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posted by Tim McSorley in on May 5, 2011 - View profile
Montreal
Stop Signs: Cars and Capitalism on the Road to Economic, Social and Ecological Decay
Book Launch & Discussion with authors Yves Engler and Bianca Mugyenyi
5:30pm
Tuesday May 17 2011
Co-presented by Right to Move and Sustainable Concordia
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 Bianca Mugyenyi and Yves Engler
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 must-read for all those
who wish to escape the clutches of auto domination.
"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 been dubbed “one of the most important voices on the
Canadian Left today” (Briarpatch magazine) and “in the mould of I. F.
Stone” (Globe and Mail). His four previous books have been praised by
Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, William Blum and many others.
Bianca Mugyenyi was born in Uganda and spent parts of her youth in
Swaziland, Kenya and England. She is the former chair of the Canadian
Federation of Students – Quebec and has been heavily involved in
campaigns ranging from the struggle for accessible education and
reproductive rights to justice for missing and murdered indigenous
women in Canada. She currently coordinates campaigns and programming
at Concordia’s Centre for Gender Advocacy.
For more info: http://stopsigns.fairtrademedia.com
To get in touch with the authors: (514) 618-2253 or e-mail
stopsignsbook@gmail.com
Organizer:stopsignsbook@gmail.com
About the poster
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