Fined $7000 for Anti-War Posters

This is NOT an April Fools joke. The ANSWER Coalition has been hit with nearly $7,000 in fines for posters announcing the March 21 National March on the Pentagon that have been put up in Washington D.C. This is taken from their site, “The government is trying to effectively eliminate ANSWER’s and any group’s ability to engage in postering for Free Speech…The message is this: If you hand out or put up a poster…you can now expect heavy fines and long court battles that are designed to divert money and resources — or shut you down completely.”

Dominique and I created this poster to bring awareness to the criminal occupation that exists around the world and also as a tribute to everyone working for peace and independence — like all those who endorsed the March on the Pentagon!

The First Amendment gives each of us the right to freedom of speech regardless of the medium used. Exercise you freedom!

March on the Pentagon - Saturday, March 21

March 21 marks the sixth anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq by US and allied forces. Students and community organizations from across the country are mobilizing to be in Washington, D.C. to make their voices heard in the March on the Pentagon. Protests will take place in most major cities in the US and around the world against continued war and occupation by the US and its allies - in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine and elsewhere.

The main organizers of the march are the Answer Coalition and The National Assembly to End the Wars. The website pentagonmarch.org is where you can get any information you may need to get involved. This is taken from their site,

“While millions of families are losing their homes, jobs and health care, the real military budget next year will top one trillion dollars–that’s $1,000,000,000,000. If used to meet people’s needs, that amount could create 10 million new jobs at $60,000 per year… The cost for the occupation of Iraq alone is $400 million each day, or about $12 billion each month…The war in Afghanistan is expanding. Robert Gates… has announced that the troop levels in Afghanistan may double in the coming months. Both he and Vice President Biden predicted higher casualties–or what they cavalierly call “an uptick” in casualties–in the coming period.”

Help to end the tradegy of war. Please go to the sites listed above to get involved. Check out my new “activist link” for free poster downloads and stencils. I am going to add more posters to this section often and encourage anyone to contact me if you have a suggestion or a cause that could use an activist poster or artwork - I would very much like to help!

This new poster, We Come in Peace was finished today. Dominique hand cut all three stencils and helped print two of the main colors! Give a quick woo hoo at your moniter for her.

Coal Poster and Graffiti

I have created this poster to provide a visual means to assist the civil disobedience against the coal industry. The posters outlet with the cross bones send the message that no matter what they tell you, burning coal for energy is not clean and in fact, is dangerous to everyone including the environment. Yes, this poster is a limited addition of only 15 that you can get here, but I have also created two smaller versions that are free to download.11″ x 17″ coal poster download. 8.5″ x 11″ coal poster download.

In addition, I have made a graffiti stencil for this coal poster that can be downloaded free and printed at any size. What does that mean? That means that you can cut the stencil out and print as many as you like. You can print on poster board, cardboard, a building or just about anything that is flat. (Please do not vandalize - that only weakens the cause). All you need is something sharp to cut out the stencil, cardboard or poster board for the stencil, and a can of spray paint. If you are not the hands on type and do not want to purchase the limited edition or download the free smaller versions, then do not worry because there is another option. If you want one or several copies of the graffiti poster I will make them for you for a very small fee - to pay for materials and a little time. A sample of what the stencil version looks like is posted under the original version. The white background would be whatever you were painting on and the black ink could be any color of your choice. If you are interested in the graffiti stencil just email me at jorge at popsicles and grenades dot com. (no spaces etc - trying to avoid spam!)

On Sunday, the 25th of January, Mike Roswell will be organizing civil disobedience in East Tennessee. If you are able to be there with him, please come. If you can’t be there, contact him at roselle@lowbagger.org and find out other ways to offer support. For more information on the TVA ash spill and how you can get involved, go to www/unitedmountaindefense.org.” Mike Roselle from Drowning in a Toxic River.

Please read the article below and watch the video of this horrible disaster. You might even change your mind and decide to join Mike in civil disobedience.

Clean Coal is a Dirty Lie!

Although this coal disaster happened a month ago, I am posting this now because there will be an organized civil disobedience in Tennessee this weekend regarding this matter. For more information read the last paragraph. The video and the following paragraphs are incredible reports from several people who care and do something about it. Click on their links to learn more.

“The morning of December 22nd, a dam holding back an ash pond burst at the Kingston Fossil Fuel Plant in east Tennessee and covered 400 acres twenty feet deep in toxic coal ash. Except it wasn’t a spill and it wasn’t a dam failure. A fifty foot high pile of toxic waste collapsed and took the dam with it. Except it wasn’t a even a dam and it sure wasn’t a pond, as the TVA calls it. It was a berm made of the same toxic material that was in the pile.” Mike Roselle from Drowning in a Toxic River.

“This is a monumental and unprecedented environmental catastrophe. The TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) disaster is now estimated at 5.3 million cubic yards of coal ash, or almost twice as large as the 2.8 million cubic yards generated by the World Trade Center collapse. There are 200 gallons in a cubic yard, so that equates to about 1.06 billion gallons — almost 100 times the size of the Exxon Valdez spill of 11 million gallons in 1989.

It’s hard to comprehend the enormous size of this spill. TVA’s coal ash mountain was stacked over 50 feet high — as high as a 5 story building. If a dump truck can hold 20 cubic yards of dirt and ash, it will take 265,000 truck loads to haul away all the ash (they are taking it back to the power plant). If they fill one dump truck trip every 5 minutes and work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, it will take about 2.5 years to clean up the spill. TVA has been telling the media it will be cleaned up in about 6 weeks - this is a ludicrous claim.” Dave Cooper from A First Hand Account of the TVA Coal Ash Disaster in Kingston, TN

The remaining text is again from Mike Roselle’s Drowning in a Toxic River. “The coal trains will soon be bringing coal from Zeb Mountain to replenish the two piles that rise above everything on the site save the massive smoke stacks. This is the end of the line for the coal that is being ripped out of the Appalachian Mountains. From here, the clean invisible electrons will zip at dazzling speed through high tension wires to homes and factories across the country providing America with clean and cheap energy.

Except it isn’t clean and it sure isn’t cheap. Every day, plants like this one will consume 10,000 tons of coal and release three times that much carbon dioxide into the air, along with mercury, arsenic and lead. What they take out of the stacks will be concentrated in the ash, and that ash will eventually wind up in a river, and this is all that’s left of the mountain. All along the way, laws and regulations designed to prevent this disaster were ignored by the TVA managers. They spent millions lobbing against treating this ash as what it clearly is: toxic waste.

So what do we do about this? Can we afford to sit by and watch this for any longer? Can we afford to wait and let the environmental movement and the democrats try to solve this problem with more studies, more press conferences, and more e-mail? As I write this, news about another TVA coal ash spill, this one in Alabama, is burning up the news wires. More toxic waste has been released into the Tennessee River. I believe it is long past time for a non violent response to the ongoing criminal activity of the coal industry. It is time to shut them down.

On Sunday, the 25th of January, I will be organizing civil disobedience in East Tennessee. If you are able to be there with me, please come. If you can’t be there, contact me at roselle@lowbagger.org and find out other ways to offer support. For more information on the TVA ash spill and how you can get involved, go to www/unitedmountaindefense.org.” Mike Roselle from Drowning in a Toxic River.

More Resources:
http://www.appalachianvoices.org/
http://current.com/users/JanforGore/all/0.htm
http://action.thisisreality.org/facts

I am a Sheep - I will vote Democrat or Republican

“Every election season America is presented with a series of false choices. Should we launch preemptive wars against this country or that one? Should every American neighborhood live under this policy or that one? Should a third of our income be taken away by an income tax or a national sales tax?”(Ron Paul) Do you see the problem with this? Are we to assume that these are our only options? So we should have a third of our income taken away! There is no option to take less money away. The debate is centered around who gets our money and we are left scratching our heads.

“And so every four years we are treated to the same tired, predictable routine: two candidates with few disagreements on fundamentals pretend that they represent dramatically different philosophies of government… But conservatives (and liberals) are told that they must support these candidates, and so they do, hoping for the best and nothing changes.” (Ron Paul)

The 2008 Town Hall Presidential Debate at Belmont University’s Curb Event Center is Tuesday, October 7th at 8pm. We will be protesting the two party media bias and the sheep that it produces. I have designed and printed t-shirts and bought masks that symbolize the public at large who blindly follow whoever the media propaganda machine tells them to trust without even using common sense. The media is so relentless that the public is fooled into believing that these politicians will fulfill everyone’s hopes and desires.

The action is to demonstrate how most people have resigned themselves to a herd mentality and follow the group or their “leaders” without thinking. The irony is that although we will be dressed as sheep we will think independently, question our leaders and follow only truth. So the goal is to spread the word that everyone of us, whether Democrat, Republican or Independent has the duty to question authority and the right to seek truth, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Our mission then is to open the public’s eyes to the tragedy that is the current political system in America. We will resist tyranny through education. Truth is American. Let us not continue to be led astray by the powerful few who are concerned only for themselves, but remove our masks of ignorance and march together toward unity. For more info  jorge@popsiclesandgrenades.com