On Tuesday, November 9, George Bush’s memoir Decision Points comes out in bookstores around the country. Taking a cue from a movement in Britain that called for people to subversively move Tony Blair’s recently published memoir, A Journey, to the Crime section of bookstores, Waging Nonviolence is asking that in honor of the release of the Bush memoir, people reshelve Decision Points to the part of the bookstore where it really belongs: Crime.

If you do decide to participate in this nonviolent act of subversion, please respond to our invitation, take a picture of your “mission accomplished,” and post a photo of your handiwork to the Wall of the event page we’ve created on Facebook.

In Bush’s upcoming memoir he defends several of the criminal policies that he implemented during his time in office, including the invasion of Iraq and the use of waterboarding.

As another fun act of subversion, back in April the Huffington Post asked readers to send in their new and improved Photoshopped Decision Points covers. The one above was my personal favorite.

Here’s your chance to voice your opinion on what you think about George Bush’s presidential recollections. Is it a crime, humor, horror, dark fantasy? Whatever your opinion, go out on Tuesday and put Bush in his right place.

Librarians and bibliophiles alike held a 24-hour read-in marathon on the steps of the Brooklyn Public Library at Grand Army Plaza this past weekend. The action brought 200 volunteer readers together to help raise awareness to the proposed $37 million budget cut to New York’s public libraries, which would result in the closing of at least 10 branches, a reduction in hours of operation (libraries would be open only 4 days a week as opposed to the average of 6 or 7), as well as lay offs of over 700 librarians.

The read-in featured everything from Emma Goldman to James Baldwin, Gossip Girl and Albert Camus, serving as a great testimony of the wide range of library patrons these cuts will affect. As the New York Times reported:

“In the Great Depression, the New York public libraries were kept open seven days a week,” said Aliqae Geraci, a librarian in Queens and a coordinator of the event. “It is a huge support system for the unemployed and the transient”

[…]

The organizers are hoping the City Council will restore financing to avoid the cuts, which they say will particularly hurt the city’s less fortunate, who depend on libraries for Internet access and employment help.

Another large group these measures will affect is children and parents. Libraries offer numerous free programs for literacy, homework help, and after-school activities. Along with school budget cuts which will result in the closure of several schools and teacher layoffs, kids will surely suffer terrible consequences from these actions.

Thanks to websites like Don’t Close the Book on Libraries and Save NYC Libraries, as well as entertaining actions like the Ghostbusters reenactment that Improv Everywhere staged, NYPL has raised over $120,000 in addition to receiving over 100,000 letters of support. But there’s still more work to be done! If you want to help, today (June 17, 2010) is Call In Action Day. If you’re in the New York City area, call 311 (outside New York call (212) 639-9675) and tell them why you think we should continue to fund our libraries.

In a recent Guardian op-ed, Jessica Reed wrote about Jeudi Noir, a group of Parisian housing activists, who—for the past two-and-a-half months—have been squatting in a piece of real estate fit for a king, literally. Place des Vosges, located in the chic neighborhood of Le Marais, is the oldest square in Paris. Originally named Place Royale, this beautifully-manicured square was built by Henri IV to celebrate the wedding of his son Louis XIII. Jeudi Noir has taken over 1 Place des Vosges, which has been vacant for over 40 years. Their goal is to bring attention to the housing crisis as well as bring light to the fact that one out of 10 buildings in Paris are vacant, many of which could be used for low-income housing, student housing, or for the number of homeless Parisians who have recently started building tent villages along the Seine.

Jeudi Noir has gained attention through their surprisingly-festive actions. After clicking around their website I found several videos of the activists, along with a guy dressed up as some sort of Disco Stu, showing up at marches, real estate agencies, and apartments for rent and throwing impromptu parties. Maybe this fun, creative protest is what has gained them support from not only the public, but also from members of France’s Green and Socialist parties (both of which may sound like small-potatoes movements here in the U.S, but are veritable political parties in France.)

Perhaps this is the sort of action we should be taking at home. New Yorkers, like myself, could put Jeudi Noir’s suggested party kit to good use. In 2006 Picture the Homeless conducted a survey of vacant property in Manhattan and found that there are 24,000 potential apartments in vacant buildings and lots in Manhattan alone. (Keep in mind, that that number does not include all five boroughs.) Picture the Homeless believes that the vacant property that they’ve assessed could house the city’s entire homeless population, which according to Friday’s Department of Homeless Services Daily Report is at roughly 37,487 people.

Jeudi Noir’s mission statement rightfully points out that the right to housing does not coincide with the right to property. What kind of right do landlords with vacant properties have to keep people in need of shelter locked out? Or banks to kick families out of their homes? As Reed eloquently points out in her piece:

It might be hard to immediately sympathise with squatters—the right to own property runs so deep in modern western society that anything challenging the status quo is bound to make waves. I would, however, question the intentions and principles of those willing to let their own buildings decay uninhabited for 40 years while homeless people die every winter from exposure. How to rationalise that? I struggle to find any excuse for leaving the most impoverished section of the population out in the cold, when buildings go unused and unlet for very long periods of time.

Activist pranksters The Yes Men have pulled it off again. Yesterday morning as groggy New Yorkers made their morning commute to work they were greeted by a haggle of unconventional newsies slinging a spoof special edition of the New York Post with the front-page headline screaming, “We’re Screwed.”

Two thousand volunteers helped blanket the city and its boroughs with nearly a million copies of this incredibly authentic-looking parody of the notorious tabloid. The 32-page paper focuses exclusively on climate change with a wide range of articles covering everything from the NYPD’s transition to low-emission cars, to China’s recent push for renewable energy, the failures of the U.S. government to sign onto the Kyoto Potocol (let alone uphold our end of the bargain regarding the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change), to even a Page Six item on Pamela Anderson’s new eco and animal-friendly fashion line.

The timing of the prank was calculated to coincide with today’s UN Summit where one hundred of the world’s leaders will meet to discuss with Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon the crucial steps that are necessary to reduce carbon emissions. The meeting is a prelude to the upcoming Copenhagen climate conference in December, which many experts see as our last chance at drastically cutting greenhouse gas emissions and diverting climate disaster.

While the special edition of the Post is most definitely an amusing hoax on a controversial tabloid and impressive example of creative nonviolent protest, the paper mainly serves as a resounding wake-up call to action. An ad in the paper not only gave readers phone numbers for President Obama, Governor Patterson, and New York senators Gillibrand and Schumer, it even provided talking points to push on the representatives.

“This could be, and should be, a real New York Post,” said Andy Bichlbaum of the Yes Men in a press release for the action. “Climate change is the biggest threat civilization has ever faced, and it should be in the headlines of every paper, every day until we solve the problem.”

After last year’s election the Yes Men pulled a similar prank when they handed out over a million copies of a spoof New York Times whose pages were filled with “All the News We Hope to Print,” including a front page headline boasting “Iraq War Over,” stories on Gitmo shutting down, and the passage of a national health insurance act.

However this time around, all the information contained in the special edition Post was based on actual facts—generating a different reception by readers. Last year when I helped pass out to unknowing victims the fake-Times, the paper had barely left my hands before I was met with a bewildered, “Is this true!?” Today, I passed out an entire stack of papers without being met with a single puzzled look or question regarding the “We’re Screwed” headline. While maybe some eyebrows were raised at the idea of the usually-conservative Post dedicating a slim special edition to discuss the consequences of global warming, it seems that most people are very well aware of our planet’s dire status, and perhaps what was actually printed on the pages of the paper is not really news, but just another reminder of the sad state of affairs of our planet.

If you don’t live in New York or didn’t get a copy, go to the amazingly well-done New York Post special edition website to read the articles, peruse the ads, and if you’re up for it, check out an incredibly dismal weather report. Or see people’s reactions to the prank on the accompanying video. And most importantly, to get involved go to tcktcktck.org or http://www.beyondtalk.net/.