Anarchists in Washington, DC

Escape Empire Anarchist Event Series presents:
A talk and discussion with Cindy Milstein:
Anarchy in the USA: The Love-Hate Relationship with Presidential Elections

Sunday, Feb. 10, 2008 at 5:00 pm
At the Brian MacKenzie Infoshop
1426 9th Street NW, Washington DC 20001
dcinfoshop@mutualaid.org or 202-986-0681
A free event — donations encouraged to benefit the Insitute for Anarchist Studies.

Nearly as early as Hillary or Obama, anarchists were hot on the campaign trail. Plans to resist the 2008 U.S. presidential elections were afoot in 2006.

As German Jewish anarchist Gustav Landauer once observed in relation to “anarchist assassination politics” that they “proceed from the intentions of a small group… following the example of the big political parties. …What they are trying to say is: ‘We are also political.’ …[Yet] these anarchists are not anarchic enough.” His comments apply to electoralism too: being political is the right impulse, but the tactic(s) and indeed the focus are wrong. Certainly, in the United States, presidential elections represent rare moments when many people “participate.”

But why the anarchist fascination with something that’s far from anything we’d recognize as politics? And why, if we choose to engage, do anarchists frequently use strategies that mirror statist and/or liberal forms, or are simply unimaginative? Perhaps, in zeroing in on presidential elections, we aren’t anarchic enough either.

Cindy Milstein is an anarchist activist and educator from Vermont. She has been involved with the Institute for Social Ecology, and is currently a board member with the Institute for Anarchist Studies and a co-organizer of the Renewing the Anarchist Tradition conference. She is also a collective member of the all-volunteer Black Sheep Books in Montpelier, Vermont.

Mobilizing Resistance Against the 2008 Republican National Convention
Panel Discussion; Anti-RNC Infoshare; Short Films

Tuesday, January 29 at 7:00 PM
at the Brian MacKenzie Infoshop
1426 9th Street NW, Washington, D.C.
(near the Shaw/Howard University metro on the Green Line)

On September 1-4 of 2008, the Republican Party is coming to Minnesota to celebrate their latest conquests in global domination and exploitation. Let’s make sure that this time the fear-mongers will be met with their own biggest fear: people mobilized, organized, and taking the future back into their own hands.

Join experienced local activists, organizers from the Twin Cities, and other curious folk in a discussion about how activists in DC can begin to organize resistance to the Republican National Convention.
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As part of the build-up to the Republican National Convention in the Twin Cities (R.N.C) and Democratic National Convention in Denver (D.N.C), Unconventional Action-Frederick is hosting two days of workshops, skill shares, and discussions about emerging strategy and tactics on January 26th and 27th in Frederick, MD. We are holding one of many events dedicated to organizing for the coming resistance against the R.N.C and the D.N.C.

Unconventional Action is an emerging network of radicals, anti-authoritarians, and anarchists. Our goal is to build a horizontal, inclusive framework for protests that will disrupt the upcoming Democratic and Republican National Conventions.

Also see:
RNC Welcoming Committee (RNC protests, Sept. 1-4 in Minneapolis/St. Paul)
Re-create 68 (DNC protests, Aug. 25-28 in Denver)
Frederick, MD Peace Community

For more information please e-mail unconventionalfrederick (at) gmail.com

Don’t miss the Brian MacKenzie Infoshop’s annual Winter Holiday Sale!!

December 14, 15, 16

20% OFF EVERYTHING*
(*= excluding Slingshot Organizers, Food Items & Art stuff)

That means all Books, CD’s, DVDs, T-Shirts, Records and more are 20% off! Even sale books too!

We’ll be open 12-9 on Fri/Sat and 12-7 on Sunday.

Plus we’ve received a ton of new books from AK, thoroughly restocked our anarchy section, and stocked up on favorite titles as well as new stuff.

Also, we’ll have copies of the new album from Defiance, Ohio (on No Idea Records) later this week.

Hope to see you soon, and thanks for another year of support.

Your friends at the Brian MacKenzie Infoshop

submitted by Potomac Earth First!

Honor the Fallen, Remember the Snitches, Resist the GreenScare

On December 7, 2005, The F.B.I. and local law enforcement began a round up, of alleged environmental and animal rights activists. This attack was not just on radical environmentalists this attack was on the entire environmental movement and American people. Like the Red Scare in the 40’s, 20’s, and turn of the 20th century the radical left was attacked in the same way which lead to an over all weakening of the progressive movement.

On December 7th we ask you to organize your college campus, community, or what ever it maybe to hold an event in solidarity with those who have been rounded up by the F.B.I. Be it demo at the local police department, movie on radical environmental, animal rights activism, (Behind the mask and Pick Axe are two good examples) or letter writing campaigns.

On December, 8th 2007 Potomac Earth First! is calling for a Green and Black anti-authoritarian march to the FBI Headquarters to demand that these alleged activists be freed and all charges dropped! We will be starting Farragut Square and marching to the F.B.I headquarters from there at 1:00 p.m. Look for the Green and Black Flags of Potomac Earth First!

For more information please e-mail: potomacearthfirst [at] gmail.com

download a flyer for the march (jpg)

Meetings are held on a rotating schedule in DC, Frederick, Sheperdstown and possibly Hagerstown or Baltimore. Email the above address for more info.

Benefit Concert and Silent Art Auction for the Common Ground Collective -
post-Katrina relief organization.

Letelier Theater - 3251 Prospect Street, NW DC
near the Foggy Bottom Metro

November 30th- 7:30pm
$7 donation

Featured Performers:
Head-Roc (hardcore hiphop)
Chris Chandler (antifolk goodness)
Everlutionary (rhythm & words)
Everything Must Go (writhing & noise featuring the Thing with The Stuff, Ika
and Clay)
tWIN eARTH (independently-minded drone rock)

Donated artwork by:
Chris Chandler, Clay Harris, Lydia Prentiss, Dale Hunt and more!

The National Conference on Organized Resistance is an annual event that brings together people from all backgrounds for a weekend of learning and discussing local and international social justice issues through workshops, panel discussions, and skillshares. This year in particular at NCOR, we are focusing on how the problems facing Washington DC and the resistance to those problems reflect struggles on both the national and the international level. We are also seeking workshops that span both the geography and subject matter of a variety of experiences.

This year’s NCOR will be held from March 7- 9, in 2008 at American University in Washington, D.C. As we move into our eleventh year, we are curating the most diverse and successful NCOR in its notable history.

NCOR attendees this year will make this vision a reality as much as the people who curate it: as volunteers, as workshop leaders, as discussion participants, you determine its successful outcome. We hope you will join us to make NCOR 2008 an inclusive and diverse forum for global resistance.

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Critical Mass rides in DC on the first Friday of every month, meeting at Dupont Circle at 6:00. For current info, view the DC Critical Mass email list archives, or join the email list.

Critical Mass is a monthly group bicycle ride to celebrate bicycles and their right to the road. Other non-motorized wheeled vehicles are welcome (unicycles, skates, etc.). Critical Mass events are held in various cities throughout the world, with no formal organization/leadership.

Critical Mass flyer #1
Critical Mass flyer #2

The 2007 Mid-Atlantic Radical Bookfair, bringing together radical and independent publishers, distributors, bookstores, and authors for a weekend of workshops, panel discussions, and performances, all free and open to the public, will take place on October 20th and 21st.

As an added bonus this year, there’s also a Radical Film Festival on October 19th to kick things off.

The bookfair will be taking place in Baltimore at 2640, the new cooperative events venue and social center launched this year by Red Emma’s.

Discussion on Arab Voices of Resistance to “The New Middle East”
plus screening of the documentaryA Summer Not to Forget
Presented by Left Turn Magazine

Saturday, October 20, 2007 - 1:00pm - 3:00pm
The Upstairs at Skewers/Cafe Luna, 1633 P St, NW, Washington, DC
More info: leftturn-dc@onebox.com

The full impact and significance of Israel’s war on Lebanon during the summer of 2006 has yet to be fully understood.

The nearly year long stand off between the US backed Lebanese government and the Hezbollah led opposition as well as a several month standoff between the military and Fatah al Islam, a Salafi islamist group sympathetic to Al-Qaeda, at the Nahr al Bared Palestinian refugee camp, are related to the war. These and other crises have contributed to sectarian tensions and a feeling that the country is on the brink of another civil war.

On the positive side, had Israel’s invasion not been repelled, the Lebanese government would’ve become another building block in the US’s efforts to construct a “New Middle East”, the fate of Palestinian refugees in Lebanese camps would’ve been precarious, and an attack on Iran more imminent.

Come hear Bilal El-Amine and Samah Idriss – two Lebanese writers and activists who helped get the truth out about the war and challenge many of the distortions about the resistance to it – discuss what’s happening in Lebanon, Palestine, and Iraq and what the US’s vision of a New Middle East means for the people of the Middle East.

There will also be a screening of Lebanese film maker Carol Mansour’s short documentary on the war, A Summer Not to Forget