Call for Organizers and Participants

As we all know, the world financial system is in crisis.  The line has been drawn: from predatory lending, to socially and environmentally destructive development, to demands for bailouts, it’s clear that the banking system considers only a select group of people and ignores or exploits the rest.

by Ben Bernasty

On November 15th the leaders of the of the 20 most powerful economies met in Washington D.C. for the “G-20 Leaders Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy.” Responding to the financial crisis.

A variety of organizations in D.C. assembled under the name Global Justice Action organized a three-day weekend of events across in and out of the streets. This weekend U.S. organizers a chance to organize against a world financial summit during at historic moment—not when world economic leaders are calmly a new trade deals, but when they are scrambling to deal with a major crisis in the world economy.

Of course, it takes months or years of hard work by dedicated activists and organizers to make a mass demonstration possible. One of the groups that played a key role in making the RNC protests happen was the RNC Welcoming Committee, a group composed mostly of anarchists and anti-authoritarian residents of the Twin Cities working to coordinate the logistical aspects of RNC resistance.

By Kara N. Tina

"I'm sorry my car was burned but the issue is very upsetting."

-Ken Epstein, assistant editor of the Oakland Post, who was finishing an article about Grant's death, watched from the 12th story of his office at 14th and Franklin streets as his 2002 Honda CR-V disintegrated in a roar of flames (Oakland Tribune)

Come to the hearings! It's not too late!

A lawsuit is being filed against the city to postpone the closure of the 11 libraries slated to close on December 31st.    

Monday, December 29th at 10 am

Tuesday, December 30th at 10 am

City Hall, Room 426

Let’s pack the court room!

Bring all your friends and family!

for more info on the library closings, check out : http://www.savekingsessinglibrary.com/

SCI Camp Hill Update—Call for Action, Increased Monitoring, Constant Vigilance

As Pressure Fades, Retaliation Escalates

Prisoners in the Camp Hill Special Management Unit report that the retaliation against them has escalated again.  The timing of the reports indicate that the last action alert stayed the hands of the guards for a while, but once the calls died down, the threats, deprivations of food, fabricated misconducts, and other forms of harassment and torture have escalated again.

Michael Edwards, Damont Hagan, and Gary Tucker have been targeted most heavily by prison guards as a result of their efforts to expose racist brutality and maintain their dignity while being subjected to systematic dehumanization.

These men, and the others listed below, need the following from all of us:

1)—Take immediate action (detailed below)

2)—Establish channels of communication with these men; write them letters

3)—Committed and strategic thinking for a long-term battle with the DOC and the Governor's office, involving intensive monitoring, visitation, legal battles, media work, community organizing, and—not least of all—transformation of an unsustainable, oppressive social order.

There is no other way to begin to address the conditions in the Camp Hill SMU, or any other solitary unit in PA or the country for that matter.  Please take a deep breath and make a commitment right now to make a phone call and write a letter sometime in the next couple of days.

Tuesday, September 2. Day 2 of the Republican National Convention.

America’s invisible poor and their allies—Black people, White people, Latino people, Asian people, First Nations peoples—march on the Republican National Convention, a March for Our Lives, under the banner of the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC).

“PPEHRC calls for you to join us as we fill the streets of St. Paul, Minnesota in a powerful, peaceful demonstration for the right to health care, housing and all economic human rights.

by Bronwyn

On entering Louise Bourgeois’s Guggenheim Retrospective (the museum, a spiraling stroll of four floors – like walking inside of a large conch shell is a perfect space for her work) one is greeted by a 30-foot, steel spider: “Maman” (1999). Typical of the ambiguous and contradictory emotions found in and elicited by her work, the spider (or mother) is simultaneously frightening, larger than life and devouring – representative of…well, mothers, and of the sustenance of life… the spider is also a weaver – of stories, social threads, interconnectedness; a spider’s web is both practical and beautiful to behold. To kill a spider is bad luck. Bourgeois, named by her feminist mother, after Louise Michel, an anarchist involved in the Paris Commune, has said “my best friend was my mother and she was deliberate, clever, patient, soothing, reasonable, dainty, subtle, indispensable, neat and useful as a spider.” A tapestry-repairer and a strong role model in many ways, her mother nevertheless tolerated a visible affair between Louise’s father and her governess, a self-described childhood ‘trauma’ that Bourgeois has revisited in her artwork through out her life.