A Canadian police officer started it all 

Women, quite understandably, were annoyed at this as this is a view that should have died a long, long time ago. The view that a woman dressing in a provocative manner would provide a man with an excuse to rape the woman should have died when Susan Brownmiller came out with "Against Our Will " back in 1975.

In April, Brian was arrested during the police response to a robbery of a corner store in West Philadelphia. Neither armed nor having taken part in the robbery, Brian has been locked up since the incident, and while confident he will beat the charges, he’s not been able to make bail.

In the meantime Brian has been separated from his partner who is now several months pregnant and taking care of their children. Brian is also an important fixture at LAVA, a community space on Lancaster Ave., often helping out at the Library and at our Thursday food giveaway.  He’s needed and missed out on the street!

We need to raise $3000 for Brian to get back out and back holding things down at LAVA and providing important support for his children and his partner.

We are asking for donations for his bail as well as loans which can be paid back when his trial wraps up (possibly up to a year from now).  Donations using paypal should be sent to freebrian@lavazone.org.

Last Wednesday, we set up a beautiful new magazine rack. Bluntly put, it's straight up amazing! Currently it contains past issues of Hip Mama, Clamor, El Libertario, Bitch, some comics and a compelling report on solitary confinement units. It had been floating around LAVA with little sense of purpose for months, but it found it's place: a perfect little nook just between Black Studies and Self Help.

Word has spread and people have been coming in to check it out. Come in yourself and have your picture taken with it to impress your friends!

Even Mumia is smiling.

This is the first installment of a blog, written by a member of the defenestrator collective, about autonomous politics in Chile.

Earlier this week I went to La Legua, a neighborhood in the Santiago, the capital of Chile. La Legua is a población, which is a term used to refer to working class neighborhoods that were often formed in huge land occupations in the middle of the 20^th century. It was explained to me that La Legua was one of the few neighborhoods were there was open, popular resistance to the US-backed coup of General Augosto Pinochet on September 11^th, 1973.