End of February Events at Sedition

Hey all,

Wow. What a full week we just had. First the Plant Walk with Meriwether, then the poetry filled John Ross reading and ending up with Ashanti Alston and a full house at the SHAPE Center. Huge thanks to the more than 150 people who attended those events and to the folks who helped organize them all.

But no resting on our laurels for Sedition Books. Nosiree. We are jam packed with events for this week as well. Starting this evening with what promises to be a fascinating discussion of the popular uprising in Honduras after the June 2009 coup. Then on Monday we are hosting an open forum of the Sedition collective, volunteers, former members and volunteers, supporters and critics to come help us plan for the future. Then Bolivian action films, a Howard Zinn commemoration, a discussion on feminist men and much much more.

One thing to mark your calendars for. On March 1st, Peter Gelderloos, author of How Nonviolence Protects the State, will be at Sedition. He and a crew of anarchists from Greece and Catalunya will be presenting a critique of Bourgeois Democracy.

We still need you to come join the collective, volunteer your time or donate your hard earned dollars, so come out to one of the upcoming events and get involved.

Sedition Books is still located at 901 Richmond Avenue (That's one block East of Montrose) and you can call or check out our website for more info: 713.523.0807 or www.seditionbooks.org You can also look for us on facebook or myspace or follow our news on twitter-just search for seditionbooks.

As always. All events are free but we can always use your donations for the infoshop and the touring bands and speakers.

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Sunday, February 21st
7:30 PM
Houston Institute for Culture
708-B Telephone Road (Next door to Bohemeo's)

Anti-Authoritarian Popular Uprising in Honduras:
A Discussion with Adrienne Pine

While the Honduran military coup of June 28th, 2009 is not without historical precedent, the massive and ongoing Honduran resistance to it is. No one expected Hondurans to rise up as they have—daily and in the hundreds of thousands—in protest against a de facto government that can most accurately be described as fascist.

One of the most interesting elements of the Honduran resistance is its avidly non-hierarchical, anti-authoritarian character, this despite a near-complete absence of self-consciously anti-authoritarian organizing within Honduran prior to the coup. In this talk Adrienne Pine will discuss what we can learn from the Honduran experience and how we can act in solidarity with Hondurans, whose situation has only worsened with the institutionalization of the coup government through a U.S.-led fraudulent election.

Adrienne Pine is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at American University. A militant medical anthropologist, Dr. Pine has done fieldwork in Honduras, Mexico, Korea, the United States, and Egypt. Her book, Working Hard, Drinking Hard: On Violence and Survival in Honduras (UC Press 2008), examines the symbolic violence resulting from Hondurans’ embodied obsession with certain forms of "real" violence as a necessary condition for the acceptance of violent forms of modernity and capitalism. Prior to and following the June 2009 military coup in Honduras, she has collaborated with numerous organizations and individuals, both inside and outside the academy, to bring international attention to the Honduran struggle to halt state violence (in its multiple forms). She blogs at http://quotha.net

We will be starting the evening with the inspired rhymes of Dee!Colonize--so get there on time!
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Monday, February 22nd
7:00 - 9:00 pm

Future of Sedition:
Open Forum on the Mission, Goals and Future of Sedition Books

Sedition is having an existential crisis! We’ve been selling tons of books, hosting loads of events, tabling all over, and seeing new faces. At the same time, we’ve lost plenty of volunteers and collective members and seen new faces, never to see them again. We now need to rethink how we’re operating, what we're doing, and what Sedition Books can grow to be. This may involve discussions of the collective's processes, attitudes, goals, political approach and ideas, how we relate and interact with each other, how we handle conflict, or anything else - we need your input.

We’re asking any former volunteers or collective members to come to the infoshop on Monday, February 1st at 7pm to discuss how to improve this radical space. The meeting will be open, candid, on friendly terms, and we promise, will officially end by 9pm.

Items on the agenda:
* What have you seen that you’ve liked or disliked about how we operate, what we do, what we carry?
* What is the purpose of an infoshop, and how can we fulfill that purpose better?
* How can we outreach to the community more, making us a truly effective organization?
* How do we retain members better?
* Anything else that people want to talk about.

Hopefully this meeting will provide us with some much needed feedback and understanding of various people's experiences of the project. Then armed with that information, we plan to work on better serving the community. If we're not helping to build and strengthen local movements to the best of our ability, and if we're not allowing more and more people to become informed and engaged over time - then we're not doing what we need to be doing.

We truly encourage you to come. There’s a much longer history of Sedition Books than just the current collective members, and we can’t do this without everyone’s input, good and bad. Please feel free to invite people who may have been left off this invite list. Our systems for keeping track of volunteers are definitely one of our issues. If you can’t make the meeting, please send your thoughts to seditioncollective@yahoo.com. We’ll go through the e-mails and put your input on the agenda. We all know the importance of a radical space in Houston, now it’s time to discuss what this space needs to be.

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Tuesday, February 23rd
8:00 pm

Ciclo de Cine Radical en Español (Spanish Language Film Series):
¿Quién Mató a la Llamita Blanca? (2006, 112 min, In Spanish with English subtitles)

Jacinto and Domitila are two indigenous Bolivians, happily married... and the most notorious criminals in the country. When they are paid to transport 50kg of cocaine to the Brazilian border, they embark on a journey that will take them through the jungles, mountains, deserts and cities of Bolivia on a riotous adventure that will test their relationship and make them question their future as criminals.

The man behind the smuggling operation, known as El Negro, is actually a blonde, blue-eyed American with a well-kept secret. Hunting down the criminals are two of the best anti-narcotics officers in the country, a corrupt Lieutenant, and his racist cadet.

Both a celebration and a parody of Bolivian customs, countryside and culture, 'Who Killed The White Llama?' is a boisterous comedy with a more serious message at its heart: When it comes to poverty, nothing is sacred. Despite the continuing criminal, political and economic scandals that plague the country, the racial divides and the drug-trafficking, the media story that really sweeps the nation concerns the accidental killing of a baby white llama.

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Wednesday, February 24
7:00 pm

Dinner and a Movie: A Celebration of Howard Zinn's Life

7pm Dinner: A delicious vegan meal
8pm Movie:The People Speak

Come out to Sedition to enjoy a tasty vegan meal as we remember the ways that Howard Zinn's life and work affected us. We will screen The People Speak (2009, 90min) a beautiful and moving film inspired by Zinn's book, A People's History of the United States - first published in 1980 and one of the bestselling history books in the U.S. - and Voices of a People's History of the United States.

The film features the actual words (in letters, songs, poems, speeches, and manifestoes) of rebels, dissenters, and visionaries from our past--and present--including Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Bob Dylan, Langston Hughes, Chief Joseph, Muhammad Ali, and unknown veterans, union workers, abolitionists, and many others never featured in high school textbooks. These dramatic moments from our history are brought to life by a group of remarkable musicians and actors.

Like Howard Zinn's work as a whole, The People Speak celebrates the extraordinary possibilities for creating social change that ordinary people have realized throughout the course of our nation's rich but often ignored history of dissent and protest.

$5 suggested donation.
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Friday, February 26th
6:30 pm

The Importance Of Anti-Sexist Men In The Feminist Movement
A Presentation and Discussion led by Collin De Laval of the Houston Solidarity Network

This workshop is geared towards creating a culture of men who wish to actively confront patriarchy with the goal of fostering a
healthier more sustainable movement. This workshop is geared toward a number of immediate goals:

Deepening the understanding of the effect that patriarchy has on our everyday life and on movement building.
Examine those structures especially as they relate to our local Houston radical community.

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Sunday, February 28
7:30 PM

Day Laborers and Jornaleros: A Book Reading by Dick Reavis and a presentation on local day laborer organizing.

A representative of the Houston Interfaith Worker Justice Day Laborer wage recovery project will give a short presentation about local organizing efforts in Houston and opportunities for volunteers to get involved. The presentation will be followed by:

Catching Out: The Secret World of Day Laborers
A Reading and Signing with Dick J. Reavis

You have undoubtedly heard of them, Labor Ready, Volt, Labor Finders, Adecco are some of the names. You can check in the Yellow Pages under "employment, temporary" and find probably two dozen halls similar to those spoken about in this book. Seasoned journalist Dick Reavis reported to a labor hall each morning, hoping to "catch out," or get job assignments. To supplement his retirement savings, the sixty-two-year-old North Carolinian joined people dispatched by an agency to jobs for which they were paid at the end of each day.

Written with the flair of a gifted portraitist and storyteller, Catching Out describes Reavis's jobs at a factory; as a construction and demolition worker, landscaper, road crew flagman, auto-auction driver and warehouseman; and several days spent sorting artifacts in a dead packrat's apartment. On one pick-and-shovel job, he finds that his partner is too blind to see the hole they're digging. In each setting, he describes the personalities and problems of his desperate peers, the attitudes of their bosses, and the straits of immigrant coworkers, so many of whom make up the three-million-strong day-laborer poor.

This is a gritty, hard-times evocation of the men and women on the bottom rung of the American workforce. It is partly a guide to performing hard, physical tasks, partly a celebration of strength, and partly a venting of ire at stingy and stern overseers. Reavis reminds us that physical exertion, even when painful or unpleasant, remains vital to the economy -- and that those who labor, though poorly paid, bring vigor, skill, and cunning to their tasks.

Dick J. Reavis is an award-winning journalist, educator and author. He was active in the civil rights movement in the South and with SDS at the University of Texas in Austin. He wrote for Austin’s underground newspaper The Rag, and was a senior editor at Texas Monthly magazine. Dick Reavis’ book, The Ashes of Waco: An Investigation, about the siege and burning of the Branch Davidian compound, was published by Simon and Schuster and may be the definitive work on the subject.

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Monday, March 1st
8:00 PM

Overthrowing Bourgeois Democracy

Join Sedition in welcoming a panel of anarchists from Greece, Spain and the United States (including author and organizer Peter Gelderloos)

People fighting for a more fair, free, and sustainable world often assume democracy to be a positive value, an ideal worth achieving more in full, even as they often find themselves silenced or even repressed by democratic governments.

What is it about the history and structure of democracies that make them inherently antagonistic or manipulative towards social movements?

Why is seeking dialogue with or representation in democratic governments self-defeating in the long term?

This presentation will explore the possibility that democratic government is in fact the most efficient form of totalitarianism ever developed, and that people who want a more free society may need to rethink their relationship with their government.

There will be copies of How Non-Violence Protects the State, other books, zines and music for sale as well.
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Thursday, March 4th
7:00 pm

What is Anarchism?
A Roundtable Presentation/Discussion on Anarchist Theory

Have questions about what Anarchism means? Want to present your theories on society, economics, and politics? Wondering about the relevance of Anarchism to modern society? Come join us as we meander through Anarchist thought together!

As there are many theories of Anarchism (i.e. anarcho-communism, anarcho-syndicalism, primitivism/anti-civilization anarchy, mutualism, individualist anarchy, insurrectionary anarchism, etc. etc.), we won't presume to be the authority on the subject.

The roundtable will be structured as a short 5-10 minute presentation on widely accepted anarchist principles, then will proceed as the group feels. Come with questions, come to listen, or come with a presentation of your own. This group will be for people of any level of expertise (or not) on Anarchist thought!