Mo' Money, Mo' Money!

Who is this man and why is he on my blog? This is Jack Abramoff and he may be the future of lobbying.

In light of the recent Supreme Court ruling that would allow corporations and unions to give more money to political candidates, this interview with documentarian Alex Gibney will surely strike a chord.

The Indypendent #118: Down and Out - Your pain is Wall Street's gain

The latest issue of The Indypendent is out. Below are the two main stories on the economy.

Bailing Out the Billionaires

By Max Fraad Wolff

Posted in National

House prices need to continue to fall and will. This will place increasing pressure on household balance sheets. To begin to address the situation, we need to concentrate on elevating earnings and reducing debt levels. read more »

Inflation Nation: A Guide to Your Pocketbook Blues

By A.K. Gupta

Posted in National

Unless you live in a bubble, like George Bush, who expressed total surprise in February when a reporter told him gas was nearing $4 a gallon, you've been socked hard in the pocketbook by rising prices. read more>>

The Indypendent's Arun Gupta on Democracy Now!

Respected Indypendent journalist, Iraq War specialist and my good friend Arun Gupta was in a three-way debate on General Petraeus' role in the Iraq War. There are video and audio streams.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/4/9/as_petraeus_urges_delay_of_troop

(Photos from Democracy Now!)

Funny short short by Barrett Brown

Bush Writes a Novel

http://www.antimuse.org/cgi-bin/pageserver.cgi?page=04100112

Knight Interview on Comic Critique

The folks at Comic Critique uploaded my Keith Knight e-interview on their
site:

http://www.comiccritique.com/interviews/ginterviewSt53.html

© Frank Reynoso, Oct. 2007, All Rights Reserved

Emily Niewendorp's Blog

My friend, actress and writer Emily Larson, aka Emily Niewendorp, started a blog wherein she'll:

• post links to articles she find interesting,
• write about her travels,
• brag about her friends & family and their accomplishments,
• post poetry,
  
• discuss current events, and
  
• of course, journal.

Check it out:
http://emilyniewendorp.blogspot.com/

© Frank Reynoso, Oct. 2007, All Rights Reserved

Why Write? Dispatch from Daniel McGowan

Daniel McGowan's story is sorted and entrenched in the political climate we're in now. Below is an excerpt from a feature on him that ran in The Indypendent. Farther down is a dispatch sent by Daniel McGowan to his friends, family and activists.

For updates on Daniel's situation click here.

- Frank


Enemy of the State
by Jessica Lee

Growing up in New York City, Daniel McGowan saw first-hand how pollution fogged the air and fouled the beaches in some of the city’s poorest communities, setting him on a lifelong path of environmental and social justice. But how he ended up drenched in gasoline and setting fire to Oregon’s Jefferson Poplar Farms in 2001 and was later targeted as a “domestic terrorist” is the story of someone who cared too much and didn’t know what else to do.

Born in Brooklyn and raised in Queens’ Rockaway Beach, Daniel McGowan grew up sandwiched between asphalt and the sky, in a forest of buildings and buzzing streets. Until Dec. 7, 2005, the 33-year-old with a round face and a chipmunk smile was mostly known in local circles for his involvement in a variety of activist projects. Today, after a nearly two-year legal battle that saw him labeled an “eco-terrorist” by the U.S. government, McGowan is serving a seven-year sentence at a federal prison in Minnesota on 15 counts of arson, attempted arson and conspiracy to commit arson against two private companies in Oregon in 2001.

(for the full story and interview with Daniel go to Enemy of the State)

Why Write?
by Daniel McGowan

It's a question I have been pondering the last two months since I reported to prison and the clock started ticking. Why, indeed? What do I have to say that is new or fresh? Will I bore people with repetitive tomes about my case or the Green Scare? Do people want to read what I write? All these questions haunt me as I put pen to paper attempting to deal with a ton of unexpressed thoughts and emotions made worse by a self-imposed silence during my legal proceedings. Where do I even begin? I doubt at times whether I can handle the release of these emotions-- anger, frustration, betrayal, profound sadness. . . I fear that there won't be a lesson or a neat and clean conclusion to what I write about that you'll get to the end and ask. So yeah, that sucked-- what am I supposed to do? The idea that anyone might think I know also freaks me out.

As in all things though, you learn by doing. You start the journey with that first step, you are that much closer to leaving prison after the first day or month or year. I'm in prison so what sense is there in not trying to make sense of it all, to not risk failing or looking stupid or being wrong. So, I've decided to write, to not wring my hands endlessly, scared to release my writings. I've even figured out some damn good reasons to write too-- I'm going to write because we need to be more flexible in our approach and if I can't be on the streets fighting my ass off for a better world, well, at least I can speak my truth on these pages. Because we live in a world where people who abuse women rarely go to prison and when they do, go in for a few years while people who destroy the inanimate property of multi-national corporations go in for longer. Because silence is complicity and I won't be bullied or silenced by prosecutors who brag that I was forced to self-report early because of my website and speaking on Democracy Now. Because I've lost some friends and comrades these past years and they can't. Because I will never for a second accept the label of terrorist for trying to call attention to what our species is doing to our planet, and because maybe we can all learn from mistakes I have made.

See, there really are some good reasons to write despite my fears after all. I don't know what this path of exploration will look like but I'll do my best to keep digging and fighting.

© Daniel McGowan, Aug 2007, All rights reserved

A Sip of Texas Tea

A while back James Spruill and I made a comic that we submitted to a publisher for consideration. "Texas Tea", written by James and illustrated by me, is a metaphor for the Iraq War. We were rejected. James and I turned it into a zine called "Lung Juice" - along with some other comix - that we gave away at MoCCA Art and Comic Fest 2006.

Ahh...memories... :)

© Frank Reynoso Aug. 2007, All rights reserved

Still from rehearsal of Global Warning

Here are some stills from the Young Principles Theater Company's rehearsal of my skit "Global Warning" at 440 Studios last night, Aug. 27. This skit is also directed by me.



Left to right: Tom (Dennis Pimentel), Jerry (Jared Scheinberg), Karl (Emily Powers), and Graham (Connie Xanthopoulos) - four religious leaders - meet to discuss a grave matter that's threatening America: global warming.

Graham (Connie Xanthopoulos) gets riled up about those "feminazis."


The four men brainstorm on the religious cause for global warming.

Karl (Emily Powers) berates Graham (Connie Xanthopoulos).


Jerry (Jared Scheinberg) listens intently as Karl (Emily Powers) puts his foot down.

© Frank Reynoso, Aug 2007, All Rights Reserved

Fly in Your Eye: excerpt from my interview with LES cartoonist Fly

FLY IN YOUR EYE: An interview with LES cartoonist and activist Fly















Here's an excerpt from my interview with radical cartoonist and awesome person, Fly. You can find the full interview at Comic Critique or the Indypendent. Thanks to Louis Vitela at Comic Critique, and John Tarleton and Irina Ivanova at The Indypendent for punching this material up.

- Frank

Fly’s distinctive style and message came to my attention some years ago on a flyer for a political event at ABC No Rio. Her actions and works speak volumes of the enigmatic person: a consistent presence in New York City radical circles, a member of the World War 3 Illustrated collective (founded by Seth Tobocman and Peter Kuper), and an adamant supporter and teacher of DIY zines and comics. From the cover of the first issue of $pread, a magazine by and for sex workers, and PEOPS, her zine-turned-book by Soft Skull, which chronicles the lives of many downtown Manhattan residents, artists and activists, Fly hardly shies away from the controversial and the commonplace. The prolific cartoonist and illustrator took some time out to talk about the laborious task of making zines, her artistic growth inspired years ago by Sue Coe’s powerful work and Fiona Smyth’s techniques, and the transformation of the Lower East Side in Manhattan.

FR: What she makes of the transformation of the Lower East Side?

FLY: That’s a big question. The LES has been transforming for so long! It’s sort of the nature of the place. People have been fighting [the latest wave of gentrification] since way before I arrived here in the late 80s. There was of course the real estate boom of the 80s that sort of went bust. Anyway, when I got here it was still pretty rundown and crazy in good ways and bad ways. I have to say that I do not miss the drug dealers or the people shooting up on the street but I do miss all the insanely talented artists and performers and just general characters that used to populate the area and I also think it is very unfair that so many people who were born in the Lower East Side now cannot afford to live here. It used to feel a bit like a small town around here but with all the options of a big city. Now if I am out in the evening, especially on the weekend, I am horrified walking along the sidewalks — even on avenue C! — to see the multitudes of loud drunken idiots making so much noise and making a big mess. I don’t know what the hell they are doing but its just so boring! I think a big problem with the Lower East Side is that it used to be a neighborhood and it had real character — and you can still find that here but it is seriously threatened by the dorm mentality of some idiot developers and the fancy restaurants and hair salons that no one living here can afford to go to. With the whole clean-up of the area of course it became safer and so suddenly since it’s considered so “edgey and hip” everybody wants to live here and the rents have become ridiculous. So what happens in the long run is that the real neighborhood gets displaced because people can’t afford to live here and they are slowly being replaced by a very transient population, NYU students and other high priced renters who are not interested in working on a connection to the real soul and history of the place. The LES is just a stepping stone for them, a place to sleep and to use as a background for pictures — oh — I could rant for hours about this. I know I am generalizing but hopefully you get the idea. There are some books I could recommend for your further edification like the recently published Resistance, edited by Clayton Patterson and published by Seven Stories

FR: What would be your dream collaboration? Living or dead.

FLY: Hmmm…. That’s a really hard one because there are so many people that I’d love to collaborate with… and lately I have been collaborating more… But I’m such a control freak. I think my dream collaboration would probably be not with another visual artist but with a writer. There’s so many writers that I really love so it’s hard to… I know: Kathy Acker. She died a while ago but I would love to have been able to work with her on a comic. (excited) Oh man, yeah. Kathy Acker. Definitely Kathy Acker. I first read her stuff in the 80s when my life was really chaotic and transient. I felt like the way she wrote was like the way I was thinking; it was like the voices in my head mixed with what was happening in the moment mixed with what already happened. It was like deconstruction or something… sorry I’m not much of a literary critic. Her writing to me was just really authentic — she wasn’t afraid to just put everything out there. I could feel it in my bones and the thing about it was that when ever I read any of her stuff I would get so inspired that I would end up doing a lot of writing and drawing myself and I would also have the craziest dreams — I used to do a lot of comics based on dreams too. I just think I could have done some amazing comics in collaboration with Kathy Acker! Hmmm maybe I should try to do a piece on her.

© Frank Reynoso, Aug. 2007, All Rights Reserved