Events

Austin Amnesty International group shows a documentary that raises key questions about where the products we consume originate and at what cost? In the Dominican Republic, a tropical island-nation, tourists flock to pristine beaches unaware that a few miles away thousands of dispossessed Haitians have toiled under armed-guard on plantations harvesting sugarcane, much of which ends up in U.S. kitchens. They work grueling hours and frequently lack decent housing, clean water, electricity, education or healthcare. Narrated by Paul Newman, "The Price of Sugar" follows Father Christopher Hartley, a charismatic Spanish priest, as he organizes some of this hemisphere's poorest people to fight for their basic human rights.

Join us for the Indymedia documentary "Miami Model" screening. The film explores the tactics employed by law enforcement agencies during demonstrations in Miami, Florida relating to the negotiations for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) trade agreement in November 2003. The term "Miami Model" refers to the distinctive features of crowd control technique used in Miami, which included large scale pre-emptive arrests, heavily armed sometimes unidentifiable law enforcement, the collection of intelligence from protesters, and the "embedding" of corporate media with the police. Miami-Dade State Attorney Kathy Fernandez Rundle responded to allegations of police brutality saying "The police were very professional, very controlled... I think we have a model here for the rest of the world to emulate in the future when these sort of events take place."

The Queer Sol Collective presents Loose Lips: Speak out, Lash out, Act out.
Loose LIps is a Queer open mic night hosted by Austin based arts collective, Queer Sol. Come support local poets and musicians and queer artistic expression. Expect to be moved, expect a packed house, expect the unexpected, but above all come with an open mind and ear.

Sign up begins at 730, Show at 8.

All donations from the event will go to the Queer Sol collective, a multidisciplinary artist collective founded by Queer People of Color to explore our diverse abilities, and share our experiences. Queer Sol seeks to provide a safe space for queer identified people of color and their allies to meet, dialogue, connect, and enact social change through artistic means.

Meet us in the MWB backyard and feel free to BYOB!

Please join Fair Food Austin for a delicious tamale dinner fundraiser -- including a report from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers' "Modern-Day Slavery Museum" tour and a preview of the upcoming Farmworker Freedom March from Tampa to Lakeland, Florida!

The event will include a vegetarian tamale dinner option available via RSVP for a sliding scale cost of $7-$15. However, dining with us is not reciw-sfaquired, so please feel free to attend the presentation itself, which is free and open to the public, and also kicks off at 7pm. Proceeds will help defray travel costs for the fifteen Austinites joining the three-day march in Florida. To RSVP or to find out more information about the caravan from Austin, email sfaatx@gmail.com.

As a Neoliberal Economic Order continues to spread across the world, displacing people from their lands and privatizing their public resources, communities across Latin America are increasingly turning  to community media as a tool of resistance to capitalist globalization. In this multi-media presentation The Prometheus Radio Project and Palabra Radio will highlight the central role that media has played in building popular power from the women in Oaxaca, Mexico who led a take-over of corporate and state media outlets in protest to the complete media black-out of the popular rebellion; to a rural Guatemalan Community using a radio station to fight a mining project; to migrant farmworkers in Immokalee, Florida broadcasting programs about economic human rights on their Low Power FM radio station.

AUSTIN'S ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT DISCUSSION Scott Swearingen reads from his new book, Environmental City: People, Place, Politics, and the Meaning of Modern Austin. An open discussion of our city's environmental efforts follows. 7:30pm. MonkeyWrench Books, 110 E. North Loop, 407-6925. Free. www.monkeywrenchbooks.org (Civic Interest)

Environmental City: People, Place, Politics, and the Meaning of Modern Austin

By William Scott Swearingen, Jr.

Keep print media alive! (and alphabetized) Do you make zines in Austin? Are you interested in meeting other local zinesters and contributing your work to our library? If so, please come join our discussion about the  forthcoming Monkeywrench Books Zine Library. Hosted by the illustrious “Monkewrench Books Zine Committee.”

We all know that war sucks! So how can we, U.S. taxpayers, refuse to support wars through our taxes? Austin Conscientious Objectors to Military Taxation (ACOMT) will tell us how! In the documentary "Death and Taxes," people around the U.S. talk about why and how they resist paying taxes for war and where that choice takes them.

Join us at Monkey Wrench for an evening of food, drinks, music and dialogue to help raise funds for Mamas of Color Rising (http://mamasofcolorrising.wordpress.com), a collective of working class mothers of color organizing around accessibility to food, housing, education, and safety in Austin, TX. Come support the Mamas in their efforts to get involved in the New Mythos Project (http://truthandhealingproject.wordpress.com/new-mythos-project/), a national grassroots network of mamaz and community caretakers that includes a northeast to southwest tour and a convening at the Allied Media Conference (alliedmediaconference.org)--hopefully to include sending some of the Mamas collective.

The Mamas will be giving a report back of the tour and update of the local Mamas project.

Suggested donation $5-25

A lesbian feminist allegorical sci-fi mockumentary made in 1983, "Born In Flames" is set in a post-revolutionary socialist-state America that still grossly discriminates against women, and focuses on the grassroots, direct action feminist guerilla groups that ban together to react against state oppression. *Disclaimer: This film depicts a rape scene that can be triggering for some viewers. Attend screening with this in mind.