Stephanie McMillan

My friend and colleague Ted Rall is writing a book. Here’s his Kickstarter campaign:

Following is a letter from a member of Batay Ouvriye (Workers’ Struggle) requesting support for their activities for May Day. I’ve volunteered to collect donations for them through my Paypal account.

Thank you for any support you can provide!
–Stephanie

* * *

Batay Ouvriye, (Worker’s Struggle, www.batayouvriye.org), a labor movement in Haiti, is planning a series of activities to commemorate International Worker’s Day (May Day), 2012.

The objectives of these activities are to:

· Continue to build the workers federation known as May First Trade Union Federation/BO.
· Reinforce the combative capacity of the trade unions inside BO (so that members are better prepared to fight for worker’s interests).
· Plan a national meeting of all union delegates.
· Elect the new executive committee of the newly formed union SOTA/BO. (Sendika Ouvriye Tekstil ak Abiman, Creole for Textile and Clothing Workers’ Union).
· Organize a march on May Day in Port-au-Prince.
· Organize marches throughout Haiti of sweatshop factory workers, peasants, and agricultural workers.

To organize these series of events, urgent funding is needed and we ask for your financial support and solidarity. It is not easy for workers to organize themselves across great distances in a land which is constantly attacked by natural disasters, foreign intervention, and brutal regimes. The Haitian workers, who are constantly in danger of repression, ask for your help and support. Any contribution which you can make will benefit Haitian workers in their struggle to better their conditions. Thank you for your help!

Please send contributions to the Paypal account
of supporter Stephanie McMillan (you don’t need a Payapl account, just a credit card). Go to Paypal.com and send to steph@minimumsecurity.net, or click the button:

Signed by:
Yannick Etienne,
BATAY OUVRIYE

If you’re in New York, I’ll be on two panels at the Left Forum on March 18. Please come by if you can!
More information: http://www.leftforum.org/

Noon, Sunday
Building the Red-Green Revolutionary Strategic Alliance
with Ron Whyte (Deep Green Philly) and Joe Ramsey (Kasama)

http://www.leftforum.org/panel/building-red-green-revolutionary-strategic-alliance

3 p.m. Sunday
Cartoonists For/Against Revolution (and/or other major changes)
with Ted Rall (Anti-American Manifesto) and Ruben Bolling (Tom the Dancing Bug)

http://www.leftforum.org/panel/cartoonists-foragainst-revolution-andor-other-major-changes

Deep Green Resistance, the organization inspired by the book of the same name, is holding a fundraising raffle.

One of the items offered to winners is to name a character of the upcoming novel co-written by Derrick Jensen and myself. The Knitting Circle Rapist Annihilation Squad will be published in 2012 by Flashpoint/PM Press. It’s a comedy about a group of women who kill rapists (in the words of one reader: “Andrea Dworkin meets Monty Python”).

Enter this raffle for the unique opportunity to choose the last name for one of the smaller characters in the book (provided the name doesn’t distract from the book. In the words of Derrick Jensen, “Moonbeam or Cannibal or Gesundheit” would not be appropriate!)

You will also receive a free copy of the book when it is released.

Here’s the page where you can buy tickets: http://deepgreenresistance.org/dinnerwithderrick/

Here’s the cover:

Earth at Risk (November 13, Berkeley) was amazing! It was an honor to share the stage with such brilliant people: Derrick Jensen, Aric McBay, Lierre Keith, Arundhati Roy, Waziyatawin, and Thomas Linzey.

Being able to visit Occupy Oakland and Occupy San Francisco was also wonderful.

I had presented part of this talk (the part about why Capitalism Must Die) at Occupy Miami the week before. That went well too.

The people are in motion! We’re standing up to join a global movement, what may become a global revolution.

This is beautiful! I’ve been waiting and working all my life to see this. We’re all here because in general we want the same things: a new society based on fairness, sustainability, healthy communities, a living planet. An end to domination and oppression of all forms.

What stands in our way? Is it greedy corporations that have grown to big and gone too far? It’s those, but it goes deeper than that. Profit. Profit is the problem. And a whole social/cultural/economic/political system based on accumulating profit, through the extraction of natural resources and the exploitation of labor.

We have an enemy. I’ll go ahead and name it: global capitalism.

Capitalism is not a thing, but a process: the conversion of life into commodities into toxic waste.

It’s also a social relation, where a small minority owns and controls our means of subsistence and uses this to dominate and exploit the majority of people and the world. Those in power start out by seizing land and destroying traditional land-based and indigenous communities. They push people into labor camps (commonly known as cities), and make them work for food and shelter. Would anyone consent to work in a factory or mine if they had any other way to survive? Would you? I wouldn’t.

Capitalism is based on constant expansion, on ever-increasing rates of private accumulation. This means it’s structurally unreformable. The nicest capitalist in the world might want to change that, but wouldn’t be able to. They must make profit or go out of business.

Global capitalism is in deep crisis. It’s played out. Many expect it to collapse. But the truth is, it won’t. It’s dynamic and adaptable. It could morph into fascism or neo-feudalism. But it will use up everything and keep going until all life on the planet is extinguished.

I don’t know about you, but for me that’s too late.

We must eliminate it. It’s our responsibility. We may be the last generation with the opportunity to do so.

With this action, with this movement, I’m starting to believe it’s possible!

I hope to see this grow into a radical mass movement that can unite all who can be united to fight the system, our common enemy. A diverse, non-sectarian movement, mutually supportive, and above all visionary and fearless.

We don’t know what’s going to happen or what this will become. But we have to keep it going, keep moving hand-in-hand to wherever the demands of our situation may lead us.

Sure, we’re chaotic, flawed, unpredictable. This may not be exactly what each of us wants or thinks we need. But the important thing is that we’re MOVING. We’ve woken up. We’re challenging the system.

Capitalists, we’re coming for you!
Imperialists and war-mongers, we’re coming for you!
Exploiters and oppressors, we’re coming for you!
Ecocidal maniacs and corporate bloodsuckers, we’re coming for you!

We’ll fight you, and we’ll fight you, and we’ll make mistakes along the way, and we’ll falter. But we’ll keep getting up and we’ll fight again, and fight again, and one day we are going to win.

I’ve been in Washington, DC since last Thursday at the October 2011 action in Freedom Plaza. Here’s a photo of me and Bunnista at the White House:

And here’s a video of a speech I gave on Saturday:

Ted Rall and I put together a quick comix pamphlet called “Occu-Pie Comix.” Someone attached it to their tent:

Here’s a pdf of the front and back covers and the interior.

Anarchie Verte has posted more translations of Minimum Security comics, here: http://anarchieverte.ch40s.net/2011/08/fin-de-la-serie-sabotages/

18 of them, starting with this one: