review

By Hans Bennett

By Hans Bennett

"When I was 15, my friends started going to jail," says Victoria Law, a native New Yorker. "Chinatown's gangs were recruiting in the high schools in Queens and, faced with the choice of stultifying days learning nothing in overcrowded classrooms or easy money, many of my friends had dropped out to join a gang."

"One by one," Law recalls, "they landed in Rikers Island, an entire island in New York City devoted to pretrial detainment for those who can not afford bail."

Law shares this and other recollections in her new book, Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women (PM Press). At 16, she herself decided to join a gang, but was arrested for the armed robbery that she committed for her initiation into the gang. "Because it was my first arrest -- and probably because 16-year-old Chinese girls who get straight As in school did not seem particularly menacing -- I was eventually let off with probation," she writes.

--A Review of Forty Years in the Struggle; The Memoirs of a Jewish Anarchist, by Chaim Leib Weinberg; English Translation by Naomi Cohen; Edited by Robert Helms; Litwin Books, 2008.

The “Old City” neighborhood of Philadelphia is renowned for its many historic sites related to the “founding fathers” and the US colonial era. Yet, very few know about this same neighborhood’s significant anarchist history. Since 1997, local historian Robert Helms has led an “Anarchist Historical Walking Tour” that presents this history of resistance from the poor and working classes, who viewed the rhetoric about “American Democracy” as a fraud, and organized themselves to challenge the power of the ruling class. Helms is the editor of the just-released English translation of Chaim Leib Weinberg’s (1869-1939) autobiography: Forty Years in the Struggle; The Memoirs of a Jewish Anarchist.

by Arielle Burgdorf

You’re walking down the street when suddenly you see it: a stencil of a bandana-clad man  about to throw something. Except where there should be a molotov cocktail in his hand, there’s a bouquet of flowers. Is it clever? Will it make people think? And, most importantly, is it art?

By Hans Bennett

On January 1, 1994, the now-infamous North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect. That same day, the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), rose up and launched a military offensive that occupied towns throughout the state of Chiapas, in Mexico. The EZLN, or “Zapatistas” had been covertly organizing for many years, but they specifically chose the day of NAFTA’s implementation for their public rebellion.

Many components of NAFTA favored US corporate interests at the expense of Mexico’s general population, but the Zapatistas were particularly opposed to NAFTA’s rewriting of the Mexican Constitution, in order to eliminate the population’s biggest victory won during the Mexican Revolution fought 90 years before, at the time of World War One. “The Mexican Revolution wrote into the national constitution the opportunity for a village to hold its land communally, in an ejido, so that no individual could alienate any portion of it,” writes Staughton Lynd, co-author of the new book Wobblies and Zapatistas: Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism and Radical History.

by seedless

In a time of fiscal crisis and poor leadership we find a noble character with a vision of resistance, discovering solutions where others only see problems. IBtheMC (not to be confused with IB4eva, host of the gathering) a Native Philadelphian discovered his gift for music particularly rap/hip-hop early on.  At the age of six, with the help of his mother he learned his first rap, by age nine he had begum to appear in local showcase’s and talent shows.  However like many urbanites he fell victim to negative elements in the community which led him astray from his path of music, and in to repeated confrontations with police, culminating in his being tried as an adult at age 16 and incarcerated for over a year as an adult. 

Michael Moore’s New Film Names the System and Presents a Radical Democratic Critique

by Alex Knight, October 15, 2009

Capitalism: A Love Story, which opened in 962 theaters earlier this month, is Michael Moore’s most ambitious work yet - taking aim at the root cause behind the injustices he’s exposed in his other films over the last 20 years. This time capitalism itself is the culprit to be maligned in Moore’s trademark docu-tragi-comic style. And by using the platform of a major motion picture to make a direct assault at the root of the problem, Moore has created space in the political mainstream for a radical conversation (radical meaning “going to the root”).

Edited by Chris Spannos

Review by James Generic

"Real Utopia: Participatory Economics for the 21st Century", edited by Chris Spannos, is a collectionof essays by a multitude of authors who have developed Participator Economic (Parecon) theory, used it in real collective work, and have written extensively in defense of participatory economics.

Some things have come out that deserve a plug:

Promissory Notes: from Crisis to Commons

A pamphlet on the crisis by Midnight Notes and Friends

After five hundred years of existence, capitalists are once again announcing to us that their system is in crisis. They are urging everyone to make sacrifices to save its life. We are told that if we do not make these sacrifices, we together face the prospect of a mutual shipwreck. Such threats should be taken seriously. Already in every part of the planet, workers are paying the price of the crisis in retrenchment, mass unemployment, lost pensions, foreclosures, and death."