Anarchic update news all over the world - Part 1 - 10.06.2018

Today's Topics:

   
1.  France, Alternative Libertaire AL #284 - Politics: The state
      club ... what counterattack? (fr, it, pt) [machine translation]
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
2.  US, blackrosefed RADICAL QUEERS AND CLASS STRUGGLE: A MATCH
      TO BE MADE (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
3.  anarkismo.net - Colombian "Peace": Assassination attempt on
      peasant & community leader by José Antonio (ca) [machine
      translation] Gutiérrez D . (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
4.  Greece, Libertarian Initiative of Thessaloniki: Winning the
      hunger strike by D. Koufontina | Anarchist Federation (gr)
      [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
5.  anarchist group "Dysenium Horse" APO: [Patra]New
      concentration against electronic auctions (gr) [machine
      translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)


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Message: 1






While the social movement of spring 2018 has not managed to spread, riotous outbreaks 
struggle to hide the weakness of the real balance of power. It is all the easier for the 
state to suppress the most contentious homes. How to react ? ---- In 2017, the labor law 
XXL passed quite easily, as well as the increase of the CSG, embellished with a petty drop 
in the personalized housing assistance, and the maxi-gift for the big bourgeoisie that is 
the suppression wealth tax. Things were slightly spoiled for the ruling class when two 
historically combative sectors, the SNCF and the faculties, returned massively to dance. 
At the same time, the government tried to expel the Zad of Notre-Dame-des-Landes with a 
delusional police deployment, and the management of Air France is put in difficulty by an 
inter-union welded as ever.

Faced with this wave of protest, the counter-attack of the government is based on a mix of 
repression (state and parastatal) and misinformation.

Police suit and fachos commandos
The first wave of repression hit faculties with, in March and early April, attacks from 
the far right and assimilated militias, the most emblematic of which took place at the law 
school of Montpellier on March 22.

The next step was police repression, with a kickoff on April 9 on the Zad of 
Notre-Dame-des-Landes. Nearly 2,500 mobile gendarmes bombarded a few hundred zadists with 
an absurd number of grenades.

Then it was the repression of the demonstrations - certainly less than during the Labor 
law - and the attack of the places of fight and strike. Occupied universities are numerous 
to have undergone police interventions: Tolbiac, Toulouse, Montpellier, Grenoble, Lyon, 
Strasbourg, Marseille, Nanterre, the EHESS in Paris, etc. CRS were also sent against the 
railway workers or postmen on strike.

" Growers " and other " privileged "
This extensive handling of fascist groups and law-enforcement agencies, which often also 
have fascistic sympathies, [1]is accompanied by a propagandist offensive against the 
strikers. Everything happens there: the " growers " who would be " privileged ", " 
corporatist ", who by their egoism ruin the quality of life of " those who want to work or 
study ", all supported by more surveys or less bogus to justify these antigrespiste clichés.

Another recurring element: the stigmatization of the ultra-left and " black blocks ". The 
demonization of a part of the social movement presented as ultraviolet, must create a 
scapegoat. The " casse ", put on show by the rioters to denounce the symbols of 
capitalism, is also put on the stage by the media, but for a diametrically opposite 
purpose: to eclipse the violence of capitalist society ; to make the protesters and 
demonstrators lambda invisible ; appoint a scapegoat who deserves repression.

Replicating this mix of batons and propaganda is necessary, and comes as much from 
strategic directions as concrete actions on the ground.

First, we must win the battle of opinion: it is extremely important to address all the 
workers who are not directly concerned by a sector of struggle: to dismantle the lies 
about " privileges " strikers or manipulations of violence (for example the so-called 
attack on Necker Hospital by the head procession on June 14, 2016). Secondly, it is 
necessary to highlight the police violence modestly passed over in the media, and to show 
it for what it is: the action of brutes paid to smash those who dare raise their voices 
against a deeply unjust social order . Filming these abuses with a phone and posting his 
video on social networks is a first deterrent.

Thirdly, it is necessary to avoid a chasm of contempt between, on the one hand, " the 
citizenry traine-savate " and on the other " the depoliticized breakers ." It is normal 
for everyone in a movement not to be in trouble and riotous practices: tactics can 
diverge, as well as appreciation of the relevance of an action. It is also normal and 
healthy to discuss these tactical differences between revolutionaries. On the one hand, 
the most radical should think about the consequences that clashes can have on those who do 
not participate, and invent a " black block that blocks something other than the demo ", 
as claimed by some after 1 st Parisian May [2].

On the other hand, we must avoid the trap of dissociation, which often responds to a media 
injunction. That is to say, it is necessary to avoid the convictions that reduce the " 
breakers " to depoliticized people and out of the movement, taking a citizen posture of " 
legitimate peaceful protest ", like the insubordinate France or PCF. This can only 
aggravate the isolation and repression of black K-ways, while those who dissociate 
publicly disarm in advance by renouncing all radical action.

Defending social movements in their diversity
Fourth, there is what is called active defense, or collective defense. This one proposes 
to leave by the top of the sempiternelle opposition " black bloc " vs " pacifist citizen " 
". Considering that social movements are diverse, the idea is to try to defend them as a 
whole. This involves securing and creating a space of cohesion within the demonstrations 
and collective movements that can be directly repressed, with a set of defense practices 
aimed at minimizing the impact of police repression. This can include structuring 
processions that are difficult for the police to penetrate (reinforced banners, chains) 
and limiting the impact of attacks: free distribution of masks, physiological saline and 
other first aid products, etc.

Creating such spaces that are not intended to be black blocks, but places to feel safe in 
manifestation, raises another relationship to violence, to protect against state violence. 
Finally, it is necessary to think this defense in legal terms, to avoid that the 
repression is individualized, and to give a political and collective character to the 
fight against the judicial repression.

Matt (AL Montpellier)

[1] More than 50 % of police and military voted FN in 2017 (Le Monde, May 5, 2017), and 
the DGSI has identified at least fifty activists of the " far right violent " within the 
security services (Mediapart, April 9, 2018).

[2] " Appeal to the convinced: an anti-authoritarian criticism of the black bloc ", May 4, 
2018, Paris- fights.info

http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Politique-L-Etat-matraque-quelle-contre-attaque

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Message: 2






The following article appears as a chapter in the 2012 anthology Queering Anarchism: 
Addressing and Undressing Power and Desire edited by C.B. Daring, J. Rogue, Deric Shannon, 
and Abbey Volcano and takes up themes of radical queer politics and anti-capitalism.  We 
are reminded of the quote by French libertarian communist figure Daniel Guérin 
(1904-1988): "If socialism is not to be a caricature of itself, we, as homosexuals, have a 
role to play in the class struggle." ---- By Gayge Operaista ---- While radical queers 
identifying with anarchism, anti-authoritarianism, and/or anticapitalism seem to be on the 
upswing, there exists a profound misunderstanding of class struggle within radical queer 
circles and a lack of class analysis that hurts both specifically queer analyses and 
anticapitalism as a whole. Let's face it, the task is not to "queer" anarchism, which has 
become a signifier for every countercultural, edgy activist project out there, to the 
point where it now has as little shared meaning among radicals as queer does in the 
radical milieu. The task is for radical queers to become class struggle militants. We need 
to be constantly conscious of moving toward a holistic queer praxis, one that examines the 
conditions of the lives of all queers, and also that locates those lives in the larger 
context of the struggles of all workers and all the oppressed. This is not only a position 
of solidarity and a refusal to leave other queers behind, but it is also the realization 
that queer liberation is inextricably tied with the self-emancipation of the working class.

Queers, like other oppressed groups, are hit particularly hard by capitalism, and this is 
especially true of the queers most often erased, ignored, or left behind by queer and 
feminist movements: queers of color, trans and gender-nonconforming people, queers with 
disabilities; and queer sex workers are some examples. Many queer anarchists and other 
anticapitalists come from anti-oppression backgrounds, and, while analysis in 
anti-oppression circles continues to improve and greater understandings and explications 
of intersectionality continue to be the case in those circles, a good, critical 
anti-oppression analysis is not enough. We need to be both anticapitalists and to 
understand how capitalism functions to truly understand the conditions of the lives of the 
working class, from those struggling against multiple systems of oppression to the "middle 
class" existing in a position of (far too often temporary) comfort in the suburbs. Through 
this understanding of class struggle, we can contribute to mass movements for collective 
liberation.

Without this understanding of class struggle, our critique of the state can only be both 
flawed and limited; we must have an understanding of class struggle to see the state as an 
instrument of the domination of one class over all other classes and our anti-state 
project as the need to destroy the bourgeois state as inseparable from the project of 
abolishing all classes. It is a social and not an antisocial project. To paraphrase 
Kropotkin, we want no rulers, not no rules, and failing to acknowledge class struggle 
leads to a view of the state as an independent institution, not as an instrument of class 
rule. Also this can lead to a glorification of antisocial acts as some sort of resistance 
to the state, when in reality they are juvenile, futile, and reactionary. Unlike 
Leninists, we neither want to seize the state nor even to replace it with a "proletarian" 
state. We know that if classes remain after the revolution, and there is the need for a 
hegemonic governing body separate from the people to maintain social relations, then the 
revolution has failed.

However, many queers come to anticapitalist movements retaining liberal ideas about class 
and how capitalism functions, treating class as just another way someone can be oppressed 
or privileged, rather than a relationship to the means of production that is continually 
re-created. Applying an antioppression analysis to class becomes problematic in many ways. 
It causes us to continue to use the definitions of class that the bourgeoisie (capitalist 
class) use for us, that serves to split the working class and convince members of it to 
act against their own class interests. It prevents us from articulating how and why some 
queers are hit so hard by capitalism, and results in us far too often ignoring the 
struggles of trans people, for instance, and rephrasing them in terms of people being 
voluntary "drop outs," as if the state of being "middle class" was an immutable, inherited 
thing rather than a term created to get portions of the working class to side with capital 
against other workers.

The solution to these issues, of course, is educating ourselves about class struggle, and 
capitalism, and to see the movement for queer liberation as both indispensably a part of 
the struggle of the working class and indispensable to that struggle.

On "Classism"
A standard practice from anti-oppression circles is writing a list of oppressions that we 
oppose, and oftentimes "classism" is included in that list. Leaving aside the fact that 
the lists are, by necessity, incomplete, capitalism is a structure of a different sort 
from white supremacy or heteropatriarchy, for instance. We do not seek to cease to engage 
in practices we currently call queer in undoing heteropatriarchy; however, the goal of 
anticapitalist struggle must be the negation of first the capitalist class (through 
seizing the means of production), and the subsequent negation of the working class, as the 
exploitation of labor ends with control over both one's labor and the necessities of life, 
the abolition of property, and the socialization of the means of production. To struggle 
for any less than this is to struggle only against class elitism, to merely want the rich 
to treat us better, for the lives of the poor to not be so hard. This is not the sum of 
our desires. We want a world without rich and poor, and it's time our analysis, our 
organizing, and our actions reflected that!

Furthermore, due to the analysis of class carried over from liberal or reformist analyses, 
there is the tendency to use accusations of classism to maintain divisions within the 
working class, to silence, erase, or render the marginalized powerless, and to 
invisibilize a wide variety of the experiences of queer people. And these all draw upon 
flawed analyses of class. The post-World War II restructuring of the working class, 
particularly in the post-industrial world, has lead to ever greater levels of education in 
the working class, and greater employment in the service sector and technical jobs. 
Meanwhile, many stereotypical assembly-line jobs have moved to the developing world or 
been replaced by machines. Not only do sociological definitions of class that are based on 
old stereotypes about education and work performed conceal social relations, they obscure 
the reality of the proletariat in the post-industrial world. Furthermore, presumptions 
about who is a "true prole" and what "true proles" are intellectually capable of both 
insult those who do blue-collar work, and serve to either implant anti-intellectualism 
into mass movements or to maintain intellectual labor as the specialized domain of 
academics. Also, with the increasing privatization of education and the rapidly rising 
costs of both public and private higher education, student debt is becoming an 
increasingly large factor in proletarian struggle, and pretending that a mythical "middle 
class" exists, composed of everyone outside the increasingly scarce assembly-line worker, 
cuts us off from a variety of important terrains of struggle. Too often, our discussions 
of class turn into a competition over whose childhood was harder rather than figuring out 
how we're going to liberate ourselves. And while there are real socioeconomic differences 
between various groups within the working class, we cannot let that obscure our analysis 
of the class as a whole.

To overcome this infighting, flawed analysis, and erasure, we need a truly anticapitalist 
analysis of class. We need to understand capitalism as creating a class system based on 
relationship to the means of production, and understand that an essential component of 
working-class struggle on the way to destroying capitalism is to win day-to-day struggles, 
such as less hours, greater pay, safer and more comfortable work environments, in so much 
as those things reduce the amount of value the capitalist class extracts from us and can 
be won directly, without mediation. Another goal of day-to-day struggle is to create and 
maintain effective self-organization. Winning these intermediate struggles does not take 
workers out of the working class, and can (and must, if we, the working class, are to 
liberate ourselves) serve both to improve the conditions we are struggling from and also 
build our capacity and ability to struggle by encouraging our self-organization as a 
class. It is foolish to buy into the same logic that the capitalist class uses to divide 
us against ourselves.

Another flaw of this sociological/liberal analysis of class as just another oppression is 
that it is the first step in breaking our solidarity with the entire proletariat. When we 
view class as a way that the poor are oppressed and that the so-called middle class and 
the capitalists are privileged (with the capitalists merely more privileged than the 
middle class), we inevitably fall into arguments of who is "working class enough"; did the 
queer who grew up in a single-parent home in poverty cease to be working class when she 
worked her way through school and became a teacher? Is the struggle of a trans person who 
is unable to get steady work under capitalism illegitimate due to the fact that they grew 
up in a two-parent household in the suburbs? Do we write off cis straight white workers 
due to their being "too privileged" to be in the same struggle as us? Do white queers 
continue to fetishize people of color, conflating race with class, without an analysis of 
how capitalism constructed and maintains racism? We cannot resolve these questions within 
queer anarchist circles while retaining an analysis of class drawn from an anti-oppression 
politics grounded in sociology or liberalism.

The most serious flaw, however, by putting class merely on the level of an oppression, is 
failing to have the realization, to paraphrase Marx, that the workers are the ones with 
radical chains; the exploitation of the working class is the entire basis of the system we 
want to destroy, and it is only by identifying, struggling against, and destroying those 
chains that any of us can be liberated. Once we realize that we can begin to understand 
how stratification based on race, gender, and sexuality were built into the working class 
as a means of control and hyperexploitation and as the midwife to capitalism's birth.

Beyond the Limits of Identity Politics
"Queer" arose as a critique of the assumptions that underlie identity politics. These 
assumptions were that oppressed groups were well-defined, had clear borders, that all 
members of the oppressed group have common desires and needs, and that a small portion of 
that group could thus speak for the entirety of the group. "Queer" was purposefully 
reclaimed to be a term of solidarity and struggle, and to include gay, lesbian, 
bi/pansexual people, and trans and other gender-nonconforming people. Initially, there was 
the acknowledgment that these groups had different desires and needs, but formed a 
coalition uniting around oppression based on gender and sexuality. However, queer 
liberation movements remaining rooted in identity politics have led us down the road of 
debating the precise boundaries of queer and arguing over whose concerns are legitimate, 
all the while pretending that we were not participating in identity politics, and thus can 
ignore the very real power differentials that occur within the queer community. To break 
away from the negative aspects of identity politics, we must look at material conditions 
and specific effects on particular subgroups, and struggle from those material conditions.

Furthermore, by defining a common struggle only along the lines of queerness, we are faced 
with the question of whether we want to organize for the same struggles as bourgeois 
queers. While queer anarchist/anti-authoritarian/anticapitalist circles make a big point 
of espousing "anti-assimilationism" and anticapitalism, often the analysis deteriorates 
into "being like the straights is bad" and "capitalism is bad." By generalizing "the 
straights" as a coherent group that hegemonically oppresses "the queers," and that the 
reason we don't want to assimilate is because we don't want to be like them, it becomes 
both too easy for us to ignore struggles that do not directly touch the entire queer 
community and to reduce anti-assimilation into nothing but a way to police the desires and 
identities of other queers.

We need to oppose the institution of state-sanctioned marriage because it strengthens the 
nuclear family as the consumptive and reproductive unit of capitalism, not because many 
straight people get married. Trying to invert the relationship hierarchy to shame people 
who are happy with a long-term relationship and shared household with a partner does not 
bring us a step closer to ending capitalism and ending oppression. It merely is one method 
by which queers police the identities, expressions, and ways of life of people in our 
community. If anti-assimilation is to be of any value, it needs to be founded on the idea 
that we want to destroy the current order and help build a better world, not keep 
ourselves separate from "the straights" because queers are somehow a well-defined group 
that do not find themselves as part of any other groups and can be kept apart from the 
rest of the world.

It is also necessary to keep in mind our class interests; no matter how well bourgeois 
queers play the part of a "radical" queerness, we can find nothing in common with their 
class interests, and are in struggle with them, and not the straight members of the 
working class. If we assume that our commonality lies in our queerness, not only can we be 
forced to ignore the other ways we are oppressed, we also assume that bourgeois queers are 
our allies and straight working-class people are our enemies, when we want only one thing 
from bourgeois queers-to take back that which is rightfully ours, and share it in common 
amongst ourselves according to our needs. This is the same thing we want from bourgeois 
straights and a desire we have in common with more and more straight members of the 
working class every time class recomposition occurs.

Without incorporating an analysis beyond identity, we are unable to go beyond the 
limitations of identity politics. While an understanding of intersectionality helps us to 
understand that some queers face issues that other queers do not, intersectionality is not 
enough, as it does not address the fact that the interests of bourgeois queers are in 
direct contradiction to the interests of the majority of queers, and this conflict can 
only be resolved through furthering class struggle, and ultimately by social revolution. 
We need to be wary of critiquing identity only to create a singular in-group and a 
singular out-group, and having the composition of that in-group have more to do with 
hipness and popularity rather than sexuality or gender. We also need to be wary of a 
politics that has us make alliances with the people in power rather than with members of 
other marginalized and exploited groups.

Struggling Autonomously, or, "Who is Queer, Anyway?"
It is often necessary for oppressed groups to engage in class struggle autonomously-i.e., 
to self-organize against their specific material conditions, fight against them, and bring 
their struggle back to the working class as a whole. While I am about as interested in 
arguing the precise definition of queer as I am about arguing about how many angels can 
have a circle jerk on the head of a pin, it's pretty clear what queer in general is-the 
state of being not-heterosexual, and/or the state of being trans, genderqueer, or 
gender-nonconforming. This, in the main, is the definition that has been used for "queer," 
as a reclaimed term of solidarity, by queer communities in struggle for decades. While 
"queer" is a purposefully imprecise term, we should avoid it becoming either a hip label 
or something that only belongs to those we agree with politically.

Working-class queer communities have often been targeted from both sides, first by 
bourgeois LGBT organizations looking for numbers and legitimacy, and by radical 
organizations that seek to coopt queers and queerness that they feel comfortable with. 
Both sides erase and silence the queers they are not comfortable with. Ultimately, 
working-class queers need the ability to self-organize, and to do that they need to not be 
controlled by either bourgeois LGBT organizations or radical organizations coming in from 
the outside to lead them. While of course there are radical working-class queers in 
radical organizations, working-class queer community organizations need to arise out of 
the self-organization of all working-class queers, and not exclude non-radicalized queers 
from membership, as people are radicalized through struggle, and excluding them from the 
organs of struggle is saying that we both know best and that they are beyond change.
While queer communities have often defined "queer" too narrowly-examples of excluded 
groups from dyke communities being bisexuals, femmes, butch/butch and femme/femme couples, 
butches and femmes at some points in time, and trans women-we need to not be so broad as 
to be meaningless; we need to retain a notion of queer that highlights the separation from 
traditional notions of the family, and the additional reproductive labor (in the sense of 
being able to reproduce one's labor power for the next day) that comes from being a member 
of an oppressed group that is in constant danger from a hostile world and lacks 
traditional means of support.

If we want queers to be able to join in the broader class struggle (not like we haven't 
been there all along), we need spaces and organizations where we can approach the class 
struggle from working-class queer standpoints. We need spaces where we can formulate the 
questions about what being a working-class queer means to our material conditions, to our 
exploitation under capitalism. To truly be able to do that we need spaces where we can 
form organizations that don't need to make every hetero radical comfortable, and spaces 
that aren't controlled by bourgeois queers. If we, ourselves, bring those spaces into 
being, we will be able to organize our own struggles, link them up to the larger struggles 
of the class, and bring queer fierceness back to the class struggle. We do not need anyone 
from the outside to lead us; we will do things for ourselves by focusing not on academic 
definitions of what it is to be queer but rather the material conditions of queer lives.

The Dead End of Anti-Assimilation
Anti-assimilation, in-so-much as it has been a critique of the bourgeois cooptation of 
movements for queer liberation, has been valuable. Anti-assimilation, in-so-much as it has 
been hostile to seeing queer struggles as part of the larger class struggle and as it has 
policed the identities of queers, by casting out queers who can pass, trans people who 
access medical transition, monogamous queers, queers who must be closeted in their working 
lives to retain employment, has been a hindrance. The assimilationist/anti-assimilationist 
dialectic is unhelpful. The proper questions we should ask ourselves about queer 
organizations, movements, and struggles are: What is the class composition? Are the forms 
of organization a benefit or a hindrance to working-class struggle? Are the goals ones 
that would strengthen the working class or the bourgeoisie? In which struggles will our 
efforts as revolutionaries be most valuable toward our ultimate goal of communism? We must 
also ask how we can broaden the struggle-what opportunities does each queer struggle bring 
to spread to the rest of the working class?

These are far more important questions to me than whether the queers participating in the 
struggle reach an appropriate level of anti-assimilationist purity, which often at its 
core is just a reflection of the stratification built into the working class, twisted on 
the surface, but true to that stratification at its core. Another problem with 
anti-assimilationist purity is, as mentioned earlier, the idea that there is a need for 
queers to discipline themselves to adhere to a hegemonic idea of queerness that stands in 
opposition to a hegemonic idea of straightness. We run into the danger of cutting out far 
more queers that we should desire to struggle alongside than those whom we do not wish to 
struggle alongside, our comrades being working-class queers who may be monogamous, 
vanilla, or gender-conforming, for instance.

Ultimately, we must remember that any movement that sees itself as divorced from class 
struggle, that does not incorporate an understanding of the logic of capital into its 
organization and goals, will go on to serve bourgeois ends as it will be easily cooptable, 
or be able to expand to other sectors of the working class, and allow itself to be 
resolved into demands that capital can easily meet without being weakened. The task of 
queer communists in relation to queer movements is to place themselves into mass 
organizations, arguing for working-class queer issues in straight-dominated organizations, 
and arguing for true anti-capitalist class analysis, direct action, and unmediated 
struggle in queer organizations. We cannot afford to seclude ourselves in a radical queer 
bubble, divorced from both radicalized straights and non-radicalized queers; nor can we 
afford to dilute our politics in united front-type politics. Instead, we see the need to 
form both specific political organizations with a great deal of unity, and to advocate for 
our revolutionary ideas in mass organizations.

Questions to Be Asked
Of course, we are long from the days when any serious communist considers queerness to be 
a "bourgeois deviation." However, while we have anarchist and Marxist feminisms to draw 
from, we are left with a queer theory that is totally divorced from class and 
transfeminisms without a solid class foundation, and a queer movement that has left behind 
its roots in the struggles of working-class queers. This leaves us with many questions 
that have yet to even be solidly asked.
On the theoretical level, we have questions regarding how queerness affects the conditions 
of productive and reproductive labor of working-class queers. Such questions as "what is 
it like to choose to not form the same sort of long-term romantic relationships in terms 
of how it impacts how one's labor is exploited (harsher exploitation, less assistance in 
dealing with work, and loss of family support)? Or, when we do, when both partners are 
perceived as/are women, the assumption that neither is the primary breadwinner and thus 
how those lower wages and being thrown into a mothering role in the workplace brings that 
alienation to our social relationships? Or the extra unpaid reproductive labor (in the 
sense of reproducing one's labor power for the next day) that is required for one to do 
when one lives in a world that is hostile to one's very existence?" must be posed, 
analyzed, and hopefully provide guidance in our participation in struggles.

On a somewhat more practical level, we have such questions as "where are the potentials 
for broadened struggles that originate among working-class queers? How did the process of 
the queer movement losing its revolutionary character and acquiring a reactionary 
character occur? What forms of self-organization would serve us, as working-class queers?" 
While these questions may seem more pressing than the theoretical ones suggested 
previously, just as theory without practice is useless, practice without theory will 
forever leave us running every which way, and unable to identify the best places and 
moments for our energies. If we are to truly build a queer movement with a proletarian 
character, and return queer struggles to the proletarian struggle, we need both.

Conclusion
Queer anarchists are faced with a choice: do we stay with an analysis based on identity, 
and see our liberation as an independent entity? Or do we directly engage in class 
struggle with the rest of the working class, and see our liberation as inextricably linked 
with the liberation of all? One choice politically isolates us and can lead us to make 
alliances with the capital that exploits us and harms the self-organization of mass 
movements; the other has the potential to lead to true liberation, as divided we are weak, 
but, united, nothing in this world happens without the sweat on our brows.

This is to not say that queers can only take from class struggle, and give nothing in 
return. Many of us have been cast out of our families of origin, and can provide a lot of 
practical experience in creating new communities of mutual aid and solidarity. We provide 
our own unique viewpoints on the operation of oppression, and, by observing how it has 
created divisions in our own communities and disrupted our struggles for liberation, we 
can provide a lot of firsthand knowledge of how intersecting oppression and power 
imbalances can harm and derail the struggle of the proletariat. We have, in the past, 
mobilized large numbers of us when our community was threatened, acknowledging the power 
imbalances in our community, how portions of our community were disproportionately 
affected, and how the crisis went beyond our community. We came together to respond to the 
initial phases of the AIDS crisis and to directly struggle against the neglect of the 
state and the profiteering of corporations, but have subsequently, with the power and 
influence gained by bourgeois queers and their organizations, been told to turn our 
attention to inclusion in marriage and the military, against our own interests and 
abandoning those of us who are multiply marginalized. We can retake that power by 
identifying the ways queer members of the working class are affected by struggles around 
unions (and struggles toward workers' organizations that are not merely the negotiating 
agent between labor and capital), housing, access to health care, the disproportionate 
effects of environmental destruction on the working class and oppressed groups, and 
against controls on immigration and toward a world without borders, in the form of 
nation-states and in the form of constraining, bordered, and policed identities. By 
identifying how queers are affected by these struggles, we can form bonds of true 
solidarity with other communities in these struggles, communities that many of us are 
already a part of. By building mass movements truly self-organized by the people in 
struggle themselves, and seeing how our issues are interconnected, we can bring about a 
serious challenge to capitalism and the state.

To me, someone who is committed to the end of all oppression, and the end of capitalism 
and the destruction of the bourgeois state, and the achievement of communism, a classless, 
stateless society, where production is according to our abilities and strictly for human 
needs, the choice is clear; as a queer communist, I must engage in class struggle and 
participate in the self-organization of the working class, as it is not enough for me, as 
a queer person to be in the same circumstances as a straight person in the same social 
position-nothing but social revolution will suffice. And the only way for that social 
revolution to occur and succeed is by struggling from our own material conditions, and 
broadening that struggle across sectors of the working class. The class struggle is the 
broadest and deepest struggle, reaching everywhere and getting to the root of things, and 
only through our selforganization can we truly be in solidarity with workers everywhere.

Author Recommended Readings and Resources
"Queers Read This" by ACT UP NY
"Refusing to Wait: Anarchism and Intersectionality" by Deric Shannon and J. Rogue
Pink Is a Shade of Red Blog
The author blogs at Autonomous Struggle of the Glittertariat
One cannot hope to understand the capitalist mode of production without some familiarity 
with Marx; while there are several good books, lecture series, and/or blogs on reading 
Marx's Capital, one should start with just reading, and, indeed, struggling through the 
first volume of Capital, without it being interpreted by someone else. Of these guides to 
Marx's Capital, Harry Cleaver's Reading Capital Politically is probably the best.
Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation by Sylvia Federici, 
detailing the bloody birth of capitalism from feudalism, the beginning of a new 
patriarchal era, and how the process of primitive accumulation incorporated hierarchies of 
race and gender into the proletariat cannot be recommended enough.
Libcom has an extensive library of what we might term libertarian communist writings-the 
work of anarcho-syndicalists, anarchist communists, left communists, autonomists, council 
communists, the ultra-left Marxist humanists, etc. that I highly recommend browsing, and 
in which one can find interesting and enlightening threads.

http://blackrosefed.org/radical-queers-class-struggle/

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Message: 3





Friday, May 4, saw the swelling of the growing list of victims in the popular movement in 
times of "peace"[1]. In the outskirts of his home, in the El Triunfo neighborhood, in La 
Guadalosa, in the vicinity of Cartagena de Chairá, Jorge Vega Galvis received seven pistol 
shots from a group of hooded men, who left him there for dead. By a miracle, he survived 
to arrive at the local health centre, from which he was sent to hospital in Florencia, the 
area capital, because of the severity of his injuries. Today (May 8th), four days after 
this atrocious crime, he is still unconscious and battling for his life. ---- Jorge Vega 
Galvis in Monterrey, Cartagena de Chairá, September 2017 (Photograph by José Antonio 
Gutiérrez D.)
Jorge is originally from the administrative region of Cesar, from a small town near 
Poponte in Chiriguaná, where he was born into a humble peasant family, experiencing work 
from an early age and all kinds of deprivation. So that they would not be eaten alive by 
the mosquitoes and the midges in the bush, while he was working, he told me once that they 
had to smear their bodies with petrol and lemon juice, while they worked under the 
scorching sun. With social ideas instilled in him by his mother, he also knew the meaning 
of the word solidarity from an early age and while almost a child, he was already 
participating in the mobilizations for peasant rights.

With the infestation of the Cesar area by paramilitary gangs under the command of Jorge 40 
of the AUC,[2]Jorge had to leave at the end of the '90s and head towards Caqueta lands. 
Little is left of his coastal accent now since he made his home in Cartagena de Chairá, 
where he makes a living, looking for what is to be had. He works as a taxi driver, 
sometimes as an electrician, and sometimes on farms. His home is in the midst of a humble 
shanty town settlement. But in different areas he has stood out as a social leader, 
promoting the Peasant Workers' Association of Caguán (ASTRACAMCAG, connected to 
Fensuagro), being President of the Cartagena de Chairá section; the El Triunfo and Villa 
Clar neighbourhood, community organizations, and also as a worker attached to the union of 
motorcycle taxi drivers of the CUT in Cartagena de Chairá. He has also held leadership 
positions in both the Patriotic March and the Alternative Democratic Pole.

The attack against him is a blow at the heart of the popular processes in Chairá and Bajo 
Caguán. It is an attack that seeks to continue the disruption of popular processes brought 
about through the militarization of the region. It is part of the social-murder[3]that is 
being carried out throughout the territory and which claims the lives of hundreds of 
social and agrarian leaders. We had already requested, in 2014, that the threats and 
harassment against Jorge be investigated[4]. Again in 2016, there were reports of threats 
received from paramilitaries.

The intimidation directed at Jorge by the troops has been almost continuous. In September 
2017, we were suspiciously detained at a military checkpoint in Cartagena de Chairá, in 
the La Hacienda sector, while returning from visiting trials of peasants. Jorge asked 
them, "Hey, are not we in a peace process? And you're doing this ...", to which a soldier, 
who did not want to identify himself and who covered the insignia of his battalion with a 
cloth, answered simply,"Of course, that's why we can do this"[5]. This attitude, Jorge 
explained to me, was normal. That night we had to sleep in the house of a peasant in the 
sector, because the army did not authorize our passage through until six in the morning of 
the following day, by which we were able to reach the crossing of the Caguán River and 
reach Cartagena. However, that night we alerted human rights organizations through 
Fensuagro because we had a well-founded fear that in the darkness of the night, there 
could be an "attack".

This time, there was no intimidation: the threats have turned into terrible facts, before 
the unconcerned gaze, if not complicity, of the civil and military authorities.

It is not enough to ask that Jorge's life be guaranteed by the authorities. We demand that 
they stop the bleeding of popular leaders that is happening, if not with their complicity, 
at least with their connivance and thanks to their calculated lack of action. In addition, 
it should be noted that with the so-brave militarization of Cartagena de Chairá, the 
activities of civic and popular organizations take place under constant fear. Guaranteeing 
the life of Jorge and the other social leaders in the Bajo y Medio Caguán, would lead to 
ensuring the full return to civil life in the municipality and that the army stops 
operating what is really a military occupation, in which they act with dictatorial powers.

Enough of this ‘counterinsurgency' campaign, this militarization and let the parks of 
Cartagena be free of rifles. Those of us who have had the good fortune of knowing Jorge 
personally, know how much he has fought for peace with social justice; what a paradox it 
is now that during the "peace", they have pulled the trigger to silence him. Certainly, we 
know that this is not the peace for which Jorge risked his skin. For now Jorge, from your 
friends and comrades, we send you a big hug, all our energy and we assure you that we will 
not leave you alone for a second. We send you strength to keep fighting, mate. Do not 
leave us.

José Antonio Gutiérrez D.
May 8, 2018

Postscript by D. Breatnach: My information is that Jorge Vega Galvis survived the attack 
and continues to recover. We wish him a speedy recovery and send our solidarity greetings.

[1]DB: The "Peace Process" was about reaching a deal between President Juan Manuel Santos 
and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - People's Army (FARC-EP) to bring an end 
to the Colombian conflict. Negotiations, mainly taking place in Havana, Cuba, began in 
September 2012. A final agreement to end the conflict was announced on August 24, 2016 but 
a referendum to ratify it was unsuccessful, with a slight majority voting against. 
Afterward, Congress ratified a revised deal agreed between the Colombian government and 
the FARC. Critics from the Left and from some human rights groups complain that the 
standing down of the guerrilla forces is allowing the State's repressive forces and the 
paramilitary assassination squads to operate with impunity in areas where they would not 
have dared to previously (or at least would have been punished by the people's forces).

[2]DB: Paramilitary drug-trafficking gang with close relationship to the the Colombian 
Armed Forces (also supported by local big landowners) which attacked FARC and ELN and 
their civilian supporters. (For more about "Jorge 40" see link above about Rodrigo Tovar 
Pupo).

[3]JA: http://anarkismo.net/article/30859

[5]JA: This incident had been described in a previous article 
http://anarkismo.net/article/30570

Translation by D.Breatnach https://rebelbreeze.wordpress.com

https://www.anarkismo.net/article/31022

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Message: 4






 From Wednesday, 30 May, political prisoner Dimitris Koufontas is for the first time on 
his revolutionary journey on a hunger strike demanding the abolition of the prosecution 
veto and the regular granting of licenses. ---- The prosecutor's veto summarizes the 
prison council by giving any prosecutor the possibility of canceling the Council's 
decisions on the case and banning the hope of the detainees over the 48-hour leave. ---- 
Licensing after hard and perennial struggles, inside and outside prisons, is a vested 
right of the prisoners, which is being called into question, since it is now in the hands 
of each prosecutor. This fact makes no apprehension since the vengeful state fury against 
political prisoners is inherent in the "values" of bourgeois democracy.

It is at least cynical for the militants to pose as a danger to the "orderly" functioning 
of society by those who have led to its overwhelming majority, and are no more than their 
bosses and their political staff.

It is now assumed that anyone who actually challenges capitalism and the monopoly of state 
violence is condemned and will continue to be condemned in several ways, as in this case 
is the refusal to grant regular permission to the face of D. Koufontina, who refuses to 
repent crouching head to its class enemies, if the latter wish it.

Remarkable and not at all incidental this time is the fact that the public prosecutor of 
Piraeus and the Prosecutor of Piraeus are prosecuted for unknown reasons, at the request 
of the Supreme Court Prosecutor, the people who voted in favor of granting regular leave. 
This clearly shows how civil justice and its mechanisms are capable of disposing of its 
own, even of the lawful ones, which it legislates itself, whenever it considers that it 
does not serve its own interests.

Against the constant condemnation and slander of the imprisoned militants, the only 
solution is the multidimensional and insurmountable struggle inside and outside the walls 
for the protection of our achievements and the conquest of new ones as the overthrow of 
the dominant order of things.

The case of Dimitris Koufodtina is not unique, he adds to a series of legal attacks on 
people involved in social struggles, such as Tassos Theophilus, Ireana, Pericles, etc.

Each case has its peculiarities. Every prosecutor expresses a particular political 
content. For the oppressed, no matter what political content they may identify, what 
matters is that each of these cases, and all together, demonstrate the essential political 
core under the surface of "impartiality" that civil justice claims for herself. This 
political core produces a gray zone of self-righteousness of the "rule of law" which, 
depending on the conjuncture, can be greatly expanded. Such a juncture is the current one 
in which we are witnessing a systematic attack by mobilizing a whole mechanism: rights 
abuses, convictions without evidence, appeals, and falsification of false news.

Based on this logic, we, by denying any thought of repentance regarding what we profess 
and dream, stand solidarity with the fighter Dimitris Koufontina and call for the social 
base to support all the solidarity mobilisations that will take place throughout Greece 
with the first ones that organizes in Athens the "Solidarity Assembly at Koufontina", with 
a moped on Wednesday 6/6 from the Propylaea and the course on Saturday 9/6 at 13:00 in 
Monastiraki.

NIKI IN THE EXCELLENCE OF HONOR OF DIMITRI KOUFONTINA

TO REPLY TO STATE RENEWALING WITH YOUR FIGHT SOLIDARITY

Anarchist Federation

anarchist-federation.gr
anarchist-federation @ riseup.net
twitter: twitter.com/anarchistfedGr
fb: facebook.com/anarxikiomospondia2015 /

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Message: 5






NO HUMAN WITHOUT BLOCKING HOUSE IN SWIMMING POOLS ---- For months, we have been gathering 
every Wednesday afternoon in front of the Patras County Court to prevent our fellow-house 
auctions. Together with other fighters, student clubs, collectives and organizations, we 
have managed - at the present time - to put down mounds in the attempt to get the first 
home from the state and the banks. Respective mobilizations were carried out by a number 
of people at county courts throughout the country. Mobilizations that have occasionally 
been targeted by state repression and resulted in the persecution of several fighters. 
---- The inability of the state and capitalist system to draw consensus on its plans has 
led to the adoption of the method of electronic auctions through the relevant online 
platform. Electronic auctions are conducted with the care of local notary offices on 
various days and hours. In many cases, fighters attempted to block electronic auctions and 
were faced with the repressive state fury.

Despite government announcements for immediate operation of the system since September 
2017, technical issues, according to the official version, have not allowed its 
implementation. In fact, the development of a militant and unwavering movement to defend 
housing and basic social goods coupled with widespread aggravation of the social anger and 
indignation generated by the assault of the bosses created a climate of complete 
socialization of the measure, postponed for about 7 whole months.

True allies throughout this aggressive movement of the state and capital are the big 
notary offices, which act as the long hand of the banks by undertaking the implementation 
of electronic auctions. Nobody is responsible ...

Today, electronic auctions are held in many notary offices under a massive massive 
mobilization outside and under the protection of the police, which often attacks the 
protesters and makes arrests.

Until mid-April, no Patras Notary Office had undertaken to conduct an electronic auction. 
On the morning of Wednesday, April 18th, it became clear that Athena Ravazoula's notary, 
in Votsi 52, will auction houses in Agrinio. After the intervention of several fighters, 
no auctioning eventually took place.

A few days later, on the evening of Tuesday 24/4, it became known that besides the 
Ravazoula notary, the notaries of Papageorgiou Vasiliki at Botsi 21 and Mitropoulou Irene 
at Kanari 45 will attempt to carry out electronic auctions. Massive mobilizations took 
place outside these offices, but the strong presence of the MATs that blocked the road to 
the movement secured their conduct.

On Wednesday, May 16, a group of 25 anarchists attempted to invade the Ravazoula notary at 
the time of electronic auctions, which allowed them to accept the attack of MAT with wood 
and chemicals. The next day, a reunion took place outside this office with the 
participation of several people. Meetings outside of notaries continue to date, at any 
given date when they are held.

For Wednesday 6th and Thursday 7th June a series of online auctions are scheduled at the 
notary offices of Ravazoula (Votsi 52) and Papageorgiou (Votsi 21).
For our part, we call the world of the struggle for vigilance for the upcoming 
mobilizations, which attempts to exploit the social wealth in our region and declare that 
we will stand in every way against the state and its mechanisms in the attempt of looting 
the people's residence. Housing, as well as access to basic social goods (electricity, 
water, health, education) are non-negotiable rights and we will defend them against the 
state which once again bangs the lower and poorer social strata confirms its timeless 
antisocial role . Any notary attempts to contribute to the realization of the most 
anti-social plans of the state and the capital must know that he should also bear the cost 
of his choices. This is the moment when organized, organized and fought, the movement must 
stand up to the occasion and give the answers it needs.

Especially at a time when bosses and unprofessed trade union leaders are promoting 
co-operation through the "social alliance," we insist that the only way to be able to 
respond to the state-run assault, banks and bosses is the road of social and class 
struggles.Employees, unemployed, youth, locals and immigrants, knowing their real needs, 
must live in their own hands, organize themselves and fight, collectively, self-organized 
and uninvolved, away from all sorts of mediation and factories. In every social and 
workplace, in schools and schools, workplaces, neighborhoods and streets, away from any 
party and syndicalist manipulation that inevitably leads to the weakening and degeneration 
of the social and class movement. It is now perceived that the underprivileged of society 
can no longer have any confidence and can not expect anything from all sorts of aspiring 
managers and mediators of social anger.

We emphasize that the insidious approaches of the state, the bosses, the bankers and their 
notaries will fall into the gap. No attempt to evict will be tolerated. Safeguard our 
neighborhoods, apply social solidarity and class self-organization in practice.

To link the few and demanding struggles for permanent and stable work, access to the 
social goods of housing, care, education, for the defense of labor and social rights, with 
the comprehensive and timely social and political demand to overthrow the world power and 
the libertarian transformation of society. For the society of equality and solidarity. Of 
justice and freedom.

NO PEOPLE WITHOUT HOUSE

TO ORGANIZE SOCIAL SELF-MADE AND CASUAL COMPETITION!

CONCENTRATION: TETRET 6 JUNE, 1pm ON THE SQUARE OF GEORGE (KORINTHOS)

anarchist group "Dysenium Horse"

member of the Anarchist Political Organization - Federation of Collectives

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