Interesting and important things that we love and want to support, and hope you will too!
We thought it maybe fun to share some potential PM Press Staff Recommendations for you to get to know (if you don’t already!) some groups/books/things that make us smile and that we think are doing great work, thoughtful organizing, or just rad stuff that it worth looking at more than once.
Zinn Education Project
The Zinn Education Project (named after Howard Zinn) offers more than 100 free, downloadable teaching activities for middle and high school classrooms to bring people’s history to the classroom. The site also lists hundreds of recommended books, films and websites. The teaching activities and resources are organized by theme, time period and grade level. This is the only collection of its kind for educators and activists — print or online — in the country.
Skateistan: The Tale of Skateboarding in Afghanistan
Skateistan – The Tale of Skateboarding in Afghanistan shares the strange and beautiful intersection of traditional Afghan society and a new generation of Afghan skateboarders and artists growing up in a warzone. Through a balanced mix of words and photographs, the book pieces together the tale of grassroots NGO Skateistan, which since 2009 has brought skateboarding, creative arts, and new education opportunities to girls and boys in war-torn Kabul, Afghanistan. The NGO has been able to replicate its unique project model in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan.
Bishop Brand
Bishop
Brand is an independent online record store featuring vintage,
subculture and pop culture media and merchandise. Not to mention classic
motorcycle-related stuff!
Help Open the Omni Commons & donate to their IndieGoGo!
The
Omni Commons already hosts an array of organizations: hackerspace Sudo
Room, citizen science laboratory Counter Culture Labs, food justice
project Food Not Bombs, worker-owned cafe and bookstore La Commune,
the Bay Area Public School free university, small press Timeless,
Infinite Light and more, including a community print shop, a shared
music studio, and a celluloid film processing lab.
The projects
in our community are inclusive and diverse: from a community lab for DIY
biology and citizen science, to a community wireless network that
provides free public Wi-Fi, to reclaiming food to ensure all are fed and
a horizontally-organized all-volunteer school! The building can
accommodate this because there are a range of shared spaces – including a
giant ballroom and theater – where you can do everything from host mass
meetings to stage performances, readings, and classes, and it will be
available on a sliding scale basis to the public.
Perspectives on Anarchist Theory journal
This journal always includes thought-provoking and worthwhile essays and reviews. The theme of the newest issue is “Strategy.” Back issues can be browsed and downloaded via the above link but the physical copies make great gifts because (a) they’re so beautifully designed and printed, and (b) purchasing Perspectives helps support the Institute for Anarchist Studies, a nonprofit foundation that has supported projects from authors around the world.
Comics for Change box set
This is a great gift for folks who are interested in social justice, art, and political comics, even if they don’t live in Oregon. Each of the ten small comic zines brings together a team of writers and illustrators to profile someone working for justice at a grassroots level, including an Indonesian refugee who became a civil rights lawyer and a Klickitat chief who has fought for tribal fishing rights and against storage of nuclear waste near the Columbia River. Engaging and accessible examples of people’s history with great art to boot.
2015 organizers from Justseeds and Eberhardt Press
Justseeds and Eberhardt Press have produced planner-sized and pocket-sized organizers for 2015, made to be both attractive and durable, with a ring binding and cover art by Mazatl and Bec Young. Inside, a different Justseeds artist’s work is featured for each month. Also recommended are Eberhardt’s other books and zines.
CIVIO, A Civil Rights Card Game
CIVIO
is a card game that has you starting as an intern at a law firm
specializing in civil rights. Each card represents either laws, Supreme
Court decisions, constitutional amendments, key issues, rights and
freedoms, players combine these cards into precedents.
A geeky, fun, educational card game for anyone interested in civil rights and the legal system.
We Are Family
We Are Family is a cool group of people (many of which have come to the organization thru the school of punk rock) that serve the needs of shut-in senior citizens in the Washington DC area. Besides, Mark Andersen (one of the main cats there) co-authored one of the definitive books on the DC punk scene called “Dance of Days” (which you should also buy).
Disassembly Required: A Field Guide to Actually Existing Capitalism
by Geoff Mann
A
wonderful and easy-reading book that lays bare the often complex
economic concepts of modern capitalism that are all too often presented
as indisputable truths of supposedly democratic societies and how they
actually work in reality as opposed to the textbook theories
continuously claimed by their proponents. It is published by fellow
comrades in arms AK Press who are also fighting for a more just world.
subMedia.tv: A Decade of Subversion DVD
$15 for an excellent collection of 10 years of anarchist cinema! Why not? Plus it helps fund the Submedia projects for 2015.
Donate to NYC Books Through Bars
You can help get books to prisoners and get something in return for a donation of $50 or more. And you can choose to do it in someone else’s name.
Shellshag – Fuck Society Volume 1 LP
Shellshag put on one of the best shows I’ve seen in recent years. This collection of covers is a good introduction with at least a couple tunes that might be familiar to most people. Sample tunes available at the link.
Addiction Motors
Addiction
Motors is a Bay Area co-op that specializes in motorcycle repair,
maintenance, education and sales. Cool folks who will help you learn how
to fix your own cycle and/or do it for you at a fair price.
Donate to the Equal Justice Initiative
The
Equal Justice Initiative is a private, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization
that provides legal representation to indigent defendants and prisoners
who have been denied fair and just treatment in the legal system.
They
litigate on behalf of condemned prisoners, juvenile offenders, people
wrongly convicted or charged with violent crimes, poor people denied
effective representation, and others whose trials are marked by racial
bias or prosecutorial misconduct. EJI works with communities that have
been marginalized by poverty and discouraged by unequal treatment. They
are small, fiesty and underfunded. Please consider looking into the work
they do, and supporting them doing it.
Donate to the Freedom of the Press Foundation and Donate to Support Encryption Tools for Journalists
Freedom
of the Press Foundation is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated
to helping support and defend public-interest journalism focused on
exposing mismanagement, corruption, and law-breaking in government. We
accept tax-deductible donations to a variety of journalism organizations
that push for transparency and accountability, and we work to preserve
and strengthen the rights guaranteed to the press under the First
Amendment.
Freedom of the Press Foundation is built on the
recognition that this kind of transparency journalism — from publishing
the Pentagon Papers and exposing Watergate, to uncovering the NSA’s
warrantless wiretapping program and CIA secret prisons — doesn’t just
happen. It requires dogged work by journalists, and often, the courage
of whistleblowers and others who work to ensure that the public actually
learns what it has a right to know.
