Aid and Abet

May Newsletter May 27, 2009

Hey Everyone!

We know you’re busy wrapping up the school year and preparing for summer, and we’re busy too, booking events for the fall and helping all sorts of cool authors and filmmakers get the word out about their awesome projects. Look for lots of updates and new additions to the roster over the summer.

Please remember if you are moving, please keep us posted on your new contact information and any new contacts at your school or organization!

Here are the updates:

Shira Tarrant’s Men and Feminism is now on bookstore shelves! Make sure you get your hands on a copy before the fall, when she’ll be touring around the U.S. Right, we’re booking events for October on the East Coast, between Boston and D.C. Get in touch if you’d like to schedule her for a talk at your school or organization.

Plans for Malik Rahim’s upcoming tour are kicking into high gear, and we are now pursuing speaking engagements for Fall 2009. We are looking for anchor stops, particularly on the West Coast, where Malik, co-founder of Common Ground Relief in New Orleans, can speak on any and all of these topics: 1. COINTELPRO, Katrina-Style (on Brandon Darby and beyond); 2. racial currents in post-Katrina New Orleans; and 3. the ongoing work of Common Ground Relief, including but not limited to rebuilding homes, bioremediation, and wetlands restoration. Please get in touch now if you’d like Malik to stop in your city or town.

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Cristy Road Featured in Brooklyn Group Art Exhibit May 6, 2009

Aid & Abet speaker and acclaimed underground artist and zinester Cristy Road will have work featured in an upcoming group exhibit in Brooklyn later this month.

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LEAVE HOME Binds varying linear structures with the sparkling connections between our souls and our soil. Home is dissected. As Brooklyn slowly transgresses into a development landmine, we hold on to the purity of bricks, concrete, our soil, our urban breeding ground, and the spurts of nature which trickle inbetween. Our identities, and our connections to our home, vary as much as our artistic renderings; but in the end converge into a collective act of visual chaos. 

Originally from the concrete depths of New Jersey; Lauren Denitzio seems to have spent a lifetime fervently investing her creativity in punk rock. Aside from being the guitarist/vocalist for The Measure [sa] (New Brunswick, NJ), Denitzio has been creating artwork, of varying visual degrees under the moniker Black & Red Eye, using thoughtful linework, an eccentric and beautiful use of patterns, and textures foreign to atypical art supplies.

Through her art and writing, Cristy C. Road blends social principles, sexual deviance, mental inadequacies, and her Cuban, punk, and queer identities. Her preferred medium is Micron Ink pens, Sharpies, and Chartpak markers. Although, coloring techniques range from Markers, Fluid Acrylic, and occasional digital color for most commissioned work. Her obsession with making art accessible began when publishing GREEN’ZINE in 1996. This snowballed into years of illustrating for punk bands, magazines, non-profit organizations, and more. In the last five years Road has released Indestructible, an illustrated novel about adolescence, Distance Makes the Heart Grow Sick , a book postcards, and Bad Habits, her most recent illustrated novel about healing, self-change, and irresponsibility, and partying hard. 

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April Newsletter April 22, 2009

April Greetings from Aid & Abet!

It’s been a busy month of travels and tours for all of us. A couple weeks ago, we met face-to-face — a rare event! — in New York City to discuss where we’re at and where we’re headed with Aid & Abet. The meeting was great, we covered a lot of ground in a couple of hours, and we look forward to implementing some exciting new changes in the not-too-far-off future. We’ll be sure to let you know when we do!

Aside from meeting up, we’ve all been traveling here and there throughout New England and the Northeast. Jen and Justine presented our “Publicity on a Shoestring” workshop at the Women, Action and the Media (WAM) conference to an enthusiastic packed room. Jen joined up with former Clamor folks in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia to talk about her pamphlet, “Becoming the Media.” Matt had a good time checking out the NYC Anarchist Book Fair and chatting with folks there. And Justine trekked to New York to accompany Robert Hillary King to a Black Panther-sponsored event in Harlem and two well-received panels on prisoners and prisons at the Left Forum.

These were just three of the 19 talks Robert King, author of the autobiography From the Bottom of the Heap and the only freed member of the Angola 3, made on his 19-day tour of the U.S. Northeast, which wraps up this week in Philadelphia. The packed tour has gone very well, averaging 60-70 people at each event to hear Robert’s powerful, moving story. We will continue working with Robert King throughout the summer and fall, so please get in touch if you’d like him to head your way next time out. In the meantime, the campaign to free Robert’s Angola 3 comrades is gaining momentum and can always use more support.

In other news — look for these terrific Aid & Abet authors, artists and activists in the next few months . . .

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Updates: Angola 3 and Robert Hillary King’s tour March 21, 2009

The latest Action Alert from the International Coalition to Free the Angola 3 reports that Herman Wallace of the Angola 3 has been unexpectedly transferred to Hunt Correctional Facility in St. Gabriel. Supporters discovered this news earlier this week when they went to Angola to visit Herman and he wasn’t there. Details will be released upon further investigation. Sign up here to receive Action Alerts about the Angola 3.

Also, be sure to check out Mother Jones’ ongoing terrific coverage of the Angola 3, including a great story about Robert Hillary King’s “Convict Confection” — aka his homemade pralines, which can be purchased online at www.kingsfreelines.com. Yum!

And — last but not least! — speaking of Robert King: his April tour in the U.S. Northeast is falling into place. Full details can be found at our Upcoming Events page. Please come hear King if you’re in the area — you won’t be disappointed!

March 2009 Newsletter March 17, 2009