Anarchic update news all over the world - Part 1 - 27.05.2019

Today's Topics:

   
1.  Britain, Class War visting Boris - MEDIA: Protesters march
      on Boris Johnson's house, chant slogans and assault police
      officers (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
2.  London Anarchist Federation: Antiuniversity 2019
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
3.  US, black rose fed: MEANS AND ENDS: THE ANARCHIST CRITIQUE
      OF SEIZING STATE POWER By Anarchopac (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
4.  Poland, Workers Initiative, ozzip.pl: Warsaw: "Full culture
      - empty accounts" - protest of culture commissions [machine
      translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
5.  Poland, Workers' Initiative: IP in Przewozy Regionalne in
      Pomerania: Travel time is working time! [machine translation]
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
6.  France, Alternative Libertaire AL #294 - EuropaCity: The
      state takes its feet in the right (fr, it, pt)[machine
      translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
7.  Italian Anarchist Federation FAI: VENEZUELA. AGAINST THE
      FALSE ALTERNATIVES , FOR THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION (ca, it)
      [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
  
 8.  US, 1st of May: Dayton, Ohio Against the Klan By BD of M1
      Michigan Collective (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)


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Message: 1





we'll be visting Boris highly secret south London address very soon.... "....chant slogans 
and assault police officers Baying mob of masked anarchists marched on Boris Johnson's 
house. ---- The gang of about 100 protesters assaulted officers, set off smoke bombs At 
least 9 officers maintained a cordon outside the front door of property One protester said 
if Boris returned home, he would 'probably be killed' ---- A baying mob of masked 
anarchists have marched on Boris Johnson's house and clashed with police while threatening 
to kill the new Foreign Secretary. ---- The gang of about 100 protesters assaulted 
officers, set off smoke bombs and chanted slogans outside the property in North London on 
Friday evening. ---- At least nine officers maintained a cordon outside the front door of 
the four-storey, £2.3 million home while protesters paraded a banner featuring Mr 
Johnson's face and the rope and blade of a guillotine.

The Foreign Secretary was not at home at the time but one protester remarked that if Boris 
were to return, he would 'probably be killed'.

New job: Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. A gang of 100 anarchists marched on his London house

Mob: Anarchists let off smoke bombs outside Boris Johnson's home and chanted slogans 
outside the property

The protest was organised by Class War, a direct action group founded in 1982

A female protester was knocked over and cut her head. Enraged anarchists charged up the 
street after her assailant but were stopped by police

The protest was organised by Class War, a direct action group founded in 1982. It turned 
violent when a number of men, chanting their support for Mr Johnson, waded into the group. 
A female protester was knocked over and cut her head.

Enraged anarchists charged up the street after her assailant but were stopped by police. 
The mob then lashed out at the officers. More smoke bombs were set off and extra police 
drafted in.

An ambulance was called for the injured woman and the man responsible was arrested.

Two protesters were arrested for assaulting police.

Fight breaks out during protest outside Boris Johnson's house

We'll send EU migrant 'surge' back: Brexit Minister David...

Love's Labour's Lost as Boris faces bill for £500,000: New...

DAN HODGES: Brilliant start. But the real crunch will come...

The Foreign Secretary was not at home at the time but one protester remarked that if Boris 
were to return, he would 'probably be killed'

An ambulance was called for the injured woman and the man responsible was arrested. Two 
protesters were arrested for assaulting police

At least nine officers maintained a cordon outside the front door of the four-storey, £2.3 
million home

Share or comment on this article: Protesters march on Boris Johnson's house, chant slogans 
and assault police officers

https://www.facebook.com/ClassWarOfficial

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Message: 2





We'll be participating in the antiuniversity festival again this year!
Check out the full programme here: http://programme.antiuniversity.org
Events we host/co-host:
18 June - Reading group on anarchist communism:
http://programme.antiuniversity.org/id/anarchist-theory-reading-group-anarchist-communism
21 June: Green Anti-capitalist perspectives:
http://programme.antiuniversity.org/id/green-anti-capitalist-perspectives
22 June: Everything you ever wanted to know about anarchism:

https://aflondon.wordpress.com/2019/05/23/antiuniversity-2019/

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Message: 3





The anarchist critique of seizing state power is often caricatured as being based on an 
abstract moral opposition to the state that ignores the harsh realities we are currently 
facing. Upon carefully reading historical anarchist authors, however, one discovers that 
the real reason why they argued that revolutionaries should not seize existing state power 
was because it was impractical for achieving their goals. ---- These practical arguments 
were grounded in their understanding of society. Anarchists held that society was 
constituted by human beings with particular forms of consciousness engaging in activity - 
exercising capacities to satisfy motivational drives - and in so doing simultaneously 
transforming themselves and the world around them. For example, when workers go on strike 
a number of fundamental transformations can occur. Workers can develop their capacities by 
learning to engage in direct action and self-direct their lives; acquire new motivational 
drives such as the desire to stand up to their boss or become a dues paying member of a 
union; and transform their forms of consciousness, by which I mean the particular ways in 
which they experience, conceptualise and understand the world, such as coming to view 
their boss as a class enemy or realising that to improve their situation they have to 
collectively organise with other workers. Through engaging in such activity workers not 
only transform themselves but also develop new social relations. They form bonds of mutual 
support and solidarity with fellow workers while they transform the social conditions 
under which they live, such as earning better wages or making their boss afraid of them. 
This is often called the theory of praxis or practice and it is one of the many 
theoretical commitments that anarchists and Marx have in common.

The Social Reproduction of Libertarian Communism
For anarchists one of the main consequences of the theory of practice was that there is an 
inherent connection between means and ends. The end goal of anarchism - free or 
libertarian communism - is a stateless classless society in which workers collectively own 
the means of production and self-manage their workplaces and communities through councils 
in which everyone has a vote and a direct say in the decisions that affect them. These 
councils would coordinate action over large areas by associating together into a 
decentralised system of regional, national and international federations in which as many 
decisions as possible were made by the local councils themselves. This would be achieved 
through regular congresses at a regional, national and international level which would be 
attended by instantly recallable mandated delegates that councils elected to represent 
them. Crucially, delegates would not be granted the power to make decisions independently 
and impose them on others. Decision making power would remain in the hands of the council 
who had elected them.

Such a society would be reproduced over time by human beings engaging in these forms of 
activity and in so doing continuously creating and re-creating both communist social 
relations and themselves as people with the right kinds of capacities, drives and forms of 
consciousness for a communist society. For example, under communism workers within their 
local councils would make decisions through a system of direct democracy in which every 
member has a vote. Through participating in these local councils they would not only make 
decisions but also reproduce themselves as people who are able to and want to make 
decisions in this manner, such as being able to effectively take minutes, formulate 
proposals that people will support and make sure that a small minority of people do not do 
all the talking in meetings.

People who want to and are able to reproduce a communist society will not magically come 
into existence. A communist society can only emerge through a social revolution that 
abolishes capitalism and therefore will have to be created by the people who presently 
live under capitalism. Given this, in order to achieve a communist society the majority of 
the population has to engage in activities during the struggle against capitalism itself 
that transform them into people who want to and are able to self-direct their lives and 
their community through local councils and federations of councils. If this does not 
happen, then communism will not be created. This is because for communism to exist real 
people must establish and reproduce it day after day through their own activity.

Revolutionaries therefore have to use means that are constituted by forms of practice that 
will actually transform individuals into the kinds of people who will be able to and want 
to create the end goal of communism. If revolutionaries make the mistake of using the 
wrong or inappropriate means then they will produce people who will create a different 
society to one they initially intended. To quote Malatesta,

it is not enough to desire something; if one really wants it adequate means must be used 
to secure it. And these means are not arbitrary, but instead cannot but be conditioned by 
the ends we aspire to and by the circumstances in which the struggle takes place, for if 
we ignore the choice of means we would achieve other ends, possibly diametrically opposed 
to those we aspire to, and this would be the obvious and inevitable consequence of our 
choice of means. Whoever sets out on the highroad and takes a wrong turning does not go 
where he intends to go but where the road leads him.[1]


The State as a Social Structure
Anarchists viewed seizing state power as a road that would lead the working class to a new 
form of authoritarian class society, rather than the intended goal of communism. To 
understand why we need to first understand what anarchists meant by the state. Through an 
in-depth analysis of the state as an actually-existing social structure, both historically 
and at the time they were writing, anarchists came to define the state as a hierarchical 
and centralized institution that uses professionally organized violence to perform the 
function of reproducing class rule. The state so understood was wielded by a political 
ruling class (generals, politicians, high ranking civil servants, monarchs, etc) in their 
own interests, and in the interests of the economic ruling class (capitalists, landlords, 
etc), against the masses. Kropotkin, for example, writes that the state "not only includes 
the existence of a power situated above society, but also of a territorial concentration 
and a concentration of many functions in the life of societies in the hands of a few. . . 
A whole mechanism of legislation and of policing is developed to subject some classes to 
the domination of other classes." The state is therefore "the perfect example of a 
hierarchical institution, developed over centuries to subject all individuals and all of 
their possible groupings to the central will. The State is necessarily hierarchical, 
authoritarian - or it ceases to be the State."[2]

Anarchists argued that the state, like all social structures, is constituted by forms of 
human activity and so participating in the state produces and reproduces particular kinds 
of people and particular kinds of social relations. This occurs irrespective of the 
intentions or goals of people because what matters is the nature of the social structure 
they are participating in and the forms of activity this social structure is constituted 
by and reproduced through. For Reclus, socialists who enter the state "have placed 
themselves in determinate conditions that in turn determine them."[3]Those who wield state 
power will therefore engage in forms of human activity that will over time transform them 
into oppressors of the working class who are concerned with reproducing and expanding 
their power over other people. Anarchists held that this process of socialists being 
transformed into oppressors would occur both to socialists who are elected into the 
currently existing capitalist state and also to socialists who attempt to seize the 
existing state via a coup and transform it into a workers' state.

Anarchists thought this would occur for two main reasons. Firstly, the state is a 
centralized and hierarchical institution in which a political ruling class monopolize 
decision making power and determine the lives of the majority who are subject to their 
rule. The minority of socialists who actually exercise state power will therefore impose 
decisions on and determine the lives of the working class, rather than enabling the 
working class to self-direct their own lives. In Malatesta's words,

Whoever has power over things has power over men; whoever governs production also governs 
the producers; who determines consumption is master over the consumer. This is the 
question; either things are administered on the basis of free agreement among the 
interested parties, and this is anarchy; or they are administered according to laws made 
by administrators and this is government, it is the State, and inevitably it turns out to 
be tyrannical.[4]

Secondly, through engaging in the activity of wielding state power socialists will be 
corrupted by their position of authority at the top of a social hierarchy and be 
transformed into people who will neither want to nor try to abolish their own power over 
others. According to Reclus,

Anarchists contend that the state and all that it implies are not any kind of pure 
essence, much less a philosophical abstraction, but rather a collection of individuals 
placed in a specific milieu and subjected to its influence. Those individuals are raised 
up above their fellow citizens in dignity, power, and preferential treatment, and are 
consequently compelled to think themselves superior to the common people. Yet in reality 
the multitude of temptations besetting them almost inevitably leads them to fall below the 
general level.[5]


The Habit of Commanding
Socialists who enter the state may initially "fervently desire" the abolition of 
capitalism and the state but "new relationships and conditions change them little by 
little" until they betray the cause whilst telling themselves that they are advancing 
it.[6]In short, to quote Bakunin, the "habit of commanding" and "the exercise of power" 
instill in people both "contempt for the masses, and, for the man in power, an exaggerated 
sense of his own worth."[7]

A state socialist could object to this argument by claiming that states do not have to be 
wielded by a minority who constitute a political ruling class. For anarchists such an 
objection ignores that states are necessarily centralized and hierarchical institutions 
and so can only be wielded by a minority of individuals at the top who do the actual daily 
work of exercising power. For Bakunin,

It is bound to be impossible for a few thousand, let alone tens or hundreds of thousands 
of men to wield that power effectively. It will have to be exercised by proxy, which means 
entrusting it to a group of men elected to represent and govern them, which will 
unfailingly return to all the deceit and subservience of representative or bourgeois rule. 
After a brief flash of liberty or orgiastic revolution, the citizens of the new State will 
wake up slaves, puppets and victims of a new group of ambitious men.[8]

It might be argued in response that although these representatives would form a minority 
they would still be workers and so not constitute a distinct political ruling class. 
Bakunin replied to this argument by insisting that such individuals are "former workers, 
who, as soon as they become rulers or representatives of the people will cease to be 
workers and will begin to look upon the whole workers' world from the heights of the 
state. They will no longer represent the people but themselves and their own pretensions 
to govern the people."[9]

For anarchists, the state not only had negative effects on those who wielded its power. It 
would also harm the vast numbers of people who were subject to it by making them engage in 
forms of practice that did not develop them into the kinds of people needed for a 
communist society. This is because instead of learning how to self-organize their lives 
effectively workers would be subject to the power of a ruling minority and so be forced to 
do as instructed. They would learn to obey and defer to their superiors rather than to 
think and act for themselves. Instead of learning how to associate with others as equals 
they would learn to put those in power on a pedestal and venerate them in just the same 
way that people under capitalism learn to hero worship so-called ‘captains of industry' or 
political figureheads like the British royal family. As Bakunin wrote, "power corrupts 
those invested with it just as much as those compelled to submit to it."[10]

The Means and Ends of State Power
Given the above, anarchists concluded that seizing and wielding state power was 
necessarily based on a means - minority rule by a political ruling class - which was 
incompatible with achieving the ends of creating a communist society based on the 
self-determination of the working class as a whole. In theory, the leadership of the 
workers' state would organize the withering away and eventual abolition of the state once 
it was no longer needed to defend the revolution. In reality, however, anarchists 
predicted decades prior to the Russian revolution that the forms of practice involved in 
exercising state power would transform genuine committed socialists into tyrants concerned 
with reproducing and expanding their position of power rather than abolishing it in favor 
of communism. In Statism and Anarchy Bakunin declared that although state socialists claim 
that "this state yoke, this dictatorship, is a necessary transitional device for achieving 
the total liberation of the people; anarchy, or freedom, is the goal, and the state, or 
dictatorship the means", they ignore that "no dictatorship can have any other objective 
than to perpetuate itself, and that it can engender and nurture only slavery in the people 
who endure it."[11]The workers' state would claim to be a dictatorship of the proletariat 
but would in reality, according to Malatesta, "prove to be the dictatorship of ‘Party' 
over people, and of a handful of men over ‘Party.'"[12]

Endnotes
1. Errico Malatesta, The Method of Freedom: An Errico Malatesta Reader, ed. Davide Turcato 
(Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2014), 281-2.

2. Peter Kropotkin, Modern Science and Anarchy, ed. Iain McKay (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 
2018), 234, 227. Kropotkin claims that the state is necessarily centralized and 
hierarchical multiple times in this text. See: ibid, 199, 275, 310.

3. Elisée Reclus, Anarchy, Geography, Modernity: Selected Writings of Elisée Reclus, ed. 
John Clark and Camille Martin (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2013), 147.

4. Malatesta, Life and Ideas: The Anarchist Writings of Ericco Malatesta, ed. Vernon 
Richards (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2015), 138.

5. Reclus, Anarchy, Geography, Modernity, 122.

6. Ibid, 122.

7. Mikhail Bakunin, Bakunin on Anarchy: Selected Works by the Activist Founder of World 
Anarchism, ed. Sam Dolgoff (New York: Vintage Books, 1972), 145.

8. Bakunin, Selected Writings, ed. Arthur Lehning(London: Jonathan Cape, 1973), 254-5.

9. Bakunin, Statism and Anarchy, ed. Marshall Shatz(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 
2005), 178.

10. Ibid, 136.

11. Ibid, 179.

12. Malatesta, A Long and Patient Work: The Anarchist Socialism of L'Agitazione 1897-1898, 
ed. Davide Turcato (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2016), 27.

L'Agitazione 1897-1898, ed. Davide Turcato (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2016), 27.

Anarchopac is a libertarian socialist youtuber personality working to spread radical 
theory related to anarchism, feminism and marxism. She is a disabled trans woman and is 
currently completing a PhD in the UK.

[We are excited to publish contemporary thinkers and writers on libertarian socialist and 
anarchist thought such as Anarchopac, please consider a patreon contribution to support 
their work.  BRF Editor]

Watch or listen to a YouTube version of this article by Anarchopac. Click here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsRyTWBj84E&t=115s
or https://www.youtube.com/user/anarchopac/featured

http://blackrosefed.org/anarchopac-critique-of-seizing-state-power/

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Message: 4





IP committees from the field of culture at the Zacheta Gallery (Warsaw, 18/05/2019) ---- 
photo: Marek Sadowski ---- On Saturday, May 11, another edition of the Museum Night took 
place in Warsaw and many other Polish cities. Although the initiative enjoys unchanged 
popularity, for many people dealing with culture and art on a daily basis, it is a clear 
example of the problems that catch up with the industry: overproduction of cultural 
"events" and multiplication of employees' duties while stagnating earnings. ---- Workers 
and employees from the cultural sector associated in the Workers' Committees of the OZZ 
"Inicjatywa Pracownicza" at the Warsaw cultural institutions organized a demonstration on 
this day, wishing to draw attention to low wages and poor working conditions in the 
budgets. Representatives and representatives of the Commission at the Center for 
Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, the Theater Institute named after Zbigniew Raszewski, 
Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Museum of Modern Art, Teatr Powszechny im. 
Zygmunt Hübner, TR Warszawa, Zacheta Narodowa Galeria Sztuki. In addition, the 
demonstration was supported by representatives of the Commission with Danfoss Poland Sp. z 
oo, the University of Warsaw, the Warsaw Environmental Commission and non-attached persons 
supporting our postulates.

The event, which took place under the slogan "Full culture - empty accounts", began at 
19.00 at the Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle. With a seven-meter banner and 
union flags, the demonstration crossed the streets of Warsaw, stopping at the next 
cultural institutions and government buildings. The next stops on our route were: Teatr 
Teatralny im. Zbigniew Raszewski, the building of the Sejm, the National Museum in Warsaw, 
the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. The demonstration ended at the Zacheta 
National Gallery of Art. We also managed to pass the Embassy of France, where we expressed 
support for workers striking in this country. Under each institution,

The manifestation took place without any disturbance, although it paid much attention to 
passers-by and people waiting in queues to visit the institutions under which we passed. 
The slogans were "full culture - empty accounts!", "Culturally - not for nothing!", 
"Dignified work worth a pay", "temporary contracts, permanent exploitation". The content 
of the leaflet, which is at the end of this relation, was also read.

The idea of the demonstration was born during the meetings of representatives of the 
Factory Commissions of OZZ "Inicjatywa Pracownicza" at the Warsaw cultural institutions 
and was the result of talks on the stagnation of earnings in this industry while 
constantly raising the requirements for employees. Cultural workers - like other public 
sector representatives - nurses, resident doctors, teachers, and administration - have 
been disregarded by politicians for years and their salaries diverge significantly from 
wages in the private sector. In this sense, the May 11 demonstration also had a solidarity 
dimension with other professional groups employed in the so-called budgets. Lack of 
increases is especially painful for those working and living in Warsaw, where the cost of 
everyday life is constantly increasing. The lack of systemic increases and the increase in 
prices and costs of living means that, in fact, our salaries are enough for less and less. 
At the same time, the market and politicians are forcing cultural institutions to produce 
more and more events. This happens without increasing the number of full-time jobs and 
without raising wages for already working people, which significantly affects other 
pathologies of work related to culture - overwork, employment on junk contracts, burnout. 
The manifestation at the Night of Museums was the first event of this type organized by 
employees of culture gathered in the Workers' Initiative in Warsaw. The Workers' 
Initiative Committees are planning next actions, showing the problems of the industry. we 
hope that the manifestation is the beginning of a discussion on workers' rights in the 
cultural sector. that in fact our salaries are enough for less and less. At the same time, 
the market and politicians are forcing cultural institutions to produce more and more 
events. This happens without increasing the number of full-time jobs and without raising 
wages for already working people, which significantly affects other pathologies of work 
related to culture - overwork, employment on junk contracts, burnout. The manifestation at 
the Night of Museums was the first event of this type organized by employees of culture 
gathered in the Workers' Initiative in Warsaw. The Workers' Initiative Committees are 
planning next actions, showing the problems of the industry. we hope that the 
manifestation is the beginning of a discussion on workers' rights in the cultural sector. 
that in fact our salaries are enough for less and less. At the same time, the market and 
politicians are forcing cultural institutions to produce more and more events. This 
happens without increasing the number of full-time jobs and without raising wages for 
already working people, which significantly affects other pathologies of work related to 
culture - overwork, employment on junk contracts, burnout. The manifestation at the Night 
of Museums was the first event of this type organized by employees of culture gathered in 
the Workers' Initiative in Warsaw. The Workers' Initiative Committees are planning next 
actions, showing the problems of the industry. we hope that the manifestation is the 
beginning of a discussion on workers' rights in the cultural sector. At the same time, the 
market and politicians are forcing cultural institutions to produce more and more events. 
This happens without increasing the number of full-time jobs and without raising wages for 
already working people, which significantly affects other pathologies of work related to 
culture - overwork, employment on junk contracts, burnout. The manifestation at the Night 
of Museums was the first event of this type organized by employees of culture gathered in 
the Workers' Initiative in Warsaw. The Workers' Initiative Committees are planning next 
actions, showing the problems of the industry. we hope that the manifestation is the 
beginning of a discussion on workers' rights in the cultural sector. At the same time, the 
market and politicians are forcing cultural institutions to produce more and more events. 
This happens without increasing the number of full-time jobs and without raising wages for 
already working people, which significantly affects other pathologies of work related to 
culture - overwork, employment on junk contracts, burnout. The manifestation at the Night 
of Museums was the first event of this type organized by employees of culture gathered in 
the Workers' Initiative in Warsaw. The Workers' Initiative Committees are planning next 
actions, showing the problems of the industry. we hope that the manifestation is the 
beginning of a discussion on workers' rights in the cultural sector. which significantly 
affects other pathologies of work related to culture - overwork, employment on junk 
contracts, burnout. The manifestation at the Night of Museums was the first event of this 
type organized by employees of culture gathered in the Workers' Initiative in Warsaw. The 
Workers' Initiative Committees are planning next actions, showing the problems of the 
industry. we hope that the manifestation is the beginning of a discussion on workers' 
rights in the cultural sector. which significantly affects other pathologies of work 
related to culture - overwork, employment on junk contracts, burnout. The manifestation at 
the Night of Museums was the first event of this type organized by employees of culture 
gathered in the Workers' Initiative in Warsaw. The Workers' Initiative Committees are 
planning next actions, showing the problems of the industry. we hope that the 
manifestation is the beginning of a discussion on workers' rights in the cultural sector.

Contents of the leaflet:

People working in the cultural sector are one of the worst-paid professional groups in 
Poland. Politicians of all parties who have been allowing exploitation of public sector 
employees for a long time are responsible for this.

Therefore, on May 18, 2019, employees and employees of Warsaw's cultural institutions go 
out into the streets to manifest their dissatisfaction with difficult working conditions 
and low pay. We meet at 19:00 at the Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle and go 
along the route, visiting other cultural institutions.

The Night of Museums is one of the most glaring manifestations of overproduction in the 
area of culture, which is why we want to draw attention to the devastating problems: junk 
contracts, overtime, low wages, overwork.

Although every day we are required to fulfill more and more obligations overlapping, we 
still experience job insecurity and receive too low wages. As a consequence of wage 
stagnation in the public sector and rising costs of living in Warsaw, all and all of us 
feel real impoverishment. That night we say how it is:

FULL CULTURE - EMPTY ACCOUNT!

Factory Commissions of OZZ "Inicjatywa Pracownicza" at the Warsaw cultural institutions

http://ozzip.pl/teksty/informacje/mazowieckie/item/2489-warszawa-pelna-kultura-puste-konta-protest-komisji-kultury

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Message: 5





"A railwayman is an endangered passenger" - KZ Inicjatywa Pracownicza poster in Przewozy 
Regionalne ---- The interview appeared in the 51 issue of the IP Bulletin ---- In the 
spring of 2019, the railway teams of Przewozy Regionalne in Chojnice in Pomerania 
established the Workers' Initiative Commission. One of the main demands of employees is to 
take into account the time of commuting as working time, which is based on ignored 
provisions of the Collective Labor Agreement and other legal acts. Since its inception, 
the commission has been fiercely attacked by the management. Ironically, the bosses have 
chosen to send rebels to the most distant jobs as the key tool of repression. The 
dangerously extended work of train drivers translates into a threat to the health and life 
of passengers - most often other poorer employees, who can not afford to drive with 
expensive Pendolino trains. The following interview was conducted on March 25, 2019 in 
Chojnice during the first meeting of the Factory Commission.

How many employees work in your Pomeranian plant?

The Pomeranian plant consists of two sections, one in Gdynia and the other in Chojnice. In 
total, 400-500 manual workers, i.e. engine drivers, train managers and train service persons.

Why did you call the Workers' Initiative commission? How did this happen?

We've set up this committee for everyone who wants to fight for better conditions. We did 
not assume this to be another relationship, but to do something, to change something. This 
is a grassroots initiative, our common, because we are all together. We hope that this 
relationship will develop and that we will create strength. We want to change the fact 
that they make us make the norm, and do not count us commuting time. Employers are 
combining how to make our conditions worse and we do not want to give up. We have to keep 
12-hour breaks, that's what it's all about - that these breaks are kept. The employer 
tries to avoid these breaks. It's true that you come home for 5 hours, you can eat, wash, 
turn a blind eye for a while and again you have to go. This must change. A new generation 
of train drivers has arrived, this is some 1/3 of our commission, and with them came other 
thinking. These young people want to act, not only complain. Some people are now waiting 
for our movements.

How does your job dimension look like?

Theoretically, we have a fixed monthly standard - 168 hours per month as train drivers, 
and as train managers we have 176. Realistically, however, we work a lot more, eg how you 
have 3-hour access to one side and the other, which do not count for working time, that is 
the essential problem. How do the "passenger" commute look like in practice? It is so that 
our company is located in Chojnice, but you should start work in Slupsk, where you have to 
leave, say, around 5 am. We leave Chojnice at 2:30, finish in Slupsk at 17:06, then return 
to Chojnice. So we have a kind of 12 hours of work, but in total we have to spend 20 hours 
without rest, which we deserve.

When we go to Gdynia, it leaves about 20 hours. There is a trip to Szczecinek around 4:40 
in the morning, and return about 20, that is, leave and arrive - together we are 
altogether outside the home for 20 hours. So a lot goes to commuting from your free time, 
time to rest. So fatigue comes, and we have to safely lead the train. We must be ready to 
react to sudden situations, such as a car entering the tracks - what we do then, how we 
react. They're doing such tests on the simulator - it's a computer that looks like a booth 
- and they're researching our reactions there. In real conditions, we are very overworked 
because we sleep very little due to these commutes and many additional hours of travel. 
How do we react to sudden situations when a man has slept for 3 hours? If you have two 
services in a row, it's not at all. And the man has to be rested and efficiently drive. 
And bringing people is a big responsibility.

Is this a common problem on the railways?

That's how it is in the section in Chojnice, meanwhile in the Gdynia section you are going 
on a delegation, in the evening, elegantly to the hotel, in the morning you get up and 
after breakfast you go. The same company - Przewozy Regionalne Oddzial Pomorski - two 
branches, one worse, the other better. We are discriminated against. There are two slots 
on our plant, Chojnice and Gdynia. In Chojnice, it got worse during the renovation works 
on railway lines. It simply drives substitute communication on so-called rubber wheels - 
trains do not drive. The managers in this situation, despite the fact that they do not 
ride the train, have a job, because they still go on this bus, whether with me on the 
train or on the bus. However, for train drivers in Chojnice, there is no such thing at the 
moment. Employer, that we - I do not know - do not do something else at the time, 
delegates us to Gdynia. In the sense of "delegates", because they tell us to drive. And 
now, at this moment, there are four services that we do in Gdynia and we go there for a 
loser. I only ask and they can not answer me: what would it be like if the situation 
turned back and in Gdynia there would be no work - would they have to go here to Chojnice 
for a loser? And the employer told you, how many of these renovations are to last? It was 
to last three months, but they have been renovating it for over a year.

How do other relationships present at the plant approach this matter?

They do not want to deal with it because they do not want to break the relationship with 
the employer. They do not want to be exposed. Those chairmen do not want to spoil good 
relations, what is the chairman?

What are the other connections to your committee?

Rather hostile. I suppose they'll make trouble for us. They immediately began to respond 
to our committee, they are not afraid of what. They call non-attached employees and try to 
save them. And other employees are discharged from there, they leave. They are afraid that 
these people will come to us. We have already begun to spin the whip and discourage employees.

Extract from legal acts and opinions on working time in Przewozy Regionalne:

"A worker is entitled to at least 11 hours of uninterrupted rest in any age. A review of 
the working time of plant employees during the last seven months has shown repeated cases 
of extension of working time over 13 or even over 15 hours (...) In the 
controlled[Pomeranian]plant in the period from January to July 2012, 172 cases of work 
over 13 hours were found . "
" Dangerously long work of train drivers ", District Labor Inspectorate in Gdansk

"In particular, the time of work (...) is the period of driving as a passenger from a 
designated place of entry to work, which may be, among others, employer's office or seat 
of the section. In a special case, this may also be the nearest to the place of residence 
of the employee locality - station (...) "
Explanation of the CLAU, Warsaw, 13 May 2014 pages.

"Travel time from the home station to the work station counts as working time. The 
employee shows readiness to work from the moment of appearing in the mother's locomotive 
and from now on the employer can dispose of his time and person. "
Resolution of the Supreme Court, 18 March 1998 III ZP 20/97

"The time of work is the time in which the employee remains at the employer's disposal in 
the workplace or in another place designated for work."
Collective labor agreement for employees of Przewozy Regionalne, par. 41

http://ozzip.pl/teksty/publicystyka/walki-pracownicze/item/2487-ip-przewozy-regionalne-pomorze-czas-dojazdu-to-czas-pracy

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Message: 6





The EuropaCity project has suffered two major legal defeats destroying all the legal bases 
of this destructive project of fertile agricultural land. Yet the state intends to 
continue the project. Strengthening the resistance of the population will be decisive for 
the continuation of this fight. ---- Remember that the EuropaCity real estate project 
grouping theme parks, "commercial and cultural surfaces", hotels and restaurants, had 
already resulted on 25 August 2017 in an unfavorable opinion given by the public inquiry 
committee for "impacts significant to very important negative environmental impacts 
[particularly with regard to the massive consumption of]fertile farmland closest to the 
capital". This opinion also highlighted the consequences of soil sealing and damage to 
biodiversity. In addition to the other negative opinions of the Environmental Authority - 
at the Local Urban Plan (PLU) of Gonesse and the ZAC - the Departmental Committee for the 
Preservation of Natural, Agricultural and Natural Areas foresters (CDPENAF) and the 
opposition of the regional chamber of agriculture.

The Administrative Court, having considered that the impact study submitted in the spring 
of 2016 during the public inquiry into the creation of the Zac contained significant gaps 
in terms of the environment and CO2 emissions, had canceled the 6 March 2018, the 
prefectural decree creating the Zac.

And this March 12, 2019, the same court canceled the PLU that was to allow the development 
of the megacomplex on agricultural land: the municipality had shown "insufficiency" in the 
information of the population, the risk of "vitiating the procedure" . Above all, the 
council of Gonesse "has made a manifest error of appreciation" by programming the 
urbanization of these "particularly fertile lands" , while "the expected economic benefits 
are not established", say the judges.

The administrative court canceled the EuropaCity project
The cancellation of the urban plan clearly constitutes a stage victory for the opponents: 
today these cereal lands are legally back to an agricultural vocation.

But, faced with the Collective for the Triangle of Gonesse, which defends an alternative 
project of peri-urban market gardening, the State appealed the cancellation of the Zac and 
the city of Gonesse announced its intention to do the same to try to save its PLU, even if 
reviving the adoption of a new corrected plan would take at least two years. Despite these 
disappointments, the State has just confirmed the completion of the Grand Paris Express 
station, expected to open in 2027 and intimately linked to the development of the Triangle.

The front of the oppositions does not cease however to be reinforced against a backdrop of 
mobilization for the ecological transition. And on May 18 and 19, a weekend of 
mobilization will gather the opponents and opponents on the grounds of Gonesse. The 
mobilization of the population towards this project of another age will be decisive for 
the future.

Jacques Dubart (AL Nantes)

http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?EuropaCity-L-Etat-se-prend-les-pieds-dans-le-droit

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Message: 7






Venezuela lives under the rule of an authoritarian government that keeps most of the 
population subdued through repression and clientelism. ---- The government of Nicolas 
Maduro, composed and supported by the Venezuelan military hierarchies, has as its purpose 
that of guaranteeing, in addition to its own, the business of the boliborges, thanks to 
the control of the companies, the looting of mineral and pet resources rolifere and drug 
trafficking. With the aim of maintaining power and its lucrative activity, the government 
represses the protests of the population, torture, arrest opponents and opponents, killing 
more than fifty people only in these early months of 2019. To facilitate the looting by 
multinationals, mining areas have been militarized and armed gangs have been created to 
subdue local indigenous populations.
The right-wing led by Guaidó, dissatisfied because excluded from the lucrative state and 
business activities, tries to conquer the power to become the exclusive beneficiary of the 
exploitation at all costs. This struggle for power is daily told by the media, which 
abundantly cover the most spectacular aspects, completely neglecting the experiences of 
self-management and solidarity that are animating the popular sectors. Both contenders for 
this dispute rely on global imperialist power blocs, headed respectively by Putin's Russia 
and Trump's United States (including Bolsonaro's Brazil), which have nothing to do with 
the 'people' that the leaders politicians claim to represent.
Federated anarchists and anarchists support the Venezuelan population in the struggle 
against all forms of government, against state and capitalist exploitation and the 
plundering of natural resources. Anarchists and anarchists do not struggle for a simple 
change of government because all governments are at the service of reproducing capital, in 
favor of exploitation and the domination of people.
We support the rebellion of our comrades and our companions who are fighting against the 
authoritarian government of Maduro and against any form of government, exploitation and 
looting of natural resources. The anarchists and anarchists in Venezuela have created 
their own forms of resistance, coordinate through neighborhood assemblies, promote and 
take part in the popular rebellion fueled by important sectors of the population that 
organize themselves autonomously with popular canteens, medical assistance and daily 
practice of solidarity.

The struggle of the anarchists and anarchists and the exploited of the Venezuelan 
exploited for freedom is our struggle.

International relations commission - FAI
May 2019

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Message: 8





Dayton, Ohio is a small city, a former manufacturing center, in southern Ohio, about 40 
miles west of Cincinnati. Like many former manufacturing centers in the midwest, Dayton 
now has a 35% poverty rate. Dayton was an aviation center, home of the Wright brothers and 
Wright-Patterson Air Force base. It was a center of auto manufacturing with General Motors 
assembly and parts plants. And it was the home of National Cash Register (NCR). Like Flint 
and Detroit and Youngstown and Akron and Gary, much of what people say about Dayton is in 
the past tense; what it was. ---- In 1960, Dayton had a population of 262,000 and about 
80,000 decent paying, union jobs. Dayton and the jobs there made the city a destination 
for Black people moving up from the south and white people moving up from Appalachia. But 
today, the population is about 140,000; most of the good, union jobs are long gone. The 
city is about 50% white and 40% Black, but it has been hollowed out. Folks with better 
jobs and incomes moved out of the city to suburbs, and some moved on to other cities and 
regions. Like many other rustbelt cities, folks are left with low wage, nonunion jobs. 
Many work part time at two or more jobs. And many who work full time don't have benefits 
and don't make enough to pay rent and the rest of the bills.

In the fall of 2018, PBS did a Frontline special on Dayton and on people and families in 
Dayton. There is an interview with a Black couple, with six children. Both work, and they 
only recently have been able to move out of a homeless shelter and move into public 
housing. They do not make enough, with both working, to pay rent and bills and buy food. 
It is a scramble for survival and a downward spiral. They are doing worse than their 
parents did.

This family lives in West Dayton, which has 40% of the city's population, is majority 
Black and has no grocery stores. West Dayton is a food desert. It has Burger King and 
McDonalds.

The late 1970s and early 1980s were a turning point in Dayton and other manufacturing 
centers in the midwest. Reagan busted the Air Traffic Controllers Union, and corporations 
moved to attack unions or decertify unions or prevent unionization or move to the south or 
to other countries or to use the threat of the same to force concessions on unions and 
communities. This was also the period of tax cuts for the wealthy and deregulation of 
industries and businesses. Hundreds of thousands of union jobs with decent pay and 
benefits in auto, steel, rubber and other industries were lost and have not returned.

The attacks on the working class continued through the 1990s and the 2000s. Worldwide, the 
capitalists continued and intensified the turn to neoliberalism, attacks on unions, 
attacks on regulations and limitations, attacks on the reforms and gains that the working 
class had fought for from the 1930s on. From 2001 to 2007, Dayton lost 23,000 jobs or 1 in 
3 manufacturing jobs gone. In 2008, GM closed the Moraine Assembly plant in Dayton, 
costing 2000 UAW jobs which had paid about $35 an hour. The meltdown intensified and 
continued through the economic crash in 2008. In 2009, National Cash Register left Dayton 
and moved to Atlanta, meaning more jobs lost forever.

For workers in Dayton and elsewhere across the country, the past 20 years have been a 
period of job losses, wage stagnation/decline and benefit cuts. In urban areas like Dayton 
and across the area and the region, public schools have been under attack, health care has 
become unaffordable for many and the pay and benefits in available jobs are nowhere near 
what was available just a few years ago.

And in the midst of this distress and crisis, the big pharmaceutical companies, Big 
Pharma, made the decision to release and flood the markets with new opioids, with 
Oxycontin, with prescription painkillers which were highly addictive. The result for 
people in Dayton and many other areas has been high rates of opioid addiction and huge 
increases in the number of overdose deaths. In Ohio, there were 10,000 overdose deaths in 
one year. Big profits for Big Pharma. Addiction and overdose deaths for people in Dayton 
and across the country.

Dayton has lost half its population and most of its good paying jobs in the past few 
decades. There has been some increase in immigrants, primarily from Turkey, moving into 
Dayton. And a Chinese billionaire glass manufacturer bought the former GM Moraine Plant. 
Fuyao Glass America now produces glass for the auto industry at the plant. One worker 
there makes $12 per hour. In 2008, the same worker made $35 per hour in the same plant 
when it was GM Moraine. This worker, who happens to be white, tells us what has happened 
to workers in Dayton and other cities and areas in the past ten years: from $35 an hour to 
$12 an hour. Our wages, the wages for workers in Dayton and in Detroit and Flint and 
Youngstown and Akron and elsewhere are now one-third of what they were just a few years ago.

The owner of the glass plant in Dayton makes it clear that it's not the comparison with 
the UAW jobs at GM from a few years ago, it's the comparison to wages paid to workers in 
Mexico or Japan or China that's important now. In other words, workers in Dayton and the 
U.S., Black, white, Latinx, Muslim or whatever, are in competition with workers in Mexico 
and China. And the capitalists whether from the U.S. or China or wherever have no interest 
in what wages used to be in Dayton, they are interested in paying wages low enough to be 
competitive with low wage workers in other countries.

For all workers in Dayton and for all of us in this country and beyond the present and the 
future is lower pay, less job security and few or no benefits. The present and the future 
for a family is two people working and not making enough to pay the bills and keep a roof 
and pay for food. Even where both people work, as with the young white couple in the 
special, families must go to food pantries to get free groceries in order to feed their 
families. This is Dayton. This is everywhere now. And it's true for all sections of the 
working class: white, Black, Latinx, immigrant, Muslim, all of us.

When you make $10 or $12 an hour, it's not enough to live on. When you have no benefits 
from the job, you don't make enough to afford medical insurance or proper health care. We 
have to scrimp, most all of us, on medicines, medical care, housing, food and so on. This 
is the capitalist system in Dayton and beyond.

In this context, the Klan comes to Dayton and calls on white workers and white people to 
turn their anger on Black people or immigrants or Jews or Muslims. But Black people or 
immigrants or Muslims or Jews did not cause the union jobs to leave, did not cause the 
opioid crisis, did not cause low wages and no benefits. Don't be a traitor to the working 
class. The capitalist class and their agents and apologists are responsible for the 
attacks on unions and the working class and our living standards.

There is only one way forward and that's a united, working class response to the attacks 
of the capitalists and the fascists and the cops and the state. The capitalists and the 
fascists and the police and the state target Black people and the Black community. The 
police run roughshod. And when the police attack, it's always because the Black person was 
violent or a criminal or dangerous or whatever. That's the narrative. It never ends. 
That's the American system.

And the same forces: the fascists, the white supremacists, the cops and the state focus on 
Muslims and immigrants and Latinx people and communities as the danger or being criminal 
or dangerous or whatever. And that's the narrative. It's right to keep international 
workers, immigrant workers in detention centers or concentration camps because they are 
dangerous. If children die in the custody of Border Patrol that's because the parents 
didn't care for them or they were sick anyway or whatever.

And when all these official narratives result in armed attacks on synagogues or mosques or 
Black churches then it must be mental health problems. The rulers don't want to admit that 
the rules of white supremacy and violence against people who are not white come from the 
top, come from this system and that violence and bigotry and brutality and murder comes 
right on down to the Klan and the fascists and the cops.

But a united, working class response to these attacks is not automatic and it's not free. 
It means a change in consciousness among many workers, a change in consciousness in our 
communities. For white workers, in particular, it's not enough to say "we're all in this 
together now." When the Klan comes to Dayton, it's not enough for white workers to say "we 
don't agree with the Klan." The way forward now is for the entire working class to unite 
to oppose the Klan and to defend communities under attack. This means white workers need 
to come out on May 25th to oppose the Klan in Dayton and to unite with the communities the 
Klan threatens and attacks.

The road to a united working class response to the capitalist attacks requires a united 
working class defense of communities under attack. That means all of us: Black, white, 
Latinx and so on come out together and unite our forces to oppose the Klan and defend 
communities under attack. And when the government and the anti-immigrant bigots, attack 
and threaten Latinx communities and immigrant communities, this means all of us: Black, 
white, Latinx and so on come out together and unite our forces and defend against and 
oppose the attacks by ICE and Border Patrol and the federal government and anti-immigrant 
vigilantes on immigrant workers and undocumented workers.

There are no shortcuts. Working class solidarity, working class consciousness and working 
class unity is built through struggle, through fighting together against attacks, through 
uniting our forces in actual practice, in actual defense of communities under attack.

Black Lives Matter Miami Valley is, with other organizations, mobilizing to oppose the 
Klan in Dayton on May 25th. We urge that all workers and all working class communities 
join in this mobilization and come out to oppose the Klan in Dayton on May 25th. The Klan 
threatens and has a brutal history of attacking Black people and the Black community.

This Klan group from Indiana is coming to Dayton and claims it's invited by supporters in 
Dayton. The Klan group also posts a Trump banner next to its call for this racist, white 
nationalist event. The effort here is to argue that white people, as white people, are 
somehow victims or under threat by Black people, or immigrants or Muslims or whomever. 
Here is a central lie of the Klan and the fascists and white nationalists and white 
supremacists. White people are nowhere under attack for being white people. White people 
are under attack as workers and poor people, as part of the working class, and on the 
receiving end of the ruling class attacks on the working class.

But the Klan calls for attacks on Black people. Real attacks on Black people, real murders 
and lynchings and bombings and fires. Black people are subject to specific attacks by the 
Klan or the police or the courts or the system because they are Black people. White people 
nowhere face these kinds of attacks based on being white. Anti-Blackness is central to the 
American system and the capitalist system and the system of imperialism and colonialism. 
To defeat the attacks on the working class, to defeat this system, then all workers must 
unite to defeat Anti-Blackness, to defeat white supremacy which is central to the 
functioning of the U.S. system, of the capitalist system, worldwide.

The working class in the United States and beyond must refuse any longer to be divided by 
anti-Blackness, by white supremacy. The only way forward now is for a united, working 
class defense of communities under attack. When the attacks are directed against Black 
communities or Latinx communities or immigrants or Muslims or Jews, we organize a united, 
working class response to defend against and oppose these attacks. Through these united 
struggles we lay the foundation for a united, working class revolution to destroy white 
supremacy and the capitalist system, once and for all.

http://m1aa.org/?p=1650

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