Arizona’s new immigration law has sparked fervent demonstrations and activist work of all kinds. Many cite the law as a blatant example of racial profiling, scapegoating, and hatred. Yesterday, Arizona federal judge Susan Bolton attempted to affirm the Obama administration’s position against the bill, but failed to meet the demand for an injunction that would have stopped SB1070 all together. Today, SB1070 officially goes into effect, but without many of the provisions that gave the law ‘real teeth‘.

Music artists have joined the ever- growing backlash against Arizona’s new anti-immigration law. The boycotts began two weeks ago, when Rage Against the Machine threw a benefit concert that raised $300,000 for organizations fighting the bill. More and more artists are joining what is being called the Soundstrike, including Kanye West, Cypress Hill, Tenacious D, Massive Attack, Norteno superstars Los Tigres del Norte, salsa-ska band Ozomatli, Nine Inch Nails, Maroon 5, Ben Harper, State Radio, Anti-Flag, and many more. Though some argue that the bands’ efforts will only hurt businesses in Arizona and disappoint fans, the nature of the boycott reflects the anger felt by those fighting against SB1070, a law they see as legalizing racial profiling and fueling an already thriving culture of hatred. In the video below, Zach de la Rocha speaks about the Soundstrike movement:

A number of other activist and artistic efforts have emerged in the fight against SB1070. On July 28th, a group known as Stop the Hate scaled down a construction crane in Phoenix to display a large banner calling for an injunction against the implementation of the law. In a statement released by the group, the activists point to the true nature of the law:

“We say ‘stop hate’ because SB 1070 is not immigration policy. Like the experience of the Irish, Italian, Chinese or others, SB 1070 is simply scapegoating and targeting of the most vulnerable among us in these uncertain times; times that should call us to stand together as a people. Within days of SB 1070 passing, we witnessed vicious hate crimes against Latinos in the Southwest. We know that hateful laws legitimize hateful acts and that tolerating their passage signals a dangerous direction for the country.”

Ernesto Yerena, a 23 year- old activist leader and artist, creates simple posters reminiscent of anti- war and civil rights graphics of the 1960s. Yerena grew up close to the border, and eventually found a way to blend his passion for art with his passionate resistance of the anti- immigration movement. See more of his work here.

Yesterday’s small victory is only the beginning in a long fight that will likely end up in the Supreme Court. As the fight continues, musicians, artists, and other activists will surely continue express their anger with Arizona and it’s leaders. Legislators and citizens are left with the responsibility to demand that this unjust law be stopped.

http://www.dailymotion.com/videoxe1knq

Last week, Argentina became the first Latin American country to legalize same sex marriage, joining a small but growing number of countries in the international community to do so. The video above showcases a unique expression of the joy and passion in Tango dance, which has found a new home in Argentina’s gay community.

Anti-Racism World Cup 2010
July 16-18

Donegal Celtic FC
Suffolk Road
Belfast Northern Ireland BT17

“For the last three years teams have traveled from across the world to play against teams from various ethnic minority groups and from local communities in Belfast and across Ireland.

Last years tournament involved over 500 local people and 100 international guests and was a showcase for Anti-Racism against a backdrop of an upsurge of racist attacks in Belfast.

This year we intend to bring more teams to Belfast, including for the first time a Palestinian youth team, and we intend to make the tournament the largest anti-racist event in Ireland in 2010.”

[Text and graphic from ARWC website. Thanks to Andy Hudson in northern England. Cross-posted to the blog of Goal 2010!, a World Cup soccer and social media project. ]

Complement to an earlier post on a panel on sports, politics and race at the US Social Forum in Detroit, below is a link to the audio of the event.

KPFA | Hard Knock Radio

Featuring Author Dave Zirin, hard knock contributor and artist Favianna Rodriguez, South African Trevor Ngwane, an activist and organizer, and Mike James, co founder of Athletes United For Peace. The panel is moderated by  Davey D.

Listen

[Graphic from HKR website. NB: catch it while you can – KPFA notes that the audio archive will only be available until July 12, 2010. Cross-posted to the blog of Goal 2010!, a soccer and social media project. Thanks to HP for the tip. ]

[Meanwhile, halfway across the globe:]

US Social Forum 2010

Thursday, June 23
Presentation: World Cup, Sports and Social Justice
Cobo Hall
Detroit, Michigan USA

* Dave Zirin – Author “A People’s History of Sports in the U.S.” The Edge of Sports
* Favianna Rodriguez – Presente.org‘s “Move the Game”
* LIVE from South Africa via Skype – Trevor Ngwane, Organizer for the Anti-Privatisation Forum and the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee
* moderator: Davey D

“The World Cup will is now playing live and a billion people are watching. Join us to learn about sports as a dynamic site of resistance, popular expression and community transformation.

Massive workers’ strikes, brutal sweeps of the homeless, more than 20 assassinations of whistle blowers: one version of the World Cup is now playing live on TV and more than a billion people are watching.

While the U.S. Left has largely dismissed sports as a distraction from serious organizing and the pursuit of social justice, across the globe sports are seen as a crucial site of both struggle and transformation – as a vehicle for popular expression and resistance.

In recent weeks, activists across the U.S. have been rallying wherever the Arizona Diamondbacks play to protest the racist immigration law SB 1070, demanding that Major League Baseball “move the game” – the 2011 All Star Game slated to be played in Phoenix. In an unprecedented and highly-publicized move, the NBA’s Phoenix Suns wore “Los Suns” jerseys to draw attention to the unjust legislation.

Less well-known are the community coalitions across the country that work every day to challenge public financing of corporate-owned stadiums, replace racist team mascots, and foster non-sexist practices by school districts and personnel. Sports also provide organizers with huge opportunities to build bridges “beyond the choir” and impact the dominant messages of the day.

Patrick Bond from the Center Civil Society in Durban has said: “Anytime you have [a] billion people watching, that’s called leverage.”

Join us for this inspiring session on the intersections of sports, social justice and community transformation.”

[Cross-posted to the blog of Goal 2010!, a soccer and social media project. Thanks to HP on site in Detroit for the tip!]

The U.S. Social Forum begins this week. From June 22-26 non-profit organizations, artists, activists, socialists, anarchists, and capitalist social change entrepreneurs alike will be gathering from around the country in Michigan’s own Motor City. What will commence is a week of workshops, people’s assemblies, seminars, lectures, camaraderie, alliance building, and general social change brainstorming. Needless to say, Detroit will be serving as a venue for one of the largest change-makers assemblies to date.

The USSF website states, “The US Social Forum (USSF) is a movement building process. It is not a conference but it is a space to come up with the peoples’ solutions to the economic and ecological crisis. The USSF is the next most important step in our struggle to build a powerful multi-racial, multi-sectoral, inter-generational, diverse, inclusive, internationalist movement that transforms this country and changes history.”

With well over 20,000 people registered, the forum is looking to be a powerful, moving, and productive event.

Our very own Donald Russell will be attending this year as a Provisions Library delegate. As well, our friends at the Floating Lab Collective will be partaking in a plethora of events, interventions, performances, and workshops across the forum and the city proper, including the exchange of a Floating Lab currency with others at the forum, collaborations with poets for a projection project and a tentative ride on a grease powered bus through Detroit. Click here for Floating Lab’s Twitter feed, which will be updated frequently throughout the week on their highlights, thoughts, and adventures.

Provisions Library and Floating Lab will likely be attending many of the following workshops throughout the week:

Art Is Change: Art & Creative Practice for Cultural and Political Transformation

Reclaiming Place, Restoring & Sustaining Living Communities

Off Grid and Unplugged: Sustainable Lifestyle Choices & Renewable Resistance

Community Currencies, Microcredit, and Banks: The Banco Palmas Model

Ending Mountaintop Removal

Creative Think Tank

Creative Organizing: Using Puppetry and Performance to Move Your Campaign

And many more

Click here for a full list of workshops at the Forum.

If you are not able to make it to Detroit this year, you may be able to catch some of the action at the USSF audio and video feeds.

In response to the vast amount of poverty and struggle within Detroit, a direct result of capitalist failure and crises, Detroit itself has become a quickly transforming hub of grassroots and progressive social movements; however, there is much work to be done. One of the coolest aspects of this year’s USSF are the Work Projects and Work Brigades: “Leading up to the forum, hundreds of folks are coming in Work Brigades to support and work with Detroiters, from gardening to healing, screen-printing, exchanging organizing methods & retrofitting houses. During the forum there will be Work Projects where folks can go into the community and get their hands dirty making real-life, needed improvements here in Detroit which will last long after the Forum.”

As well, individuals will be able to partake in socially conscious tours of Detroit: “Detroit is a living historical center. We will be doing tours of the gardens of Detroit, labor tours, movement tours – there are so many ways to see this amazing place you will be in.”

Detroit, as one of the most economically devastated metropolises in this country, might not seem like an ideal canvass for positive thinking or change making at first glance; however, one needs to take note of, not a supposedly terrifying absence of capital flow, but the birth of social movements within Detroit, which have arisen in the chasm created by the abandonment of industry and the powers of capitalism therein, despite the concurrent struggle therein. Over the past couple of years, Detroit has slowly become a center of alternative community, economy, and green movements and is now serving as the birth place of a powerful and unified national force of social movement: another Detroit is possible, another world is possible.

16 June 1976: ‘This is our day’
by Lucille Davie

“It is a day violently etched on the South African collective conscience. Commemorated over 30 years later as Youth Day, an official holiday, it is the day that honours the deaths of hundreds of Soweto schoolchildren, a day that changed the course of the country’s history: 16 June 1976.

On that day the government and the police were caught off guard, when the simmering bubble of anger of schoolchildren finally burst, releasing an intensity of emotion that the police controlled in the only manner they knew how: with ruthless aggression. SA History Online puts the number of dead at 200, far higher than the official figure of 23.”

more

[From the History and Heritage section of SouthAfrica.info. Photo by Sam Nzima. Cross-posted to the blog of Goal 2010!, a soccer and social media project.]

Arizona’s racial profiling law, also know as SB 1070, is raising deep questions about American ideals of equality and fairness by making racism and racial profiling the law of the land in Arizona.

Sweet Honey In The Rock, the critically acclaimed and socially conscious a capella group is bringing out a song for Arizona: Are We A Nation?

The Center for Community Change is offering a free download of the new song here.

DC area folks,

This month attend “Sowing Seeds Here and Now: A Chesapeake Urban Farming Summit” on June 18th.

Beltsville Agricultural Research Center (BARC) 10300 Baltimore Ave College Park, MD 20705

Click here to learn more about all of the exciting and extensive list of workshops, seminars, speakers, etc. which range from learning about the drastic links between food and health to how to plan an urban farm and the connection between food, farming, and environmental justice.

“The goal of our one-day hands-on learning and strategizing event is to catalyze and support urban farming throughout our greater metropolitan DC area.”

The purpose of this piece is to visualize the vast network of altruistic human organizations in every country, city, and community around the world, all working in parallel together. Despite their enormous diversity of size, focus, and geographic location, these organizations are all united around a core set of values in which compassion and stewardship are made highest priorities. The hundreds of millions of individuals who are creating and running these organizations bring a nourishing richness of passion, imagination, and integrity to this process. In that way I think of this piece as being like a compass, pointing toward a true source of hope and inspiration for our times.

Link.