Lucio, the movie. This Thursday!

"The banks are the real crooks, they exploit you, take your money and cause all the wars."
-Lucio Urtubia

The next ABSC meeting will be a screening of the recent documentary Lucio
For more about the film check out the official site Lucio, the move
or the Internet Movie Database listing about the film

Plus, as always, there will be snacks, drink, camaraderie, discussion, and radical musical wallpaper by the Hippolyte Havel House Band.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Thursday, February 26, 2009
7pm
@ 522 Valencia
San Francisco, CA
$5 (or $4 with your membership card!)

Up Against the Wall Motherfu**er

Osha Neumann at Bound Together this Saturday evening!

Up Against the Wall Motherfu**er; a memoir of the sixties with notes for next time

Osha Neumann reads from his new book about life in an anarchist street gang on the Lower East Side of New York in the 1960s. In addition, Alfonso Texador will provide poetry and there were be rare archival footage of the Motherfuckers.

All this on Saturday, February 21 at 8:00 pm


Bound Together Anarchist Collective Bookstore
1369 Haight Street (near Masonic)
San Francisco
415 431-8355
(bus lines 71, 6, 43, 33 and 37 all stop nearby)

Lucio, the movie

"The banks are the real crooks, they exploit you, take your money and cause all the wars."
-Lucio Urtubia

The next ABSC meeting will be a screening of the recent documentary Lucio
For more about the film check out the official site Lucio, the move
or the Internet Movie Database listing about the film

Plus, as always, there will be snacks, drink, camaraderie, discussion, and radical musical wallpaper by the Hippolyte Havel House Band.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Thursday, February 26, 2009
7pm
@ 522 Valencia
San Francisco, CA

Film Event at Bound Together Books

Saturday, February 7 at 8:00 pm

Bound Together Anarchist Collective Bookstore
1369 Haight Street (near Masonic), San Francisco
Bus Lines 6, 71, 43, 33, 37 & 7 all stop nearby
415 431-8355 / www.boundtogetherbooks.com

Two Short Historical Films on Palestine and Lebanon

followed by Q&A and discussion

The Sons of Eilaboun
A New Film* by Hisham Zreiq. In 1948 the Israeli army marched into the Galilee village of Eilaboun. The Sons Of Eilaboun is a documentary film about the massacre, and the expulsion and eventual return of survivors. In the film the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe will introduce the history behind the Nakba events; the Eilaboun (Eilabun) people tell the story--www.sonsofeilaboun.com.

*(The film is in production, with a full-length version to be released in the future. We'll be showing a short version--about 24 minutes--which has been released in advance.)

The War of 33
In July 2006 Israel invaded Lebanon. The War of 33 is an intimate, personal and powerful telling of the story of the 2006 war in Lebanon. A series of letters written by Hanady Salman--a mother living through the war in Beirut--carve a narrative arc through the intense and haunting images of conflict. She tells the stories of her family and the people she lives the war with--the refugees, the wounded, and the everyday Lebanese, struggling to maintain their sanity and their humanity during a time of war. (For additional info on this film, visit PM Press website, www.pmpress.org ) The War of '33 is more than a document of a particular historical experience. What emerges is a universal story--a complex picture of love, pain, resistance and survival in the face of uncertainty and violence. (Big Noise Tactical Media is a collective of media-makers dedicated to circulating beautiful, passionate, revolutionary images.)

Anarchist movie party!!

The ABSC will be showing the exciting film:

Lucio
(Directed by Aitor Arregi and José María Goenaga)

Thursday, February 26, 2009
7pm
@ 522 Valencia
San Francisco, CA

This wonderful documentary is a great gateway drug into working class anarchism for the uninitiated and circle @ curious, as well as a shot in the arm and a humbling inspiration for already convinced anarchists.

Plus snacks, drink, camaraderie, discussion, and radical musical wallpaper by the Hippolyte Havel House Band.

Lucio Urtubia's life is the stuff of legend. A bricklayer by profession and an anarchist by conviction, as an activist in 1950s Paris he counted André Breton and Albert Camus amongst his friends, worked with anarchist guerrilla Francisco Sabate in attempting to bring down Franco's fascist regime and carried out numerous bank robberies to fund the struggle to free Spain. In 1977, after having his earlier scheme to destabilize the US economy by forgery rejected by Che Guevara, he put his plan into action. Lucio successfully forged 20 million dollars of Citibank travelers checks to fund guerrilla groups in Latin America, bringing the bank to its knees in the process. In between he helped organize the kidnapping of Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie from his hideout in Bolivia, aided the escape of Black Panthers from the US and not surprisingly was targeted by the CIA. Lucio has defended his life's work saying…'we are bricklayers, painters, electricians - we do not need the state for anything'.

"The banks are the real crooks, they exploit you, take your money and cause all the wars."
-Lucio Urtubia

Meeting on Thursday: Sheila Rowbotham

British socialist feminist historian Sheila Rowbotham will be our featured speaker this coming Thursday evening, January 22. She will be speaking on the topic of her recently published book, Edward Carpenter: A Life of Liberty and Love.

Want more information about the book? Check out this recent review published in the Guardian, Tristram Hunt applauds a superb biography of the socialist pioneer pilloried by Orwell and Shaw
This will be her last speaking engagement before her return to the UK. If you are interested in anarchist history, don't miss this event!

As always there will be raffles, food & drink throughout

Admission is $5 ($4 with a membership card)

7pm at the ABSC meeting rooms
522 Valencia St.
San Francisco

Oakland and Athens

[Editor's note: The following statement was sent to us by comrade Devin Hoff, and was originally published at AK's blog Revolution by the book

* * *

On December 6, an Athens cop shot and killed a young unarmed anarchist, Alexis Grigoropoulos. In a matter of hours, Athens exploded in a mass uprising of anarchists, students, migrant workers, and the unemployed. For over two weeks, in their anger and frustration, they attacked not just the police themselves but the oppressive institutions cops are armed to defend: banks, government buildings, multi-national corporate interests. Not since 1968 had Europe seen such militant and targeted mass direct action, and actions around the world echoed the heroic actions of our comrades in Greece. Not far from where I am writing, in San Francisco, solidarity actions were held and moving speeches given decrying police violence and the state capitalist hierarchies such violence is inevitably in service of, and vowing to “bring the fight home.”

Sadly, the fight has, once again, come home. On New Years Day in Oakland, an unarmed butcher and father from Hayward, Oscar Grant, was shot in the back at point blank range by a transit cop after being pinned face-down on the ground. There can be absolutely no justification for this cold-blooded police murder. As was the case in the murder of Alexis, there are several witnesses who have come forward stating the officer was in no danger, some even with video recordings of the atrocity. Predictably, though, the cop who fired the shot, Johannes Mehserle, has not been arrested or even officially interrogated about the incident. This is no surprise; we know how the authorities will respond (or fail to), given their total disregard for the lives and humanity of working and poor people of color.

But how will we respond?

We are loudly indignant when police kill a militant in Athens, and applaud the just and outraged response of his comrades. We are furious when state violence kills oppressed people in Gaza, as is horrifically happening at this moment. But what do we do when a working class black man is murdered in cold blood by the cops in our own community? Do we value the lives and well being of Palestinians and Greeks and Oaxacans and adventurous middle-class white radicals more than those of working people we see every day in our own neighborhoods?

It has been five days and counting since Oscar was killed. What have we—supposed radicals and would-be revolutionaries—actually done?

Perhaps a better question is, how should we combat police violence in our own communities?