From a comrade:

Hello Folks,

You have to excuse us.  Between Ms. Sarah SK and myself, new projects abound.  Those, on top of the Occupy movements, have unfortunately left NO BOSSES, NO BOYFRIENDS neglected and overlooked for quite some time now.

It’s just been one of those seasons.

You know, one of my favorite things about music from the 90′s is that women (even) in pop were given room to explore topics other than partying and romance.  I think this Monica jam (performed to a bunch of pre-teens at All That!, no less) is a wonderful example.  “My emotional dynamicism is not entirely dependent on my love life!”

Enjoy, comrades and enjoy your weekend!

Kickoff party Friday night 11/4 at the Allways on St. Claude starting at 10 pm and a book-themed burlesque show across the street at the Hi-Ho from 10 to 12.
Book Fair this Saturday 11/5 at the corner of Frenchman and Chartres from 11 am to 5 pm. Be sure to check out the Kids’ Space while you’re there!

$LADIES$NIGHT$

For those who don’t know, Ladies’ Night is a radical feminist discussion group that has been meeting almost weekly for over two years in New Orleans. We now meet every Sunday at 4 pm for a kid-friendly, BYOB, no$boys$allowed potluck and discussion. Update! Our new Contemporary Radical Feminisms readers are printed and bound and beautiful! Please shoot us an email for questions, our location, or to get a copy of the readings. (Readings schedule TBA.) ladiesnight@noboyfriends.org

Crescent City Childcare Collective

C4 provides competent and politicized childcare support to local organizations in New Orleans who are already doing amazing work.  They will be Kids’ Spacing it at the Book Fair this Saturday but, if you miss em, don’t forget that there are monthly collective meetings every second Saturday of the month at Fairgrinds Coffee House in Mid City. The next one is Saturday 11/12 at 1 pm, immediately followed by a free childcare training for new volunteers at 2 pm at the same location.  Check out their blog for more info.

The "white shirt" cops are primarily responsible for the entrapment and brutality seen during the occupation.

Hell yeah!  The Partnership for Civil Justice filed a Class Action Complaint against Mayor Bloomberg, the City of New York, and the NYPD.  The complaint says that the 700 protesters arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge were entrapped by police who carried out “a pre-planned and deliberate course of false arrest”.

The complaint names 5 defendants, all residents of NYC, and includes all 700 who were arrested as part of the class action.  The factual allegations in the complaint are right on the mark and include the fact that we were allowed on the bridge and given only inaudible warnings about being arrested.

You can read the full complaint here.

I was arrested on Saturday, but I’m still unsure of how to process everything, and unsure of what exactly I should and shouldn’t say about what happened to all of us on the Brooklyn Bridge.  I can tell you that I am scared though.  I am scared of going back to Occupy Wall Street and getting arrested again.  I am scared that after 700 people endured the terror of being bound and locked up by the NYPD (one as young as 13) that this might all amount to nothing…just another fizzle of radical hope eventually squelched by the State.

I’m also scared that the mass arrests are the last thing we need right now.  I believe that reformist tactics do not work.  I believe that disruption, insurrection, and direct action are currently the only ways even the most minute changes will occur.  That being said, I don’t expect Wall Street to change at all.  I don’t expect our government to start taking care of us.  I don’t even want that.  700 people getting arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge got everyone’s attention, but to me that’s not what’s remarkable about Occupy Wall Street.

What’s remarkable is what’s happening in Zucotti Park…what’s been called a space of radical imagination.  Right now, in a private park in the heart of the country’s financial epicenter, people are taking care of each other.  They’re taking care of each other because they want to, not because it’s profitable or even because it’s the “right thing to do”.  Adults are playing with children, friends are feeding each other, people are sharing mattresses, coats, and sleeping bags.  In Zucotti Park, people are rethinking what it means to be a capitalist subject, and saying “fuck you” to the institutions that think we need private loans, public subsidies, and charitable pity to survive.

But it’s important also to stress that what’s happening in the park isn’t some sort of culmination, or ending point in our struggle against oppression.  Spaces like that are created organically everyday, but go unrecognized as part of a movement.  Even the police bus that took us off the bridge and to the precinct became a contested space as we began singing solidarity forever, and someone told the joke: “Why do you bury cops 6 feet underground?  Because deep down their good people”.   And even more incredible was the holding cell I shared with 11 other women.  I can’t remember all of their names, but they are all beautiful, beautiful creatures.  I don’t want to make light of incarceration, but merely explain that even in the darkest and scariest places there is hope for solidarity and transformation.

I’m hoping that all of us arrested get our summons thrown out, and that the occupation continues.  I also hope that the tactics the police have used- entrapment, brutality, and flat out lying- don’t define this movement.  The transit workers union is supposed to join up with the occupation on Wednesday, which will be an amazing thing.  And as scared as I am, I’ll probably be up there this weekend too, still trying to figure out where we go from here.

Food table at the park which serves vegan, vegetarian, and neither.

Non-violent resistance training before Saturday's march. At the time I wrote it off as silly, but in hind-sight I shouldn't have been so belittling.

A huge crowd gathered at Zucotti Park before the march. You could feel the excitement in the air.

Had a pretty fantastic time with the F Word at Florida State last night talking about Anarcha Feminism and police brutality and creepy frat culture and TV. Thanks for having me, ladies, and keep up the good work!

I am currently en route to visit my mama in Miami, and as excited as I am, I’m also really,really bummed to be missing the kickoff of New Orleans’ #occupywallstreet solidarity march. (Ps. Here’s their first official statement.) But, just because I’m a poor planner, that doesn’t mean you should miss out, too.

Ok. Pay attention.

The initial march will form in front of Orleans Parish Prison at Tulane & Broad at 12 pm, this Thursday Oct. 6th in spirit with Occupy Together’s National Day of Solidarity. It will move to the Federal Reserve at Lafayette Square, the base being at Duncan Square at City Hall.

For more info and updates, please check the website: occupynola.org

And, lemme tell you. Babies, I’ll be home soon. And if y’all still around by Friday morning, it’s bookoo daiquiris for everyone. Hold tight!

Numbers released by the federal receiver’s office show that on September 28th, nearly 12,000 prisoners were on hunger strike, including California prisoners who are housed in out of state prisons in Arizona, Mississippi and Oklahoma. This historic and unprecedented number shows the strength and resolve of the prisoners to win their 5 core demands and is a serious challenge to the power of the California prison system and to the Prison Industrial Complex in general.

Prisoners are currently on strike in Pelican Bay State Prison, Calipatria, Centinela, Corcoran, Ironwood State Prison, Kern Valley State Prison, North Kern State Prison, and Salinas Valley State Prison. Throughout the last week prisoners at California Rehabilitation Center in Norco, Pleasant Valley State Prison, San Quentin as well as West Valley Detention Center in San Bernadino County were participating.

The receiver’s office and the CDCR begin monitoring prisoners who have refused food for 72 hours or for 9 consecutive meals. Representatives of the hunger strikers have previously stated that this will be a rolling strike, allowing prisoners to come off strike to regain strength. Because of this, numbers will likely fluctuate throughout the duration of the strike.

Watch a short video about solitaritary confinement produced by the American Friends Service Committee.

Yet-to-be-signed (for some depressingly politicized reason, I’m sure), talented, and industrious (she designed her website and shoots her own videos), Na’Tee is definitely one of the best MC’s I’ve heard in too long. She has a natural, confident flow, clever and sincere lyrics, and explores themes that most rappers either lack the depth to or simply choose to ignore.

3D Na’Tee is clearly beautiful and apparently very ambitious. While I respect women’s decisions to present themselves in any manner they so choose (I certainly do not rock the most conservative aesthetic myself), I hold a small worry that when she is inevitably signed to a major label, they will reposition their focus more squarely on her (abundant) ass, moving it away from (abundant) lyrical skill.

She describes her own flow as “immaculate.” She refers to herself as Queen of the Universe. And, she has knuckle tats: “NOLA DIVA”  3D Na’Tee is my new bad-bitch role model.

(Thanks Sophie for sharing these videos with me!)