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Apr 2012 30

SuicideGirls is proud to be working with The Media Consortium’s coalition of free thinking publications and news outlets to bring you coverage of tomorrow’s May Day actions nationwide.

More than 25 independent media outlets belonging to The Media Consortium are collaborating to provide coordinated, national coverage of May Day events from around the country.

Calling themselves “Media for the 99 Percent”, these diverse outlets will offer a live TV and streaming broadcast, an interactive map, breaking news reporting, and coordinated social media coverage across their sites, reaching a combined audience of more than 50 million Americans.

“With this May Day collaboration, independent media will show that live national coverage can reflect the breadth, diversity, and complexity of the American people,” says Jo Ellen Green Kaiser, executive director of The Media Consortium.

Outlets involved in the Media For The 99 Percent project include Free Speech TV,
Mother Jones, The Nation, Truthout, and our friends over at GregPalast.com.

SuicideGirls will be tweeting and posting May Day updates throughout the day before heading down to Occupy LA’s post-4 Winds GA at Pershing Square in DTLA. If you have a photo, link, or news item you’d like us to include in our coverage, please Cc. @SuicideGirls and include the #M1GS hashtag in your tweet.

Support Media for the 99 Percent by donating here.

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Apr 2012 26

by Aaron Colter

“Occupy was impossible the day before it happened; the day after it was so obviously inevitable.” – Bill Ayers

As a co-founding radical member of the Weather Underground, Bill Ayers is still a polarizing figure in America today, even though he’s dedicated most of his life to changing the way teachers approach childhood development and learning. In advance of his appearance at Portland, Oregon’s Stumptown Comics Festival this weekend, Ayers was kind enough to answer some questions about reforming public education, President Obama’s first term, and the future of the Occupy movement.

Question: Your connection to now President Obama was greatly over-hyped during his campaign, but as a Chicagoan, a citizen, and a leftist figure in America, how satisfied are you with his first term?

Bill Ayers: During the campaign, Senator Obama said consistently that he was a moderate, pragmatic politician. The right built up a story that he was a secret socialist who palled around with bad people; liberals said, “I think he’s winking in my direction.” The reality is that the president is surely a smart, caring, kind person who is politically exactly who he said he is: moderate, pragmatic, politician, leader of one of the two great war parties.

He also was asked during the primary fight, “Who would Martin Luther King support?” His answer: “King would be in the streets, building a movement for justice.” Exactly right. Rather than wring our hands as we stare helplessly at the sites of power we have no access to — the Congress, the White House, and the Pentagon — we might get busy organizing in the communities, schools and work-places, places of power we have full access to, and take it to the streets.

Q: Many liberals seems to be unhappy with how the President has handled military action in the Middle East, especially in regards to drone attacks, and also the President’s signing of the NDAA, the controversy over Wikileaks, the detention of Bradley Manning, etc. – how do you feel about those issues and what would you say to those on the left who might not want to vote for Obama this fall?

BA: Voting cannot be the be-all and end-all of participation. And in an electoral system so awash in money, so corrupted by cash, we would be foolish to rely on an election to answer our deepest needs and dreams. Organize, build a movement, and come to Chicago in May to say No to NATO!

Q: Speaking of dissatisfaction, the Occupy Wall Street movement is potentially poised to return in force this summer, do you think the movement has had a positive effect in helping change economic inequality?

BA: Occupy is an invitation and an opening, not a point of arrival, and it’s already won in important ways: the 1% is exposed, the frame is changed, and the 99% are getting mobilized against war and planetary destruction, for peace and simple fairness.

Q: What advice would you give to protestors today? Are there tactics you see as being effective? And conversely, are there things Occupy protestors are doing that you see as having a negative effect?

BA: I’m no tactician. But fundamental radical change is what we need now more than ever — we need to change ourselves, we need to remake the world. We need a revolution in values — against militarism, racism, materialism, consumerism — and a revolution in fact for peace and sharing the socially produced wealth and saving the planet. There is no single answer, but refusal to go along with exploitation, oppression, conquest and greed will open a path. Public space is created whenever people come together authentically and freely to name themselves in opposition to injustice. Those spaces can surely turn into their opposites, but let’s resist. Symbolic actions can play an educational role, and the educational value of any symbolic action — and this can include demonstrations and sit-ins and strikes and more — is impossible to fully assess in advance. Meanings are forever contested and never settled. We do the best we can, and then we reassess and try again. But our goals must be pedagogical, and our rethinking hinges on two questions: Did we learn? Did we teach?

Q: Do you see property destruction performed by the so-called “Black Bloc” today, or in the 1990s by the ELF, as having any merit? What would you encourage young radicals to do today?

BA: Sometimes, it depends. I urge activists to become more radical (go to the root of things), study, learn, organize, talk to strangers, mobilize, display your ethical aspirations publicly. On the important issues of the last two centuries, political radicals from Jane Addams and Emma Goldman, John Brown and Harriet Tubman, to Eugene Debs and WEB DuBois have gotten it right. The legacy continues with the work of Ella Baker and Septima Clark, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X 40 years ago, and on up to today. Of course as Ella Baker said, “Martin didn’t create the Movement, the Movement created Martin,” and it’s true; for every remembered leader there were hundreds, thousands putting their shoulders on history’s wheel. We might reflect then on the people as they make and remake history.

Everyone should wake up every day and pay attention/ be astonished/ act/ doubt, and repeat for a lifetime. We begin by recognizing that every human being, no matter who, is a gooey biological wonder, pulsing with the breath and beat of life itself, eating, sleeping, pissing and shitting, prodded by sexual urges, evolved and evolving, shaped by genetics, twisted and gnarled and hammered by the unique experiences of living. Every human being also has a unique and complex set of circumstances that makes his or her life understandable and sensible, bearable or unbearable. This recognition asks us to reject any action that treats anyone as an object, any gesture that thingifies human beings. It demands that we embrace the humanity of everyone, that we take their side.

Our country is first of all an extremely diverse immigrant society, with fantastic resources and accomplishments, but it also contains a redoubtable set of internal inequities and external interventions that cannot be ignored. We are faced with the enduring stain of racism and the ever more elusive and intractable barriers to racial justice, the rapidly widening gulf between rich and poor, and the enthronement of greed. We are faced as well with aggressive economic and military adventures abroad, the macho posturing of men bonding in groups and enacting a kind of theatrical but no less real militarism, the violence of conquest and occupation from the Middle East and Central Asia to South America.

Encountering these facts thrusts us into the realm of human agency and choice, the battlefield of social action and change, where we come face to face with some stubborn questions: Can we, perhaps, stop the suffering? Can we alleviate at least some of the pain? Can we repair any of the loss? There are deeper considerations: Can society be changed at all? Is it remotely possible—not inevitable, certainly, perhaps not even likely—for people to come together freely, to imagine a more just and peaceful social order, to join hands and organize for something better, and to win? Can we do anything?

If a fairer, saner and more just society is both desirable and possible, if some of us can join one another to imagine and build a public space for the enactment of democratic dreams, our field opens slightly. Occupy! There would still be much to be done, for nothing would be entirely settled. We would still need to find ways to stir ourselves from passivity, cynicism, and despair, to reach beyond the superficial barriers that wall us off from one another, to resist the flattening social evils like institutionalized racism, to shake off the anesthetizing impact of the authoritative, official voices that dominate so much of our space, to release our imaginations and act on behalf of what the known demands, linking our conduct firmly to our consciousness.

Q: Protestors around the country are preparing for marches and actions on May 1st as part of a General Strike. How useful do you think will be?

BA: Who can predict? Not me. We do our best, we act, and then we rethink and try again. Maybe we can learn from it. Occupy was impossible the day before it happened; the day after it was so obviously inevitable.

Q: There have been some Occupy protests aligned with trying to save schools that are set to close down due to budgetary constraints, and we’ve seen people try to occupy those schools to stop them from being shut down. Do you think that’s an effective tactic? What do you think people can do that would be more likely to bring about change?

BA: Keep trying, keep thinking.

Q: May will also mark the beginning of the occupation of Chicago to protest the NATO summit, now that the G8 has been moved to Camp David. First, do you think the fact that the G8 was moved can be seen as victory for Occupy protestors? And second, how do you think the city of Chicago will handle the situation?

BA: Yes, indeed. G8’s withdrawal was our victory. Now come to Chicago May 22, please and thank you, and help us drive NATO out as well.

As far as the city goes, a 1984-style national security dragnet is set to descend on Chicago in an attempt to lock the city down during the NATO summit. Mayor Rahm Emanuel has made it clear that he will happily act as the host of NATO — and that the 99 percent are not welcome. Emanuel is concocting a culture of fear, suggesting that it is the growing human resistance to NATO that represents danger, outside agitators, violence and invasion.

Universities and schools are being urged to close early in May; communities of color are told that NATO’s work is not their concern; merchants are preparing for assault from the dissenting masses. But NATO, and their G8 friends in hiding, are the real masters of war; it is they who are the greatest purveyors of violence on this earth.

It is unsurprising, then, that Emanuel has funding to further arm and mobilize the police and militarize the city. The Mayor has announced plans to contain and suppress demonstrators. He has pushed through legislation that restricts and criminalizes free speech and assembly and requires costly insurance for public demonstrations. He is issuing a steady stream of pronouncements about a fabricated Chicago, which he says is under siege from ominous and dangerous outside forces.

The mayor, not the popular resistance, is creating conditions for a police riot in Chicago against people exercising their right to peaceful dissent. Emanuel can still change course, and he should. So far, he has chosen to frame the coming convergence of protesters and the powerful solely in military and security terms.

Chicago is big enough for all — it is after all a nuclear-free and cease-fire city, cradle of the Haymarket martyrs and the 8-hour day, labor and peace actions, vast civil rights and immigration rights manifestations, home of Ida B. Wells Barnett, Jane Addams, Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Studs Terkel. Chicago is a vast public space with historic parks, monuments, neighborhoods and streets for popular mobilizations — Chicago belongs to all of us. We underline the right — the moral duty — to dissent and demonstrate, to resist and to be heard, to participatory (not billionaire paid-for) democracy.

The festival of NATO counter-summits, protests, and family-friendly permitted marches planned for May are the next chapter. Organizers and supporters will use humor and music, art and play, civil disobedience and imagination to voice their rejection of permanent imperial wars and the many forms of violence that arise from the same paradigm: discrimination and hate based on race, gender and ethnicity; epic income disparity; mass incarceration; inadequate resources for education, health care and opportunities for meaningful work.

Music, dance, teach-ins and peoples’ tribunals will overflow the parks and theatres. The protests are in the spirit of the Arab Spring, Occupy and the Madison labor struggle, drawing equal inspiration from the work of many others: the Pelican Bay hunger strikers, teachers and nurses, the undocumented DREAMers, returning veterans against the wars, women insisting on reproductive dignity, people resisting foreclosures/take-back-the-landers, those working for LGBTQ equality and more. People from everywhere will bring their spirits and their creativity, pitch their tents and stake their claims. Join us!

Q: Congress passed a recent bill that would make it a felony for protestors to disrupt events where the secret service was present. Do you think fears of a felony charge if protesting at the NATO summit are warranted? And if so, what do you think the proper response should be from protestors?

BA: Break the law.

Q: Politics in Chicago are seen as being inherently corrupt by many people in this country. Do you think that’s a fair assessment of how the city is run? Is there a structure in Chicago politics, for example the system of wards and aldermen, that makes changing policy and accountability more complicated than other cities?

BA: I don’t know that it’s any more or less complicated, but I do know it’s corrupt to the bone, that we should abolish the mayor’s office and the city council and build popular democracy — the model might be ancient Greece for the hundred years, or the Wobbly encampments in Nevada a hundred years ago, or Occupy!

Q: Switching gears a bit, what do you see as the biggest obstacle facing education reform today?

BA: The biggest obstacle facing education reform today is the accepted frame or the established terms of the discussion — the dull but insistent dogma of fashionable common sense. Whenever any two-bit politician gets to a microphone and says, “First we need to get the lazy, incompetent teachers out of the classroom,” he has not only framed the debate, he’s won. What can I say? “No, please leave the lazy teacher there for my grand-daughter!” If I get to the microphone first, I might say, “Every kid deserves a thoughtful, intellectually grounded, morally committed, caring, compassionate, well-rested and well-paid teacher in the classroom.” That’s a re-framing, and I win this one.

A flattering portrait of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan [“Class Warrior,” the New Yorker, February 1, 2010] perfectly reflects the dominant frame in today’s school reform battles: “there are, roughly speaking, two major camps,” writes the essayist. The first he calls “the free-market reformers,” the second, “the liberal traditionalists.” This unfortunate caricature is dead wrong, and it leaves out a huge range of approaches and actors, notably it omits those who argue, as John Dewey did, that in a democracy, whatever the wisest and most privileged parents want for their children must serve as a minimum standard for what the community wants for all of its children. Arne Duncan as well as the Obama children and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s kids all attended the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, where they had small classes, abundant resources, and opportunities to experiment and explore, ask questions and pursue answers to the far limits. Oh, and a respected and unionized teacher corps as well! Good enough for secretaries, mayors, and presidents, good enough for the kids in public schools everywhere. Any other ideal for our schools, in the words of Dewey, “is narrow and unlovely; acted upon it destroys our democracy.”

In schools focused on the needs and dreams of the broad community, we would be inspired by fundamental principles of democracy, including a common faith in the incalculable value of every human being. We would rally around the idea that the full development of each is the condition for the fullest development of all, and conversely that the fullest development of all is the condition for the full development of each. One implication of this principle is that in a truly democratic spirit, whatever the wisest and most privileged parents want for their kids — that is exactly what we as a community want for all of our children.

If we think of education as a product like a car or a refrigerator, a box of bolts or a screw driver — something bought and sold in the marketplace like any other commodity — and if schools are businesses run by CEO’s, and if teachers are workers and students the raw material bumping along the assembly line as information is incrementally stuffed into their little up-turned heads, then it’s rather easy to think that “downsizing” the least productive units, “outsourcing” and privatizing a space that was once public is a natural event; that teaching toward a simple standardized metric, and relentlessly applying state-administered (but privately-developed and quite profitable) tests to determine the “outcomes” is a rational proxy for learning; that centrally controlled “standards” for curriculum and teaching are commonsensical; that “zero tolerance” for student misbehavior as a stand-in for child development or justice is sane; and that “accountability,” that is, a range of sanctions on students, teachers, and schools — but never on law-makers, foundations, corporations, or high officials — is logical and level-headed. This is in fact what a range of noisy politicians, and their chattering pundits in the bought media call “school reform.”

The magic ingredients for this reform recipe are three: replace the public schools with some sort of privately-controlled administration; sort the winners relentlessly from the losers — test, test, TEST! (and then punish); and destroy teachers’ ability to speak with any sustained and unified voice. The operative controlling metaphor for these moves has by now become quite familiar, education is an individual consumer good, not a public trust or a social good, and certainly not a fundamental human right. Management, inputs and outcomes, efficiency, cost controls, profit and loss — the dominant language of this kind of reform – doesn’t leave much room for doubt, or much space to breathe.

In this metaphoric strait-jacket, school learning is a lot like boots or hammers; unlike boots and hammers, the value of which is inherently satisfying and directly understood, the value of school learning is elusive and indirect. Its value, we’re assured, has been calculated elsewhere by wise and accomplished people, and these school masters know better than anyone what’s best for these kids (for other people’s children) and for the world. “Take this medicine,” students are told repeatedly, day after tedious day, “It’s good for you.” Refuse the bitter pill, and go stand in the corner – where all the other losers are assembled.

Schools for obedience and conformity are characterized by passivity and fatalism and infused with anti-intellectualism and irrelevance. They turn on the little technologies for control and normalization — the elaborate schemes for managing the mob, the knotted system of rules and discipline, the exhaustive machinery of schedules and clocks, the laborious programs of sorting the crowd into winners and losers through testing and punishing, grading, assessing, and judging, all of it adding up to a familiar cave, an intricately constructed hierarchy — everyone in a designated place and a place for everyone. In the schools as they are, knowing and accepting one’s pigeonhole on the towering and barren cliff becomes the only lesson one really needs.

The forces fighting to create this new common-sense, school-reform-normal, are led by a merry band of billionaires—Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Sam Walton, Eli Broad—who work relentlessly to take up all the available space, preaching, persuading, and promoting, always spreading around massive amounts of cash to underline their fundamental points: dismantle public schools, crush the teachers unions, test and punish. When Rupert Murdoch was in deep water in the summer of 2011, it came to light that Joel Klein, a leading “reformer” as head of the New York City public schools for years (and whose own kids, of course, attended private schools), was on Murdoch’s payroll. According to the New York Times, the two saw eye to eye “on a core set of education principles: that charter schools needed to expand; poor instructors (the now-famous “lazy incompetent teachers”) should be weeded out; and the power of the teachers union must be curtailed.” The trifecta!

And, of course, these imaginary reformers create a fictional opposition, as foolish as a straw man without a brain, and just as easy to knock down. So imagine escaping the logic and the metaphoric strait-jacket of the “marketeers,” wriggling free, Houdini-like, and swimming to the surface of the tank for a sweet kiss of life, that first breath of air: inhale…exhale…keep on breathing. And don’t get entangled in that silly, simple-minded binary of “reform” vs. the status quo. Let yourselves be free — think beyond what’s proscribed.

Here is a standard we might bring into this debate: What if this school/classroom/experience was for me, or for my child? That would not be the end of the matter, but a healthy and clarifying starting point for discussion. If it’s not OK to cut the arts programs or sports or clubs or science for my child, how can it be OK for the children of the poor? If I want teachers for my kids who are thoughtful, caring, compassionate professionals – well-rested and well-paid, completely capable of making clear and smart judgments in complex situations — how can I advocate for teachers who are little more than mindless clerks for the children on the other side of town? We should be highly skeptical of reformers who claim to know what’s best for other people’s children — whether Gates or Bloomberg or Bush or Obama — when it would be unacceptable for them, or for their precious ones. This kind of hypocrisy is endemic among the current crop of reformers, and this kind of test can be easily applied.

We might insist on recasting the entire discussion about education and school reform. We assume that good working conditions are good teaching conditions, and that good teaching conditions create better learning conditions — and the pathway toward good working conditions must include (not exclusively, but definitely) the independent, collective voice of the teachers.

Furthermore, education in a democracy — at least theoretically and aspirationally — is geared toward and powered by a particularly precious and fragile ideal: every human being is of infinite and incalculable value, each a unique intellectual, emotional, physical, spiritual, moral, and creative force; each of us is born free and equal in dignity and rights, each endowed with reason and conscience, each deserving, then, a community of solidarity, a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood, recognition and respect. In order to be true to that basic ethic and spirit of democracy, school folks must find ways to build on this foundation, assuming that their complex and difficult and yet deeply satisfying task is to create spaces that are happy, healthy places for children, spaces that help students achieve both individual and social fulfillment and well-being. School people who willingly dive into this contradiction realize that the fullest development of each individual — given the delicious stew of race, ethnicity, origin and background, the tremendous range of ability and disability — is the necessary condition for the full development of the entire community, and, conversely, that the fullest development of all is essential for the full development of each.

We might also align with the notion that education is a fundamental and universal human right, something every child deserves simply by being born, a moral obligation of the community, a phenomenon resting on the twin pillars of enlightenment and freedom, and principally directed to the full development of the human personality.

Now when the marketeers talk of “the market working its magic,” we can ask specifically and concretely how centrally-generated standards and an extensive testing regime, for example, or eliminating the arts, or replacing career teachers with a steady parade of short-timers, particularly in urban and low-income areas, does anything to improve education for each and for all. We can challenge the sterile notion that schools must be in every respect subservient to the market, or that the singular purpose of education is to produce workers, feed the economy, or win some trader’s war with China or India. And we can resist privatization, defending the public square and a culture of the commons — in schooling no less than other places.

So who is framing the debate today, and what do they want? All the noisy proponents of market competition in public education have managed to push their ideas onto the agenda by force of power and wealth, certainly not based on any moral suasion or even the paltry results that their schemes have produced. But the project continues, mainly because it is pure dogma — faith-based and fact-free. We need to challenge that freight train with evidence and argument and a vision consistent with our deepest democratic dreams. Organize, link up with their natural allies (parents and students) and fight back! This involves in the first place changing the frame of the discussion.

Q: In your opinion, is there something schools, regardless of their community, could do easily and immediately that would be a vast improvement over the current system?

BA: We might create here and now an open space where we expect fresh and starting winds to blow, unaccustomed winds that are sure to electrify and confound and fascinate us. Winds that tell us we are alive. We begin, then, by throwing open the windows. In this corner of this place — in this open space we are constructing together — people will begin to experience themselves as powerful authors of their own narratives, luminous actors in their own dramas, the essential creators of their own lives. They will find ways to articulate their own desires and demands and questions. In this space everyone will live in search of rather than in accordance with or in accommodation to.

Imagine a school or a classroom where asking, framing, and pursuing their own questions becomes the central work of both teachers and students; where the question of what is worthwhile to know and experience is taken up as a living challenge to focus all student activity; where we would practice participatory democracy; where all the themes, implicit and explicit, are built on a foundational idea that we are swirling through a living history, that nothing is guaranteed or foreordained, that we are, each and all of us, works-in-progress; and where every day we acted out the belief that the classroom, far from being a preparation for life, is indeed life itself. Building community and trust and traditions and engagement would then become central lessons of a successful school.

Q: There seems to be a greater number of people today in support of charter schools, especially in poorer communities – are these charter schools on the right track in your opinion? Or are they taking away from investments that should be put into more traditional public schools?

BA: I’m a bit agnostic about tactics, so it depends. But in poorer communities folks desperately want what everyone wants: a quality education for their kids that helps them become full participating members of society, and good people above all. Pressed and exploited, isolated and marginalized, communities fight for what they deserve as a human right: a decent education for our young. Tactics vary. But if charter folks want to revitalize the public schools — and not be a part of the wrecking machine — they should explain how they are doing that.

Q: Any big plans or projects that you’d like to talk about?

BA: I’m working over-time this year on occupying this and occupying that, occupying the future and occupying my imagination, occupying everything in and out of sight.

Revolution is still possible, democracy and socialism, possible, but barbarism is possible as well. I’m trying to live leaning forward, a pessimist of the head but an optimist of the heart. I find the tools everywhere — humor and art, comics and poetry, protest and spectacle, the quiet, patient intervention and the angry and urgent thrust — but the rhythm of activism remains the same: we open our eyes and look unblinkingly at the world as we find it; we are astonished by the beauty and the suffering all around us; we recognize that right next to the world as such is a world that could be or should be; we dive into the wreckage and swim as hard as we can toward a distant and indistinct shore; we doubt that our efforts make enough difference, and so we rethink, recalibrate, look again, and dive in once more. If we never doubt we get lost in self-righteousness and political narcissism — been there. If we only doubt we vanish into cynicism and despair. Awake/Act/Doubt! Repeat for a lifetime.

Oh, and I’ve got two new books on the way: Palling Around: Talking with the Tea Party, and What If? Releasing the Radical Imagination.

Exciting times!

[Note: Bill Ayers recently discussed his book To Teach: The Journey, in Comics and why comics are important to political discourse on the ComicsAlliance blog. Recommended reading!]

Images: Justin Bianchi and Michael Sauers

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Aaron Colter is a writer and marketing consultant living in Portland, OR. A graduate of Purdue University, Colter has worked for a variety of clients, including the NCAA, Willamette Week, AOL, Dark Horse Comics and several others, in addition to being a guest speaker at a variety of publishing conferences. In 2007, along with Louie Herr, Colter founded the documentation project Banana Stand Media, producing and distributing live music recordings at no cost to independent artists. The pair are currently working on a Banana Stand Media compilation album featuring some of the best live tracks captured over the years. Their goal is to raise awareness for the artists featured and for Portland’s live music scene. You can sponsor the project via Kickstarter here.

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Apr 2012 25

by Nicole Capobianco

As a member of Occupy Wall Street since its beginning 7 months ago, I have been doing the balancing act between being enrolled as a full time student and being an activist. I find myself to be a small but important part of a much larger collective, one in which I believe in wholeheartedly. So what do you believe? Most of my classmates seem shockingly apathetic these days. Meanwhile, I’m keeping track of the latest right we’ve lost, the newest surveillance technique that is being used, and how the illusion of freedom melts away into an ugly reality. With that ugliness also comes my individual political will to act against injustice and instigate change for the betterment of society.

I have 25 hours of class a week. That’s 8 classes and 18 credits this semester. The work for those classes is an additional 25 hours, and my job takes up between 14-20 hours a week. Put that together and you quickly realize that even eating and sleeping healthily takes a hit from all of this activity. The rest of my time since September has been devoted to furthering the Occupy movement in various ways, as this cause has become a huge part of me. I therefore decided to compile some advice for my fellow students, in the hopes that they will use this as a tool to engage in activism while still keeping up with their commitment to academics.

The core of time management has been balance. When I began this journey in September, I had already chosen my semester’s schedule and my work schedule. Needless to say, it didn’t play to my advantage. I was doing too much, and I ended up being sick three times in a three month period. Winter break approached and I changed my schedule to one that would work best to accommodate my activism. I started cooking my food again instead of ordering out. I started to use my weekends as a time of flexibility to do school work, freelance work, or movement work. I told myself I wouldn’t miss class time to protest, realizing that I had been locked into mortgaging my future through loans that brought me to school. It sometimes seems like school is irrelevant when thinking about revolution, but this is my reality and so balance became an important part of how I manage to take the streets. And, hey, I still made the dean’s list!

The second way to be a productive student and activist is to treat campus as if it is an outreach hub. Students have a vested interest in the issues of Occupy Wall Street, even though many of them don’t know it. It’s about each person realizing that there are various things that oppress them, and that they have a stake in the future of this movement. Many students live in a bubble, with thoughts such as “I still have two more years till I graduate and have to get a job” and “This education will give me the connections and skills to pay off these loans easily” being paramount in their minds.

When challenged about Occupy, others say stuff like “My parents paid for my education upfront so I don’t have any loans to worry about.” Or, my favorite, “My parents are part of the 1%, and protestors don’t know what they are protesting about.” Whether it is subtle or loud, I can find one thousand and one ways to loop the conversation back into one about the various issues contained within Occupy and the general importance of dissent within groups of young people, like us, students.

One of the most important things you can do as a student activist is to be honest with your professors. You would be surprised how many of them will support you, even if you are involved in political actions that do not align with their personal politics. If you plan on going to an action that has the possibility of arrest, contact your professors beforehand – and ideally in person. Explain to them that you are going to the action because it is something you believe in and because it is your right to do so, and if an assignment is due, let them know that you have a classmate ready who can present your work so it is not late.

The professors that I have approached have been overwhelmingly positive with words of encouragement and support. When Liberty Plaza was evicted and I was out all night, I texted my professor at about 8 AM to let him know that I wouldn’t make my 9.30 AM class. He told me to simply get some sleep. Teachers are part of the 99% too, and they often respect your right to redress your grievances – and that you’re doing something for the greater good – even if it’s technically inconsistent with the rules of their higher education establishment.

Overall, the best advice I can give is to focus on the things that you can do. You could spend all day making up a list of things you can’t accomplish and things that can’t change, but your willingness to act will make a difference in the struggle. Know your power as a student, as someone who made the conscious choice to learn, and as someone who knows that education is a right of all human beings. Don’t wait until later. Later comes a full time job, more commitments, relationships, more excuses to justify apathy and indifference. Most importantly, do not be afraid.

On May Day I will be on strike during one of my final exams, and later that night when my 5 PM till midnight work shift is due to begin. We run the world that they own, and they enslave us with debt. As a student it is depressing to think that I haven’t spent one day of my adult life without negative dollar signs above my head. We have the power to change these structures. Join me, rise up, and occupy everything!

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Nicole Capobianco is a freelance photographer and web designer, facilitator of the Radical Education Collective, and a student at the Pratt Institute seeking a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Photography. She lives in Brooklyn, NY. She considers herself a collaborator with an aesthetic eye for composition and design. Nicole is an artist, a thinker, and a revolutionary who has been involved with Occupy Wall Street since day one. She enjoys reading, dialogue, good food, making art, and being by the ocean. Her photography can be seen on her website: nicolecapobianco.com/. Her Twitter handle is: @nbcapobia

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Apr 2012 19

by Nicole Powers

We’ve been busting out editorial for the SG Blog out of investigative journalist Greg Palast’s NYC office for the past few weeks and the continuing story of BP’s Deepwater Horizon blow-out has literally been blowing up around us after a whistleblower has come forward with damning new evidence against the oil company.

In a previous SG interview with Greg, we learned that the oil rig incident that occurred in the Gulf on April 20, 2010 wasn’t an unforeseen accident, as BP claimed, but was almost identical to a blow-out that occurred on BP’s rig off the coast of Azerbaijan in the Caspian Sea in September 2008. The cause was the same in both cases: the use of cost-saving quick dry cement.

If BP had been more open about the incident in 2008, and had stopped using this “penny-pinching cement process” the worst oil spill in US history would probably never have happened and the eleven oil workers who perished on the Gulf rig as a result of the blow-out would most likely still be alive.

In a post published today on Ecowatch Greg writes:

We have learned this week that BP failed to notify the International Association of Drilling Contractors (IADC) about the failure of the cement. (British companies report incidents as minor as a hammer dropped.) Notification would have alerted Gulf cement contractor Halliburton that the process of adding nitrogen to cement posed unforeseen dangers.

In fact, this past December, BP attempted to place the blame and costs of the Gulf disaster on Halliburton, the oil services company that injected quick-dry cement into the well under the Deepwater Horizon. BP told a federal court that Halliburton concealed a computer model that would show that, under certain conditions, the cement could fail disastrously.

Following the Deepwater Horizon explosion, it became clear that nitrogen-laced mud can leave “channels” in the cement, allowing gas to escape and blow out the well-bore cap. However, that would have become clearer, and risks better assessed, had Halliburton and regulators known of the particulars of the Caspian blow-out.

We have also just learned that the cement casing itself appears to have cracked apart in the Caspian Sea. The sea, we were told, “was bubbling all around [from boiling methane]. You’re even scared to launch a life boat, it may sink.”

This exposed another problem with deepwater drilling. BP had promoted Blow-Out Preventers (BOPs) as a last line of defense in case of a blow-out. But if the casing shatters, the BOPs could be useless.

BP has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal the story of the first blow-out, and for good reason: If the company deliberately withheld the information that it knew “quick-dry” cement had failed yet continued to use it, the 11 deaths on its Gulf rig were not an unexpected accident but could be considered negligent homicide.

Furthermore, had BP fessed up to the past failure of their drilling methods when seeking permission to expand their drilling operations in US waters, their activities would more than likely have been somewhat curtailed. So instead, they lied by omission to our government under oath:

BP and the industry conducted a successful lobbying campaign to expand deep water drilling. BP’s Vice-President for operations in the Gulf, David Rainey, testified before Congress in November 2009, five months before the Deepwater Horizon explosion that, “Releases from oil and gas operations are rare.” Rainey assured Congressmen that reliable “well control techniques” such as cement caps will prevent a deep water disaster.

Rainey made no mention to Congress of the blow-out in the Caspian Sea which occurred a year before his testimony.

In the two years following the spill, BP has dumped a lot of resources into a public relations effort to clean up their reputation as opposed to the actual ongoing effect of the spill (we’ve all seen those very expensive and slick looking TV ads). It’s therefore no surprise that this week Al Jazeera posted a story about how the high incidence of “horribly deformed” fish found in the Gulf is alarming fishermen and scientists alike. Eyeless shrimp or clawless crab for dinner anyone?

***

About Greg Palast
Greg Palast’s reports can be seen on BBC Television’s Newsnight. He is a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow for investigative reporting, and is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Armed Madhouse.

His latest book, Vultures’ Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Predators, which he describes as “a tale of oil, sex, shoes, radiation and investigative reporting,” is available now. Visit GregPalast.com and VulturesPicnic.com for more info.

Greg Palast and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are the co-authors of a comic-style voter guide called Steal Back Your Vote. They are also collaborating on a new book and DVD entitled Election Games: Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, which will expose the one percent’s attempt to steal the 2012 election through “hidden cash and vote heists.” Support their investigation via Kickstarter here.

Related Posts:
Greg Palast – Steal Back Your Vote 2012 Part 1: Understanding Super PACs
Vultures’ Picnic: We Figured Out Who Murdered Jake
Uber-Vultures: The Billionaires Who Would Pick Our President
Tokyo Electric To Build US Nuclear Plants: The No-BS Info On Japan’s Disastrous Nuclear Operators
Stick Your Damn Hand In It: 20th Birthday of the Exxon Valdez Lie
Obama is a two-faced liar. Aw-RIGHT!
Why An Asshole Is Always In Charge
The Steal You Won’t See
SG Interview: Greg Palast – Steal Back Your Vote
SuicideGirls Steal Back Your Vote

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Apr 2012 09

by David Seaman / video segment produced by Lindsey Miller

SG’s political correspondent David Seaman contemplates CISPA – a SOPA-like Big Brother bill that is gaining traction right now – and decides it may be time to take drastic measures!

In case you’re not familiar with CISPA, the Minnesota Daily explains that:

H.R. 3532, similarly to SOPA, emphasizes digital piracy and file sharing, while also considering the infringement of intellectual property as a security threat…Under CISPA, Internet service providers and other companies could be forced to share user data with government agencies.

The EFF strongly opposes the bill because:

H.R. 3523, also known as the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011, would let companies spy on users and share private information with the federal government and other companies with near-total immunity from civil and criminal liability. It effectively creates a “cybersecurity” exemption to all existing laws.

There are almost no restrictions on what can be collected and how it can be used, provided a company can claim it was motivated by “cybersecurity purposes.”

Democratic Underground cautions:

CISPA gives private companies the ability to collect and share information about their customers or users with immunity — meaning we cannot sue them for doing so, and they cannot be charged with any crimes.

And Mashable warns:

The bill already has over 100 co-sponsors and the backing of some of Silicon Valley’s most prominent companies, including Microsoft and Facebook — support which SOPA never enjoyed.

Over half a million people have signed a petition to Stop CISCA. Add your name to it here.

A summary of the CISPA text can be viewed on the Library of Congress website.

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Apr 2012 02

by David Seaman

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Mar 2012 30

by Nicole Powers



Video streaming by Ustream

Above: Footage of the press conference organized by Revolution Truth in association with Demand Progress courtesy of Tim Pool a.k.a. @timcast.
(Actual conference starts at 1 min 40 secs.)

Thursday, March 29, 2012 was a landmark day in the fight for freedom as we know it. A group of journalists and activists gave opening statements in a federal lawsuit seeking an injunction against the implementation of key clauses in the National Defense Authorization Act, which has shattered many of the founding principles of the United States.

Chris Hedges (a Pulitzer Prize-winning ex-New York Times reporter) initially filed the lawsuit. It was subsequently amended to become a multi-plaintiff case, with six further names signing on for round one of what is hoped will be a multi-stage legal action. Dubbed the Freedom Seven, alongside Hedges the list of named plaintiffs now includes Daniel Ellsberg (a former US military analyst who is best known for releasing the Pentagon Papers), Professor Noam Chomsky (a renowned academic, activist, and writer), Birgitta Jonsdottir (an Icelandic politician and pro-WikiLeaks campaigner), Alexa O’Brien (a journalist and founder of the US Day of Rage electoral reform campaign), Kai Wargalla (the founder of Occupy London), and Tangerine Bolen (the founder of activist and alternative media organization Revolution Truth).

Opening statements were heard by Judge Katherine Forrest at the US District Court Building at 500 Pearl Street in Manhattan. Hedges, O’Brien, and Wargalla testified in person, and author Naomi Wolf read written testimony on behalf of Jonsdottir, who had been cautioned against traveling to the US due to her involvement with Wikileaks. Much of the case rests of the definition of “associated forces” – or lack thereof – since under the NDAA the military can indefinitely detain anyone it suspects has “substantially supported” al-Qaida, the Taliban or “associated forces.”

In a press release put out by The Sparrow Project, Hedges said: “I have had dinner more times than I can count with people whom this country brands as terrorists. But that does not make me one.” Given the possible broad interpretation of “associated forces” journalists such as Hedges – as well as activists and protesters – now operate under threat of possible detention without due process. However, to win the right to continue the court action, the judge has to agree that at least one of the seven plaintiffs has established a “reasonable fear” of being detained for exercising their constitutionally protected right to free speech.

During a press conference held outside the court at 2.30 PM on Thursday, Bolen made the following powerful statement in support of the Freedom Seven’s action:

“The NDAA is an egregious assault on our civil liberties…I approached Chris Hedges and asked him to amend his lawsuit to be a multi-plaintiff suit because the NDAA covers all kinds of people from around the world, and the seven of us who started this suit all feel we are in imminent danger under this law…

“I started an organization called Revolution Truth, and we’ve conducted campaigns in defense of Wikileaks and Bradley Manning. We also are an alternative media organization. We host livestreaming panel discussions with people from around the world. We were about to embark on a panel series with Middle Eastern revolutionaries and activists, including members of Hamas and other people [from] whom we want to hear about their ideas about the word ‘terrorism’ and the US government’s War on Terror…

“But we frankly were an international all volunteer group of about 25 people, and none of us feel safe in engaging in the work we normally do as journalists and activists. Under the NDAA we actually feel we are in danger, so we suspended our panel series for the time being. Furthermore, I’ve worked directly with some Wikileaks staff…and from the moment I began speaking with Wikileaks I was warned that all my communications would henceforth be routed through the NSA. This happened about a year ago. It’s something I’m used to at this point, but frankly with the confluence of factors and forces [of] the last 10 years of the laws, including the AUMF, the Patriot Act, and now the NDAA, I frankly don’t feel safe under my own government. I’m an activist, I’m a professional, I’m a Democrat, and I’m suing Obama over this…

“Our goal is to stop the unconstitutional provisions of this law, specifically sections 1021 and 1023, and to force the US government to better define its terms. Right now, it uses language in this law that is incredibly broad, and we consider very dangerous for not just this round of plaintiffs, but for all of us at some point. We actually think that the language of the law ultimately could be used against people like Occupy Wall Street and other protesters, so we’re determined to make sure our Constitution stands, and so does our Bill of Rights…I think we have a long uphill battle ahead of us. Obviously we’ve had 10 years of both Republicans and Democrats egregiously assaulting our liberties, so this is just the start…

“Chris Hedges filed this lawsuit because he spent 15 years working for the New York Times as a war correspondent. He’s personally interviewed members of Hamas and members of al-Qaeda, and the language of the law in sections 1021 and 1023 is so vague. It says “associated forces” and it talks about people who engage in hostilities against the United States. It doesn’t clearly define, as far as we’re concerned, “associated forces.” It leaves it so vague and broad that a journalist such as Chris Hedges, who meets with or gives a platform to people we, quote, call terrorists could end up being in trouble under this law…As far as we understand it, the language of this law contravenes three-quarters of the Bill of Rights and multiple Constitutional Amendments.”

During the press conference Wolf also spoke about the “chilling effect” the law is already having on the activities of journalists. She went on to say that her own activities had been directly curtailed, and that she had declined meetings with both Julian Assange and a group of former Guantanamo prisoners because of the threat posed by the NDAA.

Wargalla, who co-founded the Facebook and Twitter accounts that sparked Occupy London and was a key organizer of the subsequent encampments in the UK’s capital, then went on to explain that as an occupier she has already been defined as a member of a terrorist organization by law enforcement and government agencies. “We’re a peaceful and non-violent protest. Nevertheless the City of London police department put us on a list just under al-Qaeda saying that we were a terrorist organization,” said Wargalla. “I refuse to be silent and I refuse to be scared, and I would encourage everyone around the world to speak up and stand up against this law…If we don’t speak up now it may very well be too late.”

Civil rights activist Cornell West was in court to support the Freedom Seven, and also addressed the gathered press. If the group manages to establish legal standing, West hopes to sign on for the second round of action, which will be opened up to a larger pool of individuals who now operate under threat of the oppressive provisions of the NDAA. “You gotta keep track of this trial,” urged West. “Freedom is precious. If you don’t fight for it, you lose it.”

Reports from inside the courtroom can be found at Guardian.co.uk/, Courthousenews.com/ and Dissenter.firedoglake.com/.

Read the full text of the plaintiffs initial brief and the NDAA. For more information visit StopNDAA.org/.