One Year Birthday celebrations of the Occupied Self-Organized Park of Exarchia

During 5/6/7 March, in Exarchia area will take place the celebrations for the One Year Birthday of the Occupied Self-Organized Park of Exarchia. Also during all March collectives, creative groups and people will organize many different cultural, political and social events and gatherings on the square Exarchia in an effort to give life to the square and prepare the people for a wonderfull Spring, Summer and Autumn in the public space

for more info about the creation of self-organized,
 occupied Park of Exarchia area :
http://voidnetwork.blogspot.com/2009/03/self-organized-new-created-park-in.html
for more info (in Greek Language) 
about the Assembly of Inhabitants of Exarchia Area:
http://exarchia.pblogs.gr/a-ti-wraio-parko-nea-apo-th-nayarinoy.html
for more info about the Self-Organized 
Occupied Park of Exarchia:
http://parkingparko.blogspot.com/

Austin Texas // We Are an Image from the Future U.S.A. Tour 2010

Austin is a crazy place, the commrades were wonderfull...We did a giant open public talk there... Peter Gelderloos spoke for more than an hour and a half about all kind of great arguments included in his new book Anarchy Works from Ardent press. This book takes examples from around the world, picking through history and anthropology, showing that people have, in different ways and at different times, demonstrated mutual aid, self-organization, autonomy, horizontal decision making, and so forth--the principles that anarchy is founded on--regardless of whether they called themselves anarchists or not. Too well documented to be strictly mythology, and too expansive to be strictly anthropology, this is an inspiring answer to the people who say that anarchists are utopian: a point-by-point introduction to how anarchy can and has actually worked. According to Gelderloss, "Anarchism is the boldest of revolutionary social movements to emerge from the struggle against capitalism—it aims for a world free from all forms of domination and exploitation. But at its heart it contains a simple and convincing proposition: people know how to live their own lives and organize themselves better than any expert could. Others cynically claim that we need a government to protect us. They claim anarchy is impractical and utopian: it would never work. On the contrary, anarchist practice already has a long record, and has often worked quite well."
"State-run societies tend to be extremely effective at conquering their neighbors and securing vast fortunes for their rulers. On the other hand, as global crises intensify, hierarchical models are not proving to be particularly sustainable. The histories in this book show that an anarchist society can do much better at enabling all its members to meet their needs and desires." The anarchist bookshop MonkeyWrench accomodated and organized our talk in Austin. People from many different local grass-roots social struggles participated in the event and spoke with Void Network editors of the book "We Are an Image from the Future", about the Greek social insurrection for more than an hour during the second part of the night
Among them we have to mention people from Voices of The Appalachia as also Treasure City Thrift and the important local project Rizome Collective


portraits of this post comes from the Portrait Story project 

Save the Appalachian Mountains

We publish here a letter sent to Void Network from Portrait Story collective about their Voices for Appalachia project featuring many different links and perspectives about the great ecological struggle for saving Appalachia Mountains from Coal Mining capitalistic destructive interests. In one of our previous posts we introduced you to this struggle through our commrades Mountain Justice Here you can find also many links and ideas for participation to the Appalachia Mountains struggle. You can read the letter here:
 http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AU-skI5gY6flZGQ5OXAzcjVfNDhkcm4yNGpnNw&hl=en

Houston Texas // We Are an Image from the Future U.S.A. Tour 2010

It was a cold night in Houston... The Sedition Books infoshop invited members from many different collectives and many wonderfull people came in our event. Peter Gelderloos did a specified analysis of the illusionary nature of Democracy during his "Overthrowing Bourgeois Democracy" lecture. Void Optical Art Lab. artists created an abstract art environment for the talk. The night continued with a long open talk between Void Network and Houston activists about the social insurrection in Greece. After the end of the event we met all different people introduce us to the local struggles, initiatives and active groups of the city featuring some amazing Mexican commrades, some very active American-Greek women and many other passionate commrades.Among all participated groups, "Straight Up Distro", strives to make widely available news, books, videos and music from revolutionary movements all around the world.  People from Students for a Democratic Society from University of Houston participated in the talk and made some announcements about future demonstration in the area. 
Links of all other groups that participated in the public dialogue about Greek social insurrection can offer you a wide perspective about the political map of movements in Houston Texas area.Of course many many of the local movements can not appear in this catalogue here: 
Rising Tide North America // Houston, anarchist Cuban Libertarian Movement , the Houston Radical Women's Group (info:http://www.radicalwomen.org/),Houston food collective Rebel Roots, Houston’s very own worker owned and operated food co-operative and the Last Organic Outpost, Health Education, Advocacy & Literacy (H.E.A.L.) helping families take informed health care decisions and The Real School/Dragon Valley a non hierarchical learning environment where kids are free making their own decisions!

We had also the great chance to be accomodated by a commrade that is a member of Houston Zen anarchist group Dharma Punx (info: http://www.myspace.com/dharmapunxhtx) that gathers at Houston Zen Center. Their group organizes in Sunday, March 14 a talk amd meeting with Brad Warner athour of the inspirational book Hardcore Zen.... it was a great night in Houston with all these wonderfull people!

New Orleans // We Are an Image from The Future // U.S.A. Tour 2010

New Orleans is a different city after the destruction of the hurricane Katrina... It seems that people feeling closer one to each other, the feeling of walking downtown is great, there is a social base for creation of movement in New Orleans. The main problem is that most of the young organizers and activists are transient to New Orleans, people come and go all the time, so many ideas, visions and efforts stay incomplete and limited. The local community of activists and political aware people is small and few of them are rooted in the problems, the wishes and the struggles of New Orleans society. There is a great potential in the society of the city and we hope many new projects will appear soon that will offer many chances for participation in local projects.

Among them the bookshop Iron Rail that accomodated our talk is the center of the anarchist movement of New Orleans. The talk attracted most of the activists of the city in the packed, warm and friendly hall for public events of Iron Rail. It was an open public dialogue about Greek insurrection, about mutual aid and also a meeting of all movements of the city with Greek comrades sharing stories, ideas and strategies.

The anarchist movement of New Orleans became world known after the great voluntary humanitarian aid & medical help that offered to thousands of people during hurricane Katrina destruction, with the participation of hundreds of Anarchists from all areas of America. From the first days of the destruction until today the anarchist self-organized community hospital Common Ground Health Clinic works as a community space for free medical aid against racism, poverty and social inequality. Common Ground Health Clinic is a place of "Solidarity, Not Charity" organizing among many other programmes community garden and copwatch against police brutality. We took a very interesting video inteview with some of the activists of Common Ground Health Clinic that will appear soon at the Void Network Channel

For more info about New Orleans social struggles http://neworleans.indymedia.org/

Also, Beehive Design Collective, one of the most interesting visual art projects of U.S.A. are working now in New Orleans their new project...You can see their work and ideas here:http://www.beehivecollective.org/

New Orleans nightlife vibrates whisky, jazz and sex... Burbon str. full of tourists, prostitutes and drunk young girls and boys have an atmosphere of old times in New Orleans, even though is conquared by the alienation of entertainment industry. Frenchman str., all these old bars, in every bar a different band performing, so many styles of music, poets writing poems in the streets and transexuals, lovers and wild boys wondering around in Gay bookshops, striptiz clubs and piratik bars 200 years old... New Orleans floats on Missisipi... Late at night the full moon travels over the city and you hear the tones of an old trumpet breaking the silence....