Anticut 1: Friday, June 3

From Bay of Rage, a new anti-capitalist initiative in the Bay Area:

This is the first in a series of counterausterity marches and events we have planned for this summer, in order to begin assembling an anticapitalist force capable of combating the current age of budget cuts and economic violence. This initial event -- a roving street party ending in a guerrilla film-screening -- coincides with First Friday and Art Murmur because we want to draw attention to the fact that while the gentrification of certain areas of Oakland continues via mechanisms like First Friday, the majority of Oakland residents will face a new round of punishing budgets cuts, staggering levels of unemployment and an increasingly militarized police force. This is no accident. Just as on a national level the money cut from education and public assistance reappears as bank bailouts and tax cuts for the rich, the wealth squeezed out of certain parts of Oakland reappears in other parts of the city, in the form of art galleries and expensive restaurants, new condominiums and police weapons. So come take the streets with us on Friday night as we show our power.

We expect this to be a disruptive but relatively low-risk event. Our intent is to build up momentum, energy and intensity over the course of the summer.

Get your flyers for Anticut #1 here

Also, mark your calendars now. Anticut #2 will be taking the streets on the afternoon of June 17 at the same location. More info to come.

Also, check out these thoughts from Socialism and/or Barbarism and this killer analysis of austerity:

The only possible response to the antinomies of anti-austerity politics -- which breakdown all too often into a fight between anti-tax and pro-welfare populisms -- is to say that if we had direct, immediate access to such things, we would need neither state provision nor its powers of taxation. Only when capital is a natural, unsurpassable horizon does this appear as a real problem.