May 19 – Oakland CA – Protest against War Profiteers
Dear friends and allies,
We’re organizing a community picket against war profiteers at the Port of Oakland on May 19th and we’re asking for help from you and your group. Our goal is to shut down business by war profiteers that day to call attention to our demands: Stop War Shipments and War Profiteering – Port Money for Schools and Social Services – Bring the Troops Home Now!
Join us May 19th to Picket War Profiteers at the Port of Oakland!
Port Money for Schools & Social Services!
Picket at APL Terminal at Port of Oakland, 1579 Middle Harbor Road
[PDF of poster, Map of picket location]
We will call on ILWU Local 10 to honor our picket line and not to cross. If Local 10 honors our picket line, as it did for similar pickets in 2003 and 2004, then work will be shut down. Local 10 has a long history of supporting community pickets and struggles, and is in the forefront of labor opposition to the war.
How can you and your group help? There are a number of ways:
Publicize the May 19 picket posting this message to your email list, web site, or sending it to personal contacts;
Distribute print and digital literature [PDF of poster, Map of picket location];
Come to our final organizing meetings on Monday nigh at 7pm at NPML (see below);
Give a group or individual endorsement for May 19th and/or contribute funds;
and most of all, Join the picketing on May 19th.
Every act of support and solidarity is important. When we unite and work in concert we have power. To be successful on May 19, we need to turn out a large number of pickets. There are a number of critical issues which intersect at the port. It is a major hub for the war machine; little of the huge revenues generated at the Port fund human needs; the Port pollutes West Oakland; independent truckers are organizing for justice and a union; and ILWU Local 10 is there fighting for longshore workers. The Port offers a chance for building alliances between community-based organizations and campaigns. Thus the port, with its military shipments, is not just an anti-war issue. >It is also an education and budget issue – an economic powerhouse that is not making a fair contribution to sustain Oakland and the region. There are also governance issues, with a Port Commission that is allocating land as political patronage and not being accountable to community needs. It is a labor issue, with the commission leasing city property to labor-unfriendly businesses. It is a housing issue, with land being sold to developers who are building housing that is not affordable to residents of that area.
On April 7th, the Port Action Committee organized a rally in front of the Port of Oakland offices at Jack London Square which highlighted these issues. The rally, which also commemorated April 7, 2003 when police fired on anti-war protesters at the Port, was covered by major television, radio, and print media (Trib article, Chron article). Representatives of teachers, labor, veterans, anti-war movement, youth, and the community spoke at the rally. Now we’ve calling on all these forces to unite to picket war profiteers on May 19th.
The call for the Port picket has received endorsements from: Oakland Education Association; Bay Area Labor Committee for Peace & Justice; United for Peace & Justice, Bay Area; Oakland Green Party; Veterans for Peace; Vietnam Veterans Against the War; Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace (LMNOP); Northern California Committees of Correspondence for Democracy & Socialism; Ella Baker Center; Idriss Stelley Foundation; and Cindy Sheehan.
Join us May 19th to Picket War Profiteers at the Port of Oakland! Port Money for Schools & Social Services! Picket at APL Terminal at Port of Oakland, 1579 Middle Harbor Road (beginning at 7 am)
For more info, or to arrange to get print literature, contact Port Action Committee at portaction (at) riseup.net
You’re invited to attend our final planning meeting Monday night, at the Niebyl-Proctor Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave., Oakland (near Alcatraz and within walking distance of Ashby BART).
In solidarity,
Port Action Committee
House needed in Oakland or Berkeley CA
Meredith Dearborn and Jen Angel are looking for a house!
We will both be looking for new housing come August 1, and we’ve joined forces! We’d love it if you could look at what we need and let us know of any housing opportunities available! It would be awesome if you could forward this to anyone you think might have a lead for us. We have several friends who are also looking so we’re definitely flexible on the size of the house. Although we’re looking at establishing a new collective house, we’re open to joining one that is already in progress!
Our dream house would be:
- A 3 to 5 bedroom house or duplex
- 1.5+ bathrooms
- Within walking distance of MacArthur or Ashby BART stations
- Available between July 15 and August 1
- Good sunlight
- Ample common areas
Bonus features would include:
- Hardwood floors
- Washer and dryer
- Indoor bike parking
- Off street parking
- Pet friendly (though we don’t have any pets now)
- Yard
About us and what we offer to a household:
- Non-smokers
- Clean and responsible
- Good cooks and bakers
- Lots of kitchenware, some furniture
- Radicals who are politically active
- Meredith is a law student, and Jen is a producer at KPFA
- Financially stable
- Good references
- Firmly rooted in the community
- Two cars that can be used by roommates
Our contact info:
Jen Angel: jenangel (at) riseup.net
Meredith Dearborn: meredith.dearborn (at) gmail.com
Realizing the Impossible
I recently wrote a review of the new anthology, Realizing the Impossible: Art Against Authority, for In These Times. They’ve posted it online here.
The book, edited by Josh MacPhee and Erik Reuland, is an amazing and wide-ranging collection. The highlights are an article on the Haymarket memorials by Nicolas Lampert, and an essay on radical puppetry by Morgan Andrews. Read more at the ITT site, and check out interviews with Josh and Nicolas from May 1 at the Against the Grain site – Morgan will be appearing on the show in June.
Updates on direct action in Olympia and Pittsburgh
Just to update on a few things that I have posted before -
1. I got an email from the Pittsburgh Organizing Group announcing that charges against 14 activists arrested there on March 2 have been dropped in exchange for community service. Yay! You can find out more on the action at the POG website for the action, called M2.
2. I got a press release from Caitlin Esworthy, who participated in the Port of Olympia and Port of Tacoma protests earlier this year. I’ve pasted it below.
The People’s Veto–US Military out of our Ports
Local activists opposed to military shipments prepare to gather at the Port of Grays Harbor. Reports indicate a shipment is bound for Iraq in coming weeks. Helicopters: Apache, Black Hawk KIOWA Hellfire models, roar over peaceful Aberdeen neighborhoods. What the people in Aberdeen have experienced in the last few days is just a little taste of what the people in Iraq have lived with daily for five years. These helicopters don’t just transport people, they transport materiele, hellfire missles. It’s an armed scout, armed with 50 caliber machine guns. In addition to the invasive military weaponry, local citizens have experienced restrictions to parking at their homes.
Citizens across the nation are infuriated with congressional failure to override the President’s veto of the supplemental funding for the Iraq war. May 1 marked the fifth anniversary of Bush’s Mission Accomplished claim. Violence in Iraq has escalated significantly since Bush implemented his troop surge. Casualties to Iraqis, to US soldiers have averaged 100 day.
Grass roots resistance to military shipments in local ports began in May 2006 in Olympia. In March of 2007 Olympia protesters were successful in closing the Olympia Port to military shipments planned for Iraq. Subsequently the Army elected to route the 4th Stryker brigade, second division, through the port of Tacoma. Close to 80 people were arrested committing non-violent civil disobedience at the Port, in opposition to the ongoing occupation in Iraq. Protesters strongly support US soldiers, and believe keeping them safe at home.
The Port Militarization Resistance intends to maintain a presence. Stay tuned.
Contact:
Molly Gibbs
Caitlin Esworthy
Kate Schiffman
Kyle T. Lucas
Zoltan Grossman
American Apparel’s Next Top Model
Dude. Someone made an insane parody of American Apparel and Dov Charney on YouTube. It even features one of the Clamor Magazine parody ads. Thanks to Ama Lee from Feminist Review for forwarding it to me.
Margaret Cho and Eating
OK. So I don’t really like Margaret Cho. A lot of my friends rave about how funny she is, but I tried to watch a video of hers once and I just didn’t get it. I mean, I should qualify this statement by saying that I often tell my friends that I don’t have a sense of humor, when in truth I have a really dry sense of humor. I remember how it took me a decade to truly appreciate Monty Python. All my friends in high school loved that stuff and I just didn’t get it. Borat? Um, no. Stephen Colbert? No. OK, Jon Stewart – a definite yes.
Anyway, not many people know this about me but I am really fascinated with food, eating, and diet trends in America. Why? Partially because I’m a woman in America and I am inundated with messages about body image and food, and like most American women, I have a complex about my body. Obesity and diabetes also run in my family. So, I’ve read a lot of the best-selling diet booksjust to see what they say and read a lot of books about food. OK, I like to eat, what can I say?
So I stumbled upon this post on Margaret Cho’s blog and LOVED it. It’s from 2003, but it is so true. It’s called the “Fuck It Diet,” and I wanted to pass it along.
While I’m at it, here are two books related to health and eating that I highly recommend:
Marion Nestle, What To Eat, Norton Point Press 2006. This is an exhaustive companion to food, the economics of food, and food safety.
Walter Willett and PJ Skerrett, Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating Free Press, 2005. This book really helped me understand a lot about health and I highly recommend it.
American Methods: Kristian Williams
With my current job at KPFA’s Against the Grain, I’ve been reading a lot more books. I’ve really enjoyed the kick-in-the-pants to not only purchase good books, but read and finish them.
Recently, I had the pleasure of reading the new book by Kristian Williams: American Methods: Torture and the Logic of Domination on South End Press. We had Kristian on the show last week, and you can listen the audio on the Against the Grain website.
First, let me tell you a little about the book. In the book American Methods, Kristian argues that Abu Ghraib is not that work of a few “bad apples” but is a symptom of a larger system that not only encourages and enables such abuses, but uses torture and abuse strategically both at home and abroad. Throughout the book, Kristian uses testimony from detainees and torture victims, soldiers and police who have participated in torture, and witnesses such as interpreters to provide a detailed and well documented picture of torture and other abuses. These make up some of the more than 300 documented complaints of abuse from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo. While only 280 pages, this exhaustively researched book contains over 750 end notes and provides a clear analysis of how policy decisions made by the Bush Administration shortly after September 11 regarding strict and limited use of some torture techniques migrated from Guantanamo Bay to Afghanistan to Iraq, escalating along the way. American Methods firmly situates these policy decisions in a historical context, convincingly arguing that the foundation for Abu Ghraib was laid long before Bush. Not only does Kristian conclusively show that the U.S. has violated international law, he spends an entire chapter discussing the possible moral justifications for torture – and then debunks them. I found this discussion fascinating and felt it made his arguments stronger.
Now, here are my comments.
1. This book was difficult to read, and it is not bedtime reading. When I first started reading it, the first-hand accounts from survivors of abuse, as well as documentation from those who had witnessed torture was horrible. It was hard to get past. I think it was necessary for Kristian to tell these tales in detail because it impresses upon the reader to what extent torture actually happens, and how it happens. It’s more difficult to write off something as not that bad or a rare exception, but with the exhaustive amount of documentation, it’s impossible to do that.
Kristian shared with me a personal essay that he wrote talking about how reading accounts from survivors day after day was disturbing, and it makes me all the more appreciative of the work he did.
2. Sometimes I read a book or hear a news story, and I think to myself, why aren’t people freaking out about this? I mean, American Methods conclusively and thoroughly documents how the U.S. uses torture, that its methods are illegal, and that the U.S. doesn’t care what the world thinks (because we think we’re better than everyone else and the rules don’t apply). We should be up in arms!! So what is it about Americans that we hear this information and it doesn’t spur us to action? Or it spurs some people to action and not others? It makes me think about the nature of change and what it takes to inspire people to do something to change the world around them.
In the past I’ve thought that people need to be personally effected by something (like knowing a soldier who is killed in the war) to begin campaining against it – but something like torture by the U.S. Military (I won’t even talk about the part of the book which documents abuses in U.S. prisons and jails), won’t effect most Americans. Despite that, it is just so wrong, that any normal person should oppose it. To be against the war, instead of being personally effected by it, do people need to be reached with a critical mass of information to be moved to action? Is it only when someone learns about torture AND about oil AND ten other things? What does this mean for journalists and people who are trying to make change?
Of course the counterpart to being personally effected or to gaining enough knowledge is how important it is for people to know that they can make change. That their individual action or inaction makes a difference. And though I could go on for some time about how to do that, I realize I am off on quite a tangent here, so I’ll conclude by congratulating Kristian on an amazing accomplishment, and encourage everyone to pick up this book.
