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[RTMark Labor Fund News]

En français: http://rtmark.com/sickfr.html.
En Español:  http://rtmark.com/sicksp.html.

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April 17, 2001
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

"SICK" EVENTS TO RECLAIM PUBLIC SPACE
Holiday changes dates once again: April 20 in Canada, Mayday in the US, 
May 2 everywhere else

Phone In Sick Day (http://rtmark.com/sick) has been moved to April 20 in 
Canada, to coincide with the Quebec City Summit of the Americas meeting 
that starts on that date (http://www.a20.org/).

"Quebec has been turned into a fortress, to keep public opinion out of the 
decision-making process," explains Duane Dibbley, an RTMark member who will 
attempt to attend the Summit. "Since thousands of foreign would-be protesters 
have already been turned away at the border, we're trying the Trojan Horse 
approach: we're encouraging Canadians who might ordinarily work on that day 
to phone in sick and go to the protest instead." Previous Phone In Sick Days 
have been held responsible for the "sick-outs" of two thousand British Airways 
employees in 1997, and of thousands of Irish policemen in 1998 
(http://rtmark.com/sick2000.html).

  ************* BREAKING NEWS: Starbucks gets medieval *************
  **** Attack delayed and extended: http://rtmark.com/starbucks ****

Building an actual Trojan Horse immediately outside the fence erected around 
the entire Quebec City center (http://rtmark.com/more/info/fence.html) is the 
aim of RTMark Project MDVL (http://rtmark.com/fundlabor.html#MDVL). "If our 
leaders and de facto corporate masters behave like medieval lords, they leave 
us no choice but to resort to medieval tactics," said the RTMark investor who 
is sponsoring the Horse ($500), as well as a siege tower and catapult ($200).

For those wealthy enough to try catapulting themselves over the Canadian 
border by air, Project LUFT arrives just in time (http://rtmark.com/luft/). 
For this project, thousands of brochures advertising "Deportation Class" 
seating have been secretly placed in airplane seat pockets and airport waiting 
rooms all over North America and Europe. The brochures, printed with the help 
of an anonymous RTMark investor, illustrate how commercial airlines traffic in 
unwilling human cargo--Lufthansa alone, for example, deports from Germany more 
than 30,000 people every year, according to No One Is Illegal (contact
mailto:info@deportation-alliance.com), the group that designed the brochures.

"Airline behavior shows perfectly the meaning of 'free' in 'free trade'," said 
Jan Hoffman, a spokesperson for the group. "While Lufthansa is free to merge 
with United and even with Third-World airlines, humans seeking to escape Third-
World starvation (brought on in part by the globalization of food production) 
are forcibly put onto planes and sent back."

Visit the Project LUFT page to download and print "Deportation Class" 
brochures in time for your Quebec City flight; for later use, already printed 
brochures can be requested by writing mailto:deportation@rtmark.com.

Back on earth and closer to Mayday, Phone In Sick Day has been extended to a 
whole week in Chicago, where Mayday originated. From April 27-29, Chicagoans 
are encouraged to begin their sick time by participating in Project DSLR 
(http://rtmark.com/fundlabor.html#DSLR), an umbrella for more than sixty 
projects aiming to return all of Chicago's space, land and visuals back to 
the people who live there, create there and work there (contact 
mailto:nato@counterproductiveindustries.com). For the rest of their week off, 
Chicagoans might schedule visits to historic spots such as Haymarket Square--
known to be historic only outside the U.S. (http://rtmark.com/mayday).

Phone In Sick Day falls on Mayday where it isn't already a holiday (most 
notably, the U.S.). May 1 is also the launch date for Project NIKE 
(http://rtmark.com/fundlabor.html#NIKE), in which brochures detailing 
Haymarket-era working conditions in present-day sweatshops will be slipped 
into Nike shoe boxes all around the First World. Eight activist groups in 
Manhattan, Hollywood, Portland, Raleigh, London, and Paris are official 
participants in the project, with many others expected to join (contact
mailto:fluffy2for@yahoo.com).

Two other just-launched projects also focus on the new, commercial 
definitions of freedom in the age of globalization. Projects DUBM and FLMC 
are part of RTMark's new Heads and Tails Video Reclamation Program, which 
encourages videotape renters to create or download files and record them over 
copyright warnings and previews. DUBM (http://rtmark.com/busted/) is an 
educational filmstrip that features a little robot trying to break out of 
the prison of poor education and health care, and it includes tips for 
handling police interrogations and for hiding drugs in one's rectum (contact 
mailto:cellmedia01@yahoo.com); FLMC (http://rtmark.com/fundlabor.html#FLMC) 
describes copyright as a means of reinforcing the fortress of entertainment 
conglomerates at the expense of everyone else. (See also recent coverage of 
another Heads and Tails project, at http://rtmark.com/fundmedia.html#PLCM.)

Finally, two new projects take the Phone In Sick celebrations into cyberspace. 
Last week's fulfillment of Project CCAT (http://rtmark.com/cuehack/)
transforms the Cuecat--a freely available barcode scanner meant to aid 
shopping from home while keeping messy information away from "consumers"--
into a tool for learning about corporations (contact mailto:qp@ziplip.com). 

And fifteen months to the day after etoy finally won its battle against 
eToys and Network Solutions (http://rtmark.com/etoynsi.html), Project ICAN 
(http://rtmark.com/fundquick.html#ICAN) shows Internet users how to 
challenge NSI's continued suzerainty over the "root zone" (the file that 
decrees what domain extensions are available), an arrangement that 
overwhelmingly favors big business.


RTMark's primary goal is to publicize corporate subversion of the democratic 
process. To this end it acts as a clearinghouse for anti-corporate projects.
Project forums may be found at http://rtmark.com/f/get/funds.html, and a list 
of just-added projects is maintained at http://rtmark.com/new.html.

                             # 30 #

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