Faux flashback

Thank you for the enjoyable 15-year flashback that you presented for your anniversary [June 29]. It sloshed back fond memories such as Terminal Sunglasses, DAFP, the Rising Sun, and Mitsou teaming up with Ivan. But I was disappointed to see Me Mom & Morgentaler's "Earth vs. AIDS" benefit at the Rialto in 1992 dubbed a "washout after proceeds are withheld by Fogel-Sabourin to cover the cost of a potential lawsuit by an injured concert-goer."

For the record, there was an injury at the show. Two days after the event, we informed the organizations involved that there would be a delay in the release of the profits until we had finalized the expenses which we felt could potentially include the insurance deductible and the ambulance costs. All the organizations understood and were more concerned about the concert-goer's well-being than the delay. Fuelled by a story in the Mirror less than a week after the event, things quickly escalated from a delay in closure to potential lawsuits to promoters pocketing the profits.

If I remember correctly, the journalist at the Mirror never followed up. So, eight years later, I'd like to let you know that around two weeks after the event, the injured person was on the road to recovery from her first concert stage-dive and cheques were distributed to all the organizations, less the cost of the ambulance. On behalf of the bands, organizers, volunteers and the 1,100 concert-goers who made the "washout" a success, I hope that the Mirror can come up with a better tag-line for the event by the 20th anniversary issue.

--Duncan MacTavish, promoter guy

Green dissent

I take exception to some things in last week's letter by Green party candidate Sarwer-Foner. He found it strange that I was allowed a few words in the Mirror's article on Green parties ["Looking for the limelight," Aug. 3]. I have been involved with the Canadian and Quebec parties for a long time.

My disillusionment with party politics happened for the same reasons that Sarwer-Foner gives as the party's value: it provides a voice for environmental issues that are left out of the other parties' discourses, and that "these issues should be front and centre during elections." From an anarchist standpoint, this is a rather exclusive educational campaign, one limited in practice to election time. It addresses the mainstream parties, rather than civil society. What about the four years between elections?

A green think tank would surely do a less sporadic job than marginal parties. Why legitimize party-politics-as-usual by focusing on elections (a process whereby ordinary people hand power over to political elites)? In countries where Greens are junior partners in government, they have mostly abandoned their ideals. The German foreign affairs minister Joschka Fischer, a Green, works closely with NATO and the UN. This goes beyond greasing the wheels of the New World Order (international capitalist disorder)--he actively participates in processes that are despoiling the planet. In Mexico, the Greens are allying themselves with the right-wing Catholic PAN party, enthusiastic supporters of economic deregulation (free trade). It could be said that the closer marginal parties come to influencing state power, the more they resemble this power and adopt its agendas.

People working for meaningful change have abandoned the ballot box in favour of direct action. This can be ecological farming and direct city-dweller and farmer links in Montreal; destroying genetically modified pollutant crops in California; the armed defense of communal uses of land in India; Animal Liberation Front-style freeings of "commodified" beasts in England; reclaiming the streets and so on. It's about putting "l'imagination au pouvoir" instead of fuelling false hopes of reforming this anti-social, unecological system called capitalism and "representative" (electoral) democracy. The system is so ripe for change, it's rotting. When do we compost capitalism? As the anarchist slogan goes, if voting could change the system, it would be illegal.

-- Bernard Cooper, Party-snuffing green anarchist

Correction

In last week's visual arts listings photo, the creator of the "Cheap Thrills" V-low bicycle was wrongly identified. It was created by V-Low (93 Rachel W.) owner Karyne Paradise. We regret the error.