Taala Hooghan Event Listings

Here are the listings of a few events coming up...

Hope to see you all soon!

Taala Hooghan Infoshop is Moving...Again!

Greetings from the Taala Hooghan Infoshop Collective & Outta Your Backpack Media,

Flagstaff’s community info and action resource center, Taala Hooghan Infoshop & Youth Media Arts Center, is moving… again! After 4 months of not being able to publicly open the doors of the downtown location, we have found an awesome new space on Second St. in Sunnyside!

As some of you already know, when we signed the lease on the downtown location we thought we’d be able to open right away, but the city shut the entire building down. Everyone renting a space in the warehouse was prevented from opening due to the property owner not getting the necessary permits to do construction on the building. You may recall that Flagstaff’s Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) was our neighbor for a moment until the situation got to be too frustrating for them.

While we tried to work with the owner and await the city’s decisions on permits, we have also kept an eye out for possible other locations in the event that we would not be able to open or if the process would take too long. The two main reasons for why we have made the final decision to move are:

1) We were never given a clear timeframe for when we could be open (and after 4 months we’re very tired of waiting); and 2) We found an amazing space on the east side that is more accessible (financially and otherwise) to us as a collective.

There were initial issues in the community that moved us to open our doors on the Sunnyside two years ago that we feel important to restate as we now move back:

1. There are not as many opportunities for community empowerment and positive activities/space for youth on the east side.
2. The downtown privilege dynamic. Folks in downtown and close proximity to the university have access to a lot of resources that just aren’t available on the east side.

We also want to take this as an opportunity for us to advocate for community support. Not only for Taala Hooghan and Outta Your Backpack Media, but for all community based projects that are working towards empowerment and justice.
Too many times we hear groans of how developed Flagstaff and the surrounding areas are becoming but we see little pro-action to build and support the alternatives. We witnessed and participated in the resistance to big box development and saw that energy potential. We have witnessed the Wildfire Infoshop, the Hive Project, Railtown Infoshop, Aradia (albeit a bookstore bussiness, Aradia was a powerful community resource) and the very very few other truly community based and oriented projects. We’ve also seen other projects (and people) without spaces attacked and forced out of state controlled so-called “community centers” for their political affinities or “otherness”. This is exemplified with the ongoing harassment (which has resulted in multiple arrests) of volunteers with Food Not Bombs Flagstaff who are merely trying to address one of our primary issues here in Flagstaff, hunger. We see the deeper, systemic roots in the anti-homeless actions that the City of Flagstaff continues to take and unaddressed police abuse that is all to familiar to those who are bestowed by the state and its agents. We also have seen it with criminalization of youth at Heritage Square and most severely with the ICE raids that shook our neighborhoods fourteen months ago.

So when(and how) do we build and support the alternatives? Taala Hooghan Infoshop is not an office, we are not businesses, and we’re certainly not politicians. We are not non-profit, we are anti-profit. We are a community resource and we have a vision for a more just, healthy, and sustainable community. We don’t have illusions that everyone shares this same vision either.

After being open for two years in Sunnyside we felt torn to move. It was great seeing new faces in the downtown area and we certainly hope you’re not strangers once again.

We hope that everyone’s interests in supporting community empowerment projects such as Taala Hooghan Infoshop & Outta Your Backpack Media aren’t dependent upon location, but rather the deeper vision of pro-actively building a more healthy, just, and sustainable community.

We look forward to seeing you at our volunteer meetings, shows, film screenings, media workshops, skill-shares and more in the years to come!

Please join us at our next volunteer meeting this Friday (Feb. 6th at 5PM @ the downtown location (11 S. Mikes Pike).

If you can’t make tomorrow’s meeting and would like to get further involved, please email infofosho@gmail.com. We will also be around the downtown location throughout the next week, cleaning and moving everything back to the east side. Please stop by in the afternoon to help us in this process!

Thank you,

Taala Hooghan Infoshop Collective & OYBMedia

This Sunday: January's Beer & Revolution with John Zerzan!

(Click image for bigger version)

Sunday, January 31st, Phoenix Class War Council will be hosting its fifth (if we remember right) Beer and Revolution event. This is the first one for 2010 and we're stoked to have John Zerzan, anarcho-primitivist theorist and agitator. John will be speaking on "Anarchism and the Way Forward". Also, Dan Todd from Tucson, coming fresh from his book release the night before, will be giving some opening remarks under the provocative title “One Misapprehension, One Paradox, and Three Disparities”. The talk starts a little earlier than the last few (7 PM), so make sure you get there early. Plus, we'll have our book distro with us as well, so after the talk, please peruse our selection of anarchist and revolutionary books, magazines and pamphlets. Come by and enjoy an evening discussing revolutionary ideas with us at Boulders in Tempe (530 East Broadway). We look forward to seeing you there!

Call for Diné, O'odham, anarchist/anti-authoritarian bloc at the 1/16 anti-Arpaio rally

The following is a call for a united Diné, O'odham, anarchist/anti-authoritarian bloc at this Saturday's (January 16th) anti-Arpaio march in Phoenix. The text of the article was developed and circulated initially by the Phoenix Class War Council and comrade collective O'odham Solidarity Across Borders over the last month. Several meetings took place and comments were solicited and received by comrades in town and throughout the state in order to clarify and expand our critique.

While this article does not and could not represent a complete articulation of the problems we see, it is an attempt to move towards a broader dialog within the movement, to point out perceived errors and to suggest another way of looking at the issue that we think could prove useful. It is, in a way, a statement of some of our common principles but it is not by any means the end of the conversation.

The bloc will converge before the 10:00 march at Falcon Park and then head with everyone else to Tent city. It's possible to take public transit to the park. People should be advised that we have information that, as usual, reactionaries/fascists/Minuteklan, etc, will be marching from another location to confront the protesters.

To view the call for the Diné, O'odham, anarchist/anti-authoritarian bloc please visit Fires Never Extinguished

See you on the streets. All out against white supremacy!

STOP Snowbowl! Protest 12/19

Greetings,

The struggle to protect the Holy San Francisco Peaks and community health from ski resort expansion and wastewater snowmaking continues.

Although a current lawsuit filed by the Save the Peaks Coalition and community members has halted the ski business' efforts to make sewage snow, community support is still needed.

In the face of political pressure from the State of Arizona's Congressional Delegation, (more) the US Forest Service approved a component of the ski area's proposed development that is not associated with snowmaking.

Regardless of the approval Snowbowl cannot currently expand due to the lawsuit.

While it is unclear as to how long the court case will stop Snowbowl from expanding and making sewer water snow, in the context of the legal battle the Obama administration is doing everything in their power to put wastewater snow on the holy San Francisco Peaks.

When the Arizona Snowbowl Ski Resort opened on Thursday, a small group of protesters held signs and banners to ensure that skiers were aware of public health threats and the desecration of the sacred mountain.

Arizona Snowbowl employees called the Forest Service and County Sheriffs in an attempt to have the protesters and others with them arrested for "trespassing" on public lands. No charges were made.

You can join us in our stand for the protection of sacred places and community health.

PROTEST SNOWBOWL!
When: Saturday, December 19th starting at 10AM
Where: Flagstaff City Hall on the Rt. 66 side

If you can't join us please visit http://www.savethepeaks.org for more information on what you can do to help stop Snowbowl and protect sacred places!


Note: This event is not endorsed by the Save the Peaks Coalition.

Hopeless Escalation.

Hopeless Escalation.
Community Protest Against Obama's Troop Escalation
Saturday, December 5, 2009

On Saturday (12/5), dozens of Flagstaff residents gathered on the City Hall lawn to protest Barack Obama's decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan. On the preceding Tuesday (12/1) Barack Obama announced that the United $tates would be sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, set to start in the upcoming months.

After co-opting anti-war sentiment during the 2008 presidential election, Obama has since escalated the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq. In February 2009, Obama ordered 17,000 more combat troops to Afghanistan, furthering the U.$. occupation. Obama is also responsible for illegal and immoral attacks against Palestinians, immigrants, women, children, and other marginalized peoples, all of which have been committed by the U.$. government.

With Tuesdays announcement, the U.$. will be sending an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. This recent deployment will raise the level of U.S. troops in Afghanistan to more than 100,000. Ironically, this announcement came less than 2 months after Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

On Saturday, Flagstaff community members responded to the troop surge and we encourage more people to get involved locally. Anti-war actions have also taken place in Philadelphia, Portland, New York and internationally.


CHANGE DOES NOT EQUAL WAR

posted on arizona.indymedia.org



..//./.libertad././/..

Beer and Revolution is Back: Activism vs. Intervention with Crudo

by Jon Riley

Phoenix Class War Council's Beer and Revolution returns from a brief hiatus this Sunday. We are pleased to announce this month's installment of B&R will be hosted by our friend and comrade, Crudo, from the Modesto Anarcho Crew (MAC).

Our last B&R in September was a roundtable discussion on Borders & Movement, 30 people attended, including perspectives from CAROB (Central Arizona Radicals Opposing Borders) and the O'odham Solidarity Across Borders Collective. While we've been very busy, we are glad to know that anarchists and anti-authoritarians in the Valley enjoy participating in a political night, and we will try to continue scheduling a monthly night for speakers and discussion.

We find a lot of value in this event, especially as we look for fractures or fissures in our daily lives, and by making a traditionally non-political space (a bar) a temporary political space where liberatory ideas can be discussed openly. We hope projects like B&R inspire others to look for unconventional approaches to challenging the banality and misery of life in modern class society.

We also find inspiration in the projects of our insurrectional pals from California's central valley. The folks from MAC are busy as hell, giving it a go at building unconventional alliances amongst the discontented and marginalized, from hip hop shows against the recent gang injunctions, to supporting the efforts of the local needle exchange (a harm reduction effort for Modesto's poorer needle users that has seen it's members under attack by the police, please read more here), intervening in local struggles against education fee hikes and the nurses strike, publishing the quarterly Modesto Anarcho paper and Crudo's Vengeance journal and blog, and operating an impressive anarchist social center"Firehouse 51." With a higher poverty level than the rest of the state (which is itself a sinking ship these days), Modesto, and other Central Valley anarchists, have their work cut out for them.

Come out this Sunday for some delicious beers, or perhaps a soda or water for non-drinkers, and some great political discussion, critique, thought, and debate. We wouldn't have it any other way!

The November gathering of Beer & Revolution will once again be held this Sunday, November 8th at Boulders on Broadway in Tempe. The night begins at 8PM, and Crudo will begin his talk at 8:30, come out and have some tasty drinks, meet and mingle with other like minded people, and enjoy another great political social night. See you there!