Come drink with us SATURDAY, JULY 5th from 7pm - MIDNIGHT! We'll be screening a film (of your choosing!) outdoors, doing some potluck-style grillin', playing games, and dancin'! Join us!

...or in this case, use a broad, grassroots coalition to force Mayor Bloomby to cancel his bid for a new one in the Bronx.

That's right: the Community In Unity coalition, which fought a tooth-and-nail battle against the city, has prevented a new 2,040-bed jail from being built in the South Bronx! CIU includes groups like the Bronx Defenders, the Point, Mothers on the Move, Rights for Imprisoned People with Psychiatric Disabilities and Critical Resistance (a national, non-hierarchical prison abolition organization.) Also opposing the jail were the folks at Sustainable South Bronx, who flung a timely lawsuit at the city's construction plans.

The defeat of the Oak Point Detention Center is a huge victory for communities in New York seeking alternatives to mass incarceration and racist policing. The ill-fated jail was to have been erected just across the water from Rikers, and would've expanded a bloated prison system that already includes (in the Bronx alone) two youth detention facilities and a jail barge docked in the East River--with 800 people on board in cages, much like the slaveships of old.

Naturally, the vanquished plan fits into a larger pattern of shoveling unwanted projects on Manhattan's darker boroughs. Alongside the jails that disproportionately intern its citizens, the Bronx also plays unwilling host to 15 waste transfer stations, a Con Ed plant and a sewage treatment facility--just like Harlem endures most of New York's asthma-inducing bus depots. And the Bronx experience is only a small taste of the soaring incarceration trends across the country.

Sunday, March 2
1:30pm Parade Lines up @ 43rd Street and Skillman, Queens (directions below)
2:00pm Parade Kicks off

This is a shout out to all y’all radical queers! And to all you bad-assed hets who give a fuck about assembly and know you look good in pink!

By James Trimarco

A group of volunteers gathered in ABCNo Rio’s community arts center gallery on a cold Saturday morning in early February. The topic under discussion was grave. The future of No Rio — an open space for New York’s radical arts and squatter communities for nearly thirty years — was at stake again.

My partner and I only have a few more days in Oaxaca, and if one thing is clear from our time here, it's that it's impossible to have any comprehensive understanding of a place without a committing oneself to it for an extended period of time. I'm talking years. Anything less can end up being exploitative and touristy, which is a particularly salient risk for travelers from the Global North like myself.

When tourists cruise through a foreign country, harvesting souvenirs and selectively dispensing a few travelers checks, they often want a taste of "the local flavor." Leftists and radicals can do the same thing, backpacking through the Global South to glean inspiration from others' struggles before heading home at their leisure. Either way, that's gross.

I want to share a few observations from my time in Oaxaca, but I want to do it with these cautions in mind, in hopes that they'll help northern radicals stand in solidarity more effectively with the struggles of the Global South--where, believe me, they've got a lot cooking.

1. We'll be looking for some of our speaking workshop participants to
deliver micro-speeches during the March 1 GA, so we're in the process of contacting them in order to gauge interest.

2. In addition, we might continue the speaking workshop thread with a pair of “advance” workshops in March. Watch this space for more info if it materializes.

Neither the Center nor the Periphery...

Part VII [and also the last] - FEEL THE RED.
THE CALENDAR AND GEOGRAPHY OF THE WAR

"The difference between the irreparable and the necessary, is that for the former there is no need to prepare yourself. And only by preparation can you asses the latter".

By JOAQUIN CEINFUEGO

SELF-DETERMINATION SELF-EMPOWERMENT

A couple of individuals from New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles met informally and wanted to propose a national/inter-regional gathering for Anarchist People of Color.

CHIAPAS: MARCOS WITHDRAWS; STATES WAR IS LOOMING

Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) spokesperson Subcomandante
Marcos warned of possible coming war in Mexico's impoverished
southern state of Chiapas, and announced his departure from public

Good morning revolution, you nasty cat you!

At this very moment, my partner and her friends, along with hundreds of radical women from around the world, are gathering in Chiapas, Mexico for an encuentro between the Zapatista peoples and the peoples of the world. This is the third encuentro hosted by the Zapatisas since their uprising against the Mexican government and global capitalism in 1994, and the first focusing exclusively on the struggles of women.

Make no bones about it: this gathering is a big deal. The first "Encounter For Humanity and Against Neoliberalism" was held in 1996, bringing together a generation of radicals to discuss what anti-capitalism could mean following the collapse of state socialism. The seminal People's Global Action network emerged from conversations that followed, providing a framework for much of the counter-globalization era.

A second encuentro took place in July of this year, in a political climate characterized by resurgent imperialism, incipient state socialism and an increasingly brutal border regime. It was followed immediately by a call for a women's encuentro on the 14th anniversary of the Zapatista uprising (click here to listen to the announcement and read a translation), named after none other than Comandanta Ramona.

Hey all...sorry these have been so long in coming. Lots of good stuff in the works, though. Enjoy!

- Matthew
________

Props Crew Meeting Notes - November 23, November 30, and December 7, 2007

I walked by a TV in a bodega a few weeks back, and what did I see? A story on CNN about a(nother) luxury development in New York City; this one featured private vehicle elevators to carry you and your beamer to a palatial condo overlooking the Hudson from West Chelsea, and was designed by an architecture firm whose other down-to-earth projects include Abercrombie flagship stores in NYC, LA and London, and an estate outside Majorca, Spain. The city had just given developers the go-ahead, and construction of "200 Eleventh Avenue" is now underway.

To say the least, I was appalled when I saw that story. The monument to gluttony on 11th Avenue arrives at exactly the same time that thousands of families are losing their homes in NYC as part of the subprime lending crisis now sweeping the country. A comparison to the days of robber barons and penniless paupers couldn't be more apt.

WORKERS, NOT POLITICIANS, WILL END THIS WAR

Build Our Solidarity, Not Their Elections

Before bombs began dropping on Iraq, millions of us protested against the war. Today, the war is dismally unpopular and every day we learn of new atrocities being committed in our names. And all at the expense of the lives of U.S. soldiers, drawn heavily from the working class. Faced with this dire situation, leaders of the antiwar movement have focused on electing Democrats, lobbying Democrats, and calling on Democrats to impeach Bush. We reject this whole electoral strategy. It has not brought

I'm writing this now from the independent media center at the No Borders Camp, where heavy winds are blowing sand across my keyboard and across the camp. Friday was full of confrontation and exuberance at this convergence, beginning before breakfast when we butted heads with riot police.

The plan was simple: serve breakfast close to the policed vehicle barrier currently separating the Mexican and U.S. sides of the No Borders Camp, thus bridging a militarized border with pancakes and oatmeal. As campers milled around, the U.S. perimeter was dismantled and folks were encouraged to mill into the area, undermining the border patrol's control of the space; bikes, water bottles and scrap wood were removed--and a couch was moved out in--to an area previously held by floodlights and military jeeps.

This simple (and satiating) act of solidarity quickly drew the ire of the border patrol, who panicked at the site of brown people crowding close to a political boundary and called in riot police to separate the two sides. The first line of decked-out migra, armed with clubs and shields, brushed past confused U.S. anarchists who found ourselves unsure what to do at the threat of physical force--an understandable reaction, but one that put our compas on the other side at serious risk of being injured by the racist power structure. When a second line of riot cops approached, we lived up to our name and linked arms, blocking a line of angry border patrol agents with our own bodies.

It's been two and a half days at the No Borders Camp, where around 200 radicals have seized a temporary autonomous zone in the middle of the low-intensity war zone known as the U.S. / Mexico border.

Surrounded at different times by the la migra, local police and sheriffs, U.S. participants have erected dozens of tents, two kitchens, toilets, a pirate radio station, and an in-the-field independent media center under the glaring desert sun. On the other side, Mexican anarchists have set up camp just across the fence from their companer@s to the north--but the two remain separated by a thin line of border patrol pigs armed with humvees, billy clubs and automatic weapons.

The half of the No Borders Camp originating from the U.S. side was seized on Wednesday at the end of a 3-mile march through the streets of Calexico, California. Originating at the pedestrian border crossing between Calexico and its would-be sister city Mexicali, a contingent of Mexican and U.S. anarchists converged on the fortified wall between their two nation-states, speaking and cheering through metal mesh and steel posts.

It was a beautiful site: participants kissed through the grating of the border fence and banged on the wall with sticks and hands, chanting Queremos un mundo sin fronteras! and No borders! No Nations! No deportations! A few participants scaled the wall and hoisted a black flag on top of it (to the elation of the crowd below) before setting out on a long, dry march to a campsite whose location had been kept secret.

CALL TO WORLD DAY OF ACTION

JANUARY 26, 2008

After the successful first ever United States Social Forum (USSF) in
Atlanta, Georgia during June 27 to July 1, 2007 the ?Peoples? Movement
Assembly? (PMA) was established to continue and carry out the movement

Click the image below to view a video that's being circulated for the upcoming No Borders Camp 2007, to which I'm heading off to in the next few days.

No Borders Camps have taken place previously in Europe and Australia, confronting borders as both unjust physical boundaries and brutal systems of violence and control that pervade our societies. They generally take the form of radical encampments at the invisible line separating two countries, or outside detention camps where black-and-brown folks are imprisoned. This is the first No Borders Camp in North America, and the first to take place on two sides of an international border (see the FAQ on www.noborderscamp.org)