The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is leading a one-day strike on April 1st. In Illinois, leaders of both political parties have orchestrated an artificial budget crisis. Under the pretext of this false scarcity of resources people like Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner are firing teachers, closing schools, and wreaking havoc on public education.
Something particularly notable out this strike is that it is not just the CTU out there today. The strike is being billed as a call to action for entire city. This makes it unique.
Read moreThe world must know. The world simply must know, must be shaken by the shoulders until it collectively acknowledges that something like the Monks can exist. That there can be such a thing as “avant-garde garage rock,” and that it can be played by active American G.I.’s increasingly alienated with the army. It needs to know, fifty years to the calendar month after the release of their only album.
Ten years back there was in fact something of a surge in interest around the Monks. A documentary was made, a tribute album was put out featuring the (International) Noise Conspiracy, the Fall, and a few other recognized inheritors of the garage rock sound.
Read moreThe Communal Order of the Ouroboros is written by St. Guillotine and illustrated by Craig E. Ross. You can read this comic from the beginning by clicking here. The Communal Order of the Ouroboros is a highly esoteric yet self-proclaimed open coven for all Communist witches, warlocks, and other magical and/or mystical Marxists. This comic is the magical diary or "Communist Grimoire" told through the first person perspectives of 5 communist witches who start a coven dedicated to using any magical means necessary to overthrow the dictatorship of capital.
Read moreNo, Red Wedge will not be fucking moving to Canada, no matter how close to reality the phrase "President Trump" may be getting... With all due respect to our canuck comrades.
What we will be doing, however, is presenting not one but two panels at this year's North American iteration of Historical Materialism, which will be held at York University in Toronto on the 13th, 14th and 15th of May. The abstracts for the panels are below.
As the first abstract says, we are planning to premiere Red Wedge No. 2, "Art Against Global Apartheid" at the conference...
Read moreSixteen men were executed in the aftermath of the Easter Rising – the seizure of the General Post Office in Dublin by Irish volunteers that took place one hundred years ago this week. Among those executed was James Connolly: leader of the Irish Citizen Army, trade unionist, revolutionary Marxist, de facto commander-in-chief of the Easter Rising.
Connolly has been canonized in the century since his death. That death – at the hands of an occupying British Army – is by itself enough to command respect of anyone concerned with self-determination, but there is also a certain tragedy in how overlooked his eloquent words and ideas can be, even today.
Read moreRed Wedge will be publishing a series of articles surrounding the April 1st strike. These will deal with the impact of austerity on artists, educators and social life, both materially and ideologically; the ongoing neoliberal assault on all that is not of practical and immediate use to capital. We are putting out a call for artists, in the coming two weeks, to make drawings, collages, graphic images, or anything else that might be of use to the struggle. Submit your images to us by March 27 for consideration.
Read moreIt just so happened
I was stumbling, bumbling, fumbling around
a bit tipsy and lit from the whisky that day.
I walked, talked, and came across some chalk,
Which in big, bright, bulbous letters yelled,
“Lecture this way!”
Read moreThere is nothing about that six second video that is not wonderful and beautiful. A diverse crowd of anti-racists – Black Lives Matter of course, but also supporters of Bernie Sanders, immigrant rights and anti-Islamophobia activists – jumping up and down and shouting Kendrick Lamar lyrics in celebration: they just shut down Donald Trump.
Trump supporters and other conservatives – as well as Trump himself – are now whining about “thugs,” and threatening to show up at Sanders’ rallies. Centrists and a great many liberals are wringing their hands about whether Trump’s “free speech” has been violated – as if Trump or his supporters have ever shown such regard for our right to express ourselves.
Read moreYes, there were Dada women!
One hundred years of Dada this year. Cabaret Voltaire lasted less than six months from its opening, February 1916 in Zurich, Switzerland. Who would have guessed that its obscure beginning would herald a world-rocking negativity that was at the same time an ardent demand for renewal?
The group, idea, movement that it created, Dada, itself didn’t last very long but quickly mutated into surrealism and somehow made its radical presence known worldwide.
Read moreThe Chicago Women's Graphics Collective, much like the Chicago Women's Liberation Union and its Rock Band, is one of those neglected facets of the feminist movement in the 1970's. That is beginning to change with the release of films like She's Beautiful When She's Angry, as well as a broader interest being shown by a younger generation of feminists in their roots and history. The Graphics Collective created stunning work, some of which has found itself into the most well known iconographic annals of "the Long Sixties," even if its creators are far too infrequently acknowledged.
The text below is from Estelle Carol, a founding member of the CWGC. Still a feminist and socialist, she is now one half of the political cartoon duo Carol-Simpson, as well as a web designer in suburban Chicago. She also helps maintain the CWLU Herstory Project.
Read moreHow can we crack the vote? We can't - it's made
of blood. It's built of creaking spines and skulls,
surrounded by a hundred filthy gulls
grown fat and sleek from scraps piled in the shade.
No, we can't crack it, only grab its tail
and climb the gory bones straight to the neck
and cling on for dear life, we scrabbling specks,
Read more
