The voices of raptors

From somewhere among the branches
fall the voices of raptors.
A Cooper's hawk swoops into position
outside the clinic window, interrupting
the business of the day, scaring
a brown-eyed boy balanced
on the scale. The nutritionist gasps,
stops talking of rice cereal and mashed fruit,
startled by the rodent prey dangling from your beak.

The boy curls his toes, jaw dropped,
metal clanks metal beneath his feet.
From somewhere among the higher branches
fall the voices of young hunters
raspy like kittens mewling,
hungry for meat and bone,
sharp talons clamped tight,
awaiting your return.

A bit of Truth and Reconciliation

The Guardian: Spain finally attempts to lay ghosts of the Franco era

Spain's Socialist government yesterday proposed measures to help families of the victims of General Franco's dictatorship dig up mass graves, but refused to annul tens of thousands of summary death sentences handed down by his regime.

A long-awaited proposed law, to compensate victims of the Spanish civil war and the 36-year dictatorship that followed it, also bans the far right from holding rallies at Franco's grave in the Valley of the Fallen outside Madrid ...

My city, on fire again

As Israeli bombs rain down on Beirut, the people of the city are once again living with the horror of war. In an intimate diary, 30-year-old Lebanese artist Zena el-Khalil describes helping foreigners escape, the nightly rocket attacks - and how she couldn't leave her sick friend behind

More than a million march against electoral fraud in Mexico

Candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said yesterday "a fraudulent election cannot be erased even with all the waters of the oceans."

Imagine how different the world might be today if a million Americans had marched in 2000 to protest what happened in Florida and elsewhere ...

Refugee All Stars benefit Thursday!

Thursday, July 13, 2006, 8:00 PM
A benefit concert for NW Immigrant Rights Project

featuring...
The Refugee All Stars of Sierra Leone

Opening...
DJ: Darek Mazzone, Host of Wo'pop on KEXP 90.3
Tickets: available at all TicketsWest outlets for $15, day of $17

Neumos - 925 E. Pike St. - Seattle, WA 98122

Info: (206)957-8609 or Janet@nwirp.org

Emma Goldman again makes the headlines

My pals and former housemates at the Emma Goldman Finishing School somehow ended up on the front cover of the Seattle Weekly. The house is really much more pleasant and friendly than what comes across in the article, as anyone who has been there for a dinner or a party can attest. (I'll admit, however, that I don't miss the three-hour meetings.) Check out these lovelies and their big dreams.

The Seattle Times: From farmhand to farm owner

... Other farm operators, Lopez says, are on their radios all day, issuing orders. "But look," he says, seizing Reinhardt's hand across the picnic table and turning it over to show his friend's dirt-smudged fingers. "This is a hand that works."

Forgotten Sol's new CD release!

My pals in Forgotten Sol are releasing their new CD, Contradiction, at a party July 1st. That's Saturday night, 9pm, at Chop Suey. You in?



www.myspace.com/forgottensol

Catalan voters approve "Statute of Autonomy"

It's not often that a national government agrees to decentralize and allow one of its regions to assume greater powers, but that's exactly what a popular referendum did this weekend in Catalunya.

The power struggle between Spain and Catalunya is of great interest to me for a number of reasons: my sister lives in Barcelona; the region has a rich history of powerful social movements; and because I'm researching the role Catalan soldiers played in occupying California in the 18th century, around the same time Spain laid siege to Barcelona and consolidated its control over Catalunya.

HAPPY SOLSTICE

May the Sun shine upon you all day long.

Quinceañera

Yesterday I saw this movie at the festival, where audiences voted it one of the five best. It is as good as they say. See it as soon as you can.

words like blossoms.

Recently my friend Ms. Tara invited me to be "Guest Poet" at her second grade class at the New School at South Shore. I read the story The Boy Who Loved Words, about a boy who fills his pockets with his scribbled favorites and one night places them at the tips of a tree's many branches. Afterward we had the kids choose some of their own favorites, write them on cards, and paste them onto this illustration ...

Protest Police Attack on Mexican Schoolteachers

PROTEST AT MEXICAN CONSULATE
2132 Third Ave., at Blanchard St., Downtown Seattle
Monday, June 19, 1:00-2:00 PM

Police smackdown on striking Mexican teachers

See Jill Friedberg's Granito de Arena film webpage for updates, or Indymedia Mexico.

Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project

A note from a friend ...

As Project Coordinator for the Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project, I'd like to bring your attention to a research report recently posted on our web site by an undergraduate at the University of Washington, Jennifer Taylor.

Jennifer did outstanding work looking into the history of the 1965 police shooting of Robert Reese, an unarmed African American, that touched off a direct action campaign of "freedom patrols" that operated as "walking civilian review boards." We recently posted her full research paper about this campaign, along with some scans of associated newspaper articles, here: http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/freedom_patrols.htm

Our web site also features video clips from oral history interviews with two different civil rights leaders-- Bishop John H. Adams, and Judge Charles V. Johnson-- who discuss their leadership of the Freedom Patrols. You can find their interviews (and many more) here: http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/interviews.htm

In addition, you can find a number of other outstanding undergraduate student papers about campaigns for racial justice in Seattle, including one that was reprinted in ColorsNW this past February for Black History Month, here: http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/research_reports.htm

We will be putting much more online in the next couple months, including papers about the Black Student Union, the Christian Friends for Racial Equality, the origins of the internment redress movement in Seattle, desegregation campaigns at Boeing, and new interviews about the local Chicano/a movement and urban Indian movement during the 1970s. Stay tuned,

Trevor Griffey

The big man Berlusconi

April, 2006. The big man Berlusconi, richest in Italy, is feeling desperate in the days before elections. He tells a crowd of shopkeepers: I have too much esteem for the intelligence of Italians to think that they could be such coglioni as to vote against their own interests.

Coglioni. Literally, "testicles." Millions of countrymen and women reduced by their Prime Minister to anatomical unmentionables.

Then something happens. In sunlit piazzas, under stone arcades, where old men in knit caps smoke filterless cigarettes, in country towns where Roman ducts still bring the water, in fashion capitals, everywhere, on people’s lips, on buttons pinned to smart sportcoats, on t-shirts, on stickers adorning the bums of small cars, above the din of motor scooters and factories and loud insistent conversation, the same phrase stands out, steps up, everywhere and everyone together says WE ARE ALL COGLIONI.

Stephen Colbert's guts and glory

I can't think of any other moment in Bush Jr.'s presidency when anyone criticized him to his face for more than 30 seconds. Here, he is seared, roasted, basted, turned on the spit and served with an apple in his mouth. A very satisfying counterpunch to the years of murderous lies.

The truthiness hurts | Salon.com

Stephen Colbert's brilliant performance unplugged the Bush myth machine -- and left the clueless D.C. press corps gaping.

Some gallows humor about "Homeland Security"

Movimiento Boliviano por la Soberania y la Integracion solidaria de los pueblos: Trade Treaty of the Peoples

Bolivia's counterproposal to the rotten "Free Trade Area of the Americas"

The Anti-Orientalist - New York Times

An interesting article about Spanish author Juan Goytisolo, an expatriate in Morocco for decades ...

TLAXCALA, The Translators' Network for Linguistic Diversity. Tlaxcala's Manifesto.

Stop the law that would criminalize immigrants, and people who help them

The U.S. Congress is currently considering legislation that make it a felony to be an undocumented immigrant or for anyone to provide them help. For a brief summary, follow the link above to read the Seattle Times article "Unusual local alliance fears possible immigration changes," by Lornet Turnbull. For more background and action alerts, see hatefreezone.org. For people in the Seattle area, there is a march for comprehensive immigration reform, which protects the rights and dignity of immigrants, tomorrow in White Center, at 12:30. Details in the article.

Talking Turkey

The Story of How the Unofficial Bird of the United States Got Named After a Country

Shop with a Conscience this Holiday Season

Here's a great, short list of union-made or cooperative-made products online, from Sweatshop Watch:
Shop with a Conscience this Holiday Season