Anarchic update news all over the world - 20.02.2019

Today's Topics:

   
1.  Belgium, Leuven Anarchistist Group (nl) (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
2.  France, Alternative Libertaire AL #291 - Open Formats:
      Interoperability, a key concept (fr, it, pt)[machine translation]
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
3.  US, black rose fed: NEW STRIKE POSSIBLE AS WEST VIRGINIA
      TEACHERS CONTINUE STRUGGLE (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
4.  US, black rose fed: IS TRUMP'S NATIONAL EMERGENCY A STEP
      TOWARD FASCISM? By Mark Bray, Truth Out (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
5.  vrije bond: The Pierson riots of 1981: a walk around the
      city, discussion, and more. (nl) (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
6.  Russia, avtonom - The growth of labor activity in China
      [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)


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Message: 1




It was a busy night for lag yesterday. In addition to our own get to know your local 
anarchists event, we were also present on the kick-off of the ' stop the arms trade with 
turkey! " campaign. This campaign is put on paws by our comrades of IDSP Leuven and 
related Kurdish organisations. ---- It was an educational evening with explanation of 
different types of diplomacy, and to what kind of campaign belongs, background information 
on the, democracy in rojava, and much more. In addition, a call was also launched to 
volunteers who want to contribute to the campaign. ---- Of course, after the info-night, 
some of the attendees have also descended to the lag event to meet and drink something 
together. ---- PS: do you feel called to help? Then contact IDSP Leuven.
https://leuvenag.noblogs.org

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Message: 2





For teachers, making the choices of free is to ensure the equality of all in the 
dissemination of knowledge, regardless of economic capital. But in addition to the use of 
free software, choosing open formats allows everyone to maintain control over their data, 
work, photos ... ---- While some free software has gained a real audience today even 
beyond the restricted circle of libristes, familiarizing and sensitizing the general 
public to the question of the free, it is not quite the same with the notion of " Open 
format ". ---- A little vocabulary ---- What is a format ? The format refers to the form 
in which a computer file is encoded in order to be recorded, exchanged, read, transported, 
transformed, etc. It is usually indicated by the extension that appears after the file 
name (.mp3, .pdf, etc.). Formats are at the heart of the digital architecture and the most 
well-known of them have even become generic names like PDF, MP3 or PowerPoint. If these 
are used today in everyday language to designate respectively a fixed document printable 
as such, a digitized music file and finally a presentation, they are in fact only a 
possible declination of what they designate ( for example, OGG is another music file 
format and ODP is another presentation format).

In order for this data (text, audio, image, video or other documents) to be shared, the 
software of other users must be able to read and modify this information. This is called 
interoperability. The PDF format is a good example of a format that promotes 
interoperability, since it was precisely designed to preserve the initial characteristics 
(layout, etc.) of the document regardless of the software or computer used and always make 
the same result after printing. To put it simply: If I share a PDF document, I am sure 
that everyone who receives it will see it as I sent it.

But what is possible with a PDF file is not necessarily with all formats. In the context 
of a capitalist society where special interests are presided over, interoperability is 
unfortunately not the rule. This, says the association for the promotion and defense of 
free software in the French-speaking world (April), is only guaranteed " when it is based 
on open standards: public technical specifications, freely usable by all without 
restriction or counterpart and maintained through an open decision-making process " . It's 
only when a format is based on these open standards that we can talk about " open format 
". A format is open either because it was directly developed to be shared (like free 
software), like PDF, OGG or ODP, or because its license has expired, like MP3. In 
contrast, a format that does not meet these standards is said to be closed, and this is 
for example the case of Microsoft Office formats (Word and its .doc, Excel and its .xls, 
PowerPoint and its .ppt).

 From closed format to capitalistic monopoly
In concrete terms, if a teacher sends his students a .doc file, only those who have 
Microsoft Office (which is expensive when it is not hacked and full of viruses !) Will be 
able to read the document exactly as it was created and registered by the teacher. For 
others, who will use LibreOffice free software for example, the layout, fonts, etc., will 
be different or unreadable.

For formats even more closed than DOC, reading or processing with other software or with 
too old versions of the " good " software is simply impossible. In fact, closed formats 
impose the use of the proprietary software and thus sometimes lead to de facto monopoly 
situations.

Let's note in passing another risk of closed formats: obsolescence, whether it is 
scheduled (renewal of a paid license required, paid update software) or not (the company 
went bankrupt and the format is not therefore no longer supported). This is why choosing 
an open format is important even if the file is not intended to be shared: 
interoperability allows the retention of data over time.

Free advertising, easy monopoly, regular revenues: the capitalist logic obviously consists 
in multiplying closed formats and proprietary software. Thus it is opposed to the freedoms 
of users as defined by April: " the freedom to copy and distribute the software to his 
friends, the right to use it for all purposes, the right to study it to know how it works, 
the right to modify it to improve it ".

For emancipatory computing
The only good combination therefore lies in the coupled choice of free software and an 
open format. From an early age, students must become familiar with a free computer 
environment, the only one that will allow them to acquire a mastery from the design of the 
software to the reading of the final file, the only one that is intended to be totally 
accessible. When we know the importance for the Gafam of the famous " algorithms " as well 
as the biases and distortions of information that these induce, it is more than necessary 
that the young people have knowledge of the " recipes " and acquire some control, 
otherwise they will not be able to exercise their freedom in the digital age.

David (AL librarian working group)

http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Formats-ouverts-Interoperabilite-une-notion-cle

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Message: 3






One year ago, teachers and school service personnel in West Virginia rocked the nation 
with their historic nine-day statewide walkout. The movement was sparked in part due to 
declining state revenue for state employees' insurance plan - PEIA - and a persistent lack 
of wage growth compared to contiguous states. In the wake of the Mountain State's first 
statewide walkout in twenty-eight years, a rupture began to emerge between education 
workers and their states. Soon thereafter, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Arizona witnessed their 
own statewide actions, ranging from a few days of actions to weeklong walkouts. ---- State 
legislatures were forced to compromise by these strike actions. In Oklahoma, teachers won 
an additional $6,000 raise and an increase in school funding by over one hundred million 
dollars. In Arizona, teachers won a twenty percent raise and increase in support staff 
salaries to entice teacher retention. West Virginia‘s victory was smaller by comparison, 
but no less impactful. There, state workers won a five percent pay raise (equivalent to 
$2,000 for teachers), a one-year hiatus on PEIA premium increases, and the promise of a 
PEIA Taskforce whose sole purpose was to find a long-term revenue source for the state's 
ballooning health care costs. The year had ended with an empowered, engaged, and militant 
rank-and-file, who were at the forefront of these battles.

The West Virginia Struggle Continues
The present legislative session in West Virginia is reminiscent, in many ways, of last 
year's militant struggle. Before the session had even begun, Senate Majority Leader Mitch 
Carmichael had touted Senator Patricia Rucker's appointment to the Republican-controlled 
Senate Education Committee. Senator Rucker, a bourgeois reactionary Venezuelan who has 
spoken damningly about the Bolivarian Revolution, ended 2018 with an attack on socialism 
in her op-ed, "Socialist-style policies won't grow WV." Senator Rucker, who moved to West 
Virginia only a decade prior, founded a local Tea Party chapter in 2009 whose sole purpose 
it was to recruit "liberty-minded" candidates to run for office.

Yet despite her consistent redbaiting, which became an all too common feature during last 
year's legislative session, Senator Rucker's most troubling pieces of her background are 
her ties to the far-right in both the religious and education realms. Rucker is a 
self-described member of the Traditionalist Roman Catholic strand of Catholicism, a 
right-wing segment of the Roman Catholic Church that believes Vatican II was an 
illegitimate liberal reform effort. Rucker is also a homeschool advocate who has no 
experience teaching in public schools. Though Rucker had initially claimed to be a 
public-school teacher, a freedom of information request with the Maryland State Department 
of Education found that Rucker never held a teaching certificate with the state board of 
education, but was only a substitute teacher between 1993 and 2002, before she began 
homeschooling her children full-time.

Rucker was highlighted as ALEC's "State Legislator of the Week" last year as a model for 
right-wing libertarian deregulation and privatization efforts in state legislatures. 
Intersecting her relationship to ALEC with the reactionary religious right makes it 
evident that Rucker's initial goal to help modernize West Virginia's education system is a 
ruse, obfuscated by her larger desire to implement neo-liberal "reforms" within the 
state's public education system.

Once this legislative session began, Rucker's Senate Education Committee wasted no time in 
pushing their privatization, austerity-ridden omnibus bill - SB 451.

The omnibus bill would impact education in the following ways:

Unlimited charter school development throughout the state.
The creation of educational savings accounts (ESA's) that provide families with a percent 
of district funds should they choose not to send their children to public schools.
Payroll protection clauses, which force unions to individually sign up members rather than 
having members sign up and have their paychecks automatically deduct their dues.
Eliminate seniority as a factor in transfers and layoffs when consolidations occur, 
potentially eliminating higher scale workers in favor of lower scale state employees.
Increase student cap sizes in elementary schools.
The bill itself passed quickly through the Education Committee - spending less than a week 
in committee - before it was debated for only two hours, passing in the State Senate on an 
18-16 vote. Senator Mitch Carmichael stated at the time that, "It's a historic, great day 
for the state of West Virginia," at a press conference soon after. "We are so thrilled 
about the vote today and the aspect of finally, comprehensively, reforming the education 
system in West Virginia."

Crisis and Response
Education workers, however, were prepared for the worst retaliation from the Senate in 
advance. On the first day of the legislative session, roughly one month prior to SB 451's 
passage, hours before Governor Jim Justice held his State of the State address, teachers 
in twenty counties held walk-ins to remind their fellow workers, parents, and community 
members what it was they were fighting for. The theme of the walk-ins was a need for 
mental health and community support for children most impacted by the twin factors of 
neo-liberal capitalism and the opioid crisis.

To give some perspective on the relative crisis schools are facing, West Virginia:

Ranks forty-sixth for child poverty, and last for child poverty for children under the age 
of six.
Has over one-third of children being raised by their grandparents, which ranks it second 
in the nation for this. Grandfamilies, as they are called, make on average $20,000 less 
than the average household in the state.
Is operating at sixty-six percent efficiency for school counselor to student ratio, and at 
twenty-three percent efficiency for school psychologist to student ratio.
Has more than one-in-four children experiencing an adverse childhood experience (trauma 
leading to depression, violence, substance abuse).
The educator and activist Bob Peterson describes this brand of unionism social justice 
unionism in that the union represents the interests of the community in conjunction with 
the material interests of the workers themselves. It is little wonder that this was the 
theme, given that the walk-ins were organized by the newly-formed West Virginia United 
caucus, whose five core principles include social justice unionism. An affiliate of UCORE 
(United Caucuses of Rank and File Educators), West Virginia United began in the wake of 
last year's statewide walkouts. The caucus is a combination of members from the state's 
three primary education unions - West Virginia Education Association (WVEA), the American 
Federation of Teachers (AFT), and the West Virginia School Service Personnel Association 
(WVSSPA). In a video released back in September that announced the caucus' formation, 
steering committee member Jay O'Neal stated that, "We need a caucus, because we saw what 
happened when teachers and service personnel came together, stood together, and said, 
‘Enough is enough.' We know that our power lies in us; it's not in the politicians down at 
the capital."

New Visions of Unionism
Worker self-management of unions with respect to bargaining and actions is a component of 
what the famous Wobbly historian and organizer Staughton Lynd calls solidarity unionism. 
Solidarity unionism, in its broadest form, is a concept in union organizing that 
recognizes that the individual union member knows best their conditions and their 
contractual obligations. In lieu of relying on business unionism - lobbying and mediation 
to gain power - solidarity unionism utilizes direct action to mediate disputes between 
members and management. Union representatives become less impactful in organizing efforts 
or disputes, as workers themselves take on the task of building their union at the local 
level. In addition to social justice unionism described above, solidarity unionism is also 
one of United's five key principles.

Already, West Virginia United has begun the work of constructing a left-libertarian dual 
power institution that can challenge both their own business unions and the reactionary 
right. Members engage in online-on-the-ground campaigns that work to build power across 
the state within online spaces that are then transformed into on-the-ground efforts. On 
the Public Employees United page, which was used last year during the nine-day walkout for 
organizing efforts, over 20,000 public employees engage with one another across the state 
to educate themselves on this legislation, agitate their co-workers against it, share 
stories of triumph and anger, and organize as a larger collective.

West Virginia United is uniquely poised to capture and redirect this anger towards the 
larger struggle against austerity, given that their model of organizing relies on worker 
self-management in both a right-to-work state and in a state where public employees do not 
have the ability to collectively bargain. The primary education unions in West Virginia 
act more so as business representatives for teachers, assisting them with insurance, 
certification, and classification issues. Both WVEA and AFT lobby the legislature to push 
for laws that benefit members while holding electoral campaigns through their PAC's to 
provide resources that help elect likeminded candidates. The disconnect between business 
unionism and the militancy West Virginia has sparked nationwide last year, however, means 
that the tactics of solidarity unionism and social justice unionism must be central in the 
fight against neo-liberal capitalism.

The battle between the austerity-minded education reformers and the militant education 
workers will continue regardless of what happens to SB 451. As of the writing of this 
article, SB 451 is being debated in the House of Delegates, and its longevity is 
uncertain. Whatever may come of this lone bill, it is clear that the fight West Virginians 
are taking on once again is one in opposition to the rampant capitalism we have witnessed 
since privatization of public education began a little over two decades ago. The victories 
of the recent UTLA strike provide hope to many in the Mountain State that unions, driven 
by a desire to protect public services and in direct confrontation with neo-liberal 
capitalism, can win the day, but we cannot concede an inch to privatizers in the meantime. 
To open the floodgates would be disastrous to far too many engaged in this struggle. 
Should West Virginia strike again, it will be because the working-class educators of this 
state have developed a burgeoning class-consciousness that was lit last year, and is now 
carried on in the ranks of its militant citizens.

This article was originally published by The Hampton Institute under the title "West 
Virginia's Ongoing Anti-Capitalist Struggle" and has been edited for length.

Michael Mochaidean is an organizer and member the West Virginia IWW and WVEA. He is 
currently co-authoring a book detailing the 2018 education walkouts, their triumphs and 
limitations one year later.

http://blackrosefed.org/west-virginia-teachers-continue-struggle/

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Message: 4





President Trump has now declared a national emergency to fund his long-sought border wall. 
It is no surprise that when a fascistic president like Trump starts throwing around the 
idea of a national emergency, media outlets like Esquire start asking whether "it might be 
time to start fireproofing the Reichstag," a clear allusion to Hitler's ascent to power in 
1933. But is the comparison justified? Is Trump's declaration of a national emergency a 
threat to American democracy? ---- The short answer is: National emergencies are normal 
... until they're not. The United States has been in a state of nearly continual national 
emergency since the passage of the National Emergencies Act in 1976. Trump's national 
emergency would be the 32nd national emergency currently in effect. Others include 
selective embargoes on Syria, Libya, and South Sudan and opposition to the "Proliferation 
of Weapons of Mass Destruction." Congress can override a president's national emergency, 
but only with a two-thirds majority vote.

More broadly, parliamentary governments typically enact emergency provisions that limit 
civil liberties and enable the centralization of authority in order to protect themselves 
from social upheaval, natural disasters, and other unforeseen calamities. A political 
interpretation of such measures was coined "militant democracy" by the political theorist 
Karl Loewenstein in 1935.

An infamous example of such an emergency provision was Article 48 of the Weimar 
Constitution in Germany, which granted the president the authority to overrule the 
legislature. This provision was implemented more than 100 times prior to 1933. It was 
normal until it wasn't - until Hitler convinced President Hindenburg to use Article 48 to 
legally sanction Nazi attacks on their opponents.

The Norm Becomes the Exception
Indeed, the norm has become the exception in a number of infamous cases where fascists and 
other authoritarians have used emergency provisions to destroy the system that gave birth 
to them. Historically, fascist regimes have come to power by working within parliamentary 
systems rather than toppling them from the outside. The Enabling Act that legalized 
Hitler's dictatorship was passed by parliament (albeit under duress). Mussolini was only 
the prime minister of a governing coalition in which his party was a minority until he 
took advantage of the "exceptional" threat posed by a series of failed assassination 
attempts to eliminate opposition parties and inaugurate his dictatorship. Similarly, the 
Argentine military junta justified its seizure of power in 1976 in terms of Article 23 of 
the constitution, which legalized the suspension of constitutional guarantees in times of 
crisis. In the United States, executive orders were used to intern Japanese Americans 
during World War II and pave the way for torture after September 11, 2001.

If we conceptualize the relationship between fascism and representative democracy in terms 
of contestations over the nature of the "normal" and the "exceptional" (among other 
factors, of course) we can see how these distinctions are often far less obvious than such 
historical examples suggest. When is the use of executive authority authoritarian? 
Republicans never tired of accusing Obama of being a "tyrant" when he utilized executive 
authority, yet they defend Trump and vice versa. If they're all so worked up about 
executive authority, why not get rid of the executive branch? And why is much of the 
critique of Trump's actions offered by the Democratic leadership focused on procedure - 
"doing an end run around Congress" - rather than politics? Because the Democratic Party 
leadership also supports the detention and deportation of the undocumented and doesn't 
want to appear "soft" on immigration. Trump's "abuse of power" in pursuit of the wall is 
an egregious "exception," we are told, while routine detentions and deportations are "normal."

MAGA for Democrats
Yes, we should be outraged by Trump's border wall, but, as Evan Greer pointed out in the 
Washington Post, we should be just as outraged by the Democratic calls for a 
"technological barrier" composed of enhanced surveillance technology to support the caging 
and deportation of migrants. We must not forget that President Obama set the record for 
most deportations. The liberal ascription of blame to Trump for all social ills implicitly 
(or explicitly) constructs an image of American greatness prior to 2017. When Democratic 
politicians call for a return to the pre-Trump era, they too are saying "Make America 
Great Again."

If we look more closely at the period of "presidential government" that preceded Hitler 
from 1930-1933, nothing was actually "normal." The German working class and poor were 
suffering through the Depression, Nazi violence was increasing and any democratic vestige 
of the Weimar system had been hollowed out. The government had become so authoritarian 
that the German Communist Party argued that Germany was already fascist in 1930. Of course 
hyperinflation had decimated living standards in the early 1920s. And before that was the 
First World War. When was Germany "normal"? The same could be said for Italy, where 
poverty had been rampant for generations prior to Mussolini.

Novel Threats
This is not at all to minimize the horrors of Nazism and Fascism or to equate them with 
the economic exploitation and repression of earlier governments. Hitler and Mussolini's 
ascent to power was aided by the failure of much of the German and Italian left to 
recognize the novel threat posed by fascism until it was too late. The politics of 
anti-fascism are grounded in a commitment to never make this mistake again by taking far 
right and fascist politics seriously from the start. Such a stance entails a recognition 
of the fact that as bad as things are under a capitalist republic, they could be worse.

The challenge lies in organizing against the growth of far-right and authoritarian 
politics while simultaneously highlighting the continuities they share with the political 
center - the overlap between the "exception" and the "norm." In this case, that means 
opposing the wall with all of our might while remembering that the struggle for a world 
without borders does not stop with Trump. It means that Trump's national emergency ought 
to be resisted as if it were a slide into further authoritarianism whether that proves to 
be the case or not. As Walter Benjamin famously wrote at the peak of the fascist menace, 
"the tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘emergency situation' in which we live 
is the rule."

Mark Bray is a historian of human rights, terrorism and politics in modern Europe. He is 
the author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, Translating Anarchy: The Anarchism of 
Occupy Wall Street, and the co-editor of Anarchist Education and the Modern School: A 
Francisco Ferrer Reader. He is currently a lecturer at Dartmouth College.

http://blackrosefed.org/trump-national-emergency-step-toward-fascism/

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Message: 5






This month it'll be 38 years since the Pierson riots took place in Nijmegen. We look back 
and think about what happened, and discuss the present and future of activist movements.
We start at 13:30 with a walk around the city to see where it all happened. Then we come 
back to the Klinker and discuss the events around the Pierson riots using anecdotes and 
stories, photos and videos where available, and see what we can learn from the Pierson 
riots and what we can apply to our own activism to improve it.

Vrije Bond Secretariat

https://www.vrijebond.org/nijmegen-piersonrellen-stadswandeling-en-discussie/

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Message: 6






Factory workers all over China arrange sit-ins (a form of strike in which striking workers 
do not leave jobs to not allow themselves to be replaced with strikebreakers), demanding 
an unpaid salary for "blood and sweat." Taxi drivers surround government offices to call 
for better treatment. Builders threaten to jump out of buildings if they are not paid. 
---- While China's economic growth slowed down in nearly three decades, thousands of 
Chinese workers have been holding small protests and strikes, struggling with business 
efforts to keep compensation and reduce hours. The authorities responded with a sustained 
campaign to curb the protests, and most recently detained several prominent activists in 
the southern city of Shenzhen at the end of last month.

China Labor Bulletin, a Hong Kong advocacy group that tracks protests, registered at least 
1,700 labor disputes last year, up from about 1,200 a year earlier. These numbers 
represent only part of the controversy throughout China, as many conflicts remain 
unregistered, and Mr. Xi has increased censorship.

Since August, authorities have detained more than 150 people, which is a sharp increase 
compared with previous years, including teachers, taxi drivers, builders and left-wing 
students, leading a campaign against abuse at the factory. The unrest also affected new 
industries, including food delivery companies and travel sharing services, as workers 
complain about scheduling and low wages.

Labor protests in China are common, and to avoid protracted conflicts, local officials 
often put pressure on businesses to resolve disputes. But companies are not ready - or 
unable - to do it now, when they are trying to find money.

Xi Jinping extended party control over the All-China Federation of Trade Unions - a party 
body that should mediate disputes over more than 300 million party members, but often 
takes the side of leadership. He also eliminated non-profit advocacy groups, which in the 
past advised workers and assisted in collective bargaining.

During the repression in Shenzhen at the end of January, authorities detained five 
veterans who defended labor rights and accused them of "disturbing public order," which is 
a vague charge that the party often uses against its critics. Now that there are no 
independent trade unions, courts or news agencies that can be contacted, some workers 
resort to extreme measures to resolve disputes.

Despite the restrictions, activists have achieved some success in organizing protests 
across the province, often through social networks. Last year, crane operators across 
China coordinated a strike on Labor Day, in which tens of thousands of workers from at 
least 10 provinces participated.

Mr. Sy particularly sought to quell the surge in labor activity on campuses, including a 
resounding campaign for workers' rights, led by young communists in elite universities.

The activists used the teachings of Mao and Marx to argue that capitalism in China 
exploited the workers. Last summer in the south of China, they tried to help workers 
organize an independent trade union, stating that corrupt local officials collude with 
managers to abuse workers. Authorities have repeatedly tried to suppress the protests, 
which led to the disappearance and detention of more than 50 people associated with the 
campaign.

Alexandra Parshin

https://avtonom.org/news/rost-aktivnosti-trudyashchihsya-v-kitae

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