Anarchic update news all over the world - 2.04.2018

Today's Topics:

   
1.  France, Alternative Libertaire AL #281 - unionism, For or
      against strike funds (fr, it, pt) [machine translation]
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
2.  anarkismo.net: New Labour Bills attack workers' rights and
      democracy by Jonathan Payn - ILRIG (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
3.  Czech, afed - A3: In Africa for Prague [machine translation]
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
4.  London Anarchist Communists: London In Struggle-Report Back
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
  
 5.  Greece, liberta salonica: From the psalms of David to the
      homophobic preaching of Ambrose (gr) [machine translation]
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)


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Message: 1





The discussions around this means of financial solidarity animate many union teams, 
anxious to mobilize more and better employees. But beware, the tool is tricky to handle. 
---- After the last social movements, in many unions, what is controversial is how to hold 
the strike. The question of money arrives very quickly on the table: the precariousness 
strikes ; wages do not follow and ends of the month are more and more difficult to 
complete ; some and some are strangled by borrowing ... And all this is a drag on strike 
action. In any case, is lived and verbalized as such by many and many workers. ---- Even 
if we must keep in mind that when anger is there, the strike is necessary, and sometimes 
in the long run, we can not dismiss the cost of the strike for the employees. . This cost 
is becoming more and more important, especially in the context of the breakdown of union 
strategies.

In concrete terms, it is often around the issue of the strike banks that the discussions 
in the union teams are structured. At all levels.

Proximity solidarity

At the local level, these are local strike funds. Where a strike is about to begin, the 
union or a support group is launching a fundraiser to help the strikers. During the many 
cleaning strikes in Marseille in 2016, the CNT-SO often resorted to it. The existence of 
online pool sites facilitates these calls for solidarity, all the more legitimate when we 
know the wages in the cleaning sector for example. They are not without pitfalls.

First, the online prize pool is dependent on the media notoriety that can strike. For 
example, Onet's strikers benefited from, among other things, several press articles and 
the exhibition offered to them by the blogger Emma - followed by more than 250,000 
profiles on Facebook - with one of her stories. As a result, nearly 3,000 participants 
paid more than 65,000 euros to the strike fund of the SUD-Rail Paris-Nord union.

At about the same time, strikers at the Holiday Inn Place de Clichy held 111 days. It is 
enormous. Yet their online strike fund, launched by the CNT-SO, showed only 356 
participants on February 19 ... ten days after the end of the conflict !

Demonstration of Onet's strikers in Saint-Denis

The other question posed by digital strike funds is that of the physical and material 
experience of solidarity. Fortunately, trade unionists still have their feet on the 
ground, but we must beware of the risk of losing sight of awareness-raising initiatives 
for local residents. Meals shared in working-class neighborhoods (" communist soups ", it 
was said during the revolutionary syndicalist period of the CGT), quest for the flag on 
the markets, baskets circulating in workshops and services ... so many concrete practices 
to preserve and / or to find. Besides ensuring the anchoring of a conflict, it is also a 
way of " class To express the support of workers to other workers.

Strike without counting
After the local conflicts, then comes the question of the national strike fund. There are 
two ways to think about it.

First scenario, that of a structure guaranteeing its members a sort of " check striker " 
through a dedicated share of contributions. This is how the CFDT operates with its 
National Union Action Fund (CNAS, presented on the plant's website as a " service "). At 2 
e strike day, every adhérent.e CFDT triggers its right to compensation of seven euros / 
hour (for full-time salarié.es). The least one can say is that this " insurance " approach 
questions, individualizing the collective fact that is any strike (and that is even 
unionism). Moreover we can say that this fund must be relatively rich at the time it is 
... so the CFDT launches few strikes.

In some cases, the national strike fund can also be a way to curb a restless base: and the 
early XX th century, the CGT federation of the Book of "orientation reformist ", held a 
national strike fund. But to benefit from it, any affiliated union wishing to launch a 
strike had to obtain, beforehand, the approval of the federal management, more anxious to 
preserve the bonanza than to encourage the direct action ! [1]

Second scenario: during the global movements, such as that of 2016-2017 against the labor 
laws and their world, national strike funds were set up, in order to support the workers 
and workers involved in the labor market. 'action.

Most notorious, donated by CGT Info'Com. It redistributed more than 400,000 euros to 35 
representative structures of groups of strikers [2]. And this in all transparency, since a 
charter subject to signature framed the allocation of sums paid. For several hundred 
strikers, it was eminently valuable.

The 2016 balance sheet of this national strike fund began with these words: " Financial 
solidarity is the nerve of the social movement. But we can not stop there. The goal 
displayed by several militant unions in the battle against the Labor Law was to build the 
general strike. From then on, a strike fund can appear as a perspective ... of 
substitution for strike action. The risk being, rather than extending the movement, to 
encourage the " proxy strike ", by " subsidizing ", in a way, the so-called " blocking " 
sectors (transport, energy, industries).

But it is rather the extension that is preferred by the strikers of the " blocking " sectors .

We therefore fall back on a wider debate. It is difficult to disconnect strike funds from 
all union practices and strategies. It is our " models " of mobilization, our ways of 
engaging in collective action that must be questioned.

Théo Roumier (Solidarity unionist)

[1] See Guillaume Davranche, Too young to die, workers and revolutionaries facing the war 
(1909-1914) , The Insomniac / Libertalia, 2014.

[2] We can consult the report on the site of this union.

http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Pour-ou-contre-les-caisses-de-greve

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Message: 2





On 17 November 2017, the Minister of Labour announced the state intends to carry out a new 
round of attacks on workers and their rights. The attacks come in the form of three Labour 
Bills currently being considered by parliament: the Basic Conditions of Employment Bill, 
the National Minimum Wage Bill and the Labour Relations Amendment Bill. If passed, the 
changes to the labour laws these bills propose will be a major attack on workers' rights, 
won through decades of struggle, and will further deepen and entrench inequality and roll 
back important democratic gains. ---- 'Workers' rights are human rights' demonstration 
against new Labour Bills, 21 March 2018, Johannesburg. Photo: Nimet Arikan ---- Government 
claims the bills are intended to reduce the number of protracted, unprotected and 
so-called violent strikes. The fact, however, is that these bills are designed to restore 
and increase bosses' profits, severely hit by the ongoing economic crisis, and attract 
foreign direct investment by providing ultra-cheap black labour and limiting workers' 
ability to strike in defense of their rights and interests.

Two of the most important weapons that workers have to defend themselves against the 
ruling class and win better wages and conditions, and to advance struggles for other 
rights and needs, are the rights to strike and to organise around their interests 
independently of bosses and the state.

The proposed amendments to the LRA would further undermine the independence of unions and 
make it more difficult for workers to go on protected strikes through the introduction of 
a secret strike ballot, default picketing rules, compulsory arbitration and more 
cumbersome bureaucratic procedures before strike actions. This is an attack on the right 
of workers to make their own collective decisions about their organisations and about 
strike action without interference from bosses or the state. By increasing the 
conciliation period before workers can go on a protected strike from 30 to 35 days the 
amendments would make it easier for bosses and the state to undermine, delay, interfere 
with and prevent workers from striking. Moreover, although the LRA amendments are 
supposedly intended to prevent strikes from becoming ‘violent' they do not address one of 
the main factors that cause strikes to become violent in the first place: the bosses' use 
of scab labour.

The National Minimum Wage (NMW) and proposed changes to the Basic Conditions of Employment 
Act (BCEA) would take away important rights for some of the most vulnerable and exploited 
workers by phasing out Sectoral Determinations and replacing them with the NMW.

Sectoral Determinations currently set minimum wages as well as conditions of employment in 
a given sector. For example, the Sectoral Determination governing the farm work sector 
says that farm workers have the right to housing on the farms. If the Sectoral 
Determination is removed thousands of workers and their families could face eviction. 
Similarly, the Domestic Work sectoral determination prohibits bosses from charging a 
domestic worker more than 10% of their wages for accommodation. If the sectoral 
determination goes there is nothing to stop bosses charging workers anything they think 
they can get away with.

Moreover, the NMW does not actually set a monthly minimum wage. It only sets an hourly 
minimum wage of R20 per hour (R18 p/h for farmworkers, R15 p/hour for domestic workers and 
R11 p/h for public works, to be increased to R20 p/h by 2020) with a minimum number of 
four working hours a day. This means that workers that work less than 40 hours a week, 
such as those who work part time or flexible hours, might not even get the already 
inadequate R3 500 per month. This is not nearly enough to live a dignified life on and a 
slap in the face to the workers that died at Marikana for a living wage of R12 500.

While it is vital to resist the bills and defend hard-won workers' and democratic rights 
we must remember that even now, while we do still supposedly have these rights - at least 
on paper - they are violated by the bosses and the state daily and millions of people 
still cannot access them.

This is not simply due to corruption, mismanagement, lack of finance or imperialist 
meddling etc., but is the direct result of the neoliberal war on the poor that the ruling 
class - black and white - has waged against the black working class in South Africa for 
four decades; first under apartheid and continued under the ANC. These bills are a clear 
example of how the ruling class uses the state to do this. And how what the state gives 
with one hand - such as the right to strike - it does so under duress, when the working 
class is strong and united, and will just as easily take away with another hand when it 
serves the interests of the ruling class and the working class is weak and divided. This 
is because the state is not neutral but an undemocratic institution of elite minority rule 
over the working class majority.

The struggle to guarantee human and workers' rights for everyone, once and for all, and to 
meet their needs will necessarily have to be a revolutionary struggle against capitalism 
and the state to radically change the structure and purpose of the South African economy 
and the society we live in.

Related Link: http://ilrig.org

https://www.anarkismo.net/article/30907

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Message: 3





Liberated cantons in northern Syria awaken social imagination and give hope that a better 
world is possible. We are not silent when one of the NATO members is trying to crush 
blood. Download, print and distribute the March issue of the A3 wall paper! ---- Kurds are 
usually referred to as terrorists in corporate media, or they are completely silent about 
them. What is it that frightens our media puppets and the mighty antennae, sitting in 
government fotele, shaking their shots? The same thing that led the Turkish authorities to 
the last March attacks on Afrin. Fear of freedom, ground-level power complex and blunt 
despotism. ---- The Kurds have actually decided to step up against the system of 
contemporary capitalism, with anarchist, feminist, and ecological criticism. In the name 
of democratic confederalism, they created a system of self-governing councils operating on 
the principle of participatory democracy and the coordination of joint decisions. The 
economy of capitalist and state property was replaced by equal collective management and 
co-operatives. And all this, regardless of ethnicity, involving all those who are in the 
territory.

For decades, the Kurds, a multi-million-dollar nation divided by the borders of five 
states, have been subjected to fierce oppression-particularly in Iraq where Saddam Hussein 
has made attempts at mass-use chemical weapons, and with the greatest urgency in Turkey. 
If we recall a few Nazi-settled villages in the Kurdish regions of Turkey, one would 
hardly have counted such violent acts, accompanied by tens of thousands of dead, not to 
mention the long-standing ban on Kurdish and everyday repressive bullying.

Many Kurds, however, were silent and built in various ways to resist. Kurdistan became the 
most famous force in PKK, originally a Leninist party, but in the last twenty years it has 
been ideologically transformed into a less hierarchical, more equal and participatory form 
of organization.

In the summer of 2012, the Kurds (not only) for their lives actively built themselves in 
the north of Syria and fought the Islamic State (IS). The liberated territories declared 
autonomous cantons. The most western of them is Afrín. The people who live there are 
taking Afrínlike water and food, past and present, friendship and mutual help ... But 
states have a strategy that does not care about Afrin or its inhabitants. The attack on 
Afrin is an energy war strategy that has led to the disintegration of Syria and destroys 
many countries in the region. States create the illusion that they are leading the war 
"for their citizens". They are conducting nationalist and conservative propaganda to make 
the people in this idiocy strong. War is needed to prevent resources in the interest of 
corporations that want to increase their profits. This bloody "debate" is won by those who 
have more rifles, tanks or aircraft and, of course, soldiers - the basic material that 
directly embodies state interest. This is an explanation from the anarchists from Africa.

We should all be able to look at things from this perspective - the eyes of ordinary 
people, not the power of the deceptive eye that is imposed on us. At the same time, we 
should realize that Turkey, as a NATO member, will at any price promote its national 
interests, and all Alliance ministers will be so silent about it. Being the voice of 
people fighting for freedom and life is our task.

If Western countries want to sacrifice a free project in the north of Syria, so that by 
chance Turkey does not fall under the Russian sphere of influence, we do not intend to do 
so. In history, we have once experienced this example of Spain, where the influence of 
fascism in Europe was decided in the 1930s. Even the Western Powers quietly watched as the 
fascist forces, with the help of Hitler and Mussolini, dispensed with a promising social 
transformation project. And so today's silence gives way to the authoritarian leaders of 
Syria, Russia and Turkey.

The Turkish regime is currently waging a war against a large minority on its own 
territory, and with this war expanding beyond its borders, with the support of militia 
composed of former IS fighters. He declares terrorism as every critical voice, prisoner 
journalists, pursuing academics and students who disagree with Kurdish aggression, 
criminalizing the greatest opposition force ...

We, anarchists and anarchists, do not turn away. We are watching what is happening in the 
north of Syria and in Turkey. We are solidarity with the Kurdish struggle for a freer and 
fairer society. We think of a few activists from the Czech Republic imprisoned in Turkey 
for trying to help establish a field hospital. We support our friends who have gone to 
Syria (just as the inter-brigadists have left for Spain before) to fight the IS and are 
dying today as a result of Turkish raids.

A3 ( March 2018) HERE to download .

Download, print, spread! http://www.afed.cz/A3/A3-2018-03.pdf

The A3 wall paper is published annually by the Anarchist Federation. They are intended 
primarily for spreading through street lifts or posting in workplaces and schools.

https://www.afed.cz/text/6817/a3-v-afrinu-za-prahu

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Message: 4





The London group of the Anarchist Communist Group held a discussion meeting on March 25th, 
focusing on three struggles going on at the moment: organising workers in west London, 
fighting against land ownership and inequality, and universal credit. For each struggle we 
considered: what are the issues and why is it an important struggle, what strategies and 
tactics have been adopted and what challenges exist in order for these struggles to be 
effective. ---- Organising in west London ---- The speaker from Angry Workers presented 
the work they are doing with the IWW in west London. They consciously chose an area of 
London where there is a high concentration of factories, in this case food processing, 
with hundreds of workers who are poorly paid, have difficult working conditions and little 
or no union organisation.
Their strategy consists of leafletting factories and helping to organise meetings with 
workers who are interested in fighting back. Some of them are also working in the 
factories. They do not necessarily promote the big actions such as strikes. These would be 
difficult to organise and could lead to victimisation. They think that power in the 
factory can be changed in more subtle ways, eg working to rule. They are not against 
working with any union structure that is there but their experience is that the union 
itself is ineffectual. In addition, they have set up neighbourhood solidarity networks to 
help people with issues such as unpaid wages. They have had some successes with this.
The speaker's analysis of the challenges was very insightful. Their experience of 
organising shows the concrete obstacles faced when trying to build a revolutionary working 
class movement. For example, the divisions within a workplace, created and exploited by 
management, are a major problem in workers effectively organising. For example, in one of 
the factories there are people on ‘permanent' contracts and agency staff. The ones on 
permanent contracts tend to be Asian women from the subcontinent who have been in the 
country, and in the job, for some time. The agency staff are mainly east Europeans. They 
even have to wear different coloured hairnets! There are also conflicts over religion. 
Another problem is that people often put forward their own individual issue so it is 
difficult to gain unity around collective issues. Even though they have had some successes 
in getting people to meetings and saying they want to do something, it is another thing to 
sustain this, often when there are communication problems and immense pressure on workers 
not to get involved.
A discussion followed with one person raising the successes of unions like the United 
Voices of the World. However, the speaker pointed out that in those cases the workers had 
already decided to take action and came to the UVW for support. It is much harder to start 
from scratch. Nothing can happen until the workers themselves decide that they are willing 
to take risks. All anyone ‘outside' can do is offer ideas and support.
There is no doubt that this organising project faces big obstacles. However, if we are 
ever going to build a working class revolutionary movement, this focus on the factories 
and surrounding neighbourhoods is essential. It will not give quick results, but it will 
be the foundation that will make it possible to transform, rather than just tinker with, 
the current system.
https://angryworkersworld.wordpress.com/
https://iww.org.uk/london/
Land
A member of the ACG, who is involved in the Land Justice Network, presented the main 
issues around land, how the fact that we do not have control of what happens to land, 
including so-called publically-owned land, is at the heart of struggles around housing, 
food, social and community space and the environment.
The positive features of building a campaign around land are that it is an issue which in 
theory could unite as all in a movement to abolish private property, the basis of 
capitalism. However, the problem is that most people are heavily involved in more specific 
campaigns, eg housing, food, saving a community space, anti-fracking and have little time 
to devote to another campaign. This is understandable because it is the practical, 
concrete struggles that are fundamental to building a movement. The only hope is getting 
many more people to get involved in campaigns so that we have the resources to do all the 
things we need to do. But how to do this? A question for us all to think about.
https://www.landjustice.uk
Universal Credit
The speaker presented the serious problems caused by the introduction of universal credit 
and suggested that it could potentially be the next poll tax. However, currently there is 
a lack of a big campaign, apart from notably exceptions such as the Disabled People's 
Against Cuts https://dpac.uk.net/. We discussed why this was the case. One person 
suggested that this issue does not affect enough people, unlike the poll tax. Also, 
universal credit affects the most vulnerable who may not be in a position to organise a 
campaign. For this we are reliant on solidarity networks who have the resources to bring a 
range of people together. But even these groups, such as the Haringey Solidarity Group 
(https://en-gb.facebook.com/haringey.solidaritygroup/) have problems getting enough people 
involved to be as effective as they would like.
Conclusion
All these struggles are very important, both in terms of supporting people in the here and 
now and for building a revolutionary working class movement.
There are many challenges to being effective. We need to be honest about these and work 
together to learn from our experiences and devise more effective strategies.
Many more people need to get involved in these practical struggles and in making links 
between them
NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION AGAINST UNIVERSAL CREDIT ON APRIL 18th
Organised by DPAC.
London action. Meet 11am outside visitors' entrance to House of Commons. Local actions as 
well includin

https://londonacg.blogspot.co.il/2018/03/london-in-struggle-report-back.html

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Message: 5





"They remove the sinners from the earth and the lawless, that there is none" (David, Psalm 
103) ---- In the wake of nationalist rallies on the Macedonian and amid patriotic cries 
for both military detained in Turkey, it became known, and the fact of the acquittal of 
christianotalimpan Ambrose from the Greek 'justice'. This adopted brother had published a 
statement full of Christian love on the occasion of stirring the question of the 
cohabitation agreement between homosexual couples and having clarified that "We have no 
right to judge people! Judge of all of us is God "(!), In which he did not even call his 
flock - and here the word" flock "bears a completely literal meaning - in mass pogroms 
towards the people of lgbtqia + community. He is the one who had previously stated that if 
allowed by "law" he would buy a gun and would kill lgbtqia + people,

We would be disappointed if we did not admit that we are living in a society of which much 
is reactionary, deeply embedded in patriarchy, sexism and misogyny, homophobia and 
transphobia. Quite often fear does not turn into hatred for anything else in expression, 
language, culture. Even the satire against religion or church can bring you to the 
"righteousness" (it is difficult to forget the "Holy Paschio"), at the same time that the 
artistic expression is censored to a degree of vandalism and ... exorcism by funny-but 
all-dangerous Orthodox obscurantists. So when many people, when a declared fascist 
Christian pope incites racist crimes, is just another day when nothing remarkable happens.

In Greek reality - and of course not only - lgbtqia + people face a staggering sexist 
attitudes and practices in all areas of their personal and social life. From home, they 
have to give a fight to openly express their sexual direction, to work, they just have to 
conceal it, on the road, where the slacknesses fall down. Stable reproduction of 
homophobic / transfobic / amphiphobic substances etc standards leads to stereotypes so 
deeply rooted, which are often not perceived as such by the body of the sexist perception 
itself. On a daily basis, homosexuals, bisexuals, queers, asexuals, intersexuals, 
transgender people become the object of harassment, violence, exclusion, mockery and even 
attacks.

In the context of a capitalist society, Patriarchy, both in the form of oppression of 
women and heterogeneity (the ideological notion of the normal, hence compulsory, 
heterosexuality and the consequent, "abnormal" and " homosexuality) is aimed at 
disciplining and normalizing sexual / erotic expression and desire to set up, shield and 
perpetuate the model of family productive unit.

In a state where the criminal system is increasingly tightened to strike the world of 
struggle and resistance, the motivation to motivate killing racist hatred, in this case to 
lgbtqia + people, falls softly. The same is most likely to happen with the appeal, which, 
as disclosed yesterday, has been filed against the innocent decision. No judge, no 
prosecutor, no gear in the dirty system of "justice" will turn against another basic 
pillar of power, against the church.

This, of course, does not surprise us, because we have no illusions about bourgeois 
"justice" because we know very well that it is class and well-organized to support in any 
way the side of our class enemies. The world of the struggle, without illusions and 
assignments, must focus on how it will give its own answer. And the answer of lgbtqia + 
community or even some people who are part of, but those of us who struggle with them for 
the entire human emancipation and sexual and erotic freedom around the world, can not be 
other than the self-organized militant self-defense, the solidarity and dynamic resistance 
to all who threaten or threaten it.

Against religious fundamentalism and racist hatred that engenders against sexism and 
patriarchy against conventions and normality.
The answer must come from the competitive movement, from social resistance, from 
individuals directly affected by racism and from all forms of racism, and from all those 
who stand in them with solidarity and companionship.

FOR OVERALL MANAGEMENT OF BODIES AND OUR SEXUAL QUALITY

FOR SOCIAL RESPONSE

FOR A SUCCESSFUL COMMUNITY WITHOUT LIFE DISTINCTIONS AND RELIGION

FOR ANARCHY AND COMMUNICATION

Eleftherial Initiative of Thessaloniki - member of the Anarchist Federation
lib_thess@hotmail.com
libertasalonica.wordpress.com

https://libertasalonica.wordpress.com/2018/03/30

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