Declare Independence

Visit us JULY 4-18th 2009
and Declare the Independence you need!
our staff will be there to assist you.
LIVE performance July 18th 7pm!
@ MEME gallery,
55 Norfolk Street *Central Square*
CAMBRIDGE, MA

the Declaration of Independence

july 4-11 @ MEME GALLERY

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism(A government which exercises absolute control over all citizens and every aspect of their lives), it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

* * *
-He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

-He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

-He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

-He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

-He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

-He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

-He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

-He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

-He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

-He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

-He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

-He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

-He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

-For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

-For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

-For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

-For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

-For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

-For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

-For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

-For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

-For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

-He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

-He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

-He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

-He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

-He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

* * *

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

— John Hancock

REVOLT2DIE - Dienetics

Dienetics

HAKIM BEY

To throw money away at the Stock Exchange was pretty decent Perceptive Terrorism—but destroying money is good Sabotage. To seize TV transmission & broadcast pirated minutes of incendiary Choate art would constitute a feat of PT. If certain galleries & museums deserve an occasional brick through their windows--not destruction, but a jolt to complacency--then what about BANKS? Galleries turn beauty into a commodity but banks transmute Imagination into feces and debt. Wouldn't the world gain a degree of beauty with each bank that could be made to tremble...or fall?

Don't picket--vandalize. Don't protest--deface. When ugliness, poor design & stupid waste are forced upon you, turn Luddite, throw your shoe in the works, retaliate. Smash the symbols of the Empire in the name of nothing.

help wipe out Zombies

Know that basic comforts could be easily met for ALL humans on the planet, were it not for the imbalance of resources created by the insane and hungry gluttonous need for more. Selfish Zombies find collective expression in the economic structures of this world, such as the huge corporations, which are egotistical zombie entities that compete with each other for more. Their only blind aim is profit $$$ and will pursue that aim with absolute ruthlessness. Nature, animals, people, even their own employees, are no more than digits on a balance sheet, lifeless objects to be used, then discarded. Free your self!

At present circumstances let the economy fall, creating global freedom from religious financial inequalities created by these Zombies. In the u.s. people are forced to die for country but can't get basic health taken care of at home. Zombies responsible for the financial collapse get their 35million dollar bonus, while u.s. taxpayer pays $700billion to support their 108 foot yachts and 8 homes. It is time to take away their control, stop being a slave to the Zombie.

advise to destroy the Zombie:
-know that there is no law about having to pay taxes, you don't. Zombies force you to pay taxes. funny, if you owe them enough, they will come to your home with guns and threaten you with your life to pay, 'your money or your life!'

LOVE

Don't you know what it means really to love somebody to love without hate, without jealousy, without anger, without wanting to interfere with what he is doing or thinking, without condemning, without comparing - don't you know what it means? Where there is love is there comparison? When you love someone with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your body, with your entire being, is there comparison? When you totally abandon yourself to that love there is not the other.

Does love have responsibility and duty, and will it use those words? When you do something out of duty is there any love in it? In duty there is no love. The structure of duty in which the human being is caught is destroying him. So long as you are compelled to do something because it is your duty you don't love what you are doing. When there is love there is no duty and no responsibility.

Most parents unfortunately think they are responsible for their children and their sense of responsibility takes the form of telling them what they should do and what they should not do, what they should become and what they should not become. The parents want their children to have a secure position in society. What they call responsibility is part of that respectability they worship; and it seems to me that where there is respectability there is no order; they are concerned only with becoming a perfect bourgeois. When they prepare their children to fit into society they are perpetuating war, conflict and brutality. Do you call that care and love?

Really to care is to care as you would for a tree or a plant, watering it, studying its needs, the best soil for it, looking after it with gentleness and tenderness - but when you prepare your children to fit into society you are preparing them to be killed. If you loved your children you would have no war.

-Freedom From The Known
Jiddu Krishnamurti

ABRAHAM OBAMA

Aesthetic dialogue on construction siding
By Cara Bayles

A 13-foot high, 100-foot long mural of an iconic face reproduced nine times – a pop art image with converging colors – stands on Thayer Street in the South End. The composite portrait of Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama blends two politicians, as well as the lines between art and politics.

The mural, which could come down any day, pasted on a construction wall owned by GTI Properties, is the work of Ron English, a self-described "culture jammer," who gained notoriety illegally manipulating billboards. "The basic idea behind culture jamming is appropriating the methods and platforms created for the dissemination of corporate advertising to deconstruct the corporate message," English told the Dig, via email. His past work includes manipulating a McCain campaign billboard to look like a Viagra ad.

The Abraham Obama piece was commissioned by Will Kerr, director of Gallery XIV, for the show A Politic, which features 40 politically minded pieces from 40 different artists. "In some ways, it's the smartest and dumbest thing I've done," Kerr says. "Everyone said six months ago, 'Don't do a political show, that's the kiss of death.'"

Kerr is no stranger to controversy. Gallery XIV's Michael Costello show, which featured detailed paintings of nudes posing with muppets, was dubbed "pornographic" by protesters. Now, Kerr has come under fire for the mural, because English's fans pasted prints of it all over town, incurring the wrath of his South End neighbors. He's also received hate mail, including one letter demanding, "HOW DARE YOU PUSH YOUR POLITICAL BELIEFS ON THE PUBLIC." He's considering plastering that to the wall, next to the mural. "I'm trying to raise the stakes and invite people to add to it, but in a way that's thoughtful," Kerr says.

Will Whelan, a teacher at Bishop's Summer Academic Fun and Enrichment (B-SAFE) program, took his middle-school students to look at the piece for one such collaboration. "We talked about the subtle shift in color value, and the choices of color he used." He'd been teaching the campers about color theory, and the meanings and cultural associations with colors. The Democratic presidential candidate's name came up before Whelan ever took them to the mural. "We were talking about black and white connotations, and Obama came up. They said, 'Well, he's black, and he's mixed race' ... Then we talked about why people are identified by race rather than other attributes."

The students came up with questions they would ask Obama, ranging from "Why do we need to take the MCAS to graduate?" to "Why do guns get into the wrong hands?" to a very complicated question about why you can't buy two gallons of milk for $1. They also painted their own colors onto black and white Xeroxes of the Abraham Obama image. Some followed the mural's color patterns, while others manipulated the image, making Obama a clown, a woman, and crossing out his eyes, scrawling "PEACE" on his forehead. Whelan and Kerr pasted them on the wall, around the mural's shoulders.

Kerr and local activists interested in making the art a viral and political phenomenon knew Obama would be in Boston for his birthday (and a fundraiser), and reached out to his campaign. "My focus was benefiting the gallery and not being a fundraiser, but if it benefited the gallery, I wasn't opposed to benefiting the campaign," Kerr says. He'd planned to cut up the mural into 4-foot squares and auction off the pieces, signed by English and perhaps Obama. "I always had to be a capitalist, be about the bottom line," he says, since he'd only sold two of the pieces in the show, and couldn't renew his lease (Kerr finalized a deal last week to move the gallery to Albany Street). The Wall Street Journal covered the plans to sell the mural, quoting Charles Nesson, a law professor at Harvard's Berkman Institute for Internet and Society, pledging to start the bidding at $1,000. The next day, Kerr found the mural had been "defaced," with giant dollar bills glued to the portrait's eyes. "My understanding was, once that happened, the backers all pulled out," he says.

Last Monday, when Obama came to Boston, Kerr hoped to get a photo op with him standing next to the mural, among the campers. "I think the consensus was it would have been unwise of him to come, that it would seem presumptuous for him to say, 'I am the next Lincoln,'" Whelan says.

Kerr affixed a removable fabric eyepatch to one of the panels, but it has since been torn down. He's also painted his self-portrait on the mural, and got artist Xi Cai to paint a portrait of her grandmother. He encourages other artists to join the dialogue before the mural comes down.

When Gallery XIV moves at the end of the month, some of the work from A Politic will show in the State House, in the office of Rep. Jay Kaufman, D-Wayland.

The mural seems to straddle a line between propaganda and art, but to English, it's doing exactly what it was intended to do. "I thought all the talk about auctioning them off was a bit of hot air, but who knows? ... For me, street art is for the moment, it's not intended to last," he says. "I wanted this image to serve not as a direct statement, but as a point of departure for further conversation and as an appeal to the more brilliant angels of our nature."