Cross Border

I am rereading Eyal Weizman’s really excellent book “Hollow Land“, and I’m taken by his comment that the border is not always symmetrical. Of course, some are blocked, some pass freely, Capital flows through, commodities glide on by, others stand in line or have to sneak under the wire (if lucky). What else crosses the border, and how? Can this symmetry be tampered with in innovative ways, so as to support… Add this to the street as the border right here right now, and the ubiquity of border controls in our every move (for and against) and … Anyway, this below just had to be elevated from the comments of this post here, with dates amended, since its now time to start thinking out loud how to implement the thing. Get in touch if interested:

June 25 2008: I have been awarded some money from September for a network on the theme of ‘Beyond Text‘, and propose to use it for work on border activism and creativity - music, theatre, film. AHRC in their wisdom and generosity have included money for people from India to come to Berlin London Copenhagen - and possibly Barcelona, this year and next.

The project: we are gathering Border Activist/artists from a couple of organizations and propose to meet together over a week X 6 in the next two years - some casual meetings, some workshops, some public talks - to work out some ways to break with conventions of border arts, pursue border activisms - and of course tamper with Border Patrols. The thinking needs to be furthered as its pretty sketchy as yet, but I want that to happen in concert with others. Migrant Media London, Clandestino music festival Gotebourg, Re:Orient theatre Stockholm and friends in Unis at Barcelona, Berlin FU and Copenhagen Doctoral School.

The times are not yet fixed, but I wanted to give advance notice….

A slightly better outline of the plan: The money I have is small, and specifically for events in Berlin, London and Copenhagen and for visitors from Calandestino festival, Re:Orient theatre, and Migrant Media film, and various people from Kolkata. It is to run a series of week long laboratory-workshops. These will be variously on music, theatre and film. The focus is on border crossing activisms in some way, I hope. Nothing is worked out yet, but at a guess the dates would help - approximately, a week each in:

early November 08: London (music)

end feb 09 Berlin (theatre)

May 09 Copenhagen (Film)

Sept 09 London (film)

Feb 10 Berlin (music)

May 10 Copenhagen (theatre)

The people involved will be working on border activism, transnational, diaspora, streets as borders, the border between ourselves, everywhere, everyday…mainly, but specifically with a film, theatre and music angles. Any ideas welcome…

The first meeting at least will be music focused. A week long ‘laboratory’ on ’sonic diaspora’ to be held in London in November. There would also be a big music night at the Amersham Arms pub. The laboratory would involve various practitioners in music, and academics from Europe, in a series of workshops (no idea exactly on what yet) in the week.

So, these are just preliminary ideas, but get thinking of border again… and have a look at your calendar. - John

Border Patrols

The city is the border. Each time you wave away the Chinese DVD seller who approaches you in the pub; each time you glide past the Polish beer in the cornershop, choosing a stella or chardonnay instead; each time you discard the free advertising newsheet you’ve barely even read - a million instant statements of the border.

Sex worker postcards in the last remaining telephone booth (new in town!); spruikers on the curry shift entice you for a deal; dragging angry and Peckham through the CCTV streets at dawn - the border is the city and the walls between us all.

It could not be that we don’t know this: that the management of the border is a mass participation project operated absentmindedly by all of us all day. Through an overkill of commentary and a shifting, churning hierarchy, the profiles, stereotypes and judgements that are constantly made yet so often denied are the guilty enactment of this regime. Border Police do their work - spot check, detention, deportation - all the better because our everywhere everyday distracted border operation is there in all we do.

The regulations are on the streets, the regulators are here.

Torture Taxi

I like the fact that Trever Paglen and A.C.Thompson write in such a clear forthright style in their book “Torture Taxi: On the trail of the CIA’s rendition flights” (2006 Melville House New Jersey). Classified as ‘current affairs/military history’, I think this is compulsory reading for so many reasons. Not least of all the way a much maligned nerdy pastime - planespotting, noting registration numbers of aircraft at airports - is itself rendered a powerful research strategy and builds a dossier (another loaded word, as indeed is ‘loaded’) on CIA flights, crimes and deceit. The tone throughout is carefully modulated, and all the more effective for that. It is the best book I have read in a while, and not only for gems like this, where our authors talk of:

“dozens of cases in which the CIA had kidnapped the ‘wrong’ person, or had kidnapped someone under distressingly low standards of evidence: One of those ‘erroneous renditions’ turned out to be a college professor who had given an Al-Qaeda member a bad grade (the professor’s name was presumably given to the CIA by the disgruntled former student [fn ref to Chicago Tribune of July 31, 2006]). About a dozen of these men have ended up in Guantanamo Bay” (Paglen/Thompson 2006:169)

Though the standards of evidence for the above are equally thin - how do we check if this student was an Al-Qaeda ‘member’ (as opposed to say, a member of Facebook or some other dodgy spectral org?), how do we know the grading was not indeed biased, what happened to both student and Prof? - the anecdote is nonetheless not unbelievable given our own local security errors(!) in regard of cases like the ‘Lyrical Terrorist’, Forest Gate and Stockwell tube.

There is much good info in the book: on Air America, other covert CIA ops worldwide, and the banality of evil that are front companies, homeland security and international surveillance/kidnapping/assassination. As an example of people’s inquiry, the book is impressive, and all the more necessary in the face of approved fascism. To not engage such investigation and intervention is complicity. Who’d have thought this could be a revolutionary slogan: ‘Planespotters of the world Unite!”

Up up and away… and now a word from our sponsors:

“According to The Washington Post, ‘extraordinary rendition’, or the US’s practice of kidnapping suspects, flying them to an undisclosed location in a third-world country, and torturing them to force a confession about their role in terrorism, is ‘the largest CIA covert action program since the height of the Cold War.’ In a daring first-person investigation, AC Thompson and Trevor Paglen expose the torture apparatus of the CIA, revealing both the workings of its top-secret-and officially-denied extraordinary rendition transport system and the clandestine ‘black sites’ where terror suspects are held. It is a story that takes them around the country and around the world: by following CIA planes from the Nevada desert to Ireland, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, and by using FAA data, corporate records, and Army aircraft documents, they uncover an international program involving corrupt domestic politicos, civilian aircraft operators, and the highest levels of government. Torture Taxi is the first in-depth look into a startling and disturbing new truth about the role of torture in the ‘war on terror’.”

Floating Prisons

This post from Subtopia is the sort of thing that puts blog-diary-experiment-notes like mine to shame. Even as I feel I need to skip over the authors first paragraph of self-deprecations (sorry) I find this really really useful. Sure, I have a long interest in prisons, see here, but if you want to start to get to grips with this floating carcereal violence (in a way more urgent than Foucault 101) then you gotta read the Subtopia post in full - and by doing so you also get to see the pics. So here is a taster, then click the link.

“…There is of course a long lineage of slave ships that date back probably as far as the birth of ancient civilization, but in more recent histories the prison boat (something different, though a seemingly natural progression) really started to evolve during the colonial era; and, not to our surprise, they served as a solution to the overpopulated modern prison systems that were falling apart, (not that different from today’s prison crisis or the similarly bursting detention facilities that hold scores of intercepted migrants, refugees and other global transients.) With that, it is hardly shocking that the construct of a floating prison continues to develop today”

Read the rest here.
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Migrating University and Facebook Data Mining

A flurry of activity. A frisson of excitement. And even though I am deeply suspicious of the format, facebook has been a good place to gauge the degree of interest in the Migrating University Project we are putting on through the Centre for Cultural Studies. Its no surprise that there are a half dozen large groups of Goldsmiths/New Cross facebookerists, but the best of them perhaps is the outfit that has produced the spin off badge that is in the picture in this post (itself a response to the rebranding of Goldsmiths that emerged from the Brand consultancy - those ‘radical’ badges now vastly improved dontchya think?).

Now, Facebook as data mining may produce various farragos of anxiety about the distributed nature of auto-panoptica that this format really is - you are watched, my friend, or you are not, but there will always be a trace. One of the better discussions of Facebook-paranoia-surveilance stems from Confused of Calcutta, but generally I am wary of the feedback loop of facebook or other format discussions. Blog comments on the nature of blogging seemed particularly viral a few years back. The point though is, by doing exactly this I get to both repost the So Fucking Goldsmiths pic, which is a must-have trinket, and mention some other education posts from earlier (here, here, here and here). It also gives me a chance to mention that the reason I’ve been on facebook this week is to promote the Migrating University event at Goldsmiths this friday and satuday - and to announce the program is updated here. All are welcome. You should come.

No Detentions, No Deportations, No Borders in Education, Freedom of Movement for All.

And there is a Migrating University group on Facebook as well, simple search should find it.

Image is from So Fucking Goldsmiths (oops, copyright theft, but if you search them on Facebook and join they will forgive me, right).

Gatwick No Border Camp 2007

http://no-racism.net/article/2244

[ 27. Aug 2007 ]

Gatwick No Border Camp 2007

From 19th to 24th of September 2007 a noborder camp will take place at Gatwick Airport near London.

As the government started to build a :: new immigration prison (Brook House at Gatwick Airport, near Crawley), the :: No Border Camp is getting :: closer: Sept 19-24. Among the :: various actions announced, Saturday, the 22nd, will see a :: demonstration from Crawley to Tinsley House, the already existing immigration prison at Gatwick, next to the planned site of the new centre. There will be workshops both :: at the camp and at :: Goldsmith University the week before, to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the :: Battle of Lewisham.

Days after the Home Office :: told refugees “We’ll do everything we can to send you home”, 26 migrant prisoners :: escaped from Campsfield, Oxfordshire, following days of protests. The riot was the latest episode in the migrants struggle inside detention after the :: Harmondsworth riots last November.

Relentless protests, both inside adn outside detention, have managed to put many detention and deportation profiteers on the map. On 17 August, activists :: occupied the office of XL Airways in Crawley to protest against the charter airline’s role in forecul deportations on behalf of the Home Office. Several :: demonstrations have been announced for August 28th to protest against a planned charter flight to :: deport a number of rejected asylum seekers to DR Congo.

See also indymedia

Background info on the Gatwick No Border Camp 2007
No Borders & Migration Struggles
from various sources, 30 Aug 2007: From 19th to 24th of September 2007 a noborder camp will take place at Gatwick Airport near London.

As the government started to build a new immigration prison (Brook House at Gatwick Airport, near Crawley), the No Border Camp is getting closer: Sept 19-24. Among the various actions announced, Saturday, the 22nd, will see a demonstration from Crawley to Tinsley House, the already existing immigration prison at Gatwick, next to the planned site of the new centre. There will be workshops both at the camp and at Goldsmith University the week before, to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the Battle of Lewisham.

Days after the Home Office told refugees “We’ll do everything we can to send you home”, 26 migrant prisoners escaped from Campsfield, Oxfordshire, following days of protests. The riot was the latest episode in the migrants struggle inside detention after the Harmondsworth riots last November.

Relentless protests, both inside and outside detention, have managed to put many detention and deportation profiteers on the map. On 17 August, activists occupied the office of XL Airways in Crawley to protest against the charter airline’s role in forecul deportations on behalf of the Home Office. Several demonstrations have been announced for August 28th to protest against a planned charter flight to deport a number of rejected asylum seekers to DR Congo.

Two years of No Borders UK
It was before the G8 2005 in Scotland that initiatives started to network around the issues of Freedom Of Movement in the UK again. A Make Borders History demo took place in Glasgow during the 2005 G8 summit in Scotland, calling at several institutions and companies involved in the Border Regime. Shortly after the G8, actvists forced the YMCA to withdraw from an “ayslum slavery Scheme”.

During the following year, No Borders groups were set up all over the country, in London, Brighton, Cardiff, Nottingham, Leeds and other cities. Regular demonstrations targeted immigration reporting centres and as well as detention centres.

The year 2006 saw the first UK-wide No Borders Gathering in London (on 11-12 March) at the Square Social Centre. Exactly one year later, another gathering was held in Glasgow at the Unity centre.

The initiatives naturally had different focal points, from fighting against dawn raids [1 2 3 4 5 6], anti-deportation actions (e.g. in Leeds ), campaigning against the point-based system, to solidarity with migrant workers (e.g. justice for cleaners) and, of course, demonstrations at immigration prisons.

In Glasgow, people started Unity, a union of by and for asylum seekers. In London, Harmondsworth became another focus of protests as well as building up practical support for detainees.

The October 7th Network organised a demonstration in London as part of the Transnational Day Of Action for migrants’ rights. However, when the Home Office disclosed plans to build a new immigration prison at Gatwick, the new Brook House became a focus for the whole network.

The upcoming No Border Camp is organised by No Borders groups from Birmingham, Brighton, Glasgow, Leeds, London, Nottingham, Sheffield and Cardiff and supported by Barbed Wire Britain, Unity, Feminist Against Borders, West Midlands Antifa, Sex Workers Union, Vapaa Liikkuvuus (freedom of movement-group in Finland), Campaign to Close Campsfield, No One Is Illegal, Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! and many more.

The next Camp public meeting will take place on September 2nd in Brighton.

There will be a meeting on Monday 3rd September in London to discuss the Tinsley House demonstration.

Events During The No Border Camp:
Thursday, 20th September

Welcome Demonstration - Crawley Town Centre, 5pm-7pm. To inform people about and invite them to participate in the No Border Camp.

Friday, 21st September:

Gathering at Lunar House, the Home Office reporting centre in East Croydon, 10am-2pm. A convergeance between those who have papers and those who don’t; information-sharing, exchanging stories, food and music.

Saturday 22nd September

Transnational Demonstration at Tinsley House detention dentre at Gatwick, 12pm-2pm. Tinsley House, which has a capacity of 146, was the first purpose-built detention centre in the UK. The new planned Gatwick detention centre is to be built close by.

Later that day, groups will present their work and experiences in a Transnational Forum at the camp.

Workshops

Announced workshops so far include ones with migration controls, ID Cards, practical support of people in detention, the political situation in the Middle East, alternative media, experiences from campaigns against companies and much more.

Migrating University

Migrating University is a set of workshops at Goldsmith University in the week before the No Border Camp.

Indymedia at the No Border Camp

As usual, IMC UK will be present at the No Border Camp. There will a public access tent, help with publishing and image processing, as well as workshops about alternative media.

http://www.wombles.org.uk/article2007081224.php

Migrating University Goldsmiths to Gatwick

No Detention, No Deportation;
No Borders in Education:
Freedom of Movement for All

Migrating University, at Goldsmiths,
September 14-15th 2007;
From Goldsmiths to Gatwick.

General enthusiasm for this event is very high. A feeling of frustration, and therefore energy for exploring activist options, is strong on campus. This is the joint result of the ongoing managerialism that afflicts the ‘teaching factory’ at all levels, alongside the wider malaise of neo-liberal war-mongering imperialism/Border-ism evident in the current conjuncture, everywhere. The role of the university in relation to borders between people and knowledge, between different knowledges, between peoples, between students, between students who pay ‘overseas’ fees and those who pay too much (‘training’ for industrial gain, paid for by the student??) and the ever extended morale crush that afflicts staff… linked to the obsolescence of older ideas of ‘education’ in favour of opportunism and productivity… Exclusions and …racism, murder-death-kill… there is much good reason to explore these concerns in our workshop.

At the last meeting we had taken decisions on the date, timetable and format, five panels plus Battle of Lewisham Walk (met with them and agreed mutual co-ordination); prepared a preliminary blurb (now on CCS website [currently goldsmiths sites are down]), arranged to make a banner, booked a room, still in discussion with College over the marquee; organised with Joan Kelly to visit; linked with No Borders London and No Borders general.

Confirmed speakers so far include: Ken Fero (Injustice), David Graeber (activist anthrop), Ava Caradonna (sex worker education group), Susan Cueva (union), Sanjay Sharma (author of Multicultural Encounters), Hari Kunzru (novelist), Mao Mollona (anthropologist), Harmit Athwal (Inst Race Relations), Katherine Mann (musician), Paul Hendrich (Pirate dad) and Joan Kelly (artist).

Panels and format as it stands now [this draft is not yet confirmed]:

Migrating University – Goldsmiths 14-15 September 2007

Friday 14th September – venue room 150 and 137a Richard Hoggart Building

Room 150 RHB From 10am Tea/Coffee – welcome – stalls for No Borders Camp etc

Room 137a RHB
10.30
John Hutnyk (Goldsmiths) Introduction to the day
Camille Barbagallo (Goldsmiths) this meeting is to encourage attendance at No Borders Camp at Gatwick.

10.50 -12.55 - Panel #1 – The Teaching Factory (Chair: Leila)

Does a university education offer a passport to a world of opportunity?
Are the old exclusions of race, class, gender and ability fully redeemed by our policy initiatives and “inclusive” programs? Or is the new hierarchy a filtering mechanism promising precarious labour for some, security and success for others? While some may never question their right to access, do some have to fight to move at all and others struggle daily simply to pass or fail?
This panel asks if education is really a social good, a pass to freedom; or if it is rather a ticket to a new set of subjugations?

Speakers:
Ash Sharma (University of East London)
Massimo de Angelis (university of East london)
Paul Hendrich (Goldsmiths)

12.55-2.30pm - Picnic on Back Field/in tent or inside if rain. With Bolivian group (Emma)

2.30-4.00 - Panel #2 - Critical Pedagogy (Chair: Francisco)

Critical pedagogy (CP) questions the relationship between education and politics, between socio-political relations and pedagogical practices, in short: the correspondence between power hierarchies in the social world and the hierarchies that mark and define educational institutions at large. Moreover it challenges the ubiquitous desire of policy makers for a non-politicized, neutral educational context, free of all social and cultural conflict.

Speakers:
Sanjay Sharma (Brunel University) – author of (2007) “Multicultural Encounters”.
Glenn Rikowski (University of Northampton) – author of “The Battle in Seattle” (2001)
Tom Woodin (Institute of Education, University of London)
Patrick Ainley (University of Greenwich)

4.15-6.00 - Panel #3 – Organising in the Margins (Chair: Olivia)

Migration means traversing boundaries: between nations, between legality and illegality. This panel is about organising those in the seams and the struggles for justice for those who suffer or die in such gaps.

Ava Caradonna (Sex Workers’ Union)
What does it mean to organise the unorganisable? What does union organising mean to people who are not considered workers, or who don’t necessarily consider what they do ‘work’, ‘illegal’ or worthy of stigma? How do unions take seriously the need to organise migrants workers? How can unionism be done differently in this context? Ava Caradonna will discuss such questions and campaigns relating to them.

Susan Cueva (UNISON)
Is a life-long union activist in the Philippines and UK with experience of organising the invisible, from seafarers to street cleaners. Today’s talk includes information about UNISON campaigns seeking fair terms for migrant workers affected by swings in Home Office policy on work permits.

Ken Fero (Injustice)
A short, Youtube, version of Injustice - a film about the struggles for justice by the families of people who have died in police custody – and accompanying talk by the film’s maker.

6.15 - meeting upstairs in Goldsmiths Tavern about collective attendance at Gatwick.

7.00-9.00 Joan Marie Kelly (Singapore) for workshop upstairs in Tavern (drinks).

Topic: Foreign workers in Singapore and the use of art as contact and transformation

Saturday 15th September – Venue: Cinema Richard Hoggart Building.

From 10am Tea/Coffee – welcome – point to stalls for No Borders Camp etc

10.30-12.30. Panel #4 – Critical Practice Inside and Out (Chair: John)

It is believed there was once a time when the University was a place where there thrived a rampant intelligence that was preoccupied with something more than just cramming.

Hari Kunzru (Novelist – author of “My Revolutions” (2007)
David Graeber (Goldsmiths)
Mao Mollona (Goldsmiths)
Sukant Chandan (freelance journalist and political analyst)

1.00-2.30 Panel #5 – Local Checkpoints (Chair: Camille)

Harmit Athwal (Institute of Race Relations)
Katherine Mann (Musician)
Almir Koldzic (Refugee Week)

2.30 Quick lunch

3pm-6pm: “Battle of Lewisham commemorative walk”

- a walk along the route of the march/counter-protest against the NF in 1977, including people involved at the time. At present this will start from Clifton Rise, New Cross at 3. (info/liaison with Paul).

19-24 September O7 – No Borders Camp at Gatwick

From 19th to 24th September 07 we will gather at Gatwick Airport for the first
No Border Camp in the UK. This camp will be a chance to work together to try
and stop the building of a new detention centre, and to gather ideas for how to
build up the fight against the system of migration controls.

Wednesday 19th
Arriving at Camp Site.
Thursday 20th
Workshops, Welcome-Event in Crawley.
Friday 21st
Workshops, Gathering at Lunar House, Croydon
Saturday 22nd
Workshops, Demonstration from Crawley town centre to Tinsley House Detention
Centre, next to the building site of Brook House (Background Info).
International day of Action.
Afternoon: International Forum.
Sunday 23rd
Workshops and Forum.
Monday 24th
End of the No Border Camp.
http://noborders.org.uk

Click to join migrating_uni

From: John Hutnyk - Academic Director, Centre for Cultural Studies
Work: http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/cultural-studies/staff/j-hutnyk.php
Blog: http://hutnyk.blogspot.com/
Links: http://tawdrysouvenirs.blogspot.com/
Events: http://whats-on-occasionally.blogspot.com/

No Borders Gatwick in Sept.

An Invitation To The Gatwick No Border Camp 2007

From 19th to 24th September 07 we will gather at Gatwick Airport for
the first No Border Camp in the UK. This camp will be a chance to work together to try and stop the building of a new detention centre, and togather ideas for how to build up the fight against the system of migration controls.

Gatwick Aiport - The Border Point
Gatwick is a border in the middle of Britain. People arrive hereeveryday. People are forcibly deported from here everyday. It is a place where people are imprisoned for unlimited lengths of time withouttrial, where people are forced to hide underground and be invisible,where people are treated as criminals for the ‘crime’ of crossing the border.In Britain, the government has recently announced its intention tobuild a new detention centre, near Tinsley House, another detentioncentre at Gatwick airport. This will be another in a long line of barbarous prisons across the world, imprisoning people who migrate.Unless we stop it from being built.Not far from Gatwick there are other border fortifications: theimmigration reporting centre at Croydon, the airline companies who charter deportation flights and the ID Interview centre in Crawley. Anda few miles away are the border posts at Dover and Folkstone, wherefear of detection by the border police forces people to risk theirlives hiding under lorries, or in suffocating containers.
While the physical borders get fortified, governments also tighten upthe internal controls: from international databases to videosurveillance, biometric ID cards to electronic tagging. Just recently,the UK government has announced the introduction of the Sirene System.
This will grant Britain access to the SIS (Schengen InformationSystem), a EU wide police database for refugees and migrants, plannedto be extended to keep protesters from moving around.
A Tactics Laboratory
How does daily life, from the need to work for survival to the welfaresystem, reinforce these borders? How can we fight against the commonacceptance of borders, the idea of an inside and outside? How can we claim freedom of movement as a basic right? How do we assert ourability to decide whether to go or stay, according to our needs anddesires, not the needs of the state or the economy? How can we escapecontrol, and start building a movement powerful enough to challenge the
divisions between people?We need to share knowledge with those who have broken these borders,the hackers who escape control, those who survive without work andmoney, those who fight the detention system , those who question identities, those who have learnt to organise themselves withouthierarchy or divisions.Camp(aign)ing Against BordersThis camp is continuing the tradition of the No Border camps across the world since the late 1990s, and like the camps taking place this yearin the Ukraine in August and on the US/Mexican border in November. Itwill be a space to share information, skills, knowledge andexperiences. A place to plan actions together against the system of borders which divides us.We are aware that the struggles for “no borders” reach far beyond “openborders”. Without borders the idea of states will become obsolete,without states the national economies will be history. In a world without borders, nobody will ask for papers anymore.The camp will also be a laboratory of political and practicalself-organisation. The camp will consist only of people’s contributionsto this. We are aware of the borders which divide ourselves from each other, be it sex, class, race, nationality, or whatever. The bordercamps are experiments in how to overcome these artificial andseparating identities.
No Borders
No Borders is a network of groups struggling for the freedom of movement for all and an end to all migration controls. We call for aradical movement against the system of control, dividing us intocitizens and non-citizens.We demand the end of the border regime for everyone, including ourselves, to enable us to live another way, without fear, racism andnationalism.
We move, we meet. We talk, we fight. Come camp with us.

< http://noborders.org.uk/>

And an idea for something to bring to the Camp… Let’s bring a Uni. See here.
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