Radicals at Work: Young Labor Activists Building Power from Below

A forum hosted by the Rank and File Youth Project and the Starbucks Workers Union.

Young activists are taking jobs in targeted workplaces (transit,
telecommunications, public schools, and retail) to organize.
These inside organizers are building a stronger labor movement from the bottom up; fighting for stronger, more democratic unions;
challenging racism, sexism, and homophobia on the job; and beating back the corporate assault on working people.
Come hear their stories and find out how you can become an inside organizer.

When? Saturday, February 18th, 7:00 PM

Where? Bluestockings, 172 Allen St. (at Stanton St.; F train to 2nd Avenue)

What is the RANK AND file Youth Project? We are a network of young activists and workers organizing to promote a grassroots perspective on radical labor activism. We help young activists find union jobs, connect them with experienced rank-and-file union activists, and serve as a support network for these inside organizers. For more
information, email ranknfileyouth.project@gmail.com.

What is the Starbucks Workers Union? We are Starbucks workers
organizing for better wages and raises, guaranteed hours, an end to understaffing, and a healthier and safer workplace. Visit
www.starbucksunion.org for more information about the campaign.

Architecture and Philosophy of the Web:
IRW2006 - Identity, Reference, and the Web (IRW2006)

http://www.ibiblio.org/hhalpin/irw2006/

Co-located Workshop at WWW2006,
Edinburgh Scotland, May 22nd

Second Call for Papers:

=======================

Goal and Theme:

Our goal for this workshop is to explore the nature of identification, meaning, and reference on the Web, building on current work in Web architecture, the Semantic Web and informal community-based tagging (folksonomy), as well as current practice in XML and theory in
philosophy and linguistics. This workshop should bring together
researchers and practitioners from a variety of backgrounds in order to discuss and clarify these issues.

The greater goal of the workshop is to examine the architecture and philosophical basis of the Web by carefully inspecting how fundamental aspects of the Web can be clearly recognized and possibly improved.

URIs are the primary mechanism for reference and identity on the Web. To be useful, a URI must provide access to information which is sufficient to enable someone or something to uniquely identify a particular thing and the thing identified might vary between contexts. There is no doubt that as a mechanism for identifying web pages the URI has been wildly successful. Currently, URIs can also be used to identify namespaces, ontologies, and almost anything. However, important questions about the interpretation, use, and meaning of URIs have been left unanswered, questions that have important ramifications for everything from search engines to philosophy. As soon as matters get complicated, there is little or no consensus on issues of identification and reference on the Web. Put simply, given a URI, how should the nature of its intended referent be known in an interoperable and preferably automatic manner?

This is not an easy question to answer: for example, the Semantic Web and folksonomies present two distinctly differing viewpoints. On the Semantic Web a URI nominally identifies a single resource, while
folksonomies rely on a more informal group consensus. Notions of
identity will have even larger ramifications when privacy and trust become central issues for the Web. The management of this issue impacts practical issues of data integration on the Web and versioning and evolution for languages that use URIs, such as XML.

Another Autonomous (ESF) Playground

An Invitation for the Creation of an Autonomous Space During the 4th European
Social Forum (Spring, 2006, Athens)

This spring, the 4th European Social Forum
will take place in Athens. Thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of people from
all around Europe, from an entire galaxy of social and political movements,
organizations and collectives, will meet in our city to get to know each other,
to exchange views and practices, to strengthen and extend the networks of
resistance and creation, or even build new ones.

NOT BORED! writes:

"Jean Maitron, 'Anarchist' Historian"

Unattributed (perhaps Guy Debord)

(For decades, the only translation of the Situationist International's text about Jean Maitron — an "anarchist" historian who'd falsified one of the SI's texts, got called on it and, when he didn't do anything, was roughed-up by two young situs — was Ken Knabb's masperized version, which failed to translate well over half of this relatively short text. We are happy to announce that NOT BORED! has translated the text, from scratch and in its entirety, as it once did with Knabb's masperization of Guy Debord's "The SI Today.")

"Maitron the Historian"

The Sorbonne for itself (Workers Editions, October 1968), assembling documents on May-June 1968, is a book that claims historical objectivity. Published as a special issue of the univerity journal The Social Movement, it was put together under the responsibility of Jean Maitron, the journal's director, who has a certain reputation as a historian of the workers' movement, and even as a "libertarian." For the rest, it's best to note that the collaborators on this book included J.C. and Michelle Perrot, as well as Madeleine Reberioux, who is notoriously a member of the French Stalinist party.

This book speaks of the situationists, with many erroneous details, and reproduces some of our documents from May. However, after having notably declared on page 6 that, "We have refused all deletions (death to the ellipsis[1] that reject I-don't-know-what to hell!)," the authors have nevertheless published our "Report on the Occupation of the Sorbonne"[2] in the Masperized version,[3] which makes one strongly miss the use of the ellipsis, which at least reveals that one has hidden something.

ANOTHER / AUTONOMOUS (ESF) PLAYGROUND

Invitation for the creation of an autonomous space during the 4th European Social Forum (Spring, 2006, Athens)
This spring, the 4th European Social Forum will take place in Athens. Thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of people from all around Europe, from an entire galaxy of social and political movements, organizations and collectives, will meet in our city to get to know each other, to exchange views and practices, to strengthen and extend the networks of resistance and creation, or even build new ones.

These meetings were born by the explosion of the so-called “anti-globalization movement”: that is the source of their massive, rich and diverse character. Our collective has been a “child” of this movement and we participated with great interest in the three previous meetings: in Florence, Paris and in London, but also during other European activists gatherings (like the People's Global Action in Belgrade - summer of 2004). We discovered that – despite the distance – there are many things that unite us with collectives and people from other countries. We got ideas and inspiration, new viewpoints and practices, and we also tried to spread our own experience. We made fruitful contacts, that may become more fruitful in the future. We went down to the streets, we acted, played and enjoyed ourselves like a multitude without borders.

We think that the next meeting in Athens can be a very good opportunity to broaden and enrich these relations. Since the event will take place in our city, we have to (and we'll be glad to) take on practical responsibilities around it, in return to the hospitality and hard work of previous meetings. And we want to do this with other collectives and people from all over Greece who want to participate in a productive and cheerful gathering, osmosis, networking procedure... in a big activist playground!

Montreal Anarchist Theatre Festival Call for Submissions

Montreal's newly created 'Anarchist Theatre Festival' is now seeking submissions of
anarchist theatre pieces to be staged May 8 & 9, 2006. This will be North America's
first ever festival of anarchist theatre.The festival is part of Montreal's annual 'Festival of Anarchy' that leads up to the city's
7th annual 'Anarchist Bookfair,' May 20 & 21st, the largest anarchist event in North America.
We are looking for theatre pieces about anarchists, anarchist ideas, history, or any subject
related to anarchism. We will consider plays or monologues that are original new work, or
that have already been performed, or that have been written by anarchists (historical or
contemporary). The pieces can be either full productions or staged readings in either French or
English.

We are looking for work that is anti-State, anti-capitalist, non-sexist,
non-homophobic, anti-Empire, anti-authoritarian, etc. We want anarchist content written by either
anarchist playwrights or writers who are sympathetic to anarchism. ( Please see the 'Principles'
section of the web site of the < ahref="http://anarchistbookfair.taktic.org">Montreal Anarchist Bookfair for a more detailed description of
appropriate guidelines for 'anarchist' content.

Anonymous Comrade writes:

“Warrior Wind” Newsletter's First Issue Available

The first issue of “The Warrior Wind,” a newsletter against our society of confinement, is out now. It is available as a .pdf file, to print out and distribute locally, from either of the following two locations: here, or here.

The February newsletter contents include: “On the Recent Wave of Repression,” a look at the Northwest “eco-crime” cases; dispatches from eco-defense prisoner Jeff “Free” Luers; other repression and resistance news (grand juries, Auburn arrests, SHAC 7 trial, Chuk’shon Earth First! activists face sentencing, and “Belgium: Solidarity Against All Borders!”); information about the newsletter project itself; and finally a reprint of Ralph Chaplin’s poem “The Warrior Wind.”

We encourage you to make this project your own, not only through making copies and circulating the information within, but also by offering us your feedback and writing for future issues.

As repression increases, we believe that it has become more, not less, important for radicals to raise their voices. “The Warrior Wind” newsletter is one small gesture towards the sort of fight-back we desire.

Our first issue is dedicated to the memory of Bill Rodgers.

For a better world,
TWW Editors

The Commons Conference

An Academic-Community Event on Privatization and the Public Domain

April 28--30, 2006

University of Victoria, BC

A committee of students, researchers, and community members are organizing an interdisciplinary conference on contemporary definitions of "the commons" to be held at UVic the weekend of April 28-30th, 2006.

The concept of the commons derives from the system of collective ownership of pastureland in England, which thrived until a series of enclosure acts divided them in the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Enclosure acts transformed society -displacing labourers, forcing peasants into the market society, providing a new economic base for trade, and ecologically disrupting a diverse arrangement of cultivation, grazing, and wild lands.

The idea of the commons was revived in the 1960s and 70s by the burgeoning environmental movement. It usefully provided a way to express awareness that nature does not respect property lines. New forms of political and economic organization were needed to address the perils of environmental destruction and social alienation. In recent years, advocates of a digital or electronic commons have taken up the term "commons," as well. For example, databases offering open access to medical or scholarly research at public institutions belong "in common" ownership to citizens. However, intellectual property erects new fences around these collective agreements.

In the paths and circuits between these commons - in physical and digital space - lie important, under-theorized ideas about the meaning of the public, collectivity, and communal life that could provide powerful antidotes to the steady encroachments of the private sector into the public domain. This conference seeks to explore these spaces.

Our keynote speaker will be Dr. George Caffentzis, Chair of Philosophy at the University of Southern Maine and outspoken activist on issues of imperialism and war. Caffentzis' critical work exposes the co-optation of "commons" language and activism by those angling to replace neo-liberalism with yet another hegemonic ideology. Caffentzis submits that the critical position to taking up the commons would be that which calls into question the global circulations of capital and power. Caffentzis will be speaking on the evening of Friday, April 28th in an open event that is free to the public.

Marc garrett & Ruth Catlow writes:

"States of Interdependence"

NODE.London

A collaborative text written by Marc Garrett and Ruth Catlow, for Media Mutandis: A Node.London Reader (to be published in February 2006)

There is a Sufi fable in which a group of foreigners sit at breakfast, excitedly discussing their previous night’s exploration. One starts saying “…and what about that great beast we came across in the darkest part of the Jungle? It was like a massive, rough wall.” The others look perplexed. “No it wasn’t!” says one, “It was some kind of python”. “Yeah…” another half-agrees, “…but it also had powerful wings”. The shortest of the group looks bemused — “well it felt like a tree trunk to me.”

This fable aptly illustrates many aspects of the NODE.London experience. The name, which stands for Networked Open Distributed Events in London, indicates the open, lateral structure adopted to develop a season of media arts. It is intentionally extensible, suggesting possible future NODE(s), Rio, Moscow, Mumbai etc. As participants/instigators in the project’s ongoing conceptualization and praxis, we are just two individuals positioned on the interlaced, scale-free networks of NODE.L (more on these later). As such, our descriptions of this collectively authored project are inevitably incomplete and contestable, with a complete picture emerging only in negotiation with others.

JTC writes:

"The Overman:
Nietzschean Art, Science, Politics, and Medicine"
Dr Scott Von
New York City, Jan. 28, 2006

In the wake of the death of God and the end of history, Nietzsche proclaimed the emergence of the Overman. In this scenario, man does not return to his animal state, nor is he destroyed. Rather he is taken up along with nature into pure spirit — or the will to power. During the past century since Nietzsche's death, movements within art, science, politics, and medicine have been propelling us into this future, even as we suffer the shedding of an old skin. It is time for us to take account of our situation and embrace this inevitable becoming.

Scott Von is Director of The New Clinic in New York City where he has pioneered the development of Integral Medicine, and of Analytica — a research and training institute devoted to clinical and cultural analytic practice. He received his PhD in Psychoanalysis from the University of London and his Oriental Medical Degree from Tri-State College of Acupuncture. He has taught as a professor at NYU, CUNY, and Pacific College, is a member of Apres-Coup Psychoanalytic Association, and lectures at various training institutes. He is author of the four volume philosophical-poetic work Autopoesis and the forthcoming books Wild Analysis: Chaos and Complexity in Therapeutic Practice and Soma: The Politics of Medicine and the Ecstasy of the Body Arts.

Saturday, January 28h at 7 PM
Mercy Manhattan College
66 West 35th St. Rm. 704 (Broadway/5th)
ADMISSION: $5
http://nietzschecircle.com

For further info, please write us at info@nietzschecircle.com