Birds Before The Storm

Yesterday my friends returned to the house with a roadkill deer that they’d already skinned. Being slightly into taking gory photos, I decided to photograph some of the process of butchering the dead creature. (As an aside, the omnivores pictured are mostly freegan. The animal wasn’t hunted. Most importantly, it wasn’t raised for slaughter. Its death is a sad thing, but not one that my friends will let go to waste.) Pictured above is my friend holding the heart. It gets a lot gorier.

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Well, first of all, there are apparently 877 police in Pittsburgh, but they’re hoping to field 4000 for the event by calling in troops from all the hell over. Lots of talk about the national guard and the purchasing of less-lethals. Then there’s the Pittsburgh Organizing Group’s [POG] first general update. This covers a few different consultas and lead-in workshops, as well as some of the organizing principles such as “please don’t show up and alienate everyone by wearing black masks and smashing everything in sight.” This is likely to be a contentious decision.

And here’s some random corporate articles about it (mostly culled from that POG report): a liberal tells us to fuck off and be obedient, another article (which is factually challenged, claiming that NYC held the last RNC for example) talks about how screwed pittsburgh is, since once bought all the less-lethals will stick around. Another editorial (less angry), talks about how all the rocks will be thrown by outsiders. A letter to the editor decries the accusations of us all being jackasses. More defending of us, saying yeah, some windows aren’t as big of a deal as global governance. And here are all the articles by Mike Boda, who appears to actually make some sense.

There is also an interesting article about where the leaders might be staying, which is the nemacolin woodlands resort, 35 miles out of town. Note that this place has private landing strips and helicopter pads.

(poster culled from strangers in a tangled wilderness, link goes to a pdf.)

Reposted from infoshop news:

A committee of outside agitators, ne’er-do-wells, unpredictables, and ungovernables gets excited about the G-20.

The Grievances

On September 24-25th, leaders from the 20 richest and most powerful economies of the world will assemble in Pittsburgh, PA to discuss how they can further entrench their power in the face of the most devastating global depression seen in the last 70 years. We will meet them there.

For most of you reading this text, the political grounds upon which we would oppose such a gathering are at this point common sense. Were we to make a laundry list of grievances, it would certainly not be a short one: the evictions, the food prices, the energy costs, the increase in racist and anti-immigrant attacks, the repression of social movements, the insane ecological collapse that industrial capitalism has spread out before us like a bright red carpet rolled out over the edge of a cliff.

And then there’s the domestic front. The new boss, same as the old boss, has already reneged on every single one of his meager campaign promises, throwing in a few extra treats for us, like billions of little paper handouts to bankers and this new thing called “clean coal.” Nobody is celebrating his inauguration anymore.

The G20 summit will also be used to renew the failed promises of past free trade agreements (FTAA, NAFTA, WTO). This is especially relevant considering the victory of anti-globalization movement of the early ‘00. By all accounts, the “Washington consensus” was shattered by the blockades and disruptions of thousands in the US and abroad, and the Doha round of the WTO effectively collapsed. The G20 summit in Pittsburgh is an attempt to reorganize free trade and put a new face on these miserable economic policies in the wake of the current world economic crisis. (more…)

See, this is funny because Fuchs Lubricants Co. makes two accidental sexual references in one company name. That’s why I took a picture of the truck.

I took this picture in Chicago at Haymarket Square. Haymarket Square, where anarchists fought cops for the right to assemble and the right to organize unions, is now a bunch of condos. Yay. Here’s a zine about Haymarket and Mayday.

Many people who’ve met me recently have learned about my involvement in the war on papyrus.

I don’t know much about contemporary dance. But now I want to. Because this is, more or less, the best thing that has ever happened. Technology is at its best when we don’t need it, when it is something that adds wonder to the world, not takes wonder away.

These are photos from the Kayford, Brushy Fork, and Pettus actions. More than half of our folks are still in jail, as we attempt to raise bail. Note that many of these people are facing a $100 fine as their maximum penalty, yet have $2000 bail. One West Virginia Resident, Sid, wasn’t allowed to post his own property as proof that he wasn’t a flight risk. It’s ridiculous.

Here’s a 10 minute video that covers the picket at Pettus, West Virginia yesterday. It also briefly goes over the actions that took place up on Kayford Mountain and the Brushy Fork impoundment. If you pay close attention, I give a speech at the end, cause I’m trying to raise funds to get my friends out of jail. Little did we know that the 7 line crossers from that day also got sent to jail for $2000 cash bail as well.

So this video, and this action, mention god quite a bit. In fact, it starts out with Sage, a Mennonite preacher, giving a prayer. And one of the most important speakers is Ken Hechler, a former senator. Even I’m talking about non-violence in it. But here’s the thing about environmentalism… it takes all kinds. It takes everyone. It takes every level of tactic. We need people to cross lines to draw media attention. We need people to lock themselves to things. We need people to sue, we need people to lobby (though I shudder at what a monstrous waste of resources that last bit can seem!). And we need people to directly confront the machinery of oppression. In some cases, we need sabotage. There are a lot of different types of folks working to stop people from destroying the earth. We need solidarity between these different groups. So yes, anarchists can listen to prayers and senators from time to time. And actually, both the prayers (”God will destroy those who destroy the earth”) and the senator (”What you are seeing, up on brushy fork, is the arrogance of power”), in this case, were pretty sweet.

And yes, my friends are still in jail. We’re still trying to get them bail money. If you donate money, and we get that money back (as is often the case with bail), it’ll probably get saved to get more of us out of jail in the future. Because a lot of people are going to go to jail over this. In case you missed it, motherfuckers are blowing up mountains.

Today, three different acts of civil disobedience confronted mountaintop removal mining in West Virginia, all under the banner of Mountain Justice. Six people locked themselves down to mining equipment on Kayford Mountain, bringing operations to a halt for hours. Two people kayaked out onto the Brushy Fork Coal Slurry Impoundment and proudly displayed a “No More Sludge” banner. (this is, by the way, the tallest dam in the western hemisphere, and it holds back 9 billion gallons of coal toxin concentrate. You see, to “clean” coal, they wash out the toxins and dump them in giant toxic lakes poised above towns, and then act surprised when they fail and destroy towns.)

Then, this afternoon, people went out to Pettus, West Virginia and engaged in a symbolic line crossing, marching boldly off to arrest for trespassing. When this dam bursts, the coal sludge will be almost 20 feet high as far away as 28 miles down the road. Conservative estimates from Massey Coal themselves say that 998 people at least will die if it the dam fails. Oh, did I mention they’re about to start blasting away Coal River Mountain as close as 100 feet away from the dam?

So these people were all arrested, and they’ve been treated unprecedentedly harshly. 9 of them (include the line-crossers) are being held on 2000 cash bail… what this means is that they will not accept bond, they will not accept checks. They will only accept cash, for all 9 of these folks.

So people are trying to raise bail. Please help. Jail sucks. Mountaintop removal sucks.