Monthly Archives: June 2013

Update on NYS Bill A2736

A while ago, I wrote a short post about a piece of legislation in New York that would prevent police and prosecutors from using the presence of condoms as evidence of prostitution. The State Assembly session is almost over and that bill, A2736, still has not been brought to the floor.

Here’s what Red Umbrella Project has to say:

We need help from New Yorkers to get the bill to pass the Assembly before the end of session (which is tomorrow). Here are two calls you can make that really  make a difference. Each will take less than a minute:

Call Speaker Sheldon Silver’s office to urge him to put bill A2736 to a vote on the floor! The number is 518-455-3791

We are confident that we have the votes to pass the bill  once it is on the floor, but we need to MAKE SURE so please call your  Assemblymember and ask them to VOTE YES on A2736! You can find the info  for your Assemblymember here. Call your representative’s Albany office.

I have already made both calls, and I encourage you to do the same. NYC Department Health and Mental Hygiene distributes free condoms all over NYC free of charge. The Center for Disease Control even highlights that program as an example of a structural level intervention. This bill would prevent police and prosecutors in NYC and all over NYS from undoing the work of many government and nonprofit groups across the state.

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Friends of PM Press, June 2013 Edition

This weekend I received:

  • Michael Moorcock’s Jerusalem Commands: The Third Volume of the Colonel Pyat Quartet, with a new introduction by Alan Wall. This is a huge work of fiction that I will almost definitly not read, but it does contain a bibliography that is also available here.
  • Towards Collective Liberation: Anti-racist Organizing, Feminist Praxis, and Movement Building Strategy, by Chris Crass, forward by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, introduction by Chris Dixon. It is broken down into five sections: “While Learning from the Past, We Work to Create a New world”: Building the Anarchist Left; “We Make the Road by Walking”: Developing Anti-racist Feminist Praxis; “Because Good Ideas Are Not Enough”: Lessons From Vision-Based, Strategic, Liberation Organizing Praxis; “Love In Our Hearts and Eyes on the Prize”: Lessons from Anti-racist Organizing for Collective Liberation; and the Conclusion.
  • Maroon The Implacable: The Collected Writings of Russell Maroon Shoatz, Edited by Fred Ho and Quincy Saul, Afterword by Matt Meyer and Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, Forward by Chuck D. Co-published by PM Press and Ecosocialist Horizons. I have been waiting for this book since I went to it’s release event back in early May.  That event made such an impression on me that when the book didn’t arrive in the May package, I called PM Press to ask about to (more on that another day).

More information on Friends of PM Press and why it’s amazing is available on their website.

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Friends of PM Press, May 2013 Edition

About a week and a half ago, I received:

  • The Human Front, plus “Other Deviations: The Human Front Exposed” and “The Future Will Happen Here, Too” and “Working the Wet End” Outspoken Interview, by Ken MacLeod. Number 10 in PM Press’ Outspoken Authors series, edited by Terry Bisson.
  • In Letters of Blood and Fire: Work, Machines, and the Crisis of Capitalism, by George Caffentzis. This contains reprints of articles from 1980 through 2010. Part of the Common Notions imprint, based on Brooklyn, NY. This is the same imprint as Sylvia Federici’s Revolution at Point Zero.
  • Asia’s Unknown Uprisings, Volume 2: People Power in the Philippines, Burma, Tibet, China, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Thailand, and Indonesia, 1946-2009, by George Katsiaficas.

I am especially excited about The Human Front. The Outspoken Authors series has been great so far. There were a couple more books that I was hoping to receive this month, but I’ll just have to be a little bit more patient.

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