anarchist_nomad: (Guess who?)
( Jan. 30th, 2004 07:55 pm)
Sightseeing last night was a lot of fun, and I'll try to post about it tomorrow. After it was done, I went home and finished my current book: "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America", by Barbara Ehrenreich. Good book, and a quick read, too. Very liberal; take that as you will. I know that "liberal" is not only a dirty word to conservatives, but also to many of the other Anarchists that I know. I don't feel quite so strongly about "liberal" per se; it depends on the context. And Ehrenreich's book is a good read.

Next up, I'm going back to reading Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States: 1492 - Present." I started it last month, but then put it down for a spell. Excellent read, but quite dense.

Over the holidays, a friend recommended a book to me with the phrase, "I know you don't read fiction, but..." which came as I surprise to me. I do read fiction! But, upon further thought, he's more right than I thought. The last fictional book I read was "Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix", back in November. Since then, I have completed several works of non-fiction. Of course, my comic books give me a fifteen minute dose of fiction, but I'll have to make time (somehow) to pick up a good novel again.

Anyway, work today was okay. I'm still learning C++ the old fashioned way: On the go! I have a project before me so I need to learn the code necessary to do it. Nothing new there; that's how I learned FORTRAN all those years ago, and shell scripting languages. My attempts to learn code "for the fun of it" have been much less productive, as witnessed by the class I took in C. Never needed to use it, so the skills went in one finger and out the other.

The big news of the day is related to atrocities committed against the Zapatistas last week. For details, see the following article from the InfoShop:
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=04/01/28/4647564

The short version of it is this: The Mexican army rolled into a Zapatista village in Montes Azules, burned down two dozen homes, and violently evicted the indiginous residents. And, of course, this act of state-sponsored terrorism was conveniently overlooked by the mainstream (read: corporate) press in the United States. Typical, as the struggles and triumphs of the Zapatistas have been mostly invisible to your typical US citizen.

Anyway, I obviously angered by this and sent the article on to a mailing list for a Chicago-area Anarchist group. There has been an attempt to make a network of Chicago Anarchists that can respond quickly to an emergency. It is still new, but it seemed like this qualifies as an emergency. I suggested a demonstration for next week, when I get back to Illinois. Several people exressed interest BUT simultaneously noted that they didn't have the time to do organizational work for a demonstration.

So, if you want something done, you may have to do it yourself. Which I volunteered to do. This is somewhat new for me, actually, as I really have very little experience organizing demonstrations directly. With all my traveling, I've found it most effective to put energy into other campaigns maintained by more permanently located people. But I've been around the block and know that I can do this. I've seen enough demos to know what has worked and what hasn't. So long as the numbers of people can be raised on short notice, this should be good.

Anyway, here's a link to the public announcement:
http://chicago.indymedia.org/newswire/display/35939/index.php

Basically, the plan is to hold the demo in Chicago next Sunday (2/8) and to get as much attention for it as possible. Some demonstrations are designed to respect a diversity of tactics, but I really see this one as being more "green zone only," i.e. no civil disobedience. I'd like to see a big crowd and get the attention of the (ugh!) corporate press... and use the mainstream media to get word of the Zapatistas onto the airwaves.

But, holy macaroni! Now I'm organizing a demonstration for next week! I didn't expect _that_ when I woke up this morning!
anarchist_nomad: (Guess who?)
( Jan. 30th, 2004 07:55 pm)
Sightseeing last night was a lot of fun, and I'll try to post about it tomorrow. After it was done, I went home and finished my current book: "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America", by Barbara Ehrenreich. Good book, and a quick read, too. Very liberal; take that as you will. I know that "liberal" is not only a dirty word to conservatives, but also to many of the other Anarchists that I know. I don't feel quite so strongly about "liberal" per se; it depends on the context. And Ehrenreich's book is a good read.

Next up, I'm going back to reading Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States: 1492 - Present." I started it last month, but then put it down for a spell. Excellent read, but quite dense.

Over the holidays, a friend recommended a book to me with the phrase, "I know you don't read fiction, but..." which came as I surprise to me. I do read fiction! But, upon further thought, he's more right than I thought. The last fictional book I read was "Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix", back in November. Since then, I have completed several works of non-fiction. Of course, my comic books give me a fifteen minute dose of fiction, but I'll have to make time (somehow) to pick up a good novel again.

Anyway, work today was okay. I'm still learning C++ the old fashioned way: On the go! I have a project before me so I need to learn the code necessary to do it. Nothing new there; that's how I learned FORTRAN all those years ago, and shell scripting languages. My attempts to learn code "for the fun of it" have been much less productive, as witnessed by the class I took in C. Never needed to use it, so the skills went in one finger and out the other.

The big news of the day is related to atrocities committed against the Zapatistas last week. For details, see the following article from the InfoShop:
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=04/01/28/4647564

The short version of it is this: The Mexican army rolled into a Zapatista village in Montes Azules, burned down two dozen homes, and violently evicted the indiginous residents. And, of course, this act of state-sponsored terrorism was conveniently overlooked by the mainstream (read: corporate) press in the United States. Typical, as the struggles and triumphs of the Zapatistas have been mostly invisible to your typical US citizen.

Anyway, I obviously angered by this and sent the article on to a mailing list for a Chicago-area Anarchist group. There has been an attempt to make a network of Chicago Anarchists that can respond quickly to an emergency. It is still new, but it seemed like this qualifies as an emergency. I suggested a demonstration for next week, when I get back to Illinois. Several people exressed interest BUT simultaneously noted that they didn't have the time to do organizational work for a demonstration.

So, if you want something done, you may have to do it yourself. Which I volunteered to do. This is somewhat new for me, actually, as I really have very little experience organizing demonstrations directly. With all my traveling, I've found it most effective to put energy into other campaigns maintained by more permanently located people. But I've been around the block and know that I can do this. I've seen enough demos to know what has worked and what hasn't. So long as the numbers of people can be raised on short notice, this should be good.

Anyway, here's a link to the public announcement:
http://chicago.indymedia.org/newswire/display/35939/index.php

Basically, the plan is to hold the demo in Chicago next Sunday (2/8) and to get as much attention for it as possible. Some demonstrations are designed to respect a diversity of tactics, but I really see this one as being more "green zone only," i.e. no civil disobedience. I'd like to see a big crowd and get the attention of the (ugh!) corporate press... and use the mainstream media to get word of the Zapatistas onto the airwaves.

But, holy macaroni! Now I'm organizing a demonstration for next week! I didn't expect _that_ when I woke up this morning!
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