posted March 21, 2013 11:59 PM            

My ex's fave book:

Days of War, Nights of Love: Crimethink For Beginners [Paperback]
Crimethink Workers Collective
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Days_of_War,_Nights_of_Love

http://www.amazon.com/Days-War-Nights-Love-Crimethink/dp/097091010X

It's one I'd like to add to my library at some point.

quote:

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Beautifully designed A-Z of the totality of revolutionary youth politics. Sort of a Situ-inspired Steal This Book for everyday life, love, and how to live it. Heavily illustrated with photos, cartoons, posters, and other useful accoutrements for the new millenium. Believe the hype, and check out why this is already an underground bestseller.

Review
"It's an exciting book, and a great labor of love, skill, and daring." -- Daniel Quinn, Author of Ishmael
From the Author
CrimethInc. is an international "workers' collective" of men and women who are not willing to be mere "workers" anymore. Are you?

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

WARNING!: This book will not save your life.

Today there is a booming discontent industry, consisting of entrepreneurs who cash in on your misery by selling you products that describe and decry it. Thus the exchange economy finds a place even for its enemies: perpetuating both industry and discontent as we struggle to fight them, we keep the wheels turning by selling more merchandise. And as in every other aspect of your lives, your real desires to make something happen are channeled into consuming—and your own abilities and potential are displaced, projected onto the “revolutionary” items you purchase.

This book could be a part of that process. While we hope we are using our product to “sell” revolution, it might be that we are just using “revolution” to sell our product.* The best of intentions can’t protect us from this risk. But we’ve undertaken this project because we felt that, in addition to our other, less explicitly compromised activities, it might be worth giving the old experiment one more try: to see if a commodity can be created that gives more than it takes away.

For this book to have even the smallest chance of succeeding in that tall order, you can’t approach it passively, you can’t expect it to do the work. You have to regard it as a tool, nothing more. This book will not save your life; that, my friend, is up to you.

OK, that said, HERE WE GO!!!

. . .

*After all, in this society, if something isn’t for sale, it might as well not exist—and it’s almost impossible to think of anything to do with something of value besides market it.

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posted March 22, 2013 12:01 AM            

Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, and Dogen's Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye [Paperback]
Brad Warner

Awesome book.

reviews here:
http://www.amazon.com/Sit-Down-Shut-Up-Commentaries/dp/1577315596

posted March 22, 2013 12:51 AM            

I would go crazzyyyyyy with the power of liberty

posted March 22, 2013 12:59 AM            

This thread has the potential to become beautiful and inspirational. I'm not sure where to begin.....

posted March 22, 2013 04:47 AM            

what say you?

posted March 22, 2013 07:43 PM            

When I was 13 Granny took me to a Bonnie & Clyde festival in Jacksonville, TX, which amazed me that there were even a pair of COPS celebrating the cop-killing duo. Granny told me things about them that I never heard from anyone else. Long story short, they were seen as modern day Robin Hoods fighting villainous banks and their brutal thugs who were throwing people in the streets and taking farms people had lived on for generations, and when the pair robbed banks they also burned deeds so that banks would find it difficult to impossible to repossess land, and they were very generous with what they stole. Granny said she heard Clyde has "always stood up to bullies, even as a child, beating up boys much older than him when he saw them torment weaker kids" and that his crusade was just the ultimate standing up to bullies. She was proud that our family (who up until after the Depression had a rep for being wild outlaws, too, and we also had a pair/brothers who robbed banks, though it was so long ago that they fled on horseback) once sheltered Bonnie & Clyde from the law (hiding their car in a barn, feeding them, treating them as heroes, and though unasked they left my family a bunch of money as a parting gift). And after the duo were finally gunned down (some insisted ambushed dishonorably) their car was paraded through Louisiana and Texas, and officially it was so people could know they were now safe, but in actuality (according to Granny) they were being paraded as examples in case others decided to mount their own crusade, and there was grief at their deaths by many common people (but not the people who write history, and I was shocked when I read the official story later in library books that painted them as psychopaths). Granny ended that with telling me to remember, "Sometimes, justice is on the OTHER side of the law." And I never forgot that, saw that it was true as I got older, and that perspective helped me to like anarchists more.

So I was a runaway living on the streets at age 15 when I first heard of people calling themselves anarchists. I wasn't sure what that meant and asked, but in retrospect I didn't understand the answers very well and I took it to mean, "I'll do what I want" and a form of defiance against corrupt authorities (from a shallow perspective I suppose that's true enough). I shrugged it off, because given how vicious the cops were, unfair the laws were, and how badly I felt betrayed by the courts and how the government only cared about a teen gulag that tortured me and other kids only because it was scamming insurance and not what was done to us, my sentiment to the anarchists was to wish them well in sticking it to the Man (especially as they tended to be kind to us street kids, unlike most other people on both sides of the law, and one adult anarchist who made a point of looking ordinary as possible did all he could to hide me from both cops & pimps after I had one of both after me). However, I didn't see a point in being anarchists as I did in "being against earthquakes, fire ants, and floods." Sure, they were bad, but also a part of life, and best ignored when possible, and weathered & treated when they can't be, but railing against them was a waste to time. Still, it was no skin off my butt if they wanted to make a habit of defying authority.

So anyway, my krew often went to The Pit (don't know if that was it's official name or not) where mostly various white supremacists (with many skinheads leaning fascist or Nazi in politics) and also colorful punks (many of whom identified themselves as anarchists) went, and there were a lot of conflict between them (there were also many factions within each, too, some that faced hostility from their kindred...). Our krew was officially neutral, but as we were multiracial (seeing ourselves as "kids vs. adults" rather than along racial lines) that pretty much forced us to associate with the anarchist punks (and we used the punks in a scam of ours that netted us a lot of food & supplies, but that's another topic). I made friends with a skingirl and when I asked (genuinely curious, not judgmental) why she hung with the skinheads she said, "Gotta stick with your own color." Noting how she'd been beaten and abused, even though they touted themselves as "protecting white women, the mother of our race," I said, "With friends like that, who needs enemies?" Perhaps it was my casually saying it in a philosophical manner that got through to her, but at the time I had no idea what I said had any affect, I was just making conversation.

Not long after (and also not long after my BFF died, so I was distraught, and also emboldened by a vision of Freya) 3 skinheads confronted me on the way to the bathroom claiming I'd turned the skingirl into a "lesbian wigger." I had NO idea what they were talking about, got sick of it, and slammed a chair into one. Violence ensued and I remember it pretty well if anyone wants details (I will say the combat boots and spiked rings I wore were a great help), but it ended with me being slung, and I rolled up pulling both my butterfly knives out, and several punks surging forward to see the 3 big skinheads barely able to stand up to the little girl, and I don't know if it was my knives or if the skinheads were scared the punks were going to actually join in to defend me, but they ran. I'd been beaten bad (one punk illegally gave me a beer and I remember how much it stung as my mouth was busted up pretty bad), but I'd held my ground and was a celebrity among the punks and my krew. However, rather than respecting me it was more about disrespecting the skinheads and taunting them with things like, "Back off or I'll get my girlfriend to beat you up."

Meanwhile I found the skingirl, sick of the abuse she got, had left them and somehow joined up with a black girl who was sick of being beaten by HER gang, and the 2 went independent as drug dealers together (and yes, they were lovers). As they were in a lesbian salt & pepper relationship they found it convenient to hook up with our krew and we accepted them. However, her black girlfriend didn't come to the Pit with us as it was crawling with violent white supremacists and no one saw a point in her tempting fate or riling anybody up.

The skinheads, however, had a reputation to build back up, and one thing they did was "decree" that "girls aren't allowed in the mosh pit." Of course it was only enforced when me and the former skingirl both jumped in when several skins jumped in after us, beat us down, and beat us both to a bloody pulp before the punks rescued us. Some in my krew got me outside (where I was forever ruining a towel trying to mop up my blood and stop the bleeding) as I heard the punks & skinheads arguing outside, with the explanation of the decree against girls in the pit being (rudely) explained.

One punk went, "The Pit is Anarchy! What gives YOU the right to tell US who belongs or not!?"

A skinhead approached him menacingly as he yelled, "The White Right of Might!" Then he threw the first punch and it was on as anarchist punks and neo-nazi skinheads clashed in a brutal brawl. I was among those that left the moment we heard sirens.

posted March 23, 2013 05:44 PM            

Might add more at some point.....i'm not in that headspace atm. Once i gather thoughts, will add one or two.