On Monday, October 5th, 2009, Hunter College cafeteria workers protested against their new management company, AVI, which took over recently from Sodexho. Hunter faculty, students and others joined them to let AVI know that they will not accept reduced inferior working conditions. AVI is refusing to stand by the cafeteria workers’ old contract which included healthcare and a pension fund that some workers have been paying into for decades.

And Hunter’s own Veralyn Williams was on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer show along with Jennifer Nedbalsky, a founder of the GMC and Giovanni Mato, editor-in-chief of Word on the Street.

Here are some photos from the “Youth Action” screening last night. It was put on by the Grassroots Media Conference crew and hosted by Youth Media Reporter at the Academy for Educational Development. Filmmakers that have made work through Educational Video Center, and Casa Atabex Ache were on hand to show and talk about their work. There were also some peeps from the Ghetto Film School who are going to Brasil to work on a narrative piece, damn I’m jealous.

This is a three-minute audio vignette about the New York Times Special Edition. On the morning of the action, I followed a Brooklyn couple, Michelle and Maikel, as they spread the good news of the war’s end to perplexed New Yorkers.

The music clip is from Podington Bear.

The very fact that the states in the U.S. continue to execute anyone, even if they are “guilty,” is deplorable. The justice system’s propensity to convict and sentence indigent people, black men in particular, is a practice that must end now. Every citizen deserves a fair trial, no matter what his or her race or economic status.

Yet, this injustice is not new. It has historical ties going back to the institution of slavery, the post-Bellum oppression of black communities and the thousands of lynchings of the early 20th century. This makes the execution of a black man in Georgia even more disparaging.

I beg you, the men and women of the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles to take the higher moral ground and reconsider the case of Troy Davis.

Think of the consequences of executing an innocent man. It would be tragic and prove that justice is not blind.

Think of the implications of executing a ‘guilty’ man. Execution is not a proven deterrent of crime. To the contrary, it demonstrates that the so-called correctional system is punitive and does nothing to ‘correct’ or help those who are warehoused in prisons across this nation.

Sincerely,

Fivel Rothberg

Take action at http://www.amnestyusa.org/troydavis

The animation was made in about two days because it needed to be ready for a NYC City Council hearing about the above issue.

it was great to see works that i recognized and admire, like a large print from the Beehive Collective. they are good friends with an old roommate, morgan, who is himself a great political puppetista and propagandist. years ago he did a show about mr. block, of IWW fame, it was the first that i had heard of mr. block. part of me cried out “morgan’s work should be in this show!” okay so there are a ton of political printmakers. i suppose it was a recognition that morgan’s work is part of a strong heritage, a tradition that the Exit Art curators emphasized.

my only ‘complaint’ is that i wanted more.  maybe next time around, a similar exhibit could show the historical roots of political graphics further back than the 1960’s.

finally, there was one poster in particular that was among the Otra Campaña works. it is a poster with Mafalda as a militant Zapatista. i had seen that same poster in the Wooden Shoe and thought about buying it for Ana. but i didn’t. and then a few weeks later when i went back to the store, they had run out. grrr. wish i could find a copy somewhere. been thinking of getting a Mafalda tattoo. maybe that graphic would work well.

Exit Art is also teaming up with 16 Beaver to put on a screening series. It looks like a very impressive line-up of hard to find films.

The conference was inspired by a game called Peacemaker, which was developed by ETC graduates at Impact Games. Apparently ETC and CMU have an incubator program for start-ups coming out of the program. And Impact benefited from this program, obviously. The game is essentially a “God” game that places players in the shoes of either the Palestinian President or the Israeli Prime Minister. And unlike the typical video game scenario, one must “wage peace” to succeed. Players have various methods with which to wage peace, such as making a speech, sending in military forces, contacting the UN, etc…

Although I’m from Philly, I’d never been to Pittsburgh. And for some reason I had it in my head that it would be a very similar place. But no, I was pleasantly surprised by the new scenery. It’s certainly has an Appalachian feel to it, with the three rivers converging among hilly streets, a slew of victorian houses, etc.. We didn’t have much time to wander around. Okay, none really. But we did get a tour. Pittsburgh has a ton of cathedrals, and because we were at a game-related conference, we all thought of how they could have been levels in Zelda or Super Mario Bros.

The conference opened last Wednesday afternoon with unremarkable speeches at the main campus. In the evening we gathered at the Entertainment Technology Center facility, which is adjacent to the Ohio river. The center takes up about three floors of a modern building, which also houses some science labs. Coming from Hunter College, the facility is all the more spectacular. Electronic gadgets, toys and all kinds of games abound. The students have collaborative studio space to work in which looks like it came right out of Silicon Valley – which it essentially did. The primary faculty are ‘alums’ of big corporations like Disney, Pixar and LucasArts. And those are just a few of the places that students end up.

So, it’s a bit surprising that Peacemaker came out of that program, and that this program is even holding a conference related to technology and peace.

The Spanish/English text freely mixed sports analogy with movement building and generally avoided staid Leftist jargon. It begins with an intro that gives some background into the Z’s motives for the Other Campaign. Then it goes on to reprint the Sixth Declaration itself as well as an interview with Subcomandante Marcos, or Delegate Zero as he was known during La Otra.

The essential point of the book is that the Zapatistas are fed up with trying to work with an absolutely corrupt system and with corrupt individuals in and around that system. With that in mind, they are committed to social change that is built from the “bottom up.” They change they make will be their own. It will be free of the trickery that the leading political parties embody. They will not bow down to the military or threats of violence. And just as importantly, they will not bow down to the capitalist, neo-liberal machine that gobbles everything in its path.

The patience of the Z’s is truly impressive. They are clearly in it for the long haul. La Otra was very much about listening to their compañeros in the struggle, finding out what people are doing in various parts of Latin America, hearing about their successes, failures, needs, tactics, wants, aspirations, etc… Not to mention the fact that the Sixth Declaration pays its respects to the numerous people who have left their families to work in the belly of the beast up north.

As for the book itself, I wouldn’t recommend it as a primer on the Zapatistas because there is not that much background info. But it’s a good ‘update’ as to what the Z’s are working on. As they put it in the book they “learned to learn” over their years of perseverance.