Events - East Coast USA

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September 23-25: Resist the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh

Join Thousands at a Three Day Convergence of Action, Resistance and Hope
Pittsburghers didn’t ask the G20 to come here, but it is our intention that the worldview the summit represents will die here.
This September 24-25 Pittsburgh will host the next summit of the G20, a group of finance ministers and central bank governors from the world’s largest economies who meet twice yearly to discuss and coordinate the international financial system. Around 1,500 delegates, including heads of state, will be here along with more than 2,000 members of the media, and thousands of police and security agents tasked with squelching dissent.
This summit, and the predecessor meetings this past April in London, occurs on the heels of the worldwide financial meltdown that has been severely impacting hundreds of millions around the world. Since its inception, the G20 has been a tool used to promote a world vision based on the ability of capital to move as it pleases, at the expense of labor, human rights and the environment.
Now that the system these leaders have forced on the world is in crisis they continue to operate as if they have the answer. We know that they do not. To save countries, they propose we turn to institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), an entity that has historically imposed murderous structural adjustment programs on the world’s poor.
G20 summits, alongside other meetings of institutions such as the World Bank, the IMF and the World Trade Organization, have rightfully been targeted by hundreds of thousands of people around the world because they represent a global vision based on war-making, social and economic injustice, and corporate greed. Pittsburgh will take its place alongside people around the world who have protested and resisted such gatherings in their hometowns.
Pittsburgh was chosen as the host city because of its history, and because the President is looking to buttress his working class credentials. It is true that our city has much to offer the world in terms of progress, we just happen to disagree with the politicians on what these words mean or what others should take from our experience. Pittsburgh has experienced 50 years of population loss and industrial decline as well as more than 150 years of industrial class conflict. We have gained an instinctual knowledge that you get what you are willing to fight for. We celebrate that worker and community self-organization has often succeeded where government, bosses and the supposedly enlightened have failed.
What has carried us through the tough times has been our relationships, the tight knit nature of our mostly non-corporate dominated neighborhoods, a do-it-yourself ethic, the unpretentious manner in which people treat each other, and a sense of local pride that isn’t based on salary or one’s place in some hierarchy. Pittsburgh never died, and the currently-in-vogue talk of "rebirth" measures success, growth, and progress in terms of the number of corporations based here, the multi-national profits, or the success of our politicians at going from Mayors to County Executives to Governors.
For our measuring stick, we look to whether or not all have the resources needed to lead and pursue rewarding lives, and if we are meeting community needs without the involvement of the state. We look to the health of our environment and the treatment of other living things, the equality of educational opportunities, the degree to which we lessen our participation in the exploitation of others, and how successful we are in moving towards a new kind of society in which your success and ability to survive is not at the expense of others.
And in these respects, our city is making progress. We find inspiration and common cause in the efforts of the multitude of other projects and initiatives that are transforming Pittsburgh into a more just and sustainable place to live, efforts that are in a conflictual relationship with state power, and will be joining resistance to the G20. And truly, if the G20 were about anything besides state power and money it would be these efforts that other countries would be coming here to discuss and look at, because there is much that we have to offer in creating a better world.
Pittsburgh is not without its problems, and there is much that needs to be addressed. During the summit and its lead-up little will be said about the troubling grip the UPMC medical industrial complex and others hold over the region, the chronic illnesses caused by the extremely high levels of particulate matter in our air, the troubling ethical questions posed by the warfare robotics that are being pioneered here, the police violence and acts of unaccountable brutality against the public, a stacked deck against labor organizing, a depressingly inadequate public transit system, and a political process marked by a lack of ethical accountability and transparency.
We should be clear then, we love our city, and in so far as we see the G20 as a threat to our collective health and well-being we intend to be an obstacle to its ability to function. This is an unavoidable decision given what the summit is, and what it represents. The presence of the G20 summit in Pittsburgh will be a major - if short-lived - disruption to the city and the people who work and live here, with or without protests. Mayor Luke Ravenstahl has acknowledged as much, stating the summit will result in "chaos" due to security cordons, increased traffic, etc.
The government has already staked out its position: the needs of 20 politicians justify whatever disruption and cost to our city, and the responsibility felt by thousands to participate in resistance to the G20 and to articulate an alternate vision for society is more than unimportant, it’s a threat.
Based on past summits the media will play the state game by focusing on whether protesters will be able to disrupt the ability of the summit to meet, using ominous and sensationalist stories with unsubstantiated claims of evil outsiders come to wreck havoc on the good people, because these stories, even if refuted and later disproved, serve to justify attacks on the public’s liberties and dignity. This must not, and will not, deter resistance. The stakes are too high.
The real value of this summit, to its participants and those resisting it, is not in the substance of the "leaders’" discussions. Our power is not in whether or not we have the ability to prevent a bunch of finance ministers and heads of state from talking. The real importance is in the way an undisrupted ceremony reinforces the dominant worldview. If that view is flawed, it must be rejected, and the spotlight such a gathering creates must be one in which people will manifest liberating social conflict.
We therefore believe that the necessary attempts of thousands to interfere with the summit are not an ends in and of themselves, they are a critical part of the means we can use to achieve the victory we are collectively organizing for in September: to heighten existing social resistance, and to present an alternative narrative of why our world is the way it is. We must make it clear that the world need not be this way, and talk about our vision for a movement towards a new society based not on profit and coercion but rooted in meeting collective needs for both material comfort and the freedom to pursue fulfilling lives of opportunity and dignity.
In this effort we invite and encourage your participation!
In Struggle,
Pittsburgh Organizing Group
www.organizepittsburgh.org
If your group would like to endorse this call, let us know at [email protected]
Endorsed by:
Students for Justice in Palestine (Pittsburgh)
Harrisburg Area Anarchist Collective (Harrisburg, PA)
Workers Solidarity Alliance (North America)
Friendly Fire Collective (SF)
Ricanstruction Netwerk (NYC)
Unconventional Action (Frederick, MD)
Dirty Hands Collective (Durango, CO)
Silent City Distro (Ithaca, NY)
Unconventional Action In The Bay (Oakland/San Fran, CA)
Armchair Revolutionaries (West Chester, PA)
Wooden Shoe Books (Philadelphia, PA)


www.resistg20.org

National Call For Action And Endorsements
at the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh, PA
Sept. 19 – 25

Endorsers: Iraq Veterans Against the War Chapter 61, Pittsburgh; PA State Senator Jim Ferlo; Veterans for Peace Chapter 047 – Pittsburgh, Chapter 140 – Meadville, PA; National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations; Thomas Merton Center Pittsburgh; Codepink Pgh Women for Peace; Bail Out The People; Green Party of Allegheny County; World Can’t Wait; ISO (International Socialist Organization); WILPF (Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom) Pgh; Socialist Action; Ohio Valley Peace; Bay Area United Against War; Coloradans For Peace; Radio Free Maine; Code Pink National; Voters For Peace; Community Organizing Center (Columbus, Ohio); Columbus Campaign for Arms Control; Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists Social Justice Committee; After Downing Street; Charlotte Action Center For Justice; Connecticut Students Against the War; Students For Peace, Duluth, Minnesota; Democratic Socialists of Central Ohio; Columbus Progressive Peace Coalition; Pgh Palestine Solidarity Committee; Pitt Students for Justice in Palestine; Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace; Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, U.S. Section; Rhode Island Mobilization Committee to Stop War and Occupation (RIMC); Socialist Party USA; National Radical Women; New England United; North Star Republic – ML; Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) – Ohio; AFSC PA Program; Peace and Freedom Party of California; Socialist Party of Connecticut; Wasatch Coalition for Peace and Justice of Salt Lake City; Global Justice Ecology Project; Socialist Organizer; Green Party of Ohio; Interfaith Council for Peace in the Middle East

Activists from Pittsburgh, the U.S., and across the globe will converge to protest the destructive policies of the G-20 – meeting in Pittsburgh this September 24-25.
We believe a better world is possible. We anticipate involvement and support from like-minded people and organizations across the country for projected actions from September 19-25:

People’s Summit – Sept. 19, 21-22 (Saturday, Monday, Tuesday)
A partnership of educators and social justice groups is organizing a People’s Summit to discuss global problems and seek solutions informed by genuine democracy and human dignity, also providing interactive workshop discussions.

Mass March on the G-20 – Friday, Sept. 25:
Money for human needs, not for war!

Gather at 12 noon, march to the City County Building downtown

A peaceful, legal march is being sponsored by the Thomas Merton Center, an umbrella organization that supports a wide variety of peace and justice member projects in Pittsburgh. We will hold a mass march to demand “Money for human needs, not for war!”.

WE SEEK THE BROADEST RANGE OF SUPPORT, PARTICIPATION, AND ENDORSEMENTS FOR THE MASS MARCH AND PEOPLE’S SUMMIT

To endorse, E-mail:[email protected]
Or contact: Thomas Merton Center AWC, 5125 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15224

A number of other events are being planned by a wide variety of community and social justice groups in Pittsburgh.
For more information and updates please visit http://www.thomasmertoncenter.org/g20action.htm

The Group of Twenty (G-20) Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors represents the world’s economic leaders, intimately connected to the most powerful multi-national corporations that dominate the global economy. Their neo-liberal policies have squandered billions on war, plunged economies into deep recessions, worsened social, economic and political inequality, and polluted the earth.

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More information can be found in the following places...

http://g20media.org/sites/g20media.o...organizing.pdf
(list of events/protests)

http://www.g20media.org/sectors (media clearinghouse)


http://resistg20.org/ (organizing resistance)

http://www.organizepittsburgh.org/ (more info)

http://pittsburgh.indymedia.org/ (information, and live coverage of the protests)

there you have it, active g20 resistance in Pittsburgh. See you at the Barricades!

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EDGE, Perspectives on drug free culture

WORLD PREMIERE this Saturday Oct. 3rd 8:PM

Helen Mills Theatre 137-139 West 26th Street NYC 10001
FOR TICKETS https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/websc...ton_id=7928567

MORE INFO: http://www.theedgeprojectmovie.com/

28 years after the band Minor Threat released the song ‘Straight Edge’, the counterculture known as Straight Edge has become a worldwide phenomenon that unites individuals rejecting all forms of intoxication.
The most widely associated perception of Straight Edge involves abstinence from alcohol, tobacco, other drugs and promiscuous sex. Since it’s origin in the early 1980’s these beliefs have spread all over the world, connected through the Punk and Hardcore music scenes.
Through interviews with musicians that directly shaped the idea of Straight Edge from its inception until today,EDGE – perspectives on drug free culture reveals that the abstinence from drugs was established as a youth counter culture rejecting a society dominated by substance abuse and hegemony.
Ian MacKaye (Minor Threat, Fugazi), Ray Cappo (Youth of Today, Shelter) and Karl Buechner (Earth Crisis, Freya) give witness to their perception of the history of Straight Edge, why it was so important to them and what it changed in their personal and professional careers. But they also address problems like violence, sexism and intolerance that emerged within Straight Edge, and how it changed the ’scene’ as well as its public image.
Furthermore, EDGE explores the lives of 9 individuals, that identify as Straight Edge. Their reasons range from negative experiences with drugs to maintaining a healthy lifestyle to political reasons. Through a very close and personal look into their daily lives, we see how their decision to live ‘poison free’ has changed the world for them.
But how do people discover Straight Edge? How do women experience Straight Edge subculture? What social backgrounds are shared by people new to the scene and what makes someone turn Straight Edge? How does mainstream culture perceive this movement?
EDGE is looking for answers to these questions on a roadtrip behind and beyond the scenes of the Straight Edge subculture.

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