[GPSCC-chat] Fwd: California event for Signs: Cars and Capitalism on the Road to Economic, Social and Ecological Decay

[Gerry Gras]

Yves Engler lives in Montreal, but will be in this area in mid June.

He will be at the Humanist Forum on June 19:
     http://humanists.org/forums.htm

Gerry



-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	California event for Signs: Cars and Capitalism on the Road to
Economic, Social and Ecological Decay
Date: 	Wed, 1 Jun 2011 21:21:54 +0000
From: 	Yves Engler <yvesengler at hotmail.com>



Dear California Greens, from June 12 to 19 I will be in California
promoting my just released /Stop Signs: Cars and Capitalism on the Road
to Economic, Social and Ecological Decay/. There are events set for LA
on June 12 & 14 as well as San Fran & San Jose for June 18 & 19. I would
like to set up events for the other days and was wondering if you would
be interested in organizing a small last minute event or know of a bike
shop/cafe or bookstore that might. Even a small event at a local cafe or
bookstore would be appreciated. I'm travelling with a two-month all you
can travel Greyhound pass so travel costs have already been spent.
Below is the about the book, blurbs and some reviews.
Thanks
Yves
http://stopsigns.fairtrademedia.com/

Here are 5 recent Stop Signs reviews from Canada's largest circulation
daily, US based counterpunch.org and dissidentvoice.org as well as
Canada's widest read left-wing website and Carbusters magazine

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/994312--salutin-rob-ford-versus-the-anti-carriors 


http://www.counterpunch.org/thomson05202011.html
http://rabble.ca/books/reviews/2011/05/stop-signs-cars-and-capitalism
http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/05/steering-away-from-car-culture/
http://carbusters.org/2011/05/30/stop-signs-cars-and-capitalism/

In North America, human beings have become enthralled by the automobile:
A quarter of our working lives are spent paying for them; communities
fight each other for the right to build more of them; our cities have
been torn down, remade and planned with their needs as the overriding
concern; wars are fought to keep their fuel tanks filled; songs are
written to praise them; cathedrals are built to worship them. In Stop
Signs: Cars and Capitalism on the Road to Economic, Social and
Ecological Decay, authors Yves Engler and Bianca Mugyenyi argue that the
automobile's ascendance is inextricably linked to capitalism and
involved corporate malfeasance, political intrigue, backroom payoffs,
media manipulation, racism, academic corruption, third world coups,
secret armies, environmental destruction and war. An anti-car, road-trip
story, Stop Signs is a unique must-read for all those who wish to escape
the clutches of auto insanity.
"Mugyenyi and Engler's Stop Signs is at one and the same time an
entertaining, fact-filled anthropological tour of the land of Homo
Automomotivis, and the first all-out global ecological critique of the
American automobile addiction. Not since Jane Holtz Kay's Asphalt Nation
has a book appeared that so clearly exposed the auto-irrationality of
the most car-dependent country on earth."
John Bellamy Foster, editor of Monthly Review and co-author, The
Ecological Rift

"This book is a must read for anyone who wants to understand the impact
of the private automobile on our urban transportation options."
David Cadman, Vancouver City Councillor, International President
ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability

"In Stop Signs, Mugyenyi and Engler take readers on an insightful,
fact-filled journey through the primary habitat of the car-dominated
species they call Homo automotivis. With wit and originality, they weave
travel tales into a convincing argument against the auto economy,
culminating with a fresh call to leave car culture behind."
Katie Alvord, Author, Divorce Your Car! Ending the Love Affair with the
Automobile
"Mugyenyi and Engler illustrate the relationship between cars and
suburban living. You come away shaken, but ready to roll up your sleeves
and contribute, however modestly, to constructing a new world in the
twenty-first century."
Richard Bergeron, Montreal city councilor, urban planner and author

Yves Engler has four published books including The Black Book of
Canadian Foreign Policy (Shortlisted for the Mavis Gallant Prize for Non
Fiction in the Quebec Writers' Federation Literary Awards)

Bianca Mugyenyi was born in Uganda in 1980 and came to Canada as a
child. Mugyenyi spent parts of her youth in Swaziland, Kenya and
England. She is the former chair of the Canadian Federation of Students-
Quebec and coordinates campaigns at Concordia University's Centre for
Gender Advocacy