Today's Topics:
1. [Italy] Lorenzo Orsetti buried in the cemetery of Florentine
hills By ANA (pt) [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. Hong Kong: Anarchists in the Resistance to the Extradition
Bill - An Interview (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. US, black rose fed: AUDIO BAKUNIN: REVOLUTIONS PODCAST ON
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. France, Alternative Libertaire AL #295 - Read: Ponthus, "At
the Line, Factory Sheets" (fr, it, pt)[machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
5. Britain, AFED, organise magazine: Fire In My Belly
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
6. Poland, ozzip.pl, WORKERS' INITIATIVE: Report on Poznan
preparations for autumn protests in education [machine
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
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Message: 1
This Sunday, June 23, we greet Lorenzo Orsetti, Orso, Tekoser. Many were present this
morning in the Careggi caravan for the Mutual Aid Society of Rifredi in Florence, where
more people were present. They were present at the funeral, as well as friends, family
members, Florentines and inhabitants of their neighborhood of Rifredi, companions and
companions of Lorenzo in Rojava, as well as delegations from different countries. Also
present companions and companions anarchists from all over Tuscany and also from Milan,
Rome, Reggio Emilia, Cosenza and many other places. There were banners with many realities
of movement throughout Italy. Among the many interventions, a companion of the Livorno
Anarchist Federation read this greeting from the FAI - Italian Anarchist Federation.
" Greetings to Lorenzo Orsetti. The desire for a world of freedom, equality and solidarity
changed the choices of Lorenzo Orsetti, which is why the Italian Anarchist Federation is
close to his family, friends and friends, companions and companions. We salute Lorenzo as
a guerrilla, internationalist and anarchist . "
Livonian Anarchists
Translation> Liberto
------------------------------
Message: 2
Current Events ---- Since 1997, when it ceased to be the last major colonial holding of
Great Britain, Hong Kong has been a part of the People's Republic of China, while
maintaining a distinct political and legal system. In February, an unpopular bill was
introduced that would make it possible to extradite fugitives in Hong Kong to countries
that the Hong Kong government has no existing extradition agreements with-including
mainland China. On June 9, over a million people took the streets in protest; on June12,
protesters engaged in pitched confrontations with police; on June 16, two million people
participated in one of the biggest marches in the city's history. The following interview
with an anarchist collective in Hong Kong explores the context of this wave of unrest. Our
correspondents draw on over a decade of experience in the previous social movements in an
effort to come to terms with the motivations that drive the participants, and elaborate
upon the new forms of organization and subjectivation that define this new sequence of
struggle.
In the United States, the most recent popular struggles have cohered around resisting
Donald Trump and the extreme right. In France, the Gilets Jaunes movement drew anarchists,
leftists, and far-right nationalists into the streets against Macron's centrist government
and each other. In Hong Kong, we see a social movement against a state governed by the
authoritarian left. What challenges do opponents of capitalism and the state face in this
context? How can we outflank nationalists, neoliberals, and pacifists who seek to control
and exploit our movements?
As China extends its reach, competing with the United States and European Union for global
hegemony, it is important to experiment with models of resistance against the political
model it represents, while taking care to prevent neoliberals and reactionaries from
capitalizing on popular opposition to the authoritarian left. Anarchists in Hong Kong are
uniquely positioned to comment on this.
The front façade of the Hong Kong Police headquarters in Wan Chai, covered in egg yolks on
the evening of June 21. Hundreds of protesters sealed the entrance, demanding the
unconditional release of every person that has been arrested in relation to the struggle
thus far. The banner below reads "Never Surrender." Photo by KWBB from Tak Cheong Lane
Collective.
"The left" is institutionalized and ineffectual in Hong Kong. Generally, the "scholarist"
liberals and "citizenist" right-wingers have a chokehold over the narrative whenever
protests break out, especially when mainland China is involved.
In the struggle against the extradition bill, has the escalation in tactics made it
difficult for those factions to represent or manage "the movement"? Has the revolt
exceeded or undermined their capacity to shape the discourse? Do the events of the past
month herald similar developments in the future, or has this been a common subterranean
theme in popular unrest in Hong Kong already?
We think it's important for everyone to understand that-thus far-what has happened cannot
be properly understood to be "a movement." It's far too inchoate for that. What I mean is
that, unlike the so-called "Umbrella Movement," which escaped the control of its founding
architects (the intellectuals who announced "Occupy Central With Love And Peace" a year in
advance) very early on while adhering for the most part to the pacifistic, citizenist
principles that they outlined, there is no real guiding narrative uniting the events that
have transpired so far, no foundational credo that authorizes-or sanctifies-certain forms
of action while proscribing others in order to cultivate a spectacular, exemplary façade
that can be photographed and broadcast to screens around the world.
The short answer to your question, then, is... yes, thus far, nobody is authorized to
speak on behalf of the movement. Everybody is scrambling to come to terms with a nascent
form of subjectivity that is taking shape before us, now that the formal figureheads of
the tendencies you referenced have been crushed and largely marginalized. That includes
the "scholarist" fraction of the students, now known as "Demosisto," and the right-wing
"nativists," both of which were disqualified from participating in the legislative council
after being voted in.
Throughout this interview, we will attempt to describe our own intuitions about what this
embryonic form of subjectivity looks like and the conditions from which it originates. But
these are only tentative. Whatever is going on, we can say that it emerges from within a
field from which the visible, recognized protagonists of previous sequences, including
political parties, student bodies, and right-wing and populist groups, have all been
vanquished or discredited. It is a field populated with shadows, haunted by shades,
echoes, and murmurs. As of now, center stage remains empty.
This means that the more prevalent "default" modes of understanding are invoked to fill
the gaps. Often, it appears that we are set for an unfortunate reprisal of the sequence
that played itself out in the Umbrella Movement:
appalling show of police force
public outrage manifests itself in huge marches and subsequent occupations, organized and
understood as sanctimonious displays of civil virtue
these occupations ossify into tense, puritanical, and paranoid encampments obsessed with
policing behavior to keep it in line with the prescribed script
the movement collapses, leading to five years of disenchantment among young people who do
not have the means to understand their failure to achieve universal suffrage as anything
less than abject defeat.
Of course, this is just a cursory description of the Umbrella Movement of five years
ago-and even then, there was a considerable amount of "excess": novel and emancipatory
practices and encounters that the official narrative could not account for. These
experiences should be retrieved and recovered, though this is not the time or place for
that. What we face now is another exercise in mystification, in which the protocols that
come into operation every time the social fabric enters a crisis may foreclose the
possibilities that are opening up. It would be premature to suggest that this is about to
happen, however.
In our cursory and often extremely unpleasant perusals of Western far-left social media,
we have noticed that all too often, the intelligence falls victim to our penchant to run
the rule over this or that struggle. So much of what passes for "commentary" tends to fall
on either side of two poles-impassioned acclamation of the power of the proletarian
intelligence or cynical denunciation of its populist recuperation. None of us can bear the
suspense of having to suspend our judgment on something outside our ken, and we hasten to
find someone who can formalize this unwieldy mass of information into a rubric that we can
comprehend and digest, in order that we can express our support or apprehension.
We have no real answers for anybody who wants to know whether they should care about
what's going on in Hong Kong as opposed to, say, France, Algeria, Sudan. But we can plead
with those who are interested in understanding what's happening to take the time to
develop an understanding of this city. Though we don't entirely share their politics and
have some quibbles with the facts presented therein, we endorse any coverage of events in
Hong Kong that Ultra, Nao, and Chuang have offered over the years to the English-speaking
world. Ultra's piece on the Umbrella Movement is likely the best account of the events
currently available.
Our banner in the marches, which is usually found at the front of our drum squad. It reads
"There are no ‘good citizens', only potential criminals." This banner was made in response
to propaganda circulated by pro-Beijing establishmentarian political groups in Hong Kong,
assuring "good citizens" everywhere that extradition measures do not threaten those with a
sound conscience who are quietly minding their own business. Photo by WWS from Tak Cheong
Lane Collective.
If we understand "the left" as a political subject that situates questions of class
struggle and labor at the center of its politics, it's not entirely certain that such a
thing even properly exists in Hong Kong. Of course, friends of ours run excellent blogs,
and there are small grouplets and the like. Certainly, everybody talks about the wealth
gap, rampant poverty, the capitalist class, the fact that we are all "???" (jobbers,
working folk) struggling to survive. But, as almost anywhere else, the primary form of
subjectivity and identification that everyone subscribes to is the idea of citizenship in
a national community. It follows that this imagined belonging is founded on negation,
exclusion, and demarcation from the Mainland. You can only imagine the torture of seeing
the tiresome "I'm a Hong Konger, not Chinese!" t-shirts on the subway, or hearing "Hong
Kongers add oil!" (essentially, "way to go!") chanted ad nauseam for an entire afternoon
during recent marches.
It should interest readers from abroad to know that the word "left" in Hong Kong has two
connotations. Obviously, for the generation of our parents and their parents before them,
"Left" means Communist. Which is why "Left" could refer to a businessman who is a Party
member, or a pro-establishment politician who is notoriously pro-China. For younger
people, the word "Left" is a stigma (often conjugated with "plastic," a word in Cantonese
that sounds like "dickhead") attached to a previous generation of activists who were
involved in a prior sequence of social struggle-including struggles to prevent the
demolition of Queen's Ferry Pier in Central, against the construction of the high-speed
Railway going through the northeast of Hong Kong into China, and against the destruction
of vast tracts of farmland in the North East territories, all of which ended in
demoralizing defeat. These movements were often led by articulate spokespeople-artists or
NGO representatives who forged tactical alliances with progressives in the pan-democratic
movement. The defeat of these movements, attributed to their apprehensions about endorsing
direct action and their pleas for patience and for negotiations with authority, is now
blamed on that generation of activists. All the rage and frustration of the young people
who came of age in that period, heeding the direction of these figureheads who commanded
them to disperse as they witnessed yet another defeat, yet another exhibition of
orchestrated passivity, has progressively taken a rightward turn. Even secondary and
university student bodies that have traditionally been staunchly center-left and
progressive have become explicitly nationalist.
One crucial tenet among this generation, emerging from a welter of disappointments and
failures, is a focus on direct action, and a consequent refusal of "small group
discussions," "consensus," and the like. This was a theme that first appeared in the
umbrella movement-most prominently in the Mong Kok encampment, where the possibilities
were richest, but where the right was also, unfortunately, able to establish a firm
foothold. The distrust of the previous generation remains prevalent. For example, on the
afternoon of June 12, in the midst of the street fights between police and protesters,
several members of a longstanding social-democratic party tasked themselves with relaying
information via microphone to those on the front lines, telling them where to withdraw to
if they needed to escape, what holes in the fronts to fill, and similar information.
Because of this distrust of parties, politicians, professional activists and their
agendas, many ignored these instructions and instead relied on word of mouth information
or information circulating in online messaging groups.
1
It's no exaggeration to say that the founding myth of this city is that refugees and
dissidents fled communist persecution to build an oasis of wealth and freedom, a fortress
of civil liberties safeguarded by the rule of law. In view of that, on a mundane level, it
could be said that many in Hong Kong already understand themselves as being in revolt, in
the way they live and the freedoms they enjoy-and that they consider this identity,
however vacuous and tenuous it may be, to be a property that has to be defended at all
costs. It shouldn't be necessary to say much here about the fact that much of the actual
ecological "wealth" that constitutes this city-its most interesting (and often poorest)
neighborhoods, a whole host of informal clubs, studios, and dwelling places situated in
industrial buildings, farmland in the Northeast territories, historic walled villages and
rural districts-are being pillaged and destroyed piece by piece by the state and private
developers, to the resounding indifference of these indignant citoyens.
In any case, if liberals are successful in deploying their Cold War language about the
need to defend civil liberties and human rights from the encroaching Red Tide, and
right-wing populist calls to defend the integrity of our identity also gain traction, it
is for these deep-rooted and rather banal historical reasons. Consider the timing of this
struggle, how it exploded when images of police brutalizing and arresting young students
went viral-like a perfect repetition of the prelude to the umbrella movement. This
happened within a week of the annual candlelight vigil commemorating those killed in the
Tiananmen Massacre on June 4, 1989, a date remembered in Hong Kong as the day tanks were
called in to steamroll over students peacefully gathering in a plea for civil liberties.
It is impossible to overstate the profundity of this wound, this trauma, in the formation
of the popular psyche; this was driven home when thousands of mothers gathered in public,
in an almost perfect mirroring of the Tiananmen mothers, to publicly grieve for the
disappeared futures of their children, now eclipsed in the shadow of the communist
monolith. It stupefies the mind to think that the police-not once now, but twice-broke the
greatest of all taboos: opening fire on the young.
In light of this, it would be naïve to suggest that anything significant has happened yet
to suggest that to escaping the "chokehold" that you describe "scholarist" liberals and
"citizenist" right-wingers maintaining on the narrative here. Both of these factions are
simply symptoms of an underlying condition, aspects of an ideology that has to be attacked
and taken apart in practice. Perhaps we should approach what is happening right now as a
sort of psychoanalysis in public, with the psychopathology of our city exposed in full
view, and see the actions we engage in collectively as a chance to work through traumas,
manias, and obsessive complexes together. While it is undoubtedly dismaying that the
momentum and morale of this struggle is sustained, across the social spectrum, by a
constant invocation of the "Hong Kong people," who are incited to protect their home at
all costs, and while this deeply troubling unanimity covers over many problems,
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we accept the turmoil and the calamity of our time, the need to intervene in circumstances
that are never of our own choosing. However bleak things may appear, this struggle offers
a chance for new encounters, for the elaboration of new grammars.
Graffiti seen in the road occupation in Admiralty near the government quarters, reading
"Carry a can of paint with you, it's a remedy for canine rabies." Cops are popularly
referred to as "dogs" here. Photo by WWS from Tak Cheong Lane Collective.
What has happened to the discourse of civility in the interlude between the umbrella
movement and now? Did it contract, expand, decay, transform?
That's an interesting question to ask. Perhaps the most significant thing that we can
report about the current sequence that, astonishingly, when a small fringe of protesters
attempted to break into the legislative council on June 9 following a day-long march, it
was not universally criticized as an act of lunacy or, worse, the work of China or police
provocateurs. Bear in mind that on June 9 and 12, the two attempts to break into the
legislative council building thus far, the legislative assembly was not in session; people
were effectively attempting to break into an empty building.
Now, much as we have our reservations about the effectiveness of doing such a thing in the
first place,
3
this is extraordinary, considering the fact that the last attempt to do so, which
occurred in a protest against development in the North East territories shortly before the
umbrella movement, took place while deliberations were in session and was broadly
condemned or ignored.
4
Some might suggest that the legacy of the Sunflower movement in Taiwan remains a big
inspiration for many here; others might say that the looming threat of Chinese annexation
is spurring the public to endorse desperate measures that they would otherwise chastise.
On the afternoon of June 12, when tens of thousands of people suddenly found themselves
assaulted by riot police, scrambling to escape from barrages of plastic bullets and tear
gas, nobody condemned the masked squads in the front fighting back against the advancing
lines of police and putting out the tear gas canisters as they landed. A longstanding,
seemingly insuperable gulf has always existed between the "peaceful" protesters
(pejoratively referred to as "peaceful rational non-violent dickheads" by most of us on
the other side) and the "bellicose" protesters who believe in direct action. Each side
tends to view the other with contempt.
Protesters transporting materials to build barricades. The graffiti on the wall can be
roughly (and liberally) translated as "Hong Kongers ain't nuthin' to fuck wit'." Photo by
WWS from Tak Cheong Lane Collective.
The online forum lihkg has functioned as a central place for young people to organize,
exchange political banter, and circulate information relating to this struggle. For the
first time, a whole host of threads on this site have been dedicated to healing this
breach or at least cultivating respect for those who do nothing but show up for the
marches every Sunday-if only because marches that number in the millions and bring parts
of the city to a temporary standstill are a pretty big deal, however mind-numbingly boring
they may be in actuality. The last time the marches were anywhere close to this huge, a
Chief Executive stepped down and the amending of a law regarding freedom of speech was
moved to the back burner. All manner of groups are attempting to invent a way to
contribute to the struggle, the most notable of which is the congregation of Christians
that have assembled in front of police lines at the legislative council, chanting the same
hymn without reprieve for a week and a half. That hymn has become a refrain that will
likely reverberate through struggles in the future, for better or worse.
Are there clear openings or lines of flight in this movement that would allow for
interventions that undermine the power of the police, of the law, of the commodity,
without producing a militant subject that can be identified and excised?
It is difficult to answer this question. Despite the fact that proletarians compose the
vast majority of people waging this struggle-proletarians whose lives are stolen from them
by soulless jobs, who are compelled to spend more and more of their wages paying rents
that continue to skyrocket because of comprehensive gentrification projects undertaken by
state officials and private developers (who are often one and the same)-you must remember
that "free market capitalism" is taken by many to be a defining trait of the cultural
identity of Hong Kong, distinguishing it from the "red" capitalism managed by the
Communist Party. What currently exists in Hong Kong, for some people, is far from ideal;
when one says "the rich," it invokes images of tycoon monopolies-cartels and communist
toadies who have formed a dark pact with the Party to feed on the blood of the poor.
So, just as people are ardent for a government and institutions that we can properly call
"our own"-yes, including the police-they desire a capitalism that we can finally call "our
own," a capitalism free from corruption, political chicanery, and the like. It's easy to
chuckle at this, but like any community gathered around a founding myth of pioneers
fleeing persecution and building a land of freedom and plenty from sacrifice and hard
work... it's easy to understand why this fixation exerts such a powerful hold on the
imagination.
This is a city that fiercely defends the initiative of the entrepreneur, of private
enterprise, and understands every sort of hustle as a way of making a living, a tactic in
the tooth-and-nail struggle for survival. This grim sense of life as survival is
omnipresent in our speech; when we speak of "working," we use the term "??," which
literally means looking for our next meal. That explains why protesters have traditionally
been very careful to avoid alienating the working masses by actions such as blockading a
road used by busses transporting working stiffs back home.
While we understand that much of our lives are preoccupied with and consumed by work,
nobody dares to propose the refusal of work, to oppose the indignity of being treated as
producer-consumers under the dominion of the commodity. The police are chastised for being
"running dogs" of an evil totalitarian empire, rather than being what they actually are:
the foot soldiers of the regime of property.
What is novel in the current situation is that many people now accept that acts of
solidarity with the struggle, however minute,
5
can lead to arrest, and are prepared to tread this shifting line between legality and
illegality. It is no exaggeration to say that we are witnessing the appearance of a
generation that is prepared for imprisonment, something that was formerly restricted to
"professional activists" at the forefront of social movements. At the same time, there is
no existing discussion regarding what the force of law is, how it operates, or the
legitimacy of the police and prisons as institutions. People simply feel they need to
employ measures that transgress the law in order the preserve the sanctity of the Law,
which has been violated and dishonored by the cowboys of communist corruption.
However, it is important to note that this is the first time that proposals for strikes in
various sectors and general strikes have been put forward regarding an issue that is, on
the surface of it, unrelated to labor.
Our friends in the "Housewives Against Extradition" section of the march on September 9.
The picture shows a group of housewives and aunties, many of whom were on the streets for
the first time. Photo by WWS from Tak Cheong Lane Collective.
How do barricades and occupations like the one from a few days ago reproduce themselves in
the context of Hong Kong?
Barricades are simply customary now. Whenever people gather en masse and intend to occupy
a certain territory to establish a front, barricades are built quickly and effectively.
There is a creeping sense now that occupations are becoming routine and futile, physically
taxing and ultimately inefficient. What's interesting in this struggle is that people are
really spending a lot of time thinking about what "works," what requires the least
expenditure of effort and achieves the maximum effect in paralyzing parts of the city or
interrupting circulation, rather than what holds the greatest moral appeal to an imagined
"public" watching everything from the safety of the living room-or even, conversely, what
"feels" the most militant.
There have been many popular proposals for "non-cooperative" quotidian actions such as
jamming up an entire subway train by coordinating groups of friends to pack the cars with
people and luggage for a whole afternoon, or cancelling bank accounts and withdrawing
savings from savings accounts in order to create inflation. Some have spread suggestions
regarding how to dodge paying taxes for the rest of your life. These might not seem like
much, but what's interesting is the relentless circulation of suggestions from all manner
of quarters, from people with varying kinds of expertise, about how people can act on
their own initiative where they live or work and in their everyday lives, rather than
imagining "the struggle" as something that is waged exclusively on the streets by masked,
able-bodied youth.
Whatever criticisms anybody might have about what has happened thus far, this formidable
exercise in collective intelligence is really incredibly impressive-an action can be
proposed in a message group or on an anonymous message board thread, a few people organize
to do it, and it's done without any fuss or fanfare. Forms circulate and multiply as
different groups try them out and modify them.
In the West, Leninists and Maoists have been screaming bloody murder about "CIA Psyop" or
"Western backed color revolution." Have hegemonic forces in Hong Kong invoked the "outside
agitator" theme on the ground at a narrative level?
Actually, that is the official line of the Chief Executive, who has repeatedly said that
she regards the events of the past week as riotous behavior incited by foreign interests
that are interested in conducting a "color revolution" in the city. I'm not sure if she
would repeat that line now that she has apologized publicly for "creating contradictions"
and discord with her decisions, but all the same-it's hilarious that tankies share the
exact same opinion as our formal head of state.
It's an open secret that various pro-democracy NGOs, parties, and thinktanks receive
American funding. It's not some kind of occult conspiracy theory that only tankies know
about. But these tankies are suggesting that the platform that coordinates the marches-a
broad alliance of political parties, NGOs, and the like-is also the ideological spearhead
and architect of the "movement," which is simply a colossal misunderstanding. That
platform has been widely denounced, discredited, and mocked by the "direct action"
tendencies that are forming all around us, and it is only recently that, as we said above,
there are slightly begrudging threads on the Internet offering them indirect praise for
being able to coordinate marches that actually achieve something. If only tankies would
stop treating everybody like mindless neo-colonial sheep acting at the cryptic behest of
Western imperialist intelligence.
That said, it would be dishonest if we failed to mention that, alongside threads on
message boards discussing the niceties of direct action tactics abroad, there are also
threads alerting everyone to the fact that voices in the White House have expressed their
disapproval for the law. Some have even celebrated this. Also, there is a really wacky
petition circulating on Facebook to get people to appeal to the White House for foreign
intervention. I'm sure one would see these sorts of things in any struggle of this scale
in any non-Western city. They aren't smoking guns confirming imperialist manipulation;
they are fringe phenomena that are not the driving force behind events thus far.
Have any slogans, neologisms, new slang, popular talking points, or funny phrases emerged
that are unique to the situation?
Yes, lots, though we're not sure how we would go about translating them. But the force
that is generating these memes, that is inspiring all these Whatsapp and Telegram stickers
and catchphrases, is actually the police force.
Between shooting people in the eye with plastic bullets, flailing their batons about, and
indiscriminately firing tear gas canisters at peoples' heads and groins, they also found
the time to utter some truly classic pearls that have made their way on to t-shirts. One
of these bons mots is the rather unfortunate and politically incorrect "liberal cunt." In
the heat of a skirmish between police and protesters, a policeman called someone at the
frontlines by that epithet. All our swear words in Cantonese revolve around male and
female genitalia, unfortunately; we have quite a few words for private parts. In
Cantonese, this formulation doesn't sound as sensible as it does in English. Said together
in Cantonese, "liberal" and "cunt" sounds positively hilarious.
Does this upheaval bear any connections to the fishball riots or Hong Kong autonomy from a
few years ago?
A: The "fishball riots" were a demonstrative lesson in many ways, especially for people
like us, who found ourselves spectators situated at some remove from the people involved.
It was a paroxysmic explosion of rage against the police, a completely unexpected
aftershock from the collapse of the umbrella movement. An entire party, the erstwhile
darlings of right-wing youth everywhere, "Hong Kong Indigenous," owes its whole career to
this riot. They made absolutely sure that everyone knew they were attending, showing up in
uniform and waving their royal blue flags at the scene. They were voted into office,
disqualified, and incarcerated-one of the central members is now seeking asylum in
Germany, where his views on Hong Kong independence have apparently softened considerably
in the course of hanging out with German Greens. That is fresh in the memory of folks who
know that invisibility is now paramount.
What effect has Joshua Wong's release had?
A: We are not sure how surprised readers from overseas will be to discover, after perhaps
watching that awful documentary about Joshua Wong on Netflix, that his release has not
inspired much fanfare at all. Demosisto are now effectively the "Left Plastic" among a new
batch of secondary students.
Are populist factions functioning as a real force of recuperation?
A: All that we have written above illustrates how, while the struggle currently escapes
the grasp of every established group, party, and organization, its content is populist by
default. The struggle has attained a sprawling scale and drawn in a wide breadth of
actors; right now, it is expanding by the minute. But there is little thought given to the
fact that many of those who are most obviously and immediately affected by the law will be
people whose work takes place across the border-working with and providing aid to workers
in Shenzhen, for instance.
Nobody is entirely sure what the actual implications of the law are. Even accounts written
by professional lawyers vary quite widely, and this gives press outlets that brand
themselves as "voices of the people"
6
ample space to frame the entire issue as simply a matter of Hong Kong's constitutional
autonomy being compromised, with an entire city in revolt against the imposition of an
all-encompassing surveillance state.
Perusing message boards and conversing with people around the government complex, you
would think that the introduction of this law means that expressions of dissent online or
objectionable text messages to friends on the Mainland could lead to extradition. This is
far from being the case, as far as the letter of the law goes. But the events of the last
few years, during which booksellers in Hong Kong have been disappeared for selling
publications banned on the Mainland and activists in Hong Kong have been detained and
deprived of contact upon crossing the border, offer little cause to trust a party that is
already notorious for cooking up charges and contravening the letter of the law whenever
convenient. Who knows what it will do once official authorization is granted.
Paranoia invariably sets in whenever the subject of China comes up. On the evening of June
12, when the clouds of tear gas were beginning to clear up, the founder of a Telegram
message group with 10,000+ active members was arrested by the police, who commanded him to
unlock his phone. His testimony revealed that he was told that even if he refused, they
would hack his phone anyway. Later, the news reported that he was using a Xiaomi phone at
the time. This news went viral, with many commenting that his choice of phone was both
bold and idiotic, since urban legend has it that Xiaomi phones not only have a "backdoor"
that permits Xiaomi to access the information on every one of its phones and assume
control of the information therein, but that Xiaomi-by virtue of having its servers in
China-uploads all information stored on its cloud to the database of party overlords. It
is futile to try to suggest that users who are anxious about such things can take measures
to seal backdoors, or that background information leeching can be detected by simply
checking the data usage on your phone. Xiaomi is effectively regarded as an expertly
engineered Communist tracking device, and arguments about it are no longer technical, but
ideological to the point of superstition.
This "post-truth" dimension of this struggle, compounded with all the psychopathological
factors that we enumerated above, makes everything that is happening that much more
perplexing, that much more overwhelming. For so long, fantasy has been the impetus for
social struggle in this city-the fantasy of a national community, urbane, free-thinking,
civilized and each sharing in the negative freedoms that the law provides, the fantasy of
electoral democracy... Whenever these affirmative fantasies are put at risk, they are
defended and enacted in public, en masse, and the sales for "I Am Hong Konger"[sic]go
through the roof.
This is what gives the proceedings a distinctly conservative, reactionary flavor, despite
how radical and decentralized the new forms of action are. All we can do as a collective
is seek ways to subvert this fantasy, to expose and demonstrate its vacuity in form and
content.
At this time, it feels surreal that everybody around us is so certain, so clear about what
they need to do-oppose this law with every means that they have available to them-while
the reasons for doing so remain hopelessly obscure. It could very well be the case that
this suffocating opacity is our lot for the time being, in this phase premised upon more
action, less talk, on the relentless need to keep abreast of and act on the flow of
information that is constantly accelerating around us.
In so many ways, what we see happening around us is a fulfillment of what we have dreamt
of for years. So many bemoan the "lack of political leadership," which they see as a
noxious habit developed over years of failed movements, but the truth is that those who
are accustomed to being protagonists of struggles, including ourselves as a collective,
have been overtaken by events. It is no longer a matter of a tiny scene of activists
concocting a set of tactics and programs and attempting to market them to the public. "The
public" is taking action all around us, exchanging techniques on forums, devising ways to
evade surveillance, to avoid being arrested at all costs. It is now possible to learn more
about fighting the police in one afternoon than we did in a few years.
In the midst of this breathless acceleration, is it possible to introduce another rhythm,
in which we can engage in a collective contemplation of what has become of us, and what we
are becoming as we rush headlong into the tumult?
As ever, we stand here, fighting alongside our neighbors, ardently looking for friends.
Hand-written statements by protesters, weathered after an afternoon of heavy rain. Photo
by WWS from Tak Cheong Lane Collective.
After discussing the preliminary draft of this article, one of us raised reservations
about this statement, stating that it wasn't an entirely accurate representation of
events. While quite a few people ignored the directions of those holding the microphones,
others were receptive to them, taking them into account while also receiving information
streams from various messaging channels. One must remember that a significant proportion
of people who have taken to the streets are out there for the first time, and quite often
can be overwhelmed by panic-there were scenes, for example, of young people who broke down
in fits of tears in front of the police lines, and had to be taken out of the line of fire
by others. It is also worth describing our own experiences on June 21, when several
blockades of government buildings were organized by protesters following the failure of
the chief executive to respond to a popular ultimatum. That afternoon involved hundreds of
protesters who were quick to propose, discuss, evaluate, and make decisions in a
spontaneous fashion, giving the lie to suggestions that this new generation simply spurns
discussion for fear of co-optation. Of course, there are dubious phenomena in this
endeavor to create decision-making forms in a popular struggle-the occupation of the
entrance of the Hong Kong police headquarters, which stretched into the evening, turned
into a bit of a debacle when a debate over whether the occupation should continue was put
to a contested vote. Also, one wonders whether the acephalous, amorphous nature of the
movement, composed of novices who are making things up as they go, renders it vulnerable
to capture-on the afternoon of the 21st, it was Joshua Wong who gathered scattered units
of protesters together to assemble in front of the police headquarters. We suspect that
this had more to do with the fact that everybody had showed up to the area without any
clear idea of what they could do, rather than the person of Joshua Wong himself, but one
still wonders. ?
In reflecting on the problems concealed by the apparent unanimity of the "Hong Kong
people," we might start by asking who that framework suggests that this city is for, who
comprises this imaginary subject. We have seen Nepalese and Pakistani brothers and sisters
on the streets, but they hesitate to make their presence known for fear of being accused
of being thugs employed by the police. ?
"The places of institutional power exert a magnetic attraction on revolutionaries. But
when the insurgents manage to penetrate parliaments, presidential palaces, and other
headquarters of institutions, as in Ukraine, in Libya or in Wisconsin, it's only to
discover empty places, that is, empty of power, and furnished without any taste. It's not
to prevent the "people" from "taking power" that they are so fiercely kept from invading
such places, but to prevent them from realizing that power no longer resides in the
institutions. There are only deserted temples there, decommissioned fortresses, nothing
but stage sets-real traps for revolutionaries." -The Invisible Committee, To Our Friends ?
Incidentally, that attempt was a good deal more spontaneous and successful. The police had
hardly imagined that crowds of people who had sat peacefully with their heads in their
hands feeling helpless while the developments were authorized would suddenly start
attempting to rush the council doors by force, breaking some of the windows. ?
On the night of June 11, young customers in a McDonald's in Admiralty were all searched
and had their identity cards recorded. On June 12, a video went viral showing a young man
who was transporting a box of bottled water to protesters being brutalized by a squad of
policemen with batons. ?
To give two rather different examples, this includes the populist, xenophobic, and
vehemently anti-Communist Apple Daily, and the "Hong Kong Free Press," an independent
English online rag of the "angry liberal" stripe run by expatriates that has an affinity
for young localist/nativist leaders. ?
------------------------------
Message: 3
One of the key early figures of anarchism, Russian revolutionary Mikhail Bakunin, is
brought to life in two detailed and well researched episodes of Mike Duncan's Revolutions
Podcast. The series focuses on great revolutions of the modern era including the French,
Haitian, American and Mexican revolutions, with the current focus on the Russian
Revolution of 1917. ---- Episode 10.5: The Adventures of Mikhail Bakunin ---- This episode
covers the personal history and political trajectory of Bakunin as he began his political
career in support of Slavic national liberation and between Siberian exile and traversing
from country to country just ahead of authorities as he participated in various uprising,
he came to the cause of socialism in joining the first International. While Bakunin
largely agreed with Marx's economic analysis, the two figures famously clashed over the
question of political strategy.
https://www.revolutionspodcast.com/
https://www.revolutionspodcast.com/2019/06/105-the-adventures-of-mikhail-bakunin.html
10.5- The Adventures of Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin circumnavigated the globe and came back convinced that coercive authority
was the pits. Direct Link: 10.5- The Adventures of Mikhail Bakunin Sponsor:
casper.com/revolutions
Read this on revolutionspodcast.com >
10.5- The Adventures of Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin circumnavigated the globe and came back convinced that coercive authority
was the pits. Direct Link: 10.5- The Adventures of Mikhail Bakunin Sponsor:
casper.com/revolutions
Read this on revolutionspodcast.com >
Episode 10.6: True Liberty, True Equality, and True Fraternity
The following episode details the emergence of Bakunin's anarchist political philosophy,
his critique of the state and capitalist system and program for political action. A note
on the term "anarcho-collectivism": this is no longer is use today and is seen as a
predecessor term for anarchist-communism.
https://www.revolutionspodcast.com/2019/06/106-true-liberty-true-equality-and-true-fraternity.html
For a written biography of Mikhail Bakunin, along with quotes and recommended readings we
recommend "Mikhail Bakunin, 1814-1876: Biography, Readings and Quotes."
http://blackrosefed.org/audio-bakunin-revolutions-podcast/
------------------------------
Message: 4
He pushed the door of the temp agency. And soon after found himself "on the line"
(production) in a shellfish packing plant, then in a slaughterhouse, to Lorient. ----
Joseph Ponthus could not find a job in his sector of origin - social work - and for him
who had never been a manual worker, the factory was a physical shock, moral, even
existential. Like many, he spent several years with painkillers, but also dreamy drifts
far from repetitive gestures. This reverie is found throughout her book, whose chapters
are written as prose poetry, mixing daily narrative and political observation. The writing
can be at times intensely incarnated, weighed down by the weight of the carcasses, numbed
by the cold, saturated with the smell of blood ... and then suddenly slide into
weightlessness, lighten up, overhang the stage with detachment.
An eloquent excerpt - among many others - tells the hallucinated, frenetic night, at the
approach of the end of year feast, a team unloading pallets of whelks.
"December 23 / Bulotic Night of the Apocalypse / More Than Five We Are At the Turbine /
Six Days of the Seven / The Rumors of the Plant in the Week Had Been Foolish /
Contradictory / Will We Work on Saturday 24th / Christmas Truce / A shot was yes / A shot
no / The morning of the night of the 23rd it is said that if we spend fifteen tons of
whelks in the day / We would have our Saturday / But these are only rumors / Implicit
agreement of our team of three / Rest rather than a paid day / The relatives rather than
the pockets / So we attack / Like furious / Beyond fatigue / We're there / We're enraged
against the slightest stoppage of the line / We do not even count on the team after to
finish the job / We shorten each his break by fifteen minutes / We know that it may be in
vain and we will have to returntomorrow / We know it may be a ruse of the boss and we will
have our Saturday anyway / But we do not care / More than thirteen tons out of fifteen /
We spent more than thirteen tons of whelks at three in eight hours / We're laughing / Fist
in our hands / Falling in our arms / " To Monday »/ Says the leader / We won a worm war
and ourselves a Friday, December 23, 2016 / The two days of Christmas will be the most
precious of the world / And the fastest / Barely the meal time of Sunday family / That you
have to go back after the coffee / Tomorrow the hiring is so early."
When he was social worker, Joseph Ponthus had published on Article11.info, beautiful notes
from the daily newspaper of a deprived city in the suburbs of Paris. There was already
this very clean style, going straight to the point. To the point.
William Davranche (AL Montreuil)
Joseph Ponthus, On the line. Factory sheets , The Round Table, 2019, 272 pages, 18 euros.
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Lire-Ponthus-A-la-ligne-Feuillets-d-usine
------------------------------
Message: 5
I've got a fire in my belly, ------ It what makes me scribe, ------ It's looking for
justice and fair play, ------ It's what keeps me alive, ------ It's like a burger in a
bun, ------ Topped with a scoville relish, ------ This fire in my belly, ------ Is hard to
extinguish. ------ ------ I wear my heart on my sleeve, ------ My emotions are raw,
------ When I hear of injustice, ------ It's like throwing on petrol, ------ This feeling
I get, ------ Seeps from every pore, ------ This passion I feel, ------ Is hard to ignore.
------ ------ When I hear of acts of racism, ------ I burn up inside, ------ To me we are
all equal, ------ A feeling I can't hide, ------ I've got a fire in my belly, ------ That
rages hard and strong, ----- It's mission is to ensure, ------ That right overcomes wrong.
Some people have money,
Some people have not,
But the gap is increasing,
By tyrants and what they plot,
We've got poverty stricken children,
With a stunted education,
Who'll have to work hard all their lives,
To make the best of their situation.
Politicians with no morals,
Who people seem to trust,
Send families to food banks,
Which turns my stomach in disgust,
These people line their own pockets,
Who should hold their heads in shame,
They thrive on people's suffering,
We all know their game.
Now we all have a fire,
We all have a belly,
We all have an opportunity,
To end this inequality,
We now live in an era,
Like no era in the past,
To make a difference to human lives,
A difference that will last. ?
Swansea based Punk Poet The Uptown Portrayer was established in 2017, and has been gigging
hard ever since at Ska and Punk Festivals and supporting benefit gigs.
You can find him on Facebook.
Renowned for delivering an honest brand of poetry that resonates, and tackling subjects
such as inequality, social issues and racism head on. The Uptown Portrayer Punk Poet also
highlights the struggles of music venues, and displays a passion for live music, whilst
also showing a compassionate side with originals based around friendships and compassion
for others. Having recently recorded a verse from the poem "No Robot" with South Wales
punk band Tenplusone on their latest album.
http://organisemagazine.org.uk/2019/06/25/fire-in-my-belly/
------------------------------
Message: 6
Discussion of teachers and teachers about planned protests in education (Poznan,
15/06/2019) ---- On 15 June in Poznan, at the headquarters of the Eighth Day Theater, a
meeting of 23 schools from Poznan, Srem and Golub Dobrzyn was held. They were organized by
Poznan teachers actively involved in the organization of the May strike. The meeting
resulted from the need to summarize previous activities and to adopt new forms of
organizing to take up protests during the upcoming autumn. ---- Simultaneously with the
formation of the Poznan Inter-Enterprise Strike Committee, independent of trade unions, a
nationwide structure is being created. In connection with this, teachers from Poznan on
June 8 participated in the Warsaw meeting of the All-Poland Inter-School Strike Committee.
They did not assume the role of representatives of their city, but their goal was to pass
the Warsaw relationship to the environment of Poznan teachers at the meeting on June 15.
During the Warsaw meeting of OMKS, a number of recommendations addressed to centers
throughout the country were agreed. Due to the current diversity of regional structures,
OMKS refrained from making decisions or issuing a statement in the form of specific
commitments. The main problems at the meeting concerned the principles of OMKS operation,
forms of autumn protests, to anchor the local structures of the strike committees as well
as the limitations of the recent strike resulting from its poor preparation and the weak
structures of trade unions. In addition, reports were presented on how local governments
pay their salary during the strike period. Teachers from Poznan emphasized the necessity
to develop forms of communication at the regional as well as nationwide level.
One of the reasons for the end of the May strike by the national headquarters of the PNA
was cutting off individual schools and cities from actual information on the current
development of the strike action. Therefore, at the meeting in Poznan on June 15, a
communication network was established bringing together representatives of Poznan schools.
It was established in order to strengthen contacts between teachers, exchange of
information, selection of representatives of the Poznan Inter-School Strike Committee
representing jointly agreed positions. The model of this type of network is to counteract
the separation of schools between cities and cities, and to make them immune to false
information conveyed through communication channels controlled by the government and
political parties, church, media corporations and trade union authorities. Without the
development of communication structures under the control of teachers themselves, actions
taken by specific schools will continue to be dependent on external centers of power.
Until now, with the help of the media they controlled, they were able to impose their own
interpretation of the situation, which often differed from the actual situation, to
protesting female employees and the rest of society.
Further discussion concerned working conditions and to a large extent focused on the scope
of employee duties specified by the statutes of individual schools. In this case, it is
crucial to review the statutes and introduce in them provisions limiting the number of
employee duties, which are currently not paid. These changes may be approved by
pedagogical councils through their resolutions. The pedagogical councils of high schools
no. 1 and 8 in Poznan prepared their lists of organizational, technical and financial
changes that, after acceptance, should be handed over by the school directors to the
leading and supervising bodies. These lists were presented to representatives of other
schools as a model for creating their own applications to the management.
In addition to working conditions, Poznan education is struggling with the problem of
unpaid wages for the duration of the strike. The "anti-government" party ruling the city
withdrew from previous payment declarations just after the suspension of the strike. What
is more, the local government so far has been effectively pushing school heads to take all
extras (motivational and apprenticeship) from the striking teachers, even though they are
not dependent on the remuneration calculated during the strike period. The self-government
explains its actions as "a far-reaching cautionary attitude" to the fears of accusation of
violation of budgetary discipline. The teaching community has received such actions from
the Poznan authorities as a punishment for a strike. During the meeting on 15 June, the
lawyer of OZZ, the Workers Initiative, Piotr Krzyzaniak, challenged the legal bases that
the local government uses on the occasion of cuts to teachers. Krzyzaniak has shown that
all allowances and pay for the period of the strike can be paid out as a result of the
provisions of the agreement as part of a collective dispute. Such an agreement should be
sought by the PNA at school level. The NSZZ Solidarnosc representative present at the
meeting proposed an attempt to recover the allowances in court. Due to the length of this
type of court cases, the lawyer of the OZZ IP postulated that the sample lawsuit should be
treated only as an additional pressure on the employer when trying to reach an agreement
by the union.
W miare rozwoju strajku w obrebie srodowiska nauczycielskiego w kraju zarysowaly sie dwie
zasadnicze tendencje. Pierwsza z nich strajk interpretuje z perspektywy interesu
pracowniczego, skupiajac sie na podwyzce plac i poprawie warunków pracy. Nurt ten zaklada,
ze nauczyciele nie maja szczególnych zobowiazan wobec swoich pracodawców, którymi sa
samorzady. To na samorzadach i wladzach centralnych, a nie na nauczycielach, spoczywa
obowiazek zapewnienia powszechnego dostepu do wlasciwej jakosci edukacji. Wszelkie
twierdzenia jakoby zawód nauczyciela wiazal sie z ponadprzecietnym zaangazowaniem w prace,
traktowane sa przez ten nurt jako wywieranie presji sluzacej pogarszaniu warunków pracy.
Poniewaz nauczyciele w pierwszej kolejnosci sa pracownikami, to podstawowym obszarem ich
dzialan sa zaklady pracy i organizacje o charakterze pracowniczym. Zwiazki zawodowe
korzystajac z zapisów prawa, moga wplywac na warunki pracy, reprezentujac interesy
nauczycieli i dlatego wladze lub dyrektorzy szkól niejednokrotnie próbuja ograniczyc ich
dzialalnosc. Powyzszy nurt, który mozna okreslic jako socjalny czy tez stricte
pracowniczy, zorientowany jest na budowanie ekonomicznej sily nauczycieli, co w dalszej
kolejnosci oznacza wzmocnienie pozycji ogólu pracowników z róznych branz.
Such a strategy of action forces the authorities that employ teachers to defensive
positions. Thus, politicians are more inclined to emphasize the existence of a second
trend among teachers, who puts more emphasis on issues related to the quality of
education, reducing the problem of low wages and deteriorating working conditions. This
trend can be described as "civic", because it shifts the burden of managing education to
the whole of civil society, and in consequence distributes the responsibility of the
authorities for the quality of education. In this optics, teachers are responsible for
conducting the exams, not the authorities, the reason for the strike is not the policy of
belt tightening, only the teachers' subjective demands, and the teachers instead of wage
demands, first of all explain the lack of lessons, be "too" of excessive demands, relying
on the will of politicians in terms of their implementation. In this way, workers'
postulates are discredited as affecting the quality of education, and specific social
demands are replaced by a general discussion about the state of education in the country.
In the present realities, the teachers' dialogue with the government is in the hands of
the latter, because the dialogue removes the specter of the resumption of strike action.
Meanwhile, the strike, by strengthening the position of teachers, and at the same time the
sphere of the budget and the whole world of work, can realistically limit the influence of
current and future governing parties. and specific social demands are replaced by a
general discussion about the state of education in the country. In the present realities,
the teachers' dialogue with the government is in the hands of the latter, because the
dialogue removes the specter of the resumption of strike action. Meanwhile, the strike, by
strengthening the position of teachers, and at the same time the sphere of the budget and
the whole world of work, can realistically limit the influence of current and future
governing parties. and specific social demands are replaced by a general discussion about
the state of education in the country. In the present realities, the teachers' dialogue
with the government is in the hands of the latter, because the dialogue removes the
specter of the resumption of strike action. Meanwhile, the strike, by strengthening the
position of teachers, and at the same time the sphere of the budget and the whole world of
work, can realistically limit the influence of current and future governing parties.
labels
http://ozzip.pl/teksty/informacje/wielkopolskie/item/2495-sprawozdanie-z-poznanskich-przygotowan-do-jesiennych-protestow-oswiaty
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