Happy Anna Howard Shaw Day! (And happy birthday to my sister, Ms. L.E.J.!)

What better day than February 14th for Shamelessness? This week has been a week for catching up on old commitments and making new connections. You probably know by now about my letter to the Secretary of State of South Carolina; you may not know that I was briefly interviewed about the letter by Ernie Hancock on Declare Your Independence. Anyway, to turn back to local affairs, a crew of us from Food Not Bombs Las Vegas rolled out on Tuesday to help feed 200 FWs on the picket line at NV Energy corporate headquarters. I made it out for a somewhat productive FNB business meeting Saturday, and I’m heading out to Baker Park this morning for our weekly free picnic. On Thursday at Anarchist Cafe and then yesterday, we made our first steps towards organizing a local CopWatch network in Las Vegas. We’re beginning weekly meetings this Saturday; if you’re curious, contact me or follow us on Twitter for updates as they come out. Meanwhile, I’m still in the midst of preparations for the trip out to the Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair.

Et tu? What have you been up to this week? Write anything? Leave a link and a short description for your post in the comments. Or fire away about anything else you might want to talk about.

Here’s the opening of a story published earlier today by Dan Ball at KVBC News 3 Las Vegas, entitled Few new City Hall obstacles remain

It looks like the city of Las Vegas may soon get a new City Hall.

No, we won’t.

Last I checked, the city government in Las Vegas will soon get a new City Hall.

The rest of us in the city of Las Vegas aren’t getting anything, except the $185,000,000 bill for Oscar Goodman’s new office.

For six years, chef John Simons has operated Firefly restaurant on Paradise and Flamingo. Four months ago he opened a second location inside the Plaza hotel downtown. Simmons says he supports a new City Hall.

I’m hoping that we can develop kind of a really cool, vital downtown scene, ya know?

Because nothing says really cool and vital in a downtown scene like municipal government office buildings.

Betsy Fretwell is the city manager for the city of Las Vegas.

If we can move the City Hall from its current location we will be able to create about $4 billion in private investment in the downtown area and create over 13,000 jobs over the period of time and over four projects.

Well, hell, why don’t we just move the City Hall every year? Why not build a new one every month? Just imagine how much private investment and how many jobs all that new construction could create.

The project is estimated at about $185 million. Fretwell says the city can afford to pay for it.

You do have to evaluate what you can afford. We’ve done that, we’ve done a full feasibility report for the City Council. …

Actually, what’s happening here is that she does the evaluating. We do the affording. Whether we want to or not.

Betsy Fretwell doesn’t have to afford a damned thing; she evaluates, and we’re forced to pay up whether we reckon we can afford it or not.

Hence, this massive screwjob against Las Vegas workers, in order to fund a ridiculous and obviously self-serving local government boondoggle.

See also:

• GT 2009-04-13: The grammar of war
• GT 2007-05-13: Cry havoc! and let slip the pronouns of war...
• GT 2006-12-21: In ten words or fewer (personal pronouns edition): George W. Bush on the next year of the Iraq War

Hey y’all: it’s Sunday. Time to get down, get down, get Shameless.

I’m in the process of recovering from the weekend of coordinating cooking, preparing a presentation on Anarchism, holding down three organization tables, and otherwise having a blast at Living Without Borders 09. I have a big day of just about as close to nothing as possible planned for tomorrow — time for some reading in bed.

And you? What have you been up to this week? Write anything? Leave a link and a short description for your post in the comments. Or fire away about anything else you might want to talk about.

• By: Charles Johnson (Southern Nevada ALL, UCIR)
• Type: Presentation / Group discussion
• Language: English
• Schedule: Sunday, Nov. 8 12:30-1:30pm (Block 4). Room 209.

This workshop will be focused on an introductory discussion of the ideas and activism of anarchism (meaning the abolition of all forms of government and opposition to all systems of domination, replacing government with peaceful social cooperation and domination with free social relationships based on mutuality and equality).

Shared Article from radgeek.com

No Borders, No State (Slideshow)

Format: ODP (OpenDoc/LibreOffice) Content warning. The presentation discusses how anarchist politics and migrant status were often explicitly linked in nationalist rhetoric & anti-immigrant legislation of the 1900s-1920s. To document the stigmatization, this presentation does include images of a couple of highly racist political cartoons that appeared in U.S. magazines in the early 20th century.

radgeek.com

I will briefly introduce the basic ideals of Anarchism, discuss the meaning of Anarchy, and clarify some common misunderstandings about Anarchy and Anarchists — why Anarchy means peace, not violence, and cooperation, not conflict. I will then discuss why Anarchists are opposed to all national boundaries, why Anarchists favor the abolition of all systems of coercive immigration control, and how we hope that autonomous communities, voluntary cooperation, and grassroots, people-powered social change can replace the violence of political borders. The talk will cover both theory and practice, including a presentation on historical and contemporary examples of anarchist work against government borders — including No Borders camps in the U.S. and Europe, and international solidarity actions such as cross-border support for the Magonista uprising in Baja California during the Mexican Revolution.

Finally, we will also discuss the interconnection of struggles, and how anarchism supports the struggle against the state and its borders as part of a multidimensional struggle for social transformation, against all forms of oppression and domination.

The purpose of the workshop is to give an overview of the ideas of anarchism and some of the ways they have been put into practice in multidimensional cross-border struggles for freedom and social justice. Although I advocate Anarchism and will present my reasons for believing in it, my main purpose is to open up a conversation, about Anarchism and also particularly about the interconnection of struggles, the role that opposition to state violence, and the effort to build grassroots alternatives, play in all of our movements (whatever we might call them), and about whether or not a world without government borders must also be a world without governments. As such, I will plan to leave as much time as possible at the end of my formal presentation for discussion amongst all the participants.

Happy Day of the Dead, y’all.

As you may know, I’ve out and about doing Food Not Bombs work; I’ve also been working to help put together this year’s Living Without Borders, which is coming up just this weekend. If you’ve been considering coming, you may be interested to know that a list of confirmed workshops is now available online, including my own workshop — No Borders, No State: Anarchism, Immigration Freedom, and the Interconnection of Struggles — as well as Susie Demisse’s workshop on prison abolition, Joanna N?@c3;ba;?@c3;b1;ez’s workshop on the criminalization of immigrants, and a workshop by FW Paul Lenart (of the Reno IWW) on internationalism, radical unions, and labor solidarity across borders. Interested? Register to let us know you’re coming. Come on down. And spread the word!

And y'all? What have you been up to this week? Write anything? Leave a link and a short description for your post in the comments. Or fire away about anything else you might want to talk about.