Category: Articles

Around the world the demand for education is growing exponentially because of the projected need to have a good job within the first world service economy, but the money that is being appropriated by any government supporting education is not matching the need. Dwindling tax money is funding the global war machine and is sucking itself into bureaucracy. In California, state supported institutions of higher education like UC Berkeley, SF State, and Laney Community College are being hit by budget cuts. Students are protesting fee hikes, workers are raising their voices about layoffs, and faculty are uniting against pay cuts; the budget crisis is heavily affecting education. There is a call to action on March 4 across the nation for schools to Walk Out in opposition to cutting school budgets.

However, as this issue of Slingshot is being created, the East Bay Free School is already tirelessly producing an alternative to state and business controlled education. Instead of fighting the system to profit from the system in the form of free education, a group of people can assume control for their own desires and needs for information. Comrades all across the East Bay have signed up to teach classes about their favorite topics including and not limited to: permaculture, Spanish, homebrew, knitting, and astrology/astronomy. Education is a human entitlement that we all ought to have access to, but in attempting to create viable alternatives to capitalism we can create our own paradigm in which to learn useful skills and information.

The East Bay Free School (EBFS) is similar to other free schools around the country in that people sign up to teach classes, then the classes are listed on a calendar, which is widely distributed for people to attend. A lot of organization goes into setting up the infrastructure for the EBFS, like finding free class space and course offerings. Free School classes are all ages and, of course, all free!

I went to a Free School class about Solar PV Installation. The class was being offered every Saturday for four weeks; it allowed for the ‘teacher’ and the ‘students’ to go into as much or as little depth as they wished; together they decided their curriculum. Thus Free School is a definite way one could obtain comprehensive knowledge for free, and in a friendly, autonomous setting.

It does take a lot of effort and cooperation to put together a formal Free School calendar, and sometimes resources are scarce, so the first stages to creating an alternative educational structure might be to spontaneously get together with your friends and simply share your skills. This form of information exchange usually involves practical usage and experimentation. Most of the time institutionalized learning is heavily lacking in practice and does not end up equipping folks with useful skills but rather rhetoric information. The red tape of institutionalized school can stand in the way of someone who wants simply to learn and to pursue passions. Students must often spend extra time and money in a required class having no genuine interest. Through learning about the topics we want to learn about and exchanging information with our friends, we create a new world outside of the capitalist institutional structure for people to exist strongly together without the pressure of needing a degree for a better job because we find our needs fulfilled. In ensuring our own human rights to education we also empower ourselves to do what we love and to be really engaged in our lives as they are lived.

To contact the EBFS: eastbayfs@gmail.com or visit www.eastbayfreeskool.wikia.com. there are also meetings at the Long Haul on Mondays at 7:30 pm.

The Long Haul community space in Berkeley beat a government motion to dismiss its federal lawsuit November 30, 2009 meaning that the government defendants have to answer the lawsuit and a trial is now scheduled for May 16, 2011. Long Haul filed suit a year ago against all law enforcement involved in an August 27, 2008 police raid on the space by a joint terrorism task force composed of University of California police, sheriffs and the FBI. The police seized all computers at Long Haul after breaking in with guns drawn to execute a search warrant as part of an investigation of threatening emails allegedly sent to UC Berkeley animal researchers from a public-access computer connected to the internet at Long Haul.

Long Haul is a non-profit organization that publishes Slingshot and operates an infoshop and library at 3124 Shattuck in Berkeley. It is clear that the police never would have gotten such a broad search warrant to seize every computer at the Berkeley Public Library if the email in question had come from the public library, rather than at a radical Infoshop. While the police perhaps intended their raid to intimidate local activists, Long Haul was able to reopen the night of the raid. The public-access computer room reopened a month later with new (used) donated computers. The police searched and copied hard drives from the seized computers.

The lawsuit, filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU of Northern California, seeks relief against law enforcement using the data from the seized computers for improper purposes. While the legal process has so far moved very slowly, the struggle goes on to push back against big brother police tactics against activist spaces.

“Horrible news – its like someone dying – i can’t help but feel every minute i spend on this fucking computer is helping to destroy wonderful things such as HAND LAYOUT”

— 1:51 a.m. email from Eggplant

This issue marks the end of an era — it is the first issue that Slingshot has had to be “processed” through a computer before it reached your hands. In early January, Slingshot’s newspaper printer since 1988 told us that they had gotten rid of their camera and that they were only accepting newspaper copy in digital form. Until this issue, we would make a “camera ready” layout by hand, the printer would take a photograph of it on a huge camera, create a huge negative, and use that to burn printing plates that would then print the paper. Without a camera, the printer now burns the plates directly from a computer print out. [Note: the printer for the Organizer still has their camera so that publication is still old school.]

This is basically a symbolic loss; our friend Sandi offered to help us continue doing hand layout by scanning our camera-ready originals and emailing them to the printing press. But like Eggplant says, this is another step in the march of progress which always brings us more technology and allegedly more efficiency, but which never considers whether we want to actually live in the homogenized, soulless world that is emerging. It’s easy to get caught up in the march of progress and excited by each new shiny gadget and forget that you’re an animal — a living thing — with needs and desires far more complex, interesting and meaningful than making everything fast, efficient, easy and cheap.

The process of making Slingshot is different from how most printed publications are made these days — we still do it mostly by hand, using computers as little as we can. We physically cut, manipulate and glue back together pieces of paper to make a collage — text, artwork and headlines — that become each page of the paper. This is how publications were designed before computer layout, and after the demise of setting type on pieces of lead. Our production method means we have a collection of scissors, razor blades, pens, a waxer to glue stuff together, rolls of line tape, and huge piles of art we can cut up.

Some of these hand-layout tools are now endangered — they are no longer being manufactured and you have to become something of an antique collector if you want to continue to use all the tools that used to exist to do layout this way.

So, we’ve decided to officially become antique collectors by asking everyone to send us their un-used hand-layout tools: particularly border tape, clip art books, waxers, zipatone film, rub-on letters or other cool hand-layout stuff we may not even know about yet. We want to build a living archive of these materials — to preserve tools as well as skills as we continue using them for their intended purpose.

How you do something and the tools you use help shape your experience and your thinking while you’re using those particular tools. We think that our use of these old-fashioned publication methods is both a product of our political and counter-cultural thinking, which is skeptical of the de-humanizing effects of the high-techization of our lives, as well as helping us develop these ideas in the first place.

Computers isolate people in front of their personal screen and divide them by rewarding ever-more division of labor and specialization in particular micro-specializations. Some people have special skills while everyone else is disempowered because they lack those skills. This process of stratification promotes individualism and competition and frustrates people building community, cooperation and equality.

When we use ancient tools to make Slingshot, these tools permit a more inclusive, cooperative and equal relationship between members of the collective since everyone has a more equal knowledge regarding the means of production. Everyone can cut stuff up and glue it back together — you learn this in grade school.

As a bonus, we achieve a diversity of style within the paper, rather than the drab standardization you see in a lot of publications these days. Even a lot of radical publications look like they are trying to imitate the slick computerized style of the corporate machine they are presumably opposing — how sad. These days more than ever, we are starved for forms of expression that haven’t been sterilized and computerized — that look like they were made by living human beings rather than machines.

When we make Slingshot, each person in the collective usually does 1-3 pages, so the look of the paper changes from page to page. We do it all together in a chaotic room — sort of like a party with razor blades and scraps of paper. This environment is engaging and cooperative — breaking down the loneliness it is so easy to feel in the standardized world of sitting in front of a computer screen. Unlike computers, other human beings tell jokes, give you a hard time, challenge your ideas, teach you things and help you when you need help.

They’ll give you a hug if you need one. Creating the paper becomes much more than a means to an end — it expresses a model for how we would like to reorganize the whole world.

You always hear how the internet is turning everyone into the media and opening up new opportunities for community, creativity and access — and maybe that is true in some ways — but this isn’t the only side of the story. People are in “community” sitting alone looking at a screen. Their creativity is expressed in narrowly constrained technological forms of media expression.

The mainstream society always seeks the newest technology and the most efficient tools. But you don’t have to use these gadgets just because they exist — newer and more efficient is not always better. It is crucial to ask how each technology, tool or method makes you feel and how it impacts your relationships with others and the earth. When you start asking these questions about every technology, you start realizing how often new technology exists not to benefit the user, society or the earth, but just to enable a corporation to sell stuff.

The whole idea of efficiency is suspect — why do we always want to do everything faster? Maybe the joy of doing something slow and really engaging with it and experiencing the process is the essence of being alive — is the key to leading a meaningful life. Processes that are tough and complex can make you feel way more alive, competent and satisfied than stuff that seems easy because it has been pre-digested, computerized and managed for you by a corporation. And having everything easy can come with invisible environmental and social costs — using lots of oil, chemicals, transnational transportation and cheap labor from the third world.

If you fly an airplane across the USA, you will not know the USA. If you walk, bike and hitch, you will have really traveled. Who wants to make love as fast as possible when you could spend a lazy morning at it?

So in the spirit of slow lovin’, send us your clip art books and bordertape. Or better yet, figure out how to use them yourself and step back from computerizing every last bit of your life.

Food Not Bombs has won, it is more commonly accepted than hated. Despite intense police repression, terrorist watch lists, and the stigma that is common fare towards homeless and the poor — most people who have heard of it think it is okay to feed people for free. It has a simple straightforward model that can be replicated all over the planet — and it has.

Bay Area Food Not Bombs may be a model organization that other places can look to with envy. It’s located in an intelligent and active urban environment that has a largely sympathetic population. It is close to excellent farms and food producers who donate plenty of eats. Long-running and consistent servings further solidify its place on the streets and in our hearts.

Oakland Food Not Bombs now has one more day of hot meals cooked and dished out to folks. This is at 32nd & San Pablo Ave. and has been going strong for 6 months. Despite initial concerns that this would detract from getting help for the Berkeley People’s Park serving that happens at the same time, so far it hasn’t. There is also a food give away on Thursday mornings in Downtown Oakland, which initially had the difficulty of getting the large crowd not to push and shove for the food — behavior that our enemies mislabel as “Anarchy.”

Also coming down the line for the East Bay chapter is a move to make the organization a stand-alone non-profit. For the past 16 years it has been under the umbrella of the Long Haul non-profit, which enables many places to legally donate to it. There is some reluctance from people who shun any paper work dictated by “THE MAN.” Now it is time for the organization to stand on its own feet. This may be a good time too, because funding from a major source has just been hit by the hard times that everyone is talking about. The Berkeley Flea Market has made a cut in the monthly donations it gives that helps to pay for essentials such as bulk grains and beans. This does not rule out the traditional means of grassroots fundraising. There is talk of doing benefit shows and a self-published cookbook that has a focus on making meals for large numbers of people — as well as an angle of food security. But it is a small miracle of daily creating a way out of no way that testifies how money can’t replace people power.

Then there is San Francisco Food Not Bombs. They have as an impressive long run of serving since January 1988 — which is after the whole thing started in 1980 in Boston. The 30th Anniversary celebration will take place in Boston on the weekend of May 23, but celebrations will happen in just about every city the organization operates out of — which is over a thousand cities. Now some people have set out to put together the San Francisco celebration of Soupstock. We must have food to live, and we must celebrate to mark the season change and to break from our work. Help is needed in planning the Anniversary. The thousands of details to be addressed are now being examined. Last year was poorly attended. But if people know it’s coming maybe more excitement will be generated. How much activity can you imagine? Stop by on Thursday nights at Station 40 (16th and Mission St.) to informally talk about it. People gather at 5pm to cook for the night’s serving. For further info you can also call Diamond Dave at 415-240-0286.

San Francisco faced the most brutal repression in the first few years of serving. The thinly veiled war against the poor did not convince the courts or the general public that food could not be given away for free. Nor has the FBI deterred the grassroots by claiming Food Not Bombs as a terrorist organization. We have something to learn from this. Even here in the city where the first Human Rights charter was signed, just as many human necessities are blatantly disregarded. Not that anarchists give a fart over the UN, but issues like shelter and peace have to be wrangled out of the hands of the lying-ass of government and brought back into our hands — as Food Not Bombs shows us with food distribution. Today is very dire with people living without shelter — without homes. 2009 saw over 100 deaths of homeless people in the state of California alone. Unnecessary suffering while a large amount of houses and buildings remain vacant. The most practical solution is to make squatting as common as giving out bread. Other problems facing our communities would be the need to have conflict resolution that isn’t administered by the police. Having a locally controlled alternative to Law Enforcement seems more necessary in view of the fact that the present structure has its roots in vigilantes organized by the ultra-rich. Police have not evolved much from terrorizing runaway slaves, and recently immigrated workers organizing themselves. These problems can be seriously looked at when the 30th Anniversary comes around with the conference and the dozen micro-gatherings that grow around the main event. And of course once we’re together the possibilities of our ideas and dreams can get collective help in actualizing them.

BOOK REPORT: When Cody’s Books closed in 2006, everyone rushed in to point fingers and make self-serving claims. The owners lamented about how no one reads anymore, the media bemoaned “the end of an era,” and politicians blamed the homeless and demanded more cops on the beat. But no one did anything to save Cody’s or find something to fill the space. The building, located at the crossroads of Berkeley culture–and in some ways symbolic of it–stood vacant for years. Enter Ken Sarachan, local mogul of schlock, who already owns half a dozen businesses on the Telegraph. Since he has likened my writing to the National Enquirer, I feel it’s safe to say that that he’s a fat jerk who has made his fortune marketing the worst aspects of hippie and college cultures. His evilness is legendary and oddly lovable, like a wound you can’t help but pick at. According to informed sources, he is a zit. A tenant had finally been found for the Cody’s building: Brainwash, the South of Market laundromat and live music venue–when Ken bought it out from under them. That was the surprise news of 2009, arriving unfortunately two days after last issue’s deadline, thus depriving me of the scoop. Ken’s first move was to evict the adjacent flower stand that had been there 35 years–but what would be next? Word on the street spread: the old Cody’s would soon be Rasputin’s Books, another link in Ken’s ever-expanding chain. Ace Backwards heard the news and knew that his days selling paperbacks on that corner were over. But Ken is as unpredictable as he is evil. “Why leave?” Ken asked him. “You should stay.” Ace took that as a sign and left anyway, heading to southern pastures. He will be missed.

MORE BOOK NEWS: The millionaire man-boy from Connecticut who “rescued” Black Oak Books has found a new way to turn the once-proud business into a joke and a financial loss. Too cheap to pay the North Berkeley rent, he purchased a dilapidated nightclub in the no-man’s land of San Pablo Avenue and relocated the store there, reasoning that “plenty of parking” will lure bibliophiles right in. Veterans of 80s Hardcore fondly remember the building as the former location of seminal punk club Ruthie’s Inn!…On the 86’d list at Book Zoo: Fat Bob, Bird Sound Paul, Drunk Ethiopian Guy, and One-eyed Rodriguez. Try your luck at Black Oak instead.

FOOTNOTES: The recent police crackdown of street kids in the Haight has sent many over to this side of the bay, making for a noticeable change. Telegraph feels surlier and seedier than usual. “Spare change for alcohol? Fuck you then!” That sums up the traditional American attitudes we’ve spent our lives trying to escape–or replace–yet it’s hard to make it from Durant to Dwight without hearing it at least once. Don’t get me wrong: I like loitering, don’t mind drug dealing, and panhandling is a business like any other kind. But it’s bad enough to walk through frat row and get threats and catcalls–now it feels like fucking Fleet Week on Telegraph too. Berkeley should be a haven for everyone, yet we should be wary of predators and thugs who drain our energy and take advantage of the institutions we’ve helped to create and sustain…Latenight bites: The Burrito truck on International Boulevard by the lake is good if not great, and open til 2:30. Further towards Fruitvale are the 24-hour trucks, but those can be prohibitively far for those on foot or bike.

FINANCIAL TIMES: Berkeley’s Wingnut Economy shows signs of recovery after November’s crash following the closing of Semifreddi’s Bakery. Dumpstered bread remains at a high premium, even the universally despised and inedible Ezekial 4:9. The day-old bagel is stable. Peet’s “Free Coffee” cards were somewhat devalued with the Caffé Med issuing its own competing currency, but Peet’s “Any Drink” cards continue to be a hot commodity. Stale Luna Bars are still the Gold Standard, acceptable as currency anywhere in town or for three Clif Bars or six day-old bagels in trade. Persistent rumors of a hidden, hoarded Aileen Street-area Food Not Bombs Luna Bar cache threaten to destabilize the whole market and throw the exchange rate into chaos, but FNB spokespeople have sought to soothe public fears by issuing reports that the Luna Bars in question are all Chocolate Peppermint Stick flavor anyway.

FRESH INK: The enthusiasm I’ve expressed for new local mags in this column seems to be the kiss of death. Both Asscactus and Coupons ceased publication right after my glowing reviews. Perhaps my praise was premature, since both rags had more personality than actual content. Diamonds in the rough, I looked forward to seeing them develop–to watch the mags and their editors grow up. Alas, the world of self-publishing isn’t for everyone. Evicted from their HQ in front of Peet’s, the Asscactus editors chose to pursue music instead. The Coupons crew succumbed to the traveling itch (and I don’t mean scabies, in this case). Luckily, several new mags and their editors have arrived to take their place. I’ll keep my descriptions short, lest I continue the curse and have no one to keep me company at Kinko’s and to commiserate with over deadlines. No Gods No Mattress, though barely a year old, already has seven issues out. Editor Enola manages to be playfully whimsical and painstakingly honest at the same time, tackling difficult subjects as well as the mundane, all with an engaging, disarming grace. Later Daze is more music-oriented, but not impersonal in any way. The editor’s essay on his Polio in the latest issue is as heartwarming as it is heartbreaking. Medatrocity is all about the Med, Berkeley’s oldest and wisest cafe. A hundred people share the same room for years, yet each has their own story to tell, and each has a completely different perspective on the place. Hell Times, the house organ of dystopian community Hellarity Ensues, is the same, but with a hundred people and twenty dogs sharing a much smaller space.

POST-COLONIAL CONFLICT: A man in a khaki uniform and pith helmet boarded the SF-bound BART, and soon an irate voice could be heard. “You think that’s funny, do you? You think it’s a joke? The Boers wore outfits like that when they beat my grandfather! People who looked like you forced my family into the mines!” It was a man from Kenya talking, and he was struggling to hold back his rage. The suburban passengers grumbled, shaking their heads. “One more crazy guy,” they said. “Even on the train, there’s always some homeless person who wants your money or your sympathy–I’m sick of it!” The man in the pith helmet appeared to be from Pleasanton, out for a drunken night on the town. He and his friends laughed at the Kenyan. “It’s Halloween,” one patronizingly explained. “It’s just a costume, man.” Instead of taking the Kenyan seriously, everyone either ignored him or called him crazy, which made him understandably pissed. “That’s the same as wearing a Nazi uniform!” he yelled. “You’re a Nazi! Do you know anything about colonialism? Do you know anything about history?”

THAT WAS TOO MUCH for the liberal passengers. Nazis are pure evil, as everyone knows, to which nothing else compares–not even colonialism, whatever that is. All at once, everyone started yelling. So I joined in. Too often I’d kept my mouth shut in public transit situations when someone was being threatened or sexually harassed. I always worried that by stepping in I would make the situation worse, but afterwards I felt cowardly and wished that I had taken the chance. Now people were yelling at the Kenyan, saying he was an idiot and he didn’t know what a Nazi was. Comparisons are never perfect, but his was close enough. So I stood up and yelled, not very eloquently, that Kenya had concentration camps too, in the 50s, with racist guards dressed exactly the same as the pith helmeted man. Of course, I may as well have been yelling about Bigfoot or Atlantis, so ridiculous was the idea of Kenyan concentration camps to the other BART Passengers. The people sitting near me fidgeted or just got up to move. Great, another crazy guy–who knows what he’l
l do.

THE KENYAN CAME and sat next to me. “I have to ask you a favor,” he said. “Hold my hand.” And so, as the train rumbled through the tunnel underneath the bay, the Kenyan and I held hands tightly as he tried to calm down and everyone else on the train looked on in terror. A woman behind us made an attempt at empathy. “Everyone has a story like that about their family,” she said. “You can’t let it get you down, or take it personally.” Was she Asian-American, perhaps? Or from one of the tiny handful of Italian-American families who also got interned? No, she was as white as me. What family experience did she have that was “like” that? Her sympathy was as bad as the rest of the passengers’ ignorance. In fact, it was the same: a refusal to listen and understand that other people’s experiences shouldn’t be casually dismissed. When the Kenyan and I both got off at Powell, those seated near us breathed a huge sigh. That made me happy. For once, I wasn’t the only crazy guy. I was riled up, but not left feeling isolated and alienated, like I so often do on the commuter train crossing the bay.

Have a tip for the Foot? Tie it to a brick and throw it through the window of B of A. Write it on a grain of sand and leave it on the waterfront. Give it a paint job and some overpriced pies and call it Temescal.

This zine is written as two stories at once, which could be either slightly confusing or a unique style and way to multi-task. One story is about the past–a childhood in Michigan, written in italics, that describes the segregation of neighborhoods and dealing with race issues growing up in a small town. The other story is more present–about moving to New Orleans as a young, white kid possibly pretending to be poor, mingling with activism, and getting a taste of “not my battle” when the people he’s fighting for seemed apathetic. These two eras intersect as short segments that are mostly sincere, honest, interesting, and a little heart-breaking. Connections between the two defog in certain instances like how experiences of random violence in his youth gave the writer the conviction that no place is more dangerous than another.

Break Fast is written as the experience of the author and not in a way that assumes how other people may have felt and what was “really going on”. It presents feelings of displacement, frustration and real problems that maybe no one will ever be able to offer solutions to, but are important to discuss nonetheless.

This is a personal zine, and it’s written as a personal zine should be–with honesty and a little embarrassment–and very well written. Some technicalities like spelling errors may just make other zinesters feel better about their own work.

While scientists at our universities frantically try to crack the secrets of life in the service of financial profit, there is blindness to the crisis at hand. A crisis arguably created by the thoughtless embrace of advancing technology, leaving torn ecosystems, toxins, cancer and other new diseases, pollution, loss of topsoil, extinctions, climate change, and dying fish in its wake. Science, as it is practiced now, is not going to get us out of the fix it has gotten us into.

We need a shift in our understanding of “nature”. It is difficult to conceptualize and articulate what is missing from inside of the paradigm we inherited. It has something to do with relation, wholeness, spirit. We have lost part of the hoop of wisdom and it is hard to know what is still recoverable.

It’s not just that science needs to look at different things; we need a whole new approach to understanding our world. Scientists are the priests of the current religion of the world elite and have so narrowed their means of understanding that they are now missing the whole. It is not only that science is currently under the employ of capitalism; it is that science has discovered how to manipulate parts of nature but is woefully ignorant of the depth of the Weaving of Life. This is the web of life unraveling. To understand it we need to know ourselves as part of this whole and embrace the mystery as integral. The science that believes itself to be objective and rational leaves out poetry, magic and beauty and cannot lead us to the reweaving we need to survive.

Science has generally approached nature by capturing, manipulating, dissecting. Nature will not reveal her beauty and truth this way. How many hawks do you have to trap in your net and shackle before you understand the magnificence of their soar? How can we discover the wonders of nature by observing it in freedom? How must we be free ourselves to do so?

My heart aches to know what is happening to the animals in laboratories. How have we come this far astray? Are experimenters trapped in the same way, deprived of natural light and air? Do rats heal with love? How are they different when they are living free…running through tunnels of a nest of different plant branches collected and placed for decades by their ancestors? Can you hear them? Does their spirit talk to yours? What if you were both free and wild? What would you say to them? How about ants? Slow down and watch them communicate. What are they doing? How are we connected? How are we kin? How shall we live together?

Wake up humans! What matters is the soil that grows the food and the health of the life in the soil. We got lost down the microscope, discovering the world of small and seeing — then manipulating — nature’s building blocks. How miraculous. Nature has patterns but, tunneling to decipher the codes, we are lost; we forget where we are. We need to stand up from the microscope, stretch and reconnect, remember, reunite with the whole of which we are part and breathe. We need to notice the beauty in nature, observe her rather than dissect her, court her with respect and patience.

Science went awry, following the cold logic of Bacon and Descartes that saw nature as separate and inanimate, as something to control. In a different history we might have followed Novalis and Goethe, who approached nature respectfully, enticing her as a lover, to reveal some of her mystery. Can we find a way to re-embrace nature as beloved kin? Can we unhitch from the track of logic that leads to our predictable demise? What would it look like, this wooing, courting of nature to work with her?

It would look like free time to sit in nature, still, listening, watching, smelling, feeling. Listen, listening, lightening the load. Observing, protecting, enhancing wild places, creating space for diverse species to thrive and adapt. It would look like permaculture, living systems; like wild, diverse poly-cultures, and wetlands to revitalize water we have pooped in. Localized diverse agriculture, rooftop gardens, compost, and bio-remediation. It would look like prayer and sacred respect, honoring, participating in the cycles. It would look like simplifying, slowing and deep remembering.

Open yourself to evolve with life on earth. Let birdsong in your heart.

The climate change protest in San Francisco on November 30, 2009 — a coordinated global protest prior to the Copenhagen UN Climate conference — was more heartwarming than I had anticipated. It was a little hard dragging myself out of my routine and to the protest, and at first the chanting and signs felt forced and ritualized, but in the end the action succeeded and I left feeling energized. The climate crisis — rising greenhouse gas emissions, etc. — feel so overwhelming and disempowering. When you’re considering going to a protest like this, it seems utterly hopeless to believe that a few hundred people with signs in San Francisco could make any difference at all. Why waste time with the effort?

But there is something mysterious about actually participating in activism vs. just thinking about it. On paper, trying to change really complex, massive structures seems hopeless, but in practice, it feels one hell of a lot better to at least try something than to just give up. We marched down Market Street and to the Bank of America high-rise tower. My friend Kristi asked “why the B of A?” and it was a really good question. They are one corporation amongst thousands, all trying to maximize profits and willing to sacrifice the climate and the earth in the process. Like many others, they have lobbied against strong action on climate and for false solutions (clean coal, biofuels), and they invest in all kinds of disastrous activities. This are hardly unique.

But when we got there, the real reason became obvious. It really helps to personalize the struggle, if only to a huge concrete office tower. We rushed and blockaded the doors and even though it was just another symbolic protest — requiring a paragraph to link to the actual issues, which themselves require several paragraphs to explain — the action made the underlying conflict easy to understand. Confused business men tried to get through the door, and the looks on their faces were priceless. You could see the clash of worldviews. Are money and status, routine and order our real goal in this life? Or do our lives connect to something much deeper, which ultimately relates to the health of the planet that made our lives possible in the first place?

I’ve been to so many of these types of protests before — there is a certain routine and you can easily get jaded. But this time I didn’t feel like that at all. To the contrary, my regular life of going to work etc. has been making me feel bored and stuck. This feeling of the streets — the riot cops, the community struggling together, the closeness of being with other people willing to stand up whether it makes any damn difference or not — it felt strangely real, intense and sharp, as opposed to so much of normal life which feels like an illusion in slow motion.

We very thoroughly although briefly shut down that building and brought joyful chaos to the corporate canyons. Dancing and color and silliness and live music made the grim seriousness and “adultness” of the businessmen and the police look absurd. And it was impressive how few people it took to create such a big disruption — business as usual in a dense, modern, industrialized system is fragile and already right on the edge of collapse into chaos, requiring just a tiny push.

But I have no illusions. A tiny action like this alone can’t change the course of events. To do so will require a much broader popular uprising and a fundamental re-organization of the values and priorities that structure how things work.

What I think we accomplished was perhaps a tiny step in that direction. While maybe the people in power didn’t hear our protest, actually getting out in the streets changed those of us who participated. Maybe that change in mood, outlook and spirit can be infectious, spreading to those we’re connected to, and gradually moving the spirit of the whole community from one of resignation and depression to the kind of courage, inspiration and hopefulness we need to turn things around.

When I think back to my own life, I realize that what “normal” people consider success — getting ahead in terms of status and acquiring a bunch of possessions — is really on a fundamental level failure. It’s a failure to realize what is important and put that realization into action by living for the things that actually matter, which aren’t material things. Meaning is about experiences, relationships and having mental and emotional space to be aware of life going on around you. So many “successful” people forget to stop and notice their lives, and in the process they miss the whole thing.

Since what “normal” people consider success is really failure, then for us to achieve success on a human level may mean that we’re considered failures on a social and economic level. All the stuff you’re supposed to do — achieve status, secure material comfort — you risk giving up if you take pursuing a meaningful life seriously. If you really go for it and put your heart into alternatives to this dying system, it means giving up the types of comfort it has to offer in favor of pleasures that are off the grid.

One thing I noticed about the November 30 protest was how small it was. The organizers picked November 30 because it was the 10th anniversary of the huge protests that shut down the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in 1999. I was in Seattle for the WTO protest and it was one of the hugest, most inspirational uprisings imaginable. “Normal” life was completely displaced by a massive demand for a future beyond more economic growth. But N30 in 2009 didn’t carry on the spirit of Seattle.

Looking around at the few dozen protesters dwarfed by the thousands of workers and shoppers in downtown San Francisco, my friend Sandi and I wondered why the climate crisis didn’t draw a bigger outpouring of concern. In fact, if the global climate significantly changes, disrupting all ecosystems on earth as well as all human societies which ultimately fundamentally depend on natural agricultural production, the climate crisis will make injustice related to globalization and the WTO look like small potatoes.

Something about the enormity of climate change is throwing people into a sense of defeat or denial — the problem is so overwhelming that we’re becoming paralyzed. Perhaps it’s because we’re all tied to climate change — we’re all responsible because there’s no way to exist in our society without constantly consuming fossil fuels. Do people feel that since they’re “unpure,” they can’t demand alternatives to fossil fuels? Are we unsure we’re ready for a fundamental transition which may up-end the privilege to which we’ve grown accustomed as members of rich, developed countries?

Or perhaps we’re numb because climate change is a long-term problem and a gradual process. Psychologically, we’re better able to react to sudden and dramatic disasters like the earthquake in Haiti than to creeping catastrophes. Perhaps the very vastness of the danger itself makes effective action difficult — the human brain can understand a specific problem like a sick cat or a traffic accident, but tends to zone out when it tries to think about millions of species going extinct because of the millions tons of CO2 people add to the atmosphere each day. Our minds haven’t evolved to really understand millions or billions or trillions.

A better understanding of the psychology of climate change is desperately needed. Hopefully some smart radical psychology folks are working on this right now . . .

Just two weeks after the November 30 protest, the UN Climate change talks in Copenhagen ended in failure. But even the most optimistic goals of the UN conference would probably have been a failure. The governments at Copenhagen — all tied to and representing economic and political elites — were pushing gradual, market-based, essentially business friendly solutions.

Given the limited choice between denialism/inac
tion on one hand and gradual, modest, sensible, “adult” reform on the other, we’re still generally at a stage of denial and paralysis.

It is still up to the people on the streets — the people who aren’t sensible, who aren’t tied into the realistic institutions of power, who aren’t burdened by success — to try to figure out a third way. This isn’t necessarily a new technology or a new political coalition or a new tactic or even a new set of values or ways of thinking — it may be so big as to be hard to recognize now when we’re in the middle of it. When people sort it out (or fail to do so) future historians will give it a name.

We have to create these new ideas — this transition — from scratch and put it on the table ourselves from outside the established channels. The structures of power and the status quo maintain their control by marginalizing any sense that people can define our own priorities and our own future. They like to pick the options — multiple choice, not essay.

Direct action in the streets — getting off your computer and out of your living room and outside your comfortable peer group of friends — isn’t just a tactic or a tool to pressure the outside world. Direct action is most important because of what it teaches us and how it changes us. It nourishes us, gives us courage, gives us hope and helps us see that there are options beyond the “objective” and “realistic” ones we can see before we step over the line. Something about actually participating and doing — not just thinking or discussing — is key. It feels almost hopeless to write this because you really have to experience it yourself in your own life to know what I mean.

And of course direct action isn’t the only way to acquire these insights. The direct action scene has its own pitfalls and limitations, and can devolve into its own isolated peer group.

Everyone in this society — from us to the people who work for banks and industries — have a range of choices. We can all be held accountable for looking at the climate and the future and changing, or figuring out how to try to maintain the status quo.

After Copenhagen, it is unclear what the next step will be — not just to regular people, but to the people “in charge” who organized Copenhagen. The sense of inaction, paralysis, and denial are in themselves powerful — they hide building social, ecological and psychological pressure, like a huge spring winding up and getting tighter. The tighter you wind a spring, the more energy it stores up waiting for release.

Trying to turn away or go about our business as if we can’t see what is happening isn’t a long-term solution. We all know that our planet is endangered and sagging under the weight of too much industry, too many emissions, and too many human beings always wanting more more more stuff.

I’m looking forward to the next climate change protest. On a good day, I’m feeling less afraid and less discouraged. I’m hopeful that staying engaged with what’s really important and connected to other people with similar awareness will give us all the inspiration to create something different and sustainable.

Accounts of torture, lack of medical care, deprivation of sleep and food, and unsanitary living conditions at Guantanamo Bay have ignited international demands to close the prison. Organizations like Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union have labeled Guantanamo Bay, “an experiment to see how far a human can be dehumanized before completely losing their sanity”. Reports of violent abuse (e.g. water-boarding, prolonged standing and isolation, no human-to-human contact, exposure to extreme heat and cold temperatures, starvation, physical attacks from prison guards, sexual humiliation, exposure to urine and feces, etc.) abound. Also, it created a sense of unease amongst many American citizens and government officials.

In fact, the Human Rights violations at Guantanamo are so extensive, that this subject became a key issue in the recent U.S. Presidential race. Within hours of taking office, Obama signed an executive order to close Guantanamo Bay.

Now that the International Human Rights community has succeeded in producing awareness of these Human Rights violations at Guantanamo Bay, and President Obama has shown the willingness to address such individually destructive prisons, I must now ask: What about Texas???

Unlike the prisoners who are eventually freed from Guantanamo, and able to offer their accounts of the physical abuse they suffered there, most Texas prisoners are not as fortunate. Consider the story of Larry Lovis Cox, who was an inmate at a Supermax Control Unit in Huntsville, Texas. Mr. Cox was involved in a physical assault with numerous Texas guards, while in hand restraints, Mr. Cox was slammed to the concrete and tossed into his cell, where he laid for two full days in his own feces and urine, screaming in pain for medical attention. Mr. Cox was eventually taken to a local hospital where it was discovered that Mr. Cox suffered two broken vertebrae. Just 13 days after the assault by prison gaurds, Mr. Cox died on February 6, 2007. Two weeks later, a medical examiner ruled Mr. Cox’s death as a homicide, but over two years later, no one has been prosecuted.

We can even examine the cases of Donald Grizzele and Roger Williams. Both were housed on the Supermax Control Unit in Tennessee Colony, Texas. After being confined in sub-standard living conditions that trigger psychosis (e.g. prolonged isolation, insufficient food, exposure to extreme heat and cold temperatures, no human-to-human contact, verbal assaults by gaurds, etc.). Mr. Grizzele and Mr. Williams were denied medical and psychiatric assistance, despite the blatant signs of experiencing mental health problems. Ultimately, their conditions compelled Mr. Grizzele (05-08-07) and Mr. Williams (01-08-08) to commit suicide.

Even before one is ushered to a premature death by the torturous conditions in Texas Prisons, the prison officials obstruct prisoners’ mail to prevent any real public awareness of the torture they are subject to. Currently, at the Lane Murray Unit, a women’s prison in Gatesville, Texas, Dr. Catherine Marston, who is incarcerated there, reported that prison officials are destroying personal mail. Dr. Marston and other prisoners are attempting to inform the general public and their loved ones about an unjust indefinite lockdown that has them confined to their cells 24 hours a day. They are being fed disgusting and inedible sack lunches that lack wholesome and nutritious ingredients. Dr. Marston reports that the prisoners are not being allowed showering opportunities, forcing women to go as long as an entire week without showering. The prison guards are sexually and verbally harassing them at all hours of the night, causing sleep deprivation and countless other psychologically crippling conditions.

The entire prison that I’m currently held in, in Tennessee Colony, Texas, was completely shut down and quarantined for 12 days, due to an unknown airborne virus that sickened a huge number of prisoners. For years, prisoners here have implored the administration to correct the massive unsanitary and deplorable living conditions that have fostered the spread of staph infections, scabies, shingles, flu, stomach viruses and other skin rashes, but it was not until the prison guards fell ill from this recent unknown virus that the prison administration decided to act, and quarantine the unit. The medical department never issued any educational material to make prisoners aware of the nature of this unknown virus or how to prevent them from becoming infected, nor did they inform the prisoners about early symptoms of this virus, making it impossible for prisoners to seek medical assistance, until the virus becomes so evident, and leaves you in a terrible and unhealthy state. The backlog in the medical department causes prisoners to go 6-7 days before being treated for the thriving virus. Prisoners are not issued any cleaning supplies to clean their living areas. Trashcans are being utilized to transport food to serve to prisoners. The kitchen is infested with roaches and rodents. The recreation yards are covered with bird feces. The showers are never sanitized. Mentally ill prisoners are allowed to remain in cells filled with feces and urine.

These Human Rights violations are open and rampant all over Texas prison system. Terrence Hazel, a prisoner at the Eastham Unit in Lovelady, Texas, currently has a Civil Rights lawsuit pending in the United States Districts Court for the Eastern District of Texas, challenging many of these inhumane conditions. The prison Grievance Program and the Office of the Ombudsman, are useless in addressing these violations, so we have to call upon the support of the International Human Rights community. The Grievance Program and the Office of the Ombudsman are established to protect Texas prisons and their oppressive policies. Combine these violations, with the Human Rights violations that are carried out on the Texas Death Row with the legalized murders, the International Human Rights community should scoff at Texas prisons, like they scoffed at the prison in Guantanamo Bay, and demand that someone, even President Obama, step in and correct these Human Rights violations, even if it comes at the cost of closing the entire prison system inside the state of Texas. We can no longer sit pat and expect those in charge here in Texas to police themselves, when it’s clear they have little to no regard for humanity.

Like Guantanamo prisoners, inmates in Texas are being tortured on a daily basis, denied medical care, forced to live in unsanitary and deplorable living conditions and ushered into premature and senseless death. For sheer cruelty, the conditions in Texas exceed Guantanamo’s; they could be better identified with the Gulags of North Korea and Russia, perhaps even Hitler’s Oranienberg. Let’s protest these Human Rights violations, through protesting Texas prisons!!!!

You can write to the author of this article:

Isma’il Abdul Rahman

TDCJ-CID#881193

Robertson Unit

12071 FM 3522

Abilene, Texas 79601 (USA)

www.justiceforjeremy.net

On September 24th, 2009 Elliott Madison and Michael Wallschlager were arrested in a motel room during the G20 Protests in Pittsburgh. Their crime was allegedly listening to police over radio scanners and sending this information out over Twitter, a popular microblogging site.

Most would think the harassment would end there, but a week later police served a warrant to raid Madison’s house, in NYC, and seized all kinds of items such as mercury and pictures of Karl Marx and V.I. Lenin. Both Madison and Wallschlager’s charges have been dropped from their arrests in Pittsburgh, but Madison is facing a grand jury investigation aided by the raid on his residence.

This current round of police state repression follows a growing use of technology in protest situations. A month before the G20 protests, Iran was seeing its largest uprisings in years, aided by sites like Twitter and Youtube. In regards to the Iranian protests, the US State Department asked Twitter to hold off on updating its site (which would take it offline) so that the people of Iran would be able to use it.

It is very clear that the government and Twitter are willing to work against activists at home but with them when it meets their interest. No surprise there, but the issue of using popular websites for social organizing is a large one. The rise of new media has allowed the anarchist movement in the United States to reach whole new crowds with their message and keep people out of harm’s way. Twitter was also used during the 2008 RNC protests. Sites like Facebook and Twitter offer a good way to connect with fellow radicals at a severe price. We must all remember that these corporations work hand in glove with the state. Using their services gives away our autonomy. This fact needs to be considered when using these sites to organize.

Groups in the anarchist movement have already taken steps to increase security for activists such as hackbloc.org and riseup.net, who seek to create non-corporate tools anarchists can use. In the last few years, the Riseup Collective has launched we.riseup.net which is a Facebook-like social networking site for organizing activists. Other groups are working towards a system of “on-the-street” communications that would cut Twitter out of the loop allowing people to pass back messages from their phones or stream live video from the street to be used in cases against the police.

Having new advances in technology allows anti-authoritarians to organize in new ways, but reflections should also be made in regards to new technology. Do we need this sort of organizing? Is it making our movement more effective while factoring risks? Whatever happened to yelling “what’s going on” at a mass action instead of texting it? Often the digital world takes us out of our realities into ones that may seem more fulfilling yet do the opposite. There is a good balance between technology and Ludditeness for the anarchist community to embrace, but we must be safe in doing so or we will see increases in the effectiveness of state oppression.

For more information about Elliot’s Case: http://friendsoftortuga.wordpress.com/

For more resources check out this article: http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/5448

For more information on how to be safer online check out hackbloc.org and riseup.net