Palestinian Solidarity, and Our War For Liberation Through Infoshopping

You can now buy sweet Palestinian-made Kaffiyehs at the Iron Rail. We support the end of Israeli apartheid and Palestinian liberation. Show your anti-colonialist sentiments by wearing this symbol of resistance. They are $14.
More on Palestine:
Anarchists Against the Wall
International Intifada

December Movie Nights
December 2nd, 8pm: "9-to-5" with Dolly Parton

New Magazines
We have the new issue of Left Turn and Fifth Estate magazines for sale. Both are edited in part by New Orleanian radicals.

Bookfair Spoils
We bought tons of new books at the NOLA Bookfair, which was a huge success, yet again! So come buy some of them! Thank you to everyone who helped make it so awesome!

2009 Slingshot Organizers
We have 2009 Slingshot Organizers! Large ($10) and Small ($6). With new glossy covers on the small ones that look tight.

T-Shirts
We have a whole bunch of Iron Rail t-shirts in stock right now. So come buy one (or two)! Everyone in your family would love an Iron Rail shirt as a Chrissmas present right? They are $5-15 sliding scale.

New Orleans Anarchist Email List
Organize, strategize and discuss with local anarchists via the listserve to create a new world. Use the list to let others know about local radical info and events, discuss news and views, and figure out how to best create the world we want to see. To join, send a blank email to nola-anarchists+subscribe@googlegroups.com

Dos Americas

On tuesday November 25th there is a really great film about the reconstruction of New Orleans playing at the Iron Rail! All the films that play at the Rail are of course free but I will be taking donations to send to the wonderful film makers who took the time and spent their own money to make a film that focuses on such an important issue as this one.


Post-Katrina reconstruction is still in progress throughout the Gulf Coast, with much of the City of New Orleans still in ruins. This documentary focuses on those rebuilding this city through interviews with some of the estimated 100,000 Latino migrant laborers who have converged in this area over the past two and a half years. Despite terrible working conditions, massive fraud, a housing crisis, severe harassment by law enforcement, and very limited resources, New Orleans' Latino community has mushroomed since the storm and is establishing an infrastructure proportional to its size.
Take a look at how this community is organizing to defend itself against numerous injustices and the attempts to bridge the gap between themselves as new residents and the pre-Katrina population, all within the extremely unique and tragic context of post-Katrina New Orleans.

(subtitles in english and spanish)

this is a link to the trailer for the film
Dos Americas/Upheaval Productions

NO ANSWER

"What's your name? How long have you been in New Orleans? Where did you come from? What groups do you belong to? Are you part of an anti-war movement? What do those patches mean exactly? Are you carrying any weapons or drugs? Why do you choose this lifestyle? Have you ever been arrested?"

I came across a troupe of these obviously gang-affiliated skinheads gaffling a pair of traveller kids, and since all six of them couldn't really be that busy pestering two underfed hippies, I asked the gang members the above questions. They declined to answer; they wouldn't tell me anything about themselves. They told me to leave, albeit in a manner much less gratuitously unpleasant than the NOPD's usual.

Fair enough. I sure as shit wouldn't answer those questions put to me, and neither should you. Nobody should. Silence when questioned is our first and strongest line of defense against agents of the state. Silence, until we choose to make ourselves heard on our own terms: silence until the time we tell them, pleasantly or otherwise, to leave.

ART WARS: SWOON GOES OVER BANKSY

In most contexts, one graffiti artist even partially covering or overlapping another's work means it's on, big time. Not sure that will be the case here.

But has this specific thing ever happened before, anywhere? In any other city in the world, have these two international super-monsters of politically aware street art hit the same corner, the exact same spot, within weeks of each other, to the point where you have Swoon's trademark paper cutouts wheatpasted DIRECTLY on Banksy's stenciled spraypaint? What are the odds of that? I love you, New Orleans, I love you so much, every day.

Background on Swoon: Swoon discusses street art vs. museums, Swoon talks about her influences

From the dungeon...

Iron Rail now has a "Facebook" page. Find us on it if you want to.

Help us spread the knowledge of radical radicalism, extreme extremism, and free freedom across the land.

the islands

I do still sometimes think of you. When I'm listening to Diamond Head or Grim Reaper, the kind of shit nobody else except you ever really appreciated-- and it's night-time, and maybe I'm caffeinated, it's not so hard to drift back there: Driving the beat-to-hell (but still V6 balls-out) Camry, both of us drunk as lords, wheeling wildly among the glinting neon night-time surf shops and resort hotels of the islands. Always on the way to somewhere, and I can still see you in the passenger seat, bare feet on the dash, chugging Sparks Light, tossing the cans out the windows, arguing about something, complaining about something, hating something together-- didn't it sustain us? wallowing in the sea air, the repeating sidewalkless cul-de-sacs and Super-Mario-World hyperreal landscaping, everything framed against the massive, serene, dolphin-infested bathtub of the Gulf of Mexico.

Inter-island drawbridges, touristy "pirate" ships, squalid overpriced fish shacks where the staff all fucked each other, ten hundred food-service jobs, delivery, retail, photography, deckhand, covering ribbon cuttings and zoning disputes, 10 articles a week under silly fake names, scamming free meals for advertorial write-ups. Didn't we live large? Trashing one sublet after another, ruining acres of carpet with blenders of slushy day-glo, insane glittering-sun hangovers, blown deadlines and bold long-necked white birds, swerving back home across floodlit causeways after a night raising hell at the only cool bar that wouldn't card you, fighting about who flirted with whom, ferocious drunken sex that settled nothing, or waking up bleary facedown on the beach, or lawn, or condominium parking lot.

God how good it was, hunched over the iMac, so far gone I had to cover one eye to write, pounding out a profile of a senior-center inhabitant for Tuesday's edition while you were out fucking the girl from the tattoo shop, and the stereo so loud it shook the walls, so loud I couldn't hear the cops hammering on the door, and the money from the house sale steadily dwindling, emptying out the IRA, each condo smaller than the previous, then to apartments, then sharing a room in a converted garage that flooded, ruining your record collection. How broke we went! The gun shows, the palmettos all over our walls, the emerald lizards and noon-time downpours, hands shaking for hair of the dog, hustling short money out of leathery "swingers," Western Union from the exes, laughing with each other at our audacity.

Didn't we have fun? Horrible parties at your horrible co-workers' horrible apartments-- meth, bong hits, playstation 2 and Rap-Metal-- absolutely no control, landlord after landlord, employer after employer, and never my fault, never yours, always the hateful world's. What a team we were, darling, what an amazing team.

Barack Me Amadeus

Hope all of you who bothered to vote for district attorneys, judges, congressmen & president don't have to answer to the whores in the office which exists because you've substantiated its actuality.

The weather has changed, meeting attendance has jumped into double digits, but the Iron Rail can still use your help.
Not getting all you want out of the New Orleans radical community?
The Iron Rail has weekly membership meetings at 8pm in the space. Join us and help make the most of Our Shop.

the fucking days are fucking long

it fucking gets you fucking down

evidently chicken town

SUE BUTLER KNOWS WHAT'S UP

It's a very magical little piece of the week, almost. It's the time where YOU get a phone call or text message about volunteering at the Rail! Ha ha I bet a lot of you wish you could somehow "block" messages sent from certain phones. Maybe you can? I'm not too up on this stuff.

Seriously there's no reason filling the schedule should be as stressful & last-minute as it has been the last few weeks. Help us out!!!

And of course the one sure-fire way to not get an annoying text message is to come to the weekly collective meetings, every Wednesday at 8... We love you / miss you / need your input and ideas!

FUCK THE VOTE

Voting at all represents compromise with the illegitimate systems imposed upon us, fuck it!

but

if you wanted to know what your fave embarrassing-older-brother figure the D-Block would recommend voting for regarding the LOCAL stuff (and the presidency) then click here for a non-Iron Rail-approved voter guide. Again let me stress this is not related to the collective, it's just one collective member's views (based on views of others).

UPDATED!!! AS OF 8:45 PM, NOW MORE ACCURATE! PLZ RE-PRINT IF YOU SAW IT BEFORE.

A PILLAR OF WIND

I spend a couple weeks preoccupied and this place is a morgue. COME ON FOLKS.

So I happen to work in an office. It's an easy "go-to" when I need something to castigate myself over, that I'm a white-collar wage lackey. Anyway my office is in a building with a really powerful elevator, and when I ascend the elevator to work and there aren't other people I like to close my eyes and experience the WHOOOSH as the elevator yanks me skywards. It's astonishing when you consider it... there's this giant WELL and you step into a brass bucket and WHOOSH it sucks you up through space at however many miles per hour.

There are probably all kinds of interesting effects in the elevator shaft itself created by having something rocketing through at such a high speed. The elevator is fancy but you can hear whistling air if you press your face to one of the seams in the side panels and thus get a sense of just how crazy the physics of it is. So even though it demoralizes me to have a job and not a trust fund I must say it's cool that at least 2 or three times every shift I have the experience of being rushed heavenwards on a pillar of wind.

WHAT, YOU DON'T THINK THAT'S REMARKABLE OR INTERESTING? YOU THINK THAT'S OPPRESSIVELY MUNDANE? Well fuck you, if you were trapped 10,000,000 miles below ground and you felt like you were constantly exhausting yourself in the fight to get up to Zero, the level from which most people start their days, if you felt like you were buried so far below any kind of real life that even breaking through the surface of Zero for an occasional gulp of air and a glimpse of daylight was an accomplishment to be savored, then you might get a kick out of zooming around in an elevator too. God, my pretty little turns of phrase are clearly wasted on you! Can't you allow me my small pleasures, you philistine? Fuck it that tears it I'm going to go get drunk.