FEATURES (4-14)
COMMENTS (15-18)
ARTS & CULTURE (19-22)
Radical Press 6 Teaching Black 8 Remembering Ali Mustafa 12
Immigration Detention 15 Jane and Finch Says No Cuts 16 True Costs of Pan Am Games 17
Yes Men 19 The Beehive Collective 20 Gendered Ink 22
Winter Issue 1, 2014
Your Alternative News Magazine at York
Volume 6, Issue 1
Alternative Media
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WINTER ISSUE 1 2014
Editorial Alternative Media suggesting an asymmetrical method for those who agitate, educate, and organize. Vanessa Ciccone’s “Changing the Channel on Gender in Media” calls out the inadequacy of mainstream television in giving female characters agency. Drawing attention to the ways in which female roles are minimised, she criticises the disjuncture between representation in media and women’s lived realities which encourage younger generations to uphold sexist ideas. Statistics reported that over a quarter of the occupations and aspirations of female characters were changed from their original story development were changed along with an increase of 16% in the depreciation of female characters to merely secondary or supportive characters.
W ith this issue of the YU Free Press, we tried to critically engage with the topic of Alternative Media
and Activism in context of some key issues concerning the state of media today—corporatization, cyber-securityindustrial-complex, surveillance, representational politics and violence, as well as knowledge-production systems in academia, popular culture and everyday life. Amidst the vastness of information and media currently circulated, we sought to address the questions of who controls media, which perspectives are represented and which are excluded.
Andy Stepanian’s “Sentenced to 10 years in Prison…” addresses the imprisonment of Jeremy Hammond for his role in hacking into Stratfor, an unregulated private intelligence industry responsible for illegal surveillance activities on behalf of multinational corporations. In Jeremy Hammond’s sentencing statement, he explains his interest and the importance of the digital dissent movement which seeks to effect change through direct action, anonymity, and decentrality. In his sentencing statement, Jeremy conveys a sense of accountability, yet there remains a sense of resistance commitment to affecting
change. Our center photo collection this issue is dedicated to freelance journalist and activist Ali Mustafa who was recently killed in Syria. Ali was both a founding member of YU Free Press and a friend to many editors past and present. We regret we can only display a glimpse of his important work here and urge readers to seek more of his photos and writings out. With a report back from the group, Jane and Finch Action Against Poverty and an article by York U alumni Hammam Farah, we can see the limits of media and power systems from a local vantage, demonstrating the ways York students and activists use alternative media to support their important work. We explored Alternative Media broadly as alternative modes of knowledge production - ways of accessing, informing and learning about who we are and the struggles experienced by the peoples with whom we share this world. We hope that this issue raises questions about the ways in which the military-media-industrial-complex operates to silence people interested in alternative ways of living and learning, and how people have pushed against this silencing through various forms of alternative media. Democratic control over the production of knowledge is a critical and vital avenue to empowering ourselves and our to participate as activists in changing our realities. As media and the technologies that produce knowledge are dynamic there is much more on this topic than we can possibly cover in this issue. We encourage readers to critically explore and seek their own ways of navigating information and activating their own forms of alternative media on the metonymic note that knowledge = power.
Democratic modes of production, decision making, grassroots mobilisation and anti-oppressive politics are some of the challenges to mainstream corporate media explored in Steven Izma’s recollection of the Dumont Press Graphix’s of this typography collective’s narrative, we can re-imagine how an alternative workplace can be articulated; one where care, shared labour and non-hierarchical environments are constructed. In a similar fashion, “Free Radicals” by Jess in the UK in the 1960s and 70s, and how these printshops integrated politics into their everyday organizational and production practises. In reading this work, we are left to ponder how print production and knowledge dissemination has changed over the past few decades and furthermore, how the age of digitization has affected collectivism and the democratization of knowledge. Jarret Neal’s “Teaching Black Living Gay” presents an example in which anti-oppressive politics are nurtured in the representation of black authors in academic literature. Following the thread of academia is a piece by Joseph Kay, “Inside and Against the University” which makes the compelling bridge between the myth entailed with academic-ivory-towers and its use as an argument to further corporatize universities. Toward the end of this article, Joseph Kay describes the implications of the term “solidarity”,
COVER IMAGE
Title: Mesoamérica Resiste!
The Beehive Collective is a wildly-motivated, all-volunteer, activist art collective dedicated to “cross-pollinating the grassroots” by creating collaborative, anti-copyright images for use as educational and organizing tools. We work anonymously as wordto-image translators of complex global stories, gathered through conversations with affected communities. Since 2000 we have disseminated more than 150,000 posters throughout the Americas entirely by grassroots, hand-to-hand distribution! Our graphics have tackled issues from globalization, trade, and resource extraction, to energy, biotechnology, and climate change. We strive to create holistic and accessible images that inspire critical reflection and strategic action. Please get in touch to learn more about the Beehive! pollinators@beehivecollective.org www.beehivecollective.org.
Check out more about The Beehive Collective and Mesoamérica Resiste! on page 20 of our Arts & Culture section
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WINTER ISSUE 1 2014
News Some News Bites Fit to Chew NASA study shows industrial civilization heading towards ‘Irreversible collapse’ A recent NASA-sponsored study suggests a collapse of global industrial civilization in the impending decades due to increasing wealth inequality and unsustainable resource exploitation. The trans-disciplinary study uses historical data in an attempt to demonstrate the cycles of collapse which have occurred throughout history. This collaboration between natural and social scientists sheds light on the importance of both social and ecological considerations in making sense of data, prompting a sense of urgency in thinking about questions of sustainability and survival. According to The Guardian, “Currently, linked directly to the overconsumption of resources, with ‘Elites’ based largely in industrialized countries responsible for” the obscenely unequal distribution of wealth. The study argues that while technological development may provide cosmetic solutions which increase ‘productivity’ for the time being, unless change is made to how wealth is distributed political-economically, crisis and catastrophe will remain a threat to human civilizations.
Hamilton Declares itself a Sanctuary City! On Wednesday Feburary 12, Hamilton declared itself a 'Sanctuary City' to make municipal services accessible to all residents regardless of their immigration status. “Hamilton City
[as] in Toronto, there is a long way to go,” says Tzazna Miranda Leal of the provincial migrant worker organization Justice for Migrant Workers, a member of the Solidarity City Network. “Today’s decision should send a strong signal to other municipalities, and especially, the Province that they need to step up and provide basic rights and services to all Ontarians, irrespective of immigration status.” As Leal mentioned, there is still much more work to be done. Provincially funded services such as community housing, health care, social assistance, post-secondary education and more, still exclude undocumented residents. As in Toronto, the next step continues to be working towards equal access for all !
Vallejo insists she will keep “one foot in the government and the other in the street.” The involvement of social movements in the Chilean elections marks a change in the political climate of the country and demonstrates that social movements are becoming more receptive toward more radical socialeconomic demands led by the student movement. The presidency of Michelle Bachelet this March is a historic victory for Chile’s Left, promising a move away from neoliberal models. It is important to remember however, that a crucial part of Bachelet’s victory lies in the work of students and social movements over the past 3 years.
“ Two Walls, One Chile's Student Movement Struggle” & the Chilean Elections
In April 2011, Camila Vallejo led Chile’s confederation of university students (CONFECH) in protests calling for a free and quality education for all. The action spread to other Chilean universities not represented by CONFECH as well as to secondary students from both private and public sectors. The student movement staged dozens of massive demonstrations; marches from August 10th to 25th in 2011 had over 100,000 participants. In March 2014, Vallejo joined congress at the age of 25. In addition to Vallejo, three other leaders in the student movement have joined congress. Karol Cariola, Giorgio Jackson, and Gabriel Boric, also still in their twenties, will be continuing the system from within Chile’s congress.
Chicano Activists and student groups make a powerful comparison of colonization, territorial loss and racist aggression in Mexico and Palestine. Looking at the walls separating the U.S. and Mexico and the apartheid wall between Israel and Palestine. A presentation by Boston-baed immigrant rights activist and coordinator Gabriel Camacho, points to the striking similarities in the mechanism and technologies of colonization between the U.S colonization of Mexico and the Zionist colonization of Palestine. According to a report by Electronic Intifada, bridges are increasingly being built between Latino and Indigenous peoples in the U.S. resisting violence and colonialism and the Palestinian people resisting the colonial apartheid state. The shared experience of oppression, check points, occupation and violence strengthens the solidarity shared between both groups.
The YU Free Press is a free alternative newspaper at York University. Our principal objectives are to challenge the mainstream corporate media model and provide a fundamental space for critical analysis at York University and wider community.
EMAIL info@yufreepress.org WEBSITE http://www.yufreepress.org
EDITORIAL COLLECTIVE Michelle Lawrence Michelle Liu Damindra Liyanage Chistopher Mastrocola Stephanie Mckechnie Nathan Nun Kiran Saili
COPY EDITORS Devon Mcpherson Marion Thompson
CONTRIBUTORS Aderyn Raine Victoria Barnett and Nathan Nun Ali Mustafa (photos) Steve Izma Jess Baine Michelle Lawrence Devon Mcpherson Sports Without War The Beehive Collective Hammam Farrah
Jane and Finch Action Against Poverty
Jarrett Neal Jeremy Hammond, Andy Stepanian End Immigration Detention Joseph Kay Vanessa Cicone Laila Rashidie Ariana Adibrad and Nastaran Adibrad
PUBLISHER
Flaherty Resigns On
March
18th,
2014,
Jim Flaherty resigned. In a report glorifying the work of the former minister, CBC News praised his ‘outstanding leadership’ after a decade in the role. The Conservative for his legacy as the architect of austerity during and after the economic crisis of 2008/2009 as well as for his role in setting the G20 agenda on economic policy. As he retires to the private sector, one is left to wonder where to draw the line between the state and the private sector. Are their interests really separate? Will Flaherty’s political departure make any difference for Canada’s economic policy? Surely it means nothing for politicaleconomy. More than likely, Flaherty will be replaced Conservative - conducting economics in the same crisisprone tradition.
The YU Free Press Collective The opinions expressed in the YU Free Press are not necessarily those of the editors or publishers. Individual editors are not responsible for the views and opinions expressed herein. Images used by YUFP under various creative commons, shared, and open media licenses do not necessarily entail the endorsement of YUFP or the viewpoints expressed in its articles by the respective creators of such images. Only current members of the Editorial Collective can represent the YU FreePress.
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The YU Free Press welcomes typed, articles and letters and short creative works and visuals. All submisions must be accompanied by the author’s name Materials deemed libelous or discriminatory by the YU Free Press Collective will not be printed.
Send all submissions to info@yufreepress.org
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WINTER ISSUE 1 2014
Features
Dumont Press Graphix and Workers’ Control The Division of Labour Is Not Inevitable
credentials.
most
competing
businesses
Steve Izma
T in early 1971 proceeded along
allowance for people to respond
On the
Line
meetings and written messages On the Line found not just capitalism as a political economy, but capitalism as a campus newspaper, The Chevron,
typesetting. group formed to raise money from
{
“...once set up, our
classical strain of
time. lines of ‘This is what we were doing wrong’ in general, or more Why didn’t you do the dishes?’
appeared to be a student culture (in
life.
Capitalists
out of reduced costs for manual sometimes became a daily grind.
by merely attending meetings or The Chevron
CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE
The Cord The Spoke from The Chevron Consequently, we started producing On the Line especially
political
ones,
typeset four papers across a
and strategies, including communal
all jobs, wary of anyone settling
political demonstrations made us
needs.
5
FEATURES
WINTER ISSUE 1 2014
Free Radicals Jonathan Zeitlyn’s pamphlet ‘Print: how you can do it yourself’ (1974)
Jess Baines
B
etween the late 1960s and 1970s numerous alternative printshops were set up across the UK, with the founding objective of producing, providing or facilitating the cheap and safe printing of radical materials. They were started by libertarians, aligned and non-aligned Marxists, anarchists and feminists, and as such were constitutive of the fractured and fractious politics of the post-1968 left. Emerging mostly at the tail end of, or just after, the 1960s underground culture, they arose in a period that saw not just the extension of political concerns to cultural ones but also the rise of community activism and feminism. Despite their differences in position, those involved in the various printshops shared common left/libertarian ground: they were, in general, anti-capitalism and anti-’the state’, anti-imperialism, anti-hierarchy, anti-racist and profeminist. The London-based Poster Workshop (1968-1971), which recently uploaded its archive to the web, provides a snapshot of some radical concerns of the time:
{
“Their aim was not just to produce politically radical materials but also to enact those politics through their organisational and production practices. Liberation and equality would not just occur at some future event - i.e. the revolution but through ongoing practice in everyday life.”
the political situations in Vietnam, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Angola, Iran and Ireland; apartheid; housing; racism and rights for workers. Their rhetoric was one strike, occupation, revolution and freedom. Later, starting in the mid-1970s, the posters of screenprinting workshops such as See Red Women’s Workshop and the Poster Collective, while similarly based on principles of solidarity and revolt, became, in the main, less direct calls to action and more attempts to provide alternative and critical representations of political concerns. The ‘radical printshop’ itself was not a new phenomenon in Britain; printers of contentious material have been in existence in the UK
Dumont Press
{
“Workers who have real control over their own work turn production into art. Those who control other peoples’ work use the clock to beat those creative energies into submission.”
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4 with walking the talk: when you see the relationship between what people say and how they behave (especially in shared tasks) you get to know them a lot better. Having control over one’s work is never a solitary process. All work in our society, even artistic work, always takes place within a human network. So even though at the bottom of workers’ control is the mutually reinforcing relationship between control over one’s job and the satisfaction one derives from the work, this dynamic more often than not is social rather than individualistic. On the other hand, the reigning capitalist work ethos has us convinced that Canadian society will collapse into economic crisis without our constant effort to increase per-person productivity.
It’s a kind of a divide-and-conquer strategy. Working under the gun means not only working fast but working under coercion — the decisions you make in the work process, either on a production line or writing a newspaper article, are no longer your own, or at least, the size of your creative space becomes very constrained. As the division of labour becomes more and more specialized, even for the work available to university graduates, the amount of decision-making in a job diminishes. One’s actions become more and more repetitive, and more and more atomized. Going it alone cannot solve this dilemma. Workers’ control can only be plural. Workers who have real control over their own work turn production into art. Those who control other peoples’ work use the clock to beat those creative energies into
- often at the risk of imprisonment - since at least the seventeenth century. However the workshops referred to here came out of a new historical constellation of technological possibility and political and cultural imperatives.1 Their aim was not just to produce politically radical materials but also to enact those politics through their organisational and production practices. Liberation and equality would not just occur at some future event - i.e. the revolution - but through ongoing practice in everyday life. The printshops were a nodal point in a network of activist groups, radical publishers and alternative distributors, many of whom put their politics into the way they worked and organised. involved in the printshops had been submission. In the same way that an artistic endeavour takes its time to accomplish its project, workers’ control, in doing what is necessary for both the quality of the product and the quality of the time spent on it, is incompatible with the economy as we know it.
to art school and were critical of the dominant cultures of both art and the Poster Collective’s statement that ‘In most respects we have rejected the traditional cultural role of the artist. The artist is a kind of emblem of freedom, someone who is negatively free to do anything in the name of art’.2 In a period where radical social change seemed imminent and the critique of everything essential, the move by artists to collective practice and machine printing can, in our historical imagination, be seen to resonate with the productivist turn by artists in early twentieth century Russia/USSR. Participation and access were key concerns in the early days and articulated through an ethos Yet restructuring the economy on the basis of more creative and human-scale values won’t happen as long as production processes processes) are controlled by people who can think only of increasing the return on their investment — rather than by people who give
of self-help and skill-sharing. An entry for a ‘self-help printer’, as they were initially known, in the 1974 edition of the handbook Alternative London reads, ‘Crest Press […] have meetings anyone can attend on Fridays at 3.30 to decide what to allocate their printing time to the following week - they only print what they like and give preference to political posters and pamphlets. They will teach you how to print and expect you to help. You pay cost price.’3 In the same year Jonathan Zeitlyn, who was involved in Inter-Action Trust, a community arts project in North London, began producing the booklet Print: How You can Do It, a guide to DIY printing in which he describes how by taking charge of the means of print production, we ‘the people’ could begin to articulate a new culture. Zeitlyn continued producing these guides until the early 1990s, when he declared that with the development of desktop publishing the DIY idea of self-publishing had become commercialised: the activity was no longer attached to collective emancipation but to individualised For feminists, learning the technology of print, a traditionally male domain, was as empowering as the material they produced. Onlywomen Press, a group of radical lesbian feminist writers who set up their publishing house in 1974, initially operated their own printing presses, having trained in printing at Camberwell College of Art. This was not only pragmatic but felt by them to be a ‘physical, material’ manifestation of their feminism, along with their commitment to training women in the production process. Other women-only printshops - e.g. Women In Print, See Red Women’s Workshop and Lenthall Road shared a similar view, although in reality the capacity for training was often limited by economics. In 1986, the Greenwich Mural
CONTINUED ON PAGE 14 much more value to a daily life characterized by meaningful and collectively directed activities. Steve Izma was part of a typographers collective, Dumont Press Graphix, which operated in Kitchener, Ontario, from June 1971 until April 1987.
FEATURES
6
Inside and Against the
University Joseph Kay
T o begin, I should stress that the choice to be inside the university
is disappearing. Whether by escalating indebtedness, involuntary outsourcing, or indeed, summary suspension for political activity, exclusion from the university is making a comeback. At the same time, whether to be against the university is also becoming less of a choice, since the university, at least in its present form, is increasingly against us. With recent strikes, occupations, and violent repression, the university is becoming a battleground. What does this mean for university staff and students? We confront the university less and less as a place of an idealised ‘Education’, and more and more as an exploitative boss, a spendthrift landlord, a creditor, and an instigator of violent repression. The blood on the pavement at UCL [University College London] symbolises this shift. This article for those of us who nonetheless whether as staff or students. Critique, Recuperation, Restructuring Historically, universities functioned as basically feudal institutions. Something like a guild, operating according to restricted entry and hierarchical self-management (i.e. academics largely self-managed the institution while support staff had much less power). This is no doubt because the old universities at least - were feudal institutions. And the newer universities, like Sussex (founded 1961), imitated the feudal structure and traditions (see: silly robes and hats for graduation). There is a certain critique regarding the elitism of the university which still sometimes circulates. It goes something like this: the academy is an elitist institution, academics up in their ivory towers offer nothing of worth, and students are all future managers, burn it to the ground. This critique dates from the 1960s, when it had some weight. Indeed, insurgent students soon discovered that many of their ‘revolutionary’ Marxist professors were deeply conservative members of the establishment. Theodor Adorno infamously saw in the bare breasts of student radicals a descent into barbarism, which could only mean resurgent fascism. To combat this ‘fascism’, Adorno called in the
{
“Whether by escalating indebtedness, involuntary outsourcing, or indeed, summary suspension for political activity, exclusion from the university is making a comeback.”
police to clear occupying students. Because tits are more fascist than state repression, and when you’re a Great Intellectual, you’ll understand.1 However, the 1960s critique of the elitist academy not only no longer applies, but has been recuperated by capital to restructure the sector. To quote an excellent forum post from back in February. As the blogger ‘Carver’ wrote, “ [the anti-elitism critique] has driven the subsequent real subsumption of the formerly formally subsumed feudal university. i.e. it’s exactly the same rhetoric used to attack ‘privileged’ university workers’ pensions, whack up tuition fees and debt for the ‘privilege’ of studying, outsource and casualize the workforce in the name of breaking down underserved perks, subjugate research to a crude instrumental logic (RAE, REF), modularise and streamline course content and assessment, shift teaching on to low-paid TAs etc. What was once education for the elite has become training for the masses.” No nostalgia, no future
The exponential growth in student numbers has been met by a dramatic restructuring of the sector.2 The hierarchical self-management of the feudal university has been replaced by corporate-style executive groups consisting of professional managers. Academic autonomy has been curtailed and replaced with the publish-or-perish discipline of the REF.3 Fees have increased in an attempt to turn students into consumers, or in the words of a telling Freudian slip by the Sussex Vice-Chancellor, “units”. The ‘freedom’ of the education has been curtailed so that the freedom of the market may reign. But this presents defenders of ‘Education’ with a problem. There was no golden age. When the university had relative autonomy from capitalist discipline, it was, undeniably, an elitist institution. In the 1950s and 60s, between 4% and 8% of the population went to university. Mass access has gone hand-in-hand with the restriction of academic freedom, the imposition of ever-more assessment, spiralling debts, outsourcing and attrition of support
WINTER ISSUE 1 2014 staff, transformation of universities into nodes in the circulation of of teaching to casualized Associate Tutors on zero-hours contracts for sub-minimum wage. Indeed, a whole piece could be written on the political economy of idealism, whereby young, enthusiastic PhD candidates are enticed to provide cheap labour as an apprenticeship for secure academic jobs which are rapidly disappearing.4 In short, the ‘ real subsumption’ of the university. The price of increasing university access from 4% to over 40% of the population is that feudal institutions have become capitalist. An article in the London Review of Books captures this process clearly, and provides some context to the blood on Malet Street’s pavement. The author Oscar Webb wrote, “ administrative staff will be transformed from ‘cell-like environments’ to ‘den-like environments’: in other words, more people will have to share per cent of total space; this is
human
resources,
meanwhile,
per cent. (...) As academics and students are crammed ever closer together, commercial projects top of the six that already exist. The masterplanners aren’t shy of talking about ‘commercial opportunities’. The campus they want looks like a shopping centre. Almost every accessible ground plan. Malet Place will be turned into a ‘teaching and learning “high street”’. Retailers will be invited to set up shop in ‘underwould become a ‘student hub’, lecture theatre, a common room and a small museum would be demolished.”
At the same time, the function and class composition of the university has changed. As Carver points out, just 1.5% of graduates land ‘graduate level’ jobs, and many of these, such as nursing, are far from managerial or technocratic. But yet 1-in 3 economically active ‘ people in the UK today have a degree. As DSG wrote in 2011, “We are being made to pay for our own training, with no guarantee, and often little chance, of a corresponding increase in pay. A university degree today is not a sign of becoming middle-class. It’s a way for the working class to make themselves suitable for the post-industrial workplace. This must be the basis of any class analysis of the current argument.” The university increasingly confronts us as an exploitative boss, a spendthrift landlord, a creditor, and an instigator of violent repression. This is the context for Aaron Bastani’s suspision, “... that some of those chanting, many of whom could be considered historically privileged students and graduates, increasingly feel they share more with those rioters in August than the institutions to which they have historically given their tacit consent. Caught between nostalgia for a golden age that didn’t exist and a future equally absent, antagonism characterises university.”
the
capitalist
“Solidarity is a weapon, not a word” This slogan has gained a certain resonance lately. I think it manages to capture three crucial insights on the present state of education struggles. First, and most obvious, is a simple rejoinder to the tendency for ‘solidarity’ to become a kind of leftist ‘best wishes’, a platitude, a sign off, from which no further action is required. The slogan insists that words are not enough, solidarity is a matter of deeds. A simple, but necessary, point.
CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE
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Changing the Channel on Gender in Media Vanessa Ciccone
A
t an event put on by the Canadian Women’s Foundation in Calgary last month, Geena Davis stated, “The more hours of TV a girl watches, the less opportunities she thinks she has. For a boy, the more sexist his views become.” In 2004 Davis founded the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media to shift female portrayals and gendered stereotypes in children’s entertainment. The Institute conducts research and offers training to alter how women are depicted in media. With platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter changing the way entertainment is consumed, The Institute’s research can be applied to popular performances and music videos.
{
With everyone and their dog writing open letters to Cyrus for the new direction she’s decided to take her career in, the debate rages on around whether it’s empowering or debasing for nearly naked women to prance around stages. If it is empowering for women, why is it that men don’t push the envelope in the same way? If Justin Timberlake or any one of the teen pop sensations in One Direction tried to pull the same moves as Cyrus, they would swiftly be laughed off stage. Davis says, “The percentage of women in leadership positions is 16-20 per cent. In media portrayals it’s 17 per cent.” In music
“On-screen, women are outnumbered by a ratio of 3 to 1 in kids’ media and they are often incorporated into programming purely as decoration.”
According to The Representation Project, a movement that uses media content to expose injustices created by gender stereotypes, teenagers spend 31 hours watching T.V. per week, 17 hours listening to music, three hours watching movies, four minutes reading magazines and 10 hours a week online. The popularity of social media with techsavvy children also means that much of the content kids are sharing isn’t ageappropriate. But then, some performances by Rihanna and Miley Cyrus aren’t either, and little girls are their number one fans.
video portrayals it’s likely hovering around the three-percentile mark. management positions in 2012, meaning kids in the U.S. and Canada are actually consuming an even more negatively skewed gender portrayal than reality. Media also are not as employable as men. While women comprised 48 percent of the Canadian labour force in 2011, and 47 percent in the U.S., they only hold 20.3 per cent of the total
Inside and Against CONTINUED FROM PAGE 6 Second, in posing solidarity as a weapon it this weapon is solidarity - i.e. relationships of trust and mutual aid, collective action it also pre-empts any macho interpretation as a ‘debate’. This is not a debate, it’s our lives, our jobs, our homes, our futures on the line. We won’t win with superior reason in the traditional abstracted sense, but with superior strength in our movements’ capacities. In the university, where liberal notions of reasoned discourse have strong currency, this point is vital. Third, and least obviously, insisting that our weapon takes the form of solidarity stresses the radical asymmetry of our movement compared to the state. It may seem premature to say this, but if the current trend to violent suppression of dissent continues, and/or crosses the threshold into lethal repression, then the question of violent, armed opposition will be posed. This was the case in the repression and decline of the student movements of the 1960s, spawning the Angry Brigade, the Rote Armee Fraktion, and the Brigate Rosse. To insist that solidarity is our weapon is to preemptively insist this is a deadend. 99 times out of 100, the state has the
advantage in set-piece confrontations, from demonstrations to armed struggle. But 99 times out of 100 we have the advantage in the terrain of everyday life. This radical asymmetry of methods suggests a basically syndicalist approach: we are strong when we do the patient groundwork of talking to workmates, agitating, educating, organising. This kind of activity is much harder to injunct or bludgeon into submission. Like a mole, much of this work is subterranean, unseen, unglamorous. But when it does break the surface, it can’t easily be repressed, because - to mix my metaphors - it has roots. We don’t need to pose this argument as a hypothetical: in the 3 Cosas Campaign we have a clear example. The IWGB workers won partial concessions in a two-day strike, and responded by announcing a three-day strike to win the rest. If highly precarious, low paid, casualised, outsourced, and in many cases migrant, workers can selforganise and win strike action, then many others can too.5 Violent repression works because it disempowers while it radicalises. There’s not much point learning that all cops are bastards and the state and bosses collude to violently impose inequality if you’re physically smashed and/or too afraid to do anything about it. But the obvious urge to meet
percent of all jobs in prime-time shows and represent 25.3 per cent of those employed in children’s programs. Dr. Caroline Heldman, an associate professor of political science says, “Little boys and little girls, when they’re seven years old, in equal numbers want to be President of the United States when they grow up. But then you ask the same question when they’re 15 and you see this massive gap emerging.” On-screen, women are outnumbered by a ratio of 3 to 1 in kids’ media and they are often incorporated into programming purely as decoration. In 2011, only 11 percent of Women were also only featured in speaking
{
parts 11 percent 19 percent for children’s shows and 22 percent for prime-time programs. Given the cultural context that sexuallycharged performances are created in, a woman and man can give similar performances with the former being referred to as empowering and the latter as an embarrassment. With any luck, more celebrities like Davis will continue to try to change the channel on skewed portrayals of gender in media. For information on the important research being done by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, visit www.seejane.org This article was originally from Shameless Magazine.
“The ‘freedom’ of the education has been curtailed so that the freedom of the market may reign.”
them again in the streets may be the path to burnout and more bruises, blood, and broken bones. That’s not to say demonstrations and occupations should be avoided, but that we need to take the rage, and direct it into agitating and organising in our everyday lives.6 That way, we can build a radically asymmetric movement that can set its own demands, generate its own momentum, and have the roots to survive and even thrive in the face of the inevitable violent repression. 1. I’ve heard on the grapevine that some Marxist academics have very radical excuses for scabbing on the recent pay strikes. One day strikes are beneath such revolutionary minds, you see. 2. Academic Bob Brecher argues that academics have largely been complicit in this restructuring, consciences soothed by anti-elitist rhetoric. 3. See the following pieces from The Guardian for an article on the conservative effect of the REF and for an example of the fruits of academic autonomy capital is now curtailing:(www.theguardian.com/highereducation-network/blog/2013/nov/21/ interdisciplinary-research-ref-submissionuniversity &
www.theguardian.com/science/2013/ dec/06/peter-higgs-interview-underlyingincompetence ) 4. The rise of the adjunct in the US is a vision of the future. 5. I have some reservations about the demand for recognition of the IWGB, particularly the pressure it may create towards a growing and bureaucracy. But for now, let’s take heart from a militant and inspiring struggle - one which dispels a lot of myths about the impossibility of a syndicalist approach in ‘post-Fordist capitalism’. 6. Solidarity Federation and the IWW offer workplace organising training and support organising at work, as well as of course the IWGB in London. Other possibilities could involve organising against UKBA raids, around housing issues, around transport, energy, or food costs, or against police repression. This article was originally written for libcom.org.
FEATURES
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Teaching Black, Living Gay… Jarrett Neal The following is an abridged version of the author’s essay “Teaching Black, Living Gay...”
F
or the last six years I have been employed at Aurora University, a small private institution nestled among mid-century homes in Aurora, Illinois, a middle class suburb west of Chicago. Each day I go to work I sit down with students, either individually or in workshops, enrolled in courses across many different disciplines and guide them through the writing process. The majority of the students I work
as well; with black arts and black artists growing more eclectic with each passing year, now, I believe, is the perfect time to gather a group of eighteen year olds, force them to turn off their beeping, chirping electronic gadgets and engage them in a discussion not only of African American literature but also history, gender, sexuality, class and the politics tethered to each.
freshmen; others are middle aged graduate students primarily in the
This evening my husband asked me how I would respond if one of my students asks, “Why do I have to take this course?” The short answer is the course is a requirement for degree completion. Yet this question, despite its obvious narcissism and anti-intellectual subtext, deserves a rich response. If a student ever posed this question to me I’d be moved to ask her or him, “Why do people write?” Likely this retort would elicit little more than a shrug or eye-rolling. Writers write to make sense of the world. They seek to map the complex psychic terrain of human experience, to make sense of a world that often makes no sense. Creative writing speaks the unspoken for those who cannot or do not speak, mining the interior life of people to excavate that which is universal.
earning an advanced degree so they can switch careers. One of the me to read scholarship related to a variety of topics (in a single day I can read papers from courses in literature, sociology, nursing, social work, history and business administration) yet it also affords me the unhappy task of confronting the many ways the education system in the United States fails. Last year, with the approval of my department chair, I took an alternative approach to the course. Instead of the usual canonical readings I list on my syllabus— the litany of dead white men from Shakespeare to Hemingway and the handful of women and people of color customarily included in virtually every literature anthology—I devoted this semester’s class to the works of African American writers. AU’s student population is almost equally divided between African American, Caucasian and Latino students, and a course in black literature, I believed, would be quite successful (African American Literature, as an independent course, hasn’t been taught at AU in distributor and inquired if he could recommend a good textbook for the class. To my great delight, he sent me a brand new copy of the second edition of The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. Edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Nellie Y. McKay. For me, an African American educator and writer, this textbook is a veritable treasure trove. Never before have I seen or possessed such an extensive collection of literature written by black Americans, full of the breadth of African American experience. At this particular moment in American history, with the president leading the nation and the apoplectic ultraconservative fringe making every attempt to delegitimize his presidency and invalidate his citizenship; with select African Americans leading Fortune 500 corporations and shattering the glass ceiling not academia, medicine and science
A criminal justice major was once enrolled in one of my literature courses. Remote and taciturn, he sat in a back corner of the room each day and glowered into his textbook. At the conclusion of the course, when each student was invited to write an anonymous evaluation, this young man (I recognized his handwriting) wrote that he had always disliked reading but now, after suffering through the course, he absolutely hated it. He admitted that he only enjoyed watching movies, ones in which “stuff blows up”, and expressed relief that because he was going to have to read or write again. Confessions like this horrify me. This young man—hostile and, yes, white—needed to take a literature course more than any other student I had ever encountered. The idea that I had potentially unleashed another angry white man into the world, one who was determined to enter law enforcement yet had a complete inability to empathize with people different from himself, sends tremors through my body to this day. Those ignorant of the ways black Americans have navigated through what bell hooks terms America’s white racist capitalist patriarchy would do well to read the works of black authors. After reading The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass in an American literature course my freshman year of college, I vowed that I would
reading. A novel, a newspaper, the side of a cereal box—it didn’t matter. How could I, an African college student from a downscale neighbourhood with enough smarts to get into one of the top universities in the nation, shrug off my obligation to become as wellread as I could? I’m not naive enough to think simply reading an acclaimed novel or a collection of poems by a black writer for thirty minutes a day will solve the problems of poverty, unemployment, racism, homophobia, HIV/AIDS and gang violence among urban black youth. Yet I know that reading Native Son my senior year of high school and absorbing the poems of Nikki Giovanni and Yusef Komunyakaa, keeping a journal and writing my own poems, stories, novels and essays, has kept me from bloodshed and death. Once, long ago, in utter despair, my choice in life was made startlingly clear to me—write or die. I think many black writers, at some point, have faced that same mortal choice.
Library of Congress
With each keystroke and every lash of the page, black writers assume the psychic and emotional landscape, however tortured or enraptured, of every black person who has begun or ended his or her life in the United States of America. We do not claim victimhood. We write to let the world know, without equivocation, that black the black community and America and critiques both, opens its pages to the pleasures of the culture and its perils, makes room for all who seek its shelter and expels those who endeavour to assail us.
Brett Weinstein (Wikicommons)
Working in the humanities presents challenges from antiintellectual students and parents who continuously question the relevance of literature, history, philosophy and related disciplines, and pressure from administrators to lower the threshold for passing these courses. There is also schools that promise students degrees without the so-called hassles of taking and paying for classes such as these which they feel will have no impact on their lives or, more importantly, their future earning potential. This full scale assault on the humanities has, in recent years, disrupted pedagogical discourse, forced austerity in graduate admissions, and augmented requirements for tenure. Nevertheless, despite the ongoing changes, academia offer people of color seeking to
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David Shankbone (Wikicommons) Richard Wright, author of Native Son, writer, educator, and activist Nikki Giovanni, and poet Yusef Komunyakaa
Teaching Black CONTINUED FROM PAGE 8 political change. Our presence in higher education—especially the presence of African American men, who are underrepresented throughout academia—imparts complex dimensions to every course we teach. I encounter a range of responses from students when I enter the class. Most of the white students who attend Aurora University come from small towns and rural communities. Their parents on the whole are conservatives who revile academia and intellectuals, despise President Obama and all he stands for, and harbour deep suspicions of racial minorities, especially those in positions of authority. Although many of these students distance themselves from their families’ opinions their worldview is nonetheless slanted toward a conservative ethos that has imperilled racial and sexual minorities in aggregate ways for generations. It never ceases to amaze me how these students, simply by virtue of being white, seem to think they are better at assessing their own work than I am. This isn’t to suggest that my black students aren’t bratty and narcissistic, but my dynamic with them is markedly different. Black students have never accounted for more than one third of the students in any course I’ve taught at AU, and when they see me enter class interest, sit up straight and absorb every word I utter. In one class a small cluster of black students sitting in the back corner of the room actually applauded when I day of class and stood behind the podium, some of them exclaiming, “Yes!” and “All right!” Yet what troubles and saddens me about the black students is their readiness to give up. They maintain enthusiasm assignment is due, and if they don’t make high marks, rather than seek guidance from me or visit a tutor, they simply stop trying. Many of course, and some of them bypass and instead of dropping the course class, vanishing like apparitions with only their names penned in my grade book as evidence they were ever there. These students haunt me because I was just like them upon entering Northwestern University. As an engineering major with no head for science or higher order freshman year but returned to Northwestern several years later committed to learning, and I excelled. In the midst of failing academically I had to confront my emerging homosexuality. Away and living among men, I, who had had such limited interactions with males up until then, could no longer deny my sexual attraction to men when I was housed with them, conversed with them, undressed with them, showered with them and slept beside them. I suffered multiple shocks that year: being black and working class at a school
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where most students were white proper study habits and test taking skills when I never had to do so before, enduring separation from my family and environment for myself sexually with a man when I had been thoroughly convinced for years that I was heterosexual. At eighteen it was all too much to handle and when the university sent me a letter of dismissal at the end of the academic year subconsciously I knew leaving school was the best thing for me at the time. Now that I am an educator, as I plan my syllabus for African American Literature, I wonder what taking this same course my freshman year at Northwestern would have done for me. Gay and lesbian professors, and straight professors who have aligned themselves with queer politics or queer theory, tend to set much higher expectations for their students, grade papers meticulously, write and publish more books and articles, attend more conferences, and invest more time planning lectures and serving on committees than their peers. From bell hooks to Dwight McBride, Eve Sedgwick to Michel Foucault, queer/feminist scholars and theorists have reshaped the humanities in the last thirty years. I’ve often wondered if these professors are overcompensating, that the rigorous demands they place on themselves derive from a need to prove themselves; a way of telling colleagues, administrators, students and anyone else who dares to challenge them that their sexual orientation or gender will not be an obstacle to achieving their career ambitions. If my students knew I was gay suddenly their focus wouldn’t be on their studies; rather, they’d spend all class period thinking about me sucking dick. That’s a vulgar exaggeration of course, yet when students become preoccupied with their instructors’ private lives, particularly those of us who live alternative lifestyles, learning becomes static and very little can reactivate it. When I began teaching years ago it became apparent, from my own experiences and those I’ve heard from colleagues at AU and other institutions, that professors who are not straight white men respect and control in their classes, particularly women of colour. As much as I would like to contribute personal experience when gay and lesbian themes present in assigned readings and class discussions, I know doing so would prejudice the discussion and jeopardize my power in the class. Although I know several gay professors who are out to their students, they teach courses such as psychology or social work, or they teach at other institutions which boast a more liberal-minded student population. Disclosing their sexual orientation can do them no harm and in some helps prepare students for work who are not English majors; they take my courses as general education requirements. As a black
gay professor at a small university where I am not eligible for tenure, where I tutor students who still refer to African Americans as colored people in their essays, and the retired white homeowners who live directly across the street from campus drive cars with bumper stickers that read, “Don’t Blame Me, I Voted For the American”, I coming out against the cost it will have on my professional stature. In the years since I relocated to the Chicago with my husband Gerald, who also teaches at the university. I’ve come to realize that teaching does not end when I leave the classroom. Not only am I teaching young adults at school what it means to be black, I am teaching blacks and the rest of society what it means to be gay. Like so many other gays and lesbians my age, when I was coming of age I had no gay role models. I knew nothing of Stonewall, gay subculture or for equality. The host of gays and lesbians in pop culture today and the number of gay celebrities who have come out of the closet
wasn’t the reality Gen X and older generations of gays lived in. Living my life as I have with my husband at my side, maintaining a home with him, presenting one another at family gatherings and expanding our circle of friends and acquaintances demonstrates to my family members—those who support my lifestyle and those who rail against it—that gays should not be feared or shunned and that our lives, just as theirs, contribute to the common good of society. The toxicity of homophobia in the black community has been a topic of impassioned dialogue for as long as I can remember. I use the word toxicity here on purpose, for the calumny and sheer malice some blacks direct at gays and lesbians poisons the entire community. The work Harlem Renaissance writers and artists did to expose the invidiousness of homophobia and sexism within the black community has not slowed since the 1920s. Artists and intellectuals from James Baldwin to bell hooks to Keith Boykin and Melissa Harris-Perry have written and spoken at length about the corrosiveness of homophobia, how it can retard and even undo the strides blacks have made since the Civil Rights era. Yet it seems no matter how many black men and women come out of the closet and loudly proclaim their right to
love and equality, regardless of the increasing number of gay and and television shows and help relax some of the fear others have of us, and against their better judgment, many African Americans remain adamant and strident in their opposition to gay rights. To live as a dual minority, to belong to two groups constantly under attack in Western culture, gives black gays and lesbians the unique opportunity to educate, for each moment we live our lives, write our stories, protest for just causes and claim space, we prove our power and worth and strengthen our communities. It is impossible for us to avoid teaching moments: instances where we are called upon, whether we want to or not, to correct a misapprehension, right a wrong, give a voice to those who are voiceless and provide safe havens. We harness our mutual reserves of fortitude, endurance, charity and forgiveness, and simply by living honorably, with joy, zeal and pride, we embolden others to claim their own true selves, to love and to heal. Jarrett Neal is an author and educator based in Chicago. For full text please visit http://kieselaymon. com/?p=2560
FEATURES
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Anonymous Hacker Jeremy Hammond Sentenced to 10 Years Hammond Uses Allocution to Give Consequential Statement Highlighting Global Criminal Exploits by FBI Handlers Background by Andy Stepanian with Statement by Jeremy Hammond
Jeremy Hammond, a 28-year-old political activist, was sentenced
I have been arrested for numerous acts of civil disobedience on the streets of Chicago, but it wasn’t until 2005 that I used my computer skills to break the law in political
to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to participating in the Anonymous hack into the computers of the private
for hacking into the computer systems of a right-wing, pro-war
Ceremonial Courtroom at the
organization that sold racist t-shirts on their website and harassed anti-
today with an outpouring of support by journalists, activists and other whistleblowers who see Jeremy Hammond’s actions as a form of civil disobedience, motivated by a desire to protest and expose the secret activities of
the Computer Fraud and Abuse case was arbitrarily calculated by multiplying the 5000 credit cards
were calculated on the basis of this credit card was used or distributed arguments as to what sections of the court record will remain Jeremy’s attorneys initially erred on the side of caution in previous memorandums and kept large pieces of the record redacted, both the defence and prosecution agreed this morning that many of the sections should now be made
I have seen for myself the ugly reality of how the criminal justice system destroys the lives of the millions of people to repressive forms of power and the importance of standing up for
stiff exception to portions of the court record being made public to continue my involvement in
foreign governments, that Jeremy allegedly hacked under
Artwork by Molly Crabapple
Monsegur, the FBI informant at the helm of Jeremy’s alleged
Xs] upon the orders of Judge
that the names of these foreign
who is 9 months pregnant and due to give birth today, delivered a passionate testimonial as to the person that Jeremy is, and the need for people like Jeremy during this era of exponential changes in our
her own experiences reading the hundreds of letters from supporters to the court detailing Jeremy Hammond’s unbridled
motivated Jeremy’s actions in this centerpiece of our argument is a young man with high hopes and unbelievably laudable expectations
Hammond himself, who gave a detailed, touching and consequential allocution to the redacted a portion [marked by
{
public has a right to know the redacted information therein, we refuse to publish information that could adversely affect Jeremy or
JEREMY HAMMOND’S SENTENCING STATEMENT | 11/15/2013
Hammond and I’m here to be sentenced for hacking activities carried out during my involvement locked up at MCC for the past 20 months and have had a lot of time to think about how I would explain my Before I begin, I want to take a moment to recognize the work of I want to thank all the lawyers and others who worked on my case:
the National Lawyers Guild, the Jeremy Hammond Defense
Free
didn’t want to go back to prison, so I focused on above-ground
“I thought long and hard about choosing Chelsea Manning fell into the abysmal
Anons,
truth, could I in good conscience the
Anonymous
Black Cross, and all others who have helped me by writing a letter of support, sending me letters, attending my court dates, and spreading the word about my brothers and sisters behind bars and those who are still out there
and direct action that I am being sentenced for today are in line with the principles of community and
Could I have achieved the same goals through legal means? I have tried everything from voting petitions to peaceful protest and have found that those in power do are ignored at best and brutally confronting a power structure that does not respect its own system of checks and balances, never mind the rights of it’s own citizens or the
My introduction to politics was
over time, I became frustrated with the limitations, of peaceful protest, seeing it as reformist administration continued the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, escalated the use of drones, and failed to
Around this time, I was following inspiring to see the ideas of particularly moved by the heroic actions of Chelsea Manning, who had exposed the atrocities enormous personal risk to leak this information – believing that the public had a right to know and hoping that her disclosures would be a positive step to end these hear about her cruel treatment in
corporations and government institutions, understanding very clearly that what I was doing was against the law, and that my actions could land me back in an obligation to use my skills to expose and confront injustice—
then took advantage of the waves of racism and patriotism after 9/11 to launch unprovoked imperialist
I thought long and hard about
I took to the streets in protest naively believing our voices would
ask myself, if Chelsea Manning fell into the abysmal nightmare of
were labeled as traitors, beaten, and arrested
I in good conscience do any less, if
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Hammond Sentence CONTINUED FROM PAGE 10
I was able? I thought the best way to demonstrate solidarity was to
I was drawn to Anonymous because I believe in autonomous, time Anonymous was involved
including technical skills, and how It was an exciting time – the birth of a digital dissent movement, where
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arrested, and that the entire time I
{
undermining and discrediting activists, journalists and other
Anonymous was also involved I had never even heard of Stratfor until Sabu brought it to my excited to see a worldwide mass movement against the injustices of
crackdowns and mass arrests of
by other hackers, so it came as a Sabu had been working with the
“It was an exciting time – the birth of a digital dissent movement, where
customer base had their credit cards used to donate to humanitarian organizations, but my main role in the attack was to retrieve Stratfor’s where all the dirty secrets are
It took me more than a week to gain further access into Stratfor’s internal systems, but I eventually was so much information, we needed several servers of our own Sabu, who was involved with the
Antisec in the following months – the majority of our hacks against work of the hackers of LulzSec who were breaking into some I targeted law enforcement systems because of the racism and inequality with which the criminal was encouraging hackers to unite and attack major government and
manufacturers
and
distributors
my involvement, the other Lulzsec hackers were arrested, leaving me to break into systems and write
economic interests abroad and to
On December 4, 2011, Sabu was had already broken into Stratfor’s the watchful eye of his government handlers, then brought the hack to Antisec by inviting this hacker to credit card database as well as the
weeks, the emails were transferred, the credit cards were used for donations, and Stratfor’s systems
in order to justify the multi billion dollar cyber security industrial for the same conduct it aggressively
institutional reform but through civil disobedience and direct believe that sometimes laws must be broken in order to make room
In the immortal word of Frederick Douglas, “Power concedes nothing
the hacker who found the initial vulnerability and allow this hack to
As a result of the Stratfor hack, some of the dangers of the Stratfor and reviewing the information we were given, and decided that their activities and client base made them a deserving
but when will the government be made to answer for its crimes?
and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows,
been revealed through Wikileaks and other journalists around the world that Stratfor maintained a worldwide network of informants that they used to engage in surveillance activities on behalf of
After Stratfor, I continued to break into other targets, using allowing me administrator access asked me many times for access to
that was harmful to individuals and – from government surveillance, and from actors like myself, and
working to make this world a better I broke into numerous websites email accounts and databases onto
form of civil disobedience, but it is time for me to move on to other
enabled Sabu (and, by extension,
were suggested by Sabu while thousands of domain names and consisted largely of foreign government websites, including those of XXXXXX, XXXXXX, XXXX, XXXXXX, XXXXX, XXXXXXXX, XXXXXXX, XXXXXXX and the XXXXXX
recognize that 7 years ago I stood before a different federal judge, facing similar charges, but this does not lessen the sincerity of
It has taken a lot for me to write knowing that doing so — honestly — could cost me more years of could get as many as 10 years, but I
to hackers who went on to deface and destroy many government know how other information I used, but I think the government’s collection and use of this data
This article was originally from the Sparrow Project, an outlet of ‘publicity and creative direction for grassroots activists.’
12 Ali was in Egypt in late 2011 and returned in 2013. Pictured here is an aerial view of Tahrir Square in early February, 2012. Surrounding this are photos of the often deadly protests that occured in late 2011 against the military government. Also pictured is a family of a protester killed in a military and police raid against pro-Morsi demonstrators that left over 600 dead and many more wounded in August 2013.
“ “
When thinking about social movement, th me are is it inclusive? it democratic in char questions that I find i
- “The ‘Ultr Revolution – A Mustafa,” Le
Egyptians are in the process of building the kind of world they want to live in – one that should serve as a basic standard for us all. If you really want to know what democracy looks like, you will find no better example than Tahrir Square.” - Ali Mustafa, “A Tribute to Tahrir Square,” February, 2011
Remembering Ali Nathan Nun and Victoria Barnett
With deep sadness the YU Free Press says goodbye to a colleague and dear friend, Ali Mustafa.
In the summer of 2008 at the founding meeting of YU Free Press a group of students came togeth alternative newspaper and what we would need to do to get started. Ali, who led the founding meeting dedicated to see this media project through. Without his vision and enthusiasm the project would no Ali travelled to Palestine in 2011. In these photos an Israeli soldier inspects a Palestinian woman’s ID card at Qalandiya checkpoint. A Palestinian woman is mocked by Israeli settlers in front of what used to be her home in East Jerusalem.
Many of us had no experience with journalism and editing so there was doing. This was especially challenging when so many editors had student, activity, both at York and in the larger world, is one of the reasons we thou and explain in depth what activists were doing and the injustices they wer
Ali worked with the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil, th and was a supporter of union and other struggles closer to home. Like ma and activity of which he was involved and then some. After leaving YUFP of injustice away from the familiar and the comfortable. He courageously and hardship that we so often wish to look away from to our consciousness. outside, he shared the struggles and hardships of those whose story he so de journalism. In sharing this struggle, helping victims of government bombing i
Ali was killed doing something of which he was so passionate, telling the story his ideas, smiles, and laughs. Everyone can be inspired by his courage and rem
13 An elderly man stands by the ruins of his home after it was hit by a scud missile in Atareb, a small village under rebel control located in the governate of Aleppo, Syria. Free Syrian the frontlines of battle in the neighbourhood of Bustan
“
t building an effective he key questions for ? Is it participatory? Is racter? Those are the important.”
ras’ and the Egyptian An interview with Ali eft Hook, March, 2013
“
the Liwa al-Tawhid brigade defending their post inside the Umayyad mosque located in the al-Jalloum district of the Old City in Aleppo, Syria. The Umayyad mosque, a World Heritage site, has been badly damaged during clashes. Also pictured is the family of a man killed by government shelling outside his home in Aleppo and Syrian children playing in Atmeh refugee camp in Idlib, Syria. Over 28,000 Syrians now crowd the site. 15,000 of the inhabitants are children under the age of 15.
Syrians: the best of people I could ever know, the worst of fates I could ever imagine. That is how the world works, sadly...” - Ali Mustafa, February, 2014
In a way, I’m also fascinated by war – not in the gory sense but in the way it impacts us as human beings. What does it take away? What does it leave behind? Most importantly, what does it transform us into? These are the kinds of questions that interest me more than anything else as a journalist.” - “Reporting From the Inside: Interview with Ali Mustafa,” Upping the Anti, July 2013
Mustafa
her to discuss what we would like to see in an of YUFP, was there for it all – at every meeting, ot have taken off.
a lot of trial and error. Most of us learned by , work, and activist commitments. But activist ught an alt-paper was needed, a place to show re trying to redress.
he Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, SAIA, any editors, Ali contributed on movements P and York Ali continued to tell the stories y sought to bring the stories of struggle . But Ali did not just tell stories from the esperately wanted to tell in his photography and in Aleppo, Syria, Ali was himself murdered by aerial bombing.
y of injustice. It is hard to say goodbye. For those of us who knew Ali we will remember minded that there are things we can do to change this brutal world. Rest in peace and power, Ali.
“
With hands of toil raised in struggle all of history within reach an idle terrain of fertile dreams of those who waited and never received” - Ali Mustafa, “Of Land and Freedom”
Ali travelled to Brazil in the summer of 2008 where he learned and worked with the MST, a mass social movement and against inustice and social inequality. Pictured here are a mother and son peering out of their modest home and the MST banner painted on the side of a shed.
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Anti-War Maple Leafs? “Sports Without War” Issues Fake Press Release Imploring Toronto Maple Leafs to Reconsider their Approach to “Forces Appreciation Night”
take action to properly represent people.
while the average hockey fan is
the Harper government.
civilians are paying the massive
MLSE
claims
that
Forces
Sports Without War ignores the facts about the actual
O
creating a celebratory military entertainment in peace.
expose the hypocrisy inherent in Entertainment (MLSE) “Forces
honour not only
{
spent on this war has been in
“...the event ignores the facts about the
in the Sports Without War initiative are pretty average
than half of that money has gone
a country known for our abilities
are hockey fans; we cheer for
know. to know why our hockey teams are promoting a war that most
who often siphon off a big cut for themselves. sportswithoutwar@gmail.com
given very little material support rappelling from the rafters with from
the
violent
occupation.
generate positive responses from
Free Radicals
This article was originally from sportswithoutwar.wordpress.com
technology became much more accessible both in terms of cost
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5
From Printing is Easy… ? perhaps being that print is no
Printing Is Easy…? Community Printshops
Alternative London course they are facilitating new
is Easy…?
Printing
of participatory empowerment. collective history of the printshops
to contribute. Currently only two collectives offset litho printing businesses. Speculative explanations for the
Footnotes
with
a
'community'
their
own
work.
but
of
http://www.
Jess Baines is a London based researcher and writer interested in the relationship between aesthetics, politics, technology and organisation. She is a PHD candidate at the London School of Economics. This article was originally written for afterall.org Image from Poster workshop set up in London, UK between 1968 - 1971.
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WINTER ISSUE 1 2014
COMMENTS
“Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!” Report Back from End Immigration Detention Rally at Lindsay Jail F
“ reedom! Freedom Freedom!” chanted the entire immigration wing at Lindsay prison, joining the chorus of song coming from the solidarity rally outside. Guards rushed to peer at us through the windows and were shocked to gathered across the fence in the bitter cold. On December 16th 2013, three busloads of families and supporters of immigration detainees drove hours through snow squalls and were joined by many more residents of the Lindsay and Peterborough area to protest immigration detention. Many of the immigration detainees were on their third day of a ‘hungerfast’ to coincide with the rally outside and to demand an end to security holds, an overhaul of the adjudication process, and the implementation of a 90-day limit to detention pending deportation as per international conventions. “Jailing migrants for no crime but that of being born elsewhere is unjust, and indefensible!” says End Immigration Detention Network (EIDN) member Tings Chak, at the rally in Christie Pits Park before leaving for Lindsay. “Jailing people utterly inhumane.”On September 17th, nearly 200 migrant detainees in Lindsay jail began protest actions which have captured widespread attention. Detainees have gone on hunger strike (2 of them for 65 days), refused to enter their cells, boycotted their detention reviews, and organized other political actions. In retaliation, immigration enforcement has deported some key strike organizers, moved
others into prisons across Ontario, and locked up hunger strikers in segregation. Yet, strike actions are continuing. “We are here to insist that immigration detention in maximum security prisons and will no longer continue in silence,” EIDN member Mina Ramos said to cheers as detainees could be heard banging on their walls. “Harper is stealing status from migrant families, while building bigger and prisons where we can be locked away.” A full hour after we left the inspiring demonstration outside the Central East Correctional Centre, we received a call from a detainee, a man from Liberia who has lived in Canada for 20 years. The background noise was deafening, and when asked what was happening inside, he responded, “They’ve been yelling freedom in unison for hours.” It took a few more moments over the poor prison phone connection until we could hear the reverberation of “Freedom, Freedom, Freedom!” For us on the outside, it was humbling to know how meaningful it is to simply bring our voices to say, “We hear you.” With every word yelled, and every person on the outside spreading the struggle to end immigration detention, these prison walls get a little weaker. Until we are all free! See the full list of demands: http:// endimmigrationdetention.com/ support-the-demands/
Family Day Weekend Letter: Our Children Ask us “When will They Return?” W e are mothers, fathers, wives, partners and friends of migrant men
We are mothers and fathers who are waiting to be reunited with our
children look at their father’s shoes and ask us when they will return. We are stay-at-home moms, and elderly parents who have to leave our children, and our sick family members in search of jobs as our family’s breadwinner has been taken away. We are caught in the crocodile jaws of immigration, spending thousands of dollars we don’t have on legal fees.
We are wives and partners whose
Some of our loved ones started
locked up in maximum-security jails across Ontario. Our loved by Immigration Canada, and have been denied every opportunity to re-join their families and friends.
getting into trouble with the law at a young age because our families broke down, or because we were too busy trying to survive with multiple jobs to keep them on the right path. They have all served their jail terms yet are facing double punishment. Others have never been arrested or charged with any crime. Our loved ones have been locked up in jail, some for six months,
others for nearly ten years. They are stuck in jails and their lives are passing them by. What purpose does this serve? They want to pull their lives together but how can they do it behind bars? How can they pay a lawyer or gather their immigration documents without work, phones or internet access? Canada can’t deport most of them. Either because countries that they left at a young age don’t want them back, or because countries they come from are in upheaval. Many of them are refugees, and deporting them would put their lives at risk. Some of them have refugee status, others have a stay on their deportation but Immigration Canada won’t release them because we don’t have enough money for a bond. We are urging Canada to release them to our care. We are also asking that a 90 day limit be
put in place on detentions pending deportation so that no other family has to go through the pain we have. Our sons, brothers, friends and husbands are part of our home. They are our family. They are in jail and that’s devastating. Physically, emotionally, spiritually we need these men back. We want them out of jail. Please sign on to these men’s demands below and raise your voices with ours. M.M, S.M., C.A., D.S., A.M. Families of migrants in detention in Ontario, February 14, 2014.
**Sign the petition calling for their release: http://chn.ge/ NGWI3l
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COMMENTS
WINTER ISSUE 1 2014
Jane-Finch makes it Clear to the City:
No cuts to programs and services! Jane and Finch Action Against Poverty
O n November 5, 2013, more than 200 residents of Jane and Finch community attended a hastily arranged City “conversation” that was organized to get people to agree to the cuts to social programs in Toronto’s 13 Priority Neighbourhoods. Originally, the City neglected to organize a “consultation” in the area about the future of Priority Neighbourhoods (Now called Neighbourhood Improvement Areas), but the community publically challenged this. In Action Against Poverty and other community organizations reached out to thousands of community residents. What is more, community-based organizations
{
' The high level of participation and articulation of community issues by a wide-range of community
classism. JFAAP is very proud of all community residents and largest City “consultation” despite
community for granted. '
helped arrange for food, child care City did not supply. Attending the meeting at the seniors, parents, youth and adults resisted the top-down structure of small group sessions chaired by the City’s staff. Instead of addressing criteria, residents raised the issues of concern to them and made it
was in fact about cutting services, which they passionately opposed. The youth in attendance demonstrated both their serious disappointment with the City and on community issues, challenging the top-down approach of the arguments. The high level of participation and articulation of community issues by a wide-
range of community residents and “elected representatives” that they cannot and must not The
Jane-Finch
community,
communities in Toronto, faces serious issues when it comes to poverty, high unemployment and underemployment, low wages, bad jobs, inadequate housing, targeted policing and structural racism and
friends and allies across the City. Our community’s solid message and clear: No cuts to community programs and social services! We need better and more accessible programs and services, good jobs and a better life for all! And we need it now! December 13, 2013 Get involved: Attend JFAAP’s meetings
jfaap.wordpress.com
York U violates your rights! Hammam Farrah
On April 30, 2013, I was banned club status of Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) until January 2014. In light of President overturn the sanctions and engage in meaningful dialogue with students, I have decided to reach
{
“when the administration claims that the adjudication process is separate it means they’re abusing their power.”
and citizenship that should be tolerated at worst and encouraged at best. However, only one complaint
community and respond to the
separate, or “independent”, from
policies, it suddenly dawned on us what was happening here. The SC&LD contract that student groups have to sign in order
After a March 27 rally, which its scholarship and pension moneys by investing in weapons manufacturers, VP Student’s Janet Morrison alleged that the protest disrupted classes. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Ontario Civil Liberties Association, and the Canadian all released statements condemning the administration. By punishing peaceful protests, even those of a disruptive nature, our freedom of protests are part of the democratic
only resolved the case to the satisfaction of both parties, but also met the threshold of disruptive formal breach of policy.
“It is false that the adjudicator found there to be no academic
statement, the argument became that the adjudication process was
rights guaranteed to students by responsibilities. According to section a(v) of the bill, students have a right to fair procedures the right to due process. That right was violated when Dr. Morrison of directing complaints to the
status, it means they’re abusing their power. Indeed, there should never be a decision to impose sanctions that is separate or independent from the process of adjudication. the adjudicator’s opinion to contradict her allegation, but that’s what can happen when SC&LD is granted the power to circumvent the bill of rights and responsibilities. SC&LD’s so-called “Statement
to due process was respected was
in the club registration form? Notice that it doesn’t contain a
complaint. Put differently, when the administration claims that the adjudication process is separate
includes the bill of rights and responsibilities, SC&LD’s contract is unconscionable and allows them
with your club’s mission, you can count on increased surveillance, condescending lecturing, and harsher punishments. lobbyists, and its appointment of governors who are members of the Israel lobby, are no secret. And if this is how the administration treats the campus Palestine solidarity movement, imagine what the treatment of an effective student movement against rising tuition fees in the age of austerity would Hammam Farrah is an activist and alumni from York University working against Israeli Apartheid.
COMMENTS
WINTER ISSUE 1 2014
17
The Real Cost of the Pan Am Games Aderyn Raine
ImuchwantI todislike start off by stating how breaking issues
down into monetary arguments. Money is a language and means which I wish I didn’t have to participate in – for several reasons - but nonetheless is a language of commonality in our society [or the sprawl that occupies Turtle Island]. Capitalism drives a great number of people to engage with, understand and frame issues monetarily; while this is a practice deeply sick in itself, I’ve written this article with that inherent truth in mind. But there are bigger costs to hosting the games here in Southern Ontario, and there are broader implications. The desire to sink billions of dollars in to a sporting event while allowing residents of the hosting a state of poverty is despicable. in an attempt to look diverse and progressive is nothing short of sociopathic. Food bank shelves are empty. Shelters are over capacity. Social, environmental, educational, transportation, medical and “justice” programs have all received massive and debilitating cutbacks. People are suffering because of them. Dying. But somehow there are billions available to throw at a couple weeks of fun ‘n’ games. The implications of this are both because, plainly, it shows that our government – at all levels - do not represent or care for us as a people. overarching issues of austerity, appropriation, indigenous
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“Food bank shelves are empty. Shelters are over capacity. Social, environmental, educational, transportation, medical and “justice” programs have all received massive and debilitating cutbacks. People are suffering because of them. Dying. But somehow there are billions available to throw at a couple weeks of fun ‘n’ games.”
sovereignty, colonialism, capitalism, corporatocracy, political agendas and corruption, police interference and surveillance, civil rights, environmental protections and political oppression. Those are the real costs of hosting the 2015 games. Those are the real reasons I’ll be in the streets. But if you’re caught up on the cost, or there’s a niggling curiosity, I’ve got that noted below too. As we steadily approach the Pan Am games it’s hard not to notice certain patterns emerging. Or shall we say re-emerging. Patterns that remind us just how oppressive, deceitful and abusive our government can be – and often is. In September the liberal government quietly amended of private security for the Pan Am games, allowing them to work alongside the OPP. No consultation. No debate. While it might not seem that important, those in the know understand that the OPP happens to be the agency responsible for heading up the Integrated Security Unit (ISU) for the 2015 games.
Projection of Pam Am Village in 2015 - www.toronto2015.org
The ISU is comprised of at least nine agencies so far including the RCMP and municipal police forces – and it’s already well underway. The ISU for both the G20 and Vancouver Olympics included massive surveillance programs and numerous undercover operations in the years leading up to them. For many, it is a symbol of political oppression and the surveillance state. Back in March, before the most recent changes, the federal powers of individuals acting under “citizen’s-arrest” laws. This is the same legislation which gives private security the power to detain or arrest individuals. Under the new guidelines, someone can be detained within a “reasonable” period of time if a ‘crime’ was committed and an individual is suspected. In other words; security guards no longer have to witness the crime they are arresting you for, nor do they have to arrest you immediately proceeding it. Not only are these new powers open to abuse by those who hold them directly, but in a scenario like the Pan Am Games police can indirectly abuse them.
There’s nothing stopping police, activists and having security detain and arrest them on sight for alleged criminal acts like “disruption” – a charge so ambiguous it can include yelling in public. Seems pretty tenuous to me, and it’s not hard to see a bigger, more ominous picture emerging. One many of us have seen before – though perhaps not as clearly. A government quietly granting increased powers. Adding supportive legislation which can be easily and widely abused. In the lead-up to the G20 an ancient piece of legislation - the Public Works Protection Act (PWPA) – was quietly amended for the purpose of policing the G20. Quietly and without public debate. Its blatant and purposeful misapplication led to the abuse of hundreds of peoples’ civil liberties. After the shit-show that was the G20 the government agreed to repeal it. That application, however, died in the legislature in the fall of 2012 and today the PWPA is still in place. Some have even seen an increase of its use. In Thunder Bay, police attempted to use it to detain and identify
individuals participating in an action for missing and murdered indigenous women while on public property. In Hamilton, the PWPA was recently used to collect the identities of individuals who attended a political action elsewhere, earlier in the day. Later that same day it was used to detain and arrest individuals who were eventually slapped with a variety of other charges. When one of these individuals returned at a later date on a legal matter with a friend, the friend was made to provide their personal information or be arrested under the PWPA. In Cayuga it was used to remove an individual from a courtroom for audio recording a hearing – despite acting in the interest of the defendant and with a judge’s prior consent. It’s clear that policing “authorities” more – and clearly abusing their inherent authority in the process. As it stands now, security guards with little training will be working alongside the OPP leading up to, and for, the summer games. They will have enhanced powers of arrest and little, if any, oversight. And the PWPA is still in place. The situation invites a slew of potential issues and violations. Again. Which brings us to the question: How much will it cost to have our rights violated?
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COMMENTS
WINTER ISSUE 1 2014
Residence Questionnaire Ariana Adibrad and Nastaran Adibrad
W e don’t choose our place of birth, our names, or our colour of skin, and we don’t think Canada should be a place which discriminates on those bases!
You might be familiar with the Canadian Citizenship Residence Questionnaire. The Canadian Citizenship Residence and Citizenship and Immigration Canada may require applicants to complete it to verify details about their ties to Canada. Applicants should complete it in order for their applications for Canadian citizenship to continue processing. Usually more than 400 pages should be submitted in order to address all questions on the RQ (Residence Questionnaire) form. The government has recently expanded its use of the Residence Questionnaire, and processing times for citizenship applications have ballooned out of control. As a result, the processing times for those selected to complete the Residence Questionnaire has also increased dramatically in the last few years. Previously, the processing times were extended by
8-12 months, but now applicants are told that the bureaucratic red-tape of the RQ can delay the processing of their citizenship applications for almost 48 months. We are aware that CIC and the Canadian Government have the right to ask applicants for more documents, but if they want to increase the number of people who receive this type of questionnaire, they should increase the number of their employees as well in order to avoid any kind of disturbing delays. Canada is one of the most sought out countries in the world because it treats people equally. As such, Permanent Residents deserve a transparent, timely, and fair process by which their citizenship applications are assessed. In this respect, we have had several meetings with people who we thought might be helpful in this regard and we have started a petition. These activities seek individuals who are subject to July 30, 2013, which was held at North York Centre, we invited Mr. Lorne Waldman – an experienced immigration lawyer –who advised
everyone on the consequences of receiving these forms and the chance of challenging CIC through federal courts. 90 people attended this meeting. I have attached the photos of this meeting to this message. The second Citizenship Questionnaire information session was held at Mellasman Square on August 20, 2013 and we invited Mr. Reza Moridi (the Minster of Research and Innovation) who promised to support us by raising this issue with the Minster of Citizenship and Immigration. Almost forty of the protestors
Pan Am Costs “The games, undoubtedly, will also provide an excuse for the government to and put the security apparatus into full swing.”
The 2015TO committee is being pretty tight-lipped about security expenses, but history has shown that whatever does out of their mouths is likely to be a vast understatement. To get an idea, however, security for the G20 in Toronto hit $1.1 Billion while security for the Vancouver Olympics had a price tag of about $925 Million (initially quoted at $175 Million). By comparison, the Pan Am games are twice the size of the winter Olympics and extend across several regions. While there won’t “protect” it’s likely that the price tag to be lied to, spied upon and beaten will be comparable because of these factors alone. Of course, security isn’t the only monetary expense for the games.
expenditures like the 63 Pan Am executives earning between $190,000 and $250,000 per year. A handful of key organizers will even earn around $500,000 per year. Throwing in an incentive for those 63 executives – just for completing their jobs - adds another cool $7M.
+ other “soft” expenses such as increased border/ airport security, public transit and medical services [in multiple host cities/regions]
The main budget also DOESN’T include;
improvements or costs [particularly related to transit]
+ $10 M for Pan Am secretariat budget + $709 M for athletes housing (subject to increase) + $23 M for unanticipated soil remediation at the aquatic center + $15.43 M for a “Host City Showcase Program” in Toronto
Some intensive research has turned up the following planned expenses:
+/- $1 Billion for security
$1.44 Billion is the main budget put forth by TO2015. Half will be used to upgrade and build new venues while the remaining will be used for “operational” costs.An estimate only, that main budget is subject to grow based on gluttonous
CEO Ian Troop [severance plus a new signing bonus] + the cost of housing athletes in regions closer to their events [recently announced to cut athlete transportation times]
With help of two of our volunteers (Mr. Ali Ehsassi and David Mussavi), we prepared a formal petition and we started collecting signatures. After collecting more than 1200 signatures, we set up separate meetings with Mr. Joe Daniel (a parliament member) on August 30, 2013, Mr. Chri Alexander (the Minster of Immigration and Citizenship) on September 22, 2013, and recently with Mr. John McCallum (a parliament member) on October 4, 2013. Mr. Joe Daniel and John to sink billions into hosting and policing an event that doesn’t net a
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to the Residence Questionnaire attended this meeting.
For example, the city of Hamilton will also be building a second GO station in time for the 2015 games – both the new and current station will remain operational. While it will be funded in part by $16 Billion given to the GTHA for transit funding. In Hamilton, the Royal Botanical Gardens recently asked the city of Hamilton for $1.75M in funding to help with their $20M modernization of their rock garden to have it completed for the games. In all – we’re talking about a lot of moohla. A shit- tonne of moohla. At a time when essential services face massive cuts on every level of care, our government has chosen
and the exploitation of thousands of volunteers. In Winnipeg it took 20,000 volunteers over the course of 16 days to make just $8.9M in revenue. Had they paid those volunteers just $4 an hour they’d Here in Ontario, the government just announced that they will be “helping” students qualify for OSAP loans by forcing them to volunteer for the impending games. The program is intended for those who work the summer before attending school but can’t save money to contribute toward a principle loan. You know - the ones who are typically working poor and busy paying bills. And what will the games leave in their wake? History tells us waste; unnecessary infrastructure, displacement and increased homelessness. Flotsam.
McCalum also promised that they would raise this issue at the parliament. We handed the signed petition to all of these authorities. We also handed the petition with the original signatures on it to Mr. Reza Moridi. Continuing our efforts, we request that you consider covering this issue at your media. So that, with the help of this exposure, the unexpected delay in processing of our citizenship applications might be resolved. I very much appreciate your attention to this matter. fuck it up to turn a quick buck! The games, undoubtedly, will also provide an excuse for the political communities and put the security apparatus into full swing. That said - these events also give us an opportunity to bring our struggles to the forefront of the public consciousness, shed light on certain truths and sometimes even light the spark needed for long term resistance. They give us an uncommon opportunity to have a collective voice. There will be challenges, though. The police and media will try to dictate your narrative. Don’t let them. They will try to divide us. Don’t let them. Don’t buy in to the “violent” versus “non-violent” narrative. Those are their words now; police terms. Used to justify their force and oppression.Used to undermine us and our efforts. Participating in that narrative only feeds their strength. In fact, don’t allow anyone to stipulate “acceptable” forms of struggle or terms of resistance! All struggle is valid. All forms of resistance have a message. So refrain from vilifying each other over views and tactics. Refrain from policing each other. We are co-allies. We have a bigger
that the athletes’ village will become affordable housing [a shiny progressive image is everything these days], the reality is that only a small fraction of those 2100 units will be made available to lowincome individuals or families. Even when the opportunity to address a widespread housing crisis arises, the powers that be
See you in the streets.
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WINTER ISSUE 1 2014
Arts & Culture
The Yes Men MichelleLawerence
Idistribution n 2009, the Yes Men led the of a New York Times
special issue for which hundreds of other writers, artists, and activists shared things they wished to be news. Smiles lit up pedestrians’ faces early in the morning as they learned of the astonishing developments in the world. The Iraq war has ended? The U.S. has passed a law on maximum wage? but it was agreeably an inspiring read. The Yes Men are artists who spoof media output of major corporations, from chemical companies to transnational the World Trade Organization and Exxon Mobil - in this case it was the New York Times. They give themselves the opportunity of manipulating corporate identities by imitating their media producers, and in many cases by physically impersonating ambassadors of the companies at events. They call this “identity correction” . Their websites and performances expose truths that are omitted from the public presentation of these powerful entities, raising awareness of overlooked social injustices that these corporations participate in. The Yes Men do not work as politicians, business men, or CEOs; they have chosen instead to take up their political, social, and economic concerns with the world as actors and improv artists. The main approach to improv is to respond ‘Yes, and then…” to your fellow performers. This means going with
as they might have to if they were just a little more conscious of and up-front about their [preposterous actions]”. 1 They act on their frustrations with the structures of their society by confronting the politics that sustain it. According to their website, the men behind the Yes Men enterprise are “hijinxers” Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno. They present themselves as advocates of social justice, tackling controversial topics in documentaries and live presentations. In a presentation acting as representatives of the WTO, the Yes Men included a gold “leisure suit” prop designed for a CEO, which was equipped with a large phallic-shaped monitor that enables him to supervise his labourers. Another presentation at an Exxon Mobil conference unveiled a candle supposedly molded of fuel reduced from of Bichlbaum and Bonanno, The Yes Men create ridiculous hoaxes, that when successful, have become thinly veiled satire which half convinces and half outrages the audience. Anyone who is familiar with the antics of Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonnano would be suspicious of their intentionally humorous surnames (words phonetically suggestive of unripe, bum, and banana). In verity they are artists by the names Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos.
and exchange that has been offered by your colleagues, and leading the scenario in a direction you
By re-naming themselves to the public they acknowledge that their own identity as social commentators and documentarians is also a performance.
the theatre of corporations in this manner. The Yes men aim to “really pretend to be them, and actually defend their [outrageous] cause
In an interview on BBC as a representative of Dow Chemical, Jacques Servin employed the name ‘Jude Finisterra’ –combining Jude,
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“The Yes men aim to “really pretend to be them, and actually defend their [outrageous] cause as they might have to if they were just a little more conscious of and up-front about their [preposterous actions]”
the patron saint of impossible causes, and the Latin phrase ‘end of the world’. To the extent of their resources, Servin and Vamos repeatedly craft themselves as well as disrupters of all sorts. They wear many masks in order to make a charade of the symbols which we tend to believe directly indicate identity, status, and power. Their outlandish performances bring attention to the fact that stunts like theirs occur everywhere, even if hollow of the same good claim to be actors, yet performance is inseparable from their work. Presenting ‘professionalism’ in
the corporate environment means looking the part and mastering persuasion. As satirical news programs such as the Colbert Report and the like have parodied, if there is an argument too weak or out-right immoral it must be glossed over rather than detract public. As Robert T. Tally Jr. has said of Stephen Colbert’s program, “The fake news is more real than the real news precisely because it discloses just how fake the real news can be”. 2 The work the Yes Men do has brought a similar kind of satire up against the head of the issue. The success they have in reaching their audience requires skill. It requires on-going creative problem solving and the guts to take their concerns to the front. Behind their performance as exaggerated representatives of organizations, their work also requires the coordination of skills and information pertaining to many juggling website development, creative writing, political satire, public speaking, public relations, and improvisational theatre. The fake was already in play in corporate environments before The Yes Men intervened; only they have chosen to carry it to its limits. The two artists expose what good things people with power choose not to do. They bring to light closeted issues, “providing the fodder, sometimes, that lets these subjects get covered”. 1 In August 2006 their hoax in New Orleans wrapped up dispute between community members and the U.S. department for Housing and
Urban Development when Servin falsely reopened public housing after appearing at a conference. A response from a resident to this like this to bring the mayor out here to see what we’re going through”. I n 2 0 0 4 , The Yes Men undertook a very similar intervention but on a much larger scale. They brought to the surface horrors of colonial industry in Bhopal, India where a pesticide plant owned by American Dow-Union Carbide Chemical exploded, killing nearly 3000. Serious health affects to thousands in the community have remained since the disaster in 1984. In an interview on BBC, Servin spoke as ‘Jude Finnestera’, promising a $12million settlement from Dow to the community in Bhopal still suffering after 20 years. The Yes Men were accused of providing false hope. They redirected this criticism by responding, “One can only imagine… their disappointment when they learned that they still awaited justice”. 2 The Yes Men repeatedly prove that community-based art can exercise creative expression as a powerful and relevant communication tool. The Yes Men’s artistic approach inspires re-evaluation of the motivations behind contemporary art practices. Baudrillard, a sociologist and cultural theorist, has refuted the privilege of contemporary art, as it has a tendency to be trans-aesthetic, “raising everything to aesthetic banality” . 4 Feeling that art has met its end, Baudrillard asks, “Will art have the right to a second, interminable existence, like the secret services, that, as we know, haven’t had any secrets to steal or exchange for some time but who still continue to their usefulness, perpetuating their own myth?”. 4
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Arts & Culture
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WINTER ISSUE 1 2014
Mesoamérica Resiste! The People’s Media A pedal-powered media machine rides into the scene, using media by and for the people. They cut through the stream of development plans from the copier with their political posters, as they record stories from the front-lines and broadcast them through independent and free media. The bees are taking the power of the media into their own hands to build resistance movements, from small scale distribution of pamphlets to bold takeovers of mass media, like in Oaxaca in 2006. The free media machine catapults seed bombs at the land grab. The seed balls are a mix of seeds, soil and clay that serve to reclaim damaged land for cultivation.
A Beehive Alt.Media Narrative Guide The Beehive Collective
M
esoamérica Resiste is the third part of a trilogy of posters documenting and chronicling the struggles against corporate globalization in the Americas. This poster focuses on Free Trade, Militarization and Corporate Colonialism. Its images are informed and inspired by particular struggles and resistance movements in Mexico and Central America.
The Community Assembly
Pirate Radio The independent Radio Station powered by a small-scale water wheel beams out news and culturally valuable music over the airways and transmits critical information about social movements.
Representatives of Communities affected by Project Mesoamerica gather in a circle at the centre of the poster to discuss their common struggles and plans for collective action. Some of the characters bring items from their homes, signalling that they’ve traveled far to be here, and that organizing efforts have been coordinated across the region. Unlike the top-down
Eating Together The bees have invited friends over for a meal and for a popular education workshop about direct trade. They explain how to connect local farmers to get food straight from the farm to the table, cutting out the middle man. They use local bark to make DIY biogas that heats the comal for cooking tortillas; next to it the same bark is mixed with honey to make balché, a traditional fermented mead.
WINTER ISSUE 1 2014
Arts & Culture
21
Yes Men CONTINUED FROM PAGE 19
5
2
See www.yesmen.org for more information about the collective’s projects.
M
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Arts & Culture
WINTER ISSUE 1 2014
Schools Tools Laila Rashidie dreams, at pause. hopes, are frozen. visions, become blurry. goals, dont exist. potenional, is lost. creativity, goes missing. this is the reality, of life in routine prison. obedience is the guard, conformity is the owner,
Devon Macpherson
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and you are the product.
“The reason why many authors take this route [pen names] is because they want to make their books more relatable to the market they are trying to sell to. Although I have heard of this occurring in past generations, I didn’t know that this phenomenon occurs today.”
forget your motives. we are the wage slaves. slap the watch on your wrist. time is the killer, and you are its partner,
A s an author it must be so amazing to walk into a bookstore and see your name stretched across your labour of love. A published book must feel like a sort of declaration to the world as well
take ownership for the gruelling hours of work that went into the text. You would think that every with anyone who tried to take this moment away from him or her, however this is not the case. Many authors both from the past, as well as in the present day, give up this sense of entitlement as they think it will make the difference between the life and death of their work. When researching for this piece I came across the issue of pen names. For those of you who don’t know what pen names are, although they have many descriptors, they most controversially occur when a male or female author chooses to write under alternate gender pseudonyms. The reason why many authors take this route is because they want to make their books more relatable to the market they are trying to sell to. Although I have heard of this occurring in past generations, I didn’t know that this phenomenon occurs today. The most shocking would undoubtedly have to be J.K. Rowling, author of the famous Harry Potter series. She chose to sign the Harry Potter books as J.K. Rowling as opposed to Joanne Rowling as the publisher believed that this would be in her best interest as far as sales were concerned. In her most recent novel, The Cuckoos Calling, she chose to forego her name again, however this time writing under the pen
name Robert Galbraith. Although she explained in an interview with the Times that choosing this pen name provided an ability to write free from the expectations of her past work, I can’t help but wonder whether this was the true motive or perhaps just a way to appeal to the primarily male audience that authors in this genre have chosen to forego their true name because of the belief that males will not pick up a book of this nature by a female author. Nora Roberts is another prime example as her work in 1995 proudly displayed the name J.D. Robb. Can we truly say that after hearing of stories like this that the publishing world is truly a place where authors can share their message with the world without the constraints of into this phenomenon the less I believed this to be the case. Males even resort to using female pen names or a male pen name distinct from their own. Most famously, Benjamin Franklin often wrote letters to the editor under various female as well as male names. Polly Baker, for example, is the name he used when writing about the unjust treatment of women who were being charged for illegitimate children when their male counterparts were not burden. Although in Franklin’s case I would say that this tool was employed as a strategy for liberating women, what is the reason for other males using this same strategy males are not considered to be an accurate knowledge source on this topic, using female names allows them feel comfortable sharing
their work with the world – that is, their “softer side.” Brindle Chase author of the April Contemporary Lover Unexpected is one example of a male using a gender-neutral pen name in order to enter into the romance genre. Another example is that of M.L. Buchman, the author of the Night Stalker series who, like J.K. Rowling, chose to use initials as opposed to his full name. When asked by Publishers Weekly why he follows this practice he commented, “I do like using my initials as so many women have done over the years to protect themselves in our society. It feels appropriately ironic.” Ironic for sure but also an interesting look into how our gender biases have made their way into our literature. So the next time you buy a book and see an author’s name stretched across the cover, don’t take it for granted that the author is who they say they are. Consider the power relations that have contributed to who gets called by what name and why sometimes names have to be given up. The gendered ink process speaks to the ways in which power and domination have shaped the way literature is produced. In a way, literature and authorship are a form of alternative media. Questions of how the gendered nature of names affects the way knowledge is passed on are critical in working toward understanding writing as a site of struggle. One thing is for sure: if I ever author a book it will proudly showcase my full name and the information on the end page will clearly declare that I am female, no matter what the genre.
but its killing you. sell your life, and you sell your dreams. thats their agenda, and you are always on schedule. no time for time, its sold, by the hour, dont count the minutes, their not yours either. but in your free time are you really free? or is that time spent on your bosses watch too? yes, it is and thats when you have sold your soul. your life is not yours, its determined by the payroll. guess we all become chattel, when we’re run by capital. life is a one time offer, and your day job is your walker to your expiration. thanks school, you set me up to be a tool. Laila Rashidie is a Toronto based poet, writer and activist. To read more of her work please visit www.bellaeshq.wordpress. com
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WINTER ISSUE 1 2014
Events Refugees: Silent Witnesses To War
their lives to run essential.
Tangled Art + Disability presents Krip-Hop Nation
When: Thursday, April 3rd, 2014 @ 7pm-9pm. Where: Room 170 @ University College, 15 When: Saturday, April 12 @ 8 PM Scarborough Seedy Sautrday & Green Fair Where: Oakham House 63 Gould St. King’s College Circle, Toronto. Details: A free lecture by Mary Jo Leddy, Founder of Romero House for refugees, an Order of Canada winner, and an Adjunct Professor of Theology at Regis College. This lecture is part of the Vital Discussions of Human Security lecture series, co-sponsered by University College Health Studies Programme, Canadian Pugwash Group, Science for Peace, and Voice of Women for Peace.
When: Saturday, March 22 @ 11 AM Details: Kicking off the 2014 Tangled Arts Where: Blessed Cardinal Newman High Festival, Tangled Art + Disability presents School - 100 Brimley Rd South Krip-Hop Nation: Toronto, a hip-hop concert Details: Over 30 tables will include organic seed vendors, green exhibits, bee products, worm composting, backyard gardening, garden associations and nature organizations . Be a steward and bring in your used electronics for recycling!
more on the Tangled Art Festival visit www. tangledarts.org Celebrate Resistance Party When: Sunday, April 13 @ 7 PM Where: Lula Lounge. 1585 Dundas West.
Pipelines, Tar Sands, And The Environment Freedom and the Letter When: Sunday April 8 @ 11 AM Where: 918 Bathurst Street, Toronto th
Details: In the last year, Toronto residents have contested a plan to pump toxic tar sands oil through the city, while the Lac Megantic disaster makes us wonder what dangers lurk on our railway lines. We’re caught up in world of increasing volatility: What can we do? At this Bagel Brunch, John Riddell and Diane Meredith will share their views on what has and can be done nationally and provincially. Diane Meredith has been active in the mining justice and Aboriginal sovereignty movement for many years and has been focusing on the issue of Tar Sands development nationally
Details An evening to honour and celebrate When: Thursday, March 27 - Sunday, April 13 African and Indigenous Resistance. This community gathering will celebrate our Where Beit Zatoun diverse culture as Latin Americans and will Details: An artistic exploration of the role of the feature Axé Capoeira, Mery Perez, Nhapitapi, written word — poetry, prophetic insight and AztecGroupfdance In Toronto and DJ No illumination — in pursuit of freedom. Inspired Capitalista. $10 in advance/$12 at the door. by the recent social and political upheaval Visit lacsn.weebly.com/events for more in the Arab world, the exhibit features seven details. acrylic paintings that offer a modern take on classical Arabic calligraphy. The paintings summon the wisdom of poets, thinkers Urban Field Speakers Series: Lara and sages transforming prose into a visual Almarcequi language that transcends words. Reception: When: Thursday, April 24 @ 7:30 PM Saturday, April 5 @ 5 pm
Seasick: When Oil and Water Don’t Mix is a member of East End Against Line 9 and When: Thursday, March 27 @ 7 - 9 PM Where: an ecosocialist activist. University College , 15 King’s college circle. Rm 179
Details: The Spanish-born, Rotterdam-based artist speaks about processes of urban transformation and the potentialities of urban wastelands. Moderated by Gina Badger, artist, urban ecologist and editorial director of Fuse Magazine.
Details: Free Public lecture with awardwining Canadian journalist and author Alanna When: Thursday, March 20th @ 6:30 PM Mitchell on her full-length book, Sea Sick :The Where: Bloor Hot Docs Cinema - 506 Bloor Global Ocean in Crisis. Mayworks Festival of Working People and Street West the Arts A River Changes Its Course
Details: This documentary intimately captures the stories of three families living in Cambodia as they strive to maintain their traditional ways of life amid rapid development and environmental degradation. Hosted by Speroway in support of the Agriculture Development and Livelihoods Project.
Earth Democracy
When: May 1- 15, 2014 Where: Various Locations
When: Saturday, March 29 @ 6:30- 9:00pm Where OISE, 252 Bloor Street West. Room 2214
Details: Mayworks Festival of Working People and the Arts is a multi-disciplinary arts festival that celebrates working class culture. Founded Details: Toronto Seed Library Volunteer and in 1986 by the Labour Arts Media Committee of Info Session & Vandana Shiva Livestream the Toronto and York Region Labour Council, Mayworks is Canada’s largest and oldest Teach-In. labour arts festival. The Festival was built on Stop the Liberal War on the Poor the premise that workers and artists share a common struggle for decent wages, healthy When: Saturday, March 22 @ 1 PM Where: working conditions and a living culture. See Toronto ABC Letter Writing to Prisoners Metro Hall, King and John www.mayworks.ca for full program Details: Meal, Rally and March against the When Sun, March 30 @ 6-9 PM Liberal austerity agenda and cuts to important Where: Beit Zatoun social services for the city’s poor. Action to demand a $ 14 dollar minimum wage indexed Details: Toronto Anarchist Black Cross (ABC) Urban Field Speaks Series : Theaster Gates monthly night of conversation and letter When: Thursday, May 15 @ 7:30. restore the spending power lost since 1995, writing at Beit Zatoun. This month’s focus for restore the Special Diet and Community Start letter-writing is recently sentenced political 401 Richmond prisoners — Rebecca Rubin, and three of the Americans extradited on Toronto 2010 G20 Details: The award-winning artist and director related charges: Richard Morano, Joel Bitar, of the Arts and Public Life initiative, University and Kevin Chianella of Chicago, speaks about his community projects that critically engage with the public, Film: Through the Fire including Dorchester Projects, a vibrant Capitalism in the Classroom cultural locus on Chicago’s South Side. When: Saturday, March 22 @ 7 - 9 PM Where: Moderated by Pamela Edmonds, independent Beit Zatoun When: Saturday, April 5 @ 8 AM - 5 PM Where: Ryerson University Students’ Union. Art Projects. Details: A Documentary about three 55 Gould St. extraordinary Somali women. Through the Fire Details: Alternate Routes: A journal of Critical showcases the resilience of Somali people, Social Research is organizing a free day with a focus on women, as they do their part in long event on Neoliberalism, Education and Progressive Alternatives. of three remarkable Somali women who risk SEND YOUR EVENTS TO: info@yufreepress.org