Uncategorized – Page 34 – the reality tunnel

romantic suspense with an eco-terrorist twist

is what the woman outside the post office told me her novel-in-progress was about.

We are what we can’t give up

Making coffee in the kitchen, I just heard this segment on Weekend Edition, talking around the ideas of excess and retention in our culture.Â It soundsÂ similar to some conversations I’ve had within Defiance, Ohio.

daniel mcgowan

Friends in DC want Defiance, Ohio to play a benefit show for Daniel. I’m inclided to do this. Reading the court documents regarding and FBI informant who closely followed the Crimethinc. scene and was even in Bton this summer for the convergence hit a little close to home. Unlike that sting, however, where the defendents seem a bit like bumbling kids, Daniel’s case seems like a clear attempt for the FBI to target activists involved in legitimate, above-ground community organizing with the attempt of chilling such resistance. It could be any of us next. If they come for you in the morning, then they’ll come for me at night …

publish.nyc.indymedia.org | Brooklyn activist faces life in prison on 16-count arson indictment; Bail Denied, Extradiction to Eugene, Ore. Pending:

Daniel McGowan, 31, was arrested in New York City while working at WomensLaw.org, an advocacy organization that provides legal information for victims of domestic violence. He was held overnight, and brought before a judge in the Brooklyn Federal Court to determine whether he would be released on bail pending his arraignment and trial in Eugene, Oregon. The hearing is currently adjourned until Friday, Dec. 9 at 2 pm, while the judge will review a surveillance recording that an arresting detective alleges demonstrates McGowan is a flight risk.

also

democracynow.org | New York Activist Faces Life in Prison; Feds Accuse Him of Eco-Terrorism:

Daniel McGowan was one of six environmental activists arrested last week in a series of coordinated raids across four states. He is accused of setting a pair of arsons in Oregon in 2001 and is being held without bail. [includes rush transcript]

Finally, this came across my radar a few months ago:

Daniel McGowan is an environmental and social justice
activist, unjustly arrested and charged in federal
court on 16 counts of arson, property destruction, and
conspiracy, relating to two incidents that occurred in
Oregon in 2001.  Daniel has plead "not guilty" and
denies any knowledge or involvement in the crimes he
is being charged with.  He is facing a minimum of 30
years in prison and the possibility of life in prison
if convicted.

Daniel is from New York, and has been an active member
of the community, working on diverse projects such as
the demonstrations against the Republican National
Convention, Really Really Free Markets, and supporting
political prisoners such as Jeff "Free" Luers and
others.  Daniel was attending graduate school for
acupuncture and was working at Women's Law, a
nonprofit group that helps women in domestic abuse
situations navigate the legal system, which is where
he was arrested by federal marshals on December 7th,
2005.

Daniel was indicted separately, but his arrest comes
in the context of a well-coordinated, multi-state
sweep of six activists by the federal government,
which has charged the individuals with practically every
earth and animal liberation case left unsolved. The
arrests were made primarily from information
investigators received from activist-turned-informant,
Jacob "Sketcher D" Ferguson. Jacob is cooperating with
federal investigators and wore wiretapping devices
while speaking with several of the defendants,
including Daniel.  Since then, one of those arrested,
Stanislas Meyerhoff, has also decided to cooperate
with the prosecution, hoping that the court will show
"mercy."  Daniel has stated that there will never be
any cooperation on his part with his "captors."

In order to help Daniel, his family and friends have
created a support network (Family and Friends of
Daniel McGowan) in order to help fund Daniel's legal
representation which is expected to be hundreds of
thousands of dollars. We are asking his friends and
supporters to donate what they can to help Daniel's
family with the legal bills.  The support group will
also be covering the cost of postage and telephone
calls, travel expenses for prison visits, reading
material for Daniel, his commissary fund, and whatever
other needs might arise.

Donate by clicking here:
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_xclick&business=benjamin%40animaldefense%2einfo&no_shipping=0&no_note=1&tax=0Â¤cy_code=USD&bn=PP%2dDonationsBF&charset=UTF%2d8

In addition, we want to make sure that Daniel is
getting the emotional support he needs to remain
strong throughout this process.  He really appreciates
letters and we are asking everyone to please write to
him.

Daniel McGowan
# 1407167
Lane County Jail
101 West 5th Avenue
Eugene, OR 97401

Please remember when writing to not discuss his
pending case, do not use any nicknames, do not discuss
legal information or offer legal advice (even if you
are a lawyer), don't discuss any illegal activity, and
be smart-- remember that ALL mail is read by prison
officials.

On behalf of Daniel, we thank you for your support.

Questions and concerns can be directed to
friendsofdanielmcg@yahoo.com

notecards

So what if I got called out by Corinna and Dustin for carrying the hipster pda – it really is a pretty great organizational tool.

After being out of town for a while, I’m trying to play catch-up with a bunch of projects and I’m trying to clear out some older notecards.

Once, when I was soliciting for postage donations for Pages, a man angrily asked, “Why don’t you support the military instead of goddamned people in prison?” The statistic that I wish I could have produced, not that it would have likely made any difference is that, as of 1998, there were 56,500 Vietnam veterans and 18,500 veterans of the persion gulf war in prison in the us. These statistics are from the US Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Here’s some things that I want to check out:

Ras K’dee – Abbey and I were driving around listening to WFHB when we heard an interesting interview with this Hip-Hop artist. Maybe it was this one. He has a new record called “Street Prison”.
Chris, a new volunteer at pages who is really amazing suggested that I tap the IU progressive faculty alliance for finding common interests and issues to our work at pages. Chris is a pretty interesting guy. He’s an Eagle Scout who rebuilt and restocked a prison library for his scout project. As a reference, most people do things like build bridges on hiking trails or paint fences at a park. Chris suggested that we look into how to help out prison libraries as well as look into larger scale donations from publishers.
Ryan recommended the record Hex by the band Earth or the more obscure Smashed Guitars and Sunn Amps. I think he got into the whole drone-metal thing from his friend Orion. I feel like drone metal has been everywhere in my consciousness lately. There was the Sunn party at the Stabbin’ Cabin the night of the Piedmonster show. Ian, a boy that I talk to sometimes on the Internet mentioned it as an influence to his drone-metal project, and Mike in Detroit was wearing a Sunn t-shirt and talking about how it was currently the music he was excited about. I think Sunn has a new double LP out.
Jenny recommended the documentary Afropunk, I think, in the course of a conversation about culture within subculture.
Freshman Rhethoric is a “mathy post-punk” band that one of the guys who set up the show at Shipwrecked in G-Rad plays in. I think they have a MySpace page or something.
I enjoyed listening to Re:sound from Chicago Public Radio when we were driving through.
Someone I talked to in Lexington mentioned a radio show they had on WRFL on Tuesday from 4-6pm that combines punk music with news headlines.
I finally got to see Taryn Simon’s The Innocents photo show at the CaC in the ‘natti. Its also showing at The Provisions Library in DC where my friend Katy works.

The Midwest Pages to Prisoners Project hosts Pack-A-Thon

On Thursday, March 2nd the Midwest Pages to Prisoners Project is holding a Pack-A-Thon at its space next to Boxcar Books and Community Center at 310 S Washington Street, near the corner of Third and Washington Streets, across from Third Street Park. The event will start at 5pm on Thursday and go all night until 5am on Friday, March 3rd!

The Midwest Pages to Prisoners Project currently has a backlog of book requests from prisoners that spans nearly three months. With the help of Pack-A-Thon volunteers, we hope to reduce that backlog to two months!

Volunteers at the Pack-A-Thon will be reading letters sent from prisoners, filling requests for books from our collection of books donated by members of the Bloomington community, and packaging those books so that they are ready to be mailed. No prior experience is necessary, and training will be provided to new volunteers on the hour, every hour.

While we hope to get a lot of work done, this will also be a fun and festive event, so bring music, snacks and beverages to share, as well as everyone you know!

For more information, contact the Midwest Pages to Prisoners Project at midwestpagestoprisoners@yahoo.com, pagestoprisoners.org, or 812.339.8710.

For those unable to attend this special event, Pages meets several times every week to help send books to the imprisoned. The regularly scheduled meeting times are Mondays from 7-9pm, Thursdays from 7-11pm, and Sundays from 2-5pm.

The Midwest Pages to Prisoners Project is an all volunteer effort that strives to encourage self-education among prisoners in the United States. By providing free reading materials upon request, we hope to aid in the rehabilitation process and stimulate critical thinking behind bars.

The Midwest Pages to Prisoners project is an organization made up of volunteers working in their spare time to provide free books to prisoners. Our volunteers are concerned citizens and activists interested in rehabilitation, rather than punishment.

The project exists to alleviate pain, boredom, and attrition and to provide a direct opportunity for self-education. Additionally, we exist because prison libraries sometimes fail in this respect, and are understocked, or are only able to be patronized during specific and limited hours.

podcast on postal workers

I’ve recently finally gotten into podcasts. I’ve thought they were a cool idea for a long time, but never really use them. I bought a dvd-rw drive so I could make a dvd slideshow for the last disaster show. I now use the slick (and multiplatform) juice to manage my subscriptions and then use the slightly clunky but still functional xcdroast to burn the podcast mp3s to a cd-rw disc. I bought a portable CD player that will play MP3s years ago, and it works fine for this purpose. No need for expensive iPods! I’m still trying to find interesting podcasts, though I’ve found a few. I’ll post my OPML file eventually.

One podcast that I found that I really like is Morning Stories from Boston’s public radio station WGBH. On this weeks podcast, there is a great profile of a Boston postal worker. Between Defiance, Ohio distro orders (though Ryan does most of that these days) and sending packages for the Midwest Pages to Prisoners Project, I spend a lot of time at the post office. The postal workers in Bloomington are great. One carrier is involved with a lot of activism around Bloomington and even recorded this report on Pages to Prisoners for the local community radio station. The others who work the counter are always helpful and pleasant, even to us when we send hundreds of packages, or to the long lines of other customers who act as though they’ve never sent a package before in their life.

Anyway, you can listen to the radio piece here. I want to keep it around for possibly using it in a disaster show.

Another interesting note – my friend Leanne came through Bton recently. She used to be a postal worker who sorted mail that had illegible addresses. I’m not positive about this statistic, but I’m pretty sure that said that she said that when she started working there were 45 mail sorting facilities like the one she worked at around the country. When she quit, there were only 5, mostly due to people sending less mail.

thoughts on the band on the label, the band in the basement, and the new Defiance, Ohio record

This is something that I posted in the comments section of the Defiance, Ohio website:

To comment on a few things that others have posted:The new record, like all our releases will be available as a free download from our website. I don’t know how No Idea feels about this. As far as I know, it wasn’t something we had to argue about or anything like that.

Personally, I’m not sure when the record will be out, whether its March or May. Ryan might know.

Its been a little distressing to read comments here, and that I’ve seen and heard elsewhere to the tune of “you deserve to be on a label like No Idea”. While I appreciate the support for the band, I feel like it creates the impression that Defiance, Ohio, or any band for that matter, should have aspirations of success in terms of the popularity of your band. If there’s one thing that frightens me about releasing a record on a label that is more visible, its the thought that people might think that writing songs that are seemingly only relevent to your life, your friends’ lives, and the place where you live, releasing cd-rs and tapes with photocopied covers yourself, having fun writing songs that you keep saying how bad they are (but keep playing anyway) in the basement, and playing in your friends’ kitchen are all means to this end rather than ends in themselves.

Certainly, I’m glad that people other than the folks in Columbus circa 2003 have found our songs to be relevent to their lives; and I’m glad that I’ve gotten the opportunity to travel all over, meeting interesting folks from all states and continents, while playing music. Certainly, Its nice that we were able to put out an actual pressed CD ourselves and have people like Friends and Relatives, Plan-It-X, Anti-Creative, and now No Idea! put out records for us. But, I strongly feel that being able to do these things comes as a result of trying to write songs that feel honest or challenging to us and enjoying making music with each other. Moreover, even if all the tours and all the records had never happened, the feeling of starting Defiance, Ohio and the experience that we shared with our friends in Columbus would have been something to remember.

I listened to more well-known punk bands when I was growing up: NOFX, Rancid, Operation Ivy, The Dead Kennedys among others. But the first punk bands I ever knew, the ones that made me want to play music, and the ones that made me think that there was a way of supporting and participating in music that wasn’t just buying records, listening to the radio, or watching a video, were bands like Thistle Pink and Lost Cause, who never strayed far from shows in the back of Prodejas record store in Carlisle, PA.

Perhaps small-town, obscure punk bands wouldn’t exist without their more well-known counterparts. Maybe we need that first, naive inspiration, or maybe we need that disappointment of seeing the bands we love sell out and lose substance and the idea that we can do things differently, more sincerely – better. In any case, I don’t want to live in a world without bands that never play shows outside of their town and only matter to their twenty closest friends.

Defiance, Ohio isn’t that band anymore, at least for me, but I don’t want to think that anything we do will ever discourage others from being the band in the basement.

Category: Uncategorized