Angry White Kid

Support autonomous projects in Oaxaca

A friend is currently in town with some silk-screened shirts from CASOTA that she is selling to raise funds for CASOTA before heading back to Oaxaca soon.  CASOTA is the Oaxacan Autonomous Solidarity House of Self-Sustaining (Autogestive) Work (Casa Autonoma Solidaria Oaxaquena de Trabajo Autogestivo). It was a space I lived at and helped get started back in September of 2008. You may have heard of the police attack on it last December.

It is an important anti-authoritarian/libertarian space in the city center for the social movement in Oaxaca. Currently it contains rooms for organizers, a hostel for out-of-town organizers, space for meetings, film screenings, lectures, shows and music and theater rehearsals, a roof-top garden, plastics recycling, an economic kitchen, a silk-screening workshop, an electronics workshop, and a women's collective. There are other plans in the works, such as a medical clinic and a water-capturing system.

My friend has three tshirts left. All of the shirts were printed at CASOTA.  The asking price is $15-20 for each. If you're not in NYC add a couple bucks for shipping. All of it will go back to CASOTA. There are two smalls and one large. If you want to support CASOTA by picking up a tshirt, email me. If you're interested in supporting CASOTA beyond picking up a tshirt, email me as well. Thanks.

SMALL - Masked youth with a molotov. Says "the rock hit the traitor who attacked in the early morning, because today the people in the street await him in the barricade." Lyrics from a popular movement song.


SMALL - Says "Oaxaca Libre"


LARGE

Music and art from the social movement in Oaxaca

Below is a video I poorly recorded and edited of the son jarocho group Raices performing one of the anthems of Oaxaca's social movement, "Son de la Barricada", at Nueva Babel in Oaxaca.  It's accompanied by photos I've taken during my time here.  The video is subtitled in Spanish, click the link for the English translation. Enjoy and pass it on if you like it.

Crossing Arizona

Last Friday, the new documentary Crossing Arizona premiered in San Francisco.  If you're in the Bay Area, I highly recommend checking out this film.  If you're not, keep an eye out as they're hoping to get it in theaters around the country. 

The documentary does an excellent job focusing on the variety of groups and individuals active in the borderlands - from the Minutemen, ranchers, humanitarian groups, the ACLU, Border Patrol, etc. - and letting them present themselves in their own words. 

The most moving parts of the film for me, featuring the group that is most often overlooked in all of this, were the segments with the migrants themselves, both before, during, and after crossing. 

They are also sure to discuss issues such as NAFTA and the scapegoating of immigrants that has led to such draconian legislation as Prop. 200 in Arizona and HR 4437 nationally. 

While it doesn't makes as radical a critique as I would like to see, and doesn't delve into issues such as the legitimacy of the border and citizenship and the mindset that those sorts of constructs create, it does a very good job focusing on the human toll and putting a human face on this country's catastrophic border situation.

Check it out at the Roxie, it's here for the next week or two.

Graffiti from Peru and Bolivia

Like most cities, those in Peru and Bolivia have loads of graffiti on the wall.  However, unlike in the U.S., most graf there is explicitly political.  Below are 19 photos from our trip, some political, others just fun.  They're accompanied by my poor translation and attempted explanation if necessary.  Enjoy.

Lima, Peru - The government notice says, "Respect the facades, don't write or post papers." 

Arequipa, Peru - "The voices of the oppressed clamour for freedom."

On the wall of Buho Bar in Copacabana, Bolivia - "Neither forgetting, nor forgiving.  Justice!  Cry of the excluded of Bolivia.  Association of the Families of those Fallen in the Defense of Gas.

The photo, labelled "murderer" is of Goni (Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada), two-time president of Bolivia, including in 2003, during the Gas Wars when the Bolivian army killed over 70 protesters.

Albert Brooks Must Be Confused

Albert Brooks, apparently some guy who used to be a little funny, is coming out with a movie soon called Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World.  That title alone is enough to make one wince, but seeing the trailer is even worse. 

First of all, the guy goes to India.  Not exactly "the Muslim World."  Apparently he also spends 15 minutes in Pakistan hanging out with a bunch of armed, hash smoking, "fundamentalist looking" Pakistanis.  Marvelous.  Granted, there are about 150 million Muslims in India, but that also means there are more than 850 million non-Muslims, and those are the people who made it into Brooks' film.

So while Brooks spends time hanging out with and doing stand-up for Hindus and Sikhs, he is looking for comedy in the Muslim world?  Am I missing something here?  He's not even in an Arab country, which are more heavily stereotyped as Muslim.  His co-star is Hindu.  They make unfunny jokes about stonings in Libya.  Is this just a ploy to further confuse already tragically ignorant Americans?

The proponents of the movie say it pokes more fun at Brooks and Americans than anything else.  Since I haven't seen the movie, I'm willing to concede that could be the case, but I'm not holding my breath.  And I hate stupid comedies.  Regardless, it seems that Brooks and his pals are either dimwitted or just don't care about having Muslims in a movie about, well, Muslims.

Oh, and of course since Brooks is Jewish, he gets to insinuate that Muslims are anti-Jewish.  Haha.

Interesting side notes: Albert Brooks' birth name was Albert Einstein and his brother is Super Dave Osbourne.  Also, I saw Munich last night.  Not a fan.

A Variety of Links to Send the Year Packing

I have not posted much since I've been out east for Christmas.  I still won't be posting much since I'm leaving on a trip for new years.  But in the meantime, I wanted to share some interesting bits that have been accumulating recently.  Happy Whatever.

Fighting fascists by any means necessary - especially ones that are trying to exterminate you - is a remarkable act.  Check out the Jewish Partisans Educational Foundation.

Yes, a Ferrari "driving" the canals of Venice.  Evidently, Livio De Marchi has too much time on his hands.

Photos from the protests against the World Trade Organization's meeting in Hong Kong.

Toothpaste for Dinner.  It's funny.

Cartoonish Similarities

From LA Weekly

From peacepalestine

The Constantly European Gardener

After numerous recommendations, I saw The Constant Gardener a few weeks ago and at the time contemplated writing about it.  But I didn't and had pretty much forgotten about it until I saw a piece by Saul Landau about it in CounterPunch.  That re-inspired my urge to rant, especially because I feel Landau, and many others in their praise, missed a whole lot. 

I'll concede that there's a good message that pharmaceutical companies and imperialists are murderous and greedy.  But having one good message does not make it a good film.  Also important to consider are the other messages conveyed by the film.

For one, and perhaps this is personal taste, but I feel that fiction in general makes for a much less powerful film.  There are plenty of examples of pharmaceutical companies doing horrible things - if they wanted to take on the industry, why not use a real occurrence in order to drive home the fact that things like this actually happen.  Fiction lets viewers off the hook, less compelled to act by what they saw.  And really, who likes drug manufacturers anyway?  Talk about an easy target.

This is compounded by the fact that the end was textbook Hollywood.  In dramatic fashion, the evildoers are revealed and the good guys more or less win.  (Off topic: Who just gives up and lets himself be killed?  Weak.)  So not only is it just fiction, but when it comes down to it, justice prevails.  Phew...wouldn't want the $10 I spent to keep me up at night. 

Those are side issues compared to my main qualm with the film, which simply is that it's racist.  Granted, it is adapted from a novel by John Le Carre, who according to Landau is a "world class outraged anti-imperialist."  I don't know about that.  If he is, he's certainly a might eurocentric anti-imperialist, which should make one question his anti-imperialist credentials.

It baffles my mind how a movie sent in Kenya, about injustices being committed against Africans, can have almost no African characters of any significance.  The most important character of color is Arnold, but he dies quickly and on top of that is in the closet (an effort to display "African backwardness"?).  The rest of the African characters are either corrupt or helpless and anonymous.  A much better review noted,

[T]here was something disgusting in believing that self-righteous European elites and local elites would be the sole actors in the film, reducing a poverty stricken populace to a position of voiceless animals being led to slaughter.

I couldn't agree more.  This movie was just another version of "Whitey to the Rescue!"  Why did the Kenyans needs Tessa and then John (and of course a German non-profit) to figure out what was going on and expose it?  At every turn in the movie there's a white face to explain what is happening to the local population.  For crying out loud, there's even a white preacher in Darfur to talk to our white savior John!  This effectively removes all agency from the indigenous people and turns them into nothing more than "voiceless animals" to be acted upon by the good and bad guys.  The only time it seems the Africans regain their voices is to commit offenses against the main characters.  Kenyan officials, police and doctors are corrupt and teenagers will murder people for you if you get them drunk.

Art That Gets People Talking

Word spreads fast, so many of you have probably already seen pictures of graffiti artist Banksy's works on Israel's Apartheid Wall.

He did nine pieces that have gotten a fair amount of coverage in the British press.  Even more exciting is the fact that hundreds of bloggers have written about it, most positively and most with pictures, meaning loads and loads of people will be hearing about the wall at sites that don't normally talk about Palestine.  That is an excellent feat.  Thanks Banksy. 

I feel kind of left out of the club though. I never heard of this guy until the Wired article this month.  Oh well, better late than never.

For photos of all the pieces, check out the Wooster Collective and click on "News" on Banksy's site.

Get Your Art On

I have no clue how many people in the SF Bay Area read this blog, but if you do live around here, might I suggest the following:

Made in Palestine

The first comprehensive exhibition of contemporary Palestinian art in the U.S. Made In Palestine on view at SomArts, San Francisco, April 7 through April 21, 2005. The exhibition showcases a collection of contemporary art made by 23 Palestinian artists and refugees, who live in the occupied territories and the Diaspora. 

If you can't make the show, you can still see the art here.  Also, a decent SF Chronicle review of the show.

Shopdropping

An exhibition that both catalogues and instigates the insertion of art into public places of commerce (specifically, conglomerate retail stores)...[T]he works eschew a reductivist commodity critique in favor of complex strategies that detourne situations, present alternatives to normative systems of exchange, and graft together alternate economic regimes.

Err...and it looks fun and cool, too!