John Ross: "Stealing Elections North and South - Mexican Resistance to US Imposition"

STEALING ELECTIONS NORTH AND SOUTH – MEXICAN RESISTANCE TO U.S. IMPOSITION

A talk by JOHN ROSS

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 27th 7:00 PM

NEW COLLEGE THEATER, 777 VALENCIA STREET, SAN FRANCISCO

In an electrifying series of reports from Mexico City this summer, author- poet -correspondent John Ross chronicled the resistance of "los de abajo" ("those down below") to the stealing of the 2006 presidential election from leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and the imposition of right-winger Felipe Calderon in a fraud-marred election that Washington had to win. Ross, a daily participant in the seven week-long encampment that closed down the Mexican capital, will report back on on-going resistance to the imposition of Calderon, five months of fight back in Oaxaca, Marcos & La Otra, and the death of the Mexican political class – and what it all means for pissed-off U.S. voters.

Sponsored by New College of California Media Studies MA Program.

$5 donation; no one turned away for lack of funds.

Contact: Jon Garfield, 415-437-3425; jon [at] newcollege.edu .


JOHN ROSS is a contributor to the San Francisco Bay Guardian, the Texas Observer, Noticias Aliadas (Lima), and La Jornada in addition to the on-line left journal Counterpunch. He has lived in the old quarter of Mexico City for the past 20 years.

Tagged by La Jornada, Mexico's left wing daily, as "the new John Reed", author-poet-correspondent-and globetrotting troublemaker John Ross will kick off his 2006 Left Coast tour this October and November with multiple presentations from his hot off the press ZAPATISTAS! Making Another World Possible – Chronicles of Resistance 2000-2006 (Nation Books, New York) and BOMBA! (Calaca de Pelon, Mexico City), his newest and most explosive chapbook of poetry.

Winner of both the American Book Award and the ACLU's coveted Uppie (for Upton Sinclair) prize, Ross's fourth volume on the Zapatista rebellion, an uprising he has covered since its earli4est hours, chronicles the most underreported and mystifying period of the Mayan rebels' on-going struggle for autonomy, in addition to examining international resistance to neo-liberalism and Bush's war on terror as seen through the Zapatistas' eyes. The new volume also details the massive fraud in Mexico's July 2nd presidential balloting.

BOMBA! the author's ninth chapbook of personal and political poetry is dedicated to the struggle of the Palestinian people for a homeland and is inspired by Ross's visits to Palestine to pick in the olive harvest and to Iraq where he was a human shield on the eve of Bush's genocidal war.