Today's Topics:
1. Britain, Anarchist Communist Group (ACG): Rebellion in Sudan
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. France, Alternative Libertaire AL - Communicated, Brazil:
General strike against the Bolsonaro offensive ! (fr, it,
pt)[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. anarkismo.net: Sinn Féin: From Full Confidence Of Victory
To Arrogance And Entitlement by Eimhéar Ní Fhearóir -- The
Pensive Quill (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. Britain, Brighton Solfed: CJ Barbers owner assaults female
Brighton SolFed member (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
5. Movement of Organization of Base - Paraná: I GREVE GENERAL
I # 14J (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
6. France, Alternative Libertaire AL #295 - Read: Lahaye,
"Childbirth: Women deserve better (fr, it, pt)[machine
translation]" (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
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Message: 1
The rebellion against the regime of Umar al-Bashir in Sudan started in the northern city
of Atbara, a railway terminus, in December 2018. Discontent against a regime that had
brought poverty to the mass of the population erupted with the cry "tasqut bas" (it should
just fall). The headquarters of the ruling National Congress Party was burned down, and
the police replied to this with tear gas and live ammunition. ---- The revolt erupted
again on April 6th, having spread to the capital, Khartoum. The police and military
attacked the demonstrators, killing over 120 people, and using tear gas, rubber bullets
and again live ammunition. Thousands were arrested. The government had declared a state of
emergency in February, shutting down the press or censoring it, applied restricted access
to several phone companies, and disrupting the internet.
Despite this, the demonstrations continued. Several thousands set up a camp outside the
main army base in Khartoum and demanded that al-Bashir be removed as President.
The protests were initiated by the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA), made up of
doctors, lawyers, journalists, engineers, teachers, and university professors. Their
demands have been vague with calls for "Freedom, Peace and Justice". However, the working
class has involved itself in the demonstrations, and the Sudanese Jobless Association had
its banners on demonstrations. Up to 70% of those involved in the demonstrations have been
women, and they have shown great courage and determination.
Al-Bashir has ruled Sudan for almost 30 years. He is the only head of state wanted by the
International Criminal Court for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, as the
result of his policy of ethnic cleansing in the Darfur region. The protests began when the
government ended subsidies of basic goods. This was an attempt to tackle the rate of
inflation, which stands at 122%, the second highest in the world. Almost half the
population live below the national poverty line, with 5 million people facing food
insecurity. 20 percent of Sudanese men and 40 percent of women are illiterate. Seventy per
cent of the national budget is spent on the military, and only 5 per cent on healthcare.
But on April11th, al-Bashir was ousted. He was put under arrest by the military. Later on,
in a scenario that has parallels with the ousting of Mugabe in Zimbabwe, the Minister of
Defence said that it was overseeing a two-year transition leading up to elections.
Parliament was shut down, as was the government and local state governments. As state of
emergency was imposed for 3 months, as well as a 10pm curfew.However, the demonstrators
were not prepared to put up with this, calling for protests to continue and developing
slogans against the military government. Anti-Islamist sentiments began to emerge amongst
the crowds.
The Army was forced to intervene because dissent was growing in its own ranks, whilst on
the other hand the security forces, made up of Islamist militias, defended al-Bashir.
These militias killed 5 soldiers who were trying to stop violence against the crowds. The
Army leadership is terrified of revolt amongst the rank and file and the junior officers,
which is why it made its move.
However, the Sudanese masses have seen the recent example of Egypt, where the Army took
over from the old regime, and imposed something even worse. They do not want a military
government.
This military ruling council was led by a former Vice-President, Awad Mohamed Ahmed Ibn
Auf, surrounded by other veterans of the al-Bashir regime. The crowds refused to accept
this, chanting "The revolution has ony just begun" and "We won't replace Koaz (An Islamist
leader) by another, Ibn Auf we will crush you, we are the generation that will not be
fooled". The continuing protests meant that the military council had to remove Ibn Auf
within twenty four hours.Demands now came forward for the arrest and prosecution of
leading members of the regime and the end of austerity measures.
The new head of state, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, promised to carry out the will of the
people. But the murderous thug Salah Gosh, who was head of intelligence, was allowed to
resign instead of being arrested, and the whereabouts of al-Bashir was kept a secret by
the military. The chief public prosecutor and the head of the state run radio and
television were also allowed to resign rather than be arrested. Meanwhile many political
prisoners are still behind bars.
It was then discovered that the SPA had begun negotiating with the military council. This
provoked outrage among the crowds.
In May, armed thugs attacked the crowds, killing four people. The head of the military
council, Burhan, now began demanding that blockades on roads and railways be removed.
In response, a massive general strike broke out. In Khartoum, the response to the strike
call was almost 100 per cent. The strike affected, the banks, ministries, schools,
hospitals, airports, power plants, mines and ports.
In some places the counter-insurgency forces, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) led by
Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, deputy of the military council, arrested 10 striking electricity
workers, but were forced to release them after other workers threatened to cut off
electricity supplies. In southern Khartoum the RSF fired on workers at a fuel pumping
station, seriously wounding two.
On 3rd June, the military attacked and cleared the sit-in in front of the Ministry of
Defence in Khartoum. At least 13 were killed. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo has been whipping up
hysteria among the RSF militia, claiming that the unfolding revolution was anti-Islamic.
The most dissident Army regiments, meanwhile, were confined to barracks.
The RSF then began rampaging through Khartoum over the following days, dismantling
barricades, beating up and flogging protestors and raping women. At least a hundred people
were killed and their bodies thrown in the Nile.
Meanwhile the military council announced that it was organising elections within 9 months,
in a bid to defuse the movement. But on 9th June, another general strike broke out and
several large demonstrations began. Either the repression will crush the developing
revolution or it will cause increased resistance. Dissent is growing rapidly within the
military, and many may side with the masses against the military council and the RSF
thugs. This remains to be seen.
Black Autonomy - Call for Solidarity with the Rebellious People of Sudan
Source: Black Autonomy Network
Since the middle of December last year there has been an ongoing revolt in Sudan. This
outbreak of rebellion a continuation of earlier struggles against the regime of Omar
al-Bashir. In April, escalating protests led to a round the clock sit in occupation of the
Military HQ demanding the fall of the regime. The military - under the pretext of siding
with the revolutionaries - used this unrest to stage a coup and oust al-Bashir and install
themselves as the Transitional Military Council(TMC), many of the people on this council
had ties to the old regime and to the notorious Janjaweed - an Arab ethno-nationalist
militia (re-branded under al-Bashir as the Rapid Support Forces or RSF) involved in war
crimes and genocide in Darfur.
The TMC tried to negotiate with the movement to form a government, but the people of Sudan
saw this for what it was, and while negotiations were ongoing people were determined to
hold the sit in. Negotiations broke down as the movement demanded a full civilian
government and Saudi Arabia, the UAE - regional powers who contributed to the
counter-revolution to the Arab Spring - and Egypt pledged political and economic support
to the military council as they pushed to hold onto power.
The TMC began to criminalize the protests and declared the sit-in a "security threat".
Only days after the declaration the RSF attacked and cleared out the sit in with live ammo
and burned down the tents at the sit in while the army watched. The RSF continued on a
rampage all over Khartoum with a confirmed count of over 100 dead and 650 wounded.
More pictures of barricades built yet the RSF patrolling through them on the streets of
Khartoum. Exact location/time unknown, but taken today and been circulated around.
@BSonblast @YousraElbagir @daloya @AJEnglish @ReutersAfrica #SudanUprising
#Google_Open_Internet_For_Sudan pic.twitter.com/VPgDAi1Cry
- Anavi mxb (@ana_fi_anavi) June 4, 2019
The RSF occupation of Khartoum is still ongoing and the TMC has had the internet shut off
for over 72 hours making reports of what's going on hard to come by, but calls have come
from the movement for "total civil disobedience" and there is sporadic video and text of
people resisting all over Sudan.
"current situation:
- resistance activities at peak, w/ most roads barricaded
- intermittent sound of gunfire heard across neighborhoods
- call to prayer made in most neighborhoods; in some, RSF prevented ppl from attending, in
others people insisted on fasting"#SudanUprising https://t.co/Jg7BChIbHw
- Munchkin (@BSonblast) June 4, 2019
Why Does This Matter
Let's be clear, what's at stake is the spreading of a rebellious energy across the Middle
East and the African Continent that threatens the political order. That's why regional
powers and allies of the US - Saudi Arabia and the UAE - have supported the TMC and their
repression of Sudanese rebels.
We find ourselves in a moment of international right wing reaction with fascistic, white
supremacist, and other authoritarian movements and states seizing or consolidating power
all around the world. Our enemies have spent many years networking and building
internationally, capitalizing on both human and environmental crisis, but these crises
don't have a single road out that leads to authoritarian power that we try desperately to
react to. These moments also give us opportunity to link and build power with others, who
may or may not be or call themselves anarchists but who share the anarchic spirit for
total freedom.
We think it is no accident that the height of the anarchist movement - to what ever degree
we identify with that history - was precisely when it was an internationalist movement.
Just as capitalism and state power are global - and generate global crisis - so too must
the fight against it be.
Call for Anarchist Solidarity
We are calling for immediate acts of solidarity with rebels in Sudan (and against the
Sudanese & Saudi state) - whether that's banner drops, graffiti and wheat-pasting,
informational tabling, rowdy marches & demos, fundraisers to help Sudanese doctors get
medical supplies, or other creative acts of intervention that make sense in your context.
While this call is for immediate reaction we should be taking time to look at our local
terrain to find private or state run entities with economic ties to the Sudanese or Saudi
state and act against them to move our solidarity from what is most likely symbolic
actions to show the people of Sudan they are not alone to a combative solidarity that
impedes the smooth functioning of the TMC, the states that support and supply it, and the
logistical flows of the supplies used to repress the uprising.
Solidarity is never a one off action, but a constant process of building relationships
with other anarchists and movements for liberation, of examining, acting, and learning to
build a materially effective practice of attack. International solidarity is key because
Capital, it's defenders, and it's reaction fights globally and so should we.
Against Authoritarianism Anywhere
For Total Freedom Everywhere
Additional Resources on the Uprising
A Siege, Then a Storm: How Sudan's Sit-In Was Cleared
Revolutionaries Call for Total Civil Disobedience After Massacre by Military in Sudan
Sudan Sit-In: How Protesters Picked a Spot and Made It Theirs
Algeria, Sudan, and the Arab Spring
On Shared Struggles: From Sudan to the Gilets Jaunes to #MeToo
Sudan: Revolution Til The End
Women Led Protests Are Shaking Up Sudan
https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2019/06/11/rebellion-in-sudan/
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Message: 2
After months of sectoral mobilizations, particularly in education, and inter-union work,
workers in Brazil are expected to take to the streets this Friday, June 14, 2019 at the
call of various trade unions in the country. The Libertarian Communist Union (UCL) judges
this mobilization salutary and relays the call of the Brazilian Anarchist Coordination.
---- The Libertarian Communist Union (France) welcomes and supports the workers of Brazil
who will be on strike on June 14th. The country's trade unions (CGTB, CSB, CTB,
CSP-Conlutas, CUT, Força Sindical, Intersindical-Central, Intersindical-Luta Instrumento,
Nova Central, UGT) are calling for a day of general strike.
The main reason is the counter-reform of the pensions that Bolsonaro and his ministers
want to establish, prolonging and aggravating the attacks already carried out on this
subject by the previous governments. But many other demands are also borne by those who
will be on strike on June 14: against the "witch hunt" in public services and companies
(including education), for the maintenance, development and accessibility for all public
services useful to the population, against discrimination against police, military and
paramilitary violence, for the respect and extension of trade union rights, etc.
Involved in social struggles in France, activists of the Libertarian Communist Union are
aware of the need to make internationalism alive in the labor movement. To make known and
to support the struggles in the different regions of the world can only contribute to it.
We send a special greeting to our comrades from the Coordenação Anarquista Brasileira ,
members of the Anarkismo Network and relay their call.
Paris, June 14, 2019.
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Bresil-Greve-generale-face-a-l-offensive-de-Bolsonaro
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Message: 3
Eimhéar Ní Fhearóir responds to the election analysis offered by Sinn Fein's Natalie
Treacy. Eimhéar Ní Fhearóir is an anarchist who was previously involved with republican
activism. ---- In the wake of this year's local elections, activists from the right across
the broad left were left in a state of astonished mourning, cursing an electorate that
didn't turn up on the day. One Sinn Féin office was heard being described as "like a
wake-house" by an activist in the days following the count. ---- Natalie Treacy's
post-#LE19 election analysis is worth reading, not only because it (unintentionally)
speaks volumes about the state of local representative democracy in this jurisdiction, but
also because it has something to say about where Sinn Féin, and indeed a lot of
social-democractic/leftish political groups go wrong when it comes to their engagement
with the people they represent.
So it's a week now since the elections and I received that devastating phone call to tell
me that the people of my core area's didnt bother to take 10 minutes out of their day to
go and vote for me and that I am probably not going to be 're elected. Now this would be
perfectly fine ,if I hadn't of worked my arse off for the last 5 year's on behalf of the
people I represent. This would be perfectly fine ,if you the people I represent didnt
believe I deserved to be 're elected.
This would be perfectly fine, if you believed that our council would be better off without
Sinn Féin fighting your corner in Fingal but NO, this was simply because the people in my
core area's just didn't bother to come out and vote!
As I sat in a room last night with all my other Sinn Féin elected comrades from across
Dublin and listened to them all talking about what we did wrong in the elections because
we did make mistakes of course we did. And we will learn by our mistakes and we will move
on. But one thing we can't do is work any harder than we did. Every one of our
Councillor's and their team's worked their hardest on behalf of the community's they
represent. However what stood out in the room most was the hurt. Yes the hurt ,hurt we all
felt that our core area's didnt bother to take the time to come out and vote for us.
Some candidates and elected representatives put in serious graft. Others would sleep on
the floor if there was work in the bed, and depend very much on the work of their party
comrades. Whatever approach they take, it is very much seen that The Core Area is "their
patch." There are estates that some parties will not canvass because they don't see it as
worth their while. It's a Shinner estate. Or it's full of Fine Gaelers etc. If you're in
the business of running in elections, knowing where your core vote comes from has a value.
You can focus your resources more efficiently (in theory) or you might use a different
amount of posters because you are well known there.
The problem for Cllr. Treacy and others who think like her, is that they do not merely see
their core area as the place in which they have received the majority of their electoral
support in the past, but as a place where that past support entitles them to it
forevermore. There is no suggestion here that Cllr. Treacy did not "work her arse off" for
the past five years, but to look at an election result in which you didn't do as well as
you expected, and come to the conclusion that the fault lies with the residents of the
core area who "didn't bother to take ten minutes out of their day to go and vote,"
displays a stunning level of arrogance. The absence of any reflection as to the reason why
people didn't flock to their polling stations reveals the sense of entitlement that is at
the heart of clientelism and is embedded within Irish electoral politics.
It is clear that there was no pause to assess why people didn't turn out to vote; Was the
choice offered on the ballot so uninspiring that it wasn't worth leaving the house "for
ten minutes"? Or perhaps people see how limited the scope of local democracy is. Or maybe
the electorate felt that the sitting councillors did not do what they expected them to do.
If it is true that people couldn't be arsed get off their sofas, it is also true that Sinn
Féin failed to convince those people that they were worth getting up for.
There is no point in telling people that if they just vote, that the Councillors will then
have "the power to make a difference in your area" when many people haven't seen any
betterment from voting Sinn Féin, or anyone else, in local elections. In fact, many will
have seen a deterioration in their quality of life, finding it more and more difficult to
get somewhere to live or a place for their child to go to school or transport to their
place of work. Telling communities that when the funding gets cut and their area is
neglected that "You need to take some responsibility for that. You need to realise that
all the moaning in the world is not going to help you. You had the power to make a change
and you just didn't bother to come out and vote" is a disgraceful way to speak to or about
constituents. By that logic, the people who voted Labour in 2011 deserved to have their
child benefit cut. It smacks of victim blaming and also attributes far more power to
councillors than they actually have. We have a largely centralised budget system and
councillors, regardless of how hard they work, don't have a role in the Dáil budget
process. Housing was one of the biggest issues of the election and councillors, in most
cases, cannot deliver housing for people.
There are people voting for Sinn Féin since they turned 18 and are still living in their
Ma's boxroom with a child because they're 10 years on the council house waiting list. That
person doesn't need to take responsibility for that, and she does not need to have it
explained to her that moaning won't help her. She knows it won't, but she also knows that
taking the ten minutes to go and vote isn't going to help her either.
Cllr. Treacy, as an aside, concedes that people can vote for whoever they want - "that's
democracy" though other republicans and lefties have made similar comments about "people
with short memories" voting Green, FF, and Labour. But some of us see the limitations of
local and parliamentary democracy compared to community led direct action. Communities do
not need anyone to stand up and fight for their corner. If the anti-water charges campaign
taught us anything it's that communities are already standing up for themselves. Compared
to the results achieved through community organising and direct action there is nothing in
representative democracy for us. Cllr. Treacy does not understand that abstention is not
simply dispensing with responsibility for what happens within communities, but an
acknowledgement that representative democracy isn't all it's cracked up to be. Of course,
abstention does not always imply a conscious ideological break with liberal democracy,
but, having seen no tangible improvement in their area in the years in which they voted SF
and other poles of opposition, why should people in "core areas" feel obliged to go out
and vote?
The central weakness of local government in the 26 Counties is that it is entirely
controlled by a central government that is determined to dispense with the State
delivering public services, moving closer towards dependency on the community and
voluntary sector to deliver them instead. What most political parties fail to recognise is
that the network of councils that we have do not provide a facility to engage in local
democracy but rather, provides a system of local administration. Those that fail to see
this hold up the local council as the place where decisions affecting your community are
genuinely made, and they need to keep up that pretence in order to justify people voting
for them, and by doing so they actually hamper any prospect of developing or engaging in
something that might count as participatory democracy.
The political system is dominated and corrupted by the privileged, paralysed by
clientelism and dynastic politics, and resistant to change - Sinn Féin General Election
Manifesto 2011
For decades, people in Ireland have watched stories of corruption emerge to the point
where it is an embedded part of the political structure. Cllr. Hugh McIlvaney, a man
caught on video asking for "loads of money" in exchange for supporting a wind farm, which
was subsequently aired on national television, was reelected in Monaghan this year. The
line between McIlvaney's corrupt "Give me money and I'll give the nod to your wind farm"
and a local councillor's "Vote for me and I'll help you get a house from the council"
differ in financial value and beneficiary, but the mechanism is the same. Theoretically,
the core area of an elected councillor's vote is usually the one where they've engaged in
the most clientist based exchanges (as per Cllr. Treacy's post). For Sinn Féin
representatives, it will likely be working class areas where the councillor or TD will
exercise what influence they can to ensure that person gets their medical card or social
housing, and the representative expects that they will receive a vote from that person in
return.
The councillor's power in this circumstance is not that they can actually get the medical
card or the house, but they can help with form filling or find the right person in the
council to speak to; they can navigate a bureaucracy that appears labyrinthine to many. In
their view, doing this is them exercising their role and "standing up for their community"
and entitles them to a vote, but providing a clear route to information and a pathway to
the people that actually allocate resources is not, and should be mistaken for, actual
local democracy. They are basically doing a job that citizens information and council
offices exist for. The nature of clientelism in Irish politics and the withholding of
direct information to the public means that many communities are beholden to the local
councillors, and given that they have such little a role in resource allocation in the
first place, spending their days writing housing representations for people, it doesn't
really matter which party is elected.
When a councillor tells a person that they are in X place on the housing list and there
are some houses currently being renovated they could be in line for, it can often create
the illusion that there is someone pulling strings on their behalf, "I've put a word in
with the council. You'll get a letter soon." It doesn't matter that all the Councillor did
was write to an administrative officer to clarify their position on the housing list.
Maintaining the appearance of having influence and control in the process of resource
allocation suits the purpose of the political party.
It is a curious situation when politicians can simultaneously tell people they have the
power to change the system but they will only have themselves to blame if the wrong
decisions are made, given that politicians need to uphold the idea that people are
powerless in the absence of "representation" in order to maintain their own positions as
relevant. The benefit for the bureaucrats of the Council is that they don't have to engage
with the "great unwashed" day in, day out, leaving dialogue with the public to the
politician. The politician can then portray themselves as a great worker for the community
mandated to engage with the people who actually have the power to make decisions affecting
people's lives.
This theatre is made routine by the constituency office and the advice clinic generally
staffed by the party loyal who carry out the brokerage with the council about fixing
windows and doors; the attendance at funerals and residents association meetings and an
apparition-like ability to appear when a local photographer arrives with a camera;
followed by an increased omnipresence during election season. When the local
representative goes from residents association to community policing forum to the local
hospice fundraiser, it doesn't matter that they didn't actually do anything at any of
them, but it matters that they were seen. Being seen equates to doing work, and in this
respect they work their arses off for you, so you must vote for them in exchange. Except
that there was no exchange as all they have done is claim credit for you getting what you
were entitled to in the first place.
The State cannot keep pace with demands for state benefits, so the politician becomes the
mediator, simultaneously managing the expectations of the community on behalf of the
council and increasing their profile in the area by saying what they are doing is
advocacy. The middle classes often have increased access and less need for state services
so the politician services them differently. The local politician in this sphere is more
concerned with getting them an Educate Together school rather than more social housing.
They will have no role in it, but by making enquiries with the civil servant who has
respect for their mandate they can market their work as being an integral part of the
"democratic" process.
It is common practice for those who do the nerdwork of crunching election numbers to look
at tallies from count centres to check *how many votes came from that box covering streets
X and Y* against *how many people from streets X and Y were assisted by the councillor or
TD*. Where there are fewer votes for the politician in the box than there were in the pool
of people, the result is hurt feelings, because as far as the councillor is concerned,
those people have gotten work for free. They did not pay for assistance with their votes.
But ballots are not currency and real democracy is not a transaction. Nobody has a moral
obligation to vote for the person who assisted with them navigating bureaucracy.
Maybe it's time that Cllr. Treacy and others from SF, across the republican movement and
the left considered the possibility that the problem is not their core constituents, it is
a system that is not democratic and does not work for those communities.
Related Link:
https://www.thepensivequill.com/2019/06/from-full-confidence-of-victory-to.html?m=1
https://www.anarkismo.net/article/31443
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Message: 4
The owner of CJ Barbers, Hamid Caram, this morning assaulted a female Brighton SolFed
member, grabbing her by the arm and pushing her whilst she was standing peacefully outside
the shop. We staged a picket outside CJ Barbers this morning as part of our ongoing
campaign demanding £2800 in pay for a worker who worked unpaid for CJ Barbers as part of
an ‘apprenticeship' and on the promise of training and a job that never materialised. The
owners of CJ Barbers responded to the picket in their now familiar way, with intimidating
and violent behaviour that follows on from their threats to blacklist, smear, and assault
the worker at the centre of this campaign. ---- CJ Barbers are clearly rattled by the
power of solidarity amongst workers, which is far stronger than the intimidation of
arrogant bosses. We'll be sticking around until this worker gets the money they're owed
An injury to one is an injury to all!
More information on his dispute:
http://www.brightonsolfed.org.uk/brighton/no-work-without-pay-boycott-cj-barbers
http://www.brightonsolfed.org.uk/brighton/cj-barbers-dispute-business-threatens-to-blacklist-solfed-member
http://www.brightonsolfed.org.uk/brighton/i-train-people-for-free-because-thats-how-it-works-cj-barbers-owner-cyrus-shabani-admits-to
http://www.brightonsolfed.org.uk/brighton/i-was-desperate-for-work-desperate-to-find-a-stable-career-and-trade-i-could-rely-on-the-cj
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Message: 5
We were present on the streets of Curitiba in defense of the retirement and against the
attacks of the above. With a lot of struggle, organization and solidarity we will achieve
our goals!
Fight! Create! Popular Power!
Anarchist Collective Class Struggle
Popular ReporterLike Page
CURITIBA-PR I Social movements, workers and students took to the streets of the city
fighting the attacks of the government and the right to retire.
------------------------------
Message: 6
Every woman must be able to give birth in the conditions she wants. This is the conviction
of Marie-Hélène Lahaye, Belgian lawyer whose book is a plea for a respectful birth above
all ... women. ---- Throughout the book, the author shows how women are physically and
psychologically abused during this event that some call " the most beautiful day of their
lives ". This may be a fine day, if we manage to overcome humiliation, the obstacles to
freedom, intrusions into intimacy, scalping and other gavages drug that many (too)!) of us
suffered during their delivery. The medical profession often treats the parturients as
incapacitated, even as dangers for their own little ones. It is necessary to rehabilitate
the physiological capacity of the future mothers to give birth to their children, an
ideological fight that the feminists of the previous generations did not want to lead
since the painless birth was a revolution. Far from highlighting the suffering, the author
shows that those who choose to limit the medicalization are neither crazy nor retrograde
on the feminist level. It is about having all the keys in hand to accept or refuse the
cascade of medical gestures that each chemical discharge entails. But once actresses of
our decisions, it is still necessary that these are respected! And this is where the
medical staff takes for his rank: they oscillate, according to the investigation of MH
Lahaye, between intimidations and automatisms. All in a climate of sexism that belittles
us at a time of power and fragility.
All the excesses of the medical deliveries pass there. Above all, the author breaks the
prejudices on the so-called " security " obtained by the massification of deliveries in
hospital. What made births less dangerous for children and their mothers is above all ...
the progress of hygiene.
Marie-Hélène Lahaye, Childbirth: Women deserve better , Éditions Michalon, 2018, 296
pages, 20 euros. A short version is available on the blog Marie gives birth there .
A chapter is particularly speaking, which proposes to transpose on the sexual act all that
women undergo during childbirth. Lights in the face, perpetual entry of doctors and
trainees during the act, vaginal touches, additions of drugs to improve the " performance
" ... Thus, we perceive the incongruity of these quasi-systematic practices. On the
contrary, seeing birth as an intimate moment makes it possible to restore its strength and
beauty.
Scientifically rigorous and very knowledgeable in the medical field, MH Lahaye seeks above
all to put women back at the center of the delivery process, when all too often they are
deprived of them. Much remains to be done to ensure that the silence around obstetric
violence ceases, and that the order of gynecologists is more attentive to pregnant women,
the first concerned by the birth of generations of tomorrow.
Doriane (AL Var)
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Lire-Lahaye-Accouchement-les-femmes-meritent-mieux
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