One of those teeth smile projects

You know when you see some people out there doing something and you just smile when you see it? Somebody put together these nice 64-page booklets on countering military recruitment in the city ("Which city?" New York CITY). They're free, they made 7,500 of them, and they're just wonderful. Mega-Kudos all around. Live in the city and want one? Or just check out the Dynamite Site.

Sir No Sir!

Just saw Sir No Sir! Go see it, it was good. It is History Is A Weapon Recommended!

Three links

Came across two great sites today. The first is an obnoxious anarchist site that we are linking to just to give us "cred" (as the kids say) with the obnoxious folk. We don't exactly agree with everything here, but there's enough cruel and snide commentary to keep us all interested: P-CRAC.
The second is much more serious and a great resource: Prison Sucks. I think I ate lunch on the lawn with the guy who puts this site together years ago at a great antiprison conference (the Christian Parenti audio was recorded there). A really great site.
Another Anti-prison site that I love is 360 Degrees. Check them all out!

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Also, we will now have a quote on the sidebar. We welcome any (brief) quotes you want to add to the list!

I'm supposed to choose what?

Surfing the internet before heading to bed, I came across a banner ad/game. It showed a smiling Mike Tyson punching out Bush and instructs one to tap a button on the screen to help Bush defeat Tyson for this banner ad scam. I'm not a Tyson fan, I think he's a pretty sad character, but who the hell is going to root against Tyson and for Bush?

Always Running

Just finished "Always Running / La Vida Loca: Gang Days In L.A." by Luis J. Rodriguez. It's good. He describes organized police strategies against Chicano youth, his own descent into the L.A. gang community in the sixties, and finished with his eventual growth out. The book is good for adults, but because a lot of the substance takes place in his high school years (and earlier), despite the graphic descriptions of everything that guarantees the eventual movie an R rating, I'd recommend it to older kids as well.

Mark Rudd and Oh, snap!

Came across Mark Rudd's nice webpage today. Last featured in the excellent Weather Underground documentary, he has a number of well-written essays reflecting on armed struggle, pacifism, and the sixties. Definitely worth checking out.

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So, in the last few weeks, we've gotten a flood of generous emails offering to help us with the site. While the coordination of this will take some time, I wanted to put up an easy way for people to assist now. A lot of people have webpages and blogs, so we've slapped together a quick box and we're going to host it, and if you like the site, we'd live for you to host it and send people to us. More info will be on the FAQ soon. For now, here's the ad:

Birthright Unplugged

Several years ago, I got into a disturbing conversation with a zionist tabler at my school. She was trying to recruit for the local jewish organization and I, as I tend to do, asked what their position on Palestine was. She said some not-so-hip things and I was a bit taken aback. Newsjunkie that I am, I had recently read a number of incredibly disturbing articles about children and farmers getting shot up in the olive fields. The conversation was a bit heated by this point, but her response couldn't be excused by any level of emotion. She said: "Well, they're just going to grow up to want to kill you anyway." This is not anywhere near the kind of comment I respond well to. The sonic boom that resulted knocked a helicopter off course.
Needless to say, I've taken a pretty calloused view of this sort of thing and am always on the look out for positive Jewish contributions to the Palestinian liberation struggle. For years, people have talked about "birthright," the program that sends, free of charge, international jewish youth to Israel for "Educational" tours. For years, I've complained about it. But, ah, now there is something else to send people to, besides the International Solidarity Movement (What? You think I'd forget?). Birthright Unplugged. Check it out.


Also, because it is important to understand the context of Israel/Palestine, a great book is Primo Levi's "If Not Now, When?" Levi's writing captures a slice of Zionism when it was still largely an idea and helps contemporary readers understand the historical basis for the movement.

America: Country or Flammable?

I'm sure this is going to blow up into another "war on christmas/christians/the republican party" Hullabaloo, but a school in Colorado banned the american flag after "racial tensions" grew after all the immigration protests. Readers can quickly guess that we think borders are for morons and that we think the mainstream discourse against "amnesty" for immigrants is stupid. Amnesty for what? The fact that the north of Mexico was nakedly stolen or amnesty for the fact that the rest of the country is stolen land? Amnesty for the murderers of immigrants on the border? Amnesty for the numerous american industries that exploit illegal, and vulnerable, immigrant labor? Amnesty for the, what is it? fifty year maquiladora program that has subjugated the Mexican working class? Amnesty for what exactly?
Anyway, this school banned the american flag and I was on a friend's computer and AOL had a story about it. There were a few photos with the story and whoever picked the photos deserves a beer. Because the first picture was some righteous white kids outside rebelling with their proud american flag. But the very next picture told the rest of the story in a way that the rest of the corporate media's debate has somehow "missed." Two kids were driving by the protest with a confederate flag. That made me happy, because if I have to stomach all this out and out racist rhetoric, I want to cut the smiles and get to the gut. This debate is about how does the country manage the racist infrastructure. Ideologically in the minds of white insanity, geographically on the border, politically on the stump, and financially in the legislatures. If I had my druthers, my slogan for the immigrant community would be something along the lines of:

We, Immigrants, plowed America's fields and picked America's crops.
Immigrants laid the railroads and worked your factories.
We fight in your wars and feed your culture.
Immigrants built this country and have nothing to fear.
We can always burn it down and build anew.

Maybe we should make a poster?

A quote for the Day

"The task of the intellectual is not to decide where there are battles but to join them wherever and whenever the people wage them. Commitment is an act, not a word." — Jean-Paul Sartre