana-industrial complex that has developed to sell pot since medical marijuana was legalized.

Much of the text of the ballot measure is about figuring out the rules for the new market, including taxation of pot sales to help fund local governments. This is one of the marketing points on which proponents of the initiative hope to base their electoral campaign — that legalizing pot can raise money to pay for local governments starved for funds by government preoccupied with prisons and tax cuts for the rich.

That the ballot measure is really about creating new legal markets and products is sad but inevitable — the capitalist market system swallows everything within its reach. Word on the street is that some pot growers and dealers are against the measure because they know it will put them out of business. Residents of pot crop-dependent Humboldt County may organize a “no” campaign.

It’s up to radicals to set up alternatives in every social realm — housing, food, education, transportation, drugs and recreation — based on cooperation, sharing, production for use not profit, and meeting human needs not corporate greed. Turning fancy strains of pot into a new Napa Valley wine industry — complete with pesticides, low-paid un-documented workers, and fat-cat yuppie owners — is a likely but unpleasant picture of the future.

Clearly, drug prohibition is a bad joke that should be abandoned immediately. Laws against pot haven’t made it difficult to get. Rather, they have been a price support system and a tax on users, keeping prices high and promising super-profits to people involved in the trade. Billions of dollars have been wasted on police and prisons, pointlessly ruining lives. A few groovy hippies have been able to live rural lives growing weed, and a few corporate-style drug gangs have run a profitable business.

Average users pay an inflated price. Perhaps it can be a bit more fun to use an illegal drug than a legal drug like alcohol. Ultimately, people are going to decide what to do with their bodies no matter what the laws say and an awful lot of people seem to like smoking dope. So it is silly for laws to try to hold back popularly accepted cultural behaviors.

The ballot measure, if passed, would be the first state law to outright legalize pot for recreational use, rather than hiding behind medical uses for marijuana or past legal reforms aimed at “decriminalizing” pot by making possession and use a minor infraction, while keeping strict laws against selling and growing.

Under the proposed law, individuals over 21 years old could “possess, process, share, or transport” up to one ounce of pot “solely for that individual’s personal consumption, and not for sale.” Those of age could also “cultivate, on private property by the owner, lawful occupant, or other lawful resident or guest of the private property owner or lawful occupant, cannabis plants for personal consumption only, in an area of not more than twenty-five square feet per private residence”. That is enough space to grow an ample personal supply — perhaps 25 ounces every three months. The law bans smoking pot in public, while using a motor vehicle or “in any space while minors are present” as well as providing marijuana to anyone under 21.

The law would permit each “local government” including a “city, county, or city and county” to either ban the sale of pot within its jurisdiction, or regulate and tax up to one ounce sales by “persons . . . lawfully authorized”. Local governments would be permitted to regulate not just the sale of pot, but also who would be licensed to produce, process and distribute it. They could pass zoning rules to regulate the location, size, hours, advertising, public health and environmental impacts of marijuana production, sale and consumption within their jurisdiction.

The lack of a statewide standard could create a confusing patchwork of “dry” areas and legal areas, determined by local voters. Perhaps a few cities would emerge as drug supply hubs for the state, with potheads driving to the local dope supermarket, dominated by a few companies that were “authorized” because of their close connections to local government officials. Some cities could pass lax laws with low taxes and easy rules to become an “authorized” dealer, while others might opt for very high taxes and strict rules. There is no way to know what might happen but companies wanting to cash in on the marijuana market would be likely to heavily lobby local governments to earn potentially huge profits. The emphasis on local regulation appears to invite corruption.

Of course any petty corruption under the law is likely to be better than the status quo, which criminalizes huge numbers of people for their private decisions and spawns various levels of criminal activity, from benign to violent, throughout society. A friend who works trimming pot during harvest in Northern California described the creepy, power-tripping, paranoid dynamic that the constant fear of getting busted breeds amongst workers in the illegal pot industry. Everyone is wondering if there is a government spy in their midst.

The drug war — like the war on terrorism — gives the state endless excuses to intrude on individual liberty and privacy. This dynamic creates a corrosive, authoritarian atmosphere of expanded police budgets and authority. Ending the war on drugs is what I think of as a non-reformist reform because it opens up more liberated social conditions — space for people to build autonomy and community.

Opponents of legalization have always claimed that more people would use pot if it was legal but it’s hard to see how this could be true since weed is already so easily available to anyone who wants it. To the extent more people use it, this could be a good thing. Pot is a quick and easy way to alter one’s consciousness in an interesting way that can potentially help people question mainstream values of consumerism, human control, hierarchy, etc. When you’re stoned, social dynamics that normally seem natural or mandatory can sometimes be called into question. We need to conduct more hands-on research on this poin
t . . .

On the other hand, there are a lot of ways to alter and expand your consciousness — meditation, playing music, extreme exercise, rioting, therapy, working on Slingshot, starting a guerilla garden or plugging into other participatory, social, interactive activities. Pot can be a lazy, passive high — a cheap trip to higher consciousness that can dull the mind, inhibit spiritual development and hold people back. When pot is just another product, users are just consumers. We need a world where we’re more engaged with each other, ourselves and able to address social contradictions — another way to check-out from reality heads the wrong direction.

Some of the harder, more do-it-yourself, non-chemical mind-altering experiences can be pretty deep. While I’ve had amazing moments feeling like I was floating on air while riding my bicycle stoned into the sunset, I’ve also noticed how I get depressed for about a week after each time I try pot. Each drug works differently for different people, at different times, and has different costs and benefits. Hopefully folks will try a lot of ways to expand their consciousness because too much of any particular pathway becomes boring.

Just legalizing pot isn’t the end of the story — the social and cultural struggle about how we use marijuana and other drugs (legal or illegal) will continue indefinitely. Hopefully, once pot is legal and “out of the closet” it will be easier to have a more complex and interesting dialog, and there will be one less absurd excuse for police to bust people.

It’s summer traveling season so here’s a few places to visit on your travels that aren’t in the 2010 Slingshot organizer. Please let us know if you run into any other places we should list in the 2011 Organizer, or if you spot any errors. The deadline for the 2011 edition is August 1. I love putting this column together each issue. In a way, it is the most boring article in each issue ? just a list of places, names and numbers. No real plot development or analysis. And it is also more work per word than any other article ? each few lines requires a lot of research. But it is exciting because each listing is the tip of a huge, exciting iceberg of community, engagement, and action. When I read an email from a new project just starting up, behind the few lines of text is a flood of personal bonds developed at meetings, collecting zines, posting fliers, and building bookshelves. Cooperating with others to build something new ? a place for meetings, shows, learning and organizing ? is a beautiful act of caring, optimism and love. It is an expression of a community of people daring to seek social transformation and willing to struggle for a new world. Give these folks a hug, some support, buy a zine or a cup of coffee, or join in and volunteer to stock the shelves or do the dishes. Or maybe you’re already part of one of these projects ? if so, please accept my gratitude! Check Slingshot’s on-line radical contact list (slingshot.tao.ca) for more updated listings than what is in the printed organizer; it also includes web links where possible.

Bad Egg Books – Eugene, OR

Finally an infoshop back in my hometown! They have a reading room and store with zines and free wi-fi plus a members’ lending library for books and movies. 112 East 13th Ave, Eugene, OR 97401, (541) 636-3570.

NorthStar Center – Lansing, MI

A radical community center that features events, a reading group and a workers center. They also publish a newsletter. They’ve been around for 3 years. Visit Mon-Thurs 4-8. 106 Lathrop St., MI 48912 [mailing: P.O. Box 4794?E. Lansing, MI 48826] 517.371.2001, northstarcenter.net

The Wingnut – Richmond, VA

An all-ages, sober, social justice organizing and events space that hosts Food Not Bombs, a weekly craft night, acoustic shows, meetings and potlucks. 2005 Barton Avenue, Richmond, VA 23222, (804) 303 5449, thewingnutrva.wordpress.com

Brewing Grounds for Change – Milwaukee, WI

They are an all volunteer coffee shop and community organizing center with a zine library, a free store and they host music shows, art exhibits and meetings. Open 11 a.m. – 11:30 p.m. 2008 N Farwell Ave Milwaukee, WI 53202 414-273-9777

L@s Quixotes Infoshop & Radical Library – Seattle, WA

They are building a radical lending library and infoshop, starting off in rent-free space upstairs at Pilot Books until they can find their own space and raise enough money for a full scale project. Visit at 219 E Broadway, Seattle, WA 98102 quixotes.infoshop@gmail.com, losquixotesinfoshop.wordpress.com/

Bici Bike Coop – Birmingham, AL

A community bike shop with classes on bike repair, cheap parts and service, and bike education, rides and activism. Open Mon – Thurs, 6-8. 1211 28th Street South, Suite G2, Birmingham, AL 35205 (Behind Rhodes Park) bicicoop.org

Baltimore Free Farms – Baltimore, MD

A community garden collective that opens up and rehabilitates green spaces for food production and skill shares. They have three gardens and are expanding. Visit their flagship garden at 3519 Ash Street, Baltimore, MD 21211 443-740-8183 ashstreetgarden.com

Dandelion Communitea Cafe – Orlando, FL

An organic vegetarian cafe that hosts art openings, a poetry night, film nights, moon circles and vegan potlucks. 618 N Thornton Ave, Orlando FL 32803 407.362.1864, dandelioncommunitea.com/

Phoenix Project Collective – Dallas, TX

An all volunteer radical community center and arts and all-ages music space that hosts shows and speakers, has a bike coop, and a book exchange. 406 S. Haskell, Dallas, TX 75226 www.myspace.com/sea_wench

Ethos Vegan Kitchen – Orlando, FL

A vegan restaurant ? rare in the area ? that is a for-profit mom and pop business. 1235 N Orange Ave, Orlando, FL, 32804 407.228.3898 www.ethosvegankitchen.com

Florida School of Holistic Living – Orlando, FL

A non-profit school teaching herbalism and natural stuff. 622A N. Thornton Ave. Orlando, FL 32803 – 407.595.3731 www.holisticlivingschool.org

ISKCON – Tampa Bay, FL

They are a Krishna temple that asked to be listed as a radical contact. Check them out and let us know what you think: 14610 N. 17th St., Lutz, Fl 33549(813) 971-6474

Feraldom Gallery – Motueka, New Zealand

A free radical gallery that hosts a pirate radio station (88.5 B Aware FM) featuring music and talk shows on dumpster diving and local actions. 111 High St. Motueka – NZ.

Corrections to the 2010 Slingshot Organizer:

• The Catalyst Infoshop in Prescott, AZ has lost their space at 109 N. McCormick – we don’t know their new address yet.

• Liberty Hall in Portland, OR has closed.

• The Peace and Justice Center (& store) in Burlington, VT has moved to 60 Lake St, 1C, Burlington, VT 05401.

• The Taala Hooghan Infoshop in Flagstaff, AZ has moved again for the second time in 6 months: now they’re at 1704 N. 2nd St. Flagstaff, AZ 86004 with a 2 year lease. www.taalahooghan.org

• The City Thrift in Austin, TX has moved to 2943 East 12th St., Austin, TX 78702, same phone.

• The Third Space Infoshop in Norma, OK got shut down in December for fire code violations and all their materials are now in storage. There are no current plans to reopen.

• The Stonewall library in Ft. Lauderdale, FL has moved – the new address is 1300 E. Sunrise Blvd., Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33304.

• Confluence Books in Grand Junction, CO has moved – their new address is 749 Rood Ave. suite A, Grand Junction, CO 81501 970-245-4442, confluencebooks@riseup.net

• We listed the Train Yard in Las Cruces, NM in last issue. Their contact phone # is 575-640-2280 – you have to search for them on facebook for information on their physical location.

• Bread and Roses Workers’ Cultural Center in Denver has just moved – they are not defunct. Their new address is 2727 27th Ave, unit D, Denver, CO 80211. workersbreadandroses.org

• The Empowerment Infoshop in London, Ontario, Canada has changed their phone # to 519-435-0307. They may be changing locations September so stay tuned.

• The Hamilton Zine Library does still exist at 27 King William St., Hamilton, ON L8N 1A3, Canada.

• The infoshop in Savona, Italy has a new mailing address: Via Chiavella 3R, C.P. 249, 17100 Savona, Italy. They are the only place carrying the Slingshot organizer in Italy (at least to our knowledge.)

• The phone number for the 128 Community House in New Zealand is 04 9727260. Also, our friend confirmed that Blackstar books in Dunedin is still there.

• We got a package returned from Sandpaper books in Los Angeles. Does anyone know if they still exist or not?

• We got a note saying that the Sarasota Florida infoshop closed ? let us know if you have any more info.

• Greencup Books in Birmingham, AL closed.

Thanks to everyone who bought a 2010 Slingshot Organizer — they pay for this paper to be free all over the place. There are still copies available if you want to buy one. If you’re connected to a group that could help us give some free surplus copies to low-income teens or other folks who are unable to afford one, let us know. Email slingshot@tao.ca.

We’re about to start working on the 2011 Organizer which will be available October 1. Contact us now if you want to help create it — there are many ways to plug in.

• In May and June, we need help editing, correcting and improving the list of historical dates. Deadline for finishing: July 1.

• If you want to design a section of the calendar, let us know or send us random art by July 1. Deadline to finish calendar pages or give us suggestions for 2011 is August 1.

• We need all new radical contact listings and cover art submissions by August 1.

• If you have ideas for the short features we publish in the back, let us know by August 1. We try to print different features every year.

• If you’re in the Bay Area during the first two weeks of August you can help with the final organizer design — all done by hand, which is extra fun. Contact us. We especially need to find some really careful proofreaders in mid-August. We love sharing the Organizer with ya.

Black Mesa Indigenous Support (BMIS) is a volunteer-run collective, in solidarity with the Diné families and elders in Black Mesa/Big Mountain, AZ who have been resisting cultural genocide for over thirty-five years — targeted for unjust large-scale coal mining operations and forced relocation policies of the U.S government. Throughout those thirty-five years the US government and Peabody Coal have forcefully relocated thousands of Diné people away from their ancestral homeland, the land that they belong to, in the name of greed, energy and progress. Many families and elders have refused to leave, even though they are under constant pressure to do so. Their daily lives have become a direct action to save their land base, maintain their traditional life ways, and take a stand against global warming and globalization. They are not creating a new way of sustainable living, but are struggling to live as they always have — with the earth and not against it.

The resisting families are encouraging people to come to Black Mesa now. They request support all year long. One of the primary ways that non-native people who support the Diné live out solidarity is to honor the direct requests of these families and extend an invitation to all people interested in supporting their resistance, to come to Black Mesa, to their threatened ancestral homelands, walk with their sheep, haul water and wood, and do whatever they ask. By coming to Black Mesa, supporters can assist the elders and their families in daily chores, which helps visitors to engage with the story that they are telling, as well as to claim a more personal stake against environmental degradation, climate change, and continued legacies of colonialism and genocide. One can assist by being there so they can go to meetings, organize, weave rugs, visit family members who have been hospitalized, rest after a difficult winter and regain strength for the upcoming spring. With spring comes planting crops, shearing sheep, and lambing. Come for a month. Or longer.

Supporting these communities, whose very presence stands in the way of large-scale coal mining and further environmental degradation, is one way to work on the front lines for climate justice and against a future of climate chaos. There are also opportunities for long-term, committed supporters and organizers off the land.

BMIS is looking for Regional Coordinators to organize year-round support and work towards movement building, which would maintain and enhance communication channels between the Big Mountain resistance communities and networks that are being established to support the Big Mountain resistance, as well as other local forms of indigenous resistance, while building shared analysis, vision and movements for the liberation of all peoples and our planet. We are looking for organizers to connect to local climate justice, anti-racism, and decolonization projects, set up sheepherder send-off parties which can double as political education and fundraising events, put on screenings of “Broken Rainbow”, as well as host speaking engagements, give report-backs from the land and coordinate other educational events to spread the word about the struggle. We hope to connect with folks who will organize local responses to calls to action from the land, look into and spread information about corporate and political connections to Peabody Coal, and build a local capacity to fight racism and participate in multiracial movements for justice.

Contact us for more information if you are interested in supporting this struggle, and please visit our website for a deeper analysis and more info: www.blackmesais.org blackmeasis@gmail.com, 928.773.8086,P.O. Box 23501, Flagstaff, Arizona 86002

On October 11, 2009, Mexico woke up in confusion. The night before, a midget in Presidential clothing, shielded behind hundreds of soldiers disguised as policemen, abolished the electric company in charge of the most populated part of Mexico, Luz y Fuerza del Centro (LFC). The real reason for the action was that its union was too feisty — the action was a form of privitization meant to transfer power from workers to owners. President Calderón’s excuse was that the company had become a financial burden for the nation.

That morning, the clock ticked for hours but there was nothing but noise. The people in charge of the company had just vanished, no speeches, no nothing, just vanished. The midget was on every TV channel, every radio station, repeating over and over again his lame excuses for dissolving the company. He assured the nation that now, Mexicans would enjoy a first class electric service, with competitive rates provided by a first class company, Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE). Six months later, I’m still waiting.

After the announcement there were immediately questions. “Can he do that?”, “Does he have the constitutional power?”, “Will the new company be able to assume control?” The only ones with easy answers were the 44,000 LFC union members. “We will fight” they said.

In the days after the declaration, it became apparent that CFE could not take over the electrical system so easily. Millions of people lost electrical power for weeks. The “highly trained and specialized” CFE technicians couldn’t operate LFC facilities — they didn’t know how. The technology that kept the system operating was too old for them to operate. LFC workers complained that soldiers were arriving at their homes before dawn and kidnapping them to force them to fix problems in every aspect of the electrical service.

Those problems continue to exist right now. It can be a sunny day, no clouds, no wind, no rain, just a perfect day, and suddenly there’s a blackout that lasts for several hours. That’s the “first class” service CFE provides. And the new company is bleeding money, the exact excuse used to legitimate the disappearance of LFC. The reason is because CFE is not collecting fees — people are not paying because they don’t agree with the price. No one is checking meters to see how much energy is being used — instead everything is “calculated”. CFE doesn’t have enough employees to cover the whole service area and the former LFC workers won’t help them.

The beginning

Historically, electrical service in Mexico was provided by foreign companies. Mexican Light and Power (MLP) was the biggest of all. This company provided electricity for Mexico City and all the states around it since it was created in 1903. By 1911 it was the biggest and most modern electric company in all Latin America but that was never reflected in good salaries and work conditions for their workers. Several attempts were made to create a union but the result were always the same: police repression and the firing from the company of the unionists. This changed in 1914 after a tramway workers strike that represented a great victory for unionism in Mexico. In December, 1914 Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas (Mexican Electric Workers Union – SME) was formed. During its first 5 months of existence, the union organized two strikes and made substantial improvements in working conditions, salaries, and work hours.

In 1936, the general contract for the workers expired and the company and union couldn’t reach an agreement. The workers demanded increases in retirement payments and access to medical services. MLP denied all of this and also decided to eliminate the right to retire after 35 working years. The union’s General Secretary went to see the President and said “Mr. President, the strike is about to begin but I guarantee that all public services will continue to work.” July 16 the strike began with the support of the most important unions in the country and the Labor Secretary on their side. Ten days later, MLP had to agree to all 107 union demands and sign a contract that would be an example for unions around the world.

By 1958 it became evident that as long as private companies provided the electrical service, it would be impossible for the country to implement a national electrification program. To solve this, on September 27, 1960 the Mexican president nationalized all electrical services.

After the nationalization, there were two national companies and two unions in charge of generating electricity and providing electrical service to the Mexican people. There was the STERM union that was controlled by the government that worked for CFE and there was the SME union that was an independent union that worked for LFC.

In 1970, the government tried to abolish LFC and transfer all its assets to CFE but failed. Instead, LFC was prohibited from building new powerplants and in 1985 its service area was reduced. In 1994, LFC was recognized as a public company with no government links or control.

The reasons and explanations

The official campaign to discredit LFC and its workers has been quite effective because its assertion that the company was inefficient was true. LFC was an inefficient company from an economical, capitalist perspective. Every year, several billions had to be transferred to the company for it to continue operating. That definitively sounds like an excellent reason for it to cease operating. That is until you hear the reason it was inefficient. When you are forced to buy a product at a certain price and then you have to sell it at a lower price, you cannot make money. Since 1970, the company has been prohibited from producing the electricity it sold. Instead, it had to buy power from CFE at prices determined by the government. The government blamed the workers, calling them inefficient and saying that the financial problems of the company were because the workers salaries were exaggeratedly high and their contract had many benefits other contracts didn’t have. But if their contracts were better than other contracts, that meant they had a good union and the union did what it was supposed to do. It didn’t mean they didn’t deserve what they had. This chart explains things quite well:

Function in the company Monthly salary

(Mexican pesos)

General Director 145,800

Finances sub Director 145,000

General lawyer 145,000

Auditory Director 104,500

Unionized worker 6,000

(One US dollar is around 14 Mexican pesos right now)

Just to compare, the Mexican President gets every month 152,000. So maybe it is not the unionized workers that have exaggerated salaries. Moreover, the largest enterprises and government offices don’t pay for the electricity they use, even though they are charged a lower price that the normal users. Here is a list with some of those big users:

User Debt in millions of pesos

Mexican Congress 4.1

US Embassy 1.7

Attorney’s Office (PGR) 1.5

Mexico City subway 16.6

Foreign Affairs Office 1.5

Estado de México government 1816

Hidalgo government 316.3

Besides the flaws in the government’s arguments, it is also relevant who is making them. The Labor Secretary Javier Lozano has been an active protagonist in this situation, supporting the President’s decision and declaring invalid all of the arguments the SME has presented to support its case. This makes it impossible for SME to win because the person that should be looking out for the workers and unions’ interests, or at least be a neutral judge, is one of the main supporters of the disappearance of the company. For those that believe in God, it is like suing Jesus and letting God be the judge — you just will never have a chance of winning.

The REAL motives

Money. That is always the cause, the need to privatize things. Why give things away cheap when you can privatize and charge whatever you want? People can’t choose — if they don’t like the pric
es, they can’t do anything about it since there is no other option. For years, one government after the other has reduced the investment in education, public health, and in this case, energy generation. You don’t invest at all at a company that provides a vital service for a country, you force the company to cut the budget and to expand its service, and eventually the company will become financially ineffective. This provides the perfect excuse to privatize it. It has already happened with the telephones, the railways, and now electric energy is the next candidate. But there is something more, something else that can be privatized and that has not been mentioned. There is optical fiber, a huge network of optical fiber that reaches all of the country. Most of it belongs to CFE, but since it is a government-loyal company with a government-loyal union, you will never hear a word about someone inside the company protesting for the privatization of the optical fiber network. But in the center of the country, its most populated region, the network didn’t belong to them, it belonged to LFC and its union would never allow this privatization to occur. So what had to be done was to get them out of the way. A spotless tactic, get one union out of the way and you will be able to privatize two things. Two for the price of one — what a bargain.

The public reaction

Lots of people raised their voices back in October to support SME, great voices, powerful voices. The best lawyers in constitutional rights offered their services to prove that the presidential action was unconstitutional nothing more than a clear and flagrant violation by the government of the union’s autonomy. But it is difficult to prove a violation when the judges do what the boss says, and the boss is the one being accused. There was a lot of hope that millions of people would follow the national strike called for March 16 but nothing happened. Few people went out to show their support to the movement. Once again, television and the cheap entertainment it provides were more powerful than the cries of thousands of families for justice and a decent job. The government’s tactic is to wait for the clock to tick enough for all of the SME workers to get another job or, in the worst of case, for people to forget all of it and only recall it as a dark memory in the past, a story that maybe happened. And then, another injustice will be consummated, one more for the history books, another defeat for the union movements around the globe. Just like a Mexican historian wrote about the 1976 electric workers movement:

“La solidaridad con los electricistas de la Tendencia Democrática fue limitada, se realizaron varias maniobras y actos públicos, hubo desplegados de apoyo, volantes y hasta paros solidarios de agrupaciones sindicales universitarias. Sin embargo la movilización no alcanzó grandes proporciones. Se esperaba mucho más de lo que se dio (sucedió).”

(Solidarity with the Democratic Current electric workers was limited, public acts took place, there were statements being published, flyers, and even solidarity interruptions at universities. But nevertheless, public reaction didn’t reach huge proportions. It was expected a lot more than what finally happened.)

May

May 16 • 11-1 pm

City Slicker Farms Bike Tour – SF

fermentchange.org/

May 23 • 7 pm

Commemoration of 20th anniversary of car bomb attack on Judi Bari – La Peña 3105 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley 510-548-3113 judibari.org

May 23

Soupstock – Food Not Bombs 30th Anniversary – Boston Common – foodnotbombs.net/boston_soupstock_2010

May 29-30

Boston Skillshare – Simmons College, Boston, Massachusetts bostonskillshare.org/2010/info

June

June 11 • 6 pm

Berkeley Critical Mass – Bike Prom ride – Berkeley BART

June 19-26

High Country Earth First! Gathering – San Juan Mountains of Southwest Colorado. feralfutures.blogspot.com/

June 22-26

US Social Forum – Detroit, Michigan ussf2010.org

June 25-27

Protest the G8 Summit – Huntsville, Ontario, Canada.

June 25 • 3 pm

Trans March leaves @ 7 – Delores Park, SF

June 26 • 3 pm

Dyke March leaves @ 7 – Dolores Park, SF

June 29-July 6

Earth First! North Woods Round River Rendezvous maine.earth-first.net

July

Week of July 4th

Rainbow gathering Location announced early June. welcomehome.org

July 7-12

Cascadia Trans & Womyn’s Action Camp! twac@riseup.net twac.wordpress.com

July 23-27

Peace News Summer Camp – Oxfordshire, UK peacenewscamp.wordpress.com

July 29-August 3

Climate Action Camp – Belgium klimaatactiekamp.org

July 30-August 9

Disarmament Summer permaculture/protest encampment at US nuke laboratory – Los Alamos, NM – thinkoutsidethebomb.org

August

August 4-9

UK EF! Summer Gathering earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/

August 12-18

Punk Week – Ann Arbor, MI myspace.com/punkweekinfo

August 13 • 8 pm

Long Haul Infoshop 17th birthday party! 3124 Shattuck, Berkeley

August 21 – 22 • 10-5 Sat / 11-5 Sun

2010 Seattle Anarchist Book Fair – at the Vera Project (www.theveraproject.org). info info@seattleanarchist.org.

August 22 • 4 pm

Slingshot new Volunteer meeting 3124 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley

August 27-30

National Animal Rights Gathering veggies.org.uk

October

October 10

Global work party to reduce greenhouse gas emissions – 350.org