Black Rose Anarchist Library & Bookshop

There has been recent public debate about black face performances and
representations of race generally within the queer scene of Sydney.
There has also been controversy regarding the black face performance on
Hey Hey It’s Saturday, and John Safran's Race Relations Episode 2
(currently viewable
on www.abc.net.au/iview).

Debates have been raging. Lets talk them out:

* Is all performance of blackface racist?
* How can we decide whether something is "racist" - artists intentions?
audience interpretation?
* Does being non-racist mean I can never depict or reference outside "my" culture?
* Who is responsible (performers? audience? venues? event organisers)?
What does this "responsibility" entail?
* How can we work through racism in our communities? How can we support
promoters, performers, audiences who speak out against racism?

If you are a performer, audience member, event organiser or venue operator
and want to reflect on your own practices in these roles - come and share
dilemmas you have faced (or expect to), the questions and problems that
come up for you in working out what you think is right.

Please join us at the Red Rattler at 6.30pm for a 7pm start -8.30pm on
13 November 2009 for a facilitated discussion with people of all different
points of view where we can explore some of the answers to these questions
with mutual respect and appreciation.

WHEN: Friday 13th November, 6.30pm for a 7pm start. Discussion 7pm - 8.30pm.

WHERE: The Red Rattler Theatre, 6 Faversham St Marrickville
Buses: The 423 and 426 bus services stop at Victoria Rd near
Sydenham Rd, it's a 2 minute walk to Faversham St through Vicks Park from
the bus stop: these service operate from Circular Quay via Central.
>>For timetables and maps, visit www.sydneybuses.info/ or www.131500.info/
>>For map: http://www.redrattler.org/sydney/getting+here Red Rattler
site: www.redrattler.org
>>Please distribute to your networks. Please RSVP to Domino and Nassim
(dokta_x [at] yahoo.com.au) the facilitators for the discussion - so we can
get an idea of numbers for some materials etc. The event is free, but we
ask for a gold coin donation towards the Red Rattler's ecological
sustainability plan.

Some links that you might be interested in:
How to suppress discussions of racism:
http://coffeeandink.livejournal.com/607897.html
Tone policing:
http://theangryblackwoman.com/2008/02/12/the-privilege-of-politeness/
Derailing: http://www.derailingfordummies.com/
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2005/12/02/how-not-to-be-insane-wh...
Privilege:
http://theangryblackwoman.wordpress.com/2006/09/14/things-you-need-to-un...
About the history of minstrel http://raceandthecity.com/

G20 Solidarity

Fundraiser Karaoke Night
hosted by LovePump

Come help us raise the cash needed to pay the fines that were sentenced to folks.
Some of these were are November 31st.

Saturday November 7
8PM at Louie's

5bux Entry
Food by Donation

Little Fish is going neopolitaaaaaan and it would like sweet, colourful artists to submit to a group exhibition for
Wednesday, November 18.

Theme?! Ice cream!

There will be free cones full of the sticky, vegan stuff for all contributing artists (and real cheap for everyone else), made with Little Fish's new ice cream maker. And the exhibition also coincides with the launch of the 2010 Little Fish Calender! Calenders on sale at the exhibition. Brain freeze is free.

If you think you've got something to submit, email the collective on littefishgallery [at] gmail.com, or call or text this month's collective convener on 0408251691

Important stuff:
Deadlines for submissions is Wednesday, November 11
And we'll need your help hanging all the stuffs on Tuesday, November 17

A conference about extending strategies for anticapitalist struggle against the economic crisis

Our political and economic context is defined by a state of crisis.
The stories we are usually told about the financial crisis place it beyond our control – it is intricate hedge funds and sub-prime mortgages, it is a lack of regulation, it is greedy bankers, it is extreme capitalism. The ‘solutions’ that governments and the media are pushing, such as stimulus packages and false promises of ’saving jobs’, remain in a capitalist logic.

We need something more. This could include struggles, on our own terms, against unemployment and increased work rates, racism, and the escalation of sexualised and gendered divisions of labour. We must place the current crisis within the ongoing struggles of people across the planet.

This means asking questions. What are the origins of the crisis? How is it affecting workers? What is the relationship between the current crisis and earlier times of working class resistance? What is the capacity for resistance and solidarity now? How are they being organised, and how can they be strengthened?

The only real crisis that capitalism faces is the refusal and resistance of ordinary people, in our daily lives.

This conference aims to critique the current wave of responses to capitalism’s current predicament. It is an opportunity to collectively analyse its ‘new clothes’. As ordinary people ourselves, it is a chance to strategise together for solidarity with emerging and ongoing struggles for workers autonomy and control, peoples’ freedom of movement, sustainability, sovereignty and self determination.

10am-6pm, September 12-13 @ Redfern Community Centre, 29-53 Hugo Street, Redfern. Just across from Redfern station

Contact Name:
Tim
Contact Phone:
0439441955
Contact Email:
crisisconference2009@gmail.com
Location:
Redfern Community Centre, 29-53 Hugo Street, Redfern. Just across from Redfern station.
Website:
http://crisisconference2009.wordpress.com

2 June 2009 7pm for a 7:30pm start.

Venue: The Workshop, 16 Sloane St Newtown
Entry by donation ($5 - $10 sliding scale)
Food and drinks available. Fantastic prizes for trivia winners.
Proceeds to aid the G20 arrestees.

Sydney Anarchist Film Festival!

Tickets will be $5-8per film
and it looks as if the films will be shown somewhat in this order

Friday June 5 evening
Local shorts at Black Rose [more information soon]

Saturday June 6
12pm at Black Rose: Living Utopia
The memory of the Spanish revolution and the historical background of the Spanish liberation movement. The reality of the anarchist utopia lived in Spain, which radically transformed the structures of society in broad areas of the Republican group during the Civil War of 1936-39. The testimony of anarchist men and women who lived this extraordinary experience, which was ignored for a long time, is included.

3pm at Black Rose: Viva Zapata
Emiliano Zapata is a Mexican peon whose tribal land is stolen under the corrupt administration of Porfirio Díaz. Seeking justice, he and his fellow villagers join the revolutionaries under Madero. Zapata rises to the rank of General in the rebel army, but when Díaz flees the country the peons seem to have no more success reclaiming their land with Madero in charge. Madero means well but his military backers are only interested in power, not justice. When Madero is gunned down by Huerta's troops, Zapata then joins an uneasy alliance with Pancho Villa.

6pm at Black Rose: Panther
Set in the midst of the civil rights movement when Malcolm X and Black Panthers stepped up the fight for African-American rights, this is a powerful telling of the years after 1966 when the militant Black
Panthers fought against police harassment.
The story focuses on a moderate black judge, outraged at the injustices against his community, who joins the Black Panthers but is targeted by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. It’s now up to Black Panthers’
Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton to battle this police state until
the final violent showdown.

12pm at Jura: Manufacturing Consent
This film showcases Noam Chomsky, one of America's leading linguists and political dissidents. It also illustrates his message of how government and big media businesses cooperate to produce an effective propaganda machine in order to manipulate the opinions of the United States populous. The key example for this analysis is the simultaneous events of the massive coverage of the communist atrocities of Khmer Rouge regime of Cambodia and the suppression of news of the US supported Indonesian invasion and subjugation of East Timor

3pm at Jura: Angry Brigade Documentary
The Angry Brigade is a fantastic historical documentary, a 1973 BBC program looking at the anarchist group behind a series of bombings and attacks against private property and political targets in the early 70's. It is introduced by Stuart Christie, who was himself put on trial as a member of the Angry Brigade and acquitted, after spending years in a Spanish prison for his role in a plot to blow up Franco.
It remains the best and most in depth look at this group and this period. While I would love to see a new documentary done with some of the benefits of historical distance and perspective, nothing really could replace the immediacy and power of the news footage and interviews shown here. What I find most remarkable is that it is undoubtedly an effort to present unbiased information by a media organization that was certainly not in sympathy with anarchist bombers, yet you cannot help but come away with sympathy yourself. Perhaps it was just the spirit of the times. As someone born after these events happened, I still find it hard to understand the 60's and the 70's...intellectually it is not so difficult, but to really get a feeling for a period when so many believed that revolution was entirely possible and incredibly imminent requires watching films like this. It was extraordinary to see the footage from the radical movements in France and Germany, and the BBC actually got an interview with Spanish anarchist Alberola, once considered one of the most dangerous men in Europe.

6pm at Jura: Born In Flames
Set ten years after the most peaceful revolution in United States history, a revolution in which a socialist government gains power, this films presents a dystopia in which the issues of many progressive groups - minorities, liberals, gay rights organizations, feminists - are ostensibly dealt with by the government, and yet there are still problems with jobs, with gender issues, with governmental preference and violence. In New York City, in this future time, a group of women decide to organize and mobilize, to take the revolution farther than any man - and many women - ever imagined in their lifetimes

Sunday June 7
12pm at Black Rose: This Revolution
The B-movie faction of the International Black Bloc Movement presents a political thriller about why you can't trust the corporate media. A cynical cameraman with experience in war photography is assigned to cover another front: the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City. There he meets a single mother who challenges his convictions and his heart. Using real footage shot during the convention, (including accidentally real footage of cast members being arrested) THIS REVOLUTION gives a human face to radical political groups and the government's reaction to them.

3pm at Black Rose: Land and Freedom
An idealistic young member of the British Communist Party who decides to join the leftist forces fighting fascism in 1936 Spain in this drama from director Ken Loach. Arriving in Catalonia, Carr finds his leftist splinter group, POUM, carrying outmoded weapons and sadly lacking in supplies. After tasting his first moments of combat and seeing a priest executed, Carr's enthusiasm begins to wane; at length he begins to understand the vast chasm between the "latifundistas" (the landed gentry), and the "braceros" (the landless peasants), which is the crux of the conflict. Despite engaging in a considerable amount of ideological debate over the issues that divide the forces of the left, Carr finds time to fall in love with Blanca, an anarchist fighting alongside the men. A powerful depiction of a conflict rarely touched on by filmmakers.

6pm at Black Rose: The Weather Underground
This intensely captivating documentary from directors Bill Siegel and Sam Green focuses on the radical political activist group the Weathermen, who organized in the 1960s to protest the Vietnam War. With roots in a group called Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Weathermen represented a small faction of political-minded protesters who believed that, in order to avoid being marginalized and ignored by the US government, they would need to take violent action. Speaking out with clear goals to intentionally inflict violence, their slogan was "Bring the War Home," indicating that they would mimic on U.S. turf the violence that U.S. troops were ordered to carry out in Vietnam. While THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND takes a fascinating look at the wildly daring tactics and philosophies that this group used to try to make a change; it also comments on the group's failures and its irresponsible methods. Some of the most revelatory moments of the film come from other political activist groups, such as the Black Panthers, reflecting back on the actions of the Weathermen, and, in hindsight, looking at the group's practices with new perspective

12pm at Jura: Paris is Burning
Documentary about the Harlem drag balls thrown by predominantly inner city black and Latino gay men in the mid-1980s. The film features footage of the actual "drag" pageants, as well as interviews with ball participants, who describe their backgrounds and dreams.

3pm at Jura: Libertarias
At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, the nun Maria is forced to flee her convent. She takes refuge in a brothel, until it is liberated by a woman's anarchist group. Maria joins the group and eventually goes to the front. The women's group faces the problems of fighting not only the nationalists, but also factions on the left seeking to impose a more traditional military structure.

6pm at Jura: Free Voice of Labour
This documentary from 1980 is set around the closing of America's longest running anarchist newspaper - the Yiddish language 'Fraye Arbeter Shtime' (Free Voice of Labour). While the paper's 87 year existence from 1890 is amazing, what makes the documentary great is the extraordinary people it introduces us to. The stories of these elderly Jewish anarchists, still staunchly radical , are inspiring to hear. It is made explicit early that the Jewish label is a referance to common heritage and culture, but for these revolutionaries beras no religious significance.
They have amazing fondness and affinity with each other; one interviewee speaks of tears in her eyes as of how as anarchists at their age they still support each other and live the ideal of mutual aid. A Master Mariner with a gravelly voice speaks about still being idealistic aas he shrugs off as nothing how he'd helped refugees escape death with his boat during WW2.
Also has some fantastic music - old Yiddish folk and workers' songs that speak of struggle and revolution.

Monday June 8
Closing film at Jura, 6pm: Lucio Anarquista
There are plenty of anarchists in the world. Many have committed robbery or smuggling for their cause. Fewer have discussed strategies with Che Guevara or saved the skin of Eldridge Cleaver, of the Black Panthers. There is only one who has done all that, and also brought to its knees the most powerful bank on the planet by forging travellers cheques, without missing a single day of work in his construction job. He is Lucio Urtubia, from a tiny village in Navarra in North of Spain. Lucio, 75, now lives in Paris, still raising anarchist hell. Lucio has been protagonist and witness to many of the historic events of the second half of the 20th century. His family was persecuted by Franco's regime, he was on the streets of Paris for the phenomenon of May of '68, he actively supported Castro's revolution, he helped thousands of exiled people by providing false documents to them. But without a doubt, his greatest triumph came in the second half of the seventies. The press called him "the good bandit", or the Basque Zorro. He managed to swindle 25 million dollars from the First National Bank (now Citibank), to later invest the money in causes he believed in. Miraculously, he spent no more than a few months in jail throughout his career.

New Q presents a Queer festival to celebrate our community, to strengthen our community, and to politicise our community.

It will be held at 22 Enmore Road, Enmore (in Sydney, Australia) where New Q, Little Fish Gallery & Black Rose Library & Bookshop are located. These are collectively organised, autonomous and inclusive community spaces.

We are hoping to create a space outside/within/around the spaces occupied by capitalism and the state where we’re oppressed, marginalised and hurt because of how we express our sexualities and how we express our genders. We aim to do this creatively through interactive D.I.Y workshops, political discussions, food and festivities.

Our social exclusion through oppressive hetero-normative ideas and structures in society means that a space outside the norm is needed where we can gather our strength, celebrate ourselves, learn, explore, create and thrive. A place where we can practice and demonstrate our politics, our resistance, and our creativity.

We use the term “queer” in this statement to express the broad spectrum of sexualities and genders within communities. We use the term “queer” in an attempt to be inclusive, empowering and welcoming, where queer is about fun; where politics becomes fun and where fun becomes political.

Initially Mardi Gras provided an empowering space for queers guided by radicalism and open resistance. It played, and still plays in some ways, a really important part developing our queer community and giving confidence to queers coming out. However, many of us have become critical of prominent aspects of the festival. In particular how queer sexuality has become a spectacle and commodity. In response to these aspects, we want to celebrate, strengthen and engage our communities through our own counter ‘festival’, not be a tourist attraction traded in the pink dollar market.

The festival is what people make it. We encourage anyone whom identifies with the sentiments expressed above whether it’s all, some, or bits, to be involved and to participate. We want to celebrate our difference but strengthen our commonalities too!

For more information visit the website:

http://resurgence2009.wordpress.com/

@ "I Have A Dream" Mural, King St, Newtown.
18 October 4.30pm - 6pm

as usual we'll be cooking at jura bookshop from 1pm, and would dearly love a hand in the kitchen OR doing some other craftiness (eg making another new banner as we keep losing them all). there are also plenty of opening for food collectors if you've got some spare time on friday or saturday.

Also we have been asked to serve at Reclaim the Night Oct 31st serving by women identifiers but other totally welcome to eat and clean and cook!

hit us up: sydfoodnotbombs at gmail dot com or check out the discussion board (www.sydfnb.tk).

http://sydfoodnotbombs.blogspot.com/

Fundraiser for Unless You Are Free

Where: The Workshop, 16 Sloane Street, Enmore

When: Thursday October 16, 7.00

Beginning 2nd November and continuing on sundays 1st weekend of every month, Little Fish will be a thriving hub of activity with lively do-it-yourself craft/zine/whatevers markets. stay on afterwards for a movie and popcorn in black rose.

Time
1:00pm till 5:00pm

Place
Little Fish 22 Enmore Rd

Date
2nd Nov, 7 Dec, 4 Jan (09) >>> *future*

to book a table, email ghostesky @ gmail.com with Fish Market as the subject

www.myspace.com/littlefishgallery

2pm Sunday October 19th at Jura Books.

Give your granmama a nose ring and bring her down to Jura for a special afternoon of Jazz and Punk bands playing together.

CELEBRATE
the cancellation of the arms expo in Adelaide
Tuesday, 23 September 6 pm onwards
Gaelic Club, Devonshire Street

2pm Saturday 27th September
at Black Rose !!
22 Enmore Rd
Newtown (100m from station)

Description:
Meeting for all those interested in building a federation
of anarchists in the area, to increase cooperation and mutual
aid between groups and seek ways to work together on common
projects, and/or common causes.

Food will be provided by Sydney Food Not Bombs.

--

the ankle bone, connected to the thigh bone ;)

@ "I Have A Dream" Mural, King St, Newtown.
20 Sept 4.30pm - 6pm

as usual we'll be cooking at jura bookshop from 1pm, and would dearly love a hand in the kitchen OR doing some other craftiness (eg making another new banner as we keep losing them all). there are also plenty of opening for food collectors if you've got some spare time on friday or saturday. hit us up: sydfoodnotbombs at gmail dot com or check out the discussion board (www.sydfnb.tk).

http://sydfoodnotbombs.blogspot.com/

*************************************************************************

Beyond Resistance: Everything! An Interview with Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos

This unique interview with the Zapatista spokesperson and military commander, Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, was created and conducted by a community assembly in Durham, North Carolina, as a direct conversation between people in struggle in the United States and the EZLN. A year into the Zapatista Other Campaign in Mexico, this conversation marks a moment of change and transformation in how the EZLN has seen and spoken about the possibility of alternative politics in the US and the role of migrants, people of color, and others from below in creating such a politics.

"In this interview with El Kilombo, Subcomandante Marcos articulates more
clearly than ever before how Zapatista practices can inspire and link up with
liberation movements around the world. Read it and imagine how we can begin to do politics differently."
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, co-authors of Empire and Multitude

In a time of acute political crisis, widespread state repression of social movements, and increasing environmental devastation, the Zapatistas have re-emerged as a force for change, this time unarmed, coming down from the mountains and out of the jungle to meet with Mexicans across all sectors and people from all over the world to organize a new social force for anticapitalist struggle.

Includes an introduction by the El Kilombo Collective and Community Assembly, the interview with Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, and the EZLN's Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle.

Proceeds from the book will go to the Zapatista communities in resistance.

*************************************************************************

El Kilombo Intergaláctico is a collective in Durham, North Carolina, formed to open a community space and radical bookstore focused on the concerns of people of color, students, and working class communities in Durham. The center includes a radical bookstore, ESL learning center, progressive speaker and film series, community gardening/ food distribution program, free technology center, free health consultations, and more.

Address: 440 Parramatta Rd, Petersham, Sydney, Australia. | Phone: 9550 9931 | Email: Jura@Jura.org.au

http://www.elkilombo.org/
http://jura.org.au/
www.masn.org.au.

at

Jura Books 440 Parramatta Rd
- 30 Aug 2008 - 14:00

http://jura.org.au/

------------------------------

Description:
Meeting for all those interested in building a federation
of anarchists in the area, to increase cooperation and mutual
aid between groups and seek ways to work together on common
projects, and/or common causes.

--

the ankle bone, connected to the thigh bone ;)

In November, Adelaide will host the Asia Pacific Defence & Security Exhibition.

The last time the merchants of death brought an international arms fair (AIDEX) to Australia, activists from all over the country descended on Canberra and shut them down- it's taken them 17 years to get up the courage to try it again.

This meeting will be a chance to hear from a speaker from Adelaide involved in preparations for anti-APSDE protests, & someone who was part of the 1991 AIDEX protests in Canberra.

Public meeting:
Friday August 29
7.30
UTS

Film screening & discussion, with footage from the 1991 AIDEX protests:
Sunday August 31
5pm
Black Rose Books, 22 Enmore Rd, just near Newtown train station.

A Call against Global War Profiteers & the International Arms Trade

Mike Rann, the Premier of South Australia has announced that Adelaide will be host to the Asia Pacific Defence & Security Exhibition on 11-13th November 2008. The Asia Pacific Defence and Security Exhibition is an arms fair. Its purpose is to provide military companies from all over the world with an opportunity to display their latest war fighting machinery.

The Governments of France, Germany, Israel, Italy, South Africa, UK and USA have already booked major exhibition space for their military corporations to come to Australia and take up Mike Rann's offer to "survey the terrific business and investment opportunities" that APDSE will provide. No doubt many other nations will join the throng in the coming year.

These seven countries are together the source of at least 80% of all military equipment, from bombers and warships, through to cluster bombs and depleted uranium munitions, down to the more mundane run-of-the-mill guns, boots, bullets and surveillance equipment used to in the dozens of wars around the world today.

They are responsible for 80% of all the pain & suffering caused by militarism. For the deaths, for the amputees, for the rapes at gunpoint, for the detainees and refugees, for the orphans and the parents denied the right of dying before their children. These people are the real terrorists.

In a cruel twist the organiser of this death fair, Alex Nicholl, who also organises similar atrocities in the UK, has set the date for APDSE as 11th November, the day we normally stop and reflect on the horrors of war. To these people the remembrance of war holds no horror, only profit.

The best we can hope for is that Remembrance Day reminds them of the last time the masters of war came to Australia to peddle their wares.

This is the first major weapons trade fair since the Australian people put an end to the AIDEX 89 & 91 exhibitions in Canberra. In coming months the campaign to stop Australia being turned into a shopping mall for the world's killers will begin in earnest. We urge you to join us in stopping this happening for another 17 years.

Fo more information about the conference:
http://www.apdsexhibition.org
Email: no.apdse@gmail.com

Where: Lower Hall, Quaker House, 119 Devonshire Street, Surry Hills

When: Friday, 22 August. 6pm-8pm

The Asia Pacific Defence and Security Exhibition (APDSE) is an
arms bazaar. It will be held in Adelaide from 11-13 November 2008.
It provides military companies from all over the world with an opportunity to display and sell their latest war fighting machinery.

Peace groups have called for a Peace Convergence in Adelaide
to demand that APDSE be stopped

Join us to discuss what we in Sydney can contribute to this campaign

in solidarity with the arrested

scum system kill

voting with bricks

vae victus

plus more!

friday 22nd august @ Louie's 34 murray st marrickville

show starts 730

7 bux entry