Coming Saturday, Michael Hardt will speak about Occupy and the politics of the commons. Elke Uitentuis and I have been invited to contribute to the discussion with our experience of Occupy Amsterdam.

In the last year, the Occupy movement has emerged as a global critique to austerity politics and corporate democracy. With the end of the financial crisis nowhere in sight, the question of alternatives and strategies of resistance is more relevant than ever. Is there some path out of this crisis? What next for the occupy movement? What are the commons and what role can they play in a new political practice beyond state and market?
We will discuss these issues with the internationally acclaimed scholar Michael Hardt, co-author (with Antonio Negri) of Empire (2000) Multitude (2004) and Commonwealth (2009).
Introduction by Fabiola Jara (Seminar of the Commons).
Location: Social Center De Valreep, Amsterdam Oost, Polderweg 120.
Time: 16:00 – 18:00
Entrance is free

Literally translated, Nood Breekt Wet means Emergency Breaks Law – in other words, if it’s an emergency, then breaking the law may be necessary.
We hung this banner – a collaborative effort by Doris Denekamp, Elke Uitentuis/Wouter Osterholt and me – between a tree and a lamppost above the remains of Occupy Amsterdam on Beursplein.
Unfortunately, no sooner had we tied the last string and I was slithering back down the rain-wet, art-deco ironwork, than a police van screeched across the square at exaggerated emergency speed to instruct us to remove it, or else it would be removed. Nienke Jansen, with whom I was hanging it, put up a brave round of stroppy argument but in the end we resigned ourselves to moving it to a less prominent, less legible, position along the side of the big tent.

Here’s a first photo of the karaoke with protest songs, the lyrics being beamed onto the wall of the stock exchange at Occupy Amsterdam on Beursplein.
(Thanks to Taf Hassam for the photo)

Please join us on the Beursplein to sing along with protest songs, in the big tent on Friday December 2nd at 20:30 (bear in mind that non-hierarchical organisation means things sometimes run a little off schedule…)
The wonderful Lennie St. Luce will be presenting the evening, and all are welcome to come along and sing.

The list of karaoke songs is still being added to and will be updated – at present it includes:
Am I Black Enough for You
Bandera Rossa (IT)
Bella Ciao (IT)
Ben ik te Min (NL)
A Change is Gonna Come
De Bom (NL)
De Dievenwagen (NL)
Don’t Stop Til You Get What You Want
Do-Re-Mi
Don Vito y el Revuelto en el Frenetico (SP)
Eyes on the Prize
Guantanamera (ES)
Guns of Brixton
If There’s Hell Below…
If You Tolerate This….
Invincible
Know Your Rights
Le Triomphe de l’Anarchie (FR)
Menheer de President (NL)
Mississippi Goddam
Now (is the Time)
Red Flag
Someday We’ll All be Free
Turn Me Around
We Shall Not be Moved
When Will We Be Paid
Which Side Are You On?

Thanks to all those who have supplied songs – in particular Taf Hassam & Kees Smallegange.
Venceremos!

We hung up the new banner this morning outside the entrance to the stock exchange at Occupy Amsterdam on Beursplein…

ARTISTS wearing T-shirts bearing the text Zwarte Piet is Racisme were arrested yesterday in Dordrecht during the Sinterklaas parade in a disgraceful display of police brutality. A Danish researcher and a journalist were also arrested.

PROTEST! – get a T-shirt here.
More information (in Dutch) on Zwarte Piet is Racisme site.
Watch on Youtube here.

The Detroit Diary is now available from the Fort van Sjakoo bookshop in Amsterdam (Jodenbreestraat 24).
It’s also still on sale in Berlin at Pro qm (Almstadtstr. 48-50), in Paris at the Librairie du Centre Culturel Suisse (32 rue des Francs Bourgeois), and in 2 bookshops in Zurich – Edition Fink (Waffenplatzstrasse 39a) and Motto (Langstr. 84)

Photo: Scheltens&Abbenes - The Most Beautiful Swiss Books

I have finally managed to stop sobbing. For an hour I sat with the still warm body of a kingfisher in my hand, its blood slowly sticking my fingers together.
A special bird, its splash as it dived after a fish from its perch on the toppled velvet tree which overhangs the water, announced its presence more often than the treasured sight of its blue flash as I sat drinking early morning coffee under the larch.
But now it’s dead.

I was drinking coffee indoors this time, for the morning was a bluster of showers, when there was a loud thud against the glass doors, very close, making me jump. I didn’t expect a corpse, I imagined the bird – I hoped a stupid bloody wood pigeon – to have flown off a little dazed perhaps, but not seriously harmed, so I finished the page I was on and then, as the sun appeared, stepped out to open up. There, lying on the ground was a bright turquoise bird. Why why why? Why must it be the kingfisher? I spend the next 10minutes clutching its warm limp, body to my breast, rocking it back and forth, stoking its tiny head.

I am aware that my distress is out of proportion, that somehow the death of this tiny, precious bird has triggered something else. Perhaps somehow connecting to a sense of the death of small and precious things on a larger scale.
Read more…

Some bad and sad news from Detroit – the Catherine Ferguson Academy which enables the majority of its teenage mothers(-to-be) students to aim for college education and a life after teen-motherhood, is threatened with closure.

There’s a video piece on the Rachel Maddow blog which goes further into the reasons why this closure (and others like it) is synonymous with the way in which basic tenets of democracy are being side-stepped when they prove a stumbling block for efficient power misuse (particularly in poor neighbourhoods), thus why Michigan is ground-zero for the politics of the USA today.

Also a report from the school at the time of the student sit-in in the Voice of Detroit independent news.
Direct support is difficult from this side of the Atlantic, but here’s a petition to sign, and those in possession of a credit card can donate to By-Any-Means-Necessary who are, among other things, providing the arrested teenaged girls with legal support.

BELATED NEWSFLASH!!
My book The Detroit Diary has been chosen as one of the winners of The Most Beautiful Swiss Book award – thanks to designer Anna Haas, herself Swiss, who submitted it for the competition.

Anyone who happens to be in Zurich toward the end of June could visit the exhibition which will be at the Helmhaus Zürich, from 24th to 26th June 2011, following that the exhibition will then travel to Lavin/Engadin, St. Gallen, Bienne and Geneva. For more information, and the complete list of winners, Swiss Design Awards