Anonymous Comrade writes:

DIY Guide to Santa Cruz, California

Hey there,

        There's a couple new and interesting projects happening in Santa Cruz, that we would like to let y'all know about...

New(ish) Artspace/Infoshop!
The Playing in Sand Collectiv presents:
Werkshop Museum & The Galley @ 293 Squid Row (Downtown) Santa Cruz, CA.
Hours: 2:30 p.m. - 9:30 p.m. most days
email: playinginsand@gmail.com

This is a great d.i.y. art space/infoshop/showspace. Werkshop Museum has been open since October 2005. In January 2006 they acquired an adjacent space (the Galley) with a music room/show space and a d.i.y. art gallery to raise funds to support the project. They host a variety of regular freeskool classes, for example: figure drawing, music jam sessions, stencil making, block prints, and yoga. They have allocated a section for anarchist books and zines to be sold. A really fucking good selection. This a place that should definately be visited upon your arrival to Santa Cruz.

From the Playing in Sand Collectiv on their space:

"The P.S.C. maintains two facilities on Squid Row Alley;

        Werkshop Museum: classes/workshops, presentations/discussions, independent practice. Within is a permanent collection of local artwork, a cache of creative materials, and an infoshop with radical literature.

        The Galley: textile workshop, sound-lab, trading post. The P.S.C. offers opportunities to learn classical techniques as well as sharing experimental approaches using salvaged materials. On the second Sunday of every month we come together to host an event with workshops, food, and performances to represent these concepts and build creative momentum."

Quiver Distro & Press
POB 993
Santa Cruz, CA. 95061
quiver@anti-politics.net
www.anti-politics.net/distro

"We have recently put up a web update that includes pdf. links or text files to many of the zines we carry. This has been done in order to make it easier for those who want to get copies of these publications for distribution and reading."

DIY GUIDE TO SANTA CRUZ
(an incomplete list of independent local projects)

Meaningful projects begin with people who are motivated to put into action their desires for the kind of world in which they want to live. The more we create our own projects that are apart from and in some cases pose a direct challenge to the dominant institutions, the more vital and meaningful our world(s) will be for us. Here is a short list of some of these kinds of projects in Santa Cruz.

Anarchist Library
Need a good radical history book to curl up with in the rainy winter months? Or a great book on anarchy to take with you to the beach during the summer? Visit the Anarchist Library where you can check out radical books that might not be available in the local library. The collection covers such diverse subjects as anarchy, Situationists, history, politics, fiction, ecology, indigenous studies, feminism, psychology, and a small collection of zines. Also, current grassroots and radical events are posted. At the Sacred Grove, 924 Soquel Ave.

The Bike Church
Community Bike Shop and Tool Cooperative
http://www.santacruzhub.org/bikechurchfrm.html
You need not be a mechanic to use the Bike Church's do-it-yourself repair facility; people of all aptitudes make use of the shop. Church ministers (mechanics) are there to help and get as involved in the repair of your bicycle as necessary. We encourage people to learn by getting their hands dirty - familiarize them-selves with the machine that they rely on to get them from place to place. The Bike Church is part of The Hub at 703 S. Pacific, Downtown. 425-2453.

Food Not Bombs
http://www.geocities.com/santacruzfnb/
Food Not Bombs offers community meals open to all, as an opportunity to build community, reclaim public space, protest hunger, poverty, militarization, and all forms of oppression. Serving two days a week: Sundays 4pm @ San Lorenzo Park, & Wednesdays 4pm @ the south end of the Farmer's Market.

Free Radio Santa Cruz - 101.1 FM
http://www.freakradio.org
Free Radio Santa Cruz has been on the air for over 10 years without a license. We broadcast 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, in defiance of federal regulations. We go on the air to produce & broadcast a diversity of programs that are simply unavailable on corporate controlled stations, to bring local control & local accountability to our community media & to challenge corporate control of the airwaves. FRSC is part of a growing micro-radio movement. On the air at 101.1 FM & live stream link at website.

Free Skool Santa Cruz
http://santacruz.freeskool.org
Free Skool offers a variety of classes in homes, open spaces and community centers all over Santa Cruz. Free Skool is a decentralized and completely grass-roots effort, a collection of locals who’ve decided to act collectively and autonomously to create a skill-sharing network, a school without institutional control. It is an opportunity to learn from others and share what we know, to help create self-reliance, vital communities, and beauty in the world. Free Skool calendars are distributed widely in various public places around Santa Cruz and at the website.

Guerilla Drive-In
http://www.guerilladrivein.org
Santa Cruz Guerilla Drive-In is an outdoor movie theatre under the stars that springs up in the fields and industrial wastelands. Beyond showing movies and bringing a broad community together, part of our mission is to help reclaim public space and transform our urban environment into a joyful playground. GDI also lends support to other projects. Every other Friday. Summer series at the railroad tracks at Fair Ave. on the Westside & Winter series at the Bike Church.

Santa Cruz Indymedia
http://indybay.org/santacruz
Web-based local news and info source, focused on local issues and the direct impact of larger issues on our community. The Independent Media Center is a network of collectively run media outlets for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate telling of the truth. We work out of a love and inspiration for people who continue to work for a better world, despite corporate media's distortions and unwilling-ness to cover the efforts to free humanity. Santa Cruz Indymedia is an autonomous chapter of the Independent Media network. Online.

Of course there is much more going on around town than this short list encompasses. Keep your eyes and ears open; talk to others (word of mouth is the best way to learn about what’s-going-on) and look for flyers around town. Let’s joyfully tear down the world around us and create something wonderful in its place.

The Batko Group writes:

Dissident #2: Insurrection and Anarchism

Swedish Batko Group

The Swedish journal Dissident has now published their issue about Insurrectionary anarchism in English on their website: http://www.batko.se/en_index.php

Insurrectionary anarchism is an attempt to formulate a tendency within the revolutionary movement, a perspective that is always present in the class struggle and emerges from it, and how we as revolutionaries should relate to this.

What the insurrectionary anarchists have contributed with, and what makes them so interesting, is that they with a point of departure in the classical principles of anarchism (direct action, propaganda by the deed, an undogmatic view on theory etc.), and derived from their own analysis of the contemporary reality, have tried to cast the whole of the formal workers movement overboard, and with it everything it implies of ideological prejudice, traditions and alienating structures.

Instead they have initiated the incredibly ambitious project of formulating a completely new coherent theory for the totality of revolutionary practice, something that actually can bring us closer to the revolution, not just talk about it. They try to formulate and rationalize the spontaneous perspectives that constitute the driving force of the class struggle and they have actually come quite a long way.

The Batko Group

Tarantula Distribution writes

Now available from Tarantula Publications:

THE NEW STATE REPRESSION

“Today’s political repression differs fundamentally from the repression practiced here and around the world in the past. The most basic difference is on the level of strategy [...] the general approach of the state, the outlook of the ruling class.

“In the past, the rulers and their security forces believed that the normal condition of society was stability and calm, while insurgency was thought to be a quirk, an oddity, a pathology. [...] The difference today is their belief that insurgency is not an occasional, erratic idiosyncrasy of people who are exploited or oppressed, but a constant occurrence—permanent insurgency, which calls for a strategy that doesn’t simply rely on a police force and a national guard and an army that can be called out in an emergency, but rather a strategy of permanent repression as the full-time task of the security forces.”

—Ken Lawrence

“Our rulers need repression because they know how brittle their legitimacy really is, and how weak their grip on power. This sense of vulnerability always provides the premise for their plans, the motive for repressive action. ‘The New State Repression’ shows us this, often from the state’s perspective and largely through the words of its own strategists.

“We cannot afford to underestimate the state. But we should not fool ourselves into believing in its omnipotence, either. Ken Lawrence has offered a guard against each type of error.”

—Kristian Williams

Ken Lawrence’s classic essay on strategies of counter-insurgency has now been reprinted with a new introduction by Kristian Williams (author, Our Enemies in Blue and American Methods: Torture and the Logic of Domination).

Three dollars postpaid, or ask your local bookseller to place an order.

(Pamphlet, June 2006, 24 pages with silver/blue cover.)

Order online (U.S. / postpaid copy) here.

Please contact Tarantula Publications for bulk distribution rates, or for information on our other titles:

Tarantula / 818 SW 3rd Ave. PMB 1237 / Portland, OR 97204

www.socialwar.net

Promotional flyer (.pdf format) here. Spread the word—print and distribute!

"Colonial Dreams & Autonomous Zones"

OVNI 2006

Barcelona, May 30–June 4, 2006>

OVNI [observatori de video no identificat] 2006 presents a week-long selection of video, independent documentaries and media archaeological materials dealing with Colonialism and its mutation into Globalisation.

Themes include the occupation and destruction of other worlds and cultures, including also, at a local scale, real-estate violence, colonial tourism and migration...

Autonomy and No Zones, other ways of perceiving and creating realities, communal and internal worlds. Autonomous ways of living and thinking, zones without limits, no zones.

Lectures and panels:

// Rene Vautier (Algeria in Flames * Afrique 50 )
// Michael Taussig (Columbia University, NYC)
// Contraplano LAD (Discusion Panel)
// Serra Ciliv (If.Istanbul)

Opening: Tuesday May 30th, 20:30h

Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona
CCCB

Montalegre 5
Barcelona
(34) 93 3064100
ovni@desorg.org

Parallel screenings in the Hall and the Auditorioum: from 17:00h to 24:00h / May 31st to June 4th
//
OVNI Archives consulting: from 12:00h to 23:00h in the Hall
// Lectures and panels: 22:00h Hall
// Free Entrance

Anonymous Comrade writes:

El Kilombo Intergalactico Web-Site

"In this period of frustration and disappointment, we must turn from negation to affirmation, from the ever-lasting "No" to the everlasting
"Yes" — W.E.B. Dubois, 1934

El Kilombo Intergalactico officially announces the creation of its website at El Kilombo Intergalactico. Our website includes:

— An amazing blog from one of our members who is currently traveling with the
Zapatista's "Other Campaign." Get photos, news, analysis and constant updates from the New Mexican Revolution and participate in the global Zapatista community through our discussion forums.

— Blogs from Paris, with news, video and analysi from the November 2005 and March 2006 riots and protests, as well as updates from Toni Negri's "Multitudes" seminar.

— Exciting page filled with links about the history and current struggles of People of Color—The Black Panthers, Angela Davis, C.L.R. James, The Younglords, AIM, Red Guards, Elizam Escobar…etc., As Fred Hampton would have wanted — a real "Rainbow Coalition!"

— Video Interviews and articles of the latest round of Migrant Protests in the U.S.

— Links and recovered histories from autonomist movement in North America.

— The latest, New, Analysis and Translations from The Movement of Movements around the world (Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, South Korea, South Africa, etc…)

Anarchist Pamphlets Online in the Labadie Collection

The Digital Library Production Service and the Special
Collections Library are pleased to announce the availability
of Anarchism Pamphlets in the Labadie Collection online. The
search interface for the Anarchism Pamphlets is located at

http://www.hti.umich.edu/l/labadie

The Digital Library Production Service and the Special
Collections Library are pleased to announce the availability
of Anarchism Pamphlets in the Labadie Collection online. The
search interface for the Anarchism Pamphlets is located at
http://www.hti.umich.edu/l/labadie

The pamphlets digitized comprise a small part of a much
larger collection of pamphlets owned by the Labadie
Collection on the topic of anarchism. Since this is an
ongoing digitization project, the pamphlets were chosen in
call number order, rather than by level of intellectual or
historical significance. The pamphlets were first cataloged
in 1982 with funding from the NEH using a local database.
Later, the pamphlets were added to the University of
Michigan Library's online catalog MIRLYN, making them much
more widely accessible.

Currently, there are 226 pamphlets online. Pamphlets
determined to be in the public domain are available to the
general public. Other works are restricted to campus users only.

More information about the Labadie Collection can be found at
http://www.lib.umich.edu/spec-coll/labadie/

The Cuban Five

Noam Chomsky, ZNet

After a recent screening of "Mission Against Terror", a new film documentary about the Cuban Five, Noam Chomsky answered questions from the audience. For more information on the on-going case of the Cuban Five, visit www.freethefive.org.

Woman: Since we are in the business of torture, and the country has swung very far to the right, what are the realistic chances of getting a fair trial for the five?

Noam Chomsky: Well, first of all it is not really true that the country has swung far to the right. Though the press systematically refuses to report it, there are extensive public opinion studies taken in the United States. We know a great deal about public opinion, and I can give you some detail if you like. But what the studies shows, consistently, is that both political parties and the media are far to the right of the public on issue after issue, on a host of issues.

To give one example, the Federal Budget came out yesterday and today. Well there hasn't been time yet for a study of public attitude towards this budget, but it's about the same as the budget that came out a year ago, February 2005. Right after that the most prestigious institute that studies public opinion in the world, based in the University of Maryland, carried out a study of what people thought the budget ought to be, okay. And it was very striking. It was the exact inverse of the budget. Where federal spending was going up, the public wanted to go down: military spending, supplemental for Iraq and Afghanistan; where spending was going down, the public wanted to go up: social spending, health, education, veteran's benefits, renewable energy, support of the United Nations peacekeeping missions, on and on.

Furthermore, they were an overwhelming majority; and the scale of cutback and rises…. increases the public wanted, were enormous. Well, in a democratic society, one of the things you want to know is what your neighbor thinks. I mean if each person says "look, I am some kind of a lunatic, everything I read is something else," you are not going to get a functioning democracy. So we, therefore, want to know what happened to this information. I am willing to bet that almost none of you saw it. The reason is it was not published in a single newspaper in the United States, at least a single newspaper that's accessed by the stadard database. Well, okay, so people don't know about it. I suspect the same is true of this budget. And you'll probably have the same study and the same suppression.

So it just isn't true, I mean there is case after case like this, it's just not true that the population has swung to the right. The government has, the parties have, the media have, the public hasn't. And does that mean they can get a fair trial? Well, yeah, I tend to agree with Leonard Weinglass on that, it's possible. Not in Miami, of course. But can you get fair coverage of it? Well, that's really up to people like us. If there are delegations at the Boston Globe day after day saying why don't you publish some of this stuff, then chances are it'll get published. It's the same elsewhere. If there is public engagement and involvement, things change, otherwise, they don't. They'll keep drifting to the right, and the public will be somewhere else, with a huge gap between public opinion and public policy. It's startling, in fact, when you look at it.

"Why We Fight"

Eugene Jarecki

What are the forces that shape and propel American
militarism? This award-winning film provides an inside
look at the anatomy of the American war machine.

Streamed Online For Free

(You need RealPlayer to view)

Here.

Clicking this link should open RealPlayer

"The Critic Operator of the Web 2.0?"

Ignacio Nieto Interviews Jose Luis Brea, New Media Fix

Ignacio Nieto interviews Jose Luis Brea, who was formerly Dean
of the Fine Arts Academy of Cuenca and Director of Exhibitions for the Ministry of
Culture between 1985 ­ 1988. As a free lance art critic, he is a regular
contributor to Spanish and international art magazines including Frieze, Flash Art
and Parkett. He is Spanish correspondent for Arforum and regional editor for
"Rhizome." He has organized multiples exhibitions as independent curator and has
published several books including Auras Frias and El Tercer Umbral. Currently, he
is prefessor of Esthetics and Theory of Contemporany Art at Carlos III University
in Madrid, editor of the magazine Estudios Visuales and he is director of two new
online projects: salonKritik and ::agencia crítica::

­

Ignacio Nieto [IN]: With the popularization of blogs, a number of spaces have
developed which had no place within the logic of political economy; contained and
produced by media, creating a new front for ideas and critical thinking. For you,
what would be the advantages and disadvantages that blog technology has over
traditional media (newspapers, radio and television)?

Jose Luis Brea [JLB]: I believe that there are two fundamental advantages: an
extended possibility of access, and participation. The first is very important, of
course, because it proposes access to critical thinking that is made available to
a larger part of the population, something that was not possible in the past (this
is without exaggeration, of course, one must never forget that the supposition of
total access is an illusory fantasy‹an interest of Capitalist ideology).

Considering television and the culture of diffusion, Bourdieu called this the
"lowering of the level" (of access). Let's say that more people heard and
saw‹maybe even read‹for example philosophers; Derrida, and now Zizek, whom
they would never have had heard, seen or read before. This is much more evident
with new media (especially since the development of the web 2.0)

But for the same reason this amplification (possibility to access) would not have
an excessive importance; it would be purely quantitative, it would not contribute
without making "more of the masses" the culture of masses, and maybe to
incorporate in it cultural objects, of the critical tradition which before
belonged to areas in culture less popular, more "elitist" or more reserved for
specialized communities, let's say (for example "deconstruction," "Theory of acts
of speech," or "antagonist thinking").

Radia.FM Launch

The Radia Network is pleased to announce the launch of its new website!
Developed in cooperation with Radio.territories, the website evolved from
the best of Europe's artist run, free cultural, & community radios. The
site hosts information about radio praxis, projects and software.

The growing network of cultural radios consists of:
Radio Campus Bruxelles; Radio Cult, Sofia; Radio Grenouille, Marseille;
Kanal 103, Skopje; Kunstradio, Vienna; Radio Orange, Vienna;
Radioswap, Bruxelles; Reboot.fm, Berlin; Resonance104.4fm, London; Riist,
Lisbon; Tilos Radio, Budapest.

The Radia Network emerged from a series of meetings, clandestine events,
late night club discussions and a lot of email exchanges between cultural
radio producers across Europe. The topics vary and the reasons for forming
a network are many, but Radia has become a concrete manifestation of the
desire to use radio as an art form.

The approaches differ, as do the local
contexts; from commissioned radio art works to struggles for frequencies
to copyright concerns, all the radios share the goal of an audio space
where something different can happen. That different is also a form in the
making — radio sounds different in each city, on each frequency. Taking
radio as an art form, claiming that space for creative production in the
mediascape and cracking apart the notion of radio is what Radia does.

www.radia.fm

Radia.fm proudly highlights RADIO.TERRITORIES, a series of urban and
acoustic interventions taking place across Europe. Stay tuned for upcoming
calls for the artist residency programs and actions in your local European
City. From October 2005 to September 2006, various events will take place
in Berlin, Bratislava, Budapest, Cluj, Lisbon, Mooste, Prague, London,
Sofia and Vienna. A final conference is planned for September 2006, in
Vienna.

Territories

bootlab e.v.

tucholskystr 6

10117 berlin/germany

bootlab at bootlab dot org

www.bootlab.org