The people behind Occupied London have been instrumental in bringing news and analysis from the Greek streets and resistance, both in print and on the Web. When I first heard they were putting a book out with AK Press, I ordered a copy immediately (though it’s yet to arrive).

The North American Anarchist Studies Network (NAASN) had its founding conference in Hartford, Connecticut in 2009. Over 350 people were in attendance throughout the weekend and open assemblies were held to discuss the future of the network. Out of these assemblies sprang some working groups, ideas for expanding the network, and its future direction. We also decided that we would have an annual conference to be hosted in different cities and organized by local groups. 

I haven’t blogged in a while, so I thought I’d share some thoughts on this last weekend I spent in Baltimore (a city chock-full of radical history for anyone interested in reading up). I attended the Renewing the Anarchist Tradition (RAT) annual conference—a conference for developing anarchist theory collectively and having conversations about anarchist thought and practice. I’d never been to RAT before and was excited to attend this year’s gathering, as it was organized to be different than other conferences.

The myth of the “Ground Zero Mosque” and the Islamophobia that surrounds it are media-generated products of a state at war during campaign time. The myth represents some of the worst kinds of “Othering” associated with the hyper-patriotism that followed 9/11 in the United States. At a recent protest against the proposed center in New York City, protestors could be seen jeering, yelling at, and threatening one dark-skinned worker for being “Muslim”—even after he explained to these (largely white) protestors that he was not [8]. The problems here are obvious. We need to be countering these media-generated myths.

I don’t know if we’ll ever find solutions to problems like the HIV epidemic. I do think, though, that we could substantively address it in ways that don’t advantage some groups at the expense of others. But this is going to require a re-organization of the totality of oppressive and hierarchical social relations into something new, participatory, and fundamentally non-hierarchical