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http://www.ybca.org
Center for the Arts, Yerba Buena, San Francisco
First Floor Galleries: Mar 18 - Jul 2, 2006

Pirkle Jones, Women, Free Huey Rally, Oakland, 1968

We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black Community.

So begins the ten-point political platform of the Black Panther Party. Coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Party, Black Panther Rank and File offers a multifaceted look at one of the 20th century's most controversial and inspirational organizations.

The exhibition pairs rare artifacts--never-before-released documents, recordings, film clips and archival photos, including seminal historical photography--with artworks inspired by the movement and reflecting its liberating ideals. A range of photography, film and artworks from leading contemporary artists will reflect upon the Party's lasting legacy. Also on view will be works by artists who were creating during the rise of the Party. This complex and powerful exhibition uses the Black Panther Party as a lens through which we can explore the role artists play in inspiring social change, and in remembering and reflecting on human struggle and achievement.

Artist list:
Radcliffe Bailey
John Bankston
Ruth-Marion Baruch
Joseph Beuys
Margaret Bourke-White
Nick Cave
Emory Douglas
Ducho Dennis
Sam Durant
Coco Fusco
Ellen Gallagher
Leon Golub
Tony Gray
David Hammons
Ilka Hartmann
Barkley L. Hendricks
Lonnie Bradley Holley
Jeff Hull
It's About Time
Arthur Jafa
Paa Joe
Pirkle Jones
Kerry James Marshall
Daniel J. Martinez
Chris McNair
Zwelethu Mthethwa
Refa 1, Steve Jones and Toons
Paul Sequeira
Stephen Shames
Gail Shaw
Jeff Sonhouse
Carlos Vega
Roberto Visani
Andy Warhol
Carrie Mae Weems
and others

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http://creativecommons.org/

Creative Commons licenses provide a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors, artists, and educators. We have built upon the "all rights reserved" concept of traditional copyright to offer a voluntary "some rights reserved" approach. We're a nonprofit organization. All of our tools are free.

About Us
"Some Rights Reserved": Building a Layer of Reasonable Copyright

Too often the debate over creative control tends to the extremes. At one pole is a vision of total control -- a world in which every last use of a work is regulated and in which "all rights reserved" (and then some) is the norm. At the other end is a vision of anarchy -- a world in which creators enjoy a wide range of freedom but are left vulnerable to exploitation. Balance, compromise, and moderation -- once the driving forces of a copyright system that valued innovation and protection equally -- have become endangered species.

Creative Commons is working to revive them. We use private rights to create public goods: creative works set free for certain uses. Like the free software and open-source movements, our ends are cooperative and community-minded, but our means are voluntary and libertarian. We work to offer creators a best-of-both-worlds way to protect their works while encouraging certain uses of them -- to declare "some rights reserved."

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite

The Luddites were a social movement of English workers in the early 1800s who protested - often by destroying textile machines - against the changes produced by the Industrial Revolution that they felt threatened their jobs. The movement, which began in 1811, was named after a probably mythical leader, Ned Ludd. For a short time the movement was so strong that it clashed in battles with the British Army. Measures taken by the government included a mass trial at York in 1813 that resulted in many death penalties and transportations (deportment to a penal colony).

The English historical movement has to be seen in its context of the harsh economic climate due to the Napoleonic Wars; but since then, the term Luddite has been used to describe anyone opposed to technological progress and technological change. For the modern movement of opposition to technology, see neo-luddism.

E. P. Thompson's view of Luddism
In his work on English history, The Making of the English Working Class, E. P. Thompson presented an alternative view of Luddite history.

Luddites are often characterised, and indeed their name has to some become synonymous with, people opposed to all change--in particular technological change such as that which was sweeping through the weaving shops in the industrial heartland of England. They are often characterised as violent, thuggish, and disorganised.

E. P. Thompson advances many arguments against this view of the Luddites. He shows that the Luddites were not opposed to new technology, but rather to the abolition of set prices and therefore also to the introduction of what we would today call the free market.

Thompson argues that it was this newly-introduced economic system that the Luddites were protesting. For example, the Luddite song, "General Ludd's Triumph":

The guilty may fear, but no vengeance he aims
At the honest man's life or Estate
His wrath is entirely confined to wide frames
And to those that old prices abate

"Wide frames" were the weaving frames, and the old prices were those prices agreed by custom and practice. Thompson cites the many historical accounts of Luddite raids on workshops where some frames were smashed whilst others (whose owners were obeying the old economic practice and not trying to cut prices) were left untouched.

Secondly, Thompson counters the view that the Luddites were thuggish. There were remarkably few Luddite arrests and executions, and yet they operated highly effectively against the forces of the state. Thompson's explanation for this is that they were working with the consent of the local communities (or indeed were part of those communities).

Thirdly, Thompson argues that the Luddites were not disorganised. He notes that some of the largest Luddite activities involved a hundred men.

In short, Thompson feels that in caricaturing the Luddites as 'thugs' who just wanted to smash up new technology we are simply continuing the propaganda of the time. The reality, in Thompson's view, is that the Luddites were normal people who were protesting against changes of which they disapproved.

Evidence for this point of view has been further developed by Prof Kevin Binfield ('Writings of the Luddites' - see [1] ).-

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http://www.nothingness.org/SI/

Texts by and pertaining to the Situationist International have been entered into a database, and are available at the Text Library by clicking the link on the left. The library is fully searchable, and features more texts than ever before. Information on related articles are linked from each text, and biographical blurbs about the authors are just a click away.

Situationist images and related graphics are available from the Images link, which currently offers a selection of graphics, and a picturebook of posters from May 1968 in Paris.

Links to other Situationist and prositu websites are available through Links.

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aka The Weathermen, The Weather Underground
Weatherman, known colloquially as the Weathermen and later the Weather Underground Organization, was a U.S. Radical Left organization consisting of splintered-off members and leaders of the Students for a Democratic Society. The group referred to itself as a "revolutionary organization of communist women and men." Their stated purpose was to carry out a series of militant actions to achieve the revolutionary overthrow of the Government of the United States, and of capitalism as a whole. Weatherman collapsed shortly after the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975, which saw the general demise of the New Left, of which Weatherman had been a part.

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http://www.stealthissweater.com

1. Is this site advocating sweater theft?
No. For those of you born yesterday (or anytime during or after the Reagan years), StealThisSweater refers to Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book, a survival guide and manifesto for those who fantasize about (or pursue) anarchy. The whole book has been stolen and posted online here, so be sure to take a look to see if you've got what it takes. Chris Buck suggested the website name after John Kerry lost the 2004 election and my previous site, KnittersForKerry.com became yesterday's news. Thank you, Chris. Abbie Hoffman was a radical with a sense of humor and a hatred of The Man. At StealThisSweater, we are not fond of The Man either.

"What's all this talk of dying for revolution? Live for it."
Not sure exactly who said it first, but it's in a poem dedicated to Diana Oughton, the Weatherwoman who died in a bomb blast in NYC in 1970. The bottom edge of the sweater says "Bring the War home" on the front and "All power to the people" on the back.

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http://www.diggers.org
Overview: who are the Diggers?

The Digger Archives is an ongoing Web project to preserve and present the history of the anarchist guerilla street theater group that challenged the emerging Counterculture of the Sixties and whose actions and ideals inspired (and continue to inspire) a generation (of all ages) to create models of Free Association.

The Diggers were one of the legendary groups in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury, one of the world-wide epicenters of the Sixties Counterculture which fundamentally changed American and world culture. Shrouded in a mystique of anonymity, the Diggers took their name from the original English Diggers (1649-50) who had promulgated a vision of society free from private property, and all forms of buying and selling. The San Francisco Diggers evolved out of two Radical traditions that thrived in the SF Bay Area in the mid-1960s: the bohemian/underground art/theater scene, and the New Left/civil rights/peace movement.

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