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City to Ban Street Performers in Jackson Square bardamu 2003-07-15 11:03 AM
A city council ordinance that bans street performances from 90% of the Jackson Square area was passed this last Thursday, May 1st and will be law this Saturday, May 10 unless mayor Nagin vetoes it. The ordinance, which protects the interests of a group of painters on Jackson Square, was passed unanimously in city council last Thursday, with every member of the council co-sponsoring it before hearing any testimony. (text/html)

Juvenile Justice: Upcoming Event and New Website Anonymous 2003-07-15 11:03 AM

Anti-Cycling bill stopped by its author bardamu 2003-07-15 11:03 AM
A Louisiana state bill limiting the rights of bicycle riders on the roadway may have been stopped in its tracks by the efforts of local citizens and activists this Wednesday. House Bill 22, after passing through the House committee on transportation and passing 88-11 in the House, was stopped by its author, house member Mike Strain. The bill limited bicyclists to riding two abreast and also made illegal ‘unnecessarily impeding the normal and reasonable movement of traffic’, a statement which many cyclists saw as a way to making riding a bike illegal. (text/html)

IMC people send computers to 3rd world activists ed 2003-07-15 11:03 AM
Anti-globalization activists in Oakland, Calif., are recycling old machines, loading them with free software and shipping them off to Ecuador. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Farhad Manjoo Sept. 23, 2002 | OAKLAND, Calif. -- It's surprisingly easy to build a computer. "There's only like seven or eight parts in a PC," Eddie Nix says as we stand in the cavernous warehouse of a computer recycling center in Oakland, Calif. We're surrounded by waist-high stacks of unwanted computers, but Nix insists that the systems only look like they're dead -- they can easily be resurrected, he says, and put to good use. Wearing combat boots and a T-shirt emblazoned with a large skull and crossbones, Nix looks more like a biker than your stereotypical computer geek. He pulls out a "box" -- essentially a computer with all of the parts removed -- from a pile of old machines and sets it on a nearby worktable. "They have all sorts of people coming in here," Nix says of the warehouse, the Alameda County Computer Resource Center (ACCRC). "Some people are from drug rehab programs, from wherever -- and they can have you making computers in a day." He pops open the box and gathers all the necessary parts -- memory chips, a hard drive, a video card, a keyboard and a mouse. In less than a minute, Nix fits all the pieces into the machine and hits the start button. It's a sunny Saturday afternoon in September, and Nix is here on behalf of the Independent Media Center, a loose affiliation of grass-roots journalists who specialize in staging anti-globalization protests at international conferences devoted to "free trade." In the run-up to the next meeting of delegates to the Free Trade Area of the Americas, which will be held in Ecuador in late October, Nix and a handful of others have spent weeks turning unwanted computer parts donated to the ACCRC into working machines that they plan to use in their protest. Other volunteers are doing the same thing at Free Geek, a recycling center in Portland, Ore., and a group in Los Angeles is helping out as well. Together, the geek activists aim to build about 300 Linux machines, which they'll stuff into a shipping container and send down to Ecuador before the protest. People at the Independent Media Center pride themselves on the decentralized nature of their organization. There are no actual, official "leaders" -- but I'm here to see Evan Henshaw-Plath, who's the main force behind the Ecuador project. Henshaw-Plath is a 25-year-old programmer who once founded a dot-com and now runs a dot-net: protest.net, a calendar site used by various groups to schedule their demonstrations. During the past year, he's also spent a lot of his time with activists in South America, helping them set up computer labs, networks and Web sites, all in an attempt to stymie what he sees as the formidable, and growing, influence of various international trade organizations in the region. During one of his visits, he met with some of the groups planning to protest at the FTAA meeting and had an epiphany. Ever since the huge anti-World Trade Organization protest in Seattle in 1999, where the IMC got its start, many of the world's trade meetings have featured chanting, puppet-carrying anti-globalization activists, supported by a cadre of "journalist-activists" from Indymedia. But at most of the protests so far, says Henshaw-Plath, the activists who come in with their own equipment usually took their computers with them when they went back home after the demonstration was over. "What we haven't been able to pull off is getting a large number of computers to a large part of the society that's at the center of these issues," says Henshaw-Plath, "and that's when we thought about shipping them computers." After October's protest, the 300 computers that are being shipped to Ecuador will stay there; some will be used in Quito, the capital city, where activists will also set up a citywide wireless network, but many will be sent to various towns and villages all over the region. "It's interesting because on some level you might say these people don't need computers -- they need clean water, housing and some sort of economic base that's not exploited," Henshaw-Plath says. "But we're saying that giving computers to the right people, that's the tool to get that social change." It's a tool that simply wasn't available as recently as five years ago, he says. One fortunate corollary to Moore's Law -- the hallowed business proposition that predicts that new microprocessors double in power every 18 months -- is that old computers, too, get better and better, but, because they're technically "obsolete," they're dirt-cheap, too. Thanks to this pace of innovation, there's a glut, these days, of old machines that rich societies don't know what to do with -- machines that poor societies could make use of. The pace of computer obsolescence has been in effect for decades, but more recently, the thriving growth of the free software and open-source software developer communities means there is now a steadily growing body of software applications that are also free. The rise of wireless networking also means that the computers can easily be connected together in regions that don't have a solid communications infrastructure. The foundation for a tech-aided revolution is in place, says Henshaw-Plath; all that's needed is people to do the work, and that's where he and others at the ACCRC come in. Read the whole article at: <a href="http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/09/23/antiglobal_geeks/index.html">http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/09/23/antiglobal_geeks/index.html</a> Donate and/or read another article about the project: <a href="http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=313741&group=webcast">http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=313741&group=webcast</a> (text/html)

Nearly 300 truckers back at work ed 2003-07-15 11:03 AM
Nearly 300 of the independent truckers who walked off the job two weeks ago to demand higher pay and better work conditions returned to their jobs Monday after New Orleans port officials spent the weekend brokering a truce between drivers and the trucking firms. <br /> (text/html)

Federal Funding Key to City Airport Control nadjavox 2003-07-15 11:03 AM
The New Orleans Aviation Board began the process of moving toward the possible privatization of Louis Armstrong International Airport o­n April 16, 2003 by endorsing a $30,000 contract to study whether privitization is within reach. <br /> (text/html)

Cyclists Beware! edwardm 2003-07-15 11:03 AM
<P>An extraordinarily regressive law to basically make it illegal to ride a bike o­n any road in Louisiana is swiftly moving through the state legislature, and your help is urgently needed to stop it! HB 22 states that "Persons riding bicycles two abreast upon a roadway laned for traffic shall ride within a single lane and shall not unnecessarily impede the normal and reasonable movement of traffic."That means that any police officer could make a cyclist get off the road if he/she thinks that we are "unnecessarily impeding" traffic. It's completely arbitrary and anti-bicycle in language and spirit. This is a time when we should be encouraging alternative forms of transportation, not discouraging it!</P> (text/html)

Trucker's "Extended Vacation" Over nadjavox 2003-07-15 11:03 AM
The two-week boycott by independent truckers who move containerized cargo at the Port of New Orleans apparently has ended. The truckers took down protest lines in front of the port's headquarters today. Later, port officials said enough of them had agreed to go back to work, to start working double shifts of longshoreman to clear out a backlog. (text/html)

Newswire is up and running vile_maxim 2003-07-15 11:03 AM
It's working now, so send in your articles! The next thing on my tasklist is to allow non-users to post, then to allow other the uploading of media. (text/html)

Man arrested for 'being masked'.....An Anarchist in Huntsville, AL ed 2003-07-15 11:03 AM
Man arrested for 'being masked' <br /> <br /> By CHALLEN STEPHENS <br /> <br /> (warning: corporate media article ahead) <br /> <br /> Huntsville police warned him once. The second time Joshua Gilliam slipped the black bandana over his nose, officers led him away in handcuffs. <br /> <br /> On April 15, Huntsville police charged Gilliam with "being masked" at the end of an antiwar demonstration. Gilliam spent four hours in jail. The next morning, he pleaded not guilty in Municipal Court. He goes before a judge May 19. <br /> <br /> "They got me for a bandana," Gilliam said. "I guess I'm not too bad of a criminal." <br /> <br /> Gilliam, 21, is a self-described anarchist. He said the black bandana is a form of political speech, a show of solidarity with anarchists across the country. <br /> (text/html)

Youssou N'Dour Cancels Jazz Fest in Protest of War graceheron 2003-07-15 11:03 AM
Senegalese musician Youssou N'Dour was to appear in New Orleans at the Jazz and Heritage Festival this coming week, however, he has announced the cancellation of his seven-week tour of North America, originally scheduled for March 26-May 15. (text/html)

Anti-War Teach In Held Saturday graceheron 2003-07-15 11:03 AM
Local anti-war organization NolaStopWar held a teach-in on Saturday about the War in Iraq. Held at Barrister’s Gallery on Oretha-Castle Haley Boulevard, over 50 people came between 10 and 4 to learn more about and discuss the current state of affairs in Iraq. (text/html)

24 Protest at Angola Prison bardamu 2003-07-15 11:03 AM
Two dozen defiant protestors went to the notorious Angola Prison north of Baton Rouge on Saturday to call for the release of Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace, the remaining two members of the Angola 3. Among them was Robert ‘King’ Wilkerson, the third member, who was held there for 29 years in a six foot by nine foot cell 23 hours a day. Now two years after his release has come back to Angola to call for a release of Wallace and Woodfox, an end to Camp J, the infamous ‘torture camp’ and the worst of Angola’s CCR, or solitary confinement, camps, as well as the resignation of current warden Burl Cain. “I feel good going back, doing what I’m doing”, said Wilkerson, who has spent over half his life on the other side of the gates of Angola. “It’s something I see as a natural process. I feel that going back is necessary.” (text/html)

New Orleans Truckers go on "Vacation" for a Decent Wage ed 2003-07-15 11:03 AM
Over 350 New Orleans independent truckers decided to take their vacations early. Since Monday, truckers have been picketing outside of the Port of New Orleans' entrances at Felicity St. in Uptown, and on France St. in New Orleans East, from seven a.m. to five p.m., Monday through Friday. Because of fuel costs, higher costs of living, and governmental red tape, most are making barely above minimum wage, including some who have been in the business for over 20 years. They are asking for higher wages so that they can cover operating costs and put food on their tables. (text/html)

Voices For Justice Palestine 2003 Tour redtiger 2003-07-15 11:03 AM
<P>Friday, May 2 @ 6:00 p.m.</P><P align=left><STRONG>VOICES FOR JUSTICE (PALESTINE) 2003 TOUR (text/html)

Dyke March Fundraiser - Good Girl Friday Party 4-18-03 mags 2003-07-15 11:03 AM
<STRONG>Good Girl Friday Party<BR></STRONG> (text/html)

New Orleans Ain't Columbine: Analyzing the shooting at John McDonogh ed 2003-07-15 11:03 AM
Monday's school shooting here in New Orleans could've been a news clip from the war in Iraq: 1 killed, 4 wounded with an AK-47 assault rifle in an attack on a school. <br /> Except it wasn't. It was in New Orleans. So why did the officials and authorities in charge of dealing with this tragedy treat the situation like they were at war?... <br /> <br /> Let's rewind a little. When gunmen opened fire at Columbine, I remember coming home from high school and seeing kids and parents on TV standing outside of the school, running away, or milling about trying to find lost friends or loved ones. People were standing around in a large group, stunned and shaken by what was going on inside of Columbine High School. <br /> (text/html)

Louisiana Women in Black 4/15 Tax Day Silent Vigil report mags 2003-07-15 11:03 AM
The competition was fierce for the attention of passing motorists and pedestrians anxious to drop off their taxes at the main post office yesterday (Tuesday, April 15th) o­n Loyola Drive in downtown New Orleans, but the recently formed <STRONG>Louisiana Women In Black</STRONG> made a stunning visual impact. The chaotic rush-hour scene included a local radio station handing out promotional items at the entrance to the post office, Pax Christi activists handing out tax awareness information o­n the sidewalks, a bright yellow chicken mascot from Popeye's handing out coupons for free chicken throughout the area, and a friendly postal worker accepting mail drop-offs o­n the neutral ground. Amidst all of this, about 30 women dressed entirely in black stood in total silence o­n the neutral ground with a banner that said "Women Against War," fashioned from black duct tape and plastic sheeting, holding black posters with slogans like "We Stand For Peace," "Occupation Is Not Liberation," and "Educate Children, Don't Send Them To War." (text/html)

Saints and Sinners literary festival for the GLBT community gothwench 2003-07-15 11:03 AM
Saints and Sinners: An Alternative Literary Festival for the GLBT Community, Their Friends, and all Readers and Writers. <br /> <br /> (text/html)

Justice Not "Just Us" - Progressive Lobbying Training Christina 2003-07-15 11:03 AM
<DIV><DIV>A new progressive group, Justice Not "Just Us", recently formed to fight the powerful right-wing presence in our State Legislature. (text/html)

Angola 3 Rally - 31 years! ElizabethJeffers 2003-07-15 11:03 AM
Celebrate 31 years of resistance! & Protest 31 years of cruel and unusual punishment!! (text/html)

Reproductive Health Advocacy Day Christina 2003-07-15 11:03 AM
<DIV><STRONG>What: Reproductive Health Advocacy Day</STRONG></DIV><DIV><STRONG>Where: State Capitol in Baton Rouge</STRONG></DIV><DIV><STRONG>When: Tuesday, April 22 from 10:00 to 4:00</STRONG></DIV><DIV><BR>Come to the State Capitol for Reproductive Health Advocacy Day on Tuesday, April 22 from 10:00 to 4:00. We need your participation. The Louisiana legislative session is underway and our access to reproductive health care is in jeopardy. Due to laws enacted by our state legislators, Louisiana ranks dead last in providing reproductive health care, with over ½ of women of childbearing age without access to needed contraceptive services and supplies. Our elected officials have made Louisiana the testing ground for the initiatives of anti-choice activists - o­nce an anti-choice bill passes here it is introduced in other state legislatures. We are o­n the front line of the nationwide struggle for reproductive rights. </DIV> (text/html)

Iraq Teach In, Saturday, April 19 KarenOK 2003-07-15 11:03 AM
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N.O. Not In Our Name Benefit Concert Margo 2003-07-15 11:03 AM

SUPPORT THE TROOPS AND TRUTHS Dr_Marty 2003-07-15 11:03 AM
By Marty Rowland <br /> April 11, 2002 11:30 am to 12:30 pm <br /> <br /> Size didn’t matter today. Two anti-US empire activists infiltrated the city-wide “support the troops” yellow ribbon give-a-way event sponsored by WDSU TV-6, Clear Channel Communications, PAX TV-49, and the US armed forces. (text/html)

N.O. Not In Our Name Margo 2003-07-15 11:03 AM
<B><I>WAR ON IRAQ?....N.O. NOT IN OUR NAME!</I></B> <br> <B><I>Help place a one-page ad in the Gambit, the Louisiana Weekly, Offbeat (Jazz Fest edition), and the Times Picayune that voices the concern of New Orleans citizens about the war with Iraq.</B></I> <br><br> Dear Concerned Citizen: (text/html)

Dick Cheney's visit to New Orleans met with protest. bardamu 2003-07-15 11:03 AM
Vice President Dick Cheney’s visit New Orleans this Wednesday for the American Society of Newspaper Editor's conference was met by two dozen protestors armed with signs, banners and motor oil, braving an unseasonably cold spring morning. (text/html)

Louisiana Women In Black meeting & action mags 2003-07-15 11:03 AM
<STRONG>TUESDAY, APRIL 15TH - WOMEN IN BLACK TAX DAY SILENT VIGIL</STRONG><DIV><DIV>On the neutral ground across from the main post office o­n Loyola Drive (NOLA).</DIV> <DIV>5pm til dusk.</DIV> <DIV>Wear black.</DIV> <DIV>Bring Signs.</DIV> <DIV>Women o­nly, please.</DIV> (text/html)

Justice Policy Institute Releases Major Report At CR South ed 2003-07-15 11:03 AM
The Justice Policy Institute Report that had been <a href="http://indymedia.23rdward.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=8&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0">announced earlier</a> o­n this website was released o­n Friday at a press conference prior to the opening events of Critical Resistance South, a conference o­n the Prison Industrial Complex. The report examines the growth in Southern prison and jail populations over the last two decades. View a copy of the full report: <a href="http://www.justicepolicy.org/article.php?id=124">Deep Impact: Quantifying the Effect of Prison Expansion in the South</a>. (text/html)

Zine Show gothwench 2003-07-15 11:03 AM
The Contemporary Arts Center is hosting a zine exhibition called "Comic Release." You read right -- a zine exhibition. They want your zines, for display in a museum. (text/html)

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