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Posts By Comrade Black

0 Emergency Day of Action – Solidarity for #Elsipogtog Dec 2nd

November 29, 2013
by Comrade Black
· News · PE Web Zine · Radness · Uncategorized

Reblogged from: Reclaim Turtle Island

A message from the HWY 11 Land Defenders:

“We are not giving up despite these harsh weather conditions, sacrificing time with our families, our jobs, our homes, not only to protect land, water and people but to ensure a brighter future for the next 7 generations. We are asking for more support, through road blocks to be in solidarity. This is not just an Elsipogtog issue, this is a global issue and we need to raise awareness. Show us support any way possible, sending thank you’s, road blocks, banners, even dropping by, all and every type of support is appreciated.”

The 3rd encampment in Mi’kmaq Territory, at HWY 11, which saw stand off’s between the Mi’kmaq peoples protecting the water and RCMP protecting corporate interests, is requesting widespread global support.

The Provincial Court of New Brunswick has approved an injunction which names 5 people, including “Jane” and “John Doe”, to target the HWY 11 encampment. This encampment has successfully turned away SWN vehicles and is preventing SWN from conducting seismic testing on unceded Mi’kmaq lands. Each day that SWN cannot conduct its testing, it costs the company $54, 000. SWN is once again looking to the RCMP to enforce the injunction most recently granted. At this time, the RCMP have used the injunction to target the Mi’kmaq and have set up a “check point” on HWY 11, where the RCMP stop vehicles to arrest passengers and drivers at their whim.

We remember the last time the RCMP enforced an injunction against the Mi’kmaq people. As seen historically, the RCMP will continue to enforce the violation of treaties and attack Indigenous self-determination. At this time, the RCMP are not only harassing Mi’kmaq Land Defenders and non-Native supporters, but continuing to throw them in jail. On Thursday, November 28th the Mi’kmaq again turned SWN away – declaring another day of victory. They are standing up against brutal police repression, and continued theft of Indigenous lands and ongoing colonization. Show them they are not alone!
On Monday Dec. 2nd HWY 11 Land Defenders are asking you to show your solidarity by taking action in your community. Where possible, highway shutdowns are encouraged however any action of support, such as banner drops, are welcome. #ShutDownCanada

1 The Bunny Alliance Announces Gateway to Hell Tour

November 27, 2013
by Comrade Black
· Events · News · On Tour · PE Web Zine · Radness

The Bunny Alliance will embark on the Gateway to Hell Tour this holiday travel season to demand that Delta Air Lines end its support of animal research and help stop the transport of animal to laboratories.

from The Bunny Alliance

On December 26^th, the founders of The Bunny Alliance will set out on a nationwide tour to hold Delta Air Lines accountable for its role in the vivisection industry. During this Gateway to Hell Tour, The Bunny Alliance will coordinate demonstrations at every Delta U.S. airport hub and at the Delta Headquarters in Atlanta, GA, as well as organize activist trainings for each tour stop.

The Bunny Alliance is targeting Delta Air Lines because it is in a strategic partnership with Air France and is its North America representative—and Air France is one of the last commercial airlines to continue the practice of shipping animals to labs. The campaign against Delta is to demand that they force Air France to place a permanent ban on the transportation of all animals being shipped to vivisection labs across the world.

The tour demonstrations will call on Delta Air Lines to stop Air France’s transport of animals to labs, garner media attention about the role of the airlines in vivisection, and educate holiday travelers about the animal cruelty that Delta supports. Additionally, the trainings at each tour stop will teach local activists about the campaign and how they can be involved. The trainings will also include “know your rights” and other activism tips, as well as information about how to act as a legal observer and deal with law enforcement at demonstrations to keep activists safe.

The Gateway to Hell Tour is being organized by the co-founders of The Bunny Alliance, Amanda Schemkes and Jordan Ezell. Amanda and Jordan have both been involved in the animal liberation movement for several years and have extensive experience with activism tours and anti-vivisection campaigns.

The Bunny Alliance is asking for the support of the greater activism community to help make the Gateway to Hell Tour a success. People can learn more about the tour and make a donation at http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-bunny-alliance-gateway-to-hell-tour. The Bunny Alliance also asks people to watch for additional tour information to be released and to get involved in the tour and broader campaign against Delta Air Lines. Visit http://thebunnyalliance.com/ and email thebunnyalliance@riseup.net.

Tour Schedule

December 27: Demonstration at Salt Lake City International Airport and Activism Workshop

December 29: Demonstration at Denver International Airport and Activism Workshop

December 31: Demonstration at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport and Activism Workshop

January 1: Demonstration at O’Hare International Airport and Activism Workshop

January 2: Demonstration at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport

January 3: Demonstration at Detroit Metropolitan Airport

January 5: Demonstrations at John F. Kennedy International Airport & LaGuardia Airport and Activism Workshop

January 6: Demonstration at the New York Stock Exchange

January 7: Demonstration at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and Activism Workshop

January 8: Demonstration at Delta Headquarters

January 11: Demonstration at Los Angeles International Airport

13 Rural Punk Magazine Call Out For Submissions

November 15, 2013
by Comrade Black
· PE Web Zine · Radness · Uncategorized

Hey You! Rural Punk! We are creating a magazine just for us, the rural punks, back to the land skids, backwoods anarchists, etc! The Country Grind is a smokin’ new quarterly magazine specifically for those folks who have ran away from the cities in search of a simpler, saner, and more fulfilling life. All content is written by fellow rural punks and is intended for a rural punk audience. Whether you live in a small town, deep in the bush, on a farm in the prairies, or tucked away in the mountains. Whether you’re on grid or off. A vegan gardener or a hunter/trapper. You’re a lone wolf or you’ve got a spouse and kids. As long as you’re a punk* and you don’t live in a city, this magazine is for you.

We are currently looking for contributors and subscribers. We need rural punk contributors to write articles, create artwork, and help with organizing responsibilities. We’ll happily except any articles relevant to an alternative rural audience. Some upcoming articles include Reclaiming Childbirth in Rural Communities; Rural Isolation and Mental Health; DIY Oil Changes; and Adventures In Permaculture.

As far as artwork, we’re looking for pretty much anything relevant. Big or small. Full page artwork or little doodles. This isn’t some boring manifesto by some dead European beardo. This is Punk! This is Art! Let’s make it look beautiful!

The deadline for the first issue is Dec. 6^Th, and I hope to have it shipped out to subscribers by the winter solstice (Dec. 21^st).

The first issue (and hopefully all subsequent issues) will be 100% free to all small towns and rural addresses. City punks will have to pay, but prices are reasonable ($3-5 ppd)

If you’d like to contribute, sign up to receive the first issue, or if your interested in placing an ad (cheap ad space!) contact me at gbonegardener@gmail.com. If you’re a city punk and you’d like to buy a copy you can do so at: countrygrind.blogspot.com

Can’t wait to hear from you!

~Gretchen Bonegardener

Rural Punk Extraordinaire

countrygrind.blogspot.com

*We’re using the word “punk” very loosely, we mean it in a way that includes any folks that are living there lives in a D.I.Y. way, are battling the status quo, and have some level of disdain for authority.

0 Mandy Hiscoks Presents at Human Rights are Animal Rights on the connections between prisons and zoos

November 9, 2013
by Comrade Black
· PE Web Zine · Radness · Video

Former G20 prisoner Mandy Hiscoks speaking on Zoos and Prisons and the false dichotomy of human-VS-animal liberation

2 Never Been So Lucky?

November 9, 2013
by Comrade Black
· Columns · PE Web Zine

by Comrade Black

All my life people have been telling me how lucky I am.

There was a time in my life where I was jumped by 3 men, who held my head to the ground while one jumped up and brought his foot down; all over a hundred or so dollars. I tell people, and they tell me I am lucky. Oh so lucky to have survived. Or the time I was hit to the head with an aluminum baseball bat. So lucky.

If this is what luck is I wish I would quit getting it.

Recently I was approved for PWD (Persons With Disabilities) after years of struggling through the hoops of bureaucracy. Sometimes when I tell people this they reply “wow you are so lucky.” “I wish I didn’t have to work for money, and could get a BC wide bus pass, free camping, and ½ off at the ferries”

Yeah, lucky…

I wake up in pain, nearly every day. When I awake my feet ache from sleep, and my back is often sore too. I deal with crippling spells of fatigue that shut me right down. If I walk too long, or go up too many stairs my knees remind me of when that drunk driver said to the cops “no, I didn’t hit him, I just drove up and he was laying here.” At the hospital as I came back to consciousness the nurse said to me “You are pretty lucky… It was pretty stupid to be riding at night without any lights.”
Dumb luck.

I deal with 4 different conditions that each manifest as different forms of chronic pain, AS, fibramialgia, soft tissue damage to my knees, and migraines. At least one of them I was assured will only get worse throughout my life, and likely will cripple me permanently. Eventually. All products of poverty, and living in the disaster we call civilization.
but hey, its ok cause I get a free bus pass… Well, actually it is $45, but still, so lucky.

When I was a kid, I was bullied in school. Although bullied doesn’t even begin to describe it accurately. Terrorized would be more honest. Daily I would get my ass smacked, or my crotch grabbed, while I was called fag, tripped, spit on and they would destroy my locker so I had to carry my binders with me all day in my book bag. They even once tore my pants off my body, in half. Tore them right off of me, and laughed. I was suicidal until I was in my mid 20s, and still struggle with depression and anxiety. When I tell people these stories they often tell me “man, you are lucky you got out of there alive.”
Apparently choosing to hitchhike across the country and live on the streets to get away from there had nothing to do with it…
It was just luck.

I find the word luck dis-empowering.
Luck implies that fate or random chance of the universe just fell in my direction.
It takes away all agency, and neutralizes participation,
As if nothing I did had anything to do with why I survived, and even thrived despite it.
I don’t think I have been lucky, I have been unlucky. But I persevered, in spite of it.

My life has been a struggle, it hasn’t been easy. Sure, I wasn’t a child soldier, or sold into sex slavery, so many others have definitely had it worse – but that doesn’t undermine my own struggles and hardships.

I survived because I fought, and had the support of friends, allies, and community.
“You’re so lucky to have such a great community.”
No, sorry, I have to disagree.
I have community because we have put in the work to make it a reality.
To build and maintain those relationships which are important.
Community, relationships, they don’t just happen accidentally.

I once read a article about sexual assault, where the author meditated about how almost every woman she knew had bad it done to them
and she kept saying “I am the lucky one, lucky it never happened to me.”
Like the drunk driver who ran over me, or the people who assaulted me, the perpetrators in her story didn’t do anything, the women were just “unlucky.” Where the fuck is agency?

We live in a world, where species go extinct every day, where forest get paved, where women are prey, where most of the world (human) population lives in poverty. Yet we are constantly told we are lucky.

Fuck luck. We need action, compassion, and empathy.
We need to quit giving up our agency, and most importantly, to take responsibility.
And never be so lucky

1 Poisoning My Candy: Consumerism, Alcoholism, Patriarchy, and why I have grown to hate Halloween

October 31, 2013
by Comrade Black
· Columns

by Comrade Black

I use to love Haloween.
Now I despise it.

When I was a kid Halloween was by far my favorite day of the year. I have a distinct memory of the year I got chicken pox, I was 4 years old living in Ardrossen Alberta, and oh boy was I upset that I couldn’t go trick or treating with my older sister. She shared the candy with me, but it just wasn’t the same. Every year my mother would take me to the thrift store to find a cheap ski-suit, then come Halloween I would get on 2 pairs of long johns, don the ski-suit, and my mother would get out rolls of masking tape to cover me head to toe – I went as a mummy, with the help of mommy. And since I couldn’t bend my knees or elbows, I walked like one too!

As I got older, the costumes became more complex. My mother hand sewed me a Beetlejuice costume when I was about 12, and I spiked my hair for the first time (using green Halloween hairspray). I remember one year working for weeks with liquid latex to hand make a Halloween mask for my Lich costume (a Lich is like a zombie mage from D&D, what happens when evil wizards take a potion to extend their life at the cost of dying while staying alive so they can continue to gain more power). One year I went as the Devil, and even spent hours dying my skin red with watered down food coloring which stained for weeks, but looked awesome! Or there was the year I dressed up as a mafia guy, including a Tommy gun I spent week making, with a copper pipe barrel, coffee can magazine, and oak, hand cut and stained rifle butt. The cops pulled me over to confirm it wasn’t real – and of course to run my name for warrants – cause you know, they are assholes. That incident lead to its own humorous story, but I will tell that one another day.

Eventually I began setting up Halloween parties as a community event. This was really the first DIY organizing I ever did, years before I ever organized DIY all ages punk shows or anarchist bookfairs. I would rent a hall, get my (former) friend Pat to DJ, and my friend Yvonne to run the bar (this was years before I went Straightedge). People donated to get in, and the bar would usually break even, even after the costs of a liquor license and me setting the prices far below normal. The majority of attendees were people I played Vampire or D&D with.

The reason I loved Halloween so much as a kid, and even until I was a young adult, was that it was the one holiday where you could be dark, dress up scary, as something evil. Where you could embrace all the things normally frowned upon in this fake Christian and legalistic culture. It was the day the freaks, geeks, artists and picked on kids could shine. It was DIY, and encouraged youth to be creative, and use their imaginations. And it was the only holiday where you went out into the community, often with friends to meet your neighbors, and knocked on the doors of other people (who you would threaten with pranks if they didn’t give you candy). Every other holiday meant staying home with family to celebrate some weird depiction of a dead deity and gorged on dead animal carcasses. On Halloween, instead of consuming a carcass, you would try to create a costume that made you look like one! Halloween for me was the collective accumulation of everything missing from every other day of the year all wrapped up into one dark night. I was always drawn to darkness, just as I was always drawn to be creative.

But Halloween has been recuperated by the consumer capitalist mainstream and drunken party culture. Now it exists as nothing more than another excuse to buy more junk (made by children in a sweatshop in China), consume, and get drunk. Whereas the costumes of my childhood were mostly homemade, even if people occasionally bought a mask or the fake blood, or whatnot, there was always a DIY element to it; now the norm is to purchase your costume at the mall, 100% plastic shit, shipped from overseas, and throw it out the next day. Mom’s and dad’s no longer take their kids door to door in many cities, as the fear of poisoned candy and sexual predators has become so pervasive (even though no one has ever actually poisoned candy to hand out, and the vast majority of child molesters are family, close friends, or people given authority over the kids; not a stranger in the bush) that the new tradition for many parents is to drive their kids (in their gas guzzling SUV) to the mall where they go store to store instead of door to door, and managers or employees of corporations hand out candy along with promotional materials. Because as we all know, Corporations are far more trustworthy than the people who live down the street from you.

For young adults and teenagers, the new trend is a mix of sexist shit costumes such as “Slutty Nurse,” or “Breast Inspector” and the always popular cultural appropriation and other racist ‘costumes’ such as white people wearing blackface. And have you noticed the disturbingly sexualizing Halloween costumes being marketed for young girls these days? Costumes become more and more sexualized by the year, for both adults and children. From “Slut Shaming” to sexualizing children, the corporations who make and sell this shit have no problem profiting off of rape culture. Just as the bars have no issue with profiting of addiction, and binge drinking.

Then of course there is the Halloween candy, made of shit and chemicals that are toxic, glued together with processed sugar, and often containing the milk of abused cows or other products stolen from the bodies of animals which our species domesticated who live tortured lives in industrial farms and feedlots before being shipped to the slaughter house. This poison cocktail then gets wrapped in a couple sheets of plastic “to make sure it safe from contamination” before being shipped halfway across the world so you can give it to kids to ensure they become addicted to sugar. TRICK OR TREAT!

Even the horror movies have gotten worse, turning into movies that fetishize and sexualize torture for 2 hours straight.

Over the last few years I have pondered various strategies to try and re-appropriate what is left of the once very DIY and community oriented former Pagan holiday. As much as I am disheartened by what it has become, I still do see some hope in the darkness. The continuing popularity of the Halloween screenings of the cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show give me some hope, and honestly dressing up in drag and throwing toast in the air can be quite a blast! The overt queerness of Rocky Horror may be what has saved it from being appropriated and recuperated entirely by this consumerist and homophobic culture.

I use to see some possibility as well in November 5 – Guy Fawkes Day, before the iconic V mask became mass produced and adopted by the right wing Libertarians and conspiracy theorists who never bothered to read Allan Moore’s anarcho-antihero epic, nor taken the time to learn the real history of the Gunpowder Plot to blow up Parliament. But alas, I have given up on Guy Fawks day after burning only 1 effigy of Steven Harper.

And of course there is the Pagan revival, people going back the roots of Samhain. There is definitely something encouraging about people, especially settlers on stolen land, wanting to go back to their roots. The potential for decolonization is there. Yet I am not entirely sold on this either, as those pagan roots are often from cultures that have already engaged in the domestication of animals and plants, and worship warlike patriarchal gods, or gods who offer the control of nature for faithful servitude. Spirituality has also been largely recuperated by civilization and turned into an escapist retreat from taking action and creating change. Then there is the questions of cultural appropriation whether it is neo-pagan Wicca and reinvention of Samhain, or the appropriation of Día de Muertos.

Another thing I have attempted with limited success is to organize sober spaces that are alternatives to the drunken Halloween party culture. There is many people that can’t be in spaces where alcohol is, whether it is cause they are struggling with addiction, a youth who legally is not allowed into a space that sells booze, or someone who just doesn’t like being around drunks or doesn’t feel safe around them do to past experiences.

A new idea I had this year was to make posters which read in large text something along the lines of:
“GET TO KNOW YOUR NEIGHBORS
Halloween is suppose to be about building community
DON’T TAKE YOUR KIDS TO THE MALL
trick or treat & meet the people you live next to.”

Another idea I have played with is to make vegan treats, which may not be healthier but are a lot better than the toxic corporate crap candy most folks are handing out to trick or treaters. I have a simple recipe for Vegan rice crispy squares for example, and I thought if I was to make them with a note attached explaining who made them, why, and all the ingredients including a phone number and address to accompany my name; perhaps, just maybe, parents would let their kids actually eat them??? A connected idea to make this one work better, was to make a batch of Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies, using Sarah Kramer’s awesome recipe, in about august/September, and make a note with the ingredients that reads “hand made for you by your neighbor,” then take these door to door and hand them out for a few blocks, as a good opportunity to get to know the people who you share geographical locality with. This way not only do you meet them which can help build community, but also make them more open to homemade candy come Halloween.

The other type of strategies would be to find ways to use the current consumer culture and appropriate it’s energy for anarchist purposes. Thousands of people in the streets wearing generic disguises can offer a perfect smoke and mirrors type of potential for low level warfare against capital. Although with the enormous police presence and normalization of snitch culture amongst yuppies, there are some real risks to this. Alternatively one could try to use the trendy hipsters as a funding base for anarchist projects. Put on an event or sell something targeted towards pop culture (Zombie paraphernalia?) and use the money from it to pay the rent on your infoshop, to restock your punk distro, buy media or AV equipment, send to prisoners, or to cover travel to conferences, summits, or elsewhere for people who should be there but can’t afford it. There are many projects that are in constant need of funds in the anarchist movement. However, this strategy also runs into some risks of recuperation or wasting our energy on projects that don’t help further our own.

Halloween has been reduced from the night to creatively celebrate horror and the dead to a dead holiday where zombies dressed as in costume celebrate the death of creativity and consume the horrors of capitalist civilized reality. Is it time to bury this tradition? Or can transform into wild beasts and enact a séance to resurrect it from the death that is this modern reality called of civilization and destroy the monster called Leviathan?

0 Thinking Outside The Bars

October 28, 2013
by Comrade Black
· PE Web Zine · Video

poem by Comrade Black

by Comrade Black

The grass IS always greener
When you’re standing in a desert
That use to be a forest
Like the Fertile Crescent
Or the great Scottish rain forests
You know, where now what we call the Moor is
Or parking lots and paved roads where the meadow use to live
But you see the trick isn’t to get over to the other side of the fence
But instead to tear it down altogether
A world free of false man made borders
Walls and fences
Cages are for captives
And we are meant to be free
As all life is meant to be
I hate walls and all the people who love them.[i]
I hate bars and prisons
And bars built to keep people drunk in
Captives to their own inebriation
Wasn’t that drink suppose to give you escape?
But there is no escape when the whole world is our prison
Just another bottle do drown in
Not until the people have risen
To tear the oppression down
Bring the bastards down
No crowns
Royal or otherwise

[i] This line is a play off a line from anarcho-pop band Chumbawamba “I hate wars, and all the people who love them” from the song Here’s The Rest Of Your Life from their second album Never Mind the Ballots

1 How To Make Quinoa Taste Good: Punk rock kitchen 101

October 3, 2013
by Comrade Black
· PE Web Zine · Radness · Recipes Section

by Comrade Black

I only began eating quinoa about a year ago, but since I started I have quickly learned to love it and been constantly surprised that many others don’t! “I tried liking it” or “it’s rather bland” are common replies I hear from people when I ask if they like quinoa, some are even more crass making statements like “you actually like that stuff???” Yet whenever I make quinoa for one of these folks the response I get is quite different “wow, that’s good, how you make it taste like that?”

Truth is, cooking quinoa and making it taste awesome is really fucking easy. Quinoa (pronounced keen-wah for those who are new to it) is super quick to cook, and super healthy, a super food loaded with great nutrients and a complete protein. So making it part of your diet can help make being healthier a hell of a lot less work. And don’t worry, for the poor folks out there quinoa doesn’t have to cost a lot if you follow the advice Emma Goldman once offered to a group of poor workers “Ask for work. If they don’t give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread.” In other words what I am suggesting is that if you can’t afford good food, don’t eat shit, just take what you need. Big corporations steal from the workers on all levels, then fuck over the consumer (also generally a worker) by overpricing, so don’t feel bad about taking what you need. The simplest way is to buy from the bulk section and mark it down as something similar looking like bulgur wheat or couscous or whatever. Look for the teller in training, or if they have those electronic self serve tellers use those. Even if the teller notices, most will not say anything as they are not paid enough to care.

So here is how I cook it to make it taste awesome.

The most basic method is to cook it kinda like past or rice. I start by pouring some quinoa into a mesh tea strainer, then rinse it under the tap until the water runs through easy. I then throw it in the pot on medium heat and let it fry for a few seconds before adding water. I just add water like I would to pasta, and I am not the type to measure.

At this point I ad bouillon, I use about half a cube. Many of the basic soup bouillons happen to be vegan, even the ones that are chicken or beef flavored, just check the ingredients.

Next I add some black pepper, and if I have any ground garlic, I toss it in too. That is really all there is to it… Sometimes I also like to throw in some dried stinging nettles, which you can either get from a tea shop or you can just go outside and pick some and dry them. Fresh nettles work fine as well as long as you cook them for at least 8 minutes. The nettles are optional, I tend to like how the grassy flavor of the nettles compliments the grainy taste of quinoa and pepper. Cook it until the water is out, and I tend to turn down the heat to ¼ when it begins to get close. When the water is gone, fluff it with a fork.

This is the most basic way I cook it, it only takes about 15 minutes, and this type of quinoa is perfect for putting on a wrap with other veggies, or to eat alone.

I also like to sometimes add canned beans in tomato sauce to the quinoa right when it is just about cooked. Another similar addition is to mix in frozen mixed veggies (like the mixed peas, carrots and corn bag they always seem to give you at the food bank) when the quinoa is nearly cooked.

One of my personal favorite dishes to make witch is very easy and tastes great using quinoa uses quinoa with wild rice and lentils.

I begin by pouring wild rice into a pot, add lots of water (more than you would for other rice). Heat should be on medium. I add the soup bouillon cube at this point, then take off and do something else for a while, wild rice takes a while to cook so it is good to go do laundry or check email or plan an arson (JUST KIDDING 😉 ) while it cooks. After about 20 minutes, I add quinoa, I like using red quinoa with this variation if I have it, but any kind is great. I also add lentils at this point. It will take about another 15 minutes after this, so I add some pepper, or garlic, then go off to play video games or write a letter to a prisoner, or whatever. Again I cook it until the water is gone, then it is done. Simple.

I generally like it as is, but if you want you can always add a bit of soya sauce or other stuff to your taste.

1 Caged Dreams

October 1, 2013
by Comrade Black
· PE Web Zine · Radness

by Comrade Black

Are you in prison, or locked out?

A cage is a cage
Is a cage
Is a cage
Is a cage
Whether barbed wire
Steal bars
Or build of addiction and fear
It’s the same
Freedom knows no boundaries
Walls
Borders
Or
Shame

A cage is a cage
Is a cage
Is a cage
It’s the same
Human are animals
We all deserve to be free
Not one set of limits for you
And another for me
No prisons, or mink farms
Jails or zoos
No Pet stores
or backyard chicken coops
no psych wards where inmates are held without consent
No ant farms
Or cattle barns
Or pens to breed animals in
Liquor stores or beauty norms
or other forms of boxes to keep people IN.

There is no justification you can give to me that is good enough to continue with this
No matter how many walls, cameras, or cages
We will always resist

Keeping any living being captive without its consent
whether it is to punish them
to eat them
to pet them
or to use their labor or bodies for our needs

A cage is a cage
Is a cage
Is a cage
It’s the same

There’s no walls in a forest, desert, or stream
No bars in the oceans, the sky or in my dreams

0 Wild Children – Domesticated Dreams: Book & Speaking tour for Layla AbdelRahim

September 21, 2013
by Comrade Black
· Events · News · On Tour · PE Web Zine · Radness

It is with great enthusiasm that we are announcing the 2013 speaking tour for anthropologist, unschooler, and anarchist Layla AbdelRahim. Layla will be touring with her new book Wild Children – Domesticated Dreams through various communities in the Cascadian Bioregion.

We are still booking dates. If you wish to organize a speaking engagement with Layla in your community please get in contact: prideandunity@hotmail.com

Tour dates so far:

Tuesday October 8, 5:30-7:00
Kwantlen Polytechnic University
Surrey BC, Unceded Coast Salish Territories
Crime and Reward from an Anarcho-primitivist Perspective.
Saturday October 12, Venue TBA
Vancouver BC, Unceded Coast Salish Territories
The Insidious and Resilient Narratives of Domestication: Pitfalls to Watch for in Autonomous Learning Zones.

Tuesday, October 15, 7pm,
Camas Books – 2620 Quadra St,
Victoria BC, unceded Lekwungen Territories
What’s in a Class? On Reproduction of Gender, Species, and Ethnicity as Categories for Labour and Consumption.

Friday, October 18, 7pm
University of Victoria
Victoria BC, Unceded Lekwungen Territories
The Ship of Fools as a Place of Spectacle, Healing, and Education where the Wild are Sent to Die.

Still seeking dates in Portland, Olympia, Eugene, and Seattle.

poster artwork drawn by Ljuba Miltsova at age 12

To order copies of Wild Children Domesticated Dreams
http://fernwoodpublishing.ca/Wild-Children-Domesticated-Dreams/

Please visit Layla’s Website (where you may find many of her writings online)
http://layla.miltsov.org/

The Wikipedia entry about Layla Abdel Rahim
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layla_AbdelRahim

Full presentation descriptions:
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Crime and Reward from an Anarcho-primitivist Perspective.

George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the shooting death of Black teenager, Trayvon Martin, this summer came as a surprise to many mostly because the civilised believe words and focus on language rather than on praxis and consequences. Namely, civilised people see the judicial system with its verbose process of trial as a system of justice and in the eyes of those involved in Zimmerman’s trial, there was “no evidence beyond reasonable doubt” that Zimmerman acted within the confines of the American law. The question thus was not whether killing someone was wrong, the problem that was to be resolved in this system of justice was whether the killer had the right to kill.

In this lecture, Layla AbdelRahim discusses the civilized premises that construct the human animal as predatory and thus centers murder in anthropology itself and reinforces the predatory narrative. Furthermore, this predation is structured by the classificatory system of civilized epistemology that categorizes groups of living and nonliving beings, whether human or not, as “resources” and “consumers” thereby excluding whole groups and immense suffering from the public discourse on justice. And as discussed in her book, Wild Children – Domesticated Dreams: Civilization and the Birth of Education, this predatory narrative is reinforced by both the medical sector and the system of education.

The Insidious and Resilient Narratives of Domestication: Pitfalls to Watch for in Autonomous Learning Zones.

Not only has the hierarchical project of domestication and civilization existed for the past ten thousand years, it has been expanding globally, engulfing more and more territories and bringing the world to a state nearing the brink of collapse of biodiversity and self-sustainability. This colonizing project has not been accepted passively. It has met strong ideological, epistemological, socio-economic, and physical resistance on both individual and social levels. Nonetheless, civilization has reached an epidemic level largely owing to its misconstruction of “knowledge” about human nature and the world. In her research, Layla AbdelRahim applies concepts from biology, anthropology, ethology, and sociology to examine the mechanisms by which socio-cultural narratives and material cultures reproduce themselves through domesticated bodies, minds, and desires. In this workshop, Layla will identify these mechanisms of perpetuating domesticated “unknowledge” and will engage a discussion on resistance to its narrative.

What’s in a Class? On Reproduction of Gender, Species, and Ethnicity as Categories for Labour and Consumption.
https://www.facebook.com/events/169052663280221/?ref_newsfeed_story_type=regular

How do we know the world? How do we relate to the world and to our knowledge of it? Today, most people around the world believe that we cannot learn how to live in the world without having gone to school and received an “education”. However, what is this “education”? What is its content, its method, or its purpose?

Education is a systemic production, reproduction, and transmission of specific socio-economic constructs about humans, society, and the world. These constructs are then passed on as “knowledge”, which ensures the coexistence of epistemological classes as socio-economic classes in a hierarchical paradigm. Civilised science prioritises Cartesian thinking that divorces “reason” from “emotions” precisely because empathy with the exploited, the suffering, or the consumed will interfere with the project Civilisation.

In this conversation, Layla will discuss the underlying premises in scientific thinking about the world as a system of domestication of human and nonhuman resources for production, reproduction, consumption, and ultimately devastation.

The Ship of Fools as a Place of Spectacle, Healing, and Education where the Wild are Sent to Die.

The Medieval European allegory of the Ship of Fools was more than a metaphor or a literary ruse to critique the Church and the state. In Madness and Civilization, Michel Foucault argues that this trope was also a real socio-political tactic used to cleanse the civilised space by isolating the “mad” or the “unreasonable” from “society”. For civilisation, “reason” has two constituents: raison d’être and sanity. The sane are here defined as those existing for the purpose of domestication in a “natural” food chain hierarchy. In this sense, “society” consists of those working for the “reason” of domestication and socio-economic hierarchy, exploitation, and consumption and those who cannot or refuse to abide by the domesticator’s definition of their reason for existence are either sent to sanatoriums, hospitals, or other correctional facilities to be cured or killed.

Drawing from the research conducted for her book, Wild Children – Domesticated Dreams: Civilization and the Birth of Education (2013), Layla AbdelRahim discusses schools and children’s culture as spaces of such isolation and “correction”: where the wild raison d’être to dream and to exist for one’s own, known or unbeknownst to self purpose is extinguished and where the child is taught to exist to serve as a human resource in the chain of exploitation of nonhuman resources.

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The legendary crust classic is now available once again!

We are happy to announce our next new release

WILT – “Self Titled”

Here is a track from the upcoming LP

“Sermon for the Bootlickers”

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