Preliminary notes on the Tottenham Defence Campaign

The Tottenham Defence Campaign has issued the following advance press notice:

 

The Tottenham-based families of Mark Duggan, Roger Sylvester, Cynthia Jarrett and Joy Gardner – whose loved ones all died following detention by police officers – will speak at a press conference for the launch of the Tottenham Defence Campaign on Wednesday 5th October. This is two months since the shooting of Mark Duggan and the 26th anniversary of the death of Cynthia Jarrett.

 

The four families, speaking alongside local community activist Stafford Scott, will discuss the struggle for truth and justice they have faced.The campaign has been formed by local people to defend access to justice for young people amid community concerns that Tottenham will face disproportionate and unequal treatment in the wake of August’s disturbances.Campaigners will outline aims that include:

• A greater understanding of the history of Tottenham, particularly relating to policing and how it has impacted on the local community, which is essential for those who seek to understand and remedy the causes of social disorder

• A rejection of measures that reinforce stereotypes, marginalise or criminalise the people of Tottenham, which will not serve the course of justice and will be detrimental to the community in the longer term.

 

Tottenham Defence Campaign press conference

11am, Wednesday 5th October

North London Community House

22 Moorefield Road

London

N17 6PY

Stafford Scott, said in advance of the press conference:

“As family and friends come together to remember Cynthia Jarrett some 26 years after she was taken from us, we find it incomprehensible that this borough, Haringey, has seen three more members of our community killed whilst in the ‘custody’ of Metropolitan Police Officers.  No community should have this as their reality. As a result this is a community that has come to the conclusion that there is no justice – there’s just us.

The police must be held to account over the death of four members of our community, for their failings to contact the family of Mark Duggan about his death and their woeful response to family members on the peaceful demonstration in August. Within the community, people believe the police bear ultimate culpability for the rioting that took place in Tottenham through their failure to respond to the family or to act as events unfolded.  Yet it’s the community of Tottenham who will be further stigmatised and punished.  We will be calling on the IPCC to carry out its duty and ensure their investigation reveals the full truth about the killing of Mark Duggan.We will be calling on the Government to remember the lessons learnt from the eighties, as the response that we are witnessing is almost guaranteed to further marginalise the already marginalised; this will not lessen any likelihood of future rioting it will, inevitably, increase it”

——
For more information visit the TDC website

http://tottenhamdefencecampaign.co.uk/

How to access academic readings for free online

http://library.nu/

http://www.archive.org

http://a.aaaarg.org

The best viva in the world?

A friend just told me his PhD viva took place sitting on the grass in Russell Square Garden. He passed, and then went to see Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – with his examiners.

Adele

…I didn’t know Adele was from Tottenham. Nice one.

Current playlist

Lura – Fitiço Di Funana http://grooveshark.com/#/s/Fiti+o+Di+Funana/lIQXn?src=5

Iron and Wine – Upward Over The Mountain http://grooveshark.com/#/s/Upward+Over+The+Mountain/2sqRQx?src=5

Bombadil – Three Saddest Words http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=w14a9XKLbBs

Going to see Iron and Wine at Shepherd’s Bush Empire on 10 October.

Feminist economics, vox pop and a note on the riots

In the aftermath of what have become known as the 2011 riots I have spent some time volunteering with local groups seeking to find a community-led way of responding. This has involved time spent going door-to-door on many of the estates in Tottenham. Among the conversations with residents that took place along the way, one analysis that kept on coming back was the connection of overworked parents with troubled children. One 60-year old white man of Irish origin put it succinctly:

The kids want TVs and computers and Blackberries, and so the parents work all hours to get the money to buy the gadgets, and never see their kids until they’re in court.

Now I am preparing a lecture course on international development, and it has suddenly hit me how closely this analysis fits with what scholars like Diane Elson were saying in the early 1990s (see Elson 1991, Moser 1992). Elson argued that mainstream economics focuses on the so-called productive economy in which labour is exchanged for wages, and ignores the reproductive or care economy within the home, in which family members – more often than not, women – provide everything that is necessary for the reproduction of the workforce (e.g. dinner and breakfast for the men who will go out to work and the children who must go to school to learn, to become the workers of tomorrow).

Ignoring this side of the economy means that the full consequences of policies are not taken into account – in particular, when the State withdraws from particular areas of service provision, it is often women who have to step in, and often end up being responsible for both the productive and the care economy, decreasing their leisure time and/or decreasing the quality of their reproductive work. This is likely to have negative consequences both for women’s health and the care of children, potentially affecting social reproduction and human development (here I am paraphrasing from a working paper by Myriam Blin because I don’t have any more time to write right now).

Frank Turner’s great campfire punk song put it somewhat more provocatively than this, of course.

References:

Blin, Myriam (2006) “Export-oriented policies, women’s work burden and human development in Mauritius” SOAS Department of Economics Working Paper No. 147, available online at www.soas.ac.uk/economics/research/workingpapers/file28832.pdf

Elson, Diane (1991) “Unpaid Labour, Macroeconomic Adjustment and Macroeconomic Strategies” Working Paper number 3, Manchester: University of Manchester

Moser, Caroline O.N. (1992) “Adjustment from Below: Low-income women, time and the triple role in Guayaquil, Equador” in Haleh Afshar and C. Dennis Women and Adjustment Policies in the Third World York: Macmillan Press

Jupiter

Late last night at a party a charming long-haired space cadet pointed out Jupiter under the moon. I wasn’t convinced, even though he told me he knows a thing or two about the sky. Then he played some guitar, and told me his band is called Spring Heeled Jacks and we should look them up and come to one of their gigs. “You might like it. Or you might not. But you should come.” I can’t find the band online. But it was Jupiter.

Practical DIY software-hardware assemblage 1

Task:

Map out which buildings/streets have been flyered by a team who are sending in individual reports of what they have done.

Solution:

1. Print a map from Googlemaps.
2. Type each building/street name mentioned by the team into google.
3. Mark it on the map.

Other related mapping software:

http://batchgeo.com/

Green Lanes festival slot

My band Affinity to the Sea are playing the Green Lanes festival this Sunday, 18 September. It would be great to see you there, plus I think the festival will be worth seeing in any case. The festival takes place on Green Lanes, which will be closed off at the Manor House/Finsbury Park end, with food, drink and live music. There are two stages with live music all day, one outside the Salisbury pub, which is also well worth a visit, and the other outside the Old Ale Emporium. Here’s the line-up on the stage we are on:

Old Ale Stage – 12noon to 6pm

 

11.5O: WELCOME TO THE FESTIVAL

11.55 Koma Sersi – Kurdish music

12.15 Citizen Helene – Singer, songwriter and guitarist from Dorset.

12.40 Affinity To The Sea – A blues rock covers band

1pm New Tottenham Singers – vibrant local community choir

1.25 To The Moon – Dark trip hop and sirens with driving guitar riffs and touching harmonies

1.45 Kurdish folk dancing and music

2.15 Umbilical Chord – A three piece alternative/indie band

2.35 Haringay Big Band – Young musicians from Haringey

3pm Tessellators – Influences are Built to Spill, Captain Beefheart, Battles (especially live), The Band and Fugazi amongst many others. 

3.25 Obscuritones – Rockabilly; close harmony and rockin rhythm.

4pm Old Ale Scratch Band

4.40 Tottenham Gospel Choir – Stunning sounds from the community of West Green Road Church

5pm  David Lammy MP

5.15 THE POPES – Celtic rock and folk

 

Festival postscript:

Our slot went well, with quite a few friends/family turning out to support us, and thumbs-up received from denizens of the Old Ale Emporium and various people involved in managing the Old Ale Stage. Thanks to all the festival organisers and stage managers, we had a great day because of you.

At the end of the day, as I waited for a taxi to return the drum kit to its home (thanks to Downs Sounds studios for hiring it to us, and for being so flexible about when we returned it), I had a drink with Whiskey Mick of the Popes (and also of Whiskey Before Breakfast – which I have to agree with him is an absolutely fantastic name for a band), as well as the sound technician for the Old Ale Stage (great job by the way, thanks so much), and the singer and drummer of the band who played at 4pm – who, I am told, were not the Old Ale Scratch band, contrary to festival publicity materials.

The Popes are immense – apparently set up by Pogues’ frontman Shane McGowan during a period in which he was ejected from the Pogues on account of his inability to remain upright for a whole set (he is rather infamous for having a bit of a drinking thing going on). I don’t think Shane McGowan is currently singing with the Popes (he wasn’t at the festival, nor at Ryans Bar when I have seen the Popes play there on their regular fortnightly Friday slots).

Shortly before my taxi arrived there was a discussion about how Holloway Road is the centre of gravity for London’s Irish pub/music scene, with Whiskey Mick singing the praises of Mother Red Cap in particular (google tells me this pub once featured in an episode of Jonathan Creek), which, he claims, has the only stage in the world “that is higher than it is wide.”

Why are all the online reviews of Only You Can Save Mankind rubbish?

Procrastination alert.

If I wasn’t procrastinating I wouldn’t have read these reviews at all, because I’ve read the book in question – Terry Pratchett’s Only You Can Save Mankind (1992) – and don’t need to read reviews. But when I started going through them I really started feeling diatribetical. Chrissi, I don’t care if you’ve given it 8/10, this is not a review. Anastasia, how can you blame a book written in the early 90s for referencing what was going on in the early 90s (i.e. the Gulf War). The review on Inkweaver starts to get to the point that this is a book with a core message (something neither Chrissi nor Anastasia felt like mentioning) about war and how it gets made to look like a video game in which The Enemy are inhuman monsters with whom it is impossible to empathise (see below). So Jessica, if you think the book is like The Last Starfighter in any way, you have completely missed the point that this is not a story about a video game becoming reality, but is a provocation about the relationship between fiction and reality. Seen from the rapidly expanding perspective of Johnny Maxwell, the 12-year old hero of the story, the Gulf War is a product sold to the public and even bomber pilots as a game, while the video game he is playing seems more real than his everyday life, in which his parents are breaking up and keep forgetting that Johnny exists.

Anyway I bought this book as a present for my Australian cousin who I never get to see, because I think it’s one of the most important “children’s” books I ever read, and one of the few I have gone back to again and again. And now I must get on with work. I’ll end with a quote from Bill Hicks about how the Gulf War was sold to the American public:

‘He’s a Hitler. He’s a Hitler. Saddam Hussein is a Hitler.’ What does that make you – Goebbels? Quit arming him. ‘He’s a Hitler.’ He was your friend last week. ‘He’s a Hitler now.’ Trying to motivate people, you know. It’s unbelievable how they got ‘em. People were just like:

‘He’s a Hitler – yeah, Bush. Get real man.’

‘You like dogs, don’t ya?’

‘Yeah, we love dogs.’

‘Well, we have an intelligence report that says here Saddam Hussein likes to fuck dogs in the ass and then take their spine out and use it as a toothpick.’

‘You’re shittin’ me. Let’s go kill this guy. I had no idea he was that much of a maniac. This is for Rover!’ (crash)

‘That’s what intelligence reports say. He’s a Hitler. He fucks dogs. Mm-hm.’

‘I don’t know. [sic ]You’re sure that’s true?’

‘You like kittens?’

‘Yeah, I like kittens. They’re cute.’

‘He boils ‘em and eats ‘em.’

‘Fucker. This is for Fluffy!’ (three explosions)

(Hicks 150)

I found this quote in an online copy of Jan Koula’s Bachelor thesis “Bill Hicks and the Wall of American Mentality”, but if you like it then check out some of Bill Hicks’ stuff on Youtube. I guess that Anastasia (see above) might think Bill Hicks’ work is dated because he’s talking about stuff that happened in the early 90s; but wait a minute, wasn’t our own generation’s war on Iraq justified to us in precisely the same way? Ciao for now.