Anarchic update news all over the world - 1.07.2018

Today's Topics:

   
1.  [Germany] Hamburg: Russian visa center attacked in
      solidarity with anarchists facing repression in Russia, Belarus
      and Crimea By ANA (pt) [machine translation] 
     (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
2.  France, Alternative Libertaire AL #284 - Chronicle "Neither
      God nor School Teacher": Francisco Ferrer and Libertarian School
      (fr, it, pt)[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
3.  In the Cinematheque of Santos, this Saturday, launch of
      "Zine Anarco Feminista By ANA (pt) [machine translation]
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
4.  US, black rose fed: ESPECIFISMO: THE ANARCHIST PRAXIS OF
      BUILDING POPULAR MOVEMENTS AND 
      REVOLUTIONARY ORGANIZATION
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)


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Message: 1






Unknown people destroyed the windows of the Russian visa center in Kanalstr. 14th in 
Hamburg on the night of 22 June. They were also spray-painted on the facade of the 
building: "FUCK YOURSELF FIFA!", "FIGHT AGAINST REPRESSION!" And an "A NA BOLA". ---- 
Since the fall of 2017 there have been repressive attacks against anarchists in different 
Russian cities, Belarus and Crimea. They are objects of torture, intimidation, blackmail 
and imprisonment by the FSB (Federal Security Service). ---- At the same time, the World 
Cup, one of the greatest spectacles of power, is happening in Russia. With this event, the 
rich can get richer and behind the scenes, as in the Olympics or at the summit of richer 
countries, it can be used to develop repression and control against marginalized, poor and 
unwanted social groups and to develop an aggressive gentrification.

Freedom and solidarity do not need a visa!

Source:  https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1589344/

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Message: 2





Let us stop for a moment on the Catalan educator who founded the first modern school, or 
rational, type of school dedicated to the emancipation of the popular classes. Ferrer will 
travel to the Latin American tropics, to a Brazil of the early XX th century marked by the 
presence of European immigrants, a significant portion impregnated with libertarian ideas 
will contribute to the emergence of inspired schools of Ferrer. ---- Born in 1859, 
Francisco Ferrer, although a member of a conservative and royalist Catholic family, will 
soon demonstrate an independence of spirit that will see him frequent organizations far 
removed from circles where uncompromising Spanish Catholicism used to indoctrinate minds. 
Thus animated by a desire to learn, he will read for himself and learn from the 
Republicans of the time (the miller at whom he is placed at 14 years will also play a 
decisive role in his intellectual training) and internationalists who then become 
scarecrows to the well-meaning spirits of the time. But he also reads anarchist theorists 
under Anzhelm Lorenzo's rule, though he did not adhere to these ideas.

Republican, he also goes to a Spanish Masonic Lodge in 1884 and in 1886 participates in an 
insurrectional attempt to overthrow the monarchy which fails and forces him to exile 
himself in France. There, he strengthened his principles as free-thinker and Freemason, 
and began to attend French anarchists like Jean Grave and Sebastien Faure, who do not 
adhere to the strategy of propaganda by the fact, which he himself disapproves, especially 
since the failure of the 1886 uprising ...

However, at this time he made a major conversion and by 1892 his ideology was more 
anarchist than republican. Paris is one of the points of the world where the bubbling of 
libertarian ideas is most vivid and where one can even meet a future statesman like 
Aristide Briand, frequenting the anarchist Pelloutier or positioning himself in favor of 
the strategy of the general strike. Briand will be one of the strong supporters of the 
International League for the rational education of childhood created by Ferrer in 1908.

For, now anarchist, Ferrer sees in education rather than in violent methods the means of 
radically changing the model of society. He meets Paul Robin as he focuses more and more 
on pedagogical issues and takes an interest in his integral education concepts developed 
in Cempuis and in the framework of the first International.

Between 1895 and 1901, he lives in Paris from his Spanish classes and begins to conceive 
what will take the form of an increasingly concrete project, a school in Spain, in 
Barcelona, based on rationalist principles aimed at the emancipation of the exploited 
classes, to defeat the educational monopoly then held by the obscurantist Spanish clergy.

As in Belém in 1919, the Church extends its ominous shadow on emancipatory projects, in 
Barcelona de Ferrer, in the Amazon of its emulators. We will see next month, what was the 
Barcelona matrix of the Brazilian school, then we will resume our investigation about it.

Accattone

http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Chronique-Ni-Dieu-ni-maitre-d-ecole-Francisco-Ferrer-et-l-ecole-libertaire

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Message: 3





Insubmissas" and exhibition of the documentary "Maria Lacerda de Moura - Trajectory of a 
Rebel" ---- We are pleased to present the first issue of Zine Anarco Feminista 
Insubmissas. After a year and a half of the Anarco Feminist Periodic Study Group, in 
Baixada Santista, we were able to carry out this project, where we expressed and pointed 
out the patterns present in our daily lives, such as violence (in all its aspects), 
women's resistance , our revolt, indignation, criticism, analysis and poetry. ---- We will 
discuss about the feminist anarcho performance and the importance of initiatives like this 
in order to spread and propagate the fight and anarch resistance by the feminine, human, 
animal emancipation ... Against all forms of exploitation, servitude and prejudice!

We will have the presentation of the documentary "Maria Lacerda de Moura - Trajectory of a 
Rebel", followed by a chat with the authors of Zine. We will address the importance of the 
historical retrieval of references of women who are active in anarchism, such as Maria 
Lacerda de Moura, bringing the themes punctuated in this first issue, commenting on the 
production process.

We hope you there!!!

Documentary Synopsis:

Maria Lacerda de Moura - Trajectory of a Rebel

The biography of Maria Lacerda de Moura, a Minas Gerais professor who fought for freedom 
of thought, against all forms of authoritarianism and discussed in her books the female 
repression by the family and the Church and the suicide war carried out by the State. 
Experimental work of historical adaptation of Miriam Moreira Leite, based on manuscript 
documentation, published, photographic and cinematographic, from the period 1918-1939. 
(Dir: Ana Lúcia Ferraz & Míriam Moreira Leite / 33min / Cor / 2003 / Doc-Biográfico / Livre)

Organization:  CAFI - Collective Anarco Feminista Insubmissas

Support:  NELCA - Center for Libertarian Studies Carlo Aldegheri & Cinemateca de Santos

Free entrance

Saturday 30/06/2018 starting at 6:00 p.m.

Cinematheque of Santos

Rua Ministro Xavier de Toledo, 42, Santos (SP), Tel: 3251-1613

anarchist-ana news agency

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Message: 4





First published in The Northeastern Anarchist #11 in Spring 2006, Especifismo: The 
Anarchist Praxis of Building Popular Movements and Revolutionary Organization broke new 
ground as the first English introductory article on the concept of Especifismo. While 
being short and limited in scope, it has since become a standard introductory text which 
has been translated into multiple languages and is now used by Latin American political 
organizations. The piece was based on early translations and exchanges by 
Brazilian-American anarchist Pedro Ribeiro but since it's publication new documents have 
been translation that have further deepened and enriched the understanding of Especifismo 
such as the Federación Anarquista Uruguaya‘s 1972 theoretical piece "Huerta Grande" and 
the multi-chapter booklet "Social Anarchism and Organization" by the Federação Anarquista 
do Rio de Janeiro (FARJ).

By Adam Weaver

Throughout the world anarchist involvement within mass movements as well the development 
of specifically anarchist organizations is on the upsurge. This trend is helping anarchism 
regain legitimacy as a dynamic political force within movements and in this light, 
Especifismo, a concept born out of nearly 50 years of anarchist experiences in South 
America, is gaining currency world-wide. Though many anarchists may be familiar with many 
of Especifismo's ideas, it should be defined as an original contribution to anarchist 
thought and practice.

The first organization to promote the concept of Especifismo-then more a practice than a 
developed ideology-was the Federación Anarquista Uruguaya (FAU), founded in 1956 by 
anarchist militants who embraced the idea of an organization which was specifically 
anarchist. Surviving the dictatorship in Uruguay, the FAU emerged in the mid-1980s to 
establish contact with and influence other South American anarchist revolutionaries. The 
FAU's work helped support the founding of the Federação Anarquista Gaúcha (FAG), the 
Federação Anarquista Cabocla (FACA), and the Federação Anarquista do Rio de Janeiro (FARJ) 
in their respective regions of Brazil, and the Argentinean organization Auca (Rebel).

While the key concepts of Especifismo will be expanded upon further in this article, it 
can be summarized in three succinct points:

The need for specifically anarchist organization built around a unity of ideas and praxis.
The use of the specifically anarchist organization to theorize and develop strategic 
political and organizing work.
Active involvement in and building of autonomous and popular social movements, which is 
described as the process of "social insertion."
A Brief Historical Perspective
While only coming onto the stage of Latin American anarchism within the last few decades, 
the ideas inherent within Especifismo touch on a historic thread running within the 
anarchist movement internationally. The most well known would be the Platformist current, 
which began with the publishing of the "Organizational Platform of the Libertarian 
Communists." This document was written in 1926 by former peasant army leader Nestor 
Makhno, Ida Mett and other militants of the Dielo Trouda (Workers' Cause) group, based 
around the newspaper of the same name (Skirda, 192-213). Exiles of the Russian revolution, 
the Paris-based Dielo Trouda criticized the anarchist movement for its lack of 
organization, which prevented a concerted response to Bolshevik machinations towards 
turning the workers' soviets into instruments of one-party rule. The alternative they 
proposed was a "General Union of Anarchists" based on Anarchist-Communism, which would 
strive for "theoretical and tactical unity" and focus on class struggle and labor unions.

Other similar occurrences of ideas include "Organizational Dualism," which is mentioned in 
historical documents of the 1920's Italian anarchist movement. Italian anarchists used 
this term to describe the involvement of anarchists both as members of an anarchist 
political organization and as militants in the labor movement (FdCA). In Spain, the 
Friends of Durruti group emerged to oppose the gradual reversal of the Spanish Revolution 
of 1936 (Guillamon). In "Towards a Fresh Revolution" they emulated some of the ideas of 
the Platform, critiquing the CNT-FAI's gradual reformism and collaboration with the 
Republican government, which they argued contributed to the defeat of the anti-fascist and 
revolutionary forces. Influential organizations in the Chinese anarchist movement of the 
1910's, such as the Wuzhengfu-Gongchan Zhuyi Tongshi Che (Society of Anarchist-Communist 
Comrades), advocated similar ideas (Krebs). While these different currents all have 
specific characteristics that developed from the movements and countries in which they 
originated, they all share a common thread that crosses movements, eras, and continents.

Especifismo Elaborated
The Especifists put forward three main thrusts to their politics, the first two being on 
the level of organization. By raising the need for a specifically anarchist organization 
built around a unity of ideas and praxis, the Especifists inherently state their objection 
to the idea of a synthesis organization of revolutionaries or multiple currents of 
anarchists loosely united. They characterize this form of organization as creating an

exacerbated search for the needed unity of anarchists to the point in which unity is 
preferred at any cost, in the fear of risking positions, ideas and proposals sometimes 
irreconcilable. The result of these types of union are libertarian collectives without 
much more in common than considering themselves anarchists. (En La Calle)

While these critiques have been elaborated by the South American Especifistas, North 
American anarchists have also offered their experiences of synthesis organization as 
lacking any cohesiveness due to multiple, contradictory political tendencies. Often the 
basic agreement of the group boils down to a vague, "least-common-denominator" politics, 
leaving little room for united action or developed political discussion among comrades.

Without a strategy that stems from common political agreement, revolutionary organizations 
are bound to be an affair of reactivism against the continual manifestations of oppression 
and injustice and a cycle of fruitless actions to be repeated over and over, with little 
analysis or understanding of their consequences (Featherstone et al). Further, the 
Especifists criticize these tendencies for being driven by spontaneity and individualism 
and for not leading to the serious, systematic work needed to build revolutionary 
movements. The Latin American revolutionaries put forward that organizations which lack a 
program

which resists any discipline between militants, that refuses to ‘define itself', or to 
‘fit itself', ...[are a]direct descendant of bourgeois liberalism,[which]only reacts to 
strong stimulus, joins the struggle only in its heightened moments, denying to work 
continuously, especially in moments of relative rest between the struggles (En La Calle).

A particular stress of the Especifismo praxis is the role of anarchist organization, 
formed on the basis of shared politics, as a space for the development of common strategy 
and reflection on the group's organizing work. Sustained by collective responsibility to 
the organizations' plans and work, a trust within the members and groups is built that 
allows for a deep, high-level discussion of their action. This allows the organization to 
create collective analysis, develop immediate and long term goals, and continually reflect 
on and change their work based on the lessons gained and circumstances.

 From these practices and from the basis of their ideological principles, revolutionary 
organizations should seek to create a program that defines their short- and 
intermediate-term goals and will work towards their long-term objectives:

The program must come from a rigorous analysis of society and the correlation of the 
forces that are part of it. It must have as a foundation the experience of the struggle of 
the oppressed and their aspirations, and from those elements it must set the goals and the 
tasks to be followed by the revolutionary organization in order to succeed not only in the 
final objective but also in the immediate ones. (En La Calle)

The last point, but one that is key within the practice of Especifismo, is the idea of 
"social insertion." (1) It stems from the belief that the oppressed are the most 
revolutionary sector of society, and that the seed of the future revolutionary 
transformation of society lies already in these classes and social groupings. Social 
insertion means anarchist involvement in the daily fights of the oppressed and working 
classes. It does not mean acting within single-issue advocacy campaigns based around the 
involvement of expected traditional political activists, but rather within movements of 
people struggling to better their own condition, which come together not always out of 
exclusively materially-based needs, but also socially and historically rooted needs of 
resisting the attacks of the state and capitalism. These would include rank-and-file-led 
workers' movements, immigrant communities' movements to demand legalized status, 
neighborhood organizations' resistance to the brutality and killings by police, working 
class students' fights against budget cuts, and poor and unemployed people's opposition to 
evictions and service cuts.

Through daily struggles, the oppressed become a conscious force. The class-in-itself, or 
rather classes-in-themselves (defined beyond the class-reductionist vision of the urban 
industrial proletariat, to include all oppressed groups within society that have a 
material stake in a new society), are tempered, tested, and recreated through these daily 
struggles over immediate needs into classes-for-themselves. That is, they change from 
social classes and groups that exist objectively and by the fact of social relations, to 
social forces. Brought together by organic methods, and at many times by their own 
self-organizational cohesion, they become self-conscious actors aware of their power, 
voice and their intrinsic nemeses: ruling elites who wield control over the power 
structures of the modern social order.

Examples of social insertion that the FAG cites are their work with neighborhood 
committees in urban villages and slums (called Popular Resistance Committees), building 
alliances with rank-and-file members of the rural landless workers' movement of the MST, 
and among trash and recyclables collectors. Due to high levels of temporary and contingent 
employment, underemployment, and unemployment in Brazil, a significant portion of the 
working class does not survive primarily through wage labor, but rather by subsistence 
work and the informal economy, such as casual construction work, street vending, or the 
collection of trash and recyclables. Through several years of work, the FAG has built a 
strong relationship with urban trash collectors, called catadores. Members of the FAG have 
supported them in forming their own national organization which is working to mobilize 
trash collectors around their interests nationally and to raise money toward building a 
collectively operated recycling operation. (2)

Especifismo's conception of the relation of ideas to the popular movement is that they 
should not be imposed through a leadership, through "mass line," or by intellectuals. 
Anarchist militants should not attempt to move movements into proclaiming an "anarchist" 
position, but should instead work to preserve their anarchist thrust; that is, their 
natural tendency to be self-organized and to militantly fight for their own interests. 
This assumes the perspective that social movements will reach their own logic of creating 
revolution, not when they as a whole necessarily reach the point of being self-identified 
"anarchists," but when as a whole (or at least an overwhelming majority) they reach the 
consciousness of their own power and exercise this power in their daily lives, in a way 
consciously adopting the ideas of anarchism. An additional role of the anarchist militant 
within the social movements, according to the Especifists, is to address the multiple 
political currents that will exist within movements and to actively combat the 
opportunistic elements of vanguardism and electoral politics.

Especifismo in the context of North American and Western Anarchism
Within the current strands of organized and revolutionary North American and Western 
Anarchism, numerous indicators point to the inspiration and influence of the Platform as 
having the greatest impact in the recent blossoming of class struggle anarchist 
organizations world-wide. Many see the Platform as a historical document that speaks to 
the previous century's organizational failures of anarchism within global revolutionary 
movements, and are moved to define themselves as acting within the "platformist 
tradition." Given this, the currents of Especifismo and Platformism are deserving of 
comparison and contrast.

The authors of the Platform were veteran partisans of the Russian Revolution. They helped 
lead a peasant guerilla war against Western European armies and later the Bolsheviks in 
the Ukraine, whose people had a history independent of the Russian Empire. So the writers 
of the Platform certainly spoke from a wealth of experience and to the historical context 
of one of their era's pivotal struggles. But the document made little headway in its 
proposal of uniting class struggle anarchists, and is markedly silent in analysis or 
understanding on numerous key questions that faced revolutionaries at that time, such as 
the oppression of women, and colonialism.

While most Anarchist-Communist oriented organizations claim influence by the Platform 
today, in retrospect it can be looked at as a poignant statement that rose from the morass 
that befell much of anarchism following the Russian Revolution. As a historical project, 
the Platform's proposal and basic ideas were largely rejected by individualistic 
tendencies in the Anarchist movement, were misunderstood because of language barriers as 
some claim (Skirda, 186), or never reached supportive elements or organizations that would 
have united around the document. In 1927, the Dielo Trouda group did host a small 
international conference of supporters in France, but it was quickly disrupted by the 
authorities.

In comparison, the praxis of Especifismo is a living, developed practice, and arguably a 
much more relevant and contemporary theory, emerging as it does out of 50 years of 
anarchist organizing. Arising from the southern cone of Latin America, but its influence 
spreading throughout, the ideas of Especifismo do not spring from any call-out or single 
document, but have come organically out of the movements of the global south that are 
leading the fight against international capitalism and setting examples for movements 
worldwide. On organization, the Especifists call for a far deeper basis of anarchist 
organization than the Platform's "theoretical and tactical unity," but a strategic program 
based on analysis that guides the actions of revolutionaries. They provide us living 
examples of revolutionary organization based on the needs for common analysis, shared 
theory, and firm roots within the social movements.

I believe there is much to take inspiration from within the tradition of Especifismo, not 
only on a global scale, but particularly for North American class-struggle anarchists and 
for multi-racial revolutionaries within the US. Whereas the Platform can be easily read as 
seeing anarchists' role as narrowly and most centrally within labor unions, Especifismo 
gives us a living example that we can look towards and which speaks more meaningfully to 
our work in building a revolutionary movement today. Taking this all into consideration, I 
also hope that this article can help us more concretely reflect on how we as a movement 
define and shape our traditions and influences.

Footnotes
1. While "social insertion" is a term coming directly out of the texts of Especifismo 
influenced organizations, comrades of mine have taken issue with it. So before there is a 
rush towards an uncritical embrace of anything, perhaps there could be a discussion of 
this term.

2. Eduardo, then Secretary of External Relations for Brazilian FAG. "Saudacoes Libertarias 
dos E.U.A." E-mail to Pedro Ribeiro. 25 Jun 2004

Bibliography
En La Calle (Unsigned article). "La Necesidad de Un Proyecto Propio, Acerca de la 
importancia del programa en la organizacion polilitica libertaria" or "The Necessity of 
Our Own Project, On the importance of a program in the libertarian political organization" 
En La Calle, published by the Organización Socialista Libertaria, Argentina, Jun 2001. 
Translation by Pedro Ribeiro. 22 Dec 2005.

Featherstone, Liza, Doug Henwood and Christian Parenti."Action Will Be Taken: Left-Wing 
Anti-Intellectualism and Its Discontents" Lip Magazine 11 Nov 2004. 22 Dec 2005 .

Guillamon, Agustin. The Friends of Durruti Group: 1937-1939. San Francisco: AK Press, 1996.

Krebs, Edward S. Shifu, the Soul of Chinese Anarchism. Landham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 
1998.

Northeastern Anarchist. The Global Influence of Platformism Today by The Federation of 
Northeastern Anarchist Communists (Johannesburg, South Africa: Zabalaza Books, 2003), 24. 
Interview with Italian Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici (FdCA).

Skirda, Alexandre. Facing the Enemy, A History of Anarchist Organization from Proudhon to 
May 1968. Oakland, CA: AK Press 2002.

For related theory and strategy articles we recommend "For a Theory of Strategy by CAB 
(Brazil)," "The Problems Posed by the Concrete Class Struggle and Popular Organization" 
and "Theory, Ideology and Political Practice: The FAU's ‘Huerta Grande.'" For a 
contemporary analysis of the US by Black Rose/Rosa Negra we recommend "Below and Beyond 
Trump: Power and Counter Power" written in 2017.

http://blackrosefed.org/especifismo-weaver/

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