Today's Topics:
1. anarkismo.net: Fidel Castro (1926-2016) by Samuel Farber
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. France, Alternative Libertaire AL Novembre - Hinkley Point:
EDF and the large galley EPR (fr, it, pt) [machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. Anarcho-Syndicalist Rebel Worker Vol.34 No.3 (227)Nov.-Dec.
Debate on "Industrial Organising" (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. Turkey, sosyalsavas: SAY NO TO RAPE CULTURE AGAINST
HUMAN&ANIMALS! (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
5. Britain, Class War announces new plan: Sack Schumacher or
the siege goes on! 1pm 8 December (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
6. Greece, Athens, Calling on the path to a concentration camp
in Eleonas By A.P.O. (gr) [machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
7. France, Alternative Libertaire AL Novembre - Heavy metal
pollution: Red mud in the creeks (fr, it, pt) [machine
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
8. First of May Anarchist Alliance: Building Working-Class
Defense Organizations: An Interview with the Twin Cities GDC
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
After a long illness that forced him to withdraw from office in July 2006, Fidel Castro
died on November 25. Castro had previously survived many U.S. efforts to overthrow his
government and physically eliminate him including the sponsorship of invasions, numerous
assassination attempts and terrorist attacks. He held supreme political power in Cuba for
more than 47 years, and even after having left high office he continued to be politically
engaged for several years meeting with numerous foreign personalities and writing his
Reflexiones in the Cuban Communist Party press. ---- Fidel was a son of Cuban-born Lina
Ruz and Galician immigrant Ángel Castro, who became a wealthy sugar landlord in the
island. Fidel attended a Jesuit high school, regarded as one of the best schools in Cuba.
Upon entering the University of Havana Law School in 1945, he began his political life by
collaborating with one of the various political gangster groups that plagued the
university. As a militant university activist, Fidel participated, in 1947, in an attempt
to invade the Dominican Republic to provoke an uprising against Trujillo, and in the 1948
"Bogotazo," the widespread rioting that shook the Colombian capital after the
assassination of Liberal leader Eliecer Gaitán. The disorganized and chaotic nature of
these failed enterprises played an important role in shaping Castro's views on political
discipline and the suppression of dissident views and factions within the revolutionary
movement.
He then joined the crusading Ortodoxo Party led by the charismatic senator Eduardo "Eddy"
Chibás, where he became a candidate for the House of Representatives. The Ortodoxo was a
democratic and progressive reform party unambiguously opposed to Communism, and focused on
the elimination of the widespread political corruption in the island. It was the youth
section of this party that became the main recruiting ground for Fidel Castro when he
turned to the armed struggle against the newly installed military dictatorship of retired
General Fulgencio Batista.
Batista took power in a coup d'etat on March 10, 1952, to prevent the general election
that was supposed to take place-and which he was certain to lose-on June 1 of the same
year. By late 1956, a little over two years before Batista was overthrown, Castro's 26th
of July Movement, named after the day of his failed armed attack in 1953, had begun to
emerge as the hegemonic pole of opposition to the dictatorship. This was made possible, in
part, by the collapse of Cuba's older political parties, including the Ortodoxos, and by
the failure of the uprisings led by other organizations. But his hegemony among the
revolutionary ranks was also the outcome of his own political talents. Castro was a canny
revolutionary politician, and a master at utilizing the key elements of the prevailing
democratic political ideology in the opposition to Batista to attract and broaden the
support of all of Cuba's social classes. This is how he repeatedly endorsed, before the
victory of the revolutionary movement, the progressive and democratic Constitution of
1940, which was widely popular. This is also how, without diminishing his political
militancy, he played down the social radicalism of his 1953 History Will Absolve Me.
Fidel Castro was also a consummate tactician that instantly grasped and acted on the key
issues of the moment. For example, after having been released from prison and taken refuge
in Mexico in 1955, he coined the slogan "in 1956, we will be either martyrs or free men."
He knew that with this pledge he was bound to return to Cuba on that year, even if he was
not militarily ready, or run the immense risk of losing credibility. Nevertheless, he
decided this was necessary to differentiate his group from his armed competitors and to
revive the popular political consciousness particularly among the youth, which had become
so eroded by disillusion. He kept his word landing in Cuba with 81 other men aboard the
Granma in the early part of December, 1956, which significantly increased his prestige.
After Victory
Fidel Castro's absolute defeat of Batista's Army opened the way for the transformation of
a multi-class democratic political revolution into a social revolution. In the first
couple of years after the revolution, Fidel Castro cemented his overwhelming popular
support with a radical redistribution of wealth that later turned into a wholesale
nationalization of the economy that included even the smallest retail establishments. This
highly bureaucratic economy led to very poor performance which was greatly aggravated by
the criminal economic blockade that the United States imposed on Cuba as early as 1960. It
was the massive Soviet aid that Cuba received that made it possible for the regime to
maintain an austere standard of living that guaranteed the satisfaction of the most basic
needs of the population, especially education and health. Equally important in buttressing
popular support for the Castro regime was the revival of a popular anti-imperialism that
had been dormant in the island since the thirties.
Organizational Control
Fidel Castro's government channeled popular support into popular mobilization. This was
the Cuban government's most significant contribution to the international Communist
tradition. But while encouraging popular participation, Fidel prevented popular democratic
control, and kept as much personal political command as he could.
Under his leadership, the Cuban one-party state was established in the early 1960s and was
legally sanctioned by the Constitution adopted in 1976. The ruling Communist Party uses
the "mass organizations" as transmission belts for the party's "orientations." When these
"mass organizations" were originally established in 1960, all the previously existing
independent organizations that could have potentially competed with the official
institutions were eliminated. These included the "sociedades de color," which for a long
time had been the bedrock of black organizational life in Cuba, numerous women's
organizations mostly engaged in welfare activities, and the trade unions which became
incorporated into the state apparatus after a thorough purge of all dissenting views.
Fidel Castro's personal control from the top was a major source of economic irrationality
and waste. The overall balance of his personal interventions in economic affairs is quite
negative. These ranged from the economically disastrous campaign for a 10-million-ton
sugar crop in 1970, which failed to achieve its sugar goals and greatly disrupted the rest
of the economy, to the economic incoherence and intrusive micro-management of his "Battle
of Ideas" shortly before he left office.
Manipulation and Repression
A major feature of Fidel Castro's 47-year-old rule was his manipulation of popular
support. This was especially evident in the first two years of the revolution (1959-1960)
during which he never revealed even to his supporters where he intended to go politically.
The systematic censorship that his government established since 1960 is intrinsic to the
manipulative politics of his regime, and has continued under Raúl Castro. The mass media,
in compliance with the "orientations" of the Ideological Department of the Cuban Communist
Party, publishes only the news that satisfy the political needs of the government.
Censorship is most striking in radio and television, which is under the aegis of the ICRT
(Instituto Cubano de Radio y Television-Cuban Institute of Radio and Television), an
institution despised by many artists and intellectuals for its censorious and arbitrary
practices. The systematic absence of transparency in the operations of the Cuban
government has continued under Raúl Castro's rule. A clear example is the sudden removal,
in 2009, of two top political leaders, Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque and Vice
President Carlos Lage, without a full explanation from the government for the decision.
Since then a video detailing the government's version of that event has been produced but
shown only to selected audiences of leaders and cadres of the Cuban Communist Party.
Censorship and the lack of transparency has at times turned into outright mendacity, like
in the case of Fidel Castro's repeated denials of physical mistreatment in Cuban prisons,
in the face of its well documented existence by several independent human rights
organizations.
Fidel Castro created a political system that does not hesitate to use repression, and not
only against class enemies, to cement its power. It is a system that has recurred to
police and administrative methods to settle political conflict. This system has used the
legal system in an arbitrary manner to stifle political dissent and opposition. Among the
laws it has invoked to achieve this aim are those punishing enemy propaganda, contempt for
authority (desacato), rebellion, acts against state security, clandestine printing,
distribution of false news, pre-criminal social dangerousness, illicit associations,
meetings and demonstrations, resistance, defamation and libel. In 2006, Fidel Castro
admitted that at one time there had been 15,000 political prisoners in Cuba, although in
1967 he cited the figure of 20,000.
Foreign Policy
For many Latin Americans and other people in the Third World it is not the establishment
of Communism in Cuba that elicited their sympathy for the Cuban leader. It was rather his
outright challenge to the North American empire and his dogged persistence in that effort,
not only affirming Cuban independence but also supporting and sponsoring movements abroad
against the local ruling classes and the U.S. empire. Fidel's government paid the price
for this with Washington's sponsorship of military invasions, assassination attempts and
terror campaigns, in addition to the long standing economic blockade of the island.
Standing up to the North American Goliath was not only a matter of overcoming a vastly
superior power, but also the arrogance and racism of the powerful northern neighbor. As
the historian Louis A. Perez has noted, Washington often saw Cubans as children who had to
be taught how to behave.
Yet there are numerous misconceptions on the left about Cuban foreign policy. While it is
true that Fidel Castro maintained his opposition to the U.S. empire to his last breath,
his Cuban foreign policy, especially after the late 1960s, was moved more by the defense
of Cuban state interests as defined by him and by his alliance with the USSR than by the
pursuit of anti-capitalist revolution as such. Because the Soviet Union regarded Latin
America as part of the U.S. sphere of influence, it applied strong political and economic
pressure on Cuba to play down its open support for guerrilla warfare in Latin America. By
the late 1960s, the USSR succeeded in this effort and that is why in the 1970s Cuba turned
to Africa with a vigor that came from knowing that its policies in that continent were
strategically more compatible with Soviet interests, in spite of their many tactical
disagreements. This strategic alliance with the USSR helps to explain why Cuba's African
policy had quite different implications for Angola and South African apartheid where it
was generally on the left, than for the Horn of Africa, where it was not. In this part of
the continent, Fidel Castro's government supported a "leftist" bloody dictatorship in
Ethiopia and indirectly helped that government in its efforts to suppress Eritrean
independence. The single most important factor explaining Cuba's policy in that area was
that the new Ethiopian government had taken the side of the Soviets in the Cold War. It
was for the same reasons that Fidel Castro, to the great surprise and disappointment of
the Cuban people, supported the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, although it was
clear that Castro's political dislike for Dubcek's liberal policies played an important
role in his decision to support the Soviet action. Fidel Castro also supported, at least
implicitly, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, although he did it with much
discomfort and in a low-key manner because, as it happened, Cuba had just assumed the
leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement, the great majority of whose members strongly
opposed the Soviet intervention.
As a general rule, Fidel Castro's Cuba has, even in the first stages of its foreign policy
in the early 1960s, refrained from supporting revolutionary movements against governments
that had good relations with Havana and rejected U.S. policy towards the island,
independently of the ideological coloration of those governments. The most paradigmatic
cases of the "reasons of state" approach of Cuban foreign policy are the very amicable
relations that Cuba maintained with the Mexico of the Institutional Revolutionary Party
(PRI) and with Franco's Spain. It is also worth noting that in various Latin American
countries such as Guatemala, El Salvador and Venezuela, Fidel Castro's government favored
some guerrilla and opposition movements and opposed others depending on the degree to
which they were willing to support Cuba's policies.
Fidel Castro in Historical Perspective
The establishment of a Soviet-type regime in Cuba, cannot be explained on the basis of
generalizations about underdevelopment, dictatorship and imperialism, which have been
applied to the whole of Latin America. The single most important factor that explains the
uniqueness of Cuba's development is the political leadership of Fidel Castro that made a
major difference in the triumph against Batista and in determining the course taken by the
Cuban Revolution after it came to power. In turn, Fidel Castro's role was made possible by
the particular socio-economic and political make-up of the Cuba of the late 1950s. This
included the existence of economically substantial but politically weak
classes-capitalist, middle, and working class; a professional and in many ways mercenary
army whose leadership had weak ties with the economically powerful classes; and a
considerably decayed system of traditional political parties.
Castro's legacy, however, has become uncertain ever since the collapse of the USSR. Under
Raúl Castro, the government, particularly after the sixth Communist Party congress in
2011, promised significant changes in the Cuban economy that point in the general
direction of the Sino-Vietnamese model that combines an opening to the capitalist market
place with political authoritarianism. The reestablishment of diplomatic relations with
the United States announced in December of 2014, which Fidel Castro reluctantly endorsed
some time later, is likely to facilitate this economic strategy especially in the now
unlikely event that the U.S. Congress modifies or repeals the Helms Burton Act approved in
1996 (with President Clinton's consent) that made into law the U.S. economic blockade of
the island. Meanwhile, corruption and inequality are growing and corroding Cuban society,
contributing to an overall sense of pessimism and the desire of many, particularly young
people, to leave the country at the first opportunity.
In light of a likely future state capitalist transition and the role that foreign capital
and political powers such as the United States, Brazil, Spain, Canada, Russia and China
may play in it, the prospects for Cuban national sovereignty-perhaps the one unambiguously
positive element of Fidel Castro's legacy-are highly uncertain.
Samuel Farber is a professor of political science at Brooklyn College. Born and raised in
Cuba, his books include Revolution and Reaction in Cuba, 1933-1960, The Origins of the
Cuban Revolution Reconsidered, and most recently The Politics of Che Guevara: Theory and
Practice (Haymarket Books, 2016)
Related Link:
http://inthesetimes.com/article/19672/fidel-castro-1926-2016-death-history-communist-party
http://www.anarkismo.net/article/29802
------------------------------
Message: 2
Mired in its EPR projects in Flamanville and Olkiluoto (Finland), the management of EDF
since 2012 seeks to export two reactors in Britain, in the central Hinkley Point. A
project that has already generated a real novel of protest. ---- Challenging the
construction is done on several levels: safety of installations, sustainability of
partnership with the Chinese operator CGN (or CGNPC, China General Nuclear Power Group),
EDF finances, ability to finish the job, who will pay. .. the project is well exposed on
all sides, by the unions as well as by the Board of Directors, through engineers or
residents of the project. ---- Extra cost of 30 billion compared to renewable ---- But why
EDF holds it so much to do this project? We must remember that buying British Energy (UK
nuclear operator) in 2008, EDF had opened a market to build, and at that time had revive
its growth on the EPR. In 2013 the British government made a power purchase offer to EDF
at full price, up to 120 euros per kwh as against 40 in France.
This tripling of the price (which will fall on the British taxpayer) is actually a
disguised subsidy to a project that otherwise would not be viable. And it is based on the
advantageous mounting EDF embarked on the project of two new reactors at Hinkley Point. At
the official launch of the project on September 29, the CEO of EDF announced a record
profit rate of 9% for these reactors. Only thereafter the Board of Directors revised the
rate to 8%, and again, still lower bound foreseeable setbacks, such as the delay in
delivery[1]. As this site may be even more complicated than others already late,
transnational partnership obliges it hard to believe that the event is not thereby
budgeted. And of course, nor the future decommissioning of the plant or waste management
are reflected in the calculation of earnings.
The central Hinkley Point already has two reactors (Hinkley A and B, B being the end of
the activity), and suffered a strong challenge after a fire and a leak in 2012. A group
Stop Hinkley is active for closure of the plant, and finds himself at the forefront of the
mobilization against the construction of the EPR[2]. One of its main battle axes is to
denounce the government's propaganda, which said the central safe, economical and ecological.
Conversely, Opponents emphasize the additional costs for consumers, which will be 30
billion compared to the price of renewable energy. As for safety, there as everywhere,
statistically, the next serious accident will occur in twenty years, and EDF has topped
the list of potential candidates. Level ecology, the argument of nuclear "decarbonised",
without emission of CO2, is false, it only serves to maintain the central part of the
"green growth".
Fifty reactors by 2050
Fortunately for us, EDF promised to start construction after the completion of
Flamanville. The company also has a slight liquidity problem, a debt of 37 billion euros,
so no one knows how it will finance the new reactors (24 billion euros!), Except the
state, perhaps, that will inject 4 billion in capitalization and shares by May 2017. and
then there are the associations appeal to the courts.
EDF's goal is to build a fifty 2050. Either the renewal of the French park reactors, more
than the English park. But it is a headlong rush widely denounced as EDF is profitability
crisis, particularly due to the overall decline in electricity prices, which was not
really expected any more than the current overproduction (energies renewable are
productive, self-consumption is fashionable).
This is because EDF has more than enough to finance other programs it has negotiated a
lifespan of central forty years now and beyond, with the proposed "major overhaul" before
" to upgrade "central to extend.
But remember that this very risky bet will cost 100 billion euros to the group in the
years to come[3]. EDF, nearing economic collapse, would do better to focus on takedowns.
Because the only achieved so far, on the site of Brennilis, lasts since 1985, and there
has yet to fifteen. The logic of irresponsible oversizing inherited from the first wave of
reactors should it be pursued?
The Hinkley case, and all the renewal of the nuclear fleet reveal the bankruptcy of an
unsustainable economic model without state subsidies. And now this model driven by others,
remain debt and radioactive waste. Greatness of France.
Pippin drowned, Al Aveyron
[1]The Duck chained , No. 5004, September 21, 2016.
[2]www.stophinckley.org
[3]Alternative Libertaire , No. 264, September 2016.
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Hinkley-Point-EDF-et-la-grosse
------------------------------
Message: 3
Hello fellow workers! ---- As a unionist from Adelaide the closing of Holden's, as well
as the selling or potential closure of the Arrium Whyalla Steelworks presents a massive
working class struggle. It's my opinion that if these businesses close down the workers
should take control of the factories for themselves. What I want to know is how to plant
that seed and instigate that struggle? Any suggestions on where to start and what to do? I
don't know much about Holden's and even less about Arrium Steel, the sheer size of these
operations would make organising a workers occupation a major struggle. ----
Radelaide-the-tragic ---- Well that's a huge task to be honest. ---- In Brisbane when
Campbell Newman sacked masses of Railway workers, a few years ago, BSN went out to the
train yards in Ipswich to set up stall with info flyers to encourage general strike
action, and talk to people during shift change over.
General response was, 'Thanks mate, but should have started doing this 6 months ago. Bit
late now'. So guess it's the old path of finding a few like minds, getting in there, start
sharing the idea, with the means that you have.
Happyanarchy
To: Happyanarchy:
The reality in regard to the Ipswich stuff - is that your mob was not interested in doing
the long range "serious" organising in this sector prior to the sackings. You had an
important tool, the ASN (Anarcho-Syndicalist Network) transport paper - your mob -
refused to get behind it!!! With it you could have made contacts with workers who wanted
to do something, did stories/interviews or even made contact with a militant workers
network which may have existed behind the scenes. Helped them with their agitation,
networking, countering management propaganda, etc. Developed a QLD rail section (you in
fact did have at least one of your group in Qld Rail at this time) and even later on
other sections in the paper. So not just 6 months earlier, you could have helped get the
grassroots organising ball rolling years earlier! You could still do something like this
now. But is your mob serious about industrial organising?
The Bankruptcy of Leftist Activoidism and the "Smoke & Mirrors" Technique of the Union
Bureaucracy
What you wrote above does look like the type of pointless stuff left sects and their
activoids get up to. Getting involved when something big happens but is too late and
churning out a bit of abstract propaganda - and perhaps having a bit of excitement and an
excuse for a social occasion.
In the case of the notorious "Hutchison Ports" dispute of 2015 - in fact certain of these
sects and activoids were used by the union bosses of the MUA(Maritime Union of Australia)
in a despicable "smoke and mirrors" performance. Where a fake victory was claimed but a
real defeat of workers achieved by the MUA bosses and the employer/Govt.(1)
In regard to the Laverton, Victoria, Baiada Poultry processing plant strike of 2011, the
National Union of Workers (NUW) hierarchy used the services of leftist activoids and sects
together with NUW officials for a fake community picket. Instead of mobilising
meatworkers across the state and nationally to help the Laverton workers strike for
improved conditions. Again the activoids were "lured" into a "smoke and mirrors"
performance by the union bosses. After a few weeks the union officials closed down the
struggle claiming a "fake victory". It included a pay rise which barely met inflation and
the guarantee of making workers after 6 months on the job permanent, but this clause had
been in the previous agreement. It had never been implemented. Subsequently the NUW
officials collaborated with the bosses in the phased cutting of hundreds of jobs over
successive years. Until only 100 workers were left, prior to announcement by the company
of the closure of the plant on 17/10/16.
What "Serious" Syndicalist Industrial Organising Would Look Like?
We actually did something exactly on these above lines (re serous long range work) in
NSW/Sydney - in the years in the lead up to the Olympics in 2000. After some years we did
make contact with such a militant network. Helped them with their stuff and assisted them
to win a key union mass meeting which they forced the union bosses to call - to oppose
restructuring of the railways station network for privatisation. To out manoeuvre this
grass roots success, the union bosses called a lightning state wide rail strike in Sept.
1999, in the week before a national ALP conference held in Sydney. All this had far
reaching consequences in terms of slowing the general privatisation push and slowing the
tempo of the employer offensive. (2)
In regard to Whyalla - there has been a media report of workers there opposing a push by
the union bosses/the bosses for the workers to agree to the cut of wages and conditions.
This may indicate the activity of an above "behind the scenes" militant network. So there
may be time to assist them, if a way can be found to determine if it exists make contact.
They would need help re putting out a workplace paper etc.
Stop Press: Latest news is that the AWU (Australian Workers Union) officials and bosses
have been successful in pressuring the Steel workers to agree to the cutbacks.
Mark
Notes:
1. See "Hutchison Ports Dispute" in RW Vol.34 No.3 (224) Nov.-Dec. 2015 on web site
www.rebelworker.org
2. See "Anarcho-Syndicalism: Catalyst for Workers Self-Organisation" and
"Anarcho-Syndicalist Strategy for Australia, Today", in the archive section of
www.rebelworker.org
Thanks to Libcom
------------------------------
Message: 4
The male-dominated mindset does not seek consent from women, it also charges animals,
tortures them, rape them, kills them! ---- 30th of November Wednesday 20:30 - Banner and
Placard Preparation & Workshop Against Rape Culture (infiAl, Turan cd. 36A, Beyoglu) ----
https://www.facebook.com/events/296596067403404/ ---- 2nd of December, Friday 19:00 - Film
Screening and Interview ---- Best Speech You'll Ever Hear - Gary Yourofsky ----
https://www.facebook.com/events/537011383155856/ ---- 3th of December, Saturday 19:00
Press Release in Kadiköy https://www.facebook.com/events/528549924020175/ ---- We want the
rights of animals, which are systematically applied to rape and violence, to find a place
on the stage at least as much as those of people. We believe we can completely overthrow
the construction of the rape culture hand in hand with animals.
Animals are slaughtered every day in slaughterhouses, imprisoned in cells, excoriated and
displaced from their habitats. The affinity between psychological and sexual violence
against animals and humans comes from the tyranny of rape culture all around the world. We
do not tolerate the state that demands good time credit for animal rape and argues that a
12-year-old child might have consent in a sexual and psychological exploitation. We do not
accept or recognize state's attempts to justify sexual abuse. We refuse the assimilation
policies of state towards animals, humans and the earth.
We think that animals are not able to raise their voices against the decisions made on
their bodies and that's why we are calling you to get out on streets and raise their voice!
We invite all our friends to join the solidarity and the press release to curse the
hypocrite, male-dominated, speciecist mindset once again!
Resistance to all rape; Freedom for humans, animals and for earth!
yeryuzuneozgurluk@gmail.com
https://twitter.com/yeryuzuozgurluk
https://www.facebook.com/yeryuzuneozgurluk
https://www.youtube.com/user/YeryuzuneOzgurluk
https://www.facebook.com/groups/yeryuzuneozgurluk
http://sosyalsavas.org/2016/11/30471/#more-30471
------------------------------
Message: 5
Class War announces new plan for Schumacher action next week ---- SACK SCHUMACHER OR THE
SIEGE GOES ON ---- The trip to his house is cancelled. Instead we will lay siege to HADID
HQ till Shumacher comes out by surrounding the building on THURSDAY December 8th at 1pm.
---- Bring tents, ladders, grappling hooks and noise LOTS OF NOISE like NORIEGA NOISE ----
We are delighted to announce that we have asked DAVID GRAEBER of OCCUPY WALL STREET to say
a few words.
Thursday, December 8 at 1 PM ---- Zaha Hadid Architects
10 Bowling Green Lane, EC1R 0BQ London
http://www.classwarparty.org.uk/1pm-8-december-class-war-announces-new-plan-sack-schumacher-siege-goes/
------------------------------
Message: 6
SOLIDARITY TO REFUGEES AND IMMIGRANTS -- COMMON FIGHTS FOR LIFE AND DIGNITY ---- The
frontal attack the state and capital internationally, in the context of the establishment
of the Modern Totalitarianism status signals both take off exploitation and
intensification of repression within the Fortress Europe and the disintegration of all
social life the concept and existence through the constant warfare and wild pillage of the
capitalist periphery. ---- Extreme poverty, misery and cruel exploitation that has imposed
the strongest part of the western power blocks in a number of areas of the Middle East,
Africa and Asia have forced millions of people to leave their homes and begin a survival
campaign; to spend one trip in which they experience the effects of all the repressive
measures taken by western states to prevent the entry and immunity of borders of Europe
Fortress.
Those uprooted manage to escape death when moving the old tubs traffickers / smugglers -
often sink in Mesogeio- faced with inaccessible fences and military mechanisms such as
Frontex and NATO recently. But, once they enter into one of the western countries of entry
faced by states and political administrators as unwelcome and "surplus populations",
experiencing the effects of anti-immigrant and racist policy chosen by the rulers in order
to achieve the interception refugee / migration.
The Greek state -which as a member of the EU and the NATO membership is shared
responsibility in creating the refugee and migration roon- implement all its repressive
policies decided on by the world's dominant:
It performs the role of the border guard on the southeastern edge of the EU while, with
the assistance of Frontex and NATO hermetically clogs land and sea borders, raising fences
in Evros and legitimizing drownings of migrants and refugees in the Aegean.
Opens constantly camps to stack them thousands trapped in order to control, subjugation
and social isolation.
Proceed to violent refugee / immigrant camps evacuations, which were still those who
refused to leave the public area claiming their free movement to the places they want.
Criminalize the solidarity that has been developed to refugees / migrants, moving in
solidarity persecution and suppressing self-organized structures.
These policies of the state attempting to criminalize solidarity and main sharpening
inclusion Treaty and seek to break the bridges of inclusions and displaced refugees and
immigrants with the anarchist movement and the wider solidarity movement. They want to
make migrants invisible and a subordinate body, which is displaced from the social life
and the public sphere will not resist the terrible living conditions and daily insults.
From our side as anarchists in solidarity with the poor and the insurgents of all the
earth, will stand next to each repressed and oppressed of this world and strive together
for life and dignity. We aim to link the struggles of immigrants / refugees with the
project of a total overthrow the state and capital. Together all the exploited and
oppressed of this world to resist the murderous plans of the state and the bosses. For
placing the social and class self-organization, the common struggles locals and immigrants
against poverty, misery, fear, racism and state and parastatal terrorism. Promote the
ongoing struggle for global social revolution, anarchy and libertarian communism.
Against the state and parastatal attacks on refugee camps, squatting refugee housing and
migrants and self-organized space race
Against border war and modern totalitarianism
Solidarity with refugees and metanastesKoinoi struggles for life and dignity
CONCENTRATION: SATURDAY DECEMBER 3 - 12 m. THE METRO AND OLIVE GROVE IN PROGRESS
CONCENTRATION CAMP
A.P.O.- Local Coordination Athens
http://apo.squathost.com/
------------------------------
Message: 7
National Park Calanques between Cassis and Marseille is used for fifty years as discharge
Alteo, which operates the bauxite to produce alumina. In December 2015, the company
obtained the prefect of the region Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur the right to continue to
dump its industrial waste for another six years. ---- Alteo world's largest producer of
alumina with over 1 000 tonnes exported every day, is controlled by the US investment fund
HIG Capital. For nearly fifty years, the Gardanne bauxite processing site, the company has
a right to ship by sea residues 200 m deep and 7 km off the coast of Marseille and Cassis.
Today it is at least 20 million tons of red mud thereby lining the seabed over 2400 km²[1].
far exceeded legal norms
The authorization renewed in 1996 stipulated that the industrialist had until 31 December
2015 to stop shipping its waste at sea. To achieve Alteo has set in 2007 of three filter
presses, half funded by the Agency water. The dried red mud extracted from red mud is to
be used as fill material[2]. Despite this, the plant continues to discharge liquid
effluents containing various metals, arsenic, chromium, lead, titanium, mercury, aluminum
... Of course effluent concentrations of pollutants far exceed legal standards. According
to data of the Ministry of Ecology, are still discharged into the sea every day 6 tons of
aluminum (instead of 64 tonnes previously), 83 kg of iron (against 270 tonnes), 11 kg of
arsenic (against 42 kg ), 20 mg of mercury (against 80 g). And beyond marine pollution,
the Gardanne plant also pollutes its immediate environment through leaks retention basins
and dust cleared, and so pose to residents of major health problems.
In 2015, the industrial requested two new permissions. One to continue to occupy the
maritime public domain until 31 December 2045 with its old pipeline; the other is a
necessary derogation to continue to discharge into the marine environment liquid effluents
as it has since 2007.
A public inquiry has been opened. But neither the observations of experts, nor the intense
mobilization for the rich public inquiry over 2300 contributions nor the refusal of
several municipalities - including that of Cassis where the pipe emerges - or the
opposition of the Minister Ecology have deterred the three commissioners of the public
inquiry. They made October 22 a unanimously favorable opinion to requests for Alteo: "At a
time when French public opinion fears offshoring" , it is imperative to "save several
hundred jobs" . An article in Le Monde Diplomatique counted "four hundred direct jobs and
more than a thousand in cash subcontracting" . In the aftermath, and despite the clear
violation of the Barcelona Convention for the Protection of the Mediterranean Sea ratified
by France, the regional prefect, executing the directives of Manuel Valls, authorized for
six years pursuing these discards.
In March 2016, the environmental inspectors conducted a surprise visit to Gardanne. They
detected still too many suspended solids exceedances of permitted limits of mercury, zinc
and antimony, a high pH and a "biological oxygen demand" improper. Furthermore, on 9
March, a leak during the manufacturing process resulted in the formation of a cloud
containing caustic soda. The incident resulted in conspicuous whitish deposits on fifteen
hectares around the plant[3].
This situation calls for several types of comments. First, note once again the permanent
attitude of governments, left and right wing, whose decisions are and will be sized to
meet the short-term interests of the capitalists. Then technically an industrial unit
alumina production could be much cleaner. As stated by the BRGM (Geological and Mining
Research Office), there are solutions to filter waste water more within this extraction
process used in the Gardanne plant since 1894 and based on the dissolution of the of
alumina from bauxite using sodium hydroxide.
The false alternative employment and nature
But above all there is at least another extraction process, the process said Orbite
patented Orbite Aluminae Canadian company that does not produce red mud. In view of this,
the opposition between the defense of jobs and the nature seems artificial. What is at
stake today in Gardanne has actually little to do with the defense of employment. This is
basically to safeguard the short-term shareholder dividends of a multinational who refuses
to make the necessary investments in non-polluting alumina production.
Finally we intend to show that this opposition between job protection and nature is
fundamental to capitalism because it can divide in depth the social movement. Too often
organized labor and environmental groups are fighting under the eye bantering capitalists.
Although today the consciousness of damage productivism progresses, although in many wage
earners companies are asking questions about the effects of their work on the environment
is to fall into deep sense of powerlessness.
So we must conduct an ideological battle to convince that this employment opposition
against deep ecology is artificial. This fight is also to lead in associations and unions
where we campaign: every time this question will we seek to build bridges between those
who fight for jobs and those who fight industrial pollution that starts up a common
strategy that can address both aspects. At Gardanne, the defense of a sustainable
employment through the need to impose significant investments to eliminate any
environmental pollution. Apart from this perspective, not only offshoring will operate,
but in addition it is likely that in the host country a new polluting plant is built and
continues, moreover, to destroy life!
Jacques Dubart (AL Nantes)
[1]The World January 30, 2016.
[2]Use as backfill material containing large amounts of leachable heavy metals is likely
to cause further pollution
[3]The World July 06, 2016.
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Pollution-aux-metaux-lourds-Boue
------------------------------
Message: 8
The General Defense Committee of the Industrial Workers World (IWW) has become an
important pole of struggle for pro-working-class revolutionaries in the Twin Cities. While
active on a number of different fronts it is the participation of the General Defense
Committee (GDC) in the year-long struggle against police killings and brutality in the
Twin Cities that has largely led to the significant growth of the organization. The GDC
has grown to approximately 90 dues-paying members in Minnesota, and has several active
working-groups. In the wake of Trump's election victory, Wobblies and others across the
country have begun establishing their own GDC locals - strongly influenced by the Twin
Cities' model. ---- Interview: ---- First of May Anarchist Alliance spoke to Erik D.
secretary of the Twin Cities GDC Local 14 about the history and work of the General
Defense Committee there. Erik is a father, husband, education worker, and wobbly, who's
also been involved in the youth-focused intergenerational group, the Junior Wobblies.
Fellow Worker Erik - can you tell us about the origins and history of the General Defense
Committee, its relationship to the IWW and how the militants who founded the current Local
conceived of it?
As I understand it, the General Defense Committee (GDC) was first founded by the
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in 1917, in response to the repression of wobblies
and anti-WWI draft protests. I haven't learned enough about the historic GDC to really
speak much about it. I joined the IWW in 2006, and we didn't formally charter the current
local as a GDC until 2011. In 2011, the committee was 13 wobblies. But we had actually
started organizing ourselves prior to 2011, calling ourselves the Local Defense Committee.
Are there historical or modern examples or inspirations that influence the way GDC sees
itself, its activity and organization?
One of the things I've appreciated about the Twin Cities GDC is the very practical
intention to learn, with a specific focus on learning in order to act. From the very
beginning we engaged in mutual education. Since one of our early orientations was to
anti-fascist and anti-racist work, we did a fair bit of reading on the topic of fascism
and anti-fascism (Sunday mornings with coffee).
I mention this period of mutual education because we have a lot of inspirations, but none
of them have been role models, per se. We have looked to previous movements largely in
order to inform our own work and to learn from our elders and the experience of previous
generations, but not as Role Models To Be Emulated. That's been important.
With that caveat, we have a lot of inspiration. I get new inspiration every time I read a
book, it seems. Some of the inspiration is local: here, I'd specifically highlight
Anti-Racist Action and Teamsters Local 544. Anti-Racist Action (ARA) came out of a
Minneapolis-based group of anti-racist skinheads who decided they needed to find a way to
kick racist skins and organized fascists out of the Twin Cities. Teamsters Local 544 was
the local that organized the 1934 strike that made Minneapolis a union town, innovated new
forms of the picket (specifically, the ‘flying picket'), and engaged for a short time in
open physical confrontation on the streets.
Beyond the Twin Cities, I think our members have a lot of very different inspirations. One
of mine has always been John Brown, but I grew up partly in Kansas. I guess the Black
Panther Party would be the most common source of inspiration among early members; our
advocacy of Community Self Defense certainly owes a lot to the Panthers, including their
Survival Programs. The most recent addition to my ‘Hall of Inspiration' is Rudy Shields,
whom I learned about from Akinyele Omowale Umoja's We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in
the Mississippi Freedom Movement.
One of the first projects of the Twin Cities GDC was organizing a "Picket Training", which
seems like a kind of simple project, but you all attached some importance to it. How come?
I think the history of the Picket Training is actually the beginning of the history of the
local GDC, so forgive me for a longer answer. The IWW was always heavily involved in local
May Day events, naturally. In both 2007 and 2008 we had dispiriting and potentially
dangerous experiences in marches that were organized by other groups. These happened when
we were ‘out-marshaled' and ‘peace-policed.' Folks might remember the 2006 "Day Without An
Immigrant." In 2007 immigrant protection and rights continued to be major issues, and the
march was partly centered around pro-immigrant demands.
So it was worrying when wobblies who had been active in local anti-fascist actions saw
someone they thought they knew from a fascist rally elsewhere in the state videotaping the
crowd (we were never able to confirm the identity because of what happened next). Fascists
videotaping an immigrants rights march is extremely concerning; they were likely
videotaping either to research immigrants rights' groups (including antifa groups), or to
identify potentially undocumented people.
A few wobblies went to talk to the videotaper and get in the way of the camera. Shouting
commenced, and the self-appointed organizers of the march successfully pushed the wobblies
back into the crowd, allowing the videotaping to continue.
The May Day parade the next year found wobblies promoting militant chants shut down by the
same sort of marshals.
At roughly the same time, the local IWW was doing a lot of organizing. While some of us
had prior experience in organizing pickets and direct actions, the Starbucks Workers
campaign, the Jimmy John's campaign, the Sisters Camelot Canvas Union, and the
Chicago-Lake Liquors campaigns all provided early experience and training in planning and
executing pickets and direct actions, in a context where we were already committed to IWW
ideas and practices. Some of these were particularly challenging, such as doing
intelligence and the occasional flying picket of scab canvassers in the Sisters Camelot
campaign. Since they never stayed put, it felt like a throwback to the 1934 strikes and
the flying pickets. It was cold both Winters.
There was one particular occasion at the University of Minnesota AFSCME strike in 2007
where the IWW promoted, and executed, a hard picket line in the early morning hours at a
delivery dock. This was going extremely well until a UMN delivery truck driver rammed the
picket line. I was in the wrong place at the moment, and ended up on his hood. I found out
later I'd crushed three neck vertebrae; it took two surgeries and a lot of physical
therapy to get past it. It also gave me a serious motivation for doing pickets and direct
actions better. Just a week after a truck hit me, a delivery truck hit another picketer at
an IWW picket of D'Amico's restaurant, thankfully without serious consequences.
Finally, 2008 was the end of an intense two-year process organized at disrupting the
Republican National Convention. Most of us already had a critique of ‘summit hopping'
styles of disruption, few of which have been effective since before the FTAA in Miami
2003. But a number of wobblies were serious and on occasion influential participants in
(at least the early period of) the two years of planning that ended up calling itself the
"Welcoming Committee." The Welcoming Committee meetings (which were held in the same
community space as the early IWW at the time, the Jack Pine Community Center) hammered out
some early agreements and principles, including, along with other interested groups, the
well-known Saint Paul Principles. This process also gave local wobblies experience in
critically thinking through on-the-street tactics and what it would take to actually win
goals and actions on those streets, whether in labor pickets or direct actions._
All these motivations and experiences were in the forefront of our minds when we thought
up the picket training. We knew we had to get better at this, and though we all had some
experience, that's not the same thing as having teachable knowledge. So we researched,
wrote, debated, and practiced. We adopted a principle of teaching the tactics quickly
rather than perfecting the training first, and encouraged people to think about themselves
as the next trainers. In order to keep track of our curriculum and to make it portable, we
created a trainer's manual, a trainee manual, and a setup manual, which we update frequently.
We offer the trainings to non-wobblies, and while we avoid being an on-call security
group, we are trusted locally as providing quality security and planning successful
actions. With the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and on-the-streets protest since
Ferguson, I think the GDC has earned a bit of respect from other local organizations as a
result.
Anti-fascism seems to have been a key concern for the Twin Cities GDC from the start. Can
you explain a bit about why this was the case and how the GDC intended to "do"
anti-fascism a bit differently than other antifa groups?
Partly that was organic, because of the people involved. One of our members was a member
of the Baldies, and later Anti-Racist Action, and brought a lot of experience on that
front to the table._ Others also had anti-fascist experience. Given that density of
experience and expertise, it was fairly natural that we were interested in anti-fascism
from the beginning.
Our first major action was the disruption of a David Irving event._ Like most of his
events in recent years, promotion and entrance to these is secretive and even paranoid. We
created fake identities and profiles, acquired tickets and location information, and
mobilized over 80 locals who hated the idea of fascists meeting in our city. This put our
early group's planning abilities to the test, since the meeting was on an upper floor of a
downtown hotel with a front desk by which everyone would have to walk.
As we went along, and based in part on discussions and debates both internal to the GDC
and to the local IWW, we formulated a clearer understanding of the relationship we think
should exist between anti-fascist work (I think these days, I'd say "Community Self
Defense," which would include antifa work) and unionism.
Part of the clearer rationale was to establish faith and credit with groups that may have
bad impressions of unions, or prioritize other forms of work, and to bring a more diverse
group of fellow workers into the IWW. Another part was the understanding that if the IWW
ever gets close to its goal of genuinely challenging the foundations of capitalism, we
will have to have a group and an orientation capable of defending the union and its
workers. We didn't feel that we should wait until the attack came to organize to fight it.
I think the most significant difference of our anti-fascism from other anti-fascist groups
is our relatively public, or mass, orientation. Many anti-fascist groups operate largely
as affinity groups, stressing secrecy and small numbers, for good reasons. But the types
of pressure we can place on the fascists with these sorts of organizations is limited, and
the risks to members enormous. Our anti-fascism has taken a mass orientation: we aim for
the largest, most public, and most militant forms of engagement possible, consistently
pushing for more radical analysis and actions. While some groups consider mass
organizations fundamentally reactive and apolitical, the GDC has made its own
anti-capitalist and revolutionary politics clear, in order to avoid being captured by
liberals.
It seems apparent that the GDC really "took off" during the recent upsurge against police
killings in the Twin Cities (Jamar Clark, Philando Castile, Phil Quinn, Michael Kirvelay &
others) - could you say a little bit about why this was the case, how the GDC oriented
itself and what allowed it to be a place for militants to come and to grow?
Right. The GDC began to grow very rapidly with the engagement at the Fourth Precinct. I
want to talk for a minute about the types of engagement that we practiced there, but first
I would like to point out the time difference: we'd been meeting irregularly since 2009,
were chartered in 2011, and began to ‘take off' in 2015. We didn't develop in a rush,
despite our feeling of urgency. In retrospect, we should have done more, earlier, and more
seriously. You can only prepare to be ready for crisis and then wait to respond in an
organized fashion. By the time the police murdered Jamar Clark, after Ferguson and other
places had already seen massive protests, we were ready to respond in public, I think.
About two months previously, we'd tested our ability to organize a disciplined mass march
and directly confront racists. A group of racists organized a Confederate Flag display on
the state capitol grounds. The state sold them a permit. We weren't going to tolerate
that. We had meetings ahead of time to organize a counter-protest. We had decided to
explicitly make clear that this was a GDC action, and to use our own marshaling teams, and
worked with a large variety of other groups. One especially important person in that
entire process person is the aunt of Marcus Golden, who murdered by the Saint Paul Police
Department in January 2015. She joined the IWW and the GDC shortly afterwards, and seems
to be everywhere at all times, moving the work along.
The march began where Marcus was murdered, and ended at the Christopher Columbus statue on
the capitol grounds, after ensuring that the Confederate Flag wavers were no-shows. The
sheer numbers of people and organizations pledging to come, along with our clearly
demonstrated militance, scared them off.
When Jamar was killed, GDC members mobilized quickly. Young Black activists began an
occupation of the Police Fourth Precinct. The Fourth Precinct is in North Minneapolis,
which is a heavily policed Black neighborhood. In the 1960s, the building of the Fourth
Precinct was constructed as a community center called "The Way," in response to two
Summers' of uprisings demanding racial justice in the USA. As a metaphor of how
unfulfilled the promises made to the civil rights movement have been, I can't think of a
starker local one than the transformation of a Black-oriented Community Center into a
fortress of blue terror.
Once the occupation was established, which took a matter of minutes to hours, activists
began setting up the infrastructure for a long haul. It was already cold, but it got
arctic during the eighteen days of the occupation. GDC members were heavily involved in
the direct confrontations with police, to be sure, but far more importantly, we created
direct relationships with local militants and young people from the neighborhood, whose
politics and responses were often directly at odds with the activists who had started the
occupation.
Local youth tended to a far greater degree of militancy, and simply understood more
clearly what was necessary to protect the encampment, regardless of whether the
self-appointed official protest leaders thought. We often provided security at night, when
cars would drive at us menacingly, or shots would be fired in nearby alleyways. We were
not present in an organized fashion at the moment when White Supremacists showed up and
shot people at the occupation, and so I can't say how well we would have responded that night.
An important point about the rise in our local appeal during the struggle for the Fourth
Precinct was that we were a largely disciplined group that could reliably be counted on to
do what we promised. Equally important is that while we showed up consistently and stayed
in solidarity with the protest, we never relaxed our principled criticism of other groups'
tactics. Critiques weren't made on social media or publicly, but we were consistent in
pushing in person for more radical and militant approaches.
At one point, the self-appointed protest leaders had had enough of being challenged by
local youth and militants like ourselves. Pissed that they were losing the obedience of
the crowd, which was largely demanding increased militance, one of them grabbed a mic
during a tense moment during the encampment and id'd one of our white members as an
undercover cop. Frankly, we were fortunate that the person she accused has been active in
anti-racist circles for decades and is locally well-known as a result. If the accusation
had been made against one of our younger members, the outcome might have been less peaceful.
As a consequence of that event, and a lot of others similar to it, the GDC wrote and
released a public statement explaining ‘badjacketing' and demanding that no one involved
in seeking justice should engage in it._ We pushed that line hard for what felt like
months, but was really just about a week during the occupation. Then the tide started
turning and a large number of groups and individuals began to consider the downsides of
that sort of action, and condemn it. I think the outcome of our stance against
badjacketing actually was greater over time and after the occupation.
For those that aren't so familiar with the last year of activity in the Twin Cities, what
have been some high points and challenges of this struggle against the police- and how has
the GDC concretely participated in and contributed to this struggle?
With specific reference to our anti-police work, a few things have come together. Those of
us who'd been involved in previous actions had some knowledge of police personnel and
leadership already; like most municipalities, our local cop leadership would be laughably
incompetent if they weren't so oppressive and largely untouchable. A few particular
people had started to catch our attention over the years, among them especially Bob Kroll,
who was elected President of the local cop union in 2015.
Kroll has a long and documented history of brutality on the job and off, and has been
accused of wearing a "White Power" badge on a jacket, and being involved in a process
where the then-chief presided over the demotion, retirement, or firing of every single
Black officer in the MPD. He also called the first Muslim to serve in the US Congress a
"terrorist."
We had already written up a report on Bob Kroll, summarizing his history with
documentation, but hadn't really distributed it._ When Kroll started lying in public about
the details of Jamar Clark's murder by two MPD officers, we released the report along with
a demand that local reports stop allowing him to comment on subjects related to race and
policing, without mentioning his background. We had a big effect in publicizing Kroll's
history, to the point that he's been complaining about how frequently people refer to his
background, calling him a White Supremacist, etc. We've had little to no effect on local
reporters, unfortunately.
While the Fourth Precinct occupation was ongoing, we caught wind of a fundraiser being
held by Sheriff Stanek (heavily involved in the crackdown on the protesters at the RNC
Convention in 2008) for his reelection at a bar and bowling alley in Northeast
Minneapolis. The site was about ten blocks from the Minneapolis cop union's headquarters.
We planned and announced a march to the cop union headquarters at night from a local park.
The very same day, however, the police forced the Fourth Precinct occupation out. There
was a great deal of anger and disappointment over the course of the day, and people
weren't ready to give up just yet. We went ahead with our planned protest, starting with
about 20 protesters at our rally site.
We began to march not to the cop union headquarters, but to the bar and bowling alley
where the fundraiser was being held. The vast majority of Black Lives Matter protesters
were across the river in downtown Minneapolis, inside City Hall. When they left City Hall,
a large contingent came and joined us outside the bar. By the time they arrived, many of
the fundraiser guests had fled, and the rest had locked themselves inside. We held an
impromptu rally outside the bar, and then marched to the cop union headquarters. It was an
energetic, militant march. We'd made the cops so nervous that they'd installed security
fencing around the property, and had placed snipers in the upper floors of the building
across the street.
A few GDC members continued to help hold down the Justice4Jamar movement locally after the
eviction from the precinct. They joined a new coalition called the Twin Cities Coalition
for Justice 4 Jamar, and showed up outside the Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman's
office every Friday for "Freeman Fridays," keeping Jamar's name in the news and the demand
fresh. I was out of the country at the time, but on one of the coldest days of the year,
the GDC played a large part in a mass march. The cold caused some innovations: entering
local Cub Foods for a while looked like fun!
Of course, the local police haven't stopped murdering people since Marcus Golden and Jamar
Clark. This year we had a number of people murdered by the police: Michael Kirvelay, whose
sisters called the police for help while he was in a mental crisis, and who was murdered
by them; Phil Quinn, a Native man also experiencing a mental health crisis, was murdered
in 2015. Map Kong, a Cambodian-American murdered in his car while having a bad reaction to
drugs, Geno Smith, and Philando Castile. The last is a bit closer to me than the others,
since Philando worked at the school where my son went for 7 years, and my daughter had
been there for 6 years already. They both knew and loved Philando ("Mr. Phil," they called
him), like all the students did. Personally, I'm grateful I started fighting against
police murder when I did; I think if I hadn't had some actual experience I would have been
far more shaken when it came that close to home.
We're still fighting for justice for Philando and all those murdered by the cops. After
Philando was murdered, a group of mostly younger activists marched to Minnesota Governor's
Mansion, not far from the school where Philando worked. That occupation remained in place
for some time, but never reached the militancy or organization that we saw at the Fourth
Precinct, for a bunch of different reasons. After the occupation was cleared out, the GDC
organized and called for a rally and march to shutdown the two municipally owned liquor
stores, which help to directly fund the police department whose officer, Jeronimo Yanez,
murdered Philando.
We organized this as a GDC-led action, and as such we organized it in our fashion. We did
a lot of turnout work, education about the connection between the stores and the police
department, and publicly promised that we would picket the stores with the intention of
denying them important Saturday evening business.
This action drew the attention of more racists who tried to troll us. This was average and
expected. We also drew explicit threats from Wisconsin National Guard veterans who claimed
they would show up armed, and posted images of personally owned military weaponry on our
pages to scare us off. We took these very seriously and began research and documentation.
Shortly after, we released our security report on the situation, along with a public
statement that we were unafraid, provide for our own security and don't rely on police,
and we were going ahead. We did create a few new security tactics appropriate to the
situation, which were useful in keeping us all safe.
Despite the threats, the protest was large and well-attended. We rallied at a point midway
between the two stores, not letting on which store we were heading to. Before we even
began marching, the both stores closed, which represented significantly more economic
damage than we'd even hoped to inflict by picketing one of the stores.
What kind of folks began to join and participate in the GDC? How was its composition
similar or different from the IWW or the anti-police movement in general? So far, the GDC
seems to have "succeeded" as a multi-racial organization - how is this?
Most significantly were newer Black members and other members of color. Some had joined
prior to the precinct, but it's my impression that anti-confederate flag action, and the
precinct occupation, were important moments in attracting Black members. The African
People's Caucus of the IWW was active prior to both of these events, and I think that
their work, which was often behind the scenes, was often the most important work done,
communicating revolutionary and antifascist politics to people who may not have
encountered them in this way previously.
Probably the best way to describe the membership of the GDC in general is that members
often have direct experience with forms of oppression that are not based solely in the
workplace, and a desire to confront those challenges from a revolutionary and consistent
place. All of our working groups arose either from skills members already had or had
developed and were willing to share, or from needs we had. In addition to Anti-racism and
anti-fascism, and training people to do more effective pickets and direct actions, we
struck working groups like cop watch, harm reduction, and survivor support.
New working groups seem to have a period of incubation after being struck, during which
the people involved start to think out, collectively and carefully, what a GDC and
community self defense oriented approach would look like, and then get started. Once
disciplined action is taken, especially if it's successful, we seem to have an influx of
new members who are also affected by or concerned with those forms of oppression. I'm
happy with the way that this approach has found knowledgeable and skilled members and
connected them with others.
The Twin Cities IWW has been a fairly sizable and active Branch for years - this no doubt
provided a good basis to build from, but there has also been some informal controversy and
debate within the Branch over some Wobblies' orientation towards the GDC. What were the
concerns and how has that played out?
Yes. The local GDC wouldn't exist without the local IWW, and I strongly feel that GDC
locals should encourage all eligible members to join the IWW and begin workplace
organizing. In terms of controversy, it's my impression that there were criticisms; I was
definitely aware from the beginning that a few members opposed the formation of a GDC, but
there wasn't ever a clear debate or discussion. GDC members solicited critique and
engagement from wobblies, but nothing much really came of it, unfortunately.
Some concern was definitely based in the notion that organizing against fascists would put
IWW members as a whole at risk of fascist attack. A few other objections seem possibly to
have been that this was macho adventurism, and a distraction from the work of organizing
at the workplace. All of these deserve a serious response. In some ways, however, the
GDC's more controversial ideas have become common sense. The idea that anti-fascism is
optional for unionists, for instance, seems to be moot at the moment. This isn't as much
because of our work, necessarily, as because of recent history: it's hard to retain any
illusion about the role of the police, or the threat of fascism to workers, after
Ferguson, or after Trump's election.
How has the GDC maintained a democratic culture in the context of constant action and
growth? What are the main ways for Defenders to communicate, raise ideas, and debate
issues? How does political development work within the GDC - what would you like to see in
terms of political and educational culture within the GDC?
The people involved at the beginning were all wobblies with a fair bit of experience in
the organization and a dedication to democratic practice. So in that sense there was
already a basic common culture and attitude. I'm not certain we've always done this as
well as we could, though we usually self-correct fairly quickly. I think over the last
year the most important nuts-and-bolts contribution to a democratic practice and culture
has been found in improving our paperwork and bureaucracy, actually. With regular minutes
and agendas, asking people to write motions ahead of time, and being as organized as
possible, our organization has grown in transparency.
I'm not certain that we currently have the practices and culture in place to maintain this
without serious new effort. The rapid growth in membership proposes a challenge to this:
it means that the serious and lengthy process of mutual education, which was the basis of
our common understandings and analysis, and made our planning and actions easier and more
coherent, will now have to be sped up and transformed into a process that can handle large
numbers of new members.
There is a very serious need for lots of educational initiatives, as well as finding ways
to encourage people to take part in them. We need lots of writing, lots of one-on-ones,
lots of explanations, and lots of patience. If you've been around for awhile, get used to
hearing the same explanations of ideas, acronyms, etc. That's a sign that we're growing.
If it's irritating, please get involved in making the explanations better. Along with
speedily connecting new members to working groups, I think continuing the practice of
mutual education is our greatest current challenge.
What initiatives of the GDC are you excited about and what do you see as the biggest
challenges and weaknesses to overcome as we move into the Trump era?
The GDC has experienced solid growth as an institution for the last few years. Here in the
Twin Cities, we helped folks in St Cloud organize and apply for charters for a new IWW and
a new GDC local, both of which I believe were just approved.
The projects we take on in the GDC are organized by working groups. As we've grown in
numbers and capacity, the number of working groups has grown. Every new working group
makes me excited.
The Survivor Support working group is our newest working group, and has already taken
numerous successful direct actions. I'm really excited about this project. It remains the
case that many more people of color are murdered by police than fascists, and many more
women experience rape and violence at the hands of partners, friends, and acquaintances
than they do from the faces of the Men's Rights groups. We must address everyday violence
and oppression in our attempt to build Community Self Defense.
The post-election moment feels very new, at least at the moment. In the days immediately
following, a very large swell of interest in both the GDC and the IWW happened, and a lot
of my personal energy recently has gone into helping other groups charter by giving as
much practical advice and history as possible. Because I am convinced that the GDC and the
IWW have immense potential for the next few years, this growth is thrilling and exhausting
at once.
It's thrilling partly because of the new energy, and the sudden appearance of people who
are, perhaps for the first time, to fight. It's exhausting because the task ahead of us is
immense, and will require a nearly constant process of mutual education.
Thankfully, creating trainings is something we've been doing well in the Twin Cities, and
with the new energy, I'm hopeful we can continue to both grow and consolidate our growing
power. We've started thinking about what the process of doing mass, mutual education would
look like, and thinking of how to implement it. The point of all of our trainings, beyond
the specific skills taught, is to spread the skills and analysis we have as widely as
possible among the working class, in order to increase our confidence, competence, and
militancy. The next year is going to lit, if we do it right.
Finally, we've been debating and developing a long-term strategy for GDC growth in the
Twin Cities. Without going into details, I'll just say that the long term strategic and
nut-and-bolts planning of our group is inspiring, and gives me hope.
The Twin Cities IWW General Defense Committee Local 14 contact info:
Web: https://twincitiesgdc.org
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TC.GDC/
Twitter: @TCGDC
Contribute $: https://fundly.com/support-revolutionary-community-organizers-in-minneapolis
Address: c/o Twin Cities IWW 2 E Franklin Ave Suite 1, Minneapolis, MN 55404
Members of the First of May Anarchist Alliance are among those active in the Twin Cities
IWW General Defense Committee. For more information on First of May: m1aa.org
http://m1aa.org/?p=1316
------------------------------
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten