5 Feet of Fury

Toronto anarchists take government (i.e. taxpayer) money, open store

Prince Kropotkin plotzes!

A surprisingly good piece by Kelly McParland (who turns out to be a dude, sorry) in the National Post:

Many of the other organizations that get a free handout from the city treasury are much harder to assess. The main criteria for grants, it seems, is an ability to learn and regurgitate an inscrutable pseudo-script, which assembles legitimate words in apparent sentences, which in turn purport to contain a legitimate message but might as well be written in a regional variation of ancient Sanscrit.

BlazingCatFur (see the NP’s comments) went poking around the report, and found this:

GlobalAware Independent Media Organization
This project – Youth Media Empowerment Project – is for young men and women between the ages of 15 and 24. Assisted by a growing number of youth volunteers from diverse backgrounds, GlobalAware will facilitate a series of critical and creative workshops and events. These activities will link media awareness and production with the protection and advancement of human rights at the local and global levels. This project builds upon the 2007 AEHR funding in its engagement with youth to address media messages within the context of diversity, community and equity.
$5,000.00

Which led BCL to visit GlobalAware’s website, where you learn about this:

The GlobalAware InfoShop is located in downtown Toronto in the heart of Kensington Market. Swing by for a fair trade, organic coffee. Get some real news and a wide range of anarchist and alternative books or pickup an environmentally sustainable gift.

You can also buy photographs, prints, posters, postcards, flyers, buttons, stickers, magnets, books, note cards and greeting cards for social justice.

So now we’ve got “anarchists” accepting money extorted by the State AND selling merchandise. In exchange for, like, even more money! At least the latter is a voluntary contractual exchange. But still. Ew. Dead tree peelings with pictures of dead old white men on ’em!!!

What kind of merchandise, you ask? Well, there’s this:

Ironically, the name GlobalAwareness gave this jpg? “fhatred”. Yeah, “f**k hatred, dude! Except, er, when WE hate certain people we’ve never met and have really weird, inaccurate ideas about. Cool.”