Today's Topics:
1. Poland, Workers Initiative, ozzip: Statement of the
organizers of the Second Social Congress of Women:
What we demand
from the new authorities -- Piotr Stasiak [machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. Australia, mac group - MACG publishes The Anvil Volume 7 No
2 -- The working class (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. Greece, anarchist collectivity Omikron72 APO-OS --- POVERTY,
EXCURSION AND CALIBRATION THIS IS THE STATE
AND CAPITALISM
[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. Britain, anarchist communist group ACG: The Labour Party and
Universal Credit (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
5. France, Alternative Libertaire AL #287 - Echoes of Africa:
Official Development Assistance ... French Interests (fr, it,
pt)[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
6. Britain, Solfed: STAND UP TO MENCAP! STOP THEM DRIVING DOWN
PAY! (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
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Message: 1
Local governments still do not improve the position of women ---- Since the first free
elections in 1989, no political force in power in Poland has represented the interests of
working people, not to mention the interests of working women. Political parties operating
at the national and local government level serve business. In this way, a significant part
of society is deprived of influence on the conditions of his work and his life. ---- The
city authorities act as if they were managing private companies. They strive for maximum
profit by reducing costs. Costs are the needs of employees and employees. The way to limit
them is to keep low wages, difficult working conditions and cut social security. Low wages
force us to work hard in the budget sector or in private companies, and the lack of social
security forces us to work free in households. Profit, in turn, all goods that are beyond
our control: high wages of politicians and managers, banquets and limousines for the few,
infrastructure mainly for business, stadiums instead of apartments, monuments instead of
prenatal care.
The amount of wages does not correspond to the value of our work, and the minority who
uses our low-paid job tells us that this is the free market and democracy. Until democracy
allows for increasing social inequalities and inequalities between women and men, no
choices will improve the position of workers. A telling example of this is the president
of Warsaw. Despite the fact that this city is ruled by a woman, her reprivatization policy
deprived thousands of tenants of the roof over their heads. Increasing the number of women
in power, which are detached from the realities of workplaces or in homes that are
fungible, will not solve our problems. Women who struggle for higher wages and lower rents
on a daily basis do not need other politicians who are unable to represent our interests.
Employees of Poznan nurseries
The current president of Poznan in the previous election campaign promised increases for
female nurseries and other municipal institutions. After coming to power for two years, he
struggled with trade unions to limit these increases to a minimum. Finally, he declared a
raise of PLN 700 gross within three years. He did not keep his promise. This year, the
city authorities are going to put under the carpet the problem of minimum wages in
nurseries. Contrary to his declarations about the necessity of equality for women, Jacek
Jaskowiak does a lot to ensure that employees of Poznan crèches never have equality in
economic terms.
Workers of Poznan hospitals
Non-medical laborers of the Transfiguration Hospital in Poznan since 2009 have been
omitted in systemic hikes. For this reason, their real wages, instead of rising, are
falling. In addition, the pay gap between the employee room, the administration employee,
the nurse and the doctor are huge and are constantly growing. When some people earn tens
of thousands of zlotys a month, others have to pay compensatory allowances because they do
not reach the minimum wage. The government adopted a draft amendment to the act on the
method of determining the lowest basic salary of employees performing medical professions
employed in healthcare entities. The proposed conditions for non-medical workers, which
the amendment to the Act was to ensure, consolidate wage inequalities.
Wielkopolska Association of Tenants
The main purpose of our activities is to make the flat a good accessible to all those in
need, that it would be our right, not a privilege or an "election promise". Speculations
on the real estate and construction market along with the pressure of the banking sector
caused a sharp rise in construction prices and flat rental prices. Thousands of households
have to cope with rent indebtedness, evictions, evictions and "cleaning houses". We are
therefore in favor of greater accessibility of municipal housing resources, for developed
municipal (including social) construction, reduction of rental indebtedness and changing
the criteria for allocation of municipal housing. It is necessary not only to reject the
so-called the yardage criterion (which has already happened in Poznan), but also raising
the income criterion, so that the right to a municipal flat will be gained by more people.
Warsaw residents from WSL: for cheap and healthy housing
In the capital, despite the twelve years of rule by the woman, the housing conditions of
the masses of poorer women and their families remain dramatic. The number of cheap commune
premises has shrunk by 20,000. Over two thirds of buildings managed by the city have no
access to central heating, and the rate of connection in these houses reaches 1 percent.
annually. The Civic Platform, governing the city through privatization or demolition of
the public housing stock in total, sentenced about 50,000 people at risk of freezing or
disease by living in cold, damp and decrepit premises. Such a policy has led thousands of
households into indebtedness resulting from the high costs of electric heating. What's
more, tuberculosis is spreading among the inhabitants of under-heated buildings, and the
authorities say they do not have better homes, to evacuate people to them. In such
districts as southern Prague, fewer than two in a hundred buildings are in good condition,
and the city authorities have not built a single new premises for a decade. The elite
condemns us to a crisis for which we pay our own health. Tenants from Warsaw's Praga are
struggling to increase the stock of cheap apartments, and in the premises of the commune
where diseases prevail, fight for the abolition of rents and debts and real heating
subsidies until all of them are connected to CO, i.e. the cheapest heating method.
The examples of current conflicts described above, in which women are forced to fight for
access to basic means of subsistence, are not isolated. Women across Poland are facing
similar or similar problems. Instead of focusing on elections, we organize together in
workplaces and districts. Thanks to trade unions, tenants' associations and informal
groups, we regain influence on our lives, which are still being destroyed by politicians
and business.
Social Women's Congress, 13/10/2018, Poznan
Organizations cooperating with SKK:
Nationwide Trade Union Workers' Initiative, Warsaw Association of Tenants, Wielkopolska
Association of Tenants, Inter-Enterprise Trade Union of Employees United, Social Justice
Movement, Manifa Poznan, Feminist Eye Count, Collective Manifa Torunska, 8 March
Initiative (Wroclaw), Academic Protest Committee, Total Party, Sex Work Polska coalition,
Association "Bratnia Pomoc", Spóldzielnia Ogniwo (Kraków), Abortive DreamTeam, In Our
Case, Women's Torch Strike, Foundation Not Only Polish Mother.
http://ozzip.pl/teksty/informacje/ogolnopolskie/item/2417-oswiadczenie-organizatorek-ii-socjalnego-kongresu-kobiet-czego-zadamy-od-nowych-wladz
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Message: 2
Dear Comrades, The Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group is pleased to announce the
publication of a new issue of our newsletter, The Anvil:
https://melbacg.wordpress.com/the-anvil/ All issues are on this page & the current one is
Vol 7 No 2. -- In Solidarity, ---- Ablokeimet for MACG. ---- The Anvil Volume 7 No 2 ----
The working class ---- The Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group believes that workers’
revolution is the only way to achieve a society of peace, freedom and equality for all.
This is not a fashionable view. ---- It is understandable that our view isn’t fashionable
for two reasons. First, the capitalist media and capitalist educational institutions work
hard to build faith in other roads to a good society, or to discredit the very idea.
Second, the failure of States that uphold workers’ revolution to achieve a free and equal
society has done much to discredit both the objective and the strategy. So people who
still believe in workers’ revolution have some explaining to do. The MACG believes it can
make a good case.
Before the rise of industrial capitalism,
dreams of abolishing social class and
establishing economic equality were
confi ned to rare intellectuals or occasional
outbursts of struggle during revolutionary
periods. The intellectuals usually
conjured up authoritarian communist
utopias which could only be created by
a ruler – but which no ruler would want
to create. The outbursts of struggle
fell away when faced with the problem
of dealing with material shortage, and
new ruling classes emerged or old ones
reconsolidated.
The Industrial Revolution began in
England in the late 18th Century and,
over the following hundred years, spread
across Europe, the United States,
Britain’s settler colonies & elsewhere.
The working class separated from the
middle class, since most workers now
had no realistic expectation of advancing
to self-employment. It was this new
working class that made possible a mass
movement towards a free and equal
society, because this was a force with the
necessary motive and potential power.
This movement prefi gured a society
based on these values because of the
organic link between the practices of the
movement and the structures of the new
society.
Today, the working class is the largest
class in the world, outnumbering the
peasants and even the 3rd World urban
poor, who are largely self-employed
in the informal sector. We are vastly
more powerful than when we made the
Russian Revolution a century ago. The
social productivity of labour is so great
that many agree the world is rich enough
to abolish poverty if only there were the
political will to do so. Poverty, once an
unavoidable tragedy, is now a crime
against humanity.
Since emerging in the late 1860s, class
struggle Anarchists have said that it is the
working class that will abolish capitalism.
We have argued for revolution because
we agree with the saying attributed to
Lucy Parsons, “Never be deceived that
the rich will allow you to vote away their
wealth.” We believe the working class
is central because of our numbers,
but more importantly because workers
create society’s wealth and make society
function on a day-to-day basis. We can
seize the workplace, the source of the
capitalists’ power, and build our own
power. The struggle for better wages &
conditions is the school in which groups
of workers learn their strength and come
to believe in a society based on the
solidarity they have built.
Critics of the class struggle strategy point
to reactionary ideas amongst the working
class. It is true that many workers have
racist, sexist and homophobic attitudes
and engage in various forms of oppressive
behaviour. The leaders and propagators
of reactionary ideas in society, though,
are actually powerful capitalists. Years
of racist dog-whistling by John Howard,
Tony Abbott and Peter Dutton have
been essential, for example, to the rise
of Fascist thugs in Australia such as the
True Blue Crew and the Soldiers of Odin.
The fi sh rots from the head.
There is a also more powerful argument
against dismissing the working class.
Workers who hold reactionary ideas are
shooting themselves in the foot. Their
racism, their sexism, their homophobia,
etc, are instruments of their own defeat.
As well as barring the way to a just
society, reaction defeats workers in the
daily struggle for decent wages and
conditions. Black workers lose massively
from racism, but white workers also
lose. Women workers lose massively
from sexism, but male workers also
lose. And so on. Only the capitalists
win from reactionary ideologies and the
oppressions they justify.
We cannot put off the struggle against
sexism, racism, homophobia, religious
bigotry, anti-trans hatred or any other
oppression until “after the Revolution”.
Doing so would ensure the Revolution
never comes. Instead, we must return
to the foundation principle that built the
union movement – Touch One, Touch
All. All forms of oppression, inside the
workplace or outside, are an attack on
our solidarity and thus on the working
class as a whole.
It is in the crucible of struggle that workers
learn these lessons most quickly. The most
famous example of this was the great Miners’
Strike of 1984-85 in Britain. The coalfi elds,
long-time bastions of sexism, changed when
women stepped forward into the struggle.
Few women were directly employed in the
mines, but women saw the very existence of
their communities was at stake. Fundraising
activity by immigrant and LGBT groups made
more bonds of solidarity that transformed
miners’ consciousness. In twelve months
miners learned new attitudes that took
decades for the rest of the working class in
Britain.
The struggle of the working class is linked to
the revolution in three ways. First, the struggle
is located where capital gets its power – in the
workplace. Second, the struggle over wages
and conditions shows that economic crises are
inevitable within capitalism and the looming
threat of an irresolvable crisis is ever growing.
And third, it is only through struggle that the
working class will learn the iron solidarity
necessary for revolution. As it casts aside all
reactionary prejudices (what Marx called “the
muck of ages”), the working class will remake
itself as a body of free and equal people fi t for
a libertarian communist society.
TOUCH ONE
TOUCH ALL
------------------------------
Message: 3
On Friday, September 21, Zak Kostopoulos resorts and then trapped in the shop of
Cleopatractor E. Dimopoulos Di Angelo in the center of Athens, in Omonia. In his desperate
attempt to get out of the way, and while he is obviously in a bad physical condition -
when he is between the broken glasses of the shop window and after he manages to get out
of the bay, he accepts murderous head blows from his owner Di Angelo and an owner of an
adjacent store, Athanasios Hortaria, who is also a well-known executive of the far-right
organization "Patriotic Front". After the first round of violent beating has ended and
while Jacques tries to get up and escape in an even worse physical and mental state,
receives clubs and kicks from the DIAS cops and then, dying dead, is tied with handcuffs.
After a while, Jacques will die while being transported by ambulance to the hospital.
Jacques Kostopoulos was an active member of the community and was known for his struggle
against the world of patriarchy, gender discrimination and homophobia, and his struggle
against stigmatization of HIV positive individuals.
From the first moment of the wild assassination, the media hastened to distort the
reality, to justify the lynching and taking the role of a judge to acquit the shop owners
and the cops. By attacking the labels of a seropositive drug addict, a homosexual, a
homosexual and a bandit, they tried to create the profile of a person who is a public
danger, a man who, as he deviates from sovereign social standards, exacerbates intolerance
and racism, deserves his death. In this way, they attempt to legitimize socially the
assassination, since the defense of private property, as the supreme good, can even reach
the killing of an "aspiring bandit", while at the same time hierarchy and devaluation of
human life.
SOCIAL AND CLASSICAL CONDUCT
Social discrimination and stereotypes are products of the state-capitalist system and
their reproduction is exacerbated or diminished according to their needs. Power impose
social standards - which is formulated on the basis of idealized social, religious,
gender, sexual roles - thereby creating standardized behavioral patterns from which those
who deviate (migrants, homosexuals, homeless, mentally ill , addicted (s), etc.), unable
or unwilling to integrate into the imposed lifestyle, demonized, repressed and
marginalized. This is a steady way of sovereignty to reproduce and expand, spreading the
hierarchy and inequalities in the social field,
In a situation of generalized systemic crisis, where poverty and misery are constantly
intensifying and life and dignity are being constantly underestimated, social cannibalism,
namely the dominance of the law of the jungle, the violence and the unceasing war of all
against all the lower social strata , is a treat that is ruthlessly promoted by the above
through the diffusion of the ideation that lead to survival by all means,
individualization and competition.
From our point of view, what we have to do is turn the accumulated indignation and hatred
into anger that turns against everything that preserves and reproduces power relations and
perpetuates oppression and exploitation, thereby demonstrating the real responsible for
the looting and devaluation of our lives. And it is our duty, as struggling, anarchist, to
support the uninterrupted and uninvolved struggles against exclusion and marginalization,
without seeking complete identities with the subjects that carry it out. Just as it is our
duty not to put our stone in the reproduction of subtle separations and dangerous and
distorted generalizations that are directed against the whole of society.
Faced with the dominance of personalization and competition, oppose collectivisation and
solidarity by breaking the vernacular divisions that the exploited individuals want and
each of them to the dominant economic and political elite. We must not allow cannibalism
and social wisdom to dominate our cities. Our response to this treaty must be to promote
the vision of a collective life by putting solidarity and mutual aid as a condition.
Through self-organized social and class struggles, we can resist the constant devaluation
of our lives and strive for a society of equality, freedom and solidarity.
DO NOT TALK DEATH
AGAINST SOCIAL WASHING, SELF-ADMINISTRATION AND TRAFFICKING FROM THE CITIES
TO TAKE PLACE OF SOLIDARITY, COLLABORATION AND JOINT GAMES OF ALL COMPETITIONS
WAY TO THE PAIN OF KOSTOPOULOS
SATURDAY 13 OCTOBER 2018, MONASTIRAKOS PLACE 12 PM
anarchist collectivity Omikron72 | Member of APO-OS
------------------------------
Message: 4
Those of us who've been around awhile will know the old Labour Party trick of trying to
sound all radical when out of government. Yet when in government, they invariably end up
attacking the working class just like their Tory counterparts. Well, as far as the vile
Universal Credit goes, they're not even waiting for to get off the opposition benches
before backtracking at full steam reverse. ---- See the following article from John Pring
from the Disability News Service on the DPAC website: ---- Anger and dismay after Labour
back-tracks on pledge to scrap universal credit ---- Labour has infuriated its own
disabled members by backtracking on a public pledge by the shadow chancellor that the
party would scrap universal credit if it won the next general election.
John McDonnell drew widespread praise when he told Sky's Sophy Ridge on Sunday that
universal credit was a "shambles" and "iniquitous" and added: "I think we are moving to a
position now where it is just not sustainable. It will have to go."
His comments were widely reported, with Sky itself saying "Labour to ditch universal
credit", the BBC reporting him as saying "universal credit has to go", the Mirror saying
"Labour would scrap ‘unsustainable' Universal Credit", and iNews saying that "Labour will
scrap ‘shambolic' Universal Credit system".
But when Disability News Service (DNS) asked Labour's press office to confirm that the
party's policy was now to scrap universal credit, a spokeswoman said instead that the
benefit system was "clearly failing in its current form".
Instead of committing to scrapping universal credit, she said that Labour wanted "a
root-and-branch review of the social security system".
He said: "That food bank use has increased so much in areas where UC has been introduced
is a clear indicator of this government deliberately creating a hostile environment for UC
claimants, many of whom are disabled people."
Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), which is also campaigning for universal credit to be
scrapped, has said that universal credit has "too many flaws to be simply paused and
fixed" and is "rotten to the core", with foodbank use and rates of claimants being
sanctioned "soaring" in areas where it has been introduced.
Linda Burnip, DPAC's co-founder, said the party's back-tracking on universal credit did
not surprise her because Labour's attitude was that "we are the party of the workers and
the rest are skivers and shirkers and we don't really care about them".
https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2018/10/12/the-labour-party-and-universal-credit/
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Message: 5
Official development assistance (ODA) is generally presented as a political instrument
that is necessarily generous and useful, and many NGOs are pushing for an increase. But
far from being a " lesser evil ", ODA is a vital part of (neo) colonial politics, and
therefore part of the problem. ---- Let's move quickly on the catch-all side of what the
State counts in ODA to reach 8.6 billion euros in 2016: cancellations and rescheduling of
debts to make them " sustainable ", sometimes linked to mechanisms of reorganization.
indebtedness ; technical assistance, including the impressive salaries of co-workers,
tuition fees, that is to say related to the study in France of students from developing
countries, the costs of refugees, but also the financing of French schools abroad, French
research on development ...
Beyond the numbers, the effects of aid on the ground can be detrimental to " recipient "
countries. In the economic field, the goals of ODA are more often to open up local
economies to international markets than to develop their capacity to meet the needs of the
population. Without counting the perverse cultural and social effects of ODA, which are
now widely documented: the feeding of corruption, the orientation of development according
to the standards and criteria of donors, the focus of administrations and civil society on
external financing, the supervision of populations by an army of international experts,
and ultimately, creation and maintenance of addictive effects.
Despite the involvement of actors convinced of the legitimacy of their action on the
ground, this policy, regularly subject to technical reforms but without questioning its
foundations, therefore appears ineffective or even counter-productive vis-à-vis its
official goals of fighting poverty. Especially in the face of the nuisance and plundering
of resources in so-called " developing " countries, ODA represents only a drop of water.
The benevolence of development aid shows limits.
In addition, ODA is also proving to be one of the tools of Africa's resource mobilization
for the benefit of our companies: "to seek ways of combining support for development
projects and the creation of "an ecosystem favorable to French interests " wrote the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2014 ... ODA is also a lever promoting the influence of
France throughout the world by promoting its language and culture.
In February 2014, Pascal Canfin (then Minister of Cooperation) declared before the
National Assembly that " the objective of the aid is to allow the beneficiary countries to
be able to do without one day ", plagiarizing the Burkinabe Thomas Sankara, who had joined
the actions to the word. But is France able to do without it ?
Pauline Tetillon (survival association) and Noël Surgé (AL Carcassonne)
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Echos-d-Afrique-L-aide-publique-au-developpement-des-interets-francais
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Message: 6
The Bristol Care Workers Network will be organising a protest against Mencap in Bristol
at 12:00 on October 27th. Manchester SolFed will be organising a picket in support. ----
Mencap have gone to court to demand that the government overturns it’s recent ruling on
pay for sleeping shifts. Because of Mencap, millions of low-paid workers will now be
denied the minimum wage for their sleep shifts. ---- This has come at a time when
non-payment of the minimum wage is at it’s worst ever level. The care sector is already
one of the worst affected. Even for workers who are paid legally, studies have shown that
it is almost impossible to make a living on the minimum wage. And now, Mencap want to make
it even harder for workers to get the minimum wage.
Mencap say that the care sector can’t afford to pay it’s staff the minimum wage. We say
that austerity is not the fault of the workers. We recognise that there is a funding
deficit in social care, but employers should not be plugging the gaps from their workers’
wages. And despite crying poverty, Mencap themselves made record profits this year. Don’t
make us pay!
This is everyone’s issue. This is about workers’ power. This is about feminism, because
care workers are disproportionately working class women, and Mencap’s attack further
undermines the value of women’s labour and the economic status of women. This is about
race and migration, because migrant workers and workers of colour are far more likely to
be working in minimum wage jobs, and will be hit harder by these changes.
We want a noisy and lively demonstration in Bristol. We want to send a message to Mencap-
The working class are not powerless. We will not give up our pay without a fight.
The Bristol protest will take place on College Green at 12:00 on October 27th. Bring
banners, horns, drums, and anything else to make noise with! For more information go to
https://bristolcareworkersnetwork.orghttps://www.facebook.com/events/1974568829267337/
For details of the Manchester Solidarity Federation picket email us at
manchestersf@solfed.org.uk
This is everyone’s issue, send a clear message to Mencap by joining the protest!
http://www.solfed.org.uk/manchester/stand-up-to-mencap-stop-them-driving-down-pay
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