The weekend of July 7th and 8th witnessed the European peace movement come together in Brussels, Belgium to send a clear message to the world community, “No to war – No to NATO!”

The mass demonstration on Saturday and the No-to NATO counter summit on Sundayrejected American calls for all 29 NATO member states to increase military expenditures to 2% of GDP. Currently, the US spends 3.57% for military programs while European nations average 1.46 percent. President Trump is pressuring NATO members to spends hundreds of billions of additional Euros annually on various military programs, many which involve the purchase of American weapons and the expansion of military bases.

NATO members will meet in Brussels on July 11th and 12th. President Trump is expected to come down strongly on the Europeans while most member states are hesitant to increase military spending.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

– William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming, 1919

pocalyptic thinking has been with us for a long time, and it sometimes ushers in actual apocalypses, albeit at human scale, without biblical finality. For a century now, the Yeats poem above has served as an increasingly common reference point for those who fear apocalyptic events approaching. Today such fears are varied, the threats are real, and reactions range from crisis-mongering to self-serving denial, making any rational, coherent societal response almost impossible.

Thursday, July 12, 7pm
St. Stephens Episcopal Church, 30 W. Woodruff
July 5-8, the Columbus ISO helped organize a nearly 50 person contingent to go to the Socialism Conference in Chicago. At this meeting, we will discuss the lessons on the Conference and how we can apply those lessons long-term to the building of revolutionary organization and social movements in Columbus. We will also discuss some of the developments in the fight against deportation locally and nationally and how we intend to orient towards it.

Rob Collier, a composer/performer from Milwaukee, Wisconsin is doing a tour and will be playing at It Looks Like its Open, 13 E. Tulane on Saturday, July 14, 7:30-10:30pm. He is touring with Ben Aguilar (from Louisville, Ky) and performing a new composition called Music in Transparent Layers. They will record every performance on the tour and play the recordings at each subsequent show as we add a new layer live. Thus, each performance is a unique stage in the development of the piece. The music is ambient/minimal/experimental.

MUSIC IN TRANSPARENT LAYERS is a new composition by ROB COLLIER. Multi-timbral motives, pseudo-ambient textures, process-driven harmony. Performed in duet with BEN AGUILAR.

NOISTERIA EMISSION - Experimental electronic from Dayton, OH

HABITEUR - Coaxing beauty from ugliness, Habiteur works with machinery, junk, repurposed electronics, tapes, and various objects.

Let’s be honest.

There are many reasons that people decide to build an organization. Anger is one. A rage at injustice or an action by the government coupled with a recognition that your one voice, even yelling, will neither be heard nor will it create change, is often enough. Sometimes it is a mutual agreement between friends or like-minded individuals to all stand together and dive into the deep end of the pool and see if an issue can be attacked, a campaign created, or maybe an organization formed. Sometimes it is neighbors or fellow workers aggravated about a persistent issue or grievance that forces collective action. Sometimes it starts, as it usually did with ACORN, with someone knocking on your door. There can be all manner of triggers that begin organizations and without care, there can be as many that stunt its development or suffocate its future from birth.

Issues, grievances, inequities, and injustices are all reasons to build campaigns, but for an organization to live and win it has to have structure. It is important to be humble to the task, even while hopeful of the future.