Two Arrested for Posting Pictures of Iraqis in NYC: “Artist Emilie Clark and writer Lytle Shaw were arrested for posting pictures of people from Baghdad in Soho late Thursday night. Both have been released. A court date has been set to prosecute the two for showing New York City the people who will die in a possible war against Iraq.

Clark and Shaw were members of the Baghdad Snapshot Action Crew. Based in New York City, the crew of 75 artists and activists began posting simple flyers with pictures of ordinary Iraqi citizens around New York City, in anticipation and solidarity of the February 15th anti-war rally. The pictures were taken by artist Paul Chan, who recently returned from Baghdad as a member of the Iraq Peace Team, a project of the Chicago based, Nobel Peace Prize nominated activist group, Voices in the Wilderness.” National Philistine [thanks to John Maas] The police who detained Clark and Shaw justified their actions by concerns about the threat of a terrorist attack on the anti-war rally, and probably believed it. The twisted logic of justifying all sorts of repressive measures as protection is a keystone of the Ashcroft cosmos as it has been in every oppressive regime.

I can’t find any coverage of this in the ‘official’ press; please send me the URL if you see a news source.

The Baghdad Snapshot Action website has full-size .pdfs of the thirty posters in black and white here. I’m sure the artists wouldn’t mind if you printed them out and began posting them around your communities…

Little Friends

(For Ween and Levon)

The little friend might be a scientific partner, helping you with your

experiments, head turned up in clean appreciation. Little friends mass in

thrift stores. You adopt on hair color and compatibility. Kung Fu

aesthetics are not the aesthetics of the little friend, but those of the

dense competition among equals.

Little friends are dirty; you’ve seen their expressions in phonics

textbooks. A number of little friends might be arranged in a choir and big

voices could lead, guide the chimes of little friends.

In the morning, mist rising above the castle and hill, The Dwarf leaves his

den under the tree roots, eyes adjusting to the scene around the river:

endless little friends there in respect and confidence. He is their

protector, and of course their leader.

— Lytle Shaw