Today's Topics:
1. Britain, Class War: FREEDOM - - THE ANARCHIST PAPER WE'VE
ALWAYS HOPED FOR (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. CNT-AIT: EBRU FIRAT IS OUT OF PRISON ... THE STRUGGLE
CONTINUES FOR ALL THE OTHER PRISONERS IN TURKEY
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. Poland, zsp.net.pl: Schaffa Shoes: another hearing about
unpaid wages [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. Red and Black Leeds: Work Pamphlet (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
5. Britain, Benjamin Zephaniah: Why I Am an Anarchist By A.N.A.
(pt) [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
6. [Italy] Launch: "The Anarchic Challenge in Rojava", by N.
Santi and S. Vaccaro By ANA (pt) [machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
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Message: 1
It's taken me sometime to appreciate the radical changes that editor ZOSIA BROM has
brought to Freedom - I'd just compartmentalised it away in the not relevant box where it
had been for decades. ---- But not any more. Zosia has turned the paper into a must read
for anarchists but also reaching out to a wider audience with excellent coverage of
European anarchist news. But it's the quality of the contributors that has been
transformed with Rob Ray and Jon Bigger amongst others writing spot on pieces.
If you've not looked at Freedom for some time then look now. it's print edition has sold
out for the first time for decades. Here's Rob Ray's latest - ALL HAIL Zosia Brom
https://freedomnews.org.uk/as-the-shine-rubs-off-labour-what-next/?fbclid=IwAR2b15TThHwWnWbt77ij70Tq879ErXfdy1XtFUR2KlW_824DPMCG327sPdw
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Message: 2
This last Saturday, June 15, while we were right in the middle of a demonstration of
"Yellow vest" in Paris, we had the good surprise and the joy of receiving a call from the
lawyer of Ebru FIRAT, to inform us that Ebru had been released from the Turkish prisons
(1). This is only a "day parole", as Ebru will have to keep showing up at the Police
station until the end of his sentence. However, it will allow her to consider a future
perspective and will help her to start to rebuild herself. We are sincerely happy for her
and her loved ones. ---- But we are not fooled by the intentions of the Turkish
government: this conditional freedom will not make us forget all those, and especially the
women, who continue to rot in the Erdogan's bastilles -Kurds or Turks, journalists,
lawyers, students, workers, ... - because they dare to rise up against the
Islamic-conservative system, they dare to claim and live Freedom.
On Monday, June 17, 2 days after Ebru released, 35 activists from HDP - including 7 minors
of age - were arbitrarily arrested.
Hundreds of prisoners have been fighting for months, sometimes risking their lives, to
denounce the arbitrariness of their detention. We do not forget them!
The struggle continues to the complete and unconditional freedom of all prisoners, and
beyond the liberation of the entire region from the curse of authoritarianism.
A special thanks to all those from all over the world (Norway, Germany, France, Poland,
Spain, Philipines, Greece, UK, Russia, Ukraine, Tunisia, ...) who sent messages and
postcards of soldiarity!
"Freedom is a struggle that never ends ...
I thank all those who have been with me for 33 months, and who have given me strength.
I believe and I know that humanity will be much more beautiful and stronger with support.
Ebru "
http://blog.cnt-ait.info
FB: @ cnt.ait.paris.banner
http://blog.cnt-ait.info/post/2019/07/09/EBRU-FIRAT-IS-OUT-OF-PRISON
(1) To know more about the story of Ebru, please refer to this article:
Freedom for Ebru FIRAT! http://blog.cnt-ait.info/post/2019/03/25/Freedom-for-Ebru-FIRAT-%21
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Message: 3
On July 8 this year, another hearing was held by a former Schaffa Shoes shoe store
employee. A former employee demands a correction of a work certificate, payment of a
holiday equivalent, overdue remuneration for overtime work and remuneration for the period
of notice. ---- During the hearings of appointed witnesses, other former employees of the
Schaffa Shoes chain, it turned out that the employer did not keep records of working time,
evaded employee insurance, paid part of the salary "under the table" and often missed many
weeks with payouts, or completely he refused to settle the payment of his last salaries
and other debts (overtime pay and the equivalent for unused holiday). ---- Particularly
moving is the way the employer used false accusations of alleged theft to discipline
employees. As ex-employees have testified, the practice adopted in stores was to rent
shoes to customers for taking out bail. The customer had the opportunity to try on the
shoes at home and possibly refer them to the next day. If the customer did not come, the
money was normally postponed. The employer applied a provocation in the form of
"mysterious customer", meaning a friend who gave up as a client who wanted to "try on
shoes at home". He then accused the employee of "stealing." During his testimony, he
claimed that there was no habit of lending shoes to clients. However, this is contradicted
by the testimonies of former employees.
Former employees of Schaffa Shoes have been operating since 2018 in the Polish
Syndicalists' Union in order to recover their due money. In 2018, under the shops at Al.
Ken and the bazaar in Kabaty held two pickets organized by ZSP, as a result of which the
employer paid two former employees pay arrears.
https://zsp.net.pl/schaffa-shoes-kolejna-rozprawa-o-niezaplacone-wynagrodzenie
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Message: 4
annakey85 posted: A few years ago, we wrote this pamphlet with the Anarchist Federation
about the nature of work under capitalism and why it needs to be abolished.
For some reason we have only just got round to uploading it onto our website.
You can read it through the following links:
https://libcom.org/files/WORK-online-version.pdf
https://libcom.org/library/work-anarchist-federation
https://wearetherabl.wordpress.com/2019/07/09/work-pamphlet/
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Message: 5
I got political after I suffered my first racist attack at the age of seven. I didn't
understand any political theory, I just knew that I had been wronged, and I knew there was
another way. A few years later, when I was fifteen a marked police car pulled up to me as
I walked in Birmingham in the early hours of the morning, three cops got out of the car,
they pushed me into a shop doorway, then they beat me up. They got back into their car,
and drove off as if nothing had happened. I had read nothing about policing policy, or
anything on so-called law and order, I just knew I had been wronged. When I got my first
job as a painter, I had read nothing on the theory of working class struggles or how the
rich exploited the poor, but when my boss turned up every other day in a different
supercar, and we were risking our lives up ladders and breathing in toxic fumes, I just
knew I had been wronged.
I grew up (like most people around me) believing Anarchism meant everyone just going
crazy, and the end of everything. I am very dyslexic so I often have to use a spellchecker
or a dictionary to make sure I've written words correctly. I was hearing words like
Socialism and Communism all the time, but even the Socialists and Communists that I came
across tended to dismiss Anarchists as either a fringe group, who they always blamed if
there was trouble on demonstrations, or dreamers. Even now, I just checked a spellchecker
and it describes Anarchism as chaos, lawlessness, mayhem, and disorder. I like the
disorder thing, but for the ‘average' person, disorder does mean chaos, lawlessness, and
mayhem. The very things they're told to fear the most.
The greatest thing I've ever done for myself is to learn how to think for myself. I began
to do that at an early age, but it's really difficult to do that when there are things
around you all the time telling you how to think. Capitalism is seductive. It limits your
imagination, and then tells you that you should feel free because you have choices, but
your choices are limited to the products they put before you, or the limits of your now
limited imagination. I remember visiting São Paulo many years ago when it introduced its
Clean City Law. The mayor didn't suddenly become an Anarchist, but he did realise that the
continuous and ubiquitous marketing people were subjected to was not just ugly, but
distracting people from themselves. So more than 15,000 marketing billboards were taken
down. Buses, taxis, neon and paper poster advertisements were all banned. At first it
looked a little odd, but instead of either looking at, or trying not to look at
advertising broads, I walked, and as I walked I looked around me. I found that I only
purchased what I really needed, not what I was told I needed, and what was most noticeable
was that I met and talked to new people every day. These conversations tended to be
relevant, political, and meaningful. Capitalism keeps us in competition with each other,
and the people who run Capitalism don't really want us to talk to each other, not in a
meaningful way.
I'm not going to go on about Capitalism, Socialism, or Communism, but it is clear that one
thing they all have in common is their need for power. Then to back up their drive for
power they all have theories, theories about taking power and what they want to do with
power, but therein lies the problem. Theories and power. I became an Anarchist when I
decided to drop the theories and stop seeking power. When I stopped concerning myself with
those things I realised that true Anarchy is my nature. It is our nature. It is what we
were doing before the theories arrived, it is what we were doing before we were encouraged
to be in competition with each other. There have been some great things written about
Anarchism, and I guess that's Anarchist theory, but when I try to get my friends to read
these things (I'm talking about big books with big words), they get headaches and turn
away. So, then I turn off the advertising (the TV etc.) and sit with them, and remind them
of what they can do for themselves. I give them examples of people who live without
governments, people who organise themselves, people who have taken back their own
spiritual identity - and then it all makes sense.
If we keep talking about theories then we can only talk to people who are aware of those
theories, or have theories of their own, and if we keep talking in the round about
theories we exclude a lot of people. The very people we need to reach, the very people who
need to rid themselves of the shackles of modern, Capitalistic slavery. The story of Carne
Ross is inspiring, not because he wrote something, but because he lived it. I love the
work of Noam Chomsky and I love the way that Stuart Christie's granny made him an
Anarchist, but I'm here because I understand that the racist police who beat me have the
state behind them, and the state itself is racist. I'm here because I now understand that
the boss-man who exploited me to make himself rich didn't care about me. I'm here because
I know how the Marrons in Jamaica freed themselves and took to the hills and proved to all
enslaved people that they (the Marrons), could manage themselves. Don't get me wrong, I
love books (I'm a writer, by the way), and I know we need people who think deeply - we
should all think deeply. But my biggest inspirations come from everyday people who stop
seeking power for themselves, or seeking the powerful to rescue them, and they do life for
themselves. I have met people who live Anarchism in India, Kenya, Jamaica, Ethiopia, and
in Papua New Guinea, but when I tell them they are Anarchists most will tell me they have
not heard of such a word, and what they are doing is natural and uncomplicated. I'm an
Anarchist because I've been wronged, and I've seen everything else fail.
I spent the late seventies and the eighties living in London with many exiled ANC
activists - after a long struggle Nelson Mandela was freed and the exiles returned home. I
remember looking at a photo of the first democratically elected government in South Africa
and realising that I knew two thirds of them. I also remember seeing a photo of the newly
elected Blair (New Labour) government and realising that I knew a quarter of them, and on
both occasions I remember how I was filled with hope. But in both cases it didn't take
long to see how power corrupted so many members of those governments. These were people I
would call and say, "Hey, what are you doing?", and the reply was always something along
the lines of, "Benjamin, you don't understand how having power works". Well I do. Fuck
power, and lets just take care of each other.
Most people know that politics is failing. That's not a theory or my point of view. They
can see it, they can feel it. The problem is they just can't imagine an alternative. They
lack confidence. I simply blanked out all the advertising, I turned off the
‘tell-lie-vision', and I started to think for myself. Then I really started to meet people
- and, trust me, there is nothing as great as meeting people who are getting on with their
lives, running farms, schools, shops, and even economies, in communities where no one has
power.
That's why I'm an Anarchist.
Benjamin Zephaniah is a writer, poet and anarchist. His Latest book is The Life and Rhymes
Of Benjamin Zephaniah (Simon and Schuster).
https://noticiasanarquistas.noblogs.org/post/2019/07/09/reino-unido-por-que-eu-sou-um-anarquista/
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Message: 6
This book gathers analyzes and lived experiences, direct and indirect, of a social and
political experimentation in the middle of a war. If it is difficult to collectively
promote a revolution in social relations and the forms of generalized self-government in
the Kurdish territories, it is actually more complex to practice it when arms prevail over
words. ---- Born as a revolt against the Assad regime, the civil war was internationalized
with the intervention of regional powers (Turkey, Iran, Lebanese Hezbollah) and
international powers (United States and Russia). Not to mention the Islamic State and the
terrorist organizations of religious fundamentalism. Rojava, in Syrian territory launched
the challenge of democratic confederacy assumed to be libertarian, horizontal,
anti-authoritarian, secular and feminist.
With contradictions, hopes and disappointments, the anarchic challenge in Rojava persists
for almost five years, far more than the "brief anarchic summer" in Spain, from the
radiant days of July 1936 to the
most disastrous days of July 1937. Independently how it will end, will mark an
indisputably significant stage toward the emancipation of entire collectivities along a
rugged path of liberation and freedom ever to be conquered.
La sfida anarchica nel Rojava
N. Santi and S. Vaccaro
Price: € 20.00
192 pp.
bfs.it
Translation> Antikaikki
anarchist-ana news agency
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