SRLC Welcoming Committee BBQ, this Saturday!

Have you heard about the SRLC Welcoming Committee? We are a coalition of New Orleans individuals and groups (including the Committee to Save Charity Hospital) coming together to welcome the Southern Republican Leadership Committee to New Orleans by letting them and the world know what we think of Republican governor Bobby Jindal's ruthless assaults on Louisiana healthcare and education. We're throwing a big ol' Second Line on Friday, April 9th, at 5:30 at Lafayette Square Park, and we'd love to see you there.

In the meantime, please help us organize and plan, to make this the best event it can possibly be. You can find our meeting schedule, as well as lots of flyers and other info, at the SRLC Welcoming Committee website . We would love the involvement of more people and more groups. Our coalition is steadily growing!

We're meeting at the Rail, Friday at 4 pm and Monday at 8 pm, but more importantly, please join us Saturday at 2pm for a glorious time making and eating BARBECUE and also making but not eating SIGNS and BANNERS for the Second Line!

Please bring yourself, and as much banner/sign/craft supplies as you can gather, and also all your artsy friends and their supplies. This is a lovely thing to do on a Saturday!

PROTEST! New time! Keep the heat on wage-stealing TONY MORAN'S ! Time to escalate!

NEW TIME!

Meet up Thursday, October 29th at/outside Tira Misu 55, a bar at 123 Carondelet, at seven thirty P.M. to organize and plan. From there, we'll march over to the location of the protest: TONY MORAN'S "Italian" restaurant on Bourbon st. near the corner of Bourbon & Conti.

Tony Moran's management have been demanding workers do hours of prep while off the clock, have CONSISTENTLY STOLEN TIPS, and have withheld, bounced, and fiddled paychecks, often hiring people for catering jobs and then just refusing to pay them.

This behavior will continue-- more hard-working restaurant employees will be fucked over-- unless we send them a strong message that this behavior is unacceptable!

New Orleans restaurant workers are NOT interchangeable or disposable. All employees deserve fair pay, honest treatment, and dignity-- NOT bullying, discrimination and theft.

Attendees of the last protest got a chance to meet arch-villain Jobert Salem, the owner of (among other things) Tony Moran's and a world-class charmer : he was out there slapping at cameras, attempting to bully and shove protesters, press and passers-by, cussing, threatening, calling the cops, dancing with rage like a tantrum-throwing sweater-wearing child.

Have you or anyone you know had an abusive, bullying boss? Have you been underpaid or maltreated by your employer? This is a chance to stand in solidarity with others, united and strong, and say: ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. We must send an unmistakeable message to Jobert and bosses like him: Treat your workers fairly.

This protest is being organized by ROC-NOLA, Restaurant Opportunities Center of New Orleans on behalf of its members who've been cheated and robbed by Tony Moran's.

All of us must KEEP THE PRESSURE ON this restaurant until management agrees to sit down and negotiate. It is vital that all New Orleanians concerned with social justice join in this effort. Last week, ROC's initial protest, went well, but let's bump the turnout up and let Jobert Salem and fat cats like him know the era of screwing over workers has ENDED.

Our city is overdue for some social justice victory... let's take a stand for our fellow restaurant workers! Please join in this important action, please invite friends and associates, please help spread publicity, and together, we'll stand strong against worker exploitation!

Thanks... and we'll see ya on the picket line!!!

HONOR, AID, RESIST

It's a tragedy when people die, when anyone dies. It's a tragedy when people who lived genuinely anarchist lives and believed in resisting authority die, and sadder when and their death prompts allies to collaborate with police.

The police-- especially the NOPD-- are enemies of the people. This is not only true when you're wearing a "Stop Snitchin'" t-shirt, in ironic homage to black communities' silence in the face of oppression and interrogation; it's true when crime happens to you and "yours." It remains true when someone with your own complexion and economic background is killed. It remains true when kids steal the tip jar from the coffee shop you work at. It remains true when a New Orleanian without adequate mental health care flips out and is shouting at invisible stuff outside the house you rent.

The NOPD will never be part of a solution. Not short-term, not long-term.

Collaboration with the police sells out everything Brydrum LIVED for and fought so hard for. Let's celebrate her rich, bold, uncompromising LIFE, her optimism, and her rejection of authority, including violently repressive authority such as the NOPD. Let's work to eradicate the misogyny and social inequities that leads to tragedies such as her death. Let's not be hypocrites.

MY DELICATE CRIME-DETECTOR IS VIBRA-TING VIOLENTLY

...and the indicator points towards the Iron Rail.

Here are some month-of-March Popular Music Concerts that it might behoove the Rail to table.

To learn more about any of these shows and other local events I recommend visiting NOLADIY.org. If you'd like to table something not on this list... anything from an opera to lunch hour at an institution of higher learning... that'd be cool too. For more info on tabling, you can contact long-suffering abuse-magnet Bryan at the e-mail address: flyerstorm at yahoo dot com.

Motorized transport is probably the name of the game for some of these shows, but 'zines tote easily in a messenger bag or backpack, and if you have two people, biking a couple big pack-loads of stuff to and from the Dragons' Den is not at all a big deal.

Help us out, make friends, seem like someone who's part of something. Please help. Heaven knows, we need the $ $ $ .

Wednesday, March 11th
Eearth Fiirst! benefit @ Candle Factory

Thursday, March 12th
Big Blue Marble @ Dragon's Den
Mars @ Saturn Bar
Dark, Dark, Dark @ Sidearm

Friday, March 13th
instrumental fest @ Big Top
one man band fest @ Saturn Bar

Saturday, March 14th
In Tomorrow's Shadow @ The Bar
instrumental fest @ Big Top
Turboslut @ Hillary's house

Sunday, March 15th
King Khan @ One Eyed Jacks
One Man Machine @ Saturn Bar
Enormous Poets: Open mic & poetry slam @ Dragon's Den

Monday, March 16th
Hurray for the Riff Raff @ Tulane (Dixon Hall)
Peelander-Z @ One Eyed Jacks
So So Glos @ Zeitgeist

Tuesday, March 17th
White Colla Crimes @ Dragon's Den
Mi Ami @ 615 Gallier

Wednesday, March 18th
The Death Set @ Saturn Bar

Friday March 20th
The Weakends @ Saturn Bar

Saturday March 21st
Alternative Media Expo @ CAC
^^^I GOT THAT WORK
Dangerous Ponies @ Hillary's house

Sunday March 22nd
Des Ark @ Ducbo (matinee)
Kylesa @ Candle Factory
This Bike is a Pipe Bomb @ Saturn Bar

Monday March 23
Pygmy Lush @ 2608 Magazine
The Queers @ Dragon's Den

Tuesday, March 24th
Masshysteri @ Nowe Miasto
Frank Gratkowski @ Blue Nile
Truth Universal @ Dragon's Den
Cling to the Trees of a Forest Fire

Friday, March 27th
Orchard of the Living @ Circle Bar
The White Bitch @ Dragon's Den

Saturday, March 28th
Angry Banana @ High Ground
Mynameisjohnmichael @ One Eyed Jacks

SUPPORT GOVERNMENT-PERSECUTED LOCAL ARTIST: SUNDAY JAN 11

This is going to be quick, because I have to hurry help prepare for tonight's IRON RAIL HOLIDAY PARTY, which I neither think sounds fun nor plan to attend. If you are less of an asshole than I, contact an Iron Rail Collective member for details or swing by the Iron Rail itself before 7 p.m. I'm sure someone will give you the 411.

Moving on: SUNDAY, January the ELEVENTH, (postponed from the 10th) there is going to be a NoLa RiSiNg PaInT PaRtY in the 3000 block of St. Peter.

Why? To support Willow Schroeder, a local artist whose scumbag gentrifying neighbors moved in across the street and then decided they didn't like the house they'd moved in across the street from because it artistically commemorates Willow's son who got shot to death.

Willow's bullying, ugly persecutors, the Taylors, are as bad as it gets. They're working hand in hand with scumbag Robert Mendoza at City Hall to try to destroy Schroeder's life. Already Schroeder has been forced to make alterations and tear down some of her work... but villainous monsters like the Taylors cannot be appeased.

To learn about this ongoing anti-art, anti-artist outrage, visit http://davidshouse.wordpress.com/ or read this choice-quote-laden article from the Times-Pic.

We at the Iron Rail salute NoLa Rising for helping draw attention and publicity to Schroeder's persecution, and stand in solidarity with ALL artists against the oppression of the state and the conformist would-be-dominance of "people" like the Taylors.

This is not at all a direct action... it's more like a fund-raiser kind of thing... but please do come by JANUARY 11, SUNDAY at ONE PM to help out or at least get more acquainted with Schroeder's work and her struggle... who knows what kind of interesting ideas you might get?

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.

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.

MUSINGS

There are many reasons to destroy society as it stands, but reducing social organization to the atomic structure of interpersonal relationships simply isn't enough; those also must be boiled away.

One never really knows where one stands with friends, don't you find? Maintaining cordial relations is a strain. A wrong word, a thoughtless gesture or a moment of human selfishness can compromise a relationship that took months or years to build. A vivid enmity, on the other hand, is as constant and reliable as the sunrise. When you deal with people overtly committed to destroying you, there's no mistaking where they're coming from. Viciousness is a consistent quality, one which rarely disappoints.

Too, a long-standing hatred has nuance, a richness and texture the bland truce of friendship can never achieve. What is friendship, after all, but a suspension of natural hostility, a temporary absence of distrust? The only things that make a friendship interesting are the subliminated cruelties it conceals, the papered-over hurts, the suppressed resentments-- the unfriendly elements.

One "knows" one's friends, and how tiresome we quickly become to one another. How quickly familiarity breeds contempt. Friends tell you things about themselves, tawdry truths, cold porridge. With an enemy, you are cut off from tedious interpersonal intimacies, safe in both directions. You get only their malevolence, from which you may seek to deduce the shape of the mind beneath. Their dislike and their efforts to hurt you function as psychic lingerie, simultaneously hiding and revealing, hinting, limning, alluring.

One's enemies seldom have difficulty identifying what it is they dislike, and isn't that refreshing? Hatred is more genuine, fundamentally more honest. Don't the things your enemies virulently despise about you ring far truer than the nebulous, patronizing crap your friends claim to like, if and when they bother to say so? Who really "gets" you, those who flatter and indulge you, or those who declare you monstrous and take action from there? Between two people who can't stand each other there can even arise a grudging respect, but at that point the relationship has strayed into perversity and should be terminated. A moment to savor the rewarding nature of this respect is acceptable, but a moment only.

Everything about friendship (or love, dare I say) is tragic in the classical sense. Tragic, because it is hubristic to suppose we can get along, or be endured. Tragic, from the deluded optimism of the outset to the bewildered obsequies concluding it. The only heroism available to a friend is to suffer on a friend's behalf, or to endure outrages a friend perpetrates. Not very stirring, unless you're a masochist. An enemy provides all sorts of opportunities for thrills, and even a hatred conducted in low-level, cold-war ways brings a frisson impossible to disentangle from sexual excitement. What will happen? How far will it go? How crazy will it get? This dynamic is heightened by the inconvenient but inarguable fact one's enemies tend to be vastly more sexually appealing than one's friends. Why this is, only science could explain.

Admit your weariness with navigating the minefield of "friendship." The wasted energy, the misunderstandings, the inevitable betrayals-- what a drag. Only in the fertile, bottomless draught of hatred do ingenuity, creativity and all the nobler parts of our nature find the sustenance they need. Being loved inspires complacency; being hated spurs us to action. How I wish I was surrounded only by those who hated me! What a luxury it would be to inhabit a world peopled entirely by enemies.

Ha! Ha!

Yes, what a delicious luxury.

NEXT TIME: MY THOUGHTS ON PARENTING

MISSIONARIES OF CAPITALISM

Guess what, New Orleans??? We're gonna be rescued by opportunistic technocrat white-collar ruling-class youth! Hurray!

Last night, in true New Orleans style, some 504 New Orleanians attended the historic launch of 504ward, an initiative designed to retain the influx of young movers and shakers who are arriving by the hundreds with dual aspirations of sparking social change and advancing their careers in the inspiring laboratory of post-Katrina New Orleans...

Leslie Jacobs, a business leader and venture philanthropist in New Orleans, spearheaded and funded 504ward. According to Jacobs, "New Orleans is experiencing a historic opportunity as the city is attracting droves of educated young people, poised to advance their careers and contribute to the rejuvenation of New Orleans... A silver lining to Hurricane Katrina has been the influx of college-educated, mission-driven 'brain gainers.' Our community must join together to retain this high-demand demographic."

YUPPIE CAREERIST SCUM GO HOME

This is not a laboratory. This is not your playground. This is not a resume item. This is a battleground, and I hope you wander outside the Green Zone and find that out the hard way.

You're the imported beaureacrats who can't speak Arabic, here to aid reconstruction. Come tour our colorful, exotic marketplaces, kids. You may not be the army-- they're already here-- but make no mistake: you're the occupation.

DEATH TO ALL WAR PROFITEERS

-- D-block