This year, we added comic books to the terrain we covered and we've covered various comics, various themes, we've covered the Com-Con in San Francisco and we've covered a comic book artist's book signing. We continue to cover that (and will have an article next Sunday). Why? When we extended for six months (through this month -- we'll most likely be extending another six months after Thanksgiving but C.I. says "Don't bother me with that until Thanksgiving"), C.I. threw out there, "What are we going to be doing that justifies staying around? What topic are we grabbing that we haven't already?" That topic -- suggested by Stan, Mike, Dona, Wally, Betty and C.I. -- was comics.
And we've done a few book pieces (and have another one next edition) this year. We're really not planning on returning to them. They're a mess, they're messy (such as when, early on, we panned a book written by a friend of C.I.'s, a book C.I. happened to love) and there's just too much work to do. But there's a new book about to be released that we're considering doing a book discussion on. If we do a book discussion on it, we'll be doing it the Sunday after the book's released. What's the book? David Solnit and Rebecca Solnit's The Battle of the Story of the Battle of Seattle.
Two things I'd like to tell you about:
ACTION: A Global Day of Action for Climate Justice on the ten year anniversary of Seattle WTO shutdown, Nov 30, 2009. Yesterday African delegates walked out of pre-Copenhagen trade talks in Barcelona demanding the US and rich countries commit themselves to deeper and faster greenhouse gas emission cuts and European activists blockaded the talks. The key fight over the future of the planet is taking place right now around climate; corporate market solutions are the new WTO and the US and the rich countries are undermining any efforts at climate solutions to avert even more catastrophic impacts. What could shift things right now is people in the US (doing what we did ten years ago) showing mass resistance to the US government and corporate capitalism's obstruction and false solutions. Please join one of the regional actions being planned in SF and around the US (details here soon) and sign up to take or support direct action and get your folks together now!
BOOK: AK Press asked me to make a book reflecting on the Seattle WTO shutdown from an organizers view. With my sister Rebecca Solnit, Kate and the AK Press collective workers, designer Jason Justice and contributions from fellow organizers we did it just in time for the ten year anniversary. Please support by buying a book , get ten at half-off, and pass on the announcement below.
hope and resistance, David Solnit
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“To many mass movements in developing countries that had long been fighting lonely, isolated battles, Seattle was the first delightful sign that people in imperialist countries shared their anger and their vision of another kind of world.”—Arundhati Roy
AK Press is pleased to announce the release of a new book in honor of the tenth anniversary of the Seattle WTO protests: November 30, 2009 THE BATTLE OF THE STORY OF THE BATTLE OF SEATTLE
By David Solnit & Rebecca Solnit
with Anuradha Mittal, Chris Dixon, Stephanie Guilloud, and Chris Borte
From dawn to dusk on November 30, 1999, tens of thousands of people shut down the World Trade Organization meeting, facing cops firing tear gas and rubber bullets, the National Guard, and the suspension of civil liberties. An unexpected history was launched from the streets of Seattle, one in which popular power would matter as much as corporate power, in which economics assumed center-stage, and people began envisioning who else they could be and what else their economies and societies might look like. The Battle of the Story of the Battle of Seattleexplores how that history itself has become a battleground and how our perception of it shapes today’s movements against corporate capitalism and for a better world. David Solnit recounts activist efforts to intervene in the Hollywood star-studded movie, Battle in Seattle, and pulls lessons from a decade ago for today. Rebecca Solnit writes of challenging mainstream misrepresentation of the Seattle protests and reflects on official history and popular power. Core organizer Chris Dixon tells the real story of what happened during those five days in the streets of Seattle.Profusely illustrated, with a reprint of the original 1999 Direct Action Network’s “Call to Action” broadsheet—including key articles by Stephanie Guilloud, Chris Borte, and Chris Dixon—and a powerful introduction from Anuradha Mittal, The Battle of the Story of the Battle of Seattle is a tribute to the scores of activists struggling for a better world around the globe. It’s also a highly-charged attack on media mythmaking in all its forms, from Rebecca Solnit’s battle with the New York Times to David Solnit’s intervention in the Battle in Seattle film, and beyond. Every essay in this book sets the record straight about what really happened in Seattle, and more importantly why it happened. This is the real story. David Solnit lived and organized in Seattle in 1999 with the Direct Action Network, a group co-initiated by the Art and Revolution Collective, of which he was a part. He has been a mass direct action organizer since the early ’80s, and in the ’90s became a puppeteer and arts organizer. He is the editor of Globalize Liberation: How to Uproot the System and Build a Better World and co-author with Aimee Allison ofArmy of None: Strategies to Counter Military Recruitment, End War and Build a Better World. He currently works as a carpenter in Oakland, California and organizes with Courage to Resist, supporting GI resisters, and with the Mobilization for Climate Justice West. Rebecca Solnit is an activist, historian and writer who lives in San Francisco. Her twelfth book, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster, came out this fall. The previous eleven include 2007’s Storming the Gates of Paradise; A Field Guide to Getting Lost; Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities;Wanderlust: A History of Walking;As Eve Said to the Serpent: On Landscape, Gender and Art; River of Shadows, Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West (for which she received a Guggenheim, the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism, and the Lannan Literary Award). A contributing editor to Harper’s, she frequently writes for the political site Tomdispatch.com. She has worked on antinuclear, antiwar, environmental, indigenous land rights and human rights campaigns and movements over the years. Available now in electronic galleys. Contact Kate Khatib (kate@akpress.org) to request a copy for review. Please consider scheduling articles to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the Seattle WTO protests on November 30, 2009. SPECIAL OFFER FROM AK PRESS! http://www.akpress.org/2008/items/battleofseattleakpress The Battle of the Story of the Battle of Seattle is now available for preorder at the AK Press website, and will ship in mid-November. Individuals can get a 25% discount on the cover price (a modest $12) by ordering in advance. If, however, you or your organization is interested in buying copies in bulk at a wholesale rate, to sell or give away at upcoming events or convergences, we have a special deal for you! Order 10 or more copies of The Battle of the Story of the Battle of Seattle by November 20, and get 50% off the cover price. Books will be shipped to arrive by N30. (Orders must be prepaid, and are non-returnable, except in the case of damaged books. Shipping fees vary based on location.) Email http://us.mc366.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=kate@akpress.org for more information or to place an order, or simply place your order for 10 or more copies on our website, note *Special 50% off deal* in the comments box during checkout, and we'll apply the 50% discount before we charge your card. Questions? Emailhttp://us.mc366.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=kate@akpress.org, or call the warehouse at (510) 208-1700. |  THE BATTLE OF THE STORY OF THE BATTLE OF SEATTLE ISBN: 978-1-904859635 November 2009 5.5 X 8.5, 128 pages $12.00 40+ B&W Illustrations CURRENT EVENTS  For more information or to request a review copy, please contact: Kate Khatib kate@akpress.org p (410) 878-7706 f (510) 208-1701 674-A 23rd Street Oakland, CA 94612 http://www.akpress.org Please send any and all reviews to the addresses above. |