Welcome! Newsletter number 58.
Half a year without missing a monthly review. Like in the old days! This time, we are looking at the Verso book A Social History of Analytic Philosophy.
A correspondence between artist Andrea Bowers and me was published (in both English and German) in Texte zur Kunst, titled “Out of Left Field: Playing Out Political Positions in Art and Sports.” It was for an issue about, eh, sports. The original cover I made for the Anarchist Football (Soccer) Manual zine (later to become the book Soccer vs. the State) was included as one of the illustrations – artsy indeed! I was unsure about whether to get involved until I realized that Dirk von Lowtzow of Tocotronic is on the advisory board. I lost interest in the band about twenty years ago, but I was a huge fan of their first records from the 1990s. Full circle!
Speaking of zines: We did one called Radical Union Organizing in the Nordic Countries with the international committee of the SAC. It came out of a meeting with grassroots union organizers from Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Iceland in Stockholm in April. We’ll have it distributed by the likes of Active Distribution, AK Press, and Left Wing Books, but it’s also available for download online.
Speaking of covers: I finally (about five years after the fact) found an image of the cover of a Russian book about football (“Another Football Is Possible,” I believe) I contributed an article to. It’s nice (the cover – the article must be judged by others)!
Finally, something I’ve been pondering for a while before reaching a conclusion. I’ve decided that, from late October (the start of the Alpine skiing world cup season), I will write again for the German communist daily junge Welt after an absence of two and a half years. It’s no decision I have taken lightly because the problems that caused me to pause my contributions have not been resolved: the paper never retracted the slanderous articles published about anarchist volunteers killed in Ukraine, and the person responsible for them is still a junge Welt author. However, there are new editors-in-chief at the paper, they know what I think about the articles, and I have reason to believe that similar texts will not be published in the future. If I’m wrong, I’ll have to bear the consequences. The reasons for me resuming the contributions are threefold: 1. I love writing about sports, and there is no better outlet for political sports writing in the German language than the sports pages of junge Welt. I also treasure the good relationship I have with the sports editors of the paper. 2. There is no other German daily that is so steadfast in its support of topics I deem important, most notably the anti-colonial struggle of the Sámi. 3. While my job at the union will end in a couple of months, capitalism, in all likelihood, will not, and I’m happy for any income I can make in connection with boosting ideas I hold dear.
More next month. Stay safe!