Poetry, Occupy, and Gezi Research

Please take and share this short survey on poetry, protest, Occupy & Gezi Park! You will be helping a Comparative Literature student at İstanbul Bilgi University, Turkey. Click the image below, or go to this link:

POETRY AND OWS SURVEY

No Due Date: Books of The People’s Library

Do you remember the OWS Library books? What they looked like. How we labelled them. How they were organized? Perhaps you picked one up and saw that we had written “OWSL” across each side with a permanent marker. Perhaps you saw one with our stamp on it, or even a bookplate. Or maybe you were writing with that marker, or cataloguing them, or sorting them.

The People’s Library, Day 17.

So, where are these books now? On November 15, 2011 under orders from then Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the New York Police Department (NYPD) and the City of New York Department of Sanitation (DSNY) dismantled and destroyed the People’s Library of Occupy Wall Street under the pretence of “cleaning” the park. Along with the kitchen, medical tent, residences of occupiers and more in Zucotti Park, all of the library’s books, zines, newspapers, media, computers, and other materials were thrown into trucks by sanitation workers and brought to a DSNY garage on 57th Street. Of the approximately 3,600 books seized that night, only 1,003 were recovered. Of that number, 201 were so damaged while in the possession of the City of New York that they were made unreadable. Thus, at least approximately 2,798 books were never returned or were damaged beyond repair.

But. Some books remain. Some were checked out and taken home, and passed around. Do you have one? I do. I have the first book ever entered into our catalogue. It was the book I chose to keep as a memory of our library. Here it is in our LibraryThing catalog, at the bottom of page 190. Hakim Bey’s “T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone (Autonomedia New Autonomy Series)”:

The first book I entered into our online catalogue.

 When TAZ was donated, I held onto it, keeping it close. For me it was a perfect book for our occupation, for our library – at least, for what I imagined both to be. We all had that one book, or books. Those certain books we loved, that we were surprised to see when they were donated – that we smiled at between the piles of romance novels, Bloomberg biographies, and other less-wanteds – those books that you just knew someone gave because it made so much sense for it to be in this library.

Hakim Bey’s TAZ, with OWSL scrawled on the top.

I’m writing about our books now, about what one of our librarians called the “dregs of the library” – what was left after the attack, what was salvageable, and unsalvageable. Do you have an OWS library book? Don’t worry, there is still no due date, we don’t want them back. We want them to keep living out there. But I would love to hear the story of your book, whether you were an occupier, a visitor, a volunteer, a working group member, a patron, anyone – tell me your People’s Library book stories. And share a photo if you can of your book(s).

Post in the comments, and email me your story, your photos, anything you’d like to share. I’ll post your stories here if you want that, so others can hear about where the books ended up, or not, it’s up to you.

Librarian Is My Occupation: A History of the People’s Library of Occupy Wall Street

As bicyclists, joggers, and tourists looked on in bemusement, three exhausted individuals pushed a broken-unwieldy-wooden-wagon-thing-on-two-wheels across the Williamsburg Bridge. It was July 21, 2012, a hell of a day to push something heavy through Manhattan and Brooklyn. It is impossible to know exactly what the onlookers thought of those pushing the cart, but it is likely they did not recognize that what they were watching was working group members from the Occupy Wall Street People’s Library moving the last remnants of the collection out of a storage unit and to, alas, another temporary home. It may be that three sweaty people pushing a giant wheeled crate does not make most people think of libraries, but the People’s Library had always been dogged by others’ ideas of it.

We should know. We’ve heard them all…

“Librarian Is My Occupation: A History of the People’s Library of Occupy Wall Street” was written by two members of the OWSL working group, it was included in the book Informed Agitation. The full text of the chapter is available by clicking the above link (or the picture).

The Dayton Project, Occupy & Oral History

The Dayton Project is an oral history project on Occupy created by Kyle Pitzer, a student in the public history program at Wright State University, in Dayton, Ohio. you can follow his efforts to interview and transcribe and hopefully, he writes, turn some of that material into a radio story on his project blog here.

I wanted to share the project here because we often privilege the textual when thinking about libraries and information – but oral forms are important methods of building, sharing, and passing on knowledge, stories, history, and experience.
You can contact Kyle about the project here.

Wrapping Up

Dear friends of the People’s Library, we recently hit a turning point in the history of our beloved library. As you may remember, last spring we reached a settlement with the city and it’s various departments and officials. We received $47,000 and a not-quite-apology. We got lots of questions about what we were going to do with all that money.

As the city and the NYPD have made it an impossible thing to plant libraries such as we once had, we knew it would be futile and wasteful to attempt such a thing. Further, we are tired and busy, and many of us have moved on to other projects and several have left NYC for less hellish homes.  Besides which, money being power, and power corrupting… we didn’t want it. After all, it wasn’t really about the money, it’s just that money is how capitalist government says it’s sorry. Earlier on in the lawsuit process, we were offered a settlement without the not-quite-apology. We didn’t take it.

Anyway, we had no use for it, but we knew there were lots of groups that could use it. We drew up a list of groups we’d like to help out, divided, and wrote some checks.

Of course, it wasn’t actually that simple. There was a ridiculous group video conference, where we spent more time trying to get the damn thing to work than actually talking, for example. It obviously took a while. I’d especially like to thank Michele, Danny, and Zachary for staying on top of it and doing most of the legwork. I’d also like to thank our liaisons from Finance for helping us out along the way. And, as always, big thanks to our lawyers.

For transparency’s sake, here’s the list of groups we gave it to. We’ve held on to a little bit for things like maintaining the domain registrations of the blog and what-have-you.

• Word Up Community Bookshop
• The Brecht Forum
• Bluestockings Books
• Queers for Economic Justice
• National Lawyers Guild
• Food for Thought Books
• Waging Nonviolence
• Reader to Reader
• Silvia Rivera Law Project
• OWS Jail Support / Just Info
• Indiana Prison College
• Free University NYC
• Books Through Bars
• Housing Works
• NYC Anarchist Black Cross
• Pink and Black
• Urban Librarians Unite
• Queens Café (new community space in Queens)
• Leadnow
• Free Press
• Electronic Frontier Foundation
• NYCLU
• Demand Progress
• Brooklyn Public Library
• Queens Library Foundation
• New York Public Library
• New Alternatives
• Bailey House
• Lesbian Herstory Archives
• Interference Archive
• American Indian College Fund
• Brooklyn Base
• Tamiment Library
• OWS poetry Anthology

So, that’s pretty much it, y’all. It’s been great to serve you as your faithful librarians. You’ll hear from us occasionally as we work on further projects. And next time things go all insurrection, we’ll be there, too, books in hand.

2/11/14 – The Day We Fight Back

#RestoretheFourth

Call Congress! Rally in the streets! Get up, get angry and get involved, but remember that change requires more than just one phone call or attending one rally! The surveillance currently being conducted by the NSA has been going on for several years now and it has relied on the collusion of Internet companies, telecoms, government, and most importantly it has relied on the passivity of a population easily distracted by fancy electronic gadgets. So, restore the fourth, but also…

Take steps to secure the privacy of your personal devices (a resource guide)

Keep in mind that Paranoia is not a tactic, systemic critique is needed

Remember, that “More than Machinery we need humanity”

Recognize that a bias towards surveillance may be embedded in some of the technology you use

And as you fret about the panopticon be wary of falling for a Panoptic Con

A Resource Guide for Protecting Your Privacy

Thus, what follows is a list of programs, apps, and sites that will better enable you to protect your privacy and anonymity without forcing you to totally “go without.” Granted, of paramount importance in going forward is for us (all of us) to develop a more nuanced relationship with our technology and the Internet in which we better understand that just as we use our technology others may make use of it to use us. This list is a work in progress and will be broadened as we learn of new services.

The Guide is available at Librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com

“More than machinery we need humanity” – The NSA, Verizon, Prism, and You

“People generally do not like being spied on, but what people like even less than the actual spying is having to recognize that it is going on when they had previously been able to pretend it was not happening. This, in some respects, is the sentiment behind much of the discomfort in the recent NSA and Verizon tale that is unfolding; people knew that the government had the capability to demand all of this information, knew the government was probably doing it, but until Glenn Greenwald’s expose in the Guardian they were able to pretend that all was hunky-dory…”

Read the rest via librarianshipwreck: https://librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/more-than-machinery-we-need-humanity-the-nsa-verizon-prism-and-you/

Occupation Libraries: Gezi Parki Edition

You’ve all been following what’s up in Turkey, right?  Of course you have.

Turns out that park occupations continue to produce libraries.  Seems that folks have up and built one in Taksim Gezi Parki in Istanbul.

Further images & text in Turkish here; brief article in English here.

[crossposted at LibrarianShipwreck]

ETA: This following photo landed in our inbox this morning. Enjoy.

solidarity with #direngeziparkı

Will Copyright Reform be SOPA in Disguise?

What does one do in honor of World Intellectual Property Day? For most people the response is to say “wait, it’s World Intellectual Property Day?” shrug, and then go back to other matters (like downloading intellectual property). But if you are US Representative Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), and you chair the House Judiciary Committee, well, you might celebrate with a bit more pomp! Especially, if that means that you are delivering remarks at the Library of Congress.

So what did Representative Goodlatte say? And, more importantly, did he say it at a proper volume so that it could be heard by all without him risking being shushed by a librarian? Luckily the text of his comments was made available in a press release (no shushing necessary) with the easily understandable title of “Chairman Goodlatte Announces Comprehensive Review of Copyright Law.”

After opening his remarks with some light humorous patter (the revision of the copyright law in 1909 was to make it applicable to motion pictures [hilarious {you had to be there (I mean in 1909)}]), Goodlatte goes on to explain that copyright law has not exactly kept pace with the changes in the technologically enhanced dissemination of copyrighted material.  Example please (bonus points if you couch it in a reference to the founders)! Luckily Goodlatte obliges:

“Our Founding Fathers could never have imagined a day in which citizens would be able to immediately access the knowledge and news of the world on their smartphones as they walk down the street.”

This is a fair point, it may also be a fair point that “our Founding Fathers” might “never have imagined” assault rifles or ballooning student debt or climate change or Star Trek or People magazine, but I digress. Back to you Representative Goodlatte:

“The Internet has enabled copyright owners to make available their works to consumers around the world, but has also enabled others to do so without any compensation for copyright owners.  Efforts to digitize our history so that all have access to it face questions about copyright ownership by those who are hard, if not impossible, to locate. There are concerns about statutory license and damage mechanisms. Federal judges are forced to make decisions using laws that are difficult to apply today. Even the Copyright Office itself faces challenges in meeting the growing needs of its customers – the American public.”

The solution, as should be expected from the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, is to announce:

“that the House Judiciary Committee will hold a comprehensive series of hearings on U.S. copyright law in the months ahead. The goal of these hearings will be to determine whether the laws are still working in the digital age. I welcome all interested parties to submit their views and concerns to the Committee.”

Let us start by stating the obvious: contemporary copyright laws are a mess, and they do need to be revisited for the current age. The number of works (particularly audio works) that may disappear because nobody is sure who the copyright holder is (and therefore authorized to approve digitization/conservation) is staggering. Most people seem rather befuddled by much of the tangle that is copyright law (I say this as somebody who explains what “Fair Use” means on a daily basis). And something does need to be done to give cultural creators better means of controlling the dissemination of their work (though there are certainly solutions other than tighter copyright laws).

In other words Representative Goodlatte’s basic insight is correct: copyright laws need to be updated. Librarians (and many others) have been saying that for years.

Yet this announcement should cause as much pause as optimism, if not more pause than optimism. Copyright law needs to be adjusted, but whose interests are going to be focused upon in the revamping of these laws? Will strengthening the public domain be the focus? Shall Creative Commons be used as an example? Or will this be a stealth way of executing many of the policies that have caused uproar from many groups of late? Does Goodlatte mean it when he welcomes “all interested parties?” Before you answer consider the following…

Representative Goodlatte was one of the original sponsors and coauthors of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and as should come as no surprise he was one of the Representatives who helped CISPA to pass the House (just last week [he cosponsored CISPA the first time around]). So what direction might his copyright review take? And whose opinions shall he solicit?

In the “Technology and Innovation” section of Representative Goodlatte’s website are the following helpful sentences:

“I support efforts to enforce our nation’s intellectual property laws to ensure that those who steal the intellectual property of others are prosecuted.  I also believe that technology can provide some of the most effective solutions to help protect intellectual property.”

Those do not seem to be the statements of somebody with a goal of broadening copyright to allow a more relaxed understanding of Fair Use (and other) policies. Rather they seem to be the words of somebody who wants to see SOPA or CISPA or whatever it’s going to be called, pass under the seemingly friendly guise of “copyright reform.” After all, he says “prosecuted” not “preserved” for the ages, or better yet, “shared.” Thus the challenge falls to those of us who would like to see copyright updated to benefit the public (and creators [as opposed to just those who hire creators]) to ensure that copyright reform is reform and not regression.

Copyright laws in the US need to be reformed, they need to be reformed badly; however, they need to be reformed in a way that benefits the public instead of in a way that simply ensures that a cartoon mouse thought up by a long dead anti-Semite never enters the public domain. And they need to be updated in a way that won’t result in you being prosecuted for making a mash-up video featuring Representative Goodlatte and an advertisement for where you can obtain a good latte.

True, all that has been announced so far is Goodlatte’s intention to review copyright laws but this is a conversation that we need to engage with at the outset instead of launching a campaign when the bill is already being voted on.

Do you want World Intellectual Property Day (which is actually the 26th) to be about the World, or do you just want it to be about property? Alas, I think we know how Representative Goodlatte answers that question.

[cross posted at librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com]

[Note: I first came across the press release at Library Journal, as part of the Info Docket blog]

#StopCISPA

If CISPA becomes law, the government can spy on you without a warrant: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/02/cispa-government-access-loophole #StopCISPA

If CISPA becomes law, when the gov’t downloads your private information, you’ll never even know:http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2012/04/13/cispa-is-terrible-for-transparency/ #StopCISPA

If CISPA becomes law, it makes it so companies can’t be sued when they do illegal things with your data: https://www.eff.org/cybersecurity-bill-faq#company #StopCISPA

If CISPA becomes law, it makes every privacy policy on the web useless and violates the 4th amendment: http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/government-doesnt-need-your-private-info-cybersecurity-members-congress-still #StopCISPA

Media Round-Up Part III: Still #Winning

Annalisa Quinn at our beloved local NPR station WNYC mentions the city’s “almost apology…” read more…

Will Bunch on Philly.com sums it up perfectly in his headline “Books 1, Police State 0” and breaks it down nicely for the haters “Even if you totally disagreed with the Occupy Wall Street movement (as I’ve noticed from past comments that one or two of you might), you must agree that authorities destroying so many books was creepy and smacked of what happens in totalitarian states. This is a small measure of justice, and in 2013 America we’ll take any justice we can get.” read more…

Shawna Gillen blogging at Policymic.com grudgingly predicts a precedent has been set here: “While the NYPD and Brookfield had a strong case to justify taking control of the park, they certainly took a cop out strategy to avoid even more fees. If this case sets any sort of precedence, protestors will have more opportunities to win settlements from New York City.” read more…

Business Insider‘s Michael Kelley reports quite accurately on the raid and destruction of the library “Around 1 a.m. on Nov. 15, 2011, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg ordered the NYPD to evict protestors — some of whom had camped there for almost two months — from Zuccotti Park in New York City’s Financial District. The police threw away 5,554 books from the Occupy library and destroyed media equipment in addition to removing tents, tarps, and belongings.”…and even better, Business Insider refers to the movement, quite correctly, in the present tense “Occupy Wall Street is a movement, beginning on September 17, 2011 in Liberty Square, that protests the role of Wall Street in the 2007 financial crisis and aims to resist the influence of major banks and multinational corporations.” read more…

Media Round-Up Part II: OWS v. Bloomberg Settlement

Huffington Post featured a photo of the later days of the library, when a good part of the collection was protected by Fort Smith (maybe someone will correct Wikipedia on this now..) and uses the AP story to declare “New York City has agreed to pay Occupy Wall Street protesters more than $100,000 for property damaged or lost when police cleared out their encampment in a downtown Manhattan park in 2011, according to court documents signed on Tuesday.” read more…

The Daily News chose to show off Steve’s smiling face and sounds surprised that a collection of graduate students, writers, artists, seasoned activists and librarians was able to work with a skilled civil rights attorney to win this case… as they report “Remember the anti-authority message of Occupy Wall Street? Remember the backlash over its vague goals and nebulous methods? Surprise! Occupy Wall Street (OWS) just struck a sizeable victory, and it came by working within the system.” read more…

The Voice of Russia (American Edition) covers the story and connects it, unlike most of the other press, to bank bailouts! Follow the link to listen to the story: “The settlement has returned attention to the issue of bailouts, a central theme of Occupy Wall Street and a central theme of similar protests in Russia, where $25 billion was spent to bail out the financial sector and another $10 billion was spent to bail out the small business industry, said Dmitry Babich, a Voice of Russia political commentator.” read more…and listen here…

UPI chose a photo for their story that doesn’t fit their description of the occupation as a “sit-in” nonetheless, they report “New York City and a property owner have agreed to pay the Occupy Wall Street movement for books and property destroyed during a sit-in by the group in 2011.” read more…

Galleycat uses a photo of Stephen’s awesome sign that he made while trying to protect the library from being seized by the city. read more…

This opinion piece on Gather gets at least, and perhaps only, one thing right when they refer to the Occupy movement as “radical” and “anti-capitalist.” The rest of it distorts the facts or just makes things up such as “The police even stored the books for pick-up.” Well…. actually the books that weren’t destroyed were sent to a sanitation garage, not held by the police, and the tweet from the mayor’s office was nothing more than a PR stunt because they were losing the image game in the press. This article also ignores the fact that Bloomberg’s office did not preserve any books or make them available (although they lied on twitter and said they had), because most of them had been thrown away or destroyed – as the city clearly admits in the settlement. read more….(although it’s really not worth reading)

The Inquisitr, whatever that is, reports quite correctly that it was the NYPD (under Bloomberg’s command) who cost the city $366,000 in this case, writing “The NYPD’s raid on Occupy Wall Street in 2011 will cost the city $366,700. The raid was launched on November 15, 2011 when Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered the police to evict protesters at Zuccotti Park.” read more…

msn.com mentions the police brutality charges brought by journalists who were stopped from covering the violent eviction writing “Occupy Wall Street hasn’t scaled the same heights of publicity it had in 2011, but at least one NYC organization is still feeling heat from the group. That would be the NYPD, whose (some would say heavy-handed) November 2011 raid on the group’s Zuccotti Park encampment is going to cost them $366,700 in settlement money, according to a recent court ruling. That figure covers the destruction of books, computer equipment and bicycle-powered generators the group was using. What of the brutality charges levied against the NYPD by journalists arrested while trying to cover the raid? That’s covered in a separate lawsuit. So, $366K for one raid — was it worth it?” read more….

And finally, Maclean’s uses the prototypical chanting protester image, but quotes Jaime’s blog post! “Our court case against New York City’s various officials and agencies is over!,” the People’s Library wrote on its website Tuesday. “The city has settled with us.” read more…

OWS v. Bloomberg Full Text of Settlement

The settlement text:

View this document on Scribd

Media Round-Up: OWS v. Bloomberg Settlement

Although the People’s Library plans to hold a press conference tomorrow (Wednesday, April 10, at 11 AM, at 260 Madison Avenue) there is a great deal of attention on your library in the press tonight. So I wanted to round it up here and share how the story is shaping up in the media so far:

The New York Times opens with “As myriad court battles pitting the Occupy Wall Street movement against New York City agencies proceed, protesters claimed a victory on Tuesday, based not on how they were treated, but on how their books were mistreated.” read more…

The Atlantic reports “Fans of justice will be glad to hear that New York City will pay for all those books and all that media equipment that the police trashed when it famously raided the Occupy Wall Street camp on November 15, 2011.” read more…

Reuters reports “New York City has agreed to pay Occupy Wall Street protesters more than $100,000 for property damaged or lost when police cleared out their encampment in a downtown Manhattan park in 2011, according to court documents signed on Tuesday.” read more…

The Wall Street Journal uses the AP story and writes “There’s been a settlement in the lawsuit filed over the seizure of the Occupy Wall Street library at Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park.”read more…

The Village Voice says “In an agreement announced today, the City of New York will pay more than $365,000 to settle a lawsuit bought by people whose property was destroyed when the New York Police Department raided Zuccotti Park and evicted Occupy Wall Street on November 15, 2001.”read more…

Gawker writes that “Occupy Wall Street won a major legal battle earlier today when it agreed to a settlement from the city of New York that will pay the activist group over $230,000 in damages and legal fees. ” read more…

New York Magazine reports “New York City and Zuccotti Park owner Brookfield Properties have agreed to pay $366,700 to settle a lawsuit over the chaotic November 2011 police raid on the Occupy Wall Street encampment at the plaza. “read more…

 

#winning

Dearest supporters, we’ve been paddling like the dickens under the surface here lately, and I have big news for you!

Our court case against New York City’s various officials and agencies is over!  The city has settled with us.

We’ll be having a press conference tomorrow, Wednesday, April 10, at 11 AM, at 260 Madison Avenue, in our lawyers’ office.

[crossposted to LibrarianShipwreck]

Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology Recording + Center For Book Arts Show

This recording was made for the installation telling the story of The Peoples Free Library and the Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology shown at the Center for Book Arts (Jan-March 2013), “Brother Can You Spare A Stack?”

www.centerforbookarts.org/

the Center for Book Arts:

Brother, Can You Spare a Stack
January 18, 2013 – March 30, 2013

Organized by Yulia Tikhonova

Brother, Can You Spare a Stack presents thirteen art projects that re-imagine the library as a force for social change. Each project constructs a micro library of sorts that serves specific economic or social needs within the community. Each project proposes an alternative politicized realm, which can be imagined and formed to explore the social dimensions of contemporary culture. Small and mobile, these projects resist the limitations of a controlled, highly organized system that governs our society. In contrast to subjective libraries formed by the artists picking and choosing book titles, these projects take a pragmatic and rational approach, using the library model as an interactive field. Selected projects update the principles of relational aesthetics, and shift them towards all-inclusive and useful cultural production. “Brother, Can You Spare a Stack” borrows its title from the lyrics of a popular depression era song, claiming that the artists invent alternative models of questioning, inspiring new perspectives on social transformation. They insert themselves into the most unexpected situations and spaces, in this case libraries, to propose social and cultural improvement. The exhibition includes projects by: Arlen Austin and Jason Boughton; Brett Bloom and Bonnie Fortune; Stephen Boyer; BroLab (Rahul Alexander, Jonathan Brand, Adam Brent, Ryan Roa, and Travis LeRoy Southworth); Valentina Curandi and Nathaniel Katz; Finishing School with Christy Thomas; Anna Lise Jensen and Michael Wilson; Jen Kennedy and Liz Linden; The K.I.D.S. with Word Up Collective, Eyelevel BQE, Launchpad, NURTUREart, Weeksville Heritage Center, and individual partners, as well as with Emcee C.M., Master of None; Annabel Other; Reanimation Library; The Sketchbook Project; and Micki Watanabe Spiller.

The Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology lives online in its entirety here:

https://peopleslibrary.wordpress.com/2011/11/17/occupy-wall-street-poetry-anthology/

A special thank you to all the poets and to Anna Huckabay, Ben Rosenberg, Lee Ann Brown, Miranda Lee Reality Torn, Tony Torn, and Xena Stanislavovna Semjonova for helping create this recording!

Strike Debt, Rolling Jubilee & The People’s Bailout

Strike Debt is launching the Rolling Jubilee as a way of getting rid of people’s debts through mutual aid. Rolling Jubilee seeks to buy defaulted charged-off debt at steeply discounted prices and then abolish the debt, keeping it out of the hands of debt collectors. The amazing thing about this campaign is that it is buying charged-off debt, so that means that if they raise $50,000, they can buy $1,000,000 worth of debt, and abolish it, freeing people from debt. Donate here or purchase tickets to The People’s Bailout, a variety show and telethon to benefit the 99%

Join Strike Debt for an updated version of an old classic, the telethon, to launch The Rolling Jubilee, a campaign that buys debt for pennies on the dollar and does away with it. Instead of collecting the debt, we will abolish it and help free the debtors!

People shouldn’t have to go into debt for an education, because they need medical care, or to put food on the table during hard times. We shouldn’t have to pay endless interest to the 1% for basic necessities. Big banks and corporations walk away from their debts and leave taxpayers to pick up the tab. It’s time for a bailout of the people, by the people.

It will be a wild night of music, comedy, magic, education, and the unexpected. This fast-moving variety show will mix well-known performers, intellectuals and activists from Strike Debt and Occupy Wall Street.

Special guests include Janeane Garofalo, Lizz Winstead, Frances Fox Piven, Max Silvestri, Hari Kondabolu, David Rees, The Yes Men, actor/director John Cameron Mitchell, Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel, Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, Guy Picciotto of Fugazi, Tunde Adebimpe of TV on the Radio, Climbing Poetree, the Invisible Army of Defaulters, members of Healthcare for the 99%, Occupy Faith, and many more.

*Tickets will go on-sale Friday, November 2nd at 10AM*

$25 (abolishes an estimated $500 worth of debt)
$50 (abolishes an estimated $1000 worth of debt)
$100 (abolishes an estimated $2000 worth of debt)
$250 (abolishes an estimated $5000 worth of debt)

This is a general admission, standing event.

The event will also be livestreamed at www.rollingjubilee.org