Here’s a breakdown of the December issue:

• Kevin Mahoney | Raging Chicken Press Interview with Noam Chomsky (yes, that Noam Chomsky)
• Wendy Lee | “Fracking is a Variety of Environmental Rape Abetted by the Law: Governor Corbett’s Pennsylvania, Inc.”
• Dustin Slaughter | “Occupy 2.0: ‘Defending the Everyday Aims of Life’ While Persisting in a Police State”
• Rick Smith Files | “Privatization in Three Parts” (Featuring interviews with labor attorney, Irwin Aronson; State Rep. Scott Conklin; and Marcie Boyer, nurse and member of SEIU District 1199P  in PA in State Prison system)
• Sean Kitchen | “Battlefield USA: From Occupy Wall Street to Guantanamo Bay”
• Kati Sipp | “Some Thoughts on Getting Arrested…”
• Aaron Barlow | “Diane Ravitch on the Failure of High Stakes Testing in Two Parts”
• Sean Kitchen | “The Free University: Brought to You by Occupy Kutztown”
• Caitlin Turner | “Occupy Everything”
• Lee Camp | “You Can’t Pepper Spray a Mental Awakening”
• Lee Camp | “Is Occupy Wall Street Having an Effect?”
• “Rob” | “Sean Hannity Show: #OWS are ‘Morons, Idiots, Stupid’”

As you can see, it’s quite an issue. A great way to close out 2011. Raging Chicken Press will be taking a little break over the holidays. Our next issue will be published the first week of February. While we will not be publishing a full issue until then, I will be using the opportunity to fill you in on our plans for 2012.

One reminder: it’s still possible to be eligible to be selected from our subscriber list to receive this months “Must Read.” This month’s book takes its inspiration from our Chomsky interview: Noam Chomsky’s, Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order as well as Hopes and Prospects (that’s right, another double give-away). To be eligible, all you need to do is enter your email address in the subscription box on the right-hand side of our main page and click “Subscribe” by Monday, December 19th. That’s it and it’s free. I’ll announce our lucky subscriber next week.

That’s it for now. Hope you dig the issue!

Bread and Roses,

Editor Zero, Kevin Mahoney

For the past several weeks, I have been meeting with a group of students, faculty, and staff who have been thinking concretely about how to bring change to the university and build strong networks with the surrounding community. Our group, Occupy Kutztown, meets every Tuesday at 11am in Bear’s Den coffee house in the student union building (meeting will restart at the beginning of the spring semester).  The three suggestions I sent to the Strategic Plan Task Force attempt to get the university to enact policies of material support to the community. Here is the full memo I sent:

To: Co-Chairs, Strategic Planning Task Force
From: Kevin Mahoney
Re: Comments/Suggestions for Strategic Plan

Date: December 7, 2011

I am writing to follow up on last week’s Strategic Plan open forum. As you may recall, I made a few  suggestions about the implementation of the Strategic Plan that I believe would provide KU with some concrete goals toward implementation. These suggestions are focused on reinforcing the spirit of the mission and goals of the university in ways that also help build strong connections with our surrounding communities.

I want to express my thanks to the Strategic Plan Task Force for their great work. I believe that this strategic plan represents the first coherent vision for the long-term success of the university I have seen since joining the faculty in 2002. As the outside consultant, Dr. Stephen Reno, stated

as a result of this process, you all have a wider responsibility for this campus.  So, you should be looking at this plan and asking yourself, “what’s my part in it? What piece of it can I pick up and take up and work on?”

These suggestions represent the kind of work that I and others envision as the parts of the process that we are willing to “pick up, take up, and work on.” So, as requested, I am sending you these comments/suggestions to you to include in your deliberations.

The three suggestions I have relate directly to Objective 2.1 Develop, Promote, and Sustain Strong Community Partnerships, in particular (but not limited to), Initiative 2.1.2. The goal of Initiative 2.1.2 is to “Establish and strengthen reciprocal relationships with regional businesses and community groups.” The two desired outcomes are: 1) identify and establish relationships with businesses and community groups aligned with KU programs; and, 2) Expand our networks of approved internship sites.

The current economic climate continues to strain communities and families that surround the university and from where most of our students come.  It would seem both appropriate and strategically smart for the university to act proactively to support our communities materially. These three suggestions could have a significant material impact in our communities and strengthen our ties with our communities.

1. Bank Locally

   Currently, Kutztown University does its banking with Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo was one of the “big banks” that contributed to our current economic crisis and continues to be plagued by ethical and legal violations. I propose that Kutztown University moves its money out of “big banks” and into a community based bank. Fleetwood Bank, for example, is a local, community based bank that would be an ideal candidate. By banking locally, we are supporting the local economy and maximizing the local impact of our banking practices.

2. PA Sourcing of Office Supplies and Related Materials

   While Pennsylvania has been spared the worst of the current economic crisis, jobs are still quite difficulty to come by and PA families are struggling. As a state institution that is owned by the taxpaying citizens of the Commonwealth, it would make sense that we should maximize our economic support for PA industries. I propose that Kutztown University enact a policy of buying at least 50% of all office supplies and related materials from PA industries with a unionize workforce.

3. Sourcing Food Locally

   Similar to #2, I propose that Kutztown University enact a policy of sourcing at least 50% of the food served on campus from local farms. Given the sheer size of Kutztown University, we would provide significant direct support for local economies. Furthermore, given the increasing number of food related crises connected to large-scale, global food sourcing (arsenic in apple juice, E. coli in meat and pre-packaged salads and vegetables) buying food locally is also a health issue.

I fully recognize that none of these proposals could be enacted over-night. I also recognize that enacting these proposals would require both work and a different way of thinking about how we fulfill our mission. As President Cevallos said at the open forum, these proposals lead us into “long and complicated” discussions and there would be “difficulties.” The group of people that I am working with on these issues are more than willing with work out the “difficulties.”

I believe that we can “think big” with this strategic plan and create a set of practices that can build strong relationships with the community through material choices the university makes as to how to spend and invest its money. As President Cevallos said, budgets and the use of resources are “choices.” The three choices I outline above are choices that can help demonstrate to the community that we can not only talk the talk of community engagement, we can walk the walk, too.

Thank you in advance for you consideration. Feel free to contact me via email @ mahoney@kutztown.edu or by phone. I would be happy to meet to discuss any of these issues further.

Sincerely,

Kevin Mahoney
Assoc. Prof., English

The Strategic Plan Task Force invites the campus community to an Open Forum from 11 – 11:50 a.m. on Thursday, December 1, in AF, room 203, to discuss proposed revisions to the Strategic Plan. Faculty, students, and staff are encouraged to join in a conversation with our strategic planning consultant, Dr. Stephen Reno, members of Cabinet, and the Strategic Plan Task Force.

F. Javier Cevallos, president

My intention was to have full video of the entire forum, but two things went wrong. First, about 5 minutes into the video there is a glitch that separated the video from the audio by a few seconds, making viewing the video incredibly annoying. Second, the last 10 minutes of the forum got cut off because my SD card was full. Live and learn. I am particularly disappointed the my last exchange with President Cevallos concerning KU’s $29.1 million is unrestricted net assets (if you want the background story, check out my post from April on the XChange or my article, “Kutztown University, Shock Doctrine, and Snake Oil Tales,” from the first issue of Raging Chicken Press).

What I’ve done is convert the video to all audio. Ideally, I’ll pull out some shorter clips that will be easier to circulate. However, I thought I would post the raw audio for anyone who is interested. Click on the link below to listen to the MP3 file. You can also right click, download it to your computer, and listen to it through whatever media player you use.

KU Strategic Plan Forum – December 1, 2011

You can consider the MP3 file to be licensed under the XChange’s general Creative Commons license. You are welcome to use the file as you wish within the terms of the license.

As you may have already read, the December issue will feature a video interview with Noam Chomsky. We also intend on introducing more audio components to the site including interviews and commentary in the coming months. In January, we will welcome our first Raging Chicken Press intern, Drew Simonovich  - what we hope to be the first of many to come.  In addition to our monthly issues, Raging Chicken Press has also been able to donate to Dustin Slaughter’s David and Goliath Project in support of his coverage of the Occupy Movement. We have dropped off supplies to Occupy Allentown.  We donated money to help fund the launch of the “Occupy Wall Street Journal” back in October. We have also deepened our connections to other activist/progressive projects such as the Rick Smith Show, Occupy Kutztown, and Lee Camp’s amazing “Moments of Clarity.” Just last week we announced our first “subscriber give-away” winner of the Raging Chicken Press “Must Read” of the month. The subscriber give-away will be a regular monthly feature (so subscribe!!!!). The December and January issues will feature several new contributors – both solicited and unsolicited which promises to further diversify the progressive voices we seek to amplify and support.

The next big challenge ahead will be fundraising. We’ve been able to earn a little bit of money from our on-line store and from a few donations from supporters. Revenue from those sources will allow Raging Chicken Press to cover its web-hosting and domain name fees and purchase some equipment such as a tripod and USB drives. However, if we are going to take on all that we want to take on, we are going to need to raise money more aggressively. At this point, it is most likely that we are going to make a strong push in the beginning of 2012 through Kickstarter. If we are able to raise the funds we need, we will be able to fund paid internships for the next couple of years, issue the first paperback edition of the “Best of Raging Chicken Press” in the summer of 2012, launch a small-scale progressive publishing house in cooperation with a local, union-shop printer, and begin to host monthly or bi-monthly progressive meet-ups to facilitate activist networking.

To think that just seven month ago Raging Chicken Press was simply a “cool idea” and now we have just crossed the 10,000 all-time viewer mark after only five issues is pretty remarkable. Once again, I want to thank everyone who has helped make this project possible…from our regular contributors, to our “Raging Chicken Army” who send out links to their networks when each issue is released, to the notes of support and critique we receive from readers. Raging Chicken Press is off to a blazing start thanks to you.

Bread and Roses,

Kevin Mahoney
Editor Zero, Raging Chicken Press

As a testament to how fast events are moving, we have not had a chance to begin to digest last night’s forcible eviction of the Occupy Wall Street encampment in NYC, the court order that allowed OWS activists to return to their encampment, and the hundreds of arrests that seemed to continue into the night. In addition, the Mayor of Oakland let it slip that she had a conference call with mayors from 18 U.S. cities with Occupy encampments to coordinate crackdowns and evictions. There is now doubt that we’re entering a new stage of the Occupy/99% movement…what that stage is, however, is undecided at this time. Raging Chicken Press looks forward to covering the continual development of this amazing movement.

This months issue features the following contributions:

• “Occupy Philadelphia Faces a Crossroads,” by Dustin Slaughter
• “The 99%: A Return to E Pluribus Unum?,” by Glenn Richardson
• “What the Occupations Have Taught Me: Lose the Fear,” by Dustin Slaughter]
• Rick Smith Files | Interview with Erik Loomis: “How General Strikes and Direct Action Build Solidarity”
• Rick Smith Files | Interview with Desire Grover: “PA GOP and Corporations Stealing Our Children’s Future”
• “Occupy Well Street: Frack the Keystone XL,” by Wendy Lee
• “Occupy Allentown,” video from the field
• “How Far We’ve Come: Eroding CUNY’s Mission One Test at a Time,” by Aaron Barlow
• “Kim Kardashian, Occupy Wall Street, and Credit Default Swaps,” Lee Camp | MOC #93
• Musical Interlude | Fuel for Resistance

The November issue of Raging Chicken Press will be out soon (hopefully by Monday–we’ve been a bit sick here).  I know, the waiting game sucks.  Well, Raging Chicken Press has got something for at least some of you to do while you are waiting for the next issue.

Raging Chicken Press announces its first ever song contest! More specifically, song parody contest. Frankly, if I had the musical talent, I would have been on this over the summer. But, we all have to accept our short-comings. So, I thought this would be a cool project to push out to fans and friends of Raging Chicken Press.

Have you ever seen Disney’s version of Robin Hood? Well, I loved it as a kid and now my three-year old son loves it too. As I was watching it over the summer, I began to see the possibility of repurposing some of the songs on the soundtrack for our current struggles against right-wing attacks on collective bargaining, public education, social services, and our democracy. I began to think about casting our “beloved” governor, Tom Corbett as “Prince John” the “phony King of England.”  In particular, I was thinking about the song “The Phony King of England.” Listen to this song and replace “John” and “England” with “Tom” and “Pennsylvania” and you’ll get the idea:

Got it? If you check out Chris Priest’s repurposing of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” (see below) you’ll get the sense of what we’re thinking about here at Raging Chicken Press.

So, we’re going to try a little experiment: We are calling on readers and friends of Raging Chicken Press to submit parodies of the song “Phony King of England” to Raging Chicken Press. All entries will be posted to Raging Chicken Press and readers will have a chance to vote on the best version. The top three entries (if we get that many) will receive their choice of t-shirt from the Raging Chicken Press store.  The winning song will also receive Raging Chicken Press’s “Must Read” book of the month.

Here’s the rules:

• Song must be a rewritten version of the “Phony King of England” that appears in the video above
• Song should replace “John” with “Tom” and Tom should refer to PA Governor, Tom Corbett. Likewise, “England” should be replaced with “Pennsylvania”
• All entries must be recorded in MP3 or .wav format.
• All final recordings must be loaded up to YouTube. Ideally, the final video should include images to political protest against Tom Corbett and the PA Republican’s austerity budget and other attacks upon working families and the Commons.
• Once songs are uploaded to YouTube, an email should be sent to ragingchickenpress@gmail.com including a link to the video, the name(s) of the song writer(s), and contact information including email and mailing address.
• All entries should be submitted by November 29th.

A reminder that the deadline for the November issue of Raging Chicken Press is approaching quickly.

November marks a kind of unofficial start of the 2012 elections. There is more at stake than election of a president. Across the nation and increasingly here in Pennsylvania, state legislatures are rolling back workers rights, gutting funding for public schools and services, signing over huge tax breaks to corporations while slashing jobs, and making exercising your right to vote more difficult than ever before. PA Governor Corbett’s proposed electoral college change would effectively hand the bulk of PA’s electoral votes to the Republican candidate in an end-around the will of the people (see Richardson’s article in the October issue).  We are looking for people who are willing to put on their wonk hats and expose the radical right’s agenda. This becomes even more important as millions and millions of dollars is pouring into PA from right-wing front groups such as ALEC and the American Federation of Children.

We welcome all submissions that seek to give voice to progressive, activist communities of resistance. Become a Raging Chicken.

If you are interested in submitting your work, you can do so by sending an email to ragingchickenpress@gmail.com.  Please take a few minutes to review our Submission Guidelines to familiarize yourself with the kind of work we publish and the purpose of our publication.

Deadline for the November issue is Monday, October 31st [extended from 10/28...Halloween seemed more appropriate!]. 

As always, the earlier you get us your submission the better. We look forward to hearing from you!

Kevin Mahoney | Editor Zero, Raging Chicken Press

Raging Chicken Press plans on being around for the long haul. And to do that, we are taking steps to make our work sustainable.  The Raging Chicken Store, while a small operation, has earned Raging Chicken Press enough to pay for our hosting costs and associated services.  This coming February. Raging Chicken Press will be at the PA Progressive Summit in Philadelphia.  Next summer, Raging Chicken Press will be attending Netroots Nation in Providence, RI to learn from the experience of other media activists and to deepen our political networks. This spring, Raging Chicken Press will take on its first intern. We are working to provide at least three paid internships a year beginning summer 2012. In short, a lot is going on.

Our most ambitious project will be related to raising funds to help Raging Chicken Press on a sound financial footing.  In the next couple of weeks, Raging Chicken Press will be putting out a fundraising appeal through Kickstarter.com. Rather than being forced to rely upon advertising or smaller fundraisers, we will attempting to raise $20,000 through this amazing, community based fundraising tool. While some readers have already begun to donate to Raging Chicken Press though our PayPal donation button on our site and we thank those donors immensely.  However, we recognize that our expenses will soon out pace what we are able to raise through small donations and the Raging Chicken Press store.

I can’t begin to thank all the people who have written me to say how excited they are about Raging Chicken Press. With this kind of support we will be able to build a strong independent, progressive voice for PA and beyond. For now, keep reading and consider contributing to the November issue of Raging Chicken Press!

Anyway, the fact is that students’ activist made a tangible, concrete change in the university. If that student organization had continued after a couple of the key organizers graduated, we might still be able to say our KU apparel was not made in sweatshops. In the light of the current recession and budget-cut mania, I’ve been thinking about the kind of things we could do locally that would have real, tangible effects and that would provide some degree of mutual aid to our communities. Ever since the Occupy Movement exploded on the scene, I’ve been having conversations here and there about just this issue. And today’s Occupy Kutztown rally was an encouraging place to begin a conversation about organizing locally and retaking a piece of the commons. With that in mind, here are some projects you will be hearing more about on the XChange in the coming weeks and months. Here are some concrete things we can demand our university does:

• For starters, 50% of all food served in the dining halls and other locations on campus should be locally sourced from family farms
• 75% of all university supplies should be manufactured in Pennsylvania, when possible, at union shops. This includes office supplies such as paper and pens as well as larger items such as desks and walkway lighting.
• All new building projects should be build using union contractors from Pennsylvania.
• Space should be set aside on campus for a farmers’ market
• All university banking accounts should be moved out of “big banks” and relocated to community based banks in the area.