Author: plainwordsbloomington

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March 14: Film screening – Militant Resistance to the AIDS Crisis

From Bloomington Anarchist Black Cross

MARCH 14, 2017
7pm
Boxcar Books
408 E. 6th St

Bloomington Anarchist Black Cross presents five short films on militant resistance to the AIDS crisis.

In the Tradition of Stonewall (1994, 29 min)
A short documentary on the unpermitted breakaway march organized by ACT UP on the 25th anniversary of Stonewall.

Holding Steady Without Screaming (1995, 11 min)
A short film subtitled “I Can’t Scream Because I Have to Hold the Camera Steady”

…by any means necessary (1994, 6 min)
An angry experimental film based on a text by Kiki Mason.

The Ashes Action (1996, 29 min)
A short documentary on the October 11, 1992 action in which individuals held a Political Funeral for those lost to AIDS, throwing the ashes of friends and lovers on the White House lawn.

David Wojnarowicz (1994, 2 min)
A short piece on queer desire in a time of plague, from the No Alternative home video.

The Anarchist Movie Night is a free monthly film series on freedom and subversion. Showing documentaries, features, cult films, and experimental shorts of an anarchic sort.

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New Bloomington People’s History Poster: General Gelina

General Gelina (PDF) (Prints 11×17)

General Gelina was a revolutionary, urban guerrilla, and graduate of IU. Born Angela Atwood in North Haledon, New Jersey, Gelina attended IU, majoring in education and singing in the Pickers, a musical group in the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority. After moving to California and leaving her husband in 1973, she joined the Symbionese Liberation Army with two other IU graduates, Bill Harris and Emily Montague.

The SLA was an armed struggle group springing from relationships between rebellious prisoners and revolutionaries on the outside. They developed clandestine networks with prison rebels, executed a prison break, robbed banks to fund their activities, and carried out attacks on state and capitalist institutions and those who protect them. In their most memorable act, they kidnapped newspaper heiress Patty Hearst, forcing her father to fund a massive distribution of free food to poor people throughout California. Gelina and five other SLA fighters were murdered by the FBI and Los Angeles police on May 17, 1974. The six refused to submit, only ceasing their fight when the house they were in burned down around them.

Gelina may be gone, but the revolutionary force of life continues: joyous, unrelenting, armed.

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Feb 27: Cage Flight – Letter writing for Krow and Andrew Mickel

From Bloomington Anarchist Black Cross

FEBRUARY 27
7pm
Boxcar Books
408 E. 6th St

This month we’ll be writing letters to Krow, an environmental activist and water protector recently arrested fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline, and Andrew Mickel, on death row for killing a California cop in order to bring attention to and stop police repression.

Plus: news of prison rebellion, updates on court cases, notes of revolt against prison society.

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Plain Words #1

The first issue of Plain Words is here!

[For reading and printing 8.5×11]
[For printing 11×17]
[For printing 11×17 – “prisoner friendly”]

Plain Words is a website and publication that focuses on spreading news and developing analyses of struggles in and around Bloomington, Indiana. As anarchists, we approach these struggles from an anti-state, anti-capitalist perspective. However, we aren’t interested in developing a specific party line – even an anarchist one – and instead value the diverse forms resistance can take. Our anarchism is vibrant, undogmatic, and finds common cause with all others who fight for a world without the state, capital, and all structures of domination.

We actively seek collaboration. If you have news, images, reportbacks of actions and demonstrations, communiques, event information, publications, analyses of local trends and situations, updates on projects and campaigns, or anything else coming from an anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist perspective, please get in touch.

If you have comments on or critiques of anything we’ve printed that you’d like us to publish, feel free to send them our way.

CONTENTS
“Revenge! Rainbow Bakery Sabotaged for Feral Pines”
“Anti-Oppression & the Internet”
“New Year’s Eve Reportback”
“Reflections on the September 9th Prison Strike”
“How to Wheatpaste”
“We Have Only Begun to Fight: Reportback from the J20 Bloc”
“What is Anarchism”
Action Chronology

 

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How to: Wheatpaste

Wheatpasting is a simple, dirt-cheap way of spreading ideas, news, analyses, and creative expression outside of (and against) the pacified modes made available by the institutions that control and mangle our lives. Let’s reclaim, together, the means of expression from the media, Facebook, Twitter, smartphones, and everything else that reduces us to mere observers of life. Poetry is in the streets!

Continue reading “How to: Wheatpaste”

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February 14: Film Screening – Emma Goldman

From Bloomington Anarchist Black Cross

FEBRUARY 14, 2017
7pm
Boxcar Books
408 E. 6th St

Bloomington Anarchist Black Cross presents a documentary on the life of anarchist Emma Goldman. A Russian Jewish immigrant to America, Goldman became a major figure of the US anarchist movement until she was deported for her opposition to WWI. Labor struggles, riots, an assassination attempt on an industrialist, radical newspaper publishing, the killing of President McKinley, anti-militarist organizing, the women’s liberation movement, the Russian revolution and its betrayal by the Bolsheviks, the Spanish revolution and its hope for human freedom are all explored through the life of one woman who lived it all without compromise and with fiery vision.

After the movie, we’ll be writing letters and cards to anarchist prisoner Sean Swain.

The Anarchist Movie Night is a free monthly film series on freedom and subversion. Showing documentaries, features, cult films, and experimental shorts of an anarchic sort.

[Facebook event page]

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Bloomington, IN: J20 Reportback

 Reposted from It’s Going Down (original date: 1/21/17)

People worked their way out of the shadows to meet at People’s Park. Participants were handed complimentary gift bags which included a handout on safety in the streets, face and hand coverings, noisemakers, and other fun items for a night out on the town. It feels like a sign of the times that all of these tools were enthusiastically accepted and used by most people who received them. It doesn’t seem hard for people to understand that in order to fight this regime and its “Alt Right” foot soldiers, we need to begin to protect ourselves and each other.

Stickers put over parking meters

Continue reading “Bloomington, IN: J20 Reportback”

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January 22: Poetry reading for Marius Mason

From Bloomington Anarchist Black Cross

JANUARY 22
6:30pm
Boxcar Books
408 E. 6th St

For the annual Trans Prisoner Day of Action initiated by Marius Mason and his supporters last year, we are hosting a poetry reading event in which several local writers will read their own poems and creative writing as well as those of Marius and other trans prisoners. There will be refreshments, cards, and other materials for writing prisoners, and prisoners’ artwork. All money raised will be sent directly to Marius (and split with a couple other prisoners if we raise enough).