Events

What is democracy? Freedom, equality, participation? Everyone has his or her own definition. Across the world, 120 countries now have at least the minimum trappings of democracy – the freedom to vote for all citizens. But for many, this is just the beginning not the end. Following decades of US-backed dictatorships, civil wars and devastating structural adjustment policies in the South, and corporate control, electoral corruption, and fraud in the North, representative politics in the Americas is in crisis. Citizens are now choosing to redefine democracy under their own terms: local, direct, and participatory.

MonkeyWrench will be having a tent sale with lots of cheap books and a bike raffle as part of the annual North Loop Block Party. Come out and enjoy the neighborhood's independent businesses with live music, food, and community!

Last year, a group of radical graduate students from the University of Texas launched a low-volume, unmoderated email list for UT grad students involved in social justice organizing. The list -- which currently has around 75 subscribers -- aims to facilitate networking and foster solidarity across departments, organizations, issues, and campaigns. As the new semester gets underway, we want to make sure folks take advantage of this useful resource. While the listserv is helpful, it's no substitute for face-to-face relationships. In that spirit, please join Rad Grads on Monday for an informal, BYOB mixer.  This will be a great opportunity to meet like-minded grad students and learn from each other about organizing efforts on campus and in the broader community. 

The rapid expansion of immigrant detention and the criminalization of migration are drawing greater attention to the convergences between US migration and penal policies. Jenna Loyd is currently on a road trip through the US South and Southwest to explore how immigrant detention and deportation build on mass incarceration in the region. Tuesday, September 22, Jenna will talk with us about her approach to detention and imprisonment, report back on the first three weeks of her road trip, and discuss ideas for economic alternatives to prison development.

We will show the "recipee" used repeatedly by the CIA and US State Dept. to destabilize countries before a coup is launched, assisted, and later legitimized, and how the School of the Americas has always played a training role in this system.

We will show "The Revolution Will not be Televised," a short documentary on the April 2002, U.S.-backed coup in Venezuela, to illustrate the day by day execution of the destabilization-coup-legitimization recipee. During a closing Q/A session we will explore current similarities and connections between Honduras and Venezuela.

The "Revolution Will Not Be Televised" will also be presented as a work which inspired Oliver Stone to produce his latest documentary which places Hugo Chavez and other Latin American leadcers vilified by the US Media and State Dept. in a larger context.

Chris Clavin, of Ghost Mice and Plan-It-X Records fame, will be playing a solo early show along with MonkeyWrench favorite Saw Wheel. The show will also feature a talk on the German squatting movement to round-out the DIY experience. $5 gets to touring folks down the road and benefits MonkeyWrench Books.

http://tarnac9.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/thecominsur_booklet.pdf

Former Black Panther and Angola 3 political prisoner Robert Hillary King speaks on his new book "From the Bottom of the Heap: The Autobiography of Black Panther Robert Hillary King."  In 1970, a jury convicted Robert Hillary King of a crime he did not commit and sentenced him to 35 years in prison. He became a member of the Black Panther Party while in Angola State Penitentiary, successfully organizing prisoners to improve conditions. In return, prison authorities beat him, starved him, and gave him life without parole after framing him for a second crime. He was thrown into solitary confinement, where he remained in a six by nine foot cell for 29 years as one of the Angola 3. In 2001, the state grudgingly acknowledged his innocence and set him free.

Come one come all to discuss Fourier: The Theory of the Four Movements.

The book is available at the store for 15% off the cover price for all reading group members.

The editors of "Boneshaker: A Bicycling Almanac" believe that the bicycle, when conceived of and used appropriately, can become a tool for social change and community building. And though bicycling has become, for better or worse, an activity tied to radical undertones and bohemian implications, we are less interested in those types of categorizations and more so with simply riding bicycles to get where we are going. This almanac is, therefore, a collective ode to the ride itself, that fundamentally lonesome experience one has in the saddle, and the results of repeating that ride over and over in different directions on different days with different destinations in each instance.