Today's Topics:
1. France, Alternative Libertaire AL - 13 th congress (Nantes,
3-5 June 2017), Choosing digital tools that are compatible with
our political beliefs (fr, it, pt) [machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. Anarchical action week ahead of G20 from 28.06.-04.07.2017
(ca, de) (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. Britain, London Anarchist Federation: PAST EXAMPLES OF
LABOUR (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. anarkismo.net: Ayutla de los Libres municipality will govern
itself without political parties; it's peoples time by Demián
Revart (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
5. Workers Solidarity Movement: Jobstown not Guilty points to a
Garda conspiracy II. (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
6. France, Alternative Libertaire AL #273 - culture, "When We
Rise": a series on the conquest of LGBT rights (fr, it, pt)
[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
7. black rose fed: EMANCIPATION OF THE WORKING CLASS -
CELEBRATE THE LEGACY OF THE IWW (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
8. Britain, freedom news: Book Review: Left of the Left - my
memories of Sam Dolgoff by Anatole Dolgoff (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
9. [Spain] Days of the 80th Anniversary of the Federation
"Mujeres Libres" By ANA (pt) [machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
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Message: 1
Alternative libertarian wishes to contribute to the development of a counter-culture, then
a real popular culture of free software, which gradually marginalizes commercial and
privacy software. ---- Alternative libertarian creates in its bosom a librist commission
charged with: ---- Encourage and train in the use of trust alternatives to commercial and
proprietary software ; ---- To assist technically militants and sympathizers who wish to
migrate to Linux ; ---- To publish a training manual on digital security in collaboration
with the serenity commission ; ---- To initiate a reflection with the ecology commission
on the place of digital in the project of society of AL ; ---- To help build ties with
Liberal collectives and associations.
A commitment to free software
Alternative libertarian wishes to contribute to the development of a counter-culture, then
a real popular culture of free software, which gradually marginalizes commercial and
privacy software.
In the meantime, it is not a question of giving up contact with the mass of the
proletariat where it connects-that is, on commercial social networks like Facebook or
Twitter, for example.
But it is necessary to promote the existing free tools and encourage the librarian teams
that are working on their development, notably by using their tools and, by constructive
criticism, to help them improve.
In a few years, Framasoft , a popular education network working to make open source
software accessible and user-friendly, has made available to the French-speaking public a
wide range of online collaborative tools - mailing lists, file transfer, Text, URL
reducer, videoconference, survey, etc. Framasoft deserves special support from the
libertarian movement.
In their operation, the teams of the AL federation (federal secretariat, web commission,
newspaper commission, etc.) will use, with equivalent effectiveness, a tool promoted for
example by Framasoft rather than a commercial tool.
The Librist commission will accompany local AL collectives (CAL) who want to adopt these
tools.
All LA activists are invited to discover these tools and to make them known.
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Choisir-des-outils-numeriques-compatibles-avec-nos-convictions-politiques
------------------------------
Message: 2
To be against figures of fun like Donald Trump, the manic Retro-Sultan Erdogan and bulging
muscle dude Putin is quite easy. In gratifying the world almost daily with unexpected
neologism and fake news fantasy or strange fantasy uniforms and slightly grubby fotos of
superheros they behave like idiots. ---- With crackpots of this kind the line of argument
to repeal capitalism can be easily shortened. ---- Unfortunately these freaks are not to
be neglected. They and their slightly less freaky collegues presides an apparatus that is
armed with jails, the military, all kinds of police and sleuthhounds. And behind Putins
and Trumps backs there are swivelling strange vassals who carry the bags with a red
button. And in case one of the two bonzai-neros is pushing it - it gets pitch-black.
The 20-strong chamber of horror ,consisting of the Donald, Wladimir, Recep Tayyip and
their collegues from so called developed nations will visit Hamburg on the 7th of July.
They will, in ordert o finetune the global situation have a chit chat all weekend long
about world-economics, territorial claims, proxy wars and so on. As well as about the good
old human-rights, that´s for sure anyway. One or another deal to create jobs will be
finalized so that the social partners are satisfied.
We think this ganging up is a pretty fine event to express our gratidue for poverty,
hunger, massacers and a devastated nature. With friends and comrades we will do this for
two days.
A week in advance, at the 28th of June, of this summit we will start our anarchical week
of events. We will receive guests and speakers from all corners oft he world and will
discuss, watching movies and have some readings going on.
So when the powerful meet up here to coordinate their terror even better we unite in
ordert o network and to solidarize. Nice to see you!
Anarchical Initiative
http://anarchistischeinitiative.blogsport.eu/aufruf/
------------------------------
Message: 3
It was Labour who started off the severe cuts in wages and welfare benefits under James
Callaghan in the 1970s. Callaghan pioneered the monetarist policies then taken up by
Thatcher. ---- Many argue that a Corbyn-led Labour government would somehow galvanise
social movements. However let's look at the example of Bennism in the early 1980s. Bennism
was a similar movement to Corbynism. It mobilised around the left Labour figure of Tony
Benn. In fact both Corbyn and McDonnell were minor figures within Bennism, as were some of
their present associates. There was great hope that Benn would become deputy leader of the
Labour Party until he was defeated by Denis Healey in 1983. In the process a large number
of activists from the various social movements, women's groups, gay liberation groups etc.
who up till then were existing outside the Labour Party, were now dragged into Labour and
in the process demobilised these social movements. A similar phenomenon happened alongside
this when Ken Livingstone ran the Greater London Council from 1981 to 1986 and developed
his "rainbow coalition", involving the same social movements mentioned above, absorbing
them into the GLC. Again the result was demobilisation, with people looking towards the
GLC administration rather than relying on their own action. Livingstone backed down
against Thatcher on tube fares and setting local rates and there was no significant
response on the streets.
Going back to Syriza, we saw a situation where it persuaded people to rely on its being in
power and fighting against the austerity measures imposed by the EU, the IMF and the World
Bank. Of course Syriza broke everyone of their electoral promises. The Syriza member
Stathis Kouvelakis had later to admit that the negotiation process with the EU "by itself
triggered passivity and anxiety among the people and the most combative sectors of
society, leading them to exhaustion". The Greek social movements have taken a long time to
recover from the Syriza experience and that could be the same scenario with a Corbyn
government. Again we repeat, we have to rely on our activities and our own organisation of
grassroots struggles.
https://aflondon.wordpress.com/2017/06/28/past-examples-of-labour/
------------------------------
Message: 4
Translation: The Dawn -- A boom for the autonomy ---- There seems to be a trend among
indigenous communities of increasing vindication of their right to choose their own
representatives, rejecting the model of "voting a representative and hoping they deliver
what they promised" and instead using their traditional methods to solve the quotidien
problems they face. How can they ask a suit-and-tie politician to solve the problems of
peasants if their hands are more accustomed to handle paperwork than plowing the ground?
---- The push that drove 140 settlements and communities of Ayutla de los Libres to take
this path was the fact that 8 of 43 students kidnapped by the State of Ayotzinapa were
originally from that municipality, and therefore this was one of the epicenters of the
protest movement that this mass crime originated, claiming for answers regarding the
destiny of the victims, more security in the municipality-and this process originated new,
harmonious forms of organization of the peoples, beyond the marches and rallies.
On November 30, 2014, members of the Regional Coordinator of Communitary Authorities -
Communitarian Police (CRAC-PC), teachers of the State Coordination of Education Workers of
Guerrero (CETEG), and parents of the Ayotzinapa students, with the active support of a big
part of the population, decided to occupy what they denounced as the "Narco-City Council"
and publicly proclaimed their new authority: the People's Municipal Council, because
"narco cartels have penetrated all levels of government and only this will prevent a new
massacres and the forced disappearances we suffer daily"[1]. This autonomist movement also
spread to other municipalities: Tecoanapa, San Luis Acatlán and Tlapa de Comonfort (which
are geographically close) and, to a lesser degree, to Acapulco in Juárez.
One of the faces of this movement for self-determination, Manuel Olivares Hernández, who
is the technical secretary of the Guerrero Netword of Human Rights Organisms, said these
words that should teach a lesson for the future: "we're under a narco-power which has left
us with dozens of clandestine mass graves-even Guerrero is a great clandestine
cemetery-therefore these municipal councils are going to replace the authorities that
don't guarantee our life to live and respect for our patrimony"[2].
From that day on, autonomists have been working and formed the State Electoral Institute
for Citizen Participation (IEPC) of the state of Guerrero and the Superior Chamber of the
Electoral Court of the Federation Judiciary Power (TEPJF) to guarantee the holding of a
popular referendum realize on the last June 10th and 11th in the center of the municipality.
It's about time for peoples to self-govern
We'd be too idealist if we said there aren't obstacles to this process. There's still a
pro-party and conservative current that has opposed the election by uses and customs in an
assembly held in October 2015. As happens in many social movements, there is a conflict
between different social strata (those who have plenty and those who have little)-in this
case, between native and rural people, on one side, and the settlements of the municipal
capital, on the other.
Nevertheless, the result of the recent referendum was convincing and decisive: 7,178 voted
for the communitary assembly model, while 5,965 voted for the list election model[3](most
of them militants of the corrupt PRI, PAN and PRD parties or their satellite parties).
"The referendum wasn't easy, because they hadn't even told indigenous communities that
they would vote on how they'd be able to choose their representatives", says an inhabitant
of Ayutla. As a consequence, around 100 people occupied the headquarters of the IEPC on
May 25 this year to demand them to listen to the voices of natives.
The results of the vote held on June 10th and 11th confirm that despite the irregularities
and the interests of those who don't actually want a communitarian democracy, the
majorities want the system based on "uses and customs" (which respects the traditional
ways of making decisions).
Likewise "several political parties have tried to bribe, with presents and money,
officials not to show up at the board meetings (...) and they've also said that social
programs such as "Prospera" would disappear if parties were expelled" from the community.
The "Sebastopol"[4]of autonomy and self-government will continue to win strategic
positions and gain support at the local and national levels against the party-business
alliance.
From being out to collective strength
Ayutla is considered the birthplace of the People's Revolutionary Army (EPR), born in May
1994. Therefore it's easy to imagine the amount of police raids, vigilance and
extra-judicial murders that have been committed by the police and the State with the
excuse of capturing guerrilla members.
In the same year, another organization was born: the Me'phaa Indigenous People's
Organization (OPIM), where indigenous women have a great role. In 2016, they denounced
that only in that year 20 native women had been killed in Ayutla and the neighboring
municipality Acatepec. Due to their anti-militarist work, 16 members and collaborators
have been murdered, 7 were detained and 107 have received direct threats (from the
government, politicians, drug cartels, and police officers).
Poverty is a determinant factor (although not the only one) to the process of internal
organization of the Ayutla communities, because:
(...) according to the latest report of the National Council of Assessment of Social
Development Policies (Coneval), from 2010, in Ayutla de los Libres 88% of the population
is poor and 50% don't even have enough to eat.
"A third of its inhabitants is behind the expected education level and 78% don't have
access to basic services"[5].
therefore, the need for economic development in the community is another determinant
factor in the struggle for self-determination.
How can we expect the state to increase the economic status of the population when in fact
the state is working, through violence and stratification, to direct the flow of capital
towards a single social class?
Security is another issue. In 2010, the people of Ayutla became a part of the Regional
Coordinator of Communitary Authorities - Communitarian Police (CRAC-PC) of Costa Chica in
order to install checkpoints and decrease the amount of crimes, although the official date
of the constitution of the PC in Ayutla was 22 December, 2012. In time (and due to
infiltrations within the CRAC), there was an internal division from which a new structure
was born: the Union of the Peoples and Organizations of the State of Guerrero (UPOEG),
which doesn't precisely have a pristine record as an armed group. But the will of the
people of Ayutla has given power to both groups in the realm of security, despite the
differences between them, and the political (and even armed) dispute they hold in other
regions of Guerrero.
The government was beginning to crumble in early January 2013, when armed groups made it
official to media outlets that they were participating in Ayutla. Veiled messages from the
high levels of power were being sent regularly to the leaders of these forces, but their
activities weren't suspended for a single day.
On January 31, 2013, in the El Mesón community, around 500 people gathered to carry out
the first people's trial against 54 captured criminals who were linked to organized crime.
These initiatives born from towns and neighborhoods (all members of the CRAC-PC are
elected in a communitary assembly) caused intense indignation and temper-tantrums in the
state government. On August 21 that year, the Mexican army ambushed the CRAC-PC in an
attempt to break them. The incident occurred in the "El Paraíso" House of Justice of the
homonymous town, and resulted in the capture of six members of the CRAC-PC: Bernardino
García Francisco, Ángel García García, Florentino García Castro, Eleuterio García Carmen,
Ambad Ambrosio Francisco y Benito Morales Justo. The accusations against them were absurd:
kidnapping, carrying weapons and organized crime.
It is necessary to note the case of Arturo Campos Herrera, promoter of the CRAC-PC of El
Paraíso, who was selectively detained on December 1, 2013 in the Chilpancingo city, just
after an activity of agitation in denouncing the capture of the six detainees on August 21.
Three years went by until their liberation, on March 13, 2016.
Arturo remains imprisoned in Ayutla, but with his head held high and remembering that
"this is our crime, providing security and punishing those who comment crimes according to
our uses and customs"[6].
Self-construction and some conclusions for the future:
The relevance of admiring communitary democracy exercised through the model of uses and
customs is not about the way in which the change is achieved, not about the paradigm shift
in the way decisions are made, but about the results achieved through this:
1) The definitive expulsion of political parties; therefore, the constant confrontation
with the structure of the modern State.
2) The abolition of a presidential figure and the eradication of political hierarchies, by
forming councils made up of locals elected due to their service and interest in the
collective development of a territory and of the people inhabiting it-not on the basis of
electioneering.
3) The complete and anti-systemic autonomization of the territory, after forming a
cooperative economy and strengthening of communitary forms of self-defense, rejecting the
handouts of the three levels of government.
We don't need to be naive (and with this I refer to the second item). The process of
election by uses and customs, can be the scenario of the selfish ambitions of
organizations or representatives. But there must be a constant and conscious exercise
within the community to preserve their system from nourishing rivality or ambition of
authority.
Let decisions be made by the grassroots!
Solidarity with the communities of Ayutla de los Libres in their way to autonomy!
Guerrero for the people!
Notes and references
[1]Conversation with Ayutla's habitants in the XXI CRAC-PC Anniversary, celebrated in the
community of Horcasitas in San Luis Acatlán, Guerrero. October 2016.
[2]"Forman consejos populares en Ayutla de los Libres y Acapulco" by Sergio Ocampo &
Héctor Briseño, La Jornada, November 30, 2014, p. 7.
(http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2014/11/30/politica/007n1pol)
[3]"Gana en Ayutla el modelo de elección por usos y costumbres en asambleas" by Jacob
Morales Antonio, El Sur: Periódico de Guerrero, June 14, 2017.
(http://suracapulco.mx/1/gana-en-ayutla-el-modelo-de-eleccion-por-usos-y-costumbres-en-asambleas/)
[4]Warship used by anarcho-syndicalist mariners in the Rebellion of Kronstadt in 1921.
[5]"Ayutla de los Llibres, el lugar donde los civiles ejercen la justicia" by Daniela Rea,
CNN México, February 1st, 2013.
(http://expansion.mx/nacional/2013/02/01/ayutla-de-los-libres-el-lugar-donde-los-civiles-ejercen-la-justicia)
[6]"Vida de Arturo Campos: Creación de la CRAC-PC en Ayutla" (Autobiography)
Originally posted in:
http://expansion.mx/nacional/2013/02/01/ayutla-de-los-libres-el-lugar-donde-los-civiles-ejercen-la-justicia
https://www.anarkismo.net/article/30364
------------------------------
Message: 5
The outraged media reaction to a jury doing its job and finding the Jobstown defendants
not guilty is quite extraordinary. Rather than do the right thing and launch an
investigation as to how 180 cops could produce evidence that was directly contradicted by
video evidence, the media have gone on a rant against Twitter! Rather than finding it
suspicious that nearly 3 million in public funds was spent by the DPP on a case that any
proper check of available evidence should have indicated was never likely to convince a
jury, the media suggest instead that the problem lay in the exact charges brought. ---- As
we look across our newspapers, TV channels and radio stations and see what appears to be
coordinated messaging from politicos, journalists and other elite figures we should take
this as a teaching moment. This isn't some exception, this is how it works. It's only
visible in this instance because so many of us followed the trial in considerable detail,
and that was only possible because of the large number of activists who provided court
updates, mostly in a voluntary role. Those activists with access to social media allowed a
collective challenging of the media framing. Hundreds of people not only read what they
posted but shared and retweeted it.
The central story of the Jobstown Not Guilty verdict is how so much money could have been
spent on what looks very much like a co-ordinated frame up. Who gave the orders for this?
Not just the formal orders in terms of the DPP's office but also the informal ones that
had to have come from government politicians for such a choreographed political show trial
to get underway. The likelihood is that there was a conspiracy, that is what should be
investigated. Instead the media are doing the complete opposite and rushing to insist a
conspiracy would be impossible. The Irish Times editorial goes so far as to declare the
"Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, a scrupulously independent and respected
institution". It's precisely that claim that should be under the journalistic microscope.
The sheer scale of garda evidence also demonstrates that this is not just a few bad
apples. Around 180 Gardaí gave statements that formed part of the excuse for the DPP to
press ahead with the show trial. Some 50 of these gave evidence and was noted by the
defence the evidence later given in court often omitted the more outrageous elements of
the earlier statements. Presumably because at that point they were aware of the video
evidence and know they would be cross examined. In theory Garda evidence should simply
consist of a truthful account of what happened. In practise it consisted of an attempt to
spin and even invent things that were said or done in order to get a conviction. Claims
were made about rocks being thrown or things being said by defendants that video evidence
revealed to be false. The number of Gardaí involved and the fact that in some cases groups
of Gardaí made identical false claims - suggesting they had co-ordinated in order to do so
- points to a conspiracy. And all this in a context where the gardaí have been caught out
again and again, right up to the current teflon commissioner. But the media, in particular
the Irish Times has ruled to cover this up.
Instead the focus is on Twitter and whether what was said there might have influenced the
jury. This shouldn't have been possible as standard direction to juries is not to look up
the case on social media, doing so would result in a mistrial. The media know that full
well so what is the actual reason for the focus on social media? It's simple. For a very
long time the media in Ireland has functioned, with only a handful of exceptions, as the
cosy sidekick of the ruling elite. Over and over again they have uncritically repeated
claims coming from those with wealth and power and attacked those opposing them who do not.
The decade long struggle against Shell at Rossport was one where growing numbers of people
came to see this in practise. They would see one thing happen in person - or increasingly
on social media, then they would see the opposite being reported as fact right across the
Irish media. With the water charges campaign this not only escalated it came directly into
many housing estates across the island. Suddenly tens of thousands of people were seeing
one thing happen on their own doorsteps as water meters were resisted only to see
something quite different being reported in the media.
Faith in mainstream media collapsed. People stopped buying newspapers and started to
refuse to pay TV licenses. Very many were outraged and angry about being lied to. There
were some negative aspects to this. With the gatekeeper they had once trusted now
discredited, some people tended to fall into right wing conspiracy theories. In Ireland
because the left was active in popular struggles this was a small problem. In the US where
there wasn't a radical left on the streets it became part of the reason Trump got elected
as white voters came to believe all sorts of racist nonsense from conspiracy sites. Those
on the soft left who rant about hard left ‘populism' might want to consider that reality
and realise there is a reason why resistance to neoliberalism in Ireland took a different
route.
The establishment hate social media because it has changed the game. It used to be that
the cops could batter people, claim that they were putting down a riot, the media would
faithfully report this and most of the population would applaud what they presumed was a
job well done. I was on the streets the day that ended: Dame street 2002. That was the day
when a pack of guards, batons swinging, came changing into a peaceful Reclaim the Streets
on Dame street and proceeded to batter teenagers. The riot story was made and reported
faithfully by RTÉ but, for the first time, activists not only had cameras to capture what
had really happened but a (pretty primitive) infrastructure to transmit that footage. That
was indymedia.ie and the footage that rapidly circulated online forced the media to change
the story. No gardaí were ever held to account of course. However, considerable amounts
were paid out in compensation in the years that followed with the traditional cyclical
pattern of this happening before cases got to court - and so in silence, without publicity.
The technology greatly escalated in the years since so that nowadays the smartphone in
many of our pockets can capture, transmit and distribute video in a way that you'd have
needed 500,000 squids worth of equipment and satellite rental to do back in 2002. Videos
of Gardaí abusing people, whether that be political activists or homeless people trying to
get some sleep on our cold streets, have become routine. They seldom make the mainstream
media unless they have first been shared by enormous numbers of people. Of course, people
notice this and it adds to the move away and distrust of mainstream media.
This is why it is so disturbing that the media have not only failed to cover the other
elephant in the room but have run interference to stop it being spotted. Today the Irish
Times carries a piece by ex Justice Minister Michael McDowell that has a curious point at
the end, but one that can be understood in the context of the paragraphs above. They
reported him saying "Phone camera evidence could be edited to present any angle, he said
and perhaps it was time for gardaí to be equipped with cameras so their actions could be
monitored."
In the context of the trial this is very misleading, much of the video evidence was
captured by the Gardaí - e.g. the helicopter footage or of course from Burton's own phone.
But let us leave the implicit attack on the jury's verdict aside. The Gardaí have been
running a campaign over the last couple of years to try to make it illegal to record their
actions. We know from reports that the jury specifically requested to review video footage
before making their ‘Not Guilty' decision. In this case, where the claims of dozens of
Gardaí were contestable because the video showed otherwise, consider what the impact of
that video's absence would have been. Would the Jobstown 6 be starting prison sentences of
up to 14 years this morning?
That would suit the establishment. The politicians, garda and journalists who insisted
there has been some sort of ‘false imprisonment' and who are now outraged - not only that
the jury found otherwise but that a huge section of the population know why. Indeed
because the helicopter footage and the inside car footage made it onto social media, along
with accounts of garda evidence, a very, very large number of people are going to draw the
obvious conclusions, that they have seen and heard evidence that strongly points to a
conspiracy. And - this is what upsets the media - like us many of those people are going
to be asking why the journalists are not doing ‘their job' and investigating this apparent
conspiracy? Why are the politicians not demanding an inquiry? If it's just a rather large
amount of rotten apples where are the Garda whistleblowers coming forward to expose the
conspiracy within their ranks?
Those are very legitimate questions. As the clock ticks, the establishment not only fails
to raise them but works hard to distract attention from them. We are entitled to draw the
conclusion that this apparent conspiracy is business as usual. It's how wealth and power
protects itself from the many and it's the way things have almost always worked. If we
want things to continue to change for the better we have to organise together, to organise
against them, and bring forth a society without such divisions and those that police them.
------------------------------
Message: 6
This eight-episode series aims to track the history of LGBT rights (lesbians, gays, bi and
trans) in the United States. ---- Quickly, the series is structured around the figure of
Cleve Jones, an American historical activist who fought alongside Harvey Milk, the first
homosexual councilor and gay rights activist in San Francisco. ---- Jones, who is credited
as consultant of the series, rules in passing some accounts especially with the radical
militancy of Act Up. This is where one of the main pitfalls of the series resides. The
roots of the gay riots in Castro - the historic gay community in San Francisco - quickly
replaced a description of the arcana of the institutional game of LGBT lobby groups from
the 1990s. The perpetual balance between activism and Institution is then erected in ideal
mode of struggle.
The very form of the series will eventually recall the feel good movies. Paradoxically,
this is where the main interest of When We Rise lies . Its broadcast in prime time on a
channel as influential as ABC will have made it possible to popularize a history of the
LGBT with a wide public. Perhaps a certain classicism was necessary in order to see and
know what police violence can be, to understand how each progressive progress will be
systematically challenged, to understand that racism and poverty aggravate homophobic
discrimination.
The episodes taking place during the deadliest episode of the AIDS epidemic show what a
war can be like in peacetime. If the massacre could initially break the solidarity and
unleash homophobes, the urgency of the drama and the struggle for survival will influence
the struggles and will mark the spirits until today. But the work, especially of Act Up,
in connection with the other decimated communities (users and drug users, prostitutes ...)
and the empowerment of seropos in the understanding of the disease seems to us to be flown
in the series. It is definitely not this story that he was chosen to tell.
But the most activists and activists will be curious and curious to see the role played by
the unions in extending the rights of access to health conquered by LGBT people to the
whole population of San Francisco. They will also have the opportunity to recall how
non-mixing was a major tool for the emancipation of women since the 1970s.
In the course of the episodes, it will be noticed the difficult recognition of a common
destiny by LGBT activists between themselves and themselves. Given the narrative time that
is given for each of these different components, we will see the extent of the road that
remains to be traveled for equality in recognition of histories and legitimacy.
A narrative of our struggles is now accessible to the greatest number. The other stories
of the movement remain to be written as we have to conquer our rights when we rise.
Brassac (Paris South)
Dustin Lance Black, When We Rise, 8 episodes miniseries, 2017.
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Serie-When-We-Rise
------------------------------
Message: 7
Founded 112 years ago this week, we celebrate the rich legacy of the Industrial Workers of
the World (IWW). The union brought together a number of existing unions and radical
currents to create an alternative to the conservative trade unions of time which promoted
harmony between workers and capital and also practiced exclusion in their organizing along
the lines of race, gender and skill. Today the IWW continues to organize and we celebrate
it's vision of building a labor movement committed to the emancipation of the working
class. ---- These two excerpts are from the minutes of the founding convention of the IWW
on June 27 and 28, 1905. William "Big Bill" Haywood was a veteran unionist with the
Western Federation of Miners and key early figure of the IWW. Here he elaborates in one
simple paragraph the founding vision of what the IWW aimed to build.
Lucy Parsons was also a labor organizer of women textile workers and veteran activist in
socialist and later anarchist politics who gained international renown for her campaign
against the execution of her husband and Haymarket Martyr, Albert Parsons. Her speech
articulates a key distinction on the left at that time around the method of ballot box
reform versus the collective power of organized of workers and people to take control of
means of life. Watch a short video on her life here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1AOZlUflgo
William "Big Bill" Haywood
The opening address to the founding convention:
Fellow Workers: In calling this convention to order I do so with a sense of the
responsibility that rests upon me and rests upon every delegate that is here assembled.
This is the Continental Congress of the working class. We are here to confederate the
workers of this country into a working class movement that shall have for its purpose the
emancipation of the working class from the slave bondage of capitalism. (Applause).
There is no organization, or there seems to be no labor organization, that has for its
purpose the same object as that for which you are called together to-day. The aims and
objects of this organization should be to put the working class in possession of the
economic power, the means of life, in control of the machinery of production and
distribution, without regard to capitalist masters. (Applause).
The American Federation of Labor, which presumes to be the labor movement of this country,
is not a working class movement. It does not represent the working class. There are
organizations that are affiliated, but loosely affiliated with the A. F. of L., which in
their constitution and by-laws prohibit the initiation of or conferring the obligation on
a colored man; that prohibit the conferring of the obligation on foreigners. What we want
to establish at this time is a labor organization that will open wide its doors to every
man that earns his livelihood either by his brain or his muscle.
Lucy Parsons
Speech to the founding convention:
Now, what do we mean when we say revolutionary Socialist? We mean that the land shall
belong to the landless, the tools to the toiler, and the products to the producers. Now,
let us analyze that for just a moment, before you applaud me.
First, the land belongs to the landless. Is there a single land owner in this country who
owns his land by the constitutional rights given by the constitution of the United States
who will allow you to vote it away from him? I am not such a fool as to believe it. We
say, "The tools belong to the toiler." They are owned by the capitalist class. Do you
believe they will allow you to go into the halls of the legislature and simply say, "Be it
enacted that on and after a certain day the capitalist shall no longer own the tools and
the factories and the places of industry, the ships that plow the ocean and our lakes?" Do
you believe that they will submit? I do not.
We say, "The products belong to the producers." It belongs to the capitalist class as
their legal property. Do you think that they will allow you to vote them away from them by
passing a law and saying, "Be it enacted that on and after a certain day Mr. Capitalist
shall be dispossessed?" You may, but I do not believe it.
Hence, when you roll under your tongue the expression that you are revolutionists,
remember what that word means. It means a revolution that shall turn all these things over
where they belong to the wealth producers. Now, how shall the wealth producers come into
possession of them? I believe that if every man and every woman who works, or who toils in
the mines, the mills, the workshops, the fields, the factories and the farms in our broad
America should decide in their minds that they shall have that which of right belongs to
them, and that no idler shall live upon their toil, and when your new organization, your
economic organization, shall declare as man to man and women to woman, as brothers and
sisters, that you are determined that you will possess these things, then there is no army
that is large enough to overcome you, for you yourselves constitute the army. (Applause). ...
My conception of the strike of the future is not to strike and go out and starve, but to
strike and remain in and take possession of the necessary property of production. If any
one is to starve ... let it be the capitalist class. They have starved us long enough,
while they have had wealth and luxury and all that is necessary.
If you enjoyed this piece we recommend "The Next 100 Days: May Day and Worker Resistance
Under Trump" and "A History of May Day: The Struggle for the Eight-Hour Day and Popular
Power." Read more on Lucy Parson's speech here.
http://recomposition.info/the-general-strike-the-strike-of-the-future-by-lucy-parsons/
http://blackrosefed.org/emancipation-of-the-working-class/
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Message: 8
Sam Dolgoff was an American anarchist and wobbly (member of the Industrial Workers of the
World). He's an important figure, active for almost seven decades (including ones where
anarchism was supposed to have ‘died out'!) Anatole Dolgoff is the youngest son of Sam and
Esther Dolgoff, and Left of the Left is his insider's account of his parents' lives and
world. He's not hobbled by trying to be ‘objective', nor by trying to please anybody else.
His attention to the political movement they belonged to and his willingness to ask ‘what
was really going on here?' makes this more than a simple collection of family stories.
---- Of Sam in the 1930s he asks: ‘Where did he get the energy to live as he did? To feed
us, he painted apartments for slumlords and conniving contractors. He carried out
organizational work and soapbox duties for the Wobblies. He worked with Carlo Tresca and
other Italian anarchists in fighting fascists in the streets. He was instrumental founding
a sequence of anarchist publications, Vanguard being the most notable among them in the
early to mid-1930s. He worked with the Jewish anarchists of Freie Arbeiter Stimme. Later
came Spanish Revolution; the name of that publication speaks for itself.' (p115) Esther
appears throughout the book as partner (in both senses). I most enjoyed her rejoinder,
from a feminist meeting at Vassar College[1978?]: ‘"Marx, Marx!" she interrupted, with a
wave of the hand. "Who was Marx? He was a man who lived in the nineteenth century. He was
a brilliant man, for sure. Some of the things he said are of value today; others not so
much. Why do you feel the need to refer to him always? Why don't you stand up, think for
yourself, and say what it is you want to say?"' (p370)
Other anarchists and wobblies come to life in shared stories, like Federico Arcos' scorn
for For whom the bell tolls - ‘"Can you imagine the Spanish anarchists (!) need a guy to
come all the way from Montana to teach us how to use explosives!"' (p180) And then there's
Anatole's memories of old anarchist wobbly Bill Roth. Having knocked about with Joe Hill,
Roth found the song ‘I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night' too saintly: ‘Joe Hill was not a
flower child.' (p241)
Anatole Dolgoff has some interesting observations of his own. ‘The misconception that
he[Sam]was unduly rigid stems from the fact that he refused to abandon the concept of the
class struggle, and from his belief that democratic, revolutionary unions are the best
instruments for confronting the capitalist system and the state. I'll not get into the
thick of the debate, except to say that I think many of Sam's critics were college
educated and middle class and lived in a period of rising opportunities for people like
them.[...]Capitalism remains a predatory system because, at its core, human beings are raw
materials, commodities.[...]Yes, work is evolving but the power relations remain
unchanged.' (p360-1)
Left of the Left has an old, grizzled Sam Dolgoff on the cover in full colour. And inside,
the picture Anatole paints is not black and white either. Besides the politics, there is
working, drinking and family dynamics that aren't always pretty. Left of the Left is both
sad and funny at times. Mainly it's a wise and loving tribute, to his parents, but also to
the movement that they helped to make and that helped make them.
This review first appeared in Issue 90 of the Kate Sharpley Library Bulletin
ISBN: 978-1-84935-248-2
PP: 400
Publisher: AK Press, 2016
£17
https://freedomnews.org.uk/book-review-left-of-the-left-my-memories-of-sam-dolgoff/
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Message: 9
With the commemoration of the reason for the 80 th anniversary (1937-2017) of the
Federation Constitution " Mujeres Libres " (Free Women), the General Confederation of
Labor (CGT) will celebrate a Training Conference and pub lished here of the Minutes, the
Which we will analyze this transcendental event in the struggles of women for equality in
our country and at the international level.
The Jornadas will take place on September 8, 9 and 10, 2017 , at Centro Cultural Casa del
Reloj, Paseo de la Chopera nº 6 and 10 in Madrid, with the objective of analyzing what was
thought in its time, the effects it produced and The actuality of the messages of the
singular movement "Free Women".
CGT - Woman --- Translation> Rose and Cinnamon
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