Category: Organizer Essays

You can use this organizer as a personal time machine — traveling back to reflect on the struggles of past and then traveling forward in time to plan for a better future. The powers-that-be have boards of directors and experts working out their long-term plans for our lives and the earth. Their plans treat us as passive consumers, viewers and employees in need of management. When we merely react to their wars, their oil spills and their layoffs, we feel powerless, isolated and afraid. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The blank pages of this organizer give you hundreds of chances to organize with others to set the agenda and take control of our future.

When the corporations and leaders plan for the future, they seek to promote their own power and wealth — always seeking better machines, higher technology and larger institutions to control more details of our lives. Their plans are over-simplistic and short-sighted, ignoring the environment and more importantly, our human need for meaningful, free lives. They love the way tv and computers promote a short attention span — ignoring history and painting a frightening future — because its easy to control scared people.

The world we envision may have planning too, but it’s done together on an equal basis seeking an ecologically sustainable world where everyone can explore their full potential. Our planning tries to honor the past and think far into the future to understand how what we’re doing now might impact those who may walk the earth after us. Thanks for joining us on this journey.

This is the 17th year we’ve had the opportunity to publish the Organizer. It is our love letter to you. It raises funds to publish the quarterly, radical, independent Slingshot Newspaper. We aim to distribute the newspaper for free everywhere in the US. Send us your mailing address to become a local distributor of Slingshot. Thanks to the people who made this year’s Organizer: Aleksandr, Ali, Artnoose, Ariana, August, Bonnie, Brent, Brian, Carolina, Claire, Clyde, Dan, Deefect, Dominique, Eggplant, Eliot, Enola, Fil, Garret, Gregg, Heather, Hue, Jesse/PB, Joey, Josh(ua), Julia, Karma, Kathryn, Kermit, Kerry, Kristi, Lew, Liane, Mellissa, Ona, Peter, Rachel, Rezz, Savage, Stephanie, Tops and Zee.

Slingshot Collective

Physical office:* 3124 Shattuck Avenue Berkeley, CA 94705

Mailing address: PO Box 3051, Berkeley, CA 94703

510-540-0751 • http://slingshot.tao.ca • slingshot@tao.ca

* Please note: as we go to press, our landlord is in bankruptcy and our building is in foreclosure. We are not sure whether we’ll be able to stay at this physical location or not, so please send all mail to our new PO Box mailing address until further notice.

 

All volunteer collective – no bosses, no workers, no pay.

 

Printed on recycled paper

 

Anti-copyright. Borrow whatever you want.

In creating this Organizer, we seek to respond to increasing repression from government and the corporate industrial machine with ever more powerful creativity and love. This book is full of art, humor, sex, and madness because through these human things, we resist the cold standardization of a computerized, sterile world. There are alternatives to the dying American Empire — collectives, gardens, bikes, riots, goofing off, free skools . . . you fill in the blank.

Our lives thrive on our involvement in radical projects, and the inspiration we take from them overflows into other aspects of our lives. This energy helps us support each other while we struggle to smash the insane systems that hold us down. While we created this organizer, we sang, ate, laughed, cried, wrote, screamed, and wasted time together. This sharing is a powerful response — personally, politically and spiritually — to the mainstream’s greed, materialism, and loneliness.

This is the 13th year we’ve been privileged to publish the Organizer. It raises funds to publish the bimonthly, radical, independent Slingshot Newspaper. We aim to distribute the newspaper for free everywhere in the US. Send us your mailing address to become a local distributor of Slingshot. Thanks to the people who made this year’s Organizer: Abra, Ally, Artnoose, B, Crow, Crystal, Eggplant, Emily, Fil, Gregg, Hannah, Heather, Jenny, Julia, Kathryn, Kermit, Kerry, Leslie, Lew, Lief, Locust, Maneli, Mark, Molly, Moraya, Paseo, PB, Rachel, Sal, Sarick and Thea.

Slingshot Collective

3124 Shattuck Avenue • Berkeley, CA 94705 • 510 540-0751

slingshot@tao.ca • http://www.tao.ca/~slingshot

© Anti-Copyright. Borrow whatever you want. We did.

 

Note on Moon dates: we list the day on which a full moon or new moon occurs for Universal Time (UT) — if you live in the USA, the DAY of the event may be a different day. UT is 4 hours before eastern time and 7 hour before pacific time.

 

printed on recycled paper

All volunteer collective — no bosses, no workers, no pay.

People are setting up radical spaces in big cities and small towns all over the world to give alternative communities space for events, resource sharing and information distribution. Having activities at a public space opens the radical scene up so people who aren’t already involved in a particular friendship network can find us. Many times, a radical space will house more than one type of activity which allows different sub-groups or scenes to share the work of keeping the space going, encouraging community and cross-pollination. We’ve heard of spaces that host music shows, bike repair coops, free stores, lending libraries, Food Not Bombs kitchens, free computers, Cop-watch projects, craft supplies, women’s and trans only events, study groups, Indymedia centers, movies, Prison Literature Projects, zine shops, DIY health clinics, marching bands, yoga, activist meetings, coffee shops, needle exchanges, offices for radical groups, silk-screening, bookstores, puppet and sign making, tool lending libraries; the list goes on.

A radical space can be created in a variety of ways, such as renting a storefront, opening a squat, using a piece of land, or in a vehicle such as a bus or RV. In starting the process, look at your region and determine what is best. A metropolis may do better with a storefront, where as it might make sense to use a plot of land in a rural area.

A few things to address and establish before opening a radical space are your intentions and goals for opening the space, who you would like to be involved, how to distribute duties, and what kind of space you would like to use. Additionally funding and how to attain your space’s resources and amenities will come into play. You might be able to open the space first and work out the organizational details later as they become necessary for the project.

Many groups start out by finding a corner of an existing space that they can transform. This could be the back area of a cafe, bookstore, grocery coop, art gallery, university student union, city community center, or a garage or spare room at a community house. You can offer to pay a small sum or work trade in exchange

Another alternative is to rent a storefront or warehouse. Depending on where you live, you may need to register a fictitious business name with the state government or the county clerk’s office, though in some areas there are no laws that require you to register a fictitious business name. Some info-shops also register as a non-profit. This could require making a board of directors, talking to a lawyer, and registering paperwork with the government.

If you are looking to squat a space, the best thing would be to try and secure a place that will have longevity. After scouting out vacant spaces, it helps to research these spaces at your local accessor’s office. Some key things to look for are the name of the owner and their contact information, though it is a good sign if you cannot reach them at the resident listed. Additionally, look to see if the property tax is not being paid. If the owner is paying property tax, they are most likely paying attention to the property. Detailed information on how to squat can be found on the web; San Francisco’s Homes Not Jails has a website with useful tips and guidelines.

There can be a huge trade off between renting a cheaper space in an industrial area or ghetto vs. paying high rent for a small area in a popular shopping district with a lot of foot traffic — each group has to consider their goals when making this decision. If a space doesn’t sell anything and is used more as a work space and for music shows, an out of the way location may be ideal. If you are striving for a library, bookstore, café or hang out space, it can be crucial to be in an accessible area.

Whatever the space you decide on, whether it’s a store front or a squat, you’ll need start up money for rent, tools, bills, dish soap, etc. Avoid relying on a single source of funding — diversify as much as you can, and be creative. Benefits are usually the best way to go about raising money, which can be done by throwing a show, doing a bake sale, or hosting a dinner or movie night.

To maintain your radical space, encourage your local community to donate their resources or time to keep it running smoothly. Additional money can be made through benefits, selling coffee and tea, charging for movie or book rentals, or renting extra office space to other community groups.

If you decide to start a radical space, then congratulations! You’re giving your community an outlet to meet, learn, discuss, and share radical information. Whether it’s a mobile zine library or an acre of grass declared an Autonomous Zone, you will be giving your community a wonderful gift.

 

 

 

 

What is Critical Thinking? Critical thinking is a practice that is useful for assessing the strengths and weaknesses of situations and arguments so as to ascertain their validity and usefulness for our lives. Critical thinking involves formal logic, argumentation, rhetoric, background knowledge and an attitude of life-long learning. Some of this can be taught while some has to be learned on one’s own.

If you have been an anarchist any length of time, no doubt you have had someone in your life try to tell you how stupid or unworkable anarchy is. They might say, “Everyone would kill everyone else if there were no government” or “Who will work at the sewage plant if no one has to work?” Critical Thinking is a tool for these and similar situations.

Formal logic can be quite technical and abstract but is just a tool for figuring out if (logical) conclusions can actually follow from the given premises. If you take a course in formal logic you will learn all sorts of terms for valid and invalid forms of argumentation and common fallacies. Here are just a sample of common fallacies: “Appeal to Authority”, which means stating something is true because some ‘important’ person said it was so. This should be an obvious error to anarchists. “Ad Hominem” means ‘argument directed to the man’, which means attacking the person making the argument rather than attacking their argument. Another is “False Dilemma” where a limited number of options is given, when there are really many options. One more is the “Straw Man” in which one attacks an argument, usually a weaker one, that is different from the actual argument given. There are a lot of these fallacies and having a familiarity with them can help us argue better. Formal logic has nothing to say about whether the premises are actually true (to the extent we find ‘truth’ a valid category) and as anarchists that is mostly what we are interested in. Formal logic is the most straight forward to learn but is mostly concerned with the form of argumentation, such as: all cats speak French, Bruce has a cat, therefore Bruce’s cat speaks French. The form of this is valid because the conclusion follows logically from the premises, but obviously the argument is false. Formal logic also gives us a vocabulary for a framework of assessment, such as valid vs. invalid, strong vs. weak and sound vs. unsound arguments, but most of all it can help us see consistency and contradiction in arguments.

Argumentation is broader than logic yet covers some of the same issues, though in a more philosophical manner. What does it mean to have good reasons to believe something? What are good arguments and what are bad arguments? What is an argument anyway? So, whereas logic is about the formal properties of an argument, argumentation is about the meanings of the premises and whether they make sense and/or are plausible, do they need more supporting evidence, or are they leaving out evidence that would make them invalid.

Rhetoric is making our arguments persuasive, it is about having a style of argumentation that makes others want to at least listen to what we have to say. But we must also resist the flashy persuasive rhetoric if it means trying to sell our ideas over trying to communicate.

Background knowledge is the hardest part of critical thinking because it really depends on you wanting to know about the subject at hand. If we try to argue on subjects we know nothing about we will just look stupid and if we are subjected to arguments from others on things we know nothing about we will be bamboozled beyond belief. But this doesn’t mean we have to know everything about everything. Knowing one or two subjects very well (i.e. Foucault and carpentry) and also knowing how we know things (epistemology) and what can be known or not known (what Mr. Smith had for lunch? or is there life after death?) will go a long way toward being confident and skeptical enough to wade into arguments or wade into a new subject now and again.

Having some background knowledge on many subjects comes with a commitment to life-long learning something we as anarchists ought to embrace. If our broadest project is the dismantling of this world it behooves us to be aware of theories of such a task, what their strengths and weaknesses are, what are new theories being born now.

So, when someone asks “Won’t we all kill each other without government?” we can look at their assumptions (premises) and challenge them. Does this person really think everyone’s deepest desire is to kill and the only thing stopping them is the state? Do they think police stop crimes before they happen (rather than just investigate afterward)? And so on. We can see that their conclusion is based on faulty premises and reasoning.

You can find used Logic textbooks at good book stores which will emphasize formal, abstract logic. An anthology of critical essays will present argument in a more real world prose form and these can be found on many subjects, also at good book stores.

 

Know Your Prophecies

Many of us are baffled by rumors circulating this year about the end of the world. Friends who once seemed stable are now spouting rhetoric of impending doom. Instead of arguing, sometimes it can be more helpful to listen and think about why the person finds the myth appealing. A huge motivator behind the idea of the apocalypse is despair, merged with a bit of laziness. It is far easier to say “the world is ending, so why bother” than to actually get up and confront the huge problems we face. But myths don’t have to de-motivate us. A myth can be a powerful tool, creating an epic backdrop while we build the world we seek. To shed some light on these “dark times,” here’s a guide to this year’s apocalyptic murmuring:

RUMOR: The Mayan calendar ends in 2012.

ACTUALLY: The Mayan calendar is cyclical and will never end. Each cycle is about 395 years and called a b’ak’tun. On Dec 21 of this year, the 13th b’ak’tun will end.

RUMOR: Ancient Mayans predicted a cataclysm at the end of the 13th b’ak’tun.

BUT THE THING IS: Not a single Mayan text or tradition says this. In 1701, a Catholic friar wrote the Popol Wu’uj, a collection of Mayan myths. According to one of these myths, the gods created and destroyed 3 failed worlds before creating the 4th world, in which we live. The 3rd world lasted 13 b’ak’tuns. In the 1960s, Michael D. Coe, a CIA agent turned anthropologist, speculated that contemporary Mayans must believe that the world will be destroyed again after 13 b’ak’tuns. But the Maya do not believe this – it was entirely invented by outsiders.

RUMOR: The Earth will align with the Galactic Center on Dec 21.

SORRY, BUT: The most perfect alignment between the Earth, Sun and the center of the Milky Way occurred on Dec 21, 1998. Sorry, you missed it!

RUMOR: On Dec 21, the magnetic poles will reverse and everyone will die!

CHILL OUT: Geomagnetic pole reversals happen sporadically & cannot be predicted. Also, polar shifts aren’t instant, but occur gradually over thousands of years. The only thing you might notice is your compass pointing a little more south each decade.

CALM DOWN: With stellar spectroscopy (try it at home), we can see that the sun has 5 billion years worth of fuel left. Life on Earth might even last that long, if we don’t fuck it up.

RUMOR: Capitalism is in the process of collapsing.

AND PIGS CAN FLY: Capitalism has more or less collapsed 8 times now. The worst was perhaps the recession of the 1890s, when entire countries went bankrupt and the populace overthrew governments globally. Individual political and economic systems entirely collapsed, but capitalism just started over. Likewise, this recent “economic collapse” has ended nothing. Capitalism is now stronger than ever in its march towards global consumption. The seed of capitalism is capital (money/credit/specie). Capitalism is a social behavior in which people transform every aspect of life into something that can be bought or sold. To kill the beast, we must retool our social relations to not include capital.

HAVE YOU HEARD: According to astrologers, the 2400-year-long Age of Pisces is in the process of ending, to be replaced by the Age of Aquarius. Pisces is represented by two fish with their tails tied together and is often associated with obsessive spirituality, weak will, escapism, and confusion. Aquarius, on the other hand, is represented by a person pouring out a jug of water, dispensing it freely to all. The water represents truth. It is said that the Age of Aquarius will bring a new society ruled by honesty, innovation, humanitarianism, and intellectualism.

MURMURINGS: In the summer of 2010, a rare astrological alignment occurred called a Grand Cross. It began on June 21, 2010, and was active on and off for about two months. It is said this alignment merged revolution with rebirth, forcing everyone to undergo subtle, psychological changes that will begin to consciously surface over the next few years. Some astrologers mark the 2010 Grand Cross as the end of the Age of Pisces.

STRANGE WHISPERS: Within the psychic community, people who call themselves Lightworkers have been transmitting revolutionary energy for the past several years. They have something special planned for Dec 21. …and perhaps for February 29th as well.

AND: Some people believe that everyone born between 1979 and 2000 is part of a generation called the Indigo Children. Named for their brilliant purple auras, Indigos are highly energetic and deeply psychic. Hierarchy makes no sense to them: they believe that everyone is royal should be free to rule ourselves. The guardians of capitalism have attempted to repress the Indigos, labeling them as “unproductive” and “mentally ill,” forcing them to take mind-numbing productivity drugs. But the Indigo Generation will not be held down forever. Some prophets say the Indigos will soon rise up and lead us to a new world.

LEAP OF FAITH: Long ago, a loose collective of people called the Tohsgnils noticed that the yearly movement of the sun did not align with the daily rotation of the planet, causing an extra day to appear every 4 years. The money lenders worked to suppress this magical day, telling people to ignore it, to continue their toil. But the Tohsgnils sensed that untapped energy vibrated within this extra day. They prophesied that on February 29, 2012, the populace would rise up and claim this day for the Leap Day Revolt, igniting the 2012 Uprising.

Many of us are surrounded by conveniences that appear to improve our lives by making them easier. But the system of convenience comes with deep costs.

Some of these costs are obvious. The instant gratification world has given rise to a system of technology and industrialization that centralizes decision-making power into the hands of a few corporate leaders who treat people as objects for marketing, management, and exploitation. The rest of us are reduced to consumers, citizens, and laborers – our daily lives spent servicing a system that is beyond our control or comprehension. Meanwhile, an unsustainable global supply chain of oil, corn, and computer chips feeds the machine, devastating the environment.

A less obvious cost of convenience is the way it isolates us and robs our lives of meaning. For most of the 200,000 years Homo sapiens have walked the Earth, we have spent our lives in small groups, with the people close to us providing our food, music, shelter, warmth, and sex. But now many of us don’t count on the people in our lives to meet our needs. Our food is instantly served to us by smiling strangers. Buttons control the sound that enters our ears. Machines and photographs stand in for sex partners. Fast food. Fast tunes. Fast orgasm. Fast isolation. Depersonalized convenience explains why people in the “wealthiest” nations suffer the most from loneliness and mental illness.

Convenience also robs us of the opportunity to solve problems. Advertisers would like us to believe that human beings dislike problems, that we want things to be as easy as possible. But we are nature’s most tenacious problem-solvers. When we don’t have any challenges — when convenience has robbed us of the opportunity to do things for ourselves — we go crazy with depression and anxiety. People need complexity. We are not computers. Capitalism seeks to conquer nature and solve all problems, but when it does, what is left for human beings?

Each time you choose to “conveniently” alter your state with a corporate-distributed object, you are building up the walls of your own prison and isolating yourself from others by becoming dependent on corporations to fit your needs. “It’s all about you,” the advertisers coo, enticing us to crawl into the corporate womb of instant gratification. As products become more reflexive, responding to our needs instantly, we become trapped in individualized cages of convenience. And the Cage of Convenience is precisely the thing that is killing the Earth and making our rulers more rich and powerful, while robbing our lives of meaning. Addressing the cage means smashing hierarchy and reclaiming our lives as dynamic, meaningful interactions with people we care about.

It won’t be easy. Sometimes when we cook for each other, the food gets burned or there’s a slug in the homegrown salad. And sometimes your housemates really can’t sing that well or the scarf your boyfriend knitted doesn’t quite wrap around all the way. Meeting each other’s needs doesn’t bring instant, easy satisfaction – which is precisely the point. People have their own wants, needs, and feelings that don’t always match ours. Sometimes your partner doesn’t want to have sex with you right now, but she’ll help you repair your bicycle. Maybe your housemate will cook dinner tonight, but not the lasagna you crave. It is in the moment when other people stop being convenient – when they say “no” to our needs – that they are no longer commodities but people, with wills of their own. And it is people (not commodities) that challenge us and create texture in our lives.

And sure, sex toys are nice when you’re in a pinch, but they can’t stand in for the thrill of flirtation, the sublimity of seduction, the taste of another person’s lips, the rippling warmth of erections, ear nibbles, and ankle licks. And no fast food unit can compare to a successful home meal, to a steaming omelet with eggs from your own hens and garlic-buttered chard with a glass of dandelion wine. And yeah, it’s nice to drop the needle on a good Pink Floyd record sometimes, but the sweet sounds of In the Clouds can’t compare to the thrill of rocking out on the accordion amongst electric guitars and theremins in the new freakfolk/punk band you and your neighbors have just invented.

Corporations want us to forget that we have the power to create these deeply meaningful interactions. Our rulers seek to convince us that we aren’t ready for the hard work of building amazing lives with the people around us. But hard work is exactly what we need to make our lives meaningful and save ourselves from the machine that is destroying the Earth’s life support systems. The CEOs and corporate advertisers will scratch their heads when they discover millions of abandoned cages, then they will throw off their suits and join us.

 

Day-to-day reality can be a nightmare — chainstores, alienation, surveillance cameras and McJobs. But we’re never entirely trapped in any particular version of material reality — reality is inherently relative and multi-facetted. Tapping into other realms can inform efforts to transform the world. Our dreams can become our reality.

Lucid dreaming means dreaming while you know you are asleep. A lot of the recent knowledge of lucid dreaming has been heavily co-opted by entertainment media. Nevertheless, lucid dreaming has been part of yogic traditions for thousands of years, as a method for improving mental health and facilitating creativity. With practice, you can learn to shift or change the reality of your dreamscape as you dream it, and to prolong your dreaming so that you can explore it more deeply. If you want to learn how to induce lucid dreaming, be patient with yourself. This process is partly about the goal, and partly about enjoying your innate human faculties, which include dreaming and being asleep. Here are some simple steps that can help improve your ability to lucid dream:

1. Set a journal by the bed. Before you go to sleep, set your intention to remember your dreams. Whenever you wake from a dream, immediately record what you remember, and how it made you feel. Practice this regularly to improve your ability to recall your dreams. Also look for any patterns or repetition. As you get more information about the nature of your dreams, it will become easier to pick out dream signs, things that will indicate to you that you are dreaming.

2. Practice reality testing by writing a phrase or a string of nonsense letters on the inside of your wrist. Look at them several times a day, then look away, then look back again. See if the characters have changed. Try making them change while you look at them. If they don’t change, you may conclude you are still awake….

3. The oldest recorded instructions for lucid dreaming, a thousand year old text on dream yoga from Tibet, advises that you should sleep “on the right side, as the lion doth.” A relatively recent study found that participants who slept on their right sides were several times more likely to have a lucid dream.

4. When you are ready to attempt lucid dreaming, set your alarm clock for 6 ½ hours from when you go to sleep. Use a gentle alarm clock sound if you can, so that you are conscious but not fully alert. Write anything you remember from your dreams in dream journal.

5. Go back to sleep. As you rest, repeat this mantra: “I will wake after every dream and remember my dream….”

6. When you wake up, write down whatever you remember immediately, even if it’s vague.

7. Go right back to sleep. Your goal is to pick up where you left off. Repeat the mantra, while simultaneously visualizing yourself recognizing a dream sign, something you often dream about or the letters moving on your wrist.

8. If you become aware that you are asleep and dreaming, stay calm. If the dream starts to fade, imagine you are spinning in a circle like you did as a kid to make yourself dizzy, as the dream world spins around you, you may be able to re-enter it and begin dreaming again, only this time with full awareness that you are doing so.

9. You can also practice lucid dreaming without an alarm by repeating the mantra as you fall asleep, then waking yourself up to record your dreams throughout the night (however we dream most vividly after seven or more hours of sleep, so this is the most likely time for lucid dreaming to occur).

Lucid dreaming is much easier if you get plenty of sleep and are not busy being an overwrought overachiever type. It may not happen immediately, but with practice, lucid dreaming is something you can learn to do literally overnight. If you want to learn more, the best information I have found about lucid dreaming comes from The Lucidity Institute, based on the work of a researcher named Steven LaBerge. Hit www.lucidity.com.

Fiction

Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

The Climate Change Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson

The Earthsea Cycle by Ursula K. Le Guin

A Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

Homeland by Sam Lipsyte

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

Q by Luther Blissett

Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

The Trial by Franz Kafka

Ubik by Phillip K. Dick

V for Vendetta by Alan Moore

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

 

Nonfiction

Black Bloc, White Riot by A.K. Thompson

2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl by Daniel Pinchbeck

The Adderall Diaries by Stephen Elliott

Endgame I & II by Derrick Jensen

Everyday Pornography ed. by Karen Boyle

Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner

Green is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Social Justice Movement Under Siege by Will Potter

Living in the End Times by Slavoj Žižek

The Way of Zen by Alan Watts

Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew B. Crawford

Be Here Now by Ram Dass

Pretty in Punk: Girls’ Gender Resistance in a Boys’ Subculture by Lauraine Leblanc

Steal this Book by Abbie Hoffman

Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence by Christian Perenti

The Voice of Hope: Coversations with Alan Clements by Ang San Suu Kyi

Why I Can’t Read by Wallace Stegner

 

Poetry

Poetry as Insurgent Art by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Revolutionary Letters by Diane di Prima

The Romantic Dogs by Roberto Bolano

The Totality for Kids by Joshua Clover

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake

 

Theorycore

Principles of the Philosophy of the Future by Ludwig Feuerbach

The German Ideology by Karl Marx

The Genealogy of Morals by Friedrich Nietzsche

Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat by Geörgy Lukács

“Theses on the Philosophy of History” by Walter Benjamin (in Illuminations)

Minima Moralia: Reflections From Damaged Life by Theodor Adorno

“Formulary for a New Urbanism” by Ivan Chtcheglov

“On The Poverty of Student Life” by The Situationist International

Apocalypse and/or Metamorphosis by Norman O. Brown (esp. “My Georgics: A Palinode in Praise of Work”)

The Care of the Self by Michel Foucault

Specters of Marx by Jacques Derrida

The Sublime Object of Ideology by Slavoj Žižek (esp. ch. 1, “How Did Marx Invent the Symptom?”)

The Coming Insurrection by The Invisible Committee

This is Not a Program by Tiqqun

 

Zines to Watch Out For

Absolutely Zippo, Ad Busters, Antipatia, The Anvil, Awesome Future, Brushfire, Chintz, Communicating Vessels, Dreams of Donuts, Dreamwhip, Cometbus, Earth First! Journal, Feral Revolution, Fifth Estate, Fluke, Full Metal Faggot, Graceless, Hack This Zine, Heart Check, Maximum Rock n’ Roll, The Match, Medatrocity, Media Junky, Morgenmuffel, No Gods No Matress, Nuts!, Pipe Bomb, Rad Dad, The Raging Pelican, Rot, The Student Insurgent,Turning the Tide, Zine World

This year’s organizer is like a single mushroom sprouting from a vast, complex, subterranean counter-cultural mycelium. After silently and slowly feeding unnoticed off the decaying log of corporate America, it pushes suddenly and unexpectedly through a thick layer of leaves and debris out into the light. Its flesh is twisted, complex and colorful and it smells moist, funky and delicious. Around this mushroom — this tiny collective project — you can see other mushrooms blooming, too, all throughout the forest — each spreading spores far and wide. Each alternative project, each direct action campaign, each study-group the realization of autonomous social circles acting collectively to express our humanity and struggle for our liberation.

Making a day planner by hand like this is a throwback — a dumb paper book in a smart phone world. Worse than that, the organizer isn’t even all that organized — it’s chaotic, cluttered and messy. A lot of the art is drawn by amateurs, pasted together with wax in an overcrowded loft late into the night — scruffy people spilling coffee on the pages and negotiating for any available flat surface. The printed contents lack the depth, timeliness and clarity easily accessible with a Google search.

Which is perhaps the point. The meaningfulness of our lives is more complex, messy and difficult than straight, computerized lines. The counter-culture we’re a part of is raw, rowdy and on the margins, but it is heading in the right directions: towards a beautiful, pleasurable, sustainable world where people are free. Meanwhile, the mainstream corporate/industrial system is heading over a cliff. In such a contradictory world, it is humbling and an honor to be amongst freaks. We’re glad you’re part us.

This is our 18th Organizer. It raises funds to publish the quarterly, radical, independent Slingshot Newspaper which we try to distribute everywhere in the US. Let us know if you want to become a local distributor of the newspaper. Thanks to the people who created this organizer: Ali, Aminah, Anka, August, Babs, Bird, Crux, Claire, Danny, Dee, Dominique, Eggplant, enola d!, Evan, Fil, Gabriella, GATS, Heather, Hurricane, Jay, Jesse, Joey, Joshua, Julie, Karma, Kathryn, Kermit, Kerry, Kurt, Lew, Liane, Lvci, Melissa, Michele, Miranda, Moxy, Nuclear Winter, Rachel, Ramona, Rubicil, Samara, Sean, Sarahtops, Stephanie, Trouble, Umul, Zoe.

 

Slingshot Collective

Physical officer: 3124 Shattuck Avenue Berkeley, CA 94705

Mail: PO box 3051, Berkeley, CA 94703

510-540-0751 ex. 3 • http://slingshot.tao.ca • slingshot@tao.ca

 

anti-copyright. Borrow whatever you want.

 

Printed on recycled paper

 

All volunteer collective – no bosses, no workers, no pay.

 

Front Cover People include:

Sylvia Rae Rivera, Transgender activist, present inside the Inn during the Stonewall Riots b. 1952, US

Bell Hooks, Feminist and post-modern theorist on the intricate connections between race, class, and gender b. 1952, US

Angela Davis, prison abolitionist, scholar, political activist, former member of the Black Panther Party b. 1944, United States

Emma Goldman, anarchist, feminist, free love advocate, and founder of the anarchist journal Mother Earth b. 1869, Lithuania

Maria Lacerda de Moura, teacher, journalist, anarcha-feminist, and individualist anarchist b. 1887, Brazil

Graffiti in the Bus: from a tag by Mujeres Creado, a Bolivian anarcha-feminist group.

2012 is Leap Year — could we make someting magical and powerful with this extra day? The corporate/industrial system devours our time, strips life from the earth, centralizes power into a few hands, and extracts the meaning, humanity and pleasure from our lives. How can things keep getting worse and worse year after year, with so little resistance?

While many people are ready to fight back, it isn’t easy to know how to start or what to do that will make a difference. You can’t revolt alone. It’s a lot easier to join a general strike once thousands of people are already marching in the street and occupying the local factory. But to get things moving, someone or a small group of people have to take the first terrifying step off the sidewalk. It’s hard to take risks when you aren’t sure those around you are ready to back you up.

The only way to find out is to try — to take a leap of faith and start something. If you look through the radical dates in this organizer, you can read about revolts around the world and across the ages. Each began with an idea, determination, daring, and of course luck. People who begin revolts are regular people just like you. The day before a revolt, conditions usually look discouraging — the power structure rock solid. Last year’s revolts in North Africa and the Middle East took everyone by surprise. By contrast, it seems like a long time since the last uprising in the US. It’s easy to make excuses.

The right time to begin revolt is now, but the precise day is, in some way, arbitrary — the correct conditions already exist and have been present for some time. Leap day offers an extra day and invites us to shake off our routine, but any other day could work just as well. The global economic/technological system — while vast — is fragile and vulnerable. Alternatives to the system of corporate centralization and economic degredation exist — cooperation, local control, sharing, living in harmony with the earth.

There is nothing quite like the excitement and community with other people that you experience on the streets during revolt. The creativity of an uprising is powerful and can swiftly replace stubborn structures with new values. While many of us have spent years laying the ground work — working in tiny collectives, nurturing gardens and bike coops and art coops — these efforts in the absence of a revolt to challenge and undermine the key structures of the system are not enough.

We need to openly discuss and challenge power. The systems and values of corporations and police concentrate power by reducing individuals to consumers, viewers and objects to be managed. We seek to dismantle power so that each of us can determine what we want to do and figure out what is important. This goes way beyond just the distribution of resources — instead, its time to question whether resources, alone, is what life is really about. We demand a world organized around being awake and engaged — where we pursue intimate knowledge of others, ourselves and the world around us rather than getting distracted by treats distributed by rulers to keep us obedient and on-task.

Shifting the focus from things to experiences is what the world needs now to prevent the technological system from destroying the earth’s life support systems. Life is too short and the world too beautiful to spend more time muddling through accepting the comprimises of the corporate system and waiting for something better — far off in the future.

This year, consider February 29 as an experiment and an invitation. How do you really want to live? What would you do if you were living life like it really mattered? Would you go to work like normal, or can you think of something better? This leap day can be a universal general strike and uprising for a world worth living in, but its up to you, your friends and the whole world to take that first step. Leap for it.

www.leapdayaction.org