[Alan Moore notes: "This is Nato Thompson’s joint. I must recommend it and him as a stand-up do-right political cutrator working in the institutional mainstream. He has roots. His gang was responsible for the exciting 2003 Chicago weekend guerrilla action called "Department of Space and Land Reclamation (DSLR)" (see http://www.counterproductiveindustries.com/ for details). So this is probably going to be pretty good… Here is the event website: http://www.creativetime.org/programs/archive/2008/democracy/convergence.php ] Artists Soldier for Democracy at the Park Avenue Armory 9/21-27 Daniel Kunitz (Village Voice, September 03, 2008) About a year ago, Nato Thompson, a curator and producer at the public-art organization Creative Time, woke up wondering why "life was such a bummer." "I thought I might actually be politically depressed," he says. "Political depression set in among a lot of people after the second election of George W. Bush—not just artists, but all sorts of people nationwide." With the war in Iraq, revelations about torture and illegal wiretapping, and the failures after Hurricane Katrina, there was "real confusion about democracy. There was this feeling that you can't stop anything." Thompson's cure for this depression was to organize "Democracy in America: The National Campaign," an artistic and political initiative, which during the week of September 21 to 27 will culminate in the Convergence Center at the Park Avenue Armory, a sort of political Lollapalooza. "It's not an art exhibition in the traditional sense," he says—though some 45 artists will be included. "It's more of a rally, more of a place to discuss, to hear speeches, to get excited."

Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures 1960s to Now September 20 – November 22, 2008 Opening: September 20, 2008, 7-10pm Exit Art, 475 Tenth Ave., New York City Signs of Change is a major exhibition opening at Exit Art on September 20, 2008, chronicling 50 years of the cultural productions of social movements. Dara Greenwald and Josh MacPhee have curated over 600 posters, prints, photographs, moving images, audio clips, and other ephemera from over 30 countries. Signs of Change provides a dialogue with the past and an engagement with the present about the important cultural work of social movements. From the American Indian Movement to Women's Liberation, the South African Anti-Apartheid struggle to Portugal's Revolution of the Carnations, German Autonomen and squatters to South Korea's Kwang Ju uprising, this exhibition carries us through the whirlwind of people taking action to change the world.

RENEWING THE ANARCHIST TRADITION A Scholarly Conference November 7-9, 2008 in Montpelier, Vermont The ninth edition of the Renewing the Anarchist Tradition (RAT) conference, sponsored by the Institute for Anarchist Studies (IAS), once again aims to provide a participatory and scholarly space in which to reexamine, reinvigorate, and make relevant the social and political tradition of anarchism. Each year, RAT brings together anarchists, anti-authoritarians, and libertarian leftists who want to critically engage both the tradition itself and the world in which we live. Participants and presenters at the conference thereby contribute to developing a more rigorous contemporary theoretical framework for anarchism as well as a stronger basis from which nonhierarchical movements can organize and resist. 2008 is a strange time to be an anarchist in North America. Thomas Friedman is calling for a green revolution, and Bono is at the forefront of a global war on poverty. The bright light of the U.S. presidential election campaign, anointed by Silicon Valley capital, has harnessed massive popular desire for radical social transformation--"Change"--to propel himself toward the White House. The reception he receives abroad articulates a thirst for a genuine internationalism, even as he signals his readiness to command more of the same military interventionism that has devastated people and social movements around the world. As anarchists and anti-authoritarians, it is easy to feel marginal, dissipated, defeated, and irrelevant as we watch some of our dearest ideas co-opted, sucked of content, turned inside out, and projected into the mainstream political scene. What better moment, then, to come together to reflect on and honestly appraise the practices, platforms, convictions, dogmas, truisms, and theories that anarchism offers? What better moment to reimbue that tradition with a crucial sense of urgency and the substance that can genuinely challenge racism, imperialism, sexism, colonial pillage, capitalist exploitation, and the multifold and mutually reinforcing forms of oppression and systems of domination?

BENEFIT CD RE-RELEASE: MARIE MASON’S ‘NOT FOR PROFIT’ This music CD is a 2008 benefit re-release of Marie Mason's ‘Not For Profit’, which was originally released in 1999. A classic anarchist neo-folk record, these eight songs feature Marie (accompanied by guitarist and Earth First! activist Darryl Cherney) singing against the destruction of the earth and the oppression of humanity. Mason is a recent Green Scare arrestee who is facing Life in prison for two acts of property destruction in which no one was hurt.. She is a long-time IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) and Earth First! activist, as well as a writer for ‘Fifth’ Estate magazine. All proceeds from this re-release go to the Marie Mason General Support Fund. For more information visit: http://freemarie.org.

:: Call for Papers, Presentations, and Interventions :: The State of Things: Towards a Political Economy of Artifice and Artefacts April 29th to May 1st, 2009 Centre for Philosophy and Political Economy, University of Leicester Keynote speakers: Tiziana Terranova, University of Naples L’orientale Natalie Jeremijenko, New York University Nick Dyer-Witheford, University of Western Ontario In a more wistful moment, Marx asked what commodities would say if they could speak. Surely, if he listened long enough, they would have announced the various traumas of their exploitatative and violent birthing to him. Eventually, one imagines, they would have described the nature of the various forms of labour necessary for their production as the apparitionally elementary components of the capitalist mode of production. So would the commodity’s autobiography be the same now, one wonders. Today we live in a much different state of things: the artifice of artefacts is evident all around us. A parliament of communication technologies, from RFIDS to bluetooth devices, constantly exchange information and network all around and through us. Wireless networks of communication, control, and cooperation proliferate in mysterious ways, all speaking an infra-language of organization, inscribing new techniques of governance. But these networks have become all the more indiscernible by the open secret of their appearance.

FIFTH ESTATE #378 (Summer 2008) now out! CONTENTS of ">FIFTH ESTATE #378: * “Green Scare Continues” – H. Read * “My Green Scare Arrest” – Marie Mason * “RNC: Shut It Down!” – RNC Welcoming Committee * “An Anarchist in Cuba: Socialism or Cell Phones” – Walker Lane * “Shamanism, Anarchy, and the End of the World” – Dave Hanson * “Tarot Cards and the Left” – Joshua Sperber * “The End of Money” – Daniel Pinchbeck * “An Arm of Jacks to Fight the Power” – Peter Lamborn Wilson * “Counterfeiting Sovereignty” – Don LaCoss * “Isn’t All Money Fake?” – E. B. Maple * “Wealth and Poverty: In the Shadow of an Exclusive Club” – Val Salvo (reprint from FE summer 1991) * “Down and Out in Athens” (Excerpt from ‘Nike’) – Cara Hoffman * “We Are All Slaves of Capital” (excerpt from ‘The Wandering of Humanity’) – Jacques Camatte * “Strike!” (poem) – Eugene V. Debs * “The African Road to Anarchism?” – Jim Feast * “Shoplifting and the Politics of Instant Gratification” – Cookie Orlando * “Victorian Proto-Punk, Riot Grrls: The Literary Legacy of Helen and Olivia Rossetti” – Cara Hoffman * ”The ‘60s, 40 Years Later: No Chicago in Denver” – Bernard Marszalek * “Organizing for Anarchism in Oreland” – interview with Andrew Flood and much much more...

*Private Equity Sucks!* *Take action against KKR - Thursday July 17* *1pm, Trafalgar Square, under the lions* http://www.privateequitysucks.com *Join the Global Day of Action against one of the oldest and largest private equity firms in the world: KKR (Kohlberg, Kravitz and Roberts)* Private equity companies have gained massive influence, power and obscene wealth because they’ve stayed invisible to public attention and scrutiny. It is time for that to change! On Thursday 17 July 2008, thousands of trade unions, community organisations, environmentalists, workers and activists will be taking part in a global day of action against KKR - actions are planned in 100 cities in 25 countries. These actions will send a loud and clear message to private equity firms like KKR that we are sick and tired of a few people getting even richer and ruining our lives and the planet in the process. In London on July 17, the Private Equity Creative Action Network (PECAN) will be bringing a creative and strong message to the executives of KKR, including the delivery a giant invoice that makes it clear that KKR has a long overdue debt to our community and world. To help make this action a success and to kick off a summer of actions against private equity, we are inviting people to participate and to get involved on the day (in particular we are looking for: video artists, anti-capitalist cheerleaders, independent media makers, musicians, DJ's, clowns and of course - activists).

[ JUST RELEASED >>> INTERVENTIONS Number One ]]] http://uppingtheanti.org/node/3070 ROUNDTABLE ON G8 RESISTANCE Perspectives for the Next Phase of Global Anti-Capitalist Uprisings Moderated by Kriss Sol (Amsterdam); with Hanne Jobst (Germany), Sabu & Go (Japan), Miranda (Italy), and Jaggi Singh (Montreal) The G8 is more than a place where neoliberal trade agreements are authored. It is also a space where the legitimacy of global governance is reproduced. In 2005, 300,000 people took to the streets in Edinburgh to ask the G8 for a solution to poverty. By 2007, antagonism and dissent prevailed once again. We are entering a period that could mark the resurgence of positive dynamics from the earlier phase of global uprisings. But have we learned from the past? Can we build our interventions on new and more stable ground?

SEIZED Critical Art Ensemble Institute for Applied Autonomy June 7 to July 19, 2008 Opening Reception: Saturday, June 7, 8–11pm Admission is FREE Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center 341 Delaware Avenue, Buffalo, NY 14202 Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center is pleased to announce the exhibition SEIZED by Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) and the Institute for Applied Autonomy (IAA). The exhibition premieres Saturday, June 7, 2008 from 8–11pm and the opening reception is free and open to the public. The exhibition will remain on view through July 18, 2008. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday, 11am to 6pm and Saturday, 1–4pm. Following the four year long ordeal of CAE founding member and University at Buffalo Art Professor Steve Kurtz—accused by the Justice Department of “bio-terrorism” and later indicted on charges of mail fraud for procuring harmless bacterial cultures for use in an educational art project—SEIZED presents the artworks behind this case which has attracted worldwide attention and propelled an international arts community to rally to Kurtz’s support and on behalf of freedom of expression.

Will you join us in the middle of a whirlwind? In the Middle of a Whirlwind: 2008 Convention Protests, Movement and Movements A one-off online journal of theory, art, activism and organizing out now! Coordinated by: Team Colors Collective Published by: The Journal of Aesthetics & Protest Press In the Middle of a Whirlwind (Whirlwinds) inquires into current organizing efforts in the United States, and through that process, assembles a strategic analysis of current political composition as a tool for building political power. Whirlwinds’ strategic context is this summer’s RNC and DNC protests; through these documents and the discussions that erupt from them we hope to directly impact the anti-Convention organizing. In a larger sense, and in the long-term, Whirlwinds is intended to provide a set of useful documents for contemporary radical organizing. Each essay and interview addresses the issues of movement, working class power and composition, and/or gives strategic insight into organizing, and the strengths and weaknesses of current movement/s in the U.S.