Poster by Jolly Armada and Erin Wilson.

I was happy to see this in my mailbox this morning. From the New Orleans bookfair collective (emphasis added):

Comrades,

We are writing to let you know that the First Annual New Orleans Anarchist Book Fair will take place on October 19-20, 2013. We are now accepting vendor applications for tabling. Please visit our website for more information on the book fair in general and registration in particular.

We are also on Facebook and Twitter.

Solidarity,

The New Orleans Anarchist Book Fair Organizing Committee

N.O.A.B.
1631 Elysian Fields #282
New Orleans, LA 70117
http://www.nolaanarchistbookfair.org/

From the website:

We'd like to invite you to an exciting experiment in books, tables and Gulf Coast Anarchism, The First Annual New Orleans Anarchist Book Fair! Our collective has been hard at work securing a wonderful list of tablers and events for our book-based autonomist free-for-all on October 19th and 2013, 2013. The Book Fair will take place at the cavernous Zeitgeist Multi-disciplenary Arts Center and include events, shows and readings all around the city. For more information feel free to browse around the site or contact us directly. We are also helping to coordinate rideshares and housing for those coming into the city from out of town.

— About New Orleans Anarchist Bookfair

Their Facebook page is at facebook.com/NewOrleansAnarchistBookfair. Their website is at nolaanarchistbookfair.org. Mark your calendars! A.L.L. Distro just sent in an application for a table; more on this, hopefully, soon.

ALLies,

Are you yourself, or do you know anybody who is, an individualist anarchist, agorist, mutualist, market anarchist, or otherwise on the libertarian left, who happens to live in or nearby the Indianapolis, Indiana metropolitan area?

Are you yourself, or is the ALLy that you know, interested in meeting like-minded people and getting (more) involved in local activism and organizing? If so, please drop me a line with your or their contact information. I have some requests — from three local ALLies — who are looking for other libertarian-left folks to discuss, meet up with, and possibly start organizing a local group of the Alliance of the Libertarian Left. I would love to be able to put interested ALLies in contact with each other.

Via Sheldon Richman on Facebook, comes this story about political Progressivism.

Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) emerged as one of the most notable progressive defenders of the National Security Agency’s sweeping surveillance programs on Monday when he expressed a “high level of confidence” that the federal government’s collection of phone and Internet data has been effective in thwarting terrorism.

I can assure you, this is not about spying on the American people, Franken told Minneapolis-based CBS affiliate WCCO. The junior Minnesota senator, who’s only been in the Senate since 2009, said he was was very well aware of the surveillance programs and was not surprised by a recent slate of bombshell reports by both The Guardian and The Washington Post.

I have a high level of confidence that this is used to protect us and I know that it has been successful in preventing terrorism, Franken said.

–Tom Kludt, Al Franken Defends NSA Surveillance: It’s Not Spying, They’re Protecting Us
in TPMLiveWire (Tuesday, June 11, 2013)

Of course he has. Because he is privileged to be part of the us that is being protected, not the us that is being spied on. The reactions of many political Progressives to this scandal — including many political Progressives who had presented themselves for years as civil libertarians — are outrageous; but they should not be even a little bit surprising. They are yet another illustration of why serious social change can never come about through electoral politics; because the only mechanism that electoral politics has for change is to make a different party into the governing party. But when a party becomes the governing party, the party that they belong to has always proved to be of far less practical significance than the fact that they are, or see themselves as, governing. Their first and last loyalty will never be to a professed set of principles or a party platform, but rather to the uninterrupted continuity of government, and the successful management of the core structures of state power. The first and last loyalty of the party in power in America will always be to power, both for their party and for the American government — not to the causes or the principles or the people that they claim to speak for.

Also.

• Rad Geek People’s Daily 2010-11-02: Don’t Vote
• Rad Geek People’s Daily 2008-10-31: View images tagged Complete Falsehoods …
• Rad Geek People’s Daily: Articles tagged Change You Can Believe In
• Randolph Bourne, The State, § II ¶ 9: The President is an elected king, but the fact that he is elected has proved to be of far less significance in the course of political evolution than the fact that he is pragmatically a king. . . .

Att’n: Nevada friends, ALLies and rabble-rousers! (Or, anyone who happens to be passing through the Vegas Valley on the evening of June 5 ….) Here’s some great news from Vegas ALLy and A-Café-er Kelly Patterson: Vegas (A)s have organized a visit and a talk from scott crow of Common Ground Collective, Ecology Action of Texas, etc. etc. etc., based on stories from his book Black Flags and Windmills. The presentation will be in Beam Hall on UNLV campus, on Wednesday, June 5.

• WHO: Everyone’s invited!
• WHEN: Wednesday, June 5, 2013, 6:00 – 8:00pm.
• WHERE: Frank and Estella Beam Hall, Room 105 @ UNLV. Las Vegas, Nevada.
• WHAT: Talk by Organizer/Author Scott Crow of the Common Ground Collective

Here’s the Facebook event page; or Las Vegas Anarchy Meetup event page if you prefer. Either way, the copy’s the same:

Scott Crow co-founder of the Common Ground Collective, an anarchist inspired grassroots relief in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, will be in Las Vegas to give a presentation. crow uses his book as a foundation for a visual, fast moving and engaging presentation of stories to show what ordinary people can do to change their own worlds and create power from below without governments. The presentation seeks through a collection of stories to show how the philosophy of anarchism has shaped and changed modern political movements. Anarchism's influence on organization and actions has allowed spaces for projects like the Common Ground Collective, the largest anarchist organization in modern US history to come into existence after Hurricane Katrina, the Occupy uprisings, and the environmental climate change movements across the US. The presentation which is equal parts personal story, radical history and organizing philosophies asks questions about how we engage in social change, the real and perceived challenges presented by the state and dares us to rethink our grassroots movements in how we engage for the future.

This talk will be of interest for anyone that has been involved in grassroots organizing and community related planning from a decentralized, member based perspective.

scott crow bio:

scott crow has spent his varied life as an underground musician, coop business owner, political organizer, trainer, strategist, consultant, ‘green collar’ worker, writer and speaker advocating the philosophy and practices of anarchism for social, cultural, environmental, and economic aims.

Over the last two decades scott has worked for a number of national organizations like Greenpeace, A.C.O.R.N. and Ruckus Society and co-founded a number of varied projects, businesses and organizations including Lesson Seven (political industrial band), Red Square (coop art gallery), Century Modern (antique cooperative), Treasure City Thrift (volunteer/worker cooperative) and the Common Ground Collective in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina (the largest anarchist inspired organization in modern US history). He is the author of the book Black Flags and Windmills (PM Press 2011), appeared in What Lies Beneath: Katrina, Race and the State of the Nation (South end Press) and co-produced the film Angola 3: Black Panthers and the Last Slave Plantation (PM Press). He has appeared in international media as both a writer and subject including the NY Times, Democracy Now, CNN and NPR as well as the documentaries Welcome to New Orleans, Better this World, and Informant.

NPR's This American Life called him a living legend among anarchists and the New York Times characterized him as anarchist and veteran organizer . . . that comes across as more amiable than combative . . .. Currently scott splits his time speaking and consulting nationally and organizing locally.

• Marketplace (May 9, 2013): Does fair trade clothing help the consumer and the retailer?: NPR’s Marketplace features a short story on Fair Trade certification for clothing, and efforts to address the working conditions in Bangladesh sweatshops. Along the way, there’s a couple quotes from my co-editor on Markets Not Capitalism, Gary Chartier, about the supply-chain practices that many clothing-industry TNCs use to displace responsibility and insulate themselves from accountability for lethal working conditions in their factories.

• Cathy Reisenwitz @ Sex And The State (May 15, 2013): Fighting Sexism, Sexily I've long contended that libertarians have a habit of downplaying or denying certain problems when they don't like the proposed solutions. For example, when people talk about sexism, or the wage gap, it's common for a libertarian to retort that the wage gap isn't real, or can be explained by individual choices. I understand this desire to avoid the coercive solutions many people suggest for fighting sexism . . . The thing is, Rothbard was super bothered by a state monopoly on force. We libertarians need to get really bothered by sexism. And then we need to come up with cultural, and not state, solutions. . . . (With an example of creative thinking and guerrilla theater, featuring a cheesecake pin-up poster of Bro-sie the Riveter.)

• Marja Erwin (May 2, 2013): Trans Politics and Colonialism: A Few Questions?. Read the whole thing.

• Marja Erwin (April 23, 2013): I still think market anarchism has a lot to contribute to the rest of anarchism. This too. I think it's important to have a system where people can communicate what they need, and what they want, and what they don't need, and what they can do to help, and I think it's important to have systems where people can work things among themselves, if for some reason they can't work things out through the community or union or federation orgs. . . . (Against all monopolizations of social capital.)

• Mark Stoval @ On the Mark (May 7, 2013) claims that he is going to take A look at Mutualism. In comments, Roderick Long points out that he ought to have looked harder. Or, really, tried looking at any mutualist writing at all, rather than just doing what he seems to have done, which was to scan ahead until he reached a fixed phrase (labor theory of value, occupancy and use) that convinced him that he already knows everything that he needs to know about the rest of the book. Nearly everything that Mark claims about Mutualists is a ridiculous travesty of Kevin Carson’s views; and evidence that he knows nothing about Mutualists other than Kevin Carson. But Roderick’s intervention in the comments section is right-on.

• Forbes (May 15, 2013): Suit Alleges IRS Improperly Seized 60 Million Personal Medical Records. You know what the worst part of this story is? The part about having an Internal Revenue Service, to surveill daily expenses and seize personal data, all in order to investigate and police tax payments. Seriously, there is no possible way to square that with basic civil liberties, and it ought to be abolished.

• BBC (May 6, 2013): Lauryn Hill jailed for tax evasion. Partly this is a story about the government’s tax-policing. Partly it’s a story about the financial traps that are imposed by the structure of state capitalism, and the ways in which tax structures systemically confine people — both very wealthy people, like Hill, and very poor people as well — to high-liquidity, cash-producing business and employment. The Grammy-winning singer, 37, also faces three months of home confinement, after pleading guilty last year. Hill failed to pay taxes on about $1.8m (£1.2m) of earnings between 2005-07. In a statement to the judge, Hill said she had intended to pay the taxes but could not after withdrawing from public life and ending her music career to raise her children. . . . I am a child of former slaves who had a system imposed on them, Hill said in court. I had an economic system imposed on me. Free Lauryn Hill and all political prisoners.

• Dominic Gover, International Business Times (May 7, 2013): Lauryn Hill Blames Slavery as She’s Jailed for $500,000 Unpaid Tax Bill. Oh by the way, did I mention that the judge is also forcing Lauryn Hill to undergo counselling because of her conspiracy theories [sic] as a condition of her plea? Where conspiracy theories means political dissent from the status quo.

• Jim Epstein @ reason.com (May 7, 2013): Government Assault on the Chinatown Bus Industry Fueled By Bogus Federal Study. In which the government takes care of Greyhound’s competitors for them, using an error-ridden bogus safety study, which uses Greyhound’s own crashes to prove that their curbside competitors are less safe. The study is like a matryoshka doll of clumsy errors and statistical malpractice; every time you spot them one error and set it aside for the sake of argument, you find another error, just as atrocious as the last one, nested inside of it.

• Home School Legal Defense Association (May 14, 2013): German Family Denied Asylum, HSLDA Appeals. The judge’s decision to deny asylum is appalling. From the press release: The court said that the Romeikes had not made a sufficient case, and that the United States has not opened its doors to every victim of unfair treatment. Well no, no they haven’t. But they say that like it ought to be a problem for the victims of unfair treatment. Actually, it is a problem with the United States, which needs to stop acting as a gatekeeper and get out of the way. It is appalling that any peaceful immigrant should be turned away, for any reason. Solidarity with all people without papers, and all immigrants without status.

• Free Adam Kokesh (May 20, 2013): Adam Kokesh Accused of Felony Assault on Federal Officer — No Bail Yet: It looks pretty clearly like he is being held on a vacuous detained-by-will-of-the-cop charge — in this case, resisting arrest and assault on a federal officer — for getting himself shoved by a Federal Officer and then grabbing the arm of the dude who was physically attacking him. His hearing is set for Thursday; in the meantime he is in contact with his attorney but has been denied the opportunity to make phone calls (content warning: Alex Jones links, feh).

• DinoGoss (May 11, 2013): The Validity of Lambeosaurus — Anybody Know A Good Lawyer? I Am Not A Taxonomist, but I’m inclined to think that if your system would throw out Lambeosaurus at this point in favor of Didanodon altidens that’s probably a problem with your naming system not a problem with current use of Lambeosaurus.

• Lucy Cooke @ Vimeo (February 8, 2013): BUCKET OF SLOTHS. Exactly what it says on the tin.