Aid & Abet

Independent Media Activist Jen Angel to speak on “Becoming the Media”

Friday August 8th
6pm for a lecture, discussion and workshop.
Black Rose Collective Bookstore & Community Resource Center
4038 N. Mississippi Avenue Portland, OR 97227

Come to a lecture, discussion and workshop with independent media activist Jen Angel, who has recently written a pamphlet on PM Press titled “Becoming the Media: a critical history of Clamor Magazine”. Jen will speak to both her experiences in running a national magazine as well as the current state of independent media.

Jen Angel will address the current independent media environment, opportunities and challenges, and to her experiences in independent media and as the co-editor of Clamor Magazine. Clamor was a movement publication that existed between 2000 and 2006, covering radical politics, culture, and activism. Clamor published 38 issues and featured over 1,000 different writers and artists.
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There was more, that went by too fast when I was on the bus, but here are a few photos. 

Zunil and Chicken Buses

Like I said, traveling in Guatemala was the first time I’ve traveled outside of the US and Canada. I haven’t traveled much in countries that aren’t developed partially because I was uncomfortable being a tourist, worried about my place visiting other cultures, and because I only spoke English. I wasn’t worried about my personal safety as much as I was worried about intruding or being unwanted in other people’s areas, or something PC like that.

Guatemala is really poor. Even in the cities, there is a lack of secure work and many people are struggling. Something like 80% of the population is unemployed or marginally employed. They lack conveniences that most people in the U.S. take for granted like consistent electricity, safe drinking water, hot showers, public transportation. After a while, I realized that the biggest luxury that they do not have is privacy, though at the same time they have no expectation of privacy. In most families, people share bedrooms (no one has their own), and you can hear everything that happens in the house, and if you go to a cafe to use the Internet, someone can just glance over your shoulder to find out what you are doing. But, people are used to the way of life and do their best with what they have - what else can they do? Since they have no expectation of privacy, for example, using the internet at cafes and sharing a room with your mom are totally normal. Read the rest of this entry »

Antigua from the 3rd floor of the hostel I was staying at

So, i just spent the last few weeks in Guatemala. It was my first experience traveling outside of the United States and it was a big experience for me. I went there to learn Spanish at a language school because it seems like the right thing to do in this day and age. Especially since I live in California, but really, it’s important everywhere.

The school that I went to, the Projecto Lingüistico Quetzalteco de Español in Quetzaltenango (also called Xéla), was amazing. The school has a city location and a partner rural school about an hour away by bus. I chose the school because I know dozens of radicals who have gone there over the school’s 20-year history, and I wanted to be in a place with a political consciousness with which I could identify. The school is set up to have five hours of one on one instruction every day, with a lot of other activities throughout the week, like lectures, films, and trips to neighboring areas (like the trip to Nuevo Amanacer that I posted about previously). All of these are designed to give you access to the country’s history and current political and social situation, from people who are living it every day, or who actually experienced the historical events. It was fascinating, well organized, and an exercise in consciousness raising for me and many of the students. Read the rest of this entry »

So, I’m in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala at an awesome Spanish language school called the Proyecto Linguistico Quetzalteca. It was recommended to me by many friends, and they were right. I will write more about the school in another post.

I haven’t wanted to post a lot because I can’t upload my photos, and because I don’t have a ton of access to the Internet. Well, there are TONS of Internet cafes here but I don’t really want to spend all my time at a computer.

But, I really wanted to write about today. Today we visited a small town called Nuevo Amanacer, about 2 and a half hours by bus from Quetzaltenango (also known as Xela). Guatemala has had a long and crazy past that includes a civil war from 1960 to 1996, and prior to that, military rule for most of the country’s post-colonial period (except for a small time from 1944 to 1954, the end of which is written about in great detail in the book Bitter Fruit). I’ve been learning a lot about the country’s history and current economic crisis (exacerbated by NAFTA and CAFTA). Anyway, during the civil war, many Guatemalans, many of Mayan descent, fled the country to Mexico to avoid persecution by the military (torture, disappearance, death). The town of Nuevo Amancera was settled by people who fled to Mexico (Chiapas) in 1983 and then returned to Guatemala in 1998.

It’s one thing to read about people being tortured or disappeared (popular book of the moment: Shock Doctrine), and it’s another to meet people who have experienced this. Read the rest of this entry »

Holy Shit! Photo above and story from the Guardian. Here’s the blog of the “climate change protesters” with more updates.

One of the workshops I went to at the National Conference on Media Reform that I really enjoyed was a session called “Privacy in the Age of AT&T, Google, and the NSA.” In part, the panel was so good because the presenters, like Tim Jones of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Tim Sparapani of the ACLU were so knowledgeable.

This was not a session that talked about how to protect your personal privacy on the internet, though that would have been an equally well-received workshop. What they did was cover in some detail recent developments, such as the move by the White House to grant immunity to telecom companies that participated in the Bush Administration’s warrantless wiretapping, as well as the implications. In another facet of the same case, AT&T is being sued by the EFF after a whistleblower came forward with evidence of AT&T’s participation in the wiretapping, creating a “dragnet” that gathered unsuspecting users’ emails.

The panel discussed the implications of these (and other cases), and I found a couple of points very interesting: Read the rest of this entry »

Just a few quick updates on local organizing around oil giant Chevron and their proposed expansion of the refinery in Richmond, California.

First, Wiretap Magazine, a great outlet, especially for young writers, reprinted my post on the May shareholders meeting at the company’s headquarters in San Ramon.

Second, while I was in Minneapolis, the planning commission of Richmond voted to cap the amount of crude processed at the refinery. This is an amazing, and possibly historic moment in the fight for community control over health and environment. Get more details in this press release from the Asian Pacific Environmental Network or this story in the Contra Costa Times.

Congrats to all the groups who have worked long and hard to hold Chevron accountable in Richmond, including West County Toxics Coalition, APEN, Communities for a Better Environment, Richmond Greens, Richmond Progressive Alliance, and Direct Action to Stop the War (just to name a few).

This photo is by Dean Coppola from the Contra Costa times. That’s the mayor Richmond at the rally before the commission hearing.