The Raccoon Collective is having a Meet UP JAN 10th at 333 Division at 6pm or at Vic's Pizza at 6:15pm on the same day.  This is a meeting for all people who would like to participate in the Jan 26th WEST SIDE ARTS WALK and for general interest in the collective.  If you already belong to artist collective or are just interested come find out what we're up to and how you can benefit from affiliating with us.  After the meeting we will be having a work party where will be making various weapons of mass creation!!  GOOD people, GOOD fun.

  This is an alternative arts walk that will provide space for projects and artists not shown at the conventional oly arts walk.  The venue for this event will be private recidences on the west side with in biking and walking distance.  The arts walk will feature well known bands such as (the Hail Seizures, the Pasties and special guests the Riot Folk Collective).  Expect great art, music, installations, films, and other surprizes.  A Map and  schedule of events will be available starting JAN 16th at various businesses around town (Vics, Ottos, Old school, Last Word, New Moon, Cafe Vita ect),  BRING YOUR BIKE FOR THE BIKE TOURS!!!!
The Raccoon Arts Collective is dedicated to uniting the arts accross olympia in order to secure artist resources, support social and environmental justice, and also just do many wonderfully fun and engaging projects together.  If you would like to participate in the West Side ARtS Walk or are generally interested in the collective please come to the MEET UP at Jan 10th 6pm at 333 Division ST where we will then head to Vic's because we probably can't fit everybody at that house, but anyhow just come!

Please help get the word out and BEWARE:we never hibernate!

The military is trying to avoid demonstrators and the media by transporting Suzanne Swift from Bangor to Ft. Lewis this Wednesday morning (Jan. 3), and then releasing her from Ft. Lewis at noon.

Therefore...

...THE SUZANNE SWIFT RALLY IS MOVING TO FORT LEWIS.

Everything will occur as scheduled, but rather than meeting at Bangor Naval Base, we will meet at the ol' Exit 119 overpass (DuPont-Steilacoom), outside of Fort Lewis.

The start time is the same: 11:30 AM, Wednesday, Jan. 3

The carpool detail for Lacey is slightly different:
LACEY -- meet at 11 am at the Martin Way park & ride
OLYMPIA -- meet at 10:30 am at the Grocery Outlet (Harrison & Division) parking lot.

Welcome back Suzanne Swift!

Tell everyone you know who's planning on going to the rally!

Free film screening and Q&A with Bev Harris of Black Box Voting

HACKING DEMOCRACY
Friday, January 5th, 2007, 7pm
Olympia Unitarian Universalist Congregation
2200 East End St NW on Olympia's West Side

Is American democracy safe in the age of computers? This cautionary film looks at the very real risk of hackers altering vote counts in public elections--and exposes the vulnerability of the computers that count approximately 80% of America's votes in county, state and federal elections. Filmed in 2004-2005, this documentary tells the story of Bev Harris, a Seattle publicist/writer whose watchdog group uncovered evidence of mishandled voting records and suspicious voting machine malfunctions. Harris's crusade took the group--consisting of computer experts, activists and political candidates from both parties--from her home computer (where she found a computer system blueprint accidentally made public) to Tallahassee, FL, for a 
"mini-election" that proved just how easy it is to hack the vote. 81 minutes

We're very lucky to have Bev Harris come to this exclusive screening of Hacking Democracy here in Olympia.  Come learn about how Black Box Voting and Bev Harris have exposed the ease at which people can manipulate electronic voting machines.

Event Contact/Questions: Howard Rosenfeld, 360-790-4020

 MLK Day 

Traditional Vigil

and Nonviolent
Direct Action

Ignorant Movie Review:  Our Daily Bread

Response to title:  Okay, biblical allusion to "The Lord's Prayer".  Social commentary here we come...

Response to curbside poster:  Wow.  Great and visually loaded poster.  A person in a hazmat suit walking a greenhouse row while spraying an apparently hazardous substance over the ground.  The spray gun actually looks like a lightsaber to me.  So maybe this is a documentary about GMOs?  I'm prepared to watch something scathing.

Response post-credits:  This film bears witness to the mass production methods of our modern food supply.  Produced in a manner which renders human dialogue barely audible, the film focuses its audience on the sights and sounds of the machinery, future food and processes while drawing visual analogies between methods of food production and our lives.  For two hours I sat in semi-stunned silence as The Jungle modernized before me.  People left during scenes (I assume because of perceived brutality) and, until reaching the Brotherhood, I was convinced that the people with children whom I saw in the lobby were absolutely insane.

Eid Mubarak and happy New Year! The Olympia-Rafah Sister City Project is planning for another delegation to Gaza in 2007. I'm gearing up to work on our projects in Rafah starting in the middle of March of this year. To get the latest on our sister city plans and to get involved, click here.

This is a reprint from Common Dreams that I wanted to share:
Published on Tuesday, January 2, 2007 by the New York Times
Middle-Class French Join Sleep-In Over Homelessness
by Craig S. Smith


PARIS - Hundreds of people emerged from tents beside this city’s Canal St.-Martin to greet the chilly New Year with a hot lunch from a nearby soup kitchen. But not all of them were homeless.

Dozens of otherwise well-housed, middle-class French have been spending nights in tents along the canal, in the 10th Arrondissement, in solidarity with the country’s growing number of “sans domicile fixe,” or “without fixed address,” the French euphemism for people living on the street. The bleak yet determinedly cheerful sleep-in is meant to embarrass the French government into doing something about the problem.

“Each person should have the minimum dignity in a country as rich as this,” said Bleunwenn Manrot, a 28-year-old with a newsboy cap on her head and a toothbrush in her hand. Ms. Manrot drove more than six hours with friends from her home in Carhaix, Brittany, to spend New Year’s Eve along the canal.

The demonstration has drawn enough media attention over the holidays for President Jacques Chirac to acknowledge it during his traditional New Year address to the nation on Sunday. He asked the government to work in the coming weeks to “put in place a truly enforceable right to housing” that would give the homeless the legal means to demand a place to live.

Given France’s well-financed social services, the country’s homeless problem is relatively mild — the national statistics bureau estimated the number of people living without a fixed address on any one night at 86,000 for all of France in 2004, about equal to the number of homeless in Los Angeles alone.

But even that number is disturbing for the socially active segment of France’s population. In December 2005, the French affiliate of the international charity Doctors of the World began distributing nylon pup tents to people who sleep on Paris’s sidewalks and beneath its bridges. The movement took hold, and since then the tents have become a fixture in odd corners of the city.

A BMI rep was recently in town and at least one restaurant got the shake down. I mean, how is this not a racket? Sell music, then tell businesses that play the music that they have to pay a licensing fee. Plus charge music venues in advance, since the live band might possibly play a cover version of a copyrighted song.

This particular restaurant was even shown a copy of a 1999 Seattle Weekly article The Hidden Cost of Music, just to get the point across real good. This local restaurant has decided to turn off the music altogether. Which is sad, but understandable, as the alternative is to pay a music license fee. Or refuse to back down and then most likely have to deal with being sued.

And the entire process is not at all transparent.

"They're not a governmental organization, but they act like one," says one licensee.

Wtf?