Punk Legend Joe Strummer Dies

Jon Dennis, London Guardian

Monday December 23, 2002

Joe Strummer, frontman with the Clash, has died at his home aged 50. Strummer, who was the band's guitarist, singer and songwriter alongside
Mick Jones, died yesterday.

Anonymous Comrade writes "Mike Alewitz is a mural artist. This piece is a brief for the use of mural art in building the labor movement. In it he recounts historical instances of the close relation between art and politics in the U.S.. Alewitz recently produced a "coffeetable" book of his work called "Insurgent Images" (Monthly Review Press 2002) which combines his mural images with photos of demonstrations, showing the clear context of organizing within which his work is made.

Art Can Help Create a New Labor Movement

The following article is based on a speech by Mike Alewitz, Artistic
Director of the Labor Art and Mural Project (LAMP.) It was delivered
to the Collective Bargaining Convention (CBC) of the American Association
of University Professors (AAUP.) The convention took place in
Washington DC, on December 6. 2002.

__________________________________________________

This meeting takes place at a critical juncture in history. The US
government stands poised to launch a horrible new war against the
people of Iraq. Actually "war" is something of a misnomer - that term
implies the capability of both sides to inflict damage. This is really going to be a massive bombing campaign and invasion of a virtually defenseless country.

The war is occurring in conjunction with serious new assaults on
working people here at home. It's going to create some big changes in
this country. It's going to change the labor movement, and force us
to confront who we are and where we come from.

We are going to have to relearn some lost traditions. One of those
traditions is using art and culture as a method of struggle. Art can
help create a new labor movement. As we discuss this tonight, I am
going to use slides of murals and banners from recent projects to
illustrate these ideas.

hydrarchist writes Welcome to Part 2

Moral Economy definition

Anonymous Comrade writes

"Don't Trust Anybody, Not Even Us!"

A Brief History of Czech Anarchism

The motto in the title, attributed to the anarchists of the 20th century,
is typical for the anarchist movement in Bohemia, not only in the
way that it warns against considering anarchism as a dogma.
Czech anarchists also propheticly warned against themselves. The
history of Czech anarchism is a history of a development of
libertarian radicals, who left their ideas and moved into high policy
posts, or became propagandists of the Bolshevik totalitarian
ideology. And even after the revival of the anarchist movement we
can see how the movement politicizes and forms stable
organizations, at the other hand also its cutting-off into activistic
ghettos. The history of the Czech anarchism isn't just black and
white -- and that way perhaps more interesting and instructive.

hydrarchist writes

"This is part III, go back to Part 1".

SHOPLIFTING - Very Generalisable…

Time and again research has shown that shoplifters and shoppers are one and the same. See the incredible 200% rise in offences known to the Police in America from 1973 (349,283) to 1989 (1,059,765) And remember that this is the tip of the iceberg - most shoplifting offences are not detected by the private security, and then again not all cases they detect are passed onto the police. Whilst nobody knows how many people security let go either side of the Atlantic there are similarities in the process, stereotypes and prejudices. Whilst it is acknowledged that because of the private nature of the ownership of stores the

"Police involvement in the detection and apprehension of
shoplifters, however, is minimal." [34]

We should not discount the amount of shoplifters who are let go annually. Some idea of the scale of this issue can be gained from Segrave

"Police in [the whole of] New York City arrested 3,177 shoplifters
in 1963; in 1962 they arrested 3,061… [security] personnel picked up 6,200 pilferers in its two Bronx stores in 1963, against 4,900 in 1962." [35]

hydrarchist writes

This is Part 1 of a three-part essay. Part 2 is to be found here, and the final Part 3 here."

"Crime Becomes Custom, Custom Becomes Crime"

Trevor Bark

Paper presented at the 'Making Social Movements:
The British Marxist Historians and Protest Movements' conference, June 26-28 2002 Edge Hill College of Higher Education.

Abstract

The British Marxist Historians (BMH) were involved in the study not only of protest and social movements, but of what was and was becoming crime. The enclosures, the change from wages in kind (perquisites) to the wage form itself (Linebaugh 1991), wood gathering, nutting and so on that were previously peoples custom were criminalized and fought politically by the disposessed. Thompsons 'moral economy' theses was based upon the study of bread riots, and this in turn became part of what is known as the social crime debate (Douglas Hay et al, 1975)

Bureau of Public Secrets writes "Gary Snyder's article "Buddhist Anarchism" -- one of the first expressions
of what later became known as "socially engaged Buddhism" -- is now online
at Snyder.

"Although Mahayana Buddhism has a grand vision of universal salvation, the
actual achievement of Buddhism has been the development of practical systems
of meditation toward the end of liberating a few dedicated individuals from
psychological hangups and cultural conditionings. Institutional Buddhism has
been conspicuously ready to accept or ignore the inequalities and tyrannies
of whatever political system it found itself under. This can be death to
Buddhism, because it is death to any meaningful function of compassion....

"The mercy of the West has been social revolution; the mercy of the East has
been individual insight into the basic self/void. We need both.""

Anonymous Comrade writes :

"Location One invites you to join us online or in the gallery (Soho, New York) for:

PART TWO (A Networked Event on World Conflict)

Wednesday, October 30, 2002 8 PM, Free to the public

PART TWO (a networked event on world conflict) continues to experiment
with
the new collaborative software used at Location One in such events as
the
electronic presentation of Mac Wellman's Bitter Bierce. The focus of
this
ongoing investigation is to seek, in an informal way, the discursive
possibilities of a relatively new practice — the live digital video
mix.

Catching a Falling Knife: The Art of Day Trading

Interview with Michael Goldberg By Geert Lovink

Over the next three weeks artist Michael Goldberg will be betting on
Newscorp shares. The installation, Catching a Falling Knife, opens
tomorrow at Artspace in Sydney (Oct 17, 18.00). As Artspace's critic in
residence, together with Michael, I will report on the ups and downs of
Murdoch's media enterprise and Michael's efforts to play the market . The
following interview gives the reader an idea about Michael Goldberg's
previous work, his intentions and expectations. You can follow the project
at falling knife

A nice piece of interactive visual critique on work may be found here:

More-Inc

More-Inc. is an artistic simulation of lifestyle in a capitalist
culture. The project is dedicated to employee number 12995 and to his
frustrations and angst. Wesley Thomas Meyer analyses, with irony, the human being's
role in a world dominated by corporations and the New Economy. The user
is invited to participate in the daily routine of a faceless employee
and to interact with the endless meetings, paper pushing, form filing,
homogeneity, subversion, and anxiety that are typical in the corporate
work world. Later, the user's interaction travels beyond the job to
employee 12995's domestic life and dreamy subconscious leading to an
experiential crescendo realized in breakdown, dissimulation, and
resurrection.