BODY OF WORK

Here is an archive of work published by Brian Awehali in or on places other than LOUDCANARY.

FEATURES | ESSAYS | INTERVIEWS | LiP: INFORMED REVOLT

FEATURES

» WE LOOK LIKE THE TYPE
A recent surge in interest in typewriters isn’t just about nostalgia or fetishistic hipster concerns. It’s about light, speed, focus and pleasure. It’s also about digital discontent: As our type has grown speedier and more legible, we’ve become more legible to people, corporations and governments in increasingly centralized, synoptic positions.

originally published in the East Bay Express | May 2014

» OCCUPY EVERYWHERE, PART 1: NOTES FROM WALL STREET
In the first days of the occupation, most corporate media reporters approached the protesters as would any good B-movie alien delegation: “Take us to your leader,” they demanded. Confronted with a decentralized organizing culture, they furrowed their brows, demanded demands, preferably in sound bite form, and generally derided protesters for being young, unrealistic, weird-looking, and/or unhygienic.

Earth Island Journal | October 2011

» AFTER THE TWISTER
The tornado hit without warning on May 22, at 5:41 p.m., ultimately claiming more than 155 lives. People were getting home from work, firing up the grill, or sitting down to eat. Everyone I spoke with said houses were already imploding and disintegrating before anyone heard a siren. (This is a personal essay about the meteorological leveling of my birthplace.)

The Brooklyn Rail | July 2011

» DRIFT TO LIVE: A PROFILE OF LIAO YIWU (廖亦武), CHINA’S MOST-CENSORED PEOPLE’S HISTORIAN
“Why should the government fear me?” says Liao smiling, the first day we meet, along with an interpreter and several of Liao’s writer friends, at a riverside teahouse outside of Chengdu, in Sichuan province. “I’m just a guy who tells stories.”

Counterpunch / LOUDCANARY | May 2011

» CHINA’S UNDERGROUND HISTORIAN
Liao Yiwu may be China’s most-censored writer. His work has been translated into several languages and has enjoyed international critical acclaim, yet in his hometown of Chengdu, where his books are banned, he’s virtually unknown.

The Progressive | April 2011

» UNDER THE ETERNAL SKY: MONGOLIA’S WILDERNESS & PEOPLE THREATENED BY MINING BOOM
In the countryside (and most of it remains countryside) the Eternal Sky held sacred by Mongolians since well before the time of Genghis Khan levitates with majesty over wide-open grassland prairie, steppe, subarctic evergreen forest, wetland, alpine tundra, mountain and desert. It stretches above yak, goat, reindeer, camel, wolf, bear, marmot, squirrel, hawk, falcon, eagle and crane, and above some of the last traditional nomadic peoples and wild horses on Earth.

The seemingly infinite Mongolian sky also hangs over the largest mining boom on the planet.

Earth Island Journal / The Guardian / Third World Resurgence (Malaysia) / Ger (Denmark) | 2010-11

» NATIVE ENERGY FUTURES
Renewable Energy, Actual Sovereignty & the New Rush on Indian Lands

LiP: Informed Revolt | 2006 | (Project Censored award winner)

» TRUST US, WE’RE THE GOVERNMENT
How to Make $137 Billion of Indian Money Disappear

Alternet | 2002 | (Project Censored award winner)

» THE BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIR’S $100-BILLION SHELL GAME

Z Magazine cover story | April 2002 | (with Silja J.A. Talvi)

» BROKEN PROMISES
Government malfeasance continues in landmark Indian Trust case

ColorsNW | 2003 | (Society of Professional Journalists award-winner) | (with Silja J.A. Talvi)

» DAVID & GOLIATH IN INDIAN COUNTRY
The feds are on the losing side of the largest class action lawsuit ever filed against the U.S. government. This time, the Indians may actually beat the cavalry.

Alternet | 2005

» NEW WORLD DISORDER
How U.S. Arms Dealers and Their Cabinet-level Cronies Profit from the War on Terror

LiP: Informed Revolt / Alternet | 2002

» MONITORING YOUR EVERY MOVE: A GUIDE TO BIOMETRIC TECHNOLOGIES
What are the facts about biometrics? Predictably, industry leaders and critics paint wildly different pictures. Here, however, are a few brief looks at today’s leading biometric technologies, which may be a much bigger part of your life than you’d expect, in a considerably shorter time than you’d imagine.

High Times | 2002

» PROFIT, CONTROL & THE MYTH OF TOTAL SECURITY
The advance of Total Surveillance Society promises a world free of danger and uncertainty, yet the arguments for a comprehensive surveillance society comprise a fear-addled litany of threats and fantastic promises of security that are grossly exaggerated by the very corporate and government serial offenders who pose the greatest threat to our health and safety.

LiP: Informed Revolt | 2006 | (with Ariane Conrad)

» LIFE AFTER CORPORATE DEATH CARE
As traditional religious death rituals have given way to more secular alternatives, a consumer revolt against the high cost of dying in America is well underway.

Alternet | 2004

» PROPAGANDA, PUBLIC RELATIONS AND THE NOT-SO-NEW DARK AGE
Edward L. Bernays birthed the public relations industry in the United States. His clients included General Motors, United Fruit, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, the U.S. Department of State, Health, and Commerce, Samuel Goldwyn, Eleanor Roosevelt, the American Tobacco Company, and Proctor & Gamble. He directed public relations campaigns for every president from Calvin Coolidge in 1925, to Dwight Eisenhower in the late 1950s. He was, in the estimation of cultural historian Ann Douglas, the man “who orchestrated the commercialization of a culture.”

LiP: Informed Revolt | 2006 | (with Stephen Bender)

» NIKE COME HOME, ALL IS FORGIVEN
Oregon governor Mannix invites shoe giant to consider the economic advantages of domestic prison labor.

LiP: Informed Revolt | 1998

» CHALLENGING THE WAR ON DRUGS
A landmark conference on drug policy in Los Angeles convened nearly 600 attendees from across the U.S. and Europe.

Santa Fe New Mexican / Alternet | 2002

ESSAYS

» INVENTING THANKSGIVING
Thanksgiving Day provides an ideal opportunity to consider the formation of national identity and the concept of a civil religion. It’s also a living metaphor of the prevailing American model for immigrant assimilation and the ways in which history can be reinterpreted, and indeed wholly reinvented, to serve competing ethnic, patriotic, religious, and commercial ends.

Britannica.com | 2002

» WHERE FOOLS RUSH IN: CUSTER’S LAST STAND
July 25, 1876 ― The U.S. Army today suffered its worst defeat ever in Plains Indian warfare, as more than 260 soldiers in the 7th Cavalry were killed along the banks of the Little Bighorn River in the disputed Montana Territory today. The bloodbath followed an evidently ill-conceived charge under the command of Gen. George Armstrong Custer.

Britannica.com | 2000

INTERVIEWS

» MADNESS & MASS SOCIETY
Pharmaceuticals, Psychiatry, and the Rebellion of True Community

with Dr. Bruce Levine | LiP: Informed Revolt | 2006

» TORTURE TAXI
Anatomy of a CIA Front Company

with A.C Thompson & Trevor Paglen | LiP: Informed Revolt | 2007

» REMOTE CONTROL HIP HOP
Culture, power and youth

with Jeff Chang | LiP: Informed Revolt | 2005

» WHO’S WHITE?
Race, Humor and the New Black/Non-Black Breakdown

with damali ayo & Tim Wise | LooseLiP | 2007

» BAD VIBES – POISON PLEASURE PRODUCTS?
Words with Jessica Giordano, co-founder of the Smitten Kitten and the Coalition Against Toxic Toys (CATT).

LiP: Informed Revolt | 2006 | (with Lisa Jervis)

» CONVEYING CORRECTNESS
The Prefabrication of Political Speech

with Chip Berlet | LiP: Informed Revolt | 2005

» DESIGNING OUR OWN DEMISE

One respected Cornell robotics expert is in firm belief that machines will acquire human levels of intelligence by the year 2040, and that by the middle part of this century, they will be our intellectual superiors.

with Hans Moravec | Britannica.com | 2000

» MEMBERSHIP HAS ITS DISADVANTAGES
Whiteness and the Social Entropy of Privilege

with Tim Wise | LiP: Informed Revolt | 2005

» NOTES ON A NATIONAL DISORDER
A look at the growing problem of excessive concentration in the U.S. culture industries, and the oligopolistic sway of just a few giant players over television news, book publishing, popular music and cable TV. Also, how the hell Bush II happened.

with Mark Crispin Miller | LiP: Informed Revolt | 2005

» ADDICTED TO WASTE
Harm Reduction, Disposability and the Myth of Activist Purity

with Julia Butterfly Hill | Tikkun | 2005

» ON IRONY
A pointed Q&A with author Rebecca Solnit

LiP: Informed Revolt | 2006

LiP: Informed Revolt

“Funny, refreshing, intelligent and outrageous!”

— Howard Zinn, Historian, activist and author of
A People’s History of the United States

“LiP is one of the finest political publications in the country, and I recommend it for your mental and political self-defense.”

— Van Jones, environmental advocate, president of Rebuild the Dream, and author of The Green Collar Economy (2008)

“In an era when most political magazines in the U.S. ranged from the tepid to the tedious there was LiP, fearlessly delving into the essential topics of our times and mapping the way to a revolution you’d actually want to join.”

— Patrick Reinsborough, co-founder of the smartMeme Project
and co-author of Re:Imagining Change

LiP: Informed Revolt was an award-winning alternative zine-turned-magazine that took on various incarnations after I founded it in 1996. It began in Chicago as a zine, distributed mostly at local bookstores and coffee shops, then began publishing online in 2001 before eventually evolving into a full-format North American periodical in 2003. It was run by an all-volunteer staff until 2007, was devoted to politics, culture, sex and humor, and took a satirical, analytical, and often biting approach to what we called “a culture machine that strips us of our desires and sells them back as product and mass mediocracy.”

Unique among its publishing peers, but consistent with its stated political values, LiP printed entirely on 100% recycled PCW paper, with non-petroleum-based inks, and using only union-run or worker-owned presses. At the time it published, it was also the only progressive-to-radical publication in the U.S. featuring a majority female editorial group, contributor base, and readership while not being aimed specifically at women or “women’s issues.”

Contributors to the magazine included activists, cultural critics and literary figures, including Vandana Shiva, Tim Wise, Julia Butterfly Hill, Mark Crispin Miller, Martín Espada, Rebecca Solnit, David Solnit, Elizabeth “Betita” Martinez, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Jeff Chang, damali ayo, Chip Berlet, Michael Eric Dyson, Mary Roach, Boots Riley, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, Heather Rogers, Timothy Kreider, Iain Boal, Jeff Conant, Neal Pollack, Neelanjana Banerjee, Antonia Juhasz, Bruce Levine, and Christopher Hitchens.

The magazine also regularly featured excerpts from contemporary and historical authors, including Susan Faludi, Mary Roach, Derrick Jensen, Eduardo Galeano,Winona LaDuke, Bertrand Russell, Elizabeth and Stuart Ewen, Mark Crispin Miller, Voltairine DeCleyre, Robin D.G. Kelley, Albert Camus, Dorothy Allison, Eduardo Antonio Parra, Liza Featherstone, Doug Henwood, Christian Parenti, Leslie Savan, Mark Zepezauer, John Ross, and Noam Chomsky.

TIPPING THE SACRED COW
The Best of LiP: Informed Revolt (AK Press)
(Complete PDF)

You may also download several complete issues of LiP:

The Constructively Negative
Sacred Cows Issue (pdf)

FEATURING, AMONG OTHERS: Lisa Jervis, Derrick Jensen, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, Susan Faludi, Bertrand Russell, Jeff Chang, Rebecca Solnit, David Solnit, and Timothy Kreider

Cover art by Mona Caron

The Relentlessly Persuasive
P.R. & Propaganda Issue (pdf)

FEATURING, AMONG OTHERS: Vandana Shiva, damali ayo, Chip Berlet, Bruce Levine, Vanessa Huang, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Eduardo Galeano, and Leslie Savan.

Cover art by Hugh D’Andrade

The Grossly Unexpected Bugs issue [PDF]

Some people shot us weird looks when we announced “bugs” as the theme for the final issue of LiP. A few others reacted with exuberance, as if all this time we’d been talking about the political, what they’d been really wanting to read about was the entomological.

This issue was an attempt to slip a certain noose of predictable political formulations. One of several operational definitions given for “politics” is “the total complex of relations between people living in society,” yet the obvious interdependence of human beings and the natural and animal world makes it reasonable to expand the definition of politics to include, well, just about everything; even—especially, as it turns out—bugs.

The lineup and links to a PDF of the complete issue after the jump…

Gods & Monsters: Bugs in Modern Western Culture, Inc. – by Christy Rodgers
Breeding Resistance: Malaria & the Global Pesticide Pandemic – by Jeff Conant and Tim Krupnik
Torture, Inc: Anatomy of a CIA Front Company – Brian Awehali interviews A.C. Thompson & Trevor Paglen
Every Cockroach is Beautiful to its Mother – by Kari Lydersen
Profit, Control & the Myth of Total Security – by Brian Awehali & Ariane Conrad
Fear, Profiteering & the Culture of Mistrust – by Nell Greenberg
Pheremoan (insect erotica, in a manner of speaking) – by Nikolai Kingsley
Darwin vs. the Ant: The Altruism of Bugs & Humans – by Erin Wiegand
[reading] Break the Bank: Counterfeiter Extraordinaire, Alves Reis, & the Portuguese Currency Crisis – by Sam Burton
[excerpt] The Plague of Disbelief – Albert Camus
Please Step Away from the Vernacular: Race, Slang & Roget’s Thesaurus – by Elizabeth & Stuart Ewen
Flirting with Death & Living – Lisa Jervis interviews Kate Bornstein
REVIEWED – Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 & How it Changed Everything; Pink Ribbons, Inc: Breast Cancer & the Politics of Philanthropy; homegrown: engaged cultural criticism by bell hooks & Amalia Mesa-Bains; Outsiders Within: Writings on Transracial Adoption, edited by Jane Jeong Trenka, Julia Chinyere Oparah & Sun Yung Shin; Transgender Rights, edited by Paisley Currah, Richard M. Juang & Shannon Price Minter.