Shepard Fairey Occupy UPDATE !

After Conversations with Occupy Wall Street Organizers, Shepard Fairey Releases Revised “Occupy Hope” Design

By Shepard Fairey
I am not directly associated with either the Obama re-election campaign or the organizers of Occupy Wall St. After I put my Occupy HOPE image and brief statement online [last] Friday, I received responses from people and some very important issues were raised. It is hard to put across complex ideas with an image, and even harder to have a reasonable discussion in this polarizing, sound-bite oriented, media landscape, so I was grateful for some thoughtful feedback. My most eye-opening discussion was with an organizer of Occupy Wall St. who remains anonymous to preserve the lack of hierarchy within the movement. Below is a bit of our dialogue, which shows the many nuances to be navigated…

This image represents my support for the Occupy movement, a grassroots movement spawned to stand up against corruption, imbalance of power, and failure of our democracy to represent and help average Americans. On the other hand, as flawed as the system is, I see Obama as a potential ally of the Occupy movement if the energy of the movement is perceived as constructive, not destructive. I still see Obama as the closest thing to “a man on the inside” that we have presently. Obviously, just voting is not enough. We need to use all of our tools to help us achieve our goals and ideals. However, I think idealism and realism need to exist hand in hand. Change is not about one election, one rally, one leader, it is about a constant dedication to progress and a constant push in the right direction. Let’s be the people doing the right thing as outsiders and simultaneously push the insiders to do the right thing for the people. I’m still trying to work out copyright issues I may face with this image, but feel free to share it and stay tuned… -Shepard Fairey

Response from an Occupy Wall Street organizer:

Shepard,

The design is brilliant and powerful on many levels. I’m sure many people will love it. I don’t know if you know the history and evolution of the OWS 99% movement, but a core subgroup within Anonymous played a significant role, so to see that you used the V mask is very fitting. That being said, if it is not too late, we would like to make suggestions that we believe will make the design much more broadly accepted within the movement. You’re the artistic genius, so take what we say for whatever it’s worth to you.

Unfortunately, as it stands now, I myself and several other organizers cannot in any way be connected to this design. The 99% movement is wholly non-partisan and we have been repeatedly attacked as being a front for Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. Our movement is about uniting people, from all different walks of life and all different political viewpoints, against the global financial elite who have bought control of our government through campaign finance, lobbying and the revolving door.

As Obama has raised more money from Wall Street than any other candidate in history, it would make us naive hypocrites to support him under present circumstances. I have written many investigative reports on our economic crisis, I know the situation very well from a policy perspective. All hope was lost with Obama as soon as he picked Tim Geithner as his Treasury Secretary. He also made Larry Summers his lead economic advisor and Bill Daley his Chief of Staff. He even supported the reconfirmation of the Bush-chosen Fed chairman Ben Bernanke. You cannot have a worse group of people when it comes to the economic destruction of the US. Geithner, Summers and Bernanke have made a career out of exploiting the 99%.

Some of us are of the opinion that Romney would be worse than Obama on some issues and many OWS supporters may end up voting for Obama over Romney. However, this movement is about empowering people to take actions themselves to fight for the structural change we urgently need. To reduce us to an Obama re-election campaign will not help anyone. Our political system is corrupt and broken. As naive as it may sound, we have to stop looking to leaders and we must be the change.

When you say that you “see Obama as a potential ally of the Occupy movement if the energy of the movement is perceived as constructive, not destructive.” That is a highly offensive and disrespectful comment. Everything we do is designed to be constructive. In the face of repeated police brutality, we have remained non-violent. We use the money that has been donated to us to feed people at our camps that don’t get food otherwise. We have medical professionals and psychologists who help people who can’t afford care. We had drug addicts directed to our camps by the police in attempts to make us look bad, and we have professional councilors treating them if they need or want help. We have put our bodies on the line in a peaceful non-violent manner so we can give voice to the voiceless. Our camps have become a place where people can air their grievances and engage in dialogue to find constructive ways out of the dire situation they are in. Of course the Fox News type outlets are going to work to create a false impression, but why would you feed into their propaganda framing?

As for the design, the fact that you put the 99% inside the Obama O is crossing a sacred line. While it definitely looks cool, whether intended or not, this sends a clear message that Obama is co-opting OWS. Just the fact that you are the person creating the design and using your iconic red, white and blue gives the Obama connection more than enough room to make your pro-Obama statement. Without the 99% being in his O, it would be a fair balance of interests, in my opinion. With the 99% being in his O, this sends a clear message that Obama is attempting to co-opt OWS and creates serious problems for the movement.

Also, given the fact that Obama’s HOPE is written out just as it was last time, it is again excessive and in my opinion weak to pleadingly address the president as hoping he is on our side. If you want to win over the movement in a genuine way, I would suggest saying something like “We Are Hope” and then underneath the word “Hope” you can really get some street cred by writing, “Expect Us.”

Obviously, this is your design and powerful statement, and you are brilliant in conveying your message. I’m sure you will find a large audience that will love it. Given my admiration and respect for you as an artist, I am conflicted in the fact that I cannot support or endorse this as it currently is. Depending on the intensity of the backlash that the movement endures in response to it, I sincerely hope that we can find ways to work together moving forward. I will do my best not to publicly comment on it and will work to advise other organizers to not speak out against it. Sorry for having to write these things, my every move has been under intense scrutiny. At the end of the day, I have great respect for you and your art.

Shepard’s response:

I get everything you are saying. I don’t agree with all of it, but I appreciate it. I get that the Occupy movement is non-partisan. I see a conflict for you and the movement there. However, my poster is not in any way a re-elect Obama poster. I have zero contact with the Obama campaign. I am disappointed with many aspects of Obama’s presidency and I am far from an unconditional Obama supporter. The round logo I made is not Obama’s O logo. His O uses curved stripes and a white sun. The stripes in my 99% logo are straight. I saw my 99% logo as subverting his logo more than amplifying it. I wanted a patriotic frame for the 99% logo to assert that the Occupy movement IS patriotic. The use of the word HOPE is more saying that Occupy is the greatest Hope we now have, but it would be great if Occupy pushed Obama in the right direction. You may find any appeal to Obama to support Occupy as unrealistic, but I have always believed in working EVERY angle. I’ve called it the “inside/outside strategy” for many years. Outsider activism is where I come from, but outsider elitism is incredibly unhealthy because it excludes moderates.

I have no interest in pandering to Obama. I see my image as a reminder to him that he has alienated his populist progressive supporters. If the threat of not being re-elected pushes Obama to do more to reform Wall St. etc… then I’m all for that! I’m also terrified of a Republican taking office. I voted for Nader in 2000 and if people like me won Bush that election I’ll regret that forever. I did not make the Occupy HOPE image to become THE image for Occupy. I believe very strongly in the Occupy movement, but I’m looking more at the politics of the entire nation than the politics within Occupy. I’m sure I may not be extreme enough for some people. When I said “if the movement is perceived as constructive, not destructive” I mean exactly that… PERCEIVED. I am trying to be realistic, not offensive. I have written that the movement is intelligent, civilized, peaceful, and tolerant in stark contrast to the Tea Party, but I have also been to Occupy LA and NY and seen and heard some views that I think undermine the movement’s potential to resonate. Some of the loudest people are putting across anti-capitalist, anti-government messages. I have plenty of issues with capitalist greed and our government’s policies, but constructive phrasing about reform is essential. I’m not feeding into Fox’s framing, I’ve witnessed this myself. I’m all for freedom of speech, but I desperately want the movement to succeed!

Most of the rhetoric is not too radical for me, but I’m well aware that much of the country is scared and cautious. I know that you and the organizers are very intelligent, dedicated, and engaged. I meant no disrespect to 98% of the 99%. I’m incredibly frustrated too, but evolution, much less “revolution”, scares most people. I want progress to be made! I made a series of images calling out villains and issues (I actually made these several months before Occupy started): http://obeygiant.com/support-the-occupy-movement-free-downloads I donate money and art to rootstrikers.org. I want campaign finance reform ASAP. We may disagree on some things. I want to support Occupy as much as I can without undermining its potential to move things in the right direction. I have tons of issues with the two-party system, but I don’t see it being dismantled any time soon. I want reform to happen and I’m trying to look at realistic routes to ideal outcomes. I’m very open to hearing suggestions from you, and I’d also be into sharing this dialogue publicly if you are open to that. I think it could be valuable to people to hear a thoughtful discussion of these issues. Let me know.

-Shepard

LEGO Hard Core Show for Black Friday!

Remember this Thanks Giving Day:You Cannot Evict An Idea.

and a note from Michael Moore:

Where Does Occupy Wall Street Go From Here? ...a proposal from Michael Moore

Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011

Friends,

This past weekend I participated in a four-hour meeting of Occupy Wall Street activists whose job it is to come up with the vision and goals of the movement. It was attended by 40+ people and the discussion was both inspiring and invigorating. Here is what we ended up proposing as the movement's "vision statement" to the General Assembly of Occupy Wall Street:

We Envision: [1] a truly free, democratic, and just society; [2] where we, the people, come together and solve our problems by consensus; [3] where people are encouraged to take personal and collective responsibility and participate in decision making; [4] where we learn to live in harmony and embrace principles of toleration and respect for diversity and the differing views of others; [5] where we secure the civil and human rights of all from violation by tyrannical forces and unjust governments; [6] where political and economic institutions work to benefit all, not just the privileged few; [7] where we provide full and free education to everyone, not merely to get jobs but to grow and flourish as human beings; [8] where we value human needs over monetary gain, to ensure decent standards of living without which effective democracy is impossible; [9] where we work together to protect the global environment to ensure that future generations will have safe and clean air, water and food supplies, and will be able to enjoy the beauty and bounty of nature that past generations have enjoyed.

The next step will be to develop a specific list of goals and demands. As one of the millions of people who are participating in the Occupy Wall Street movement, I would like to respectfully offer my suggestions of what we can all get behind now to wrestle the control of our country out of the hands of the 1% and place it squarely with the 99% majority.

Here is what I will propose to the General Assembly of Occupy Wall Street:

10 Things We Want
A Proposal for Occupy Wall Street
Submitted by Michael Moore

1. Eradicate the Bush tax cuts for the rich and institute new taxes on the wealthiest Americans and on corporations, including a tax on all trading on Wall Street (where they currently pay 0%).

2. Assess a penalty tax on any corporation that moves American jobs to other countries when that company is already making profits in America. Our jobs are the most important national treasure and they cannot be removed from the country simply because someone wants to make more money.

3. Require that all Americans pay the same Social Security tax on all of their earnings (normally, the middle class pays about 6% of their income to Social Security; someone making $1 million a year pays about 0.6% (or 90% less than the average person). This law would simply make the rich pay what everyone else pays.

4. Reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, placing serious regulations on how business is conducted by Wall Street and the banks.

5. Investigate the Crash of 2008, and bring to justice those who committed any crimes.

6. Reorder our nation's spending priorities (including the ending of all foreign wars and their cost of over $2 billion a week). This will re-open libraries, reinstate band and art and civics classes in our schools, fix our roads and bridges and infrastructure, wire the entire country for 21st century internet, and support scientific research that improves our lives.

7. Join the rest of the free world and create a single-payer, free and universal health care system that covers all Americans all of the time.

8. Immediately reduce carbon emissions that are destroying the planet and discover ways to live without the oil that will be depleted and gone by the end of this century.

9. Require corporations with more than 10,000 employees to restructure their board of directors so that 50% of its members are elected by the company’s workers. We can never have a real democracy as long as most people have no say in what happens at the place they spend most of their time: their job. (For any U.S. businesspeople freaking out at this idea because you think workers can't run a successful company: Germany has a law like this and it has helped to make Germany the world’s leading manufacturing exporter.)

10. We, the people, must pass three constitutional amendments that will go a long way toward fixing the core problems we now have. These include:

a) A constitutional amendment that fixes our broken electoral system by 1) completely removing campaign contributions from the political process; 2) requiring all elections to be publicly financed; 3) moving election day to the weekend to increase voter turnout; 4) making all Americans registered voters at the moment of their birth; 5) banning computerized voting and requiring that all elections take place on paper ballots.

b) A constitutional amendment declaring that corporations are not people and do not have the constitutional rights of citizens. This amendment should also state that the interests of the general public and society must always come before the interests of corporations.

c) A constitutional amendment that will act as a "second bill of rights" as proposed by President Frankin D. Roosevelt: that every American has a human right to employment, to health care, to a free and full education, to breathe clean air, drink clean water and eat safe food, and to be cared for with dignity and respect in their old age.

Let me know what you think. Occupy Wall Street enjoys the support of millions. It is a movement that cannot be stopped. Become part of it by sharing your thoughts with me or online (at OccupyWallSt.org). Get involved in (or start!) your own local Occupy movement. Make some noise. You don't have to pitch a tent in lower Manhattan to be an Occupier. You are one just by saying you are. This movement has no singular leader or spokesperson; every participant is a leader in their neighborhood, their school, their place of work. Each of you is a spokesperson to those whom you encounter. There are no dues to pay, no permission to seek in order to create an action.

We are but ten weeks old, yet we have already changed the national conversation. This is our moment, the one we've been hoping for, waiting for. If it's going to happen it has to happen now. Don't sit this one out. This is the real deal. This is it.

Have a happy Thanksgiving!

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@MichaelMoore.com
@MMFlint
MichaelMoore.com

Who Says Angry People Don't Have A sense of Humor? Fuck'em!

My Life as a Turkey

Watch My Life as a Turkey on PBS. See more from NATURE.

OCCUPY HOPE a note from my friend Shepard Fairey

This image represents my support for the Occupy movement, a grassroots movement spawned to stand up against corruption, imbalance of power, and failure of our democracy to represent and help average Americans. On the other hand, as flawed as the system is, I see Obama as a potential ally of the Occupy movement if the energy of the movement is perceived as constructive, not destructive. I still see Obama as the closest thing to “a man on the inside” that we have presently. Obviously, just voting is not enough. We need to use all of our tools to help us achieve our goals and ideals. However, I think idealism and realism need to exist hand in hand. Change is not about one election, one rally, one leader, it is about a constant dedication to progress and a constant push in the right direction. Let’s be the people doing the right thing as outsiders and simultaneously push the insiders to do the right thing for the people. I’m still trying to work out copyright issues I may face with this image, but feel free to share it and stay tuned…
-Shepard Fairey

from OBEY

Dorli Rainey - Sunday Inspiration - Listen Up!

Eighty-four-year-old activist Dorli Rainey tells Keith Olberman about her experience getting pepper-sprayed by the police during an Occupy Seattle demonstration and the need to take action and spread the word of the Occupy movement. She cites the advice of the late Catholic nun and activist Jackie Hudson to "take one more step out of your comfort zone" as an inspiration, saying, "It would be so easy to say, 'Well I'm going to retire, I'm going to sit around, watch television or eat bonbons,' but somebody's got to keep 'em awake and let 'em know what is really going on in this world."

Congress: pizza is a vegetable when it is fed to children

from BoingBoing:

After intense lobbying from frozen pizza makers, and the potato and salt industry, Congress is poised to pass a spending bill whose riders establish that pizza is a vegetable and can be served in school cafeterias in substitute for actual vegetables.

We’re now facing a policy decision that has replaced science-backed common sense with the assertion that pizza ought to count as a vegetable when it’s served to schoolchildren.

(Side note: we’re not even talking about whole-grain pizza loaded with veggie toppings! We’re talking about frozen cheese pizza with tomato paste.)

If you want to take a look at the bill’s language, go for it, but the main takeaway is this: our Congressional leaders are on a fast track to overrule nutrition science in favor of political expediency. This is a dangerous precedent to set and not good public policy.

Pizza Counts as a Vegetable? How the Spending Bill in Congress Could Unravel Progress on School Nutrition (via Reddit)

TERMINATOR is Born and it's Given Name is ASIMO HONDA

The is not a human in a costume, it's a humanoid robot built by Honda. This is absolutely incredible and insanely creepy at the same time.

Honda unveiled the latest version of their humanoid robot, All-new ASIMO, on November 8th 2011. This video shows some of its capabilities.







More info:
http://world.honda.com/news/2011/c111108All-new-ASIMO/index.html
http://www.plasticpals.com/?p=30620

Chomsky on Vegetarianism

From Z Magazine, November 2001
(I think, though it seems to come from an interview from between '93 and '96.)

THE NEXT STEP. file under: WAKE UP MOTHERFUCKERS!

Thursday
November 17th
National Day of Action
Facebook Event | Twitter #N17 | Direct Action Resources

On Thursday November 17th, the two month anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement, we call upon the 99% to participate in a national day of direct action and celebration!

New York City Schedule

BREAKFAST: Shut Down Wall Street - 7:00 a.m.

Enough of this economy that exploits and divides us. It's time we put an end to Wall Street's reign of terror and begin building an economy that works for all. We will gather in Liberty Square at 7:00 a.m., before the ring of the Trading Floor Bell, to prepare to confront Wall Street with the stories of people on the frontlines of economic injustice. There, before the Stock Exchange, we will exchange stories rather than stocks.

LUNCH: Occupy The Subways - 3:00 p.m.

We will start by Occupying Our Blocks! Then throughout the five boroughs, we will gather at 16 central subway hubs and take our own stories to the trains, using the "People's Mic".

Bronx
Fordham Rd
3rd Ave, 138th Street
163rd and Southern Blvd
161st and River - Yankee Stadium
Brooklyn
Broadway Junction
Borough Hall
301 Grove Street
St Jose Patron Church,185 Suydam St, Bushwick
Queens
Jackson Heights/Roosevelt Ave.
Jamaica Center/Parsons/Archer
92-10 Roosevelt Avenue, Jackson Heights
Manhattan
125th St. A,B,C,D
Union Sq. (Mass student strike)
23rd St and 8th Ave
Staten Island
St. George, Staten Island Ferry Terminal
479 Port Richmond Avenue, Port Richmond
DINNER: Take The Square - 5:00 p.m.

At 5 pm, tens of thousands of people will gather at Foley Square (just across from City Hall) in solidarity with laborers demanding jobs to rebuild this country's infrastructure and economy. A gospel choir and a marching band will also be performing.

Afterwards we will march to our bridges. Let's make it as musical a march as possible - bring your songs, your voice, your spirit! Our "Musical" on the bridge will culminate in a festival of light as we mark the two-month anniversary of the #occupy movement, and our commitment to shining light into our broken economic and political system.

Resist austerity. Rebuild the economy. Reclaim our democracy.

from: http://occupywallst.org

NYC Transit Rules of Conduct Re: Skateboarding

NYC Transit Rules of Conduct -
It is a violation to:
Stand on a skateboard
Jump the turnstile or enter the system improperly
Move between end doors of a subway car whether or not train is in motion
Damage subway or bus property - that includes graffiti or scratches

Filmed and edited by Colin Read.

Probably The Most Beautiful Images I've Ever Seen Of Our Planet

Earth | Time Lapse View from Space | Fly Over | Nasa, ISS



Notes from the Vimeo page where the video was found:

Note: Still couldn't find any appropriate, reliable source describing
the technical setting for this footage. The same applies to any specific
information about the responsible person in charge of the photographs.
Please let me know, if you have any information, links or the like.

Time lapse sequences of photographs taken with a special low-light 4K-camera
by the crew of expedition 28 & 29 onboard the International Space Station from
August to October, 2011. All credit goes to them.

HD, refurbished, smoothed, retimed, denoised, deflickered, cut, etc.

Music: Jan Jelinek | Do Dekor, faitiche back2001
w+p by Jan Jelinek, published by Betke Edition
janjelinek.com | faitiche.de

Editing: Michael König | koenigm.com

Image Courtesy of the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory,
NASA Johnson Space Center, The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth
eol.jsc.nasa.gov

Shooting locations in order of appearance:

1. Aurora Borealis Pass over the United States at Night
2. Aurora Borealis and eastern United States at Night
3. Aurora Australis from Madagascar to southwest of Australia
4. Aurora Australis south of Australia
5. Northwest coast of United States to Central South America at Night
6. Aurora Australis from the Southern to the Northern Pacific Ocean
7. Halfway around the World
8. Night Pass over Central Africa and the Middle East
9. Evening Pass over the Sahara Desert and the Middle East
10. Pass over Canada and Central United States at Night
11. Pass over Southern California to Hudson Bay
12. Islands in the Philippine Sea at Night
13. Pass over Eastern Asia to Philippine Sea and Guam
14. Views of the Mideast at Night
15. Night Pass over Mediterranean Sea
16. Aurora Borealis and the United States at Night
17. Aurora Australis over Indian Ocean
18. Eastern Europe to Southeastern Asia at Night

High Speed Liquid and Bubble Photographs by Heinz Maier

from COLOSSAL art+design:

It never ceases to amaze: just when you think you’ve seen every possible permutation of an artform or technique—be it figurative sculpture, stop motion animation, or in this case, high speed photography—somebody comes along and manages to do something radically different. German photographer Heinz Maier says that he began taking photographs less than a year ago in late 2010. He claims to not know what direction he’s heading in just yet, right now he’s experimenting with macro photography, mostly insects, animals, and these delicate high speed water droplets. Personally, I think he’s found a great direction. There are so many things happening here to make these photographs simply outstanding: the lighting, the colors, the occasional use of symmetry in the reflection of water, let alone the skill of knowing how to use the camera itself. It’s hard to believe these aren’t digital. See much more of his work here.

Baby Marx Visits Occupy Wall Street

The Story of Broke

TRANSCRIPT

These last few years, I’ve had to get a lot more careful about how I spend my paycheck. Everyone has. Like I’m eating out less often, holding back on expenses I don’t really need, saving for my kid’s college.

I’m getting more responsible, taking control of how I spend.

But one thing I can’t control is that every month a big chunk of my paycheck goes off to the government.

It’s not the most fun part of my budget, but I believe in paying taxes.

Not just because it’s the law but because that’s how
I invest in a better future that I can’t afford to build on my own.

You know that future we all want and nearly every candidate promises us — great schools, a healthy environment, clean energy, good jobs.

But a funny thing happens to our money on its way to that better future. It seems to disappear.

And by the time we get around to investing in it, all we hear is, “sorry, not this year, we’re broke.”

In fact, we’re so broke, they say, that we have no choice but to slide backwards, cutting things that made this country great — like schools and the EPA , maybe even Social Security and Medicare.

Wait a minute. Broke? I’m sending in my share of hard-earned cash every month and so are you!

Now, what we’ve got to work with shrinks a lot thanks to corporate tax loopholes and unprecedented tax breaks for the richest 1%.

But even after those, we’ve still got over a trillion dollars.

So if we’re broke, what’s happening to all that money?
I decided to look into it and it turns out this whole “broke” story hides a much bigger story — a story of some really dumb choices being made for us — but that actually work against us. The good news is that these are choices, and we can make different ones.

So, where is all that money going?

Well ?rst the military takes a big chunk – $726 billion in 2011.

Wow! We could build a lot of better future with that kind
of money.

Spending billions on ?ghter planes we don’t need or wars with no end, and then saying we’re broke, just isn’t honest. It’s like calling your kid from your billion-dollar yacht to say you can’t afford her lunch money.

Then hundreds of billions more go to propping up the dinosaur economy. You know, the obsolete system we talked about in The Story of Stuff — the one that produces more pollution, greenhouse gasses and garbage than any other on Earth — and doesn’t even make us happy. In so many ways, it’s just not working, but we’re keeping it in on life support instead of building something better.

A lot of that life support comes in the form of subsidies.

A subsidy is a giveaway that gives some companies a lift over others. That’s not necessarily a bad thing — we should help companies that are building a better future. The problem is the government keeps lifting up companies that are actually dragging us down.

Everywhere you look along the dinosaur economy, you’ll ?nd these subsidies.

There’s spending subsidies: where the government just gives our money away — like payments that bene?t big agribusiness, while helping drive family farms off a cliff.

Or the less obvious version where the government foots the bill for things corporations should pay for themselves like cleaning up toxic chemical spills or giant livestock manure ponds.

Or building roads that go to only one place — a new Walmart.

Or paying for polluting and wasteful garbage incinerators that would never make ?nancial sense to build on their own.

Then there’s tax subsidies: which excuse big corporations from contributing their fair share — like the enormous tax breaks granted to oil and gas companies even in times of record pro?ts.

These subsidies amount to billions of dollars we should be collecting and putting to good use.

And there’s risk transfer subsidies: where the government acts as an investment bank and even an insurance company for corporations doing risky things, like building nuclear reactors.

If anything goes wrong, we have to cover for them.

There’s freebie subsidies: where the government gives stuff that belongs to all of us to corporations for cheap or even free. That’s billions more we should be collecting but never see! Like permits to mine public lands, granted at prices set
in the Mining Law of 1872.

Really. 1872. President Grant signed this law to encourage settlement of the West. News ?ash: it’s settled.

And all this doesn’t even count externalized costs. They don’t show up on any spreadsheet and could amount to trillions of dollars — they include the damage to the environment, public health and the climate that this dinosaur economy causes. Without laws that make the polluters pay, we all pay with the loss of clean water and air, or increased asthma and
cancer.

By the time we’ve handed out all these subsidies, there isn’t even enough money to pay our bills — forget about building
the better future.

So why is there always enough money for the dinosaur economy, from big oil to bailouts for big banks, but when it comes to building a better future we’re supposedly broke? Maybe it’s because these guys know how to ask for it.

Their lobbyists and giant campaign contributions let the government know what they want, and what they’ll do if they don’t get it. And it works. US Senators who voted to keep big oil subsidies in 2011 had received 5 times more in Big Oil campaign cash than those who voted to end them.

So, while subsidies should be a tool for government to help companies that are helping all of us, instead, they’ve become a prize for those with the most power to get on the handout list.

But you know who has the real power? We do! What if we got as protective of our tax dollars as we are with the rest of our money? What if we told the government what we want and what we’ll do if we don’t get it – starting with voting them out!

We could re-direct these dinosaur subsidies, freeing up hundreds of billions of dollars. Forget broke, we could build a
better future right now!

We could start by reinvesting the $10 billion in oil and gas subsidies
to renewable energy and energy ef?ciency projects.

With just half of that amount, we could put solar systems on over two million rooftops. Then use the rest to retro?t half a million homes, creating jobs and saving energy year after year.

The average cost of cleaning up a toxic site on the Superfund list is $140 million.

Let’s make the polluters pay and instead invest our money in developing safer materials so we don’t have to worry about them spilling in the ?rst place.

Most chemicals today are made from oil — that’s why they are called petro-chemicals. Switching just 20% of them to biobased materials would create over 100,000 new jobs.

Instead of subsidizing garbage incinerators, let’s subsidize real solutions, like zero waste.

Raising the US recycling rate to 75% would create one and a half million new jobs — with less pollution, less waste, less pressure to harvest and
mine new stuff. What’s not to like?

That would still leave hundreds of billions of dollars for improving education — the best investment for a healthy
economy. With $100 billion, we could increase the number of elementary school teachers by over 40% and give college scholarships to over 6 million students.

See, we can rebuild the American Dream; we can afford to have a healthy environment, good jobs, and top-notch public education. But not if we continue subsidizing the dinosaur economy.

So next time you have an idea for a better future and someone tells you, “that’s nice, but there’s no money for that,” you tell them we’re not broke.

There is money, it’s ours, and it’s time to invest it right.

Incredible Swarms

"Amazing flock of starlings filmed flying over Oxfordshire, Scotland.




"Swarming fish, demonstrating distributed computing..."

Occupy Wall Street vs The Tea Party

Infographic courtesy of Accelerated Degree

THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND DOCUMENTARY FROM 1976

from DangerousMinds

Directed by Emile de Antonio, Haskell Wexler and Mary Lampson, Underground (1976) tells the story of radical activists the Weathermen via interviews and news footage of the civil rights and anti-war protests of the 1960s and 70s.

De Antonio reports that he had little difficulty contacting the radicals-in-hiding. Along with cameraman Haskell Wexler and editor Mary Lampson, he filmed the interview in a California safe house, avoiding his subjects’ faces by filming them through sheets and from behind. One camera angle used by De Antonio became a hot topic of discussion among film students. The Weathermen and women are filmed through a mirror. We see De Antonio, Lampson and Wexler with his camera staring right at us, but only the backs of the subjects’ heads. The angle states exactly how the film was made and acknowledges the presence of a camera at all times. What’s more, it suggests that the filmmakers are an active part of the testimony, and not separate from it. To some the shot suggests solidarity with the Weathermen. Others see it as a challenge to the F.B.I.: we’re exercising our First Amendment rights and we’re not hiding from anybody.”

De Antonio, Wexler and Lampson were subpoenaed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in an effort to locate the Weathermen. The film was pulled from circulation.

The three, all prominent within the Hollywood community, hired the best lawyers that they could find, and with the support of other filmmakers and actors, including Elia Kazan, Shirley MacLaine, Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty, were able to get the subpoenas repealed . The three were able to use their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, as well as the rights of journalistic integrity which allow for confidentiality of sources.

The Weather Underground were a divisive force within the anti-war movement. Their violent approach to protest, which included bombing symbols of the corporate war machine, was reviled by pacifists who felt their tactics were just a mirror image of the forces the peace movement was railing against. But despite their lack of support, The Weather Underground managed to shake up the system without anyone getting killed but themselves. Three Weathermen died when a nailbomb blew up in a townhouse on 11th street in Manhattan in 1970.

THE PEOPLE VS.GOLDMAN SACHS: CORNEL WEST AND CHRIS HEDGES PRESIDING

from DangerousMinds

Thanks to New York photographer Robert Chin for videotaping this and uploading it to Youtube.

Recorded November 3, 2011, 10.15am. The People vs. Goldman Sachs mock trial people’s hearing held at Liberty a/k/a Zuccotti Park with fiery commentary by Dr. Cornel West, eloquence by Chris Hedges, and testimonies from people directly affected by Goldman Sach policies.

You can keep up-to-date with the always compelling Cornel West at his website.

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize winning human rights journalist who writes a weekly column for Truthdig .

This is the kind of street theater we need to see in cities all across America. In addition to marching and occupying public places, we need to explore creative and provocative ways to capture the attention of the media. In our ADD culture, we’ve got to keep things interesting. West and Hedges are taking a page from the Abbie Hoffman play book.



Hedges was arrested along with 15 other protesters following the “people’s trial” when they staged a sit-in outside the headquarters of Goldman Sachs.

The Gothamist reports:

Over a dozen Occupy Wall Street protesters were arrested today outside Goldman Sachs, where they had marched with 300 others after holding a mock trial of CEO Lloyd Blankfein. Among those arrested were performance artist gadfly Reverend Billy and author and columnist Chris Hedges, who is a senior fellow at The Nation Institute. Hedges and the Rev joined several others in a direct action protest outside the firm, sitting down on the sidewalk, linking arms, and refusing to leave. It seems clear the activists intended to be arrested; earlier today Reverend Billy tweeted, “I’ll spend the afternoon in a police van with Chris Hedges and come out ten times more READY for the miracle! Revolujah!”

A Couple of Songs to Wake You The Fuck Up

One New One Old - both killin' it!

First let's go with the present. Atari Teen Age Riot has released the 2nd edit of their fan based video mash-up re-mix, "Black Flags" this version of the song is timely and features Boots Riley throwing down some extra vocals. DOPE!




The old is from The Sonics, I've heard the songs before but never until recently knew who these bad ass motherfuckers were. This song is from 1965, dig it!

Noam Chomsky at Occupy Boston - Occupy the Future -

This article is adapted from Noam Chomsky's talk at the Occupy Boston encampment on Dewey Square on Oct. 22. He spoke as part of the Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture Series held by Occupy Boston's on-site Free University. Zinn was a historian, activist and author of "A People's History of the United States.")

Delivering a Howard Zinn lecture is a bittersweet experience for me. I regret that he's not here to take part in and invigorate a movement that would have been the dream of his life. Indeed, he laid a lot of the groundwork for it.

If the bonds and associations being established in these remarkable events can be sustained through a long, hard period ahead, victories don't come quickly, the Occupy protests could mark a significant moment in American history.

I've never seen anything quite like the Occupy movement in scale and character, here and worldwide. The Occupy outposts are trying to create cooperative communities that just might be the basis for the kinds of lasting organizations necessary to overcome the barriers ahead and the backlash that's already coming.

That the Occupy movement is unprecedented seems appropriate because this is an unprecedented era, not just at this moment but since the 1970s.

The 1970s marked a turning point for the United States. Since the country began, it had been a developing society, not always in very pretty ways, but with general progress toward industrialization and wealth.

Even in dark times, the expectation was that the progress would continue. I'm just old enough to remember the Great Depression. By the mid-1930s, even though the situation was objectively much harsher than today, the spirit was quite different.

A militant labor movement was organizing, the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations) and others, and workers were staging sit-down strikes, just one step from taking over the factories and running them themselves.

Under popular pressure, New Deal legislation was passed. The prevailing sense was that we would get out of the hard times.

Now there's a sense of hopelessness, sometimes despair. This is quite new in our history. During the 1930s, working people could anticipate that the jobs would come back. Today, if you're a worker in manufacturing, with unemployment practically at Depression levels, you know that those jobs may be gone forever if current policies persist.

That change in the American outlook has evolved since the 1970s. In a reversal, several centuries of industrialization turned to de-industrialization. Of course manufacturing continued, but overseas, very profitable, though harmful to the workforce.

The economy shifted to financialization. Financial institutions expanded enormously. A vicious cycle between finance and politics accelerated. Increasingly, wealth concentrated in the financial sector. Politicians, faced with the rising cost of campaigns, were driven ever deeper into the pockets of wealthy backers.

And the politicians rewarded them with policies favorable to Wall Street: deregulation, tax changes, relaxation of rules of corporate governance, which intensified the vicious cycle. Collapse was inevitable. In 2008, the government once again came to the rescue of Wall Street firms presumably too big to fail, with leaders too big to jail.

Today, for the one-tenth of 1 percent of the population who benefited most from these decades of greed and deceit, everything is fine.

In 2005, Citigroup, which, by the way, has repeatedly been saved by government bailouts, saw the wealthy as a growth opportunity. The bank released a brochure for investors that urged them to put their money into something called the Plutonomy Index, which identified stocks in companies that cater to the luxury market.

"The world is dividing into two blocs, the plutonomy and the rest," Citigroup summarized. "The U.S., U.K. and Canada are the key plutonomies, economies powered by the wealthy."

As for the non-rich, they're sometimes called the precariat, people who live a precarious existence at the periphery of society. The "periphery" however, has become a substantial proportion of the population in the U.S. and elsewhere.

So we have the plutonomy and the precariat: the 1 percent and the 99 percent, as Occupy sees it, not literal numbers, but the right picture.

The historic reversal in people's confidence about the future is a reflection of tendencies that could become irreversible. The Occupy protests are the first major popular reaction that could change the dynamic.

I've kept to domestic issues. But two dangerous developments in the international arena overshadow everything else.

For the first time in human history, there are real threats to the survival of the human species. Since 1945 we have had nuclear weapons, and it seems a miracle we have survived them. But policies of the Obama administration and its allies are encouraging escalation.

The other threat, of course, is environmental catastrophe. Practically every country in the world is taking at least halting steps to do something about it. The United States is taking steps backward. A propaganda system, openly acknowledged by the business community, declares that climate change is all a liberal hoax: Why pay attention to these scientists?

If this intransigence continues in the richest, most powerful country in the world, the catastrophe won't be averted.

Something must be done in a disciplined, sustained way, and soon. It won't be easy to proceed. There will be hardships and failures, it's inevitable. But unless the process that's taking place here and elsewhere in the country and around the world continues to grow and becomes a major force in society and politics, the chances for a decent future are bleak.

You can't achieve significant initiatives without a large, active, popular base. It's necessary to get out into the country and help people understand what the Occupy movement is about, what they themselves can do, and what the consequences are of not doing anything.

Organizing such a base involves education and activism. Education doesn't mean telling people what to believe, it means learning from them and with them.

Karl Marx said, "The task is not just to understand the world but to change it." A variant to keep in mind is that if you want to change the world you'd better try to understand it. That doesn't mean listening to a talk or reading a book, though that's helpful sometimes. You learn from participating. You learn from others. You learn from the people you're trying to organize. We all have to gain the understanding and the experience to formulate and implement ideas.

The most exciting aspect of the Occupy movement is the construction of the linkages that are taking place all over. If they can be sustained and expanded, Occupy can lead to dedicated efforts to set society on a more humane course.

© 2011 Noam Chomsky

Finding Life Beyond Earth: Take A Spectacular Trip

Guess what? We are on the verge of answering one of the greatest questions in history: Are we alone?

From NOVA and PBS come this must see episode Finding Life Beyond Earth. Turn the sound up, chill out and go on this 2+ hour animated space journey where NOVA asks the questions about how planet earth came to be and what’s going on with other nearby planets and whether any signs of life will soon be found.

Hearing all about the mysteries of space reminds us that that planet earth is just a tiny speck in relation to the rest of the universe. For example, did you know that 1,300 Earth’s could fit inside Jupiter? We’re also incredibly vulnerable to a major cosmic event happening that could drastically change the course or destroy the planet as we know it. Two awe-inspiring and slightly terrifying thoughts that can put things in perspective rather quickly.

How’s that for reality TV?

Take a spectacular trip to distant realms of our solar system to discover where secret forms of life may lie hidden. Combining the latest telescope images with dazzling animation, this program immerses audiences in the sights and sounds of alien worlds, while top astrobiologists explain how these places are changing how we think about the potential for life in our solar system. We used to think our neighboring planets and moons were fairly boring—mostly cold, dead rocks where life could never take hold. Today, however, the solar system looks wilder than we ever imagined.

Powerful telescopes and unmanned space missions have revealed a wide range of dynamic environments—atmospheres thick with organic molecules, active volcanoes, and vast saltwater oceans. This ongoing revolution is forcing scientists to expand their ideas about what kinds of worlds could support life. If we do find primitive life-forms elsewhere in the solar system, it may well be that life is common in the universe—the rule, and not the exception.

Watch Finding Life Beyond Earth on PBS. See more from NOVA.

Watch Finding Life Beyond Earth on PBS. See more from NOVA.

Watch Finding Life Beyond Earth on PBS. See more from NOVA.

Watch Finding Life Beyond Earth on PBS. See more from NOVA.

Watch Finding Life Beyond Earth on PBS. See more from NOVA.

Watch Finding Life Beyond Earth on PBS. See more from NOVA.

Watch Finding Life Beyond Earth on PBS. See more from NOVA.

Watch Finding Life Beyond Earth on PBS. See more from NOVA.

Watch Finding Life Beyond Earth on PBS. See more from NOVA.

Watch Finding Life Beyond Earth on PBS. See more from NOVA.

Watch Finding Life Beyond Earth on PBS. See more from NOVA.

thanks, Shocklee.com

Finding Cool Photos In The Crates

Above is my classic picture of Milo Aukerman of the DESCENDANTS that I first printed in MY RULES and then later in FUCK YOU TOO. I shot this photo at the Dancing Waters club in San Pedro, CA back in early 1982.

Old friend Jordan Schwartz of We Got Power fanzine and We Got Power Films recently dug up the photo of me below shooting what looks like the exact moment i shot the very same photo of Milo above. Pretty cool when this stuff turns up.


(as usual click on the images to see them bigger)

First Follower: Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy

Transcript:

If you've learned a lot about leadership and making a movement, then let's watch a movement happen, start to finish, in under 3 minutes, and dissect some lessons:

A leader needs the guts to stand alone and look ridiculous. But what he's doing is so simple, it's almost instructional. This is key. You must be easy to follow!

Now comes the first follower with a crucial role: he publicly shows everyone how to follow. Notice the leader embraces him as an equal, so it's not about the leader anymore - it's about them, plural. Notice he's calling to his friends to join in. It takes guts to be a first follower! You stand out and brave ridicule, yourself. Being a first follower is an under-appreciated form of leadership. The first follower transforms a lone nut into a leader. If the leader is the flint, the first follower is the spark that makes the fire.

The 2nd follower is a turning point: it's proof the first has done well. Now it's not a lone nut, and it's not two nuts. Three is a crowd and a crowd is news.

A movement must be public. Make sure outsiders see more than just the leader. Everyone needs to see the followers, because new followers emulate followers - not the leader.

Now here come 2 more, then 3 more. Now we've got momentum. This is the tipping point! Now we've got a movement!

As more people jump in, it's no longer risky. If they were on the fence before, there's no reason not to join now. They won't be ridiculed, they won't stand out, and they will be part of the in-crowd, if they hurry. Over the next minute you'll see the rest who prefer to be part of the crowd, because eventually they'd be ridiculed for not joining.

And ladies and gentlemen that is how a movement is made! Let's recap what we learned:

If you are a version of the shirtless dancing guy, all alone, remember the importance of nurturing your first few followers as equals, making everything clearly about the movement, not you.

Be public. Be easy to follow!

But the biggest lesson here - did you catch it?

Leadership is over-glorified.

Yes it started with the shirtless guy, and he'll get all the credit, but you saw what really happened:

It was the first follower that transformed a lone nut into a leader.

There is no movement without the first follower.

We're told we all need to be leaders, but that would be really ineffective.

The best way to make a movement, if you really care, is to courageously follow and show others how to follow.

When you find a lone nut doing something great, have the guts to be the first person to stand up and join in.

Keepers of the Flame

from the Village Voice ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED JANUARY 2002 - "Because it bears repeating and provides context."

As Moderate Groups Turn Down the Heat, Anarchists Light a New Way for Dissent
By Esther Kaplan


She arrived in the U.S. from India with her parents when she was just a little kid—long before she took the name Warcry or started protesting institutions like the World Economic Forum. It was 1976, the bicentennial, and right off her dad bought her a small American flag. She says he saw America as a land of promise, but she watched him work hard as a researcher every day of his life only to die young. "I don't want to live my whole life for the system," she says. At college in the Bay Area, she read Emma Goldman for the first time, and "it was like someone threw open a window in my brain. Fresh air rushed in and I never went back." She got her direct action chops tree-sitting in old growth forests—and then came Seattle, and the chance to take on the "corporate death machine" itself.

In an activist video about that now famous protest against the World Trade Organization, there's a shot of Warcry, a black scarf masking all but her radiant eyes, shouting giddily, "I always wanted to be part of a revolution!" Yet this same Warcry has kept that little flag all these years, and still feels an affinity for her dad's struggles and hopes. "The American dream is dead," she says. "But there are certain American ideals—freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom to dissent—these are things I believe in and would like to make real."

That zeal, matched by the passions of thousands of like-minded young radicals, will be on full display in New York City this week, as activists raucously confront the World Economic Forum, whose thousands of global elites will gather at the Waldorf-Astoria. This outpouring will get a boost from the recent resurgence of anarchism after years relegated to the oral history dustbin.

The cries of the anarchists may echo loudly in this post-9-11 world. In a climate where dissent has been called un-American, and the Patriot Act has granted the government new powers to eavesdrop, arrest, and detain, many of the global justice movement's more mainstream players have decided to lie low. The Sierra Club has completely bowed out, while at the fair trade outfit Global Exchange, says cofounder Kevin Danaher, "we are still dusting ourselves off" from the blow of 9-11. The group will conduct only teach-ins. The AFL-CIO had hoped to march, but was denied a permit.

So the anarchists and direct action types like Warcry have been left to lead the charge. Not only have they assembled the samba bands, but also, for the first time, the anti-capitalists even negotiated a permit for a march, the only legal one this week. To a great extent, what happens at the WEF showdown—the size and energy and confrontational tone—depends on them.

While the whole world wasn't watching, anarchists have spent their time between demos getting organized.

If you had wandered into the InterGalactic Anarchist Convention last Sunday, in the Chashama Theater just off of the New Times Square, you'd have passed a tableful of Barricada back issues, including the one featuring "The Black Bloc in Genoa: An Affinity Group's Account"; stacks of literature on animal rights and labor exploitation in the global south; free copies of To Arms!!!, with its ecumenical listing of WEF protests and a handy lesson on wheat-pasting, published by the CrimethInc Ex-Workers Collective. You might also have been invited down to the basement for a vegan meal fashioned from supermarket throwaways, or happened upon a few dozen sweatshirted activists in low-slung pants and rumpled hair talking protest.

Perhaps none of this would have surprised you. But most striking, if you listened in, would have been the gently earnest tone of the debates, and the palpable humility of the participants. That night, a twentysomething hippie sitting cross-legged on the floor offered up a defense of nonviolence that could have come out of SNCC's civil rights playbook—"We draw out the inherent violence of the police"—while a rosy-faced teenager decried what he called "militant pacifism" and an older woman drew a distinction between damaging property (OK, since property doesn't feel pain) and injuring people (unacceptable). Everyone spoke briefly and passionately and stopped to really listen, and speakers reflected on how much they had to learn. At a larger meeting, facilitators set aside just five or 10 minutes for each agenda item—as if to schedule in a half hour was too presumptuous—extending the time only after seeing enough fluttering fingers (a sign of consensus). Sunday night's impromptu conversation ended only when Lena, 28, one of the conference organizers, quietly mentioned that the evening panelists had arrived, and would it be all right for them to take the microphone?

The textured disagreements that aired out that weekend—sandwiched between lectures on Afghanistan, Argentina, and "Why WEF Is Evil"—hardly call to mind the anarchism we have read about in the two years since Seattle.

It was there that America discovered anarchism for the first time since Sacco and Vanzetti—in the intimidating form of the masked militants of the black bloc. "Street rage," blared The New York Times; "nightmare of protests," declared NBC Nightly News, as everyone from the Rainforest Action Network to the president rushed to separate the good protesters from the bad. Rainforest head Randy Hayes said the vandalism hurt the movement, while direct action trainer John Sellers, head of the Ruckus Society, called it "inexcusable." Last year's protests in Genoa inspired more variations on the theme: The black bloc'ers were "barbarians at a castle's gates . . . whose modus operandi is to infiltrate more moderate groups and launch attacks," reported Newsweek. And as WEF delegates began to arrive at ground zero, even a Village Voicereporter regurgitated whole the police assertion that black bloc'ers are "Al Qaeda-like."

This groupthink has not only obscured the true nature of the protest violence—since the police have been by far the most aggressive perpetrators, from the pepper spray and nightsticks of Seattle to the fatal bullets of Genoa—but also made invisible a significant new development: The anarchist fringe is fast becoming the movement's center.

Decades of Republican assaults on the basic functions of government, capped by a presidential election decided by dirty tricks and partisan courts rather than by popular will, have plowed the soil for a generational politics that is suspicious of political power. No Logo author Naomi Klein has long argued that the global justice movement has an inherently anarchist feel. But as the months have rolled by since Seattle, more and more activists, with little fanfare, have come to explicitly identify as anarchists, and anarchist-minded collectives are on the rise.

There are now more than 175 Food Not Bombs chapters, at least 60 Independent Media Centers (the newest of which are mostly in the global south), nearly a dozen People's Law Collectives, countless troupes of puppetistas, and several new medic teams, including one cofounded by anti-capitalist EMS worker James Creedon, who assisted with the World Trade Center rescue. And starting with the Quebec free-trade protests last spring, the radical wing of the movement has consolidated its troops under the banner of the Anti-Capitalist Convergence. All of these formations will provide crucial infrastructure for the protests ahead.

The movement is widely perceived as anti-intellectual, but sales are up at Oakland's AK Press, which publishes more than 80 anarchist titles, including a new English translation of Daniel Guérin's classic anthology of anarchism, No Gods No Masters; and students are flocking to Vermont's Institute for Social Ecology, where they study the anarchist works of Murray Bookchin and, according to instructor Brooke Lehman, 29, "spend the summer talking about how we might realize our vision of direct democracy and freedom."

Unlike modern-day social reformers, who want Nike to let inspectors into their factories or the World Bank to forgive some debt, anarchists explicitly oppose capitalism itself. They don't attack the International Monetary Fund or the WEF just because their policies exploit the poor, but because their power is illegitimate. They envision an egalitarian society without nation states, where wealth and power have been redistributed, and they take great pains to model their institutions in this vein, with autonomous, interconnected structures and consensus-based decision making. UC Santa Cruz professor Barbara Epstein, an expert on direct action, senses that anarchism has now become "the pole that everyone revolves around," much as Marxism was in the '60s. In other words, even young activists who don't identify as anarchists have to position themselves in relation to its values.

The reformist perspective is likely to retreat further with groups like the Sierra Club absent from WEF week and the AFL-CIO presence reduced from a march to a rally. Danaher says Global Exchange will focus instead on the alternative World Social Forum in Brazil. Shooting more from the hip, Public Citizen staffer Mike Dolan, an architect of Seattle, says his group has not yet endorsed the one permitted march because the sponsor, Another World Is Possible, "can't guarantee that the event will be nonviolent, and that the movement won't be marred by vandalism." At press time, Drop the Debt, Earth First!, Rainforest Action Network, and the Ruckus Society had all not signed onto the march, either.

With these significant players sitting it out—or penned in by overzealous police—who's left to distribute schedules, run listservs, host spokescouncils, paint banners, and coordinate legal and medical support, food, and housing? The anarchists are making do.

The Anti-Capitalist set tends to be far more mixed by background than, say, the middle-class student movement, and no deep pockets are keeping them afloat now. Their genius is in making use of the wealth all around them—whether human resources or capitalism's leavings—despite a lack of cash or access to traditional forms of power.

At a party last week for the political comic book World War III at Theater for a New City, an interview with InterGalactic conference organizer Lena turned into a group discussion—as so many interviews with anarchists seem to, the collective impulse is so strong—about the joys of mutual aid. "It's about finding out who needs what and filling in the blanks," says Lena, who incidentally is the daughter of a construction worker and has supported herself since age 16. Her friends Jenna, 22, a slender Asian woman; and Kevin, 23, Jenna's lanky white partner, are indeed itinerant activists, floating from community to community in what they see as a profoundly American hobo tradition. They live off bartering and networks, not checks from Mom. "I appreciate anarchists so much," says Jenna, "because I've never gone to a demo and not found housing or food." Kevin recalls showing up in Houston, hearing about a collective anarchist household, and bunking there for a month and a half while he engaged in prisoner support. The two just returned from a trip to a punk show in Gainesville, Florida, that morphed into a month of work on a community farm.

The idea is that the resources to live, and the chance to do good, are out there for the taking—it's an economy of opportunity, not scarcity, an ethos that extends to their analysis of global poverty. Ben, 21, an NYU dropout who now cooks food each week for the homeless denizens of Tompkins Square Park through Food Not Bombs, says anarchism's egalitarianism helps attract youth who are new to politics of any kind. "Some of the drunkest kids I've ever seen are now going to Food Not Bombs meetings and taking responsibility," he says. "Once they find a place where they're not on the bottom rung, where they can take initiative, they do it. They start out listening to a Subhuman song and they end up reading Noam Chomsky." Come to think of it, he later adds, that's pretty much how it happened for him, too—catching punk shows at ABC No Rio, noticing the Food Not Bombs shopping cart, and slowly waking up to the fact that poverty and hunger are not natural. As the conversation breaks up around midnight, the kids head out to dumpster dive, to supply food for their own kitchens and the anarchists camping out at Cabo Rojo in the Bronx, to save that community garden from the bulldozer.

After spending any significant amount of time around the nonhierarchical, collective sensibilities of these anti-capitalists, you can begin to feel your entire life is corrupted by absurd power imbalances, your apartment overrun by excess goods. Ben mentions that Food Not Bombs had a serious discussion about collecting more plastic forks from fast food places so they could put savings from the cost of purchasing them toward the WEF legal defense fund. David Graeber, 40, a Yale professor and Anti-Capitalist Convergence cofounder, says the network would probably spend no more than a couple thousand on the WEF protests, all earned through passing the hat.

Which is not to say this movement is ascetic. Lena and her friends use words like joy and beauty as often as some long-ago editor of Mother Earth. Jenna rhapsodizes about how anarchists constantly create space for poetry jams, musical performance, and art; Ben giggles as he recounts a black bloc contingent at a Boston biotech protest, led by a man in a bunny suit carrying a sign that read "The Violent Fringe." This week, as the NYPD practices cracking heads at Shea Stadium, the puppetistas are madly rehearsing a street tango corps and a line of Radical Rockettes, assembling a samba band, and building papier mâché globes painted with images of better, possible worlds.

In debates over the sustainability of the global justice movement, the anarchists are mostly chalked up as a problem. But their spirit of cultural celebration, combined with an elaborate web of small, accessible collective endeavors, has clearly provided activists with skills, support structures, and points of entry.

Of course there's still that nagging question of violence, as important to the movement as to the media, because, as Danaher of Global Exchange says, "The test of any tactic is whether it builds the movement. And you don't attract people to a movement that looks dangerous and messy." But there were plenty of half-a-million-strong peaceful marches in Washington, D.C., over the past decade that raised nary an eyebrow, while Seattle galvanized a generation.

Watching some old footage from that watershed event, Warcry shakes her head at the depth of the people's discontent. "To be honest, what the left has done since the '60s hasn't been that successful, and we can't afford to embrace tactics that don't work," she says. "I don't think Seattle would be on the map if it weren't for the catalyzing level of rage that was made visible through property destruction." She calls window-smashing "the transformation of the psychogeographic landscape" and points out that it's far more strategic than most people think—with specific corporate targets, such as sweatshop operators like Nike—and getting more strategic as the years progress. Besides that, as Public Citizen's Dolan emphasizes, whether people get injured in New York this week is mostly up to the police.

When pushed, most of the Anti-Capitalist crew recognize that the people of this city—including its uniformed officers—are still recovering from the trauma of 9-11. Though it's hard to find an anarchist who doesn't fiercely defend the right to destroy certain kinds of property, placing vandalism of McDonald's in the respected tradition of the Boston Tea Party, most are also cautious that the movement itself not get too attached to this, or any other, particular tactic. "No one's talking property destruction right now in New York City," says Graeber, a sometime black bloc'er, "though a certain level of urban redecoration is appropriate. No one's going to abjure spray paint."

No one's promising that there won't be a black bloc, either. Warcry recalls joining the bloc at previous protests, the sense of anonymity, collectivity, of people you don't even know having your back, of "glimpsing the possibility of a world where they don't have total and absolute control," of feeling that viscerally. Her tribe is the one that's not intimidated by the new Patriot Act, that hasn't lost sight of challenging corporate exploitation even while there's a war on.

Warcry, as always, speaks from the heart. "We want to save the life of this planet," she says. "We can't afford to sit this one out."

Thanks, Visitor Design