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

[Jim Stauffer]

Humanist Community Forum, Palo Alto

19 Jun 2011 - 11:00

Palo Alto

11AM-noon
Humanist Community Forum
Palo Alto High School Student Center
Corner of El Camino Real and Embarcadero Road






-------- 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