CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE AS AN EFFECTIVE TOOL: A HOW TO
Friday, March 5 at 6:00pm. At Portland State University Smith Memorial Student Union room 236 (Cascade Room)
FILM SHOWING "AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD"
Saturday, March at 7:30pm. At Portland State University 5th Avenue Theater (510 SW Hall St.)

"Snow Ball Fights as a Form of Social War: or notes on how to turn snow ball fights into a force of insurrection" Read More

Feb 8 Report: Bikes roll, plows and PEPCO bog down

February 6, 2010 – RIVERSIDE – Between 30 and 50 people, most of them young, attended a series of presentations on feminism, local struggles, and worker's cooperatives held at a local coffee shop. They strategized about where to take the movement, and ended the day with a concert--after the requisite police harassment.

From the newswire: Reportback & Analysis of 'Anarchy in Riverside' & Some Thoughts on 'Building the Party' by Los Angeles Anarchists | | Anarchy in Riverside by Rockero

See also: Dana Ward Pulled My Prole Card by Crudo from the Vengeance blog

Saturday, Feb. 13th, 4pm
Arise! Bookstore
2441 Lyndale Ave S
Minneapolis, MN 55405

After being in our current location since 1993, the Arise! Books and Resources Collective has come to the painful realization that we can no longer afford to operate in this space. Rather than letting the awful realities of capitalism tear us apart, we want to figure out a way to arise anew. A new form. A new location. A new way to continue serving and being part of the radical and progressive community in the Twin Cities.

On Sunday, January 24th, the long awaited Buffalo episode of ABC’s Extreme Home Makeover finally aired. The main players from that surreal week in November --contracting company David Homes, PUSH-Buffalo, Buffalo ReUse and WNY Americorps--put together a red carpet gala at Shea’s Theater that brought out 2,000 people of all stripes. The mix of people in the crowd was unbelievable, from Mayor Brown to Bills player Chris Draft to jewelry peddler Eric Starchild to student-workers in the Youthbuild program. Big time donors in their finest suits stood shoulder to shoulder with people in hoodies and sneakers.

Without a doubt Hollywood’s visit to Buffalo was the biggest local story of 2009. Notwithstanding the expected pessimism of a sizeable minority, there has been considerable optimism and hope here for the past few months. But much like the nationwide wave of hope which came with Obama’s campaign, the major question remains; is all the hope just hype, or can it be used as a catalyst for serious change?

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A year into President Barack Obama’s first term, it has become depressingly clear that he is, as Jay Leno put it, "our greatest Republican President ever." From warrantless wiretapping to bank bailouts to endless war, on issue after issue his policies have proven identical to those of George W. Bush. And unlike Bush, Obama’s position at the head of the Democratic Party, along with his immense talent as a salesman, allows him to advance the Republican agenda with almost no opposition from self-described liberals. But this unexpected windfall also presents the Republicans, or rather their corporate paymasters, with a dilemma. How do they get Obama reelected while pretending to oppose him?

U.S. Attorney Clifford R. Cronk III is using his office’s investigation of a 2004 animal rights-related break-in at the University of Iowa to harass and punish targets whom he claims identify as anarchists, a political ideology dating back to the early 19th Century. To date, neither his superiors in the Department of Justice, nor the federal courts, have done anything to curtail his abuse of power. In behavior reminiscent of the darkest days of the McCarthy witch hunts, Cronk argues in court documents that anarchists are domestic terrorists who should be locked up for posing a threat to civil society based on nothing but the prosecutor’s unfounded political bias.

In the latest updates from the Davenport, Iowa grand jury cases that Cronk used as a springboard, a judge denied Scott DeMuth's motion to extend his upcoming "animal enterprise terrorism" trial date of March 1, even though he has not yet received any discovery from the government.  A new motion to extend the date will be filed; meanwhile DeMuth is still slated for a pretrial hearing on February 8.  Carrie Feldman, meanwhile, is still in Washington County, Iowa jail, despite a host of legal issues that should set her free.  Her recent appeal for release was denied 2-1, with the majority judges citing secret evidence.

Related: DeMuth Denied Continuance for Trial | Appeal for Carrie Feldman's Release Denied | TCDP: The Secret Case Against Carrie Feldman | Peter Young: Ex-U of Iowa Grad Student/Humane Society Lawyer Subpoenaed to Iowa Grand Jury | Grand Jury Resistance Project Statement of Solidarity" | davenportgrandjury.wordpress.com

The Rosehip Medic Collective is holding a 20 hour basic Street Medic training in Bellingham, WA on the last weekend in Janurary, with a focus on training medics for the Anti-Olympics Convergence. In these trainings we seek to empower people to provide
quality emergency care in situations pertinent to activists. We will train you in giving a basic assessment, in offering friends and allies life saving first aid, discuss strategies for dealing with police weapons and violence, and many other awesome things.

This training will be the weekend of January 29-31, 5pm-9pm on Friday and 9am-6pm on both Saturday and Sunday. We ask for a $20 donation to cover the cost of materials, supplies, and travel, but no-one is turned away for lack of funds. We're not from Bellingham, but we can help to coordinate housing for people coming from out of town. Our priority is to get as many people trained as possible, and we will prioritize anyone planning on providing medical support at the Olympics. Please let us know if there's anything we can do to make this training accessible for you.

The U.S. peace “movement,” much of which “comes and goes” as often as Boy George’s “Karma Chameleon,” has finally discovered that its presumed perch in Barack Obama’s tree was untenable, if not wholly imaginary. To be sure, “Progressives for Obama” and other assorted delusional groupings were always squatters in the Obama camp – but they were the only ones who didn’t know it. How embarrassing it would have been, back during the campaign, had the lost little lefties realized that Obama’s imperial soul mates were laughing at them from a disdainful distance, knowing full well the path their bought-and-paid-for president would soon be traveling. How would the Obama peacenik groupies have preserved their sense of self-worth – much less their arrogant smugness – had they realized the absolute contempt in which they were held by their hero’s funders and packagers – and no doubt by the Object of Adulation, himself?

One persons' recollection of the events of N30 in 1999, where protesters from many movements came together to oppose the World Trade Organization. Read More

Also published in the Defenestrator's Special Issue: Ten Years Since the Seattle WTO

RELATED: Photo-essay from Seattle, Nov. 30, 1999

Following a landmark referendum, students at Sussex University have voted to boycott Israeli goods. The decision will become part of the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, which calls upon Israel to respect international law and end the occupation of Palestine. The referendum result mandates the Students' Union to remove all Israeli produce from its stores, and review its sources for food outlets. This makes Sussex Students' Union the first in the UK to implement a full boycott of Israeli goods. The vote was one of the largest and closest contested in the Union's history, with 562 votes for and 450 against the boycott.

Uri Gordon writes: “In case anyone hasn’t noticed, anarchism is alive and kicking. This past decade or so has seen the full revival of a global anarchist movement on a scale and on levels of unity and diversity unseen since the 1930s. From anti-capitalist social centres and eco-feminist farms to community organizing, blockades of international summits, daily direct actions and a mass of publications and websites – anarchy lives at the heart of the global movement that declares: ‘another world is possible’…Its euphemisms are legion: anti-authoritarian, autonomous, horizontalist…but you know it when you see it, and anarchy is everywhere.”

Houston hero Lenwood Johnson has been organizing residents of Freedmen’s Town in 4th Ward for over 30 years, fighting demolition and gentrification of the city’s oldest Black neighborhood. He reminds everyone of the price paid by the founders to make a home for their people in perpetuity: The bricks that pave many of the historic streets in Freedmen’s Town were hand made over a century ago by formerly enslaved Africans.

When Lenwood E. Johnson, the son of Texas sharecroppers, moved into Houston’s Allen Parkway Village project housing, the Freedmen’s Town section of the city had yet to be designated historic and the village had yet to be saved. By the end of the 1990s, the village was preserved and Johnson had proved to be something of an unlikely hero here in Houston’s 4th Ward, historically one of the poorest sections of the city – but always ripe for redevelopment because of its proximity to the downtown. [read the full article]

Econvergence Conference: NW Regional Gathering on the Economic and Ecological Crises

October 2 - 4, 2009 in Portland, OR

This three-day conference will include over 80 workshops and sessions (all sessions other than Noam Chomsky and Derrick Jensen will be presented FREE to the public). Workshops will cover diverse political perspectives and a broad array of topics including: the economic crisis, the environmental crisis, direct action, organizing, economic justice, environmental activism, war & imperialism, political repression, the Green Scare, veganism, anarchism, socialism, cooperatives, radical art and poetry, and more!

Check out the selected list of workshops below that indicates some of the radical workshops represented at the conference, listed by topic. There's really something for everyone. We hope to see you there!!

Friday and Saturday events will take place at First Unitarian Church of Portland (SW 12th Ave & SW Salmon St). Sunday events will take place at Portland State University, Smith Memorial Union. For more information and a complete list of workshops, visit www.econvergence.org.

Some of the people I love most in this world are right-wing conservatives. That would include most of my family. I am the red and black sheep of the family. Talking politics when in the presence of my parents and siblings is an invitation to familiar disaster. We all love each other and we share a passion for politics but we stand at opposite poles.