maybe edmonton

“Democracy - We Deliver,” John Yates, 1993. From the current exhibit at the Oakland Museum of California: All of Us or None: Social Justice Posters of the San Francisco Bay Area

“For Jurgen Habermas, “the public sphere briefly flourished at a specific historical moment. Just before the industrial revolution, ­literary men and women met in London’s coffee houses, Paris’s salons and ­Germany’s Tischgesellschaften (“table talks”) for what Habermas calls “rational-critical discussion”. “In its clash with the arcane and bureaucratic practices of the absolutist state,” writes Habermas, “the emergent bourgeoisie gradually replaced a public sphere in which the ruler’s power was merely represented before the people with a sphere in which state authority was publicly ­monitored through informed and critical discourse by the people.”

But that 18th-century “public sphere” was killed in its cradle. Habermas found lots of different fingerprints on the murder weapon: the welfare state, mass media, the rise of public relations, the undermining of parliamentary politics by the rise of political parties. The fact that most of us know more about Paris Hilton than post-­endogenous growth theory probably doesn’t help either. Habermas’s ­thinking has a nostalgic tenor: if only we were more like all those well-read, well-informed, critically minded coffee-house ­denizens, then ­democracy might have a chance in the 21st century.” photo via

-sisteroficarus:

jonathan-cunningham:

zuky: From the Vancouver Sun:

The youngest woman ever elected to Afghanistan’s parliament told a Canadian audience Sunday that the NATO occupation of her homeland is supporting a puppet government and making Afghanistan a haven for terrorists and drug-trafficking.

Malalai Joya, an outspoken critic of NATO and the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, was invited to speak at the University of Calgary on Sunday by the Afghan Canadian Students’ Association.

On her first visit to Calgary, the 32-year-old said Afghanistan called on Canadians to support the fight for a lasting democracy in Afghanistan.

“We are in between two evils: the warlords and Taliban on one side, and the occupation on the other,” Joya said. “The first step is to fight against occupation — those who can liberate themselves will be free, even if it costs our lives.”

The soft-spoken Joya raised an uproar in Afghanistan in 2003 when she condemned the warlords at the Loya Jirga, the assembly of the most powerful political stakeholders in Afghanistan.

In 2005, she was elected to parliament but kicked out of office in 2007 after criticizing the Karzai government.

Joya has survived five attempts on her life but said she doesn’t fear death and won’t stop speaking out. She was named one of Time magazine’s most influential people in the world this year.

“My biggest fear is political silence,” said the activist, who has been teaching girls and women since she was 13 years old and living in refugee camps in Pakistan and Iran. “Education gives us hope and courage.”

Joya said that, even though the U.S. has said it will start pulling out of Afghanistan in 2011, it’ll leave a puppet government behind. She added that U.S. President Barack Obama’s foreign policies, by propping up the Karzai government, are worse than those of former president George W. Bush.

To aid Afghanistan’s move to true democracy, Joya asked Canadians to join antiwar organizations.

“Open the eyes and minds of the justice loving,” she said.

Malalai Joya is my newest hero.

 I think she may be reading Paulo Freire. Or have read.  Either way; AWESOME.

(via misamdry)