The weekly newsletter from Justice? - Brighton's Direct Action collective

FIFTH BIRTHDAY SHOCKER!

Who would have thought in those halcyon days of the Courthouse community centre, squatted to highlight the nasty Criminal Justice Act looming on the horizon, that it would come to this? A few people decide to mimic the news, reading out bits of information while getting their hair cut. Then some bright sparks decide to put the spoken word on paper 'cos Brighton needs a news-sheet.' Hey presto! SchNEWS is born (no we can't remember why it's called that either). Five years on and we're still here.

Despite the Criminal Justice Act (CJA) being well established on the statute books people protesting and putting on free parties just haven't taken the hint, and have carried on regardless. As for SchNEWS, it has grown from a scrappy bit of A4 with a no advertising - no compromise policy - to well, eh, a scrappy bit of A4 with a no advertising and no compromise policy! Along the way we've branched out from just writing about the CJA with it's arrestometer, to taking on the whole damn world.

Making links with all sorts of groups in struggles ranging from striking dockworkers, to the granarchists on the live export direct action frontline, to indigenous peoples fight against multinational nasties, to anarchist pie throwers.

Going on mass to Geneva to the Peoples Global Action first conference and meeting all those inspiring people from around the world and realising that all our struggles are the same - that no issue is single. The multinationals based in the west, are the very same companies that are doing the damage to the peoples of the so- called third world.

Top

AND THE NEXT FIVE YEARS?

SchNEWS is run on a voluntary basis. No one gets paid tho' we do manage to blag into gigs and festivals for free (to spread the word of course) and when our treasurer's not looking, raid the petty cash tin for biscuits. Our stories originate from dodgy anarchist filth mags to the Financial Times (no, really), from conversations in the pub to the internet.

We try and be as accurate as possible and chase people up to verify the stories. And since the idea of SchNEWS is not to believe the written word, but get up off your arse and go and see things for yourself, articles are often first hand accounts from our very good selves as we storm all over the country causing trouble/saving the world/having a laugh.

As for who keeps us going. Well even with free office space kindly donated by the Levellers, we still reckon to be spending around £20,000 a year on printing, stamps, telephone, computers, envelopes, stationary, e-mail accounts . and rely on subscriptions and our readers generosity to keep us afloat.

And Finally, SchNEWS is an open collective, we are always looking for new people to get involved, so if you like reading the news the mainstream tends to ignore (or at best talks about the lifestyle rather than why an action is going on) take a look in the next column and see if anything grabs your fancy.

WAKE UP! WAKE UP!
IT'S YER TYPICAL SCHNEWS WEEK

• Monday afternoon: We get up to 350 emails a week, and someone has the fun job of going though all these, answering queries and deciding which ones might become stories.
• Wednesday: Start writing and researching SchNEWS, go through all the mail, decide roughly what we are going to cover this week.
• Thursday: More writing, except it's usually a bit more frantic cos we've got to get it all finished and checked by early evening before the pubs shut.
• Thursday evening: Desk Top Publishing crew come in and do their stuff, someone managing to crush a tonne of information into two bits of A4.
• Friday 10 am: Hot off the press. A bleary-eyed person prints up the SchNEWS at The Resource Centre. Friday mornings: The web-masters do their thing and put it on our site (currently getting 1,200 hits a day) and send it out to all our e-mail subscribers (currently 3,000 and growing at 15 a day).
• Friday afternoons: The mail out crew, stuff envelopes and send it out to all our paper subscribers. (We've currently got 500 subscribers, 80 of these copy and distribute, whilst various organisations, bookshops and people get bundles to hand out. Prisoners get SchNEWS free.) While this is going on SchNEWS is being distributed to various places around Brighton (about 2,000 copies).
• Saturday: If people are about then SchNEWS is handed out to passers by in the North Laines. And there's more: During the week the subscription database is constantly being updated, letters answered, book orders posted, journalist queries answered (unless it's any of Murdoch's papers where we tell the caller to fuck off).

Still interested? Then give the office a call. We have regular training days, but if you can't wait for them, give the office a ring now. Don't let the fact that SchNEWS comes out every week lull you into a false sense of security. We constantly need more people to get involved. We guestimate SchNEWS reaches around 30,000 people a week. Not bad for a scrappy no-adverts no-compromise bit of A4.

Top

Special SchNEWS cor-blimley-they're-practically-giving-them-away book offer

SchNEWS Reader SORRY ALL GONE
SchNEWS Round issues 51 - 100 £5 inc postage
SchNEWS Annual issues 101 - 150 £5 inc. postage
SchNEWS Survival Guide issues 151 - 200 and a whole lot more £6 + £1.20 postage
All three yours for £15 inc. postage.

In addition to 50 issues of SchNEWS, each book contains longer articles, photos, cartoons, a "yellow pages" list of contacts, comedy etc.

SEARCH OUR DATABASE OF OVER 500 ORGANISATIONS

ARCHIVE - every issue since January 1997, with extra Web links
DATABASE - organisations, books, emails, web sites and other stuff 
BOOKS - buy our books

What we got up to last year

SchNEWS, PO Box 2600, Brighton, BN2 2DX, England
Phone/Fax: +44 (0)1273 685913 Email: schnews@brighton.co.uk

Last updated 21st January, 2000
@nti copyright - information for action - copy and distribute!