Month: July 2008

508 #43: Art, gardening, comics

508 is a show about Worcester. This week, Jacob Berendes and Mike Leslie talk about public art in Elm Park. Sarah Loy talks about the Arboretum Community Garden. Aiden Duffy delivers Anger-Man #2. And Mike Benedetti reads the InCity Times.

[display_podcast]

Park Fences

mp3 link, other formats, feed, low-fi versions

To get an e-mail each week alerting you of the new episode of 508, join the e-mail list:

Email:

We won’t share this list with others.

Peter Maurin speaks

According to Tom Cornell, the only recording of Peter Maurin’s voice was taken from a wire recording made circa 1946-47. Several copies of this were pressed to 78rpm and sent to supporters of the Catholic Worker. He’s reading his easy essay “Makers of Europe,” or “When the Irish were Irish.” (The Catholic Worker archives lists this as c. 1939.)

[display_podcast]

Download the mp3 or see other formats.

508 #42: Car and Catholic conventions

508 is a show about Worcester. This week’s panel includes Brendan Melican and Jeff Barnard.

[display_podcast]

After a short attempt to remain a parks commissioner, Bruce Wahle has stepped down. The auto event called the Summer Nationals is in Worcester this weekend; lots of blogging by Jeff, and a great interview with the founder in Worcester Magazine.

Tom Lewis’s retrospective art show has opened. The head of AIDS Project Worcester wrote a strong rebuttal to a letter by Barbara Haller and Billy Breault. The T&G had a nice photo of the fireworks; many more on Flickr. The whole Charter/NebuAd/customer betrayal thing is unravelling; kudos to WoMag for covering it, and fie on the T&G for ignoring it. Security Now has a two part podcast explaining the technology and issues involved in this sort of thing.

Mike talks about the Catholic Worker gathering and rosary trial update, already blogged here. Central Street is still not named after MLK. A local was busted for buying fake drugs. People like real drugs. (We talk about drug legalization in Massachusetts at length.) Mike reads some Jordan Levy headlines.

The City Council will discuss street vendors again on Tuesday, and likely vote on whether to restrict their activities. If you support vendors, it’s not a waste of time to contact your councilor, because they’re still divided on the issue.

The Union Station garage isn’t open; some of the vacancies there will be filled. There is cool art in Elm Park.

Piedmont Street: A campaign office focusing on registered Dominican voters living in Worcester?
IMG_0088

mp3 link, other formats, feed, low-fi versions

To get an e-mail each week alerting you of the new episode of 508, join the e-mail list:

Email:

We won’t share this list with others.

Public events in Worcester federal building: talk to manager?

A few weeks back, Ken Hannaford-Ricardi went into the Worcester federal building to see about getting a permit to hold a political/religious event there. After being sent to various offices, and waiting several days for people to check around about a permit, he was told that nobody knew about such a permit. He wrote to the judge in our civil disobedience case, letting him know that getting a permit was not so straightforward as the US Attorney made it out to be.

Now the Government has written a letter in reply, saying that the Building Manager is the person to approach, as per Code of Federal Regulations 41 S. 102-74.460 through S. 102-74.555.

When we’ve had a chance to approach the Building Manager, I’ll post the results here.

Nonviolence, racism, and the state

You may recall my frustrated critique of the essay “Nonviolence as Racism.” One of many things I disliked about this essay is that it didn’t back up many of its assertions, and seemed more off-the-cuff than the subject deserves.

In trying to understand this line of argument, I stumbled across some references to Peter Gelderloos’s How Nonviolence Protects the State. I haven’t found much of the meat of this book online, but I did find this 7-part critique of the book by Parke Burgess. I plan to read this over the weekend.

I have chosen to devote considerable space to a critical review of this work not because it represents a formidable challenge to nonviolence in itself, but because it appears to collect under one title many of the grievances and frustrations of militant activists toward those who advocate nonviolent tactics.

(Everyone I talked to about “Nonviolence as Racism” disliked it, some intensely, but I have second-hand reports of people who agree with parts of it. I hope to track them down and talk about it.)

Kaihsu’s letter in the Guardian

P&C contributor Kaihsu Tai had a letter in yesterday’s Guardian:

Don Touhig and the Co-operative party’s People’s Rail campaign (Letters, June 25) has no credibility. The party is the junior partner in government with Labour, which has already had a decade to sort out the railways by reversing privatisation. As taxpayers, the citizens are already “shareholding members” of Network Rail. Adding another layer of membership is not going to make it a “mutual” – any more than an NHS trust becoming a foundation trust (with nominal, non-shareholding membership). The Co-op needs to break from its electoral pact with Labour and cooperate with voices for real collective change.
Kaihsu Tai, Janet Warren, Sid Phelps
Oxfordshire Green party

As usual with British politics, I have no idea what is going on.