Guerrilla Gardening: Year 2

The Calgary Culture-Jammers are preparing for another adventerous season of guerrilla gardening.

We welcome people dedicated to organic gardening—particularly food crops—who are eager to join us in our efforts to transform the urban landscape.

Our planning meeting is this Thursday, March 29, 6:30-8:00PM, at the Arusha Centre (106, 223 - 12 Avenue SW).

Affordable Housing Task Force

The provincial government's Affordable Housing Task Force will be in Calgary for two community meetings today:

1-3PM and 7-9PM
in Hall B of the MacEwan Student Centre at the University of Calgary

It's very important that as many of us as possible attend these sessions to advocate for serious positive action on the part of our government. They need to be told, over and over again, that housing must not be left solely in the hands of "the market" and that it is in fact a critical social infrastructure that we, as a society, must take collective responsibility for.

These sessions are "open mic" - speakers will be allowed 2 minutes each to speak.

Also, whether or not you attend the sessions, please send your feedback to the task force through their website or by email to: affordable.housing@gov.ab.ca

The deadline is today!

Handing out Citizen’s Statement of Offense tickets

We went out around downtown Calgary this afternoon, ticketing SUVs (and limos) for their high inefficiency—with additional penalties for idling vehicles.

We used the tickets (“Citizen’s Statement of Offense”) that the Montréal arts collective ATSA gave us last month when they were presenting in Calgary.

Some folks from CBC television’s The National news program came along, with their reporter Mark Kelley joining us in ticketing vehicles.

They’re filming a documentary on Hummers to air on The National—probably in March.

Action: Ticketing Hummers & SUVs

We're heading out on Saturday to ticket some of the least efficient, most polluting, vehicles on the road.

Join us at noon on Saturday, February 17, at the Haymarket Café. From there we'll head out together to a shopping mall parking lot.

More details at the event listing:
upcoming.org/event/152144/

Anti-consumption Christmas Carols

Buy Nothing Christmas has posted lyrics for a whole bunch of anti-consumption christmas carols.

Guerrilla Gardening Action! Tuesday, May 30

We'll be gathering to engage in some guerrilla gardening.

Contact us for location.

Please wear clothes suitable for gardening - such as overalls and gloves.

Bring any garden tools you can, especially hand trowels (hand shovels) and hand forks/rakes.

Please bring some stones for the border decoration, too - if you can (between 1-5 inches in diameter).

Guerrilla gardening

At the meet last night, we decided to look into doing some guerrilla gardening. Please get in touch if you're interested in participating - especially (but not only) if you have gardening or permaculture skills and experience.

TV Turn-off Action Details: TV Herd

Friday, April 28, 2006 - 5-6pm(ish)
@ Eau Claire Plaza (101 - 3 Street SW; Between Eau Claire Market and the YMCA)

Please RSVP on the Meetup group, or email Grant, if you plan to participate.

Participants will be wearing cardboard TVs on their heads (with the screen part cut out so you can actually see :-) and doing various skits as part of a "herd" of TV-people.

Please dress in dark (preferably black) clothing.

Our street theatre action will be taking place right before the Critical Mass bike ride.

TV Turn-off Week

The big Adbusters event this month is TV Turn-off Week. At the planning meet last week, we came up with the following:

TV HERD: A Street Theatre Action

The whole group (herd) will be decked out in TV-heads (cardboard boxes decorated to look like TV sets, probably with the "screen" part cut out for visibility. There will be one extra-big lead TV with a loudspeaker of some sort (probably a megaphone) that will be leading the herd through various obedience and assimilation exercises.

The emphasis will be on quick pieces.

E.g.: The Big TV will shout out something like "You are inadequate. But if you wear a scarf you will be cool." Then the herd will all rush to put on scarves. Once they all have one on, Big TV will shout out "Scarves are going out of fashion." Almost the whole herd will scramble to get rid of their scarves. One of the herd will leave their scarf on too long and the rest of the herd will crowd menacingly around them until they take it off.

Another example: Then Big TV might say "You are depressed. Our new patented drugs will give you the life you deserve." The herd rushes to open pill bottles and take the contents. Big TV quickly recites "Side effects may include dizziness, drowsiness, vomiting, suicidal tendencies, ..." all of which get acted out by the herd.

And so on. Finishing up with a Kool-aid ad - the herd all drink the Kool-aid and fall over dead.

Putting it together

We'll be doing up fabric squares with "TV obedience" messages printed/screened on them. The squares will be stitched/pinned onto your shirts/jackets for the event. Please wear a black shirt/jacket and black (or your darkest) pants.

We might also have printed messages to fill the "screen" of the lead TV, or maybe as "word balloons" to go beside.

We'll have a workshop a day or two before to put the cardboard TVs and other props together.

Some things you can do

• Contribute ideas for the TV Herd segments. (Some possible themes to get you started: Alcohol, body image, over-consumption, sex-related drugs, depression-related drugs, car culture, denial of environmental crisis, war mongering, etc.). We're aiming for short (under a minute) segments, but don't let that hold you back if you've got an idea that would take longer.
  
• Gather materials for the TV Herd props. We'll need paint, fabric, sticks, pill bottles, tape, string, glue, etc.
  
• Recruit! The bigger our herd, the better.
  
• Come to a meeting (or all of them) this month. We'll be continuing to plan every Tuesday, 7-9pm, @ Arusha Centre.
  

Fossil Fools Day: Saturday, April 1, 2006

We're having a protest rally again this year in support of the Jumpstart Ford Campaign's Fossil Fools Day events.

Saturday, April 1, 2006 - 1:00pm-2:00pm
at the corner of 11 Street and 9 Avenue SW
(Metro Ford, downtown)

Chelsea has done up two posters you can use to promote the event:

• Gas Mask Beaver,
• Canada's Oil Addict.

Oct 15, Documentary Screening: The Take

This Saturday, October 15, 1:00PM, we're watching The Take, a documentary by Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis. That will be followed by group discussion.

"In the wake of Argentina's dramatic collapse in 2001, Latin America's most prosperous middle class finds itself in a ghost town of abandoned factories and mass unemployment.

"In suburban Buenos Aires, thirty unemployed auto-parts workers walk into their idle factory, roll out sleeping mats and refuse to leave. All they want is to re-start the silent machines. But this simple act - the take - has the power to turn the globalization debate on its head.

"Director producer Avi Lewis and writer/producer and renowned author Naomi Klein take viewers inside the lives of ordinary visionaries, as they reclaim their work, their dignity and their democracy."

[expletive deleted] for the U.S. in New Orleans

Now I try to avoid foul language, particularly in print, but there's an extremely apt and descriptive term I'm seeing all over the place to describe what has gone on, and is still going on, in New Orleans: It's a clusterfuck. (Wiktionary defines that as “A disastrously unsuccessful collaborative effort.”)

From people being prevented from leaving the city on foot—turning them back at gun-point [another reference]—to blatant exploitation of the, predominantly black, poor, to what are effectively prison camps for survivors (with scarier implications for the more conspiracy minded).... It seems like practically everything that can go wrong there is going wrong—either through ignorance and extreme stupidity, or through wilful neglect.

Countless attempts to help the people there have been blocked. All sorts of excuses are being conjured up to prevent people from recovering, from getting the basic needs of food, clothing, shelter. The abuses being heaped on the survivors are deeply disturbing.

A very surprising amount of the media coverage, particularly the early coverage, didn't try to apologize for the government(s) responsible. Although that has inevitably begun to shift as the spin control comes into play.

Meanwhile, the U.S. dictatorship is shunting the responsibility to help the survivors onto the charity of the public instead of doing everything it can. This is in stark contrast to the efforts of individuals who still have—unlike the Bush Regime—their humanity, who try to do everything they can to help without fretting over political or bureaucratic implications. Although, sadly, many who are willing to help are being blocked at every turn.

And the long-term implications of this disaster are just as scary (if not scarier).

There have been a number of very expressive pictures coming out, both actual and collaged. I've seen a number of them using the Bush guitar photo-op from a couple days into the disaster.

The extreme expressions of racism, classism and unfathomable inhumanity in the (lack of) response to this disaster (and the creation of the circumstances that contributed to it) is beyond any reasonable comprehension. I will echo the sentiment I heard from someone recently that they wished they believed in Hell so they could believe that the people (ir)responsible would be going there.

[this entry copied from my personal blog]
disaster, NOLA, Katrina, hurricaneKatrina.

Source for Chomsky and related videos and audio

ChomskyTorrents.org has a whole pile of interesting documentaries, videos, audio books and other media related to Noam Chomsky, his writings and other stuff not related to Chomsky, but relevant to the issues he talks about.

Gaviotas Eco-Village in Columbia

Gaviotas is an amazing-sounding eco-village in Colombia. According to an article on Social Design Notes, they have achieved energy self-sufficiency and no net greenhouse gasses (due, in part, to their massive reforestation efforts - over 1.5 million trees planted).

See also:

• Gaviotas on Wikipedia.
• Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World - a 1998 book by Alan Weisman (review, Amazon listing, an article in Mother Jones by Weisman).
• Dispatches From a Colombian Utopia by Kate Willson:
  • "Gaviotas: In a War Zone, but Not at War".
  • "An Ecologically Sound Paradise in the Middle of a War Zone".
• New Internationalist: "Time for Utopia.
• Gaviotas home page at University of Iowa.
• Living on Sun, Water, Wind, Grass, and Community.
• Gaviotas article on MetaFilter.

Seen at Boing Boing: Water pump driven by kids' roundabout.
eco-village, intentional community, community, environment, ecology, Colombia, Gaviotas, wind power, windmill, rainforest, energy, consensus.

Gaviotas Eco-Village in Columbia

Gaviotas is an amazing-sounding eco-village in Colombia. According to an article on Social Design Notes, they have achieved energy self-sufficiency and no net greenhouse gasses (due, in part, to their massive reforestation efforts - over 1.5 million trees planted).

See also:

• Gaviotas on Wikipedia.
• Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World - a 1998 book by Alan Weisman (review, Amazon listing, an article in Mother Jones by Weisman).
• Dispatches From a Colombian Utopia, by Kate Willson:
  • "Gaviotas: In a War Zone, but Not at War".
  • "An Ecologically Sound Paradise in the Middle of a War Zone".
• New Internationalist: "Time for Utopia".
• Gaviotas home page at University of Iowa.
• Living on Sun, Water, Wind, Grass, and Community.
• Gaviotas article on MetaFilter.

Seen at Boing Boing: Water pump driven by kids' roundabout.
eco-village, intentional community, community, environment, ecology, Colombia, Gaviotas, wind power, windmill, rainforest, energy, consensus.

Organic Art Action - Saturday, June 25

This Saturday (June 25, 1-3pm), we're having an Organic Art Action.

We'll be gathering to collectively create public art using found natural elements (e.g., twigs, leaves, 'weeds', rocks, etc.).

Meet at Eau Claire Plaza (map is approximate), near the Prince's Island Park pedestrian bridge. We'll go west along the river pathway (on the downtown side of the river, in the direction of the 10 Street bridge), creating organic art along the way. If you're late, just walk the path along the river until you find us.

You can download and print a PDF poster of this info (about 1MB file size) to promote the event.

Some inspiration: Chelsea's post on Andy Goldsworthy's art.

organic art, CalgaryJammers.

Video Screening: The Corporation

At this coming Saturday's meet, we'll be watching the excellent documentary The Corporation.

Come for the movie, stay for the discussion.

Saturday, May 28, 2005 - 1-3pm(ish)
@ the Arusha Centre (106, 223 - 12 Avenue SW)

Space is limited, so RSVP to ensure your spot.

TV Turnoff Week in Calgary

On April 30, 2005, we did some fun street theatre at Tompkins Park (17 Ave SW) for TV Turnoff Week.

The first was putting television on trial.

We also lined up along the sidewalk, with our mock-tvs, to admonish passers by to "Obey," "Consume," "Trust Your Televsion," etc.

A local book store showed up with a table to give away free books. They had a sign reading "Kill Your Television." They also brought a smashed television with bloodied baseball-bat.

See our TV Turnoff Photos for more pictures.

tvturnoff, tvturnoffweek, tvturnoffcalgary, television, tv, Adbusters, Calgary, tvperson, protest, streettheatre, CalgaryJammers.

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

"The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment was called for by United Nations Secretary- General Kofi Annan in 2000. The objective of the MA was to assess the consequences of ecosystem change for human well-being and to establish the scientific basis for actions needed to enhance the conservation and sustainable use of ecosystems and their contributions to human well-being."

This website has the full 219 page report
http://www.millenniumassessment.org/en/Products.Synthesis.aspx

There is a summary of the report on this website along with some other information
http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/index.htm

Peace Posters

Here are two websites that have some really creative posters/images.

http://www.anotherposterforpeace.org/

http://www.anti-war.us/gallery/index.php