Anarchic update news all over the world - 1.06.2018

Today's Topics:

   
1.  Greece, Libertarian Initiative of Thessaloniki: Progress
      against the "Social Alliance" Tuesday 29/5, 19:00, Kamara (gr)
      [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
2.  France, Alternative Libertaire AL #283 - Read: Leschi and
      Morder, "When High School Students Speak Out" (fr, it, pt)
      [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
3.  France, Alternative Libertaire AL - Honduras: Radio Macompo,
      a community and feminist experience (fr, it, pt) [machine
      translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
4.  black rose fed: SENZALA OR QUILOMBO: REFLECTIONS ON 
     APOC AND
     THE FATE OF BLACK ANARCHISM (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
5.  London Anarchist Federation: Anarchist reading group #2
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)


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Message: 1






On 30/5, the "Social Alliance", ie the cooperation of the GSEE and ADEDY regime-employers 
confederations with a series of employers' professional associations (GSBEE, ESEE, TEE, 
Economic Chamber, Plenary of the Bar Associations, Panhellenic Medical Association, 
Panhellenic Pharmaceutical Association, Supreme General Confederation of Pensioners) call 
for a "National Day of Action" in the form of a nationwide "strike" and central 
demonstrations. GSEE and ADEDY validate in their clearest way their role as defenders of 
the state and capital and promoters of the peace order. ---- We are calling, bosses and 
workers, exploiters and exploiters, to eat the tale of national unity and to protest 
alongside those who live by our own labor, parasitic on them from below. In order not to 
fight and bless our bosses, be they big or small, and the consensual, bureaucratic, 
bureaucratic union that engages peace with our class enemies, it is imperative to organize 
an intransigent, militant trade unionist base. Put our labor interests ahead and take our 
lives in our hands without hierarchies, mediations and paternalisms.

NO PEACE WITH BENEFITS AND CIRCUITS

NATIONAL MODULE INDICATES THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE PROJECTS TO CAPITALISTIC EXPLOITATION

PROTECTION AGAINST "SOCIAL ADMINISTRATION":

THURSDAY 29 MAY, 19:00, KAMARA

Eleftherial Initiative of Thessaloniki - member of the Anarchist Federation

lib_thess@hotmail.com

http://www.libertasalonica.wordpress.com

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Message: 2






Robi Morder and Didier Leschi tell the story of the High School Action Committees (CAL). 
The years 68 evoked here thus cover essentially the 1967-1976 decade. ---- The authors 
take care to indicate where they are speaking: both of them, a few years apart, have 
actively participated in these adventures, as activists of Trotskyist organizations, 
mainly of the LCR, in meaning of its various tendencies, splits and emanations. In the 
foreword is pointed " the near absence " in the book of other currents including 
libertarians and anarchists, stating that it " does not mean they were nonexistent, far 
from it ."That's right, and we can only stay hungry from this point of view. But others 
will be able to do useful work by also telling their CAL ... From sources as incontestable 
as relevant, this book is a sum on this piece of history of the movement high school 
student, whose climax is in 1973 during the fight against the law Debré. During these ten 
years, demonstrations, occupations of premises, coordination of establishments on strike, 
self-management experiments, punctuate the school years, against a backdrop of intense 
political activity. The social, political or cultural context is recalled. This is 
essential to understand the dynamics that engage over time. Some testimonies complete the 
comments of the authors. At the heart of this decade, there is a very current debate: the 
relationship between building the autonomy of a mass movement and the political forces 
that support it. Other food for thought for today: the attitude of the trade union 
movement (CGT and CFDT at the time), the links with the high school movement but also the 
often very harsh confrontations, the brief experience of the permanent Coordination of the 
colleges of technical education (CP-CET) directly driven by the CGT ... A useful book for 
young people today, tomorrow ... and yesterday.

Christian (AL Southeast Suburbs)

Didier Leschi and Robi Morder, When high school students spoke, the years 68, Syllepse, 
2018, 300 p, 15 euros.

http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Lire-Leschi-et-Morder-Quand-les-lyceens-prenaient-la-parole

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Message: 3






In this state of Central America, one of the most violent on the planet, women are 
organizing to defeat machismo and patriarchy. Presentation of a radio made by women for 
their emancipation. ---- Honduras, a small Central American country of 8.7 million people, 
90% of which is a mixed race and 9% of Amerindians, has been marked by political violence 
since the birth of the sovereign state in 1838. succession of coups supported by the 
United States, marks the country XX th century until today: with the coup of 2009 against 
the democratic president Manuel Zelaya, the Constitution flouted by the current president 
Juan Orlando Hernandez, who represented himself in the elections of 2017 without having 
the right, and the suspicion of electoral fraud that tainted the elections of November 26, 
2017. Private militias protect the interests of the sectors of activity (mining, 
deforestation) in relation to the leaders of the army, and commit murders of activist. es. 
Honduras has the highest rate of political killings in the world, relative to its 
population. Environmentalists and trade unionists are particularly targeted, and impunity 
for social and political crimes is almost total.

Violence is also social with the maintenance of the population, especially the rural 
population, in a chronic underdevelopment, generating well-known illiteracy, delinquency, 
mafia, high infant mortality.

Political and social violence in Honduras
In this climate, the first victims of violence are women. Abortion is prohibited and 
punishable by imprisonment. The morning after pill is strictly forbidden. Violence against 
women every day is extreme: it is estimated that a woman dies every 16 hours. Femicide is 
the second leading cause of death: 95% of reported violence is not punished  [1].

Honduran women are at the heart of struggles against deforestation and the privatization 
of health and education. They fight for political and social changes, for a transformation 
of society, a guarantee of a better future for their children. They have everything to 
gain and nothing to lose, not even their lives that are threatened even in the heart of 
their homes. They are at the same time the pillar of the family and the main object of 
violence  [2].

Even though they struggle in trade unions or movements alongside men, women in Honduras 
also have a very great capacity to collectively assemble, among women, for local actions 
to transform their daily lives. Thus in La Unión, in Olancho, after Hurricane Mitch in 
1998, a group of women formed to create, manage and animate an associative radio.

The origins of Radio Macompo
The initiative goes to a small French association, the Latin American North-Cotentin 
Committee, some of whose members have stayed in Honduras for humanitarian health 
activities and kept in touch, particularly in Olancho. Olancho is a mountainous region, 
located in the north of the country, which lacks infrastructure. The inhabitants of 
Olancho have the reputation of being rebels to the central government (the Olancho 
demanded its independence in 1877), which has always "   punished   " them by leaving them 
in a social and economic underdevelopment (the first school dates from 1930 ).

Not having the means to make the emergency, the French association decided to mount a 
long-term project. She sent one of its members to the site to identify the needs of the 
population, that is, the needs of women. The contact was made through the Catholic nuns 
who live there and carry out health activities with mothers and children. They have set up 
a pharmacy of herbal products that they grow and process, a source of income for the 
village women who are employed there.

The women interviewed responded overwhelmingly that the biggest problem was isolation. 
They wanted to have a tool at their disposal to contact each other from village to 
village, to teach literacy, education, health and agriculture training, to spread their 
culture. . They asked for a radio.

Some women in La Uniòn began to meet and formed an association which they named Macompo, 
that is to say Mujeres Activas para comunicación de los pueblos de Olancho. The group 
consisted of teachers who were very motivated by the prospect of having an educational 
tool allowing them to involve both students and parents, a bank employee who volunteered 
to be trained on the radio, and other women around this core.

In each village, a meeting was organized by a woman at her home. The women came from the 
countryside to participate, having walked several kilometers, a child on the back. All 
showed the desire to have a radio for them. Their energy was impressive, at the height of 
their destitution. It was necessary to find a local, acquire the equipment, train 
personnel, buy a frequency and obtain the license to emit. The bishopric proposed to 
install the antenna on a hill belonging to it, without counterpart. It remained to buy a 
frequency whose price, given the corruption, can go double, and obtain a license to issue 
while the state is reluctant to promote totally free radios, that is to say to say 
non-evangelical or commercial.

Feminist and self-managed radio
In 2002, a commercial radio station in La Uniòn ceased broadcasting for economic reasons. 
The French association financed the purchase of the frequency and equipment already in 
place. Radio Macompo began broadcasting on February 14, 2004. Since then it has been 
broadcasting from 5 am to 9 pm.

The radio is objective, service, non-profit. She makes sure to stay independent. It is the 
Women's Radio, for women, led by women with the objective of enabling access to education 
for all through educational programs  ; relay local and national information  ; to inform 
the inhabitants of Olancho about the health of children and women, including an 
information program on birth control and sexually transmitted diseases, education, 
violence, environment, human rights, and to allow access to national and international 
culture.

The radio transmits in seven very isolated villages of the north of Olancho, about 20 km2. 
A survey conducted in 2007 shows that of the 50,000 inhabitants of the seven villages 
concerned, between 25 and 30,000 listen to Radio Macompo.

The original plan provided for the French association to withdraw completely after three 
years. The salary of the manager was taken care of until the end of 2006. To finance the 
salary and to be totally free from the French association, Macompo set up a coffee 
production and marketing cooperative. Radio Macompo is now part of a community radio 
network. Community radio plays a very important role in the education of women in a 
country where the fertility rate is very high, as well as in teenage pregnancies, and even 
very young girls who are just pubescent.

Of course, the risks are great and require caution. Some radios were closed at the time of 
the coup and during the long years of dictatorship (1972-1983). The women of Radio Macompo 
know how to be cautious and the radio has never, until now, stopped broadcasting for 
fourteen years. But Radio Macompo must also resist the pressure of the evangelicals and 
the Catholic Church who are trying to have slots to proselytize. Religious programs exist 
nevertheless at the request of the inhabitants, without privileging a religion in particular.

Like many others in Honduras, Macompo's women work quietly, but silence is perhaps their 
first and only protection. Beyond the resistance, Honduran women undermine the foundations 
of a patriarchal, macho and violent society. It will no doubt be necessary, when political 
conditions permit, for their actions to become visible, to be recognized, and to be part 
of a political project of social development.

Christine Gillard (AL friend)

Listen to Radio Macompo on Linkedin.com

[1] Report on violence against women in Honduras, July 26, 2007, to be found on Un.org.

[2] "   Honduras a Calvary for Women   ", Le Monde, November 23, 2014.

http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Honduras-Radio-Macompo-une-experience-communautaire-et-feministe

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Message: 4






"Sezala or Quilombo" was in it's time a scathing indictment against certain quarters of 
criticism inside the wider US anarchist movement around the formation of Anarchist People 
of Color (APOC). First began as a website and list serve that linked various 
self-identified anarchists of color, the effort blossomed into a 2003 conference in 
Detroit and was followed up by regional and national conferences and attempts to form 
local group in some parts of the country. At the time of the writing of this piece in 2005 
Pedro Ribeiro was a member of the Furious Five Revolutionary Collective in San Jose, CA 
which later merged into the California based Amanecer. This piece was published as part of 
the Black Anarchism reader. ---- By Pedro Ribeiro
In years past, when the slavery of the children of Africa was carried out by chain and 
whip instead of uniforms and patrol cars, black people in Brazil had only two places where 
they could be - in the Senzala or the Quilombo. The Senzala was a small hut placed outside 
the master's house, a shack in which the slaves would stay from after sunset to before 
sunrise, chained to the walls and behind locked doors. The Senzala was their home; there 
they raised their children and grew old. In secret, they practiced their language, 
religion and culture away from white eyes. The window of the senzala would always face the 
main quad of the plantation where a single post could be seen emerging from the earth's 
belly. The Pelourinho - the mast in which rebellious slaves were tortured into submission 
or death, whichever came first. This was the Senzala.

But, every once in a while, a laborious and dedicated group of slaves would defect from 
the generosity of the slave master's whips and chains and senzalas, and go into the 
jungle. They would run, day after night after day after night, into the mata, deeper into 
the forest; away from the treacherous Capitão do mato, the black or mulatos overseers 
responsible for capturing escaped slaves. In the jungle, they looked for hope. In the 
jungle, they looked for freedom. In the jungle, away from the white man, they looked for 
the Quilombo.

Quilombos were city-states created in the heart of the mata by escaped slaves. The most 
famous - the largest and the one whose name was whispered in secret in the dark by those 
in search of freedom - that was Palmares. Palmares had a estimated population of twenty to 
thirty thousand, structured in eleven different villages. In Palmares, as in other 
Quilombos escaped slaves held the majority. Natives and poor whites were also accepted 
into the Quilombo, with and shared the same rights and duties as anyone else. Decisions 
were made by village assemblies, in which every adult, man or woman, of every race, could 
(and most would) participate.

No, Palmares was no utopia. It was no communist society in which the decisions where as 
horizontal as possible and in which all were seen as equal. Palmares had chiefs, one for 
each village. The chief of the capital, Macacos, was the king of Palmares. But this is 
neither here nor now. The now is the quilombo as opposed to the senzala.

Palmares died in flames. It fought until the last person was dead. It had been fighting 
for its sovereignty and independence for over one hundred years. It gave its blood to 
defend what it cherished most - its freedom and its self-determination.

Whatever drove the Palmarinos to fight is what I am interested in talking about. A friend 
of mine said something that struck a chord in me. He said: "People are always talking 
about dying for this or that. You gotta die for the cause if you are militant enough, if 
you are really bad ass you should die for your beliefs. But nobody asks, what are you 
living for? Not dying, but living - what is your life for?"

The Palmarinos were living for something. They were living for their freedom and their 
collective autonomy. They were living for their right of self-determination, to do away 
with the chains that held them slaves in the past and to decide by themselves the path of 
their life. If they died fighting for that, they died for what they were living for. They 
died the death of free people.

We now call ourselves Anarchists. We say we want the end of all chains and the 
extermination of all oppression. Yet, in the Anarchist "movement", black folk and other 
folks of color are still in the senzala. We are still having to disguise ourselves, call 
whitey "Massa" and chain ourselves to the wall. No, don't talk about racism unless is in 
that very abstract sense of 
"we-are-all-equal-let's-sing-kumbayas-and-pretend-the-color-of-our-skin-does-not-matter" 
racism. While there might be nobody yelling "die, nigger, die!*", you can hear a very 
clear "shut the fuck up, nigger, just shut the fuck up."

We pretend that racism is just a minor problem, something that, like the Leninist State, 
will wither away if we will it to. The intrinsic racist characteristics that infect 
Anarchism, specially North-American Anarchism, cannot be questioned without one being seen 
as some kind of authoritarian nationalist, or even worse, a Maoist. Red-baiting, of all 
things!

Like in the real senzala, our resistance to racism needs to be covert. It needs to be 
hidden and made like it is something else. It cannot be what it needs to be, it cannot do 
what needs to be done, or the senzala would break apart and the master's house would be 
set aflame. No. Like capoeira, our fight against white supremacy inside North American 
anarchism needs to disguise itself as a dance in order to become a martial art.

And you know how the rap goes: if we talk about empowerment we are power hungry. If we 
assert our self-determination, we are authoritarian nationalists. When we expose how white 
Anarchism is, elitist white Anarchists generally come with excuses like "Hey, I saw a 
black anarchist once!" or the classic, "well, we need to outreach to communities of color."

Let me tell you something, the reason why the masses are not flooding to your Anarchism is 
exactly that one - it is your Anarchism. It is a white, petty-bourgeois Anarchism that 
cannot relate to the people. As a Black person, I am not interested in your Anarchism. I 
am not interested in individualistic, self-serving, selfish liberation for you and your 
white friends. What I care about is the liberation of my people. The collective liberation 
of the children of the African Diaspora, those that have been beaten down and treated 
worse than dogs all across the world.

So, no, we are not interested in your anarchism. We need to create our own. Understand 
this, if the whites in Palmares were allies and died with the blacks and the natives it is 
not because they invited the blacks and the natives into their structure, into their 
society and said unto them: "We are all equal." It was because the blacks and the natives 
created their own structure - their own society - in which power relations were different 
so that whites could not longer by the sheer force of their privilege impose their view of 
how the society should be run. To try and integrate people of color in your society or 
your movement, like there would be no culture clash and no confrontation - it is naive, 
senseless and can lead nowhere but into deception.

In the senzala of contemporary Anarchist theory and practice, the only place for Blacks 
and other folks of color is the chain in the wall or the Pelourinho. To question the 
structure of this "movement", why is it really composed mainly of white suburban boys, is 
a invitation to the Pelourinho - or to the Quilombo.

Some escaped slaves decided to create their own Quilombo in the forest of North America, 
and they called it APOC (Anarchist People Of Color). APOC was a necessary step on the 
beginning of the self-determination of people of color inside the movement. This 
self-determination we seek is to analyze the problems of race inside and outside the 
movement in our own perspective. To create our own analysis of authority and what it means 
for us to be Anarchists. What does it mean for those that have always felt odd at an 
Anarchist event while looking around and thinking are they made the wrong turn somewhere 
and ended up in a white only area of segregated Mississippi.

When an anarchist tells me about how the cops are fascist pigs, I stop for a second and 
think. A lot of times I'll of some experience in a protest against this or that corporate 
meeting or something, in which the cops tear gassed the crowd and whoop some ass and I 
think, man, you got it easy. I remember in my neighborhood in Brazil, where if you got 
only an ass-whooping, you would consider yourself lucky. I remember the day they shot my 
uncle dead. I remember this one cop that used to follow me around and scare the life out 
of me because I thought he was going to cap me and there no way in hell I was approaching 
no authorities to complain because then I would surely wind up dead. I remember the police 
invading my grandma's house, guns in hand, while my cousin was still a baby and was 
sleeping in my aunt's bed. Even here, in my neighborhood in East Palo Alto, you can always 
hear the cops fussing around at night and you know they are not looking for no black-bloc 
kid from some protest or another. So tell me again how the cops are fascists...

The fact is, we know oppression. We live it, we experience it. In one form or another, one 
extreme or another. We do not conceptualize it. We do not sit down and intellectualize 
about pain because our people have been hunted down and shot, and burned and beaten and we 
lost the need to understand pain philosophically when we learned it physically.

So why are the people not filling the ranks of the Anarchist movement? What it is that 
prevents those people of color that have been feeling the brunt of police brutality, and 
have been living off the scraps of what capitalism leaves behind, why have they not joined 
the movement?

The answer is simple: because is not their movement. It can never be their movement while 
it is being created by and for white middle-class kids with a Jesus complex who think they 
can save the world (or the ones with Buddha complex who think they can get wet by talking 
about water). You cannot hustle the movement and you cannot hustle the people. Revolution 
is not a game in which you can pretend to listen to the voice of the people of color only 
when is convenient and shut them off when they start questioning your privilege.

APOC, as any revolutionary step, spurned an immediate reaction, a counter-revolutionary 
step. The amount of voices in the Anarchist "movement" that have been raised to criticize, 
put down or, in any other form, discredit APOC (most, if not all of them, white, by the 
way) have been, if small, consistent and bold. To incur and cite these criticisms is 
irrelevant to today's discussion. I am not here to defend APOC. I am here to talk about 
why I don't need to do it.

APOC is our Quilombo. Our keep, our fortress, where we can meet as people from oppressed 
background and not only share our experiences and how they are relevant to each other, but 
also how they are relevant in the larger scheme of things. APOC is more than a safe zone 
for people to feel good about not being in a room without white folk, but is a conscious 
project of self-determination for people of color. It is a step closer to our freedom as a 
people and the materialization of the idea that community comes from something in common, 
something we can share.

No, APOC is no utopia. It is not even close. But that is neither here nor now. We may 
stumble, we may fall, we may even break our heads wide open. But at least we are walking 
on our own two feet.

It is pointless for me to try and convince white Anarchists of the need for APOC because 
white anarchists have not experienced what we a people of color have experienced. It is 
like trying to convince my boss of the need for Socialism - a more often than not 
fruitless endeavor.

And while there are white Anarchists out there who remember that only the oppressed can 
liberate themselves and the end of white supremacy cannot be brought about by white people 
- there are those that, in their arrogance and short sightedness, will not yield and 
cannot tolerate the thought that maybe there is something that Anarchist people of color 
need to discuss that does not include white people.

And if, for a moment, I thought that APOC needed to be approved by the white anarchist 
scene that would be the moment in which APOC would lose its appeal to me. Because is not 
about being accepted, being cherished, being "on the good side" with the white Anarchists 
- that is the Senzala. It is about self-determination and it is about resistance. It is 
about creating our own culture, our own analysis and dictating our own future. APOC for me 
is not about seeking a way to make white people love us, or hate us.

I have to tell you a secret about APOC: it is not about white people at all. It is not, 
and it should not be ever. I am tired of talking about white people, thinking of white 
people, analyzing white people and worrying about white people. I want to know what I have 
in common with my Korean sister and my Guatemalan brother. I want to know about the great 
struggles for liberation in Uganda and how the Filipino resisted imperialism. What can we 
learn from each other as people of color? What does my bairro in Rio de Janeiro has in 
common with a Latino barrio in East Side San Jose?

This is something I wrote for my sisters and brothers at APOC. We need to understand 
ourselves in order to understand the world around us and be able to fight and destroy the 
bourgeois plague which eating away our homes, our lives and our cultures.

As a black person, my anarchism is Black Anarchism. As a member of the exploited class, my 
anarchism is Class-Struggle Anarchism. As a person who wishes for a better future, my 
anarchism is Anarchist-Communism.

Vamos a ela, porque temos muito, muito para construir.
Não tá morto que peleia!
Viva a Anarquia!

http://blackrosefed.org/senzala-or-quilombo-black-anarchism/

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Message: 5






After discussions at the last reading group moved into ideas around education, what is it 
for and what is a ‘good' education, this reading group looks at some texts on anarchist 
pedagogies. We've selected a few which cover both theory and practical examples. ---- Come 
and join us for a discussion of these texts on the 3rd Tuesday (19th June) at 7pm at 
Freedom Bookshop. The texts themselves are fairly short (8 pages for one- cheers, Colin!) 
so shouldn't be too onerous and all available online as pdfs. ---- Colin Ward, Schools no 
longer (In Anarchy in Action, p.79 
https://libcom.org/files/Ward_-_Anarchy_in_Action_3.pdf) ---- Judith Suissa, Anarchism 
goes to school (Escuela Moderna and the Ferrer School) p75-88 (in Anarchism and Education: 
A philosophical perspective http://rebels-library.org/files/anarchismandeducation.pdf)

Jeffery Shantz, Learning to Win: Anarchist Infrastructures of Resistance (in Anarchist 
Pedagogies http://rebels-library.org/files/anarchistpedagogies.pdf)

Justin Mueller, Anarchism, the State, and the Role of Education (in Anarchist Pedagogies 
http://rebels-library.org/files/anarchistpedagogies.pdf)

https://aflondon.wordpress.com/2018/05/29/anarchist-reading-group-2/

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