Colorado Solar Hot Water Install
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Hundreds gather against Control Unit torture at Temple University
By: onion
on: Tue 14 of Oct, 2008 [19:17 UTC]
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by dave onion “...body language and verbal skills got separated. I talk through a little window, this wide, this high and all I see is the face. I don’t see the body language. The people on the tier with me, you talk under the door. You don’t see people. This separation causes chaos in the human mind. This is what segregation units do to the human mind.... Segregation Units are an abomination. Prisons don’t work. They’re wrong in concept, they’re wrong in application. They’re wrong to the core. They’re an abomination.. Some people don’t survive this...” This was Bobby Dellelo describing his experience being housed in a Control Unit in Walpole. He still suffers from sleeplessness and is recovering from the experience.
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Raid On Gilbert’s Shoes Demystified
By: admin
on: Tue 14 of Oct, 2008 [18:56 UTC]
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by Tessa Landreau- Grasmuck and dave onion  On the morning of Friday, June 13th, 2008, Philadelphia police entered a Ridge Avenue home without a warrant and arrested four Philadelphia community members and dear friends – Daniel Moffat, Trevor Burgess, Andrea Okorley, and Jennifer Rock. These residents were pulled from their home at 1652 Ridge Avenue, arrested, and detained without charges at the Ninth District for over twelve hours. During their detention, Philadelphia Police called in the City’s Licenses and Inspections Agency, who deemed the house uninhabitable, and sealed the doors. Despite an extraordinary output of community support in response to the raid, the residents of the affectionately named Shoe Store are still facing an arduous struggle to reclaim their home. As we continue to support the displaced family of the Ridge Avenue Shoe Store, we seek to put their situation in the context of policing and displacement happening city, nation and world wide. We send this letter with two-fold intention: to respond to all the comrades who have asked how they can help, as well as to activate our support for those affected by these policies in the context of a diverse movement with wide and varied experience.
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3 prisoners who forecast their own "suicides"
Abuse and Deaths at SCI Smithfield
By: onion
on: Wed 28 of May, 2008 [16:37 UTC]
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3 prisoners who forecast their own "suicides"by dave onion with reporting by Andalusia Knoll 
On April 7th this year a small crowd gathered in the Rotunda of the Harrisburg State Capitol to protest recent deaths in Pennsylvania prisons. Most of the demonstrators, who presented a list of demands to law makers were family or friends of the deceased. Some prison advocates and activists were also present from the Fight for Lifers West, STOPMAX Campaign, Prison Society, New Vision Organization, defenestrator and Friends and Family of Prisoners Emergency Response Network. With one of the key organizers stuck in traffic, the protest self organized and relatives of the deceased spoke on the loss of their loved ones.
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HOPE NOW
By: admin
on: Thu 08 of May, 2008 [17:06 UTC]
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Obey Later
Passing on a couple thoughts and pieces on the current Obamamania....
While Obama's campaign is interesting in a number of different ways, we should never forget that Obama is engaging and participating in a profoundly dirty and fucked up game. A game that regardless how clean or righteous one tries to be while engaging in it will always remind its participants to play by its rules. Rules written by elites through history on their own terms.
To summarize a conversation I've had countless times, usually across a clipboard, to a election dazed green party canvasser, is the case of the german green party. Originally very rooted in social movements against war, nuclear power and weapons as well as social issues affecting people's daily lives on numerous levels, the greens ascended through levels of state power with some earned legitimacy of their face to face presence in the streets. But once inside the machinery of the the state, the former radical troublemakers had to learn quickly how to become cogs which fit nicely in with the rest of the machinery. Which they did.
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A decennary of defenestration
Looking back on a decade of throwing power out the window
By: by dave onion
on: Thu 01 of Nov, 2007 [18:39 UTC]
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It’s now been ten years since we first started publishing this paper.
The defenestrator as a project initially grew from an informal conversation riding back to Philly from a Homes Not Jails conference in Boston. The conversation in the back of that van in retrospect bore a strange resemblance to more recent conversations I’ve been in on the way home from other inspiring conferences, essentially: “Why don’t we do that in Philly?” A few weeks later we had our first meeting to shape what was to become the paper you now hold. The first issue, number zero, was photocopied, laid out by hand and contained Philly news about the Kensington Welfare Rights Union, Philly Squatters Aid, an enthusiastic bit on Philly Freedom Summer for Mumia, the Atlantic Anarchist Circle, Wooden Shoe Books recovering from a fire, as well as updates from political prisoners and various international news bits. We printed issue zero on stolen paper using commandeered photocopiers at undisclosed locations.
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book review:
Are Prisons Obsolete?
By: admin
on: Wed 25 of Jul, 2007 [21:34 UTC]
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reviewed by dave onion
 The title of Angela Davis’ book Are Prisons Obsolete (2003) sounds nothing short of utopian. Here in the US, as Davis points out, prisons are integral to everyday life. In poor communities and communities of color, nearly everyone has family or friends who are among the 2.5 million plus doing time in this country. Television and pop culture in general (where pop culture = cop culture) reminds the rest of us that prisons are part of society. But for those of us actively seeking out ways of being and organizing society that don’t rely on coercion or institutional violence, some utopian imagination is necessary (can we create it, if we can’t even imagine it?). But APO isn’t exactly that. Davis delivers a short book of historical context for what is now a monstrous soul devouring industry, but one which she shows is a relatively recent development and one which we should be working our way beyond. Besides, the book is an excellent primer on prisons.
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Autonomous Communities
By: onion
on: Tue 17 of Jul, 2007 [02:38 UTC]
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 The aspiration for autonomy is above all the struggle against political and moral alienation from life and work - against the functionalization of outside interests, against the internalization of the morals of our foes ... This aspiration is concretized when houses are squatted to live humanely or not to have to pay high rents, when workers call in sick in order to party because they can’t take the alienation at work, when unemployed people plunder supermarkets ... because they don’t agree with absurd demands of unions for more jobs that only integrate people into oppression and exploitation. Everywhere that people begin to sabotage, to change the political, moral and technical structures of domination is a step toward a self-determined life.
from a 1983 meeting of Autonomen in Hamburg
Back in the day, LAVA, the space where defenestrator keeps its office chose to call itself the Lancaster AVenue Autonomous space. At the time the name LAVA and the autonomous label seemed like a good fit. To some of us it contained enough meaning to show our general political motivations, while being inclusive enough to allow for a pretty wide spectrum of voices and ways. But after having to explain the meaning of that word over and over again to people who’ve come in to visit the space, it became apparent that even many who were members of the groups using the space probably couldn’t explain why we were called that or where our name even came from. So it seemed like we needed to maybe revisit what that second A in LAVA was all about. ...
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Mainzer Strasse eviction 1990
By: admin
on: Sun 25 of Mar, 2007 [20:58 UTC]
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Philadelphia Combat Zones
By: onion
on: Thu 22 of Mar, 2007 [16:19 UTC]
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All over the news end of November last year was the murder of Sean Bell by the NYPD. It was his wedding night and the unarmed Bell was gunned down by 50 shots from plainclothes police. But as the year (which was one of Philadelphia’s deadliest) was coming to a close, Philly cops had already put an end to the lives of 20 Philadelphians. 2006 marked the deadliest year at the hands of cops since 1980. We currently boast the deadliest police force of all big cities in the US with more killings than New York City, which has 13 times the population.
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Oaxaca Libre, La Lucha Sigue!
By: onion
on: Fri 08 of Dec, 2006 [23:12 UTC]
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It’s been a turbulent few weeks in Oaxaca. If you read corporate news accounts of the current uprising in Oaxaca, you’ll read quotes of distressed tourists unhappy their vacation has been ruined by reckless mobs; “how difficult it is to sit in the main square and savour the famous chocolate or mole sauce.” Or the businesses that haven’t been open for weeks. What rarely emerges beyond the spectacle of whiny tourists are the stories of thousands of Mexico’s poor and dispossessed fighting against a system of political corruption as well as entrenched economic and police violence. 
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What's this?
a gathering of personal production and influences.
you can email me: onion at defenestrator dot org or check out a page of curious things
Emergency Response Network
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