Today's Topics:
1. freedom news: Greece: anarchists raid Athens Voice offices
in protest at ‘funny comment' regarding the death of migrant
woman (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. US, black rose fed: THE COUNTER-REVOLUTION OF 1776, THE
GENOCIDE OF 1779 AND THE "VILLAGE DESTROYER" WASHINGTON
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. Spain, CGT, salvamento maritimo: About us (ca, it) [machine
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. Britain, anarchist communist group ACG: Dover and Folkestone
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
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Message: 1
Anarchists from Rouvikonas (Greek for Rubicon) group have raided the offices of Athens
Voice newspaper in Athens in protest at a ‘funny comment' the paper made in relation to
the death of Gayane Kassardjian. ---- Gayane Kassardjian, a 50 year old Armenian woman and
hospital caregiver, died last Saturday, after she jumped out of the window of Nikaia
General Hospital in Piraeus out of fear of an inspection of her immigration status and
work permit. Following her death, Athens Voice made a ‘funny comment' on this tragic
incident in the paper's online edition. ---- Yesterday, around 15 members of Rouvikonas
raided the paper's offices and used crowbars to smash the equipment and furniture, before
splashing black paint all over the place. In a statement at Athens Indymedia website, the
group said that the attack took place in protest against the paper's coverage of Gayane's
death and accusing "the greedy monsters of journalism" of trying to "deny any dignity
from her death".
"In a world where perceptions are created by the dirty hands of the bourgeois, bosses and
directors, there is no room for journalistic ethics. With these insidious and often
inhuman propaganda, we are bombarded with the nationalism of capitalist development and
its cultural trash."- the group's statement adds.
The action was condemned by the ruling party SYRIZA and described as "attack on democracy"
by the right-wing party New Democracy .
https://freedomnews.org.uk/greece-anarchists-raid-athens-voice-offices-in-protest-at-funny-comment-regarding-the-death-of-migrant-woman/
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Message: 2
Herkimer at the Battle of Oriskany (1901, Frederick Coffay Yohn). Herkimer was a militia
leader and slave owner who was mortally wounded in the Battle of Oriskany (August 6,
1777). Like fellow slave owner George Washington, he is hailed as a "hero of the American
revolution" by many and is part of the creation myth of the United States. ---- By Brendan
Maslauskas Dunn ---- This world is engulfed in a whirlwind of myths. But myths give
meaning. Every fourth of July I reflect on the power that myths hold over people and how
those people above, those that hold all the power, wield those myths and forge them into
cudgels, and weapons to be used to keep all of us subservient. To create feelings of doubt
when you veer off the path they created. Those myths, especially those creation myths of
how the US became a nation started at a young age.
The story was simple when I was young. It's one that so many of us in the US have been
told over the years. The patriots were revolutionaries that were fighting for ideals of
liberty, justice and freedom and the British were merciless, blood thirsty colonizers. It
makes sense that this creation story is a retelling of David and Goliath. David, as
expected, wins. And, even with all of its flaws, the US as a nation, an ideal, was imbued
with the notion of progress.
The myth worked for me. I believed in it. I believed in it to such an extent that at the
age of thirteen I sent a letter to the Marine Corps requesting to enlist. I was
disappointed to learn from the response that I was too young to join but I was given a
gift of dog tags that I happily wore, and a promise that the minute I was old enough, a
recruitment officer would sign me up.
I held onto that myth of American exceptionalism tightly, but I eventually began to lose
my grip and it slowly slipped through my fingers. It was not a rapid change, but one that
worked its way into my psyche, little by little over the years.
I was born in the impoverished rustbelt city of Utica, NY. Like all cities, towns and
regions in this nation, the national creation myth is repackaged locally. I started to
question that local narrative a little more deeply when I was younger, then the national
one. In the Mohawk Valley, where I grew up, the heroism of local patriots was lauded. A
central figure in the local struggle for independence was militia leader Nicholas Herkimer
who died from mortal wounds from the Battle of Oriskany. Another was Reverend Samuel
Kirkland, the kind missionary who was a close friend of the Oneida people. Yet another was
Peter Gansevoort, the brave commander who repelled the British in their siege of Fort
Stanwix - a battle where it is rumored the stars and stripes were first flown. The list of
heroic men, with their displays of bravery, honor, and selflessness, is long.
Unsurprisingly, the foes of these great patriots were the British, their loyalist allies,
and the Mohawk and other Iroquois warriors who fought with them. They were ruthless, we
were told, and wracked a campaign of terror in the Mohawk Valley where they burned down
countless patriot villages and massacred civilians. Goliath had reared his ugly head, and
only David could slay him.
I remember the day that my high school American History teacher, Mr. Gressler, passed out
photocopies of chapters from Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States as
assigned reading for my class. Zinn's argument that the "American Revolution" wavered
between "a kind of revolution" rife with contradictions and a revolt of political elites,
many of them slave owners and land owners, to consolidate their power resonated with me.
In any given area that was gripped by the war, the poorer people tended to side with
whichever group had fewer elites. Zinn gave me a chisel to start chipping away at that
national creation myth. I used it to reveal the truth that was buried in the Mohawk Valley.
Herkimer, as it turns out, was a slave owner and one of the wealthiest land owners in the
Mohawk Valley. Gansevoort was part of the Dutch aristocracy near Albany who for years had
amassed a wealth from different business ventures, land speculation and, you guessed it,
slave labor. Samuel Kirkland helped create a political crisis within the Iroquois
Confederacy by persuading many, but not all, Oneida people to side with the patriots. It
was a fatal error on the part of the Oneida - their nation is now split into two (one in
their ancestral homeland, and the other in Wisconsin from a forced removal). Kirkland went
on to found the Hamilton-Oneida Academy (now Hamilton College) - a school for settler
American and Indigenous students alike. Although the academy is often painted as a
progressive, forward thinking institute, in reality, it was an earlier example of those
institutions that wanted to "kill the Indian, and save the man." Locally, everyone knows
the name Herkimer - streets, a town, a county and even a college are named in his honor.
But fewer know the names of Thayendanegea (Joseph Brant), Cornplanter, or so many other
Iroquois warriors. Or any of the names of those escaped slaves from Upstate New York who
joined Butler's Loyalist Rangers because they saw that their path to emancipation was
found by joining the British and putting down the rebellion of slave owners like
Washington and Herkimer.
One of the largest omissions of the national creation myth that is conveniently and
intentionally left out is Sullivan's Campaign. This was one of the largest offensive
campaigns that George Washington launched during the War of Independence and it occurred
just West and South of where I grew up.
In 1779, George Washington gave clear orders to General John Sullivan who was handpicked
to lead the campaign against the Iroquois:
The Expedition you are appointed to command is to be directed against the hostile tribes
of the Six Nations of Indians, with their associates and adherents. The immediate objects
are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements, and the capture of as many
prisoners of every age and sex as possible. It will be essential to ruin their crops now
in the ground and prevent their planting more.
I would recommend, that some post in the center of the Indian Country, should be occupied
with all expedition, with a sufficient quantity of provisions whence parties should be
detached to lay waste all the settlements around, with instructions to do it in the most
effectual manner, that the country may not be merely overrun, but destroyed.
But you will not by any means listen to any overture of peace before the total ruinment of
their settlements is effected. Our future security will be in their inability to injure us
and in the terror with which the severity of the chastisement they receive will inspire them.
Sullivan carried out Washington's orders. Thousands of soldiers invaded Iroquois territory
with a horrifying display of power and violence. A scorched earth policy entirely burned
to the ground over 40 Iroquois villages (it should be noted that these "villages" often
had a higher population density than most cities in Europe at the time). Crops were
burned, animals killed and people displaced. In one Mohawk village, every single male was
arrested and sent to a jail in Albany. The Onondaga, Seneca, Cayuga, Mohawk, Tuscarora and
even some Oneida peoples of the Iroquois Confederacy became refugees in their own lands
and several thousand fled to Canada to relocate. For Washington and his cause, the
offensive was a success. It decisively tipped the balance of power away from the Iroquois
and Loyalists. Settlers rapidly took over the lands and villages previously occupied by
the Iroquois and the indigenous territory in New York and Pennsylvania was forcefully
opened up to the rest of the Great Lakes and even farther west in the longer project of
settler colonialism and expansion.
Map detailing Sullivan's scorched earth campaign of genocide.
I remember visiting Canandaigua Lake last summer for the first time. As the sun set, my
eyes met the glow of a small island. That island was both the birthplace of the Seneca
Nation and served as a place of refuge for countless Seneca people in 1777 who fled
Sullivan's troops. My hands shook and my eyes watered over at the sheer depth of what
happened there.
There is a name for this: genocide. It is no surprise then that Washington earned the
nickname "village destroyer" and "village devourer." It's a name fitting for every
president since him. This very same history recently came up with my Mohawk nephews and
their tóta (grandmother in Mohawk). We were all sitting down together last year and one of
my nephews mentioned that his class was learning about George Washington and, I imagine,
the creation myth that surrounded him. Without hesitation, their grandmother responded,
"He was a bad man. He was a very bad man." We talked about their shared Iroquois history,
of the genocide of the Iroquois and brutal institution of slaves, but also the resistance
waged by Mohawk and slave alike.
The Hiawatha Wampum Belt, the visual record of the foundation of the
Iroquois/Haudenosaunee Confederacy. The resistance against colonial domination continues
to this day.
There is a great denial that this genocide is an actual genocide. That it even took place.
There are no accurate historical markers, no national acknowledgment of what happened, no
requirements to teach this in American history classes. And this connects directly to the
myth that people keep alive to this very day. And that is, somehow, that Trump and his
administration stand as an aberration to what the US has always been, that his grasp of
reigns of power is the exception and not the rule to a longer history of process,
democratization, to something that is exceptional. That the concentration camps popping up
along the US-Mexico border have no historical precedent.
This nation was built on a foundation of genocide and slavery. As people locally celebrate
George Washington, the patriot troops at Fort Stanwix and the martyrdom of Herkimer and
other militiamen in the Battle of Oriskany, I can only think of the terrified Iroquois
refugees who survived an act of genocide, or of the slaves who toiled in the homes and
fields of the Mohawk and Hudson Valleys. But I also think about those slaves who fled
their conditions of servitude and enlisted with the British Army, including some of
Washington's slaves, or the former slave involved in a plot to assassinate the ultimate
slave master and village destroyer. I also think of all of the indigenous warriors who
fought to preserve their culture and their way of life during that brutal war.
Historian Gerald Horne is right. He took Zinn's argument even further and said that the
American "revolution" was a counter-revolution. That the war of independence in large part
was launched as a response to growing slave rebellions in the Southern colonies and the
Caribbean but also to the early signs of a gradual transition to abolition in England and
beyond. The writing was on the wall, and something had to be done to secure slavery as an
institution. It's no surprise that 10,000s of slaves fled to and took up arms on the side
of the British during the war. To them, that army, with all its contradictions, was one of
revolutionary liberation, not Washington's Continental Army. The ideas of despotism,
violence, oppression, slavery and genocide were woven into the very fabric of the
foundation of this nation in 1776. So, what do we make of this nation in 2019?
A painting depicting a Black Loyalist soldier. Slaves openly rebelled and resisted in many
forms during the War of Independence. And although some Black soldiers fought in the
Continental Army, many more joined Lord Dunmore's Ethiopian Regiment and fought on the
side of the British.
In Trump's America, the children suffering in concentration camps along the border taken
from their parents is not too different from those Iroquois children who were displaced
from their homes and their families in 1779 in Washington's America. It should serve as no
irony that just as in 1779, many of the children targeted today by the "village destroyer"
are also indigenous - from Mexico and Central America. And just as in 1779, so many
targeted by the village destroyer are Black, are poor, are destitute.
I hope that a major takeaway my Mohawk nephews had about our discussion on Washington was
not just about the violence and suffering he inflicted on the Iroquois and on slaves, but
that countless Iroquois and slaves resisted against that oppression. This is not a
question of history. That resistance continues. Today, a small group of activists from
across the lands where this genocide took place are descending on the ICE Detention Center
in Batavia, NY - a prison for immigrants built by a nation that's been in the business of
creating refugees and displacing people since 1776. Even in Philadelphia, a large group of
Jewish activists and their supporters proclaiming "Never Again is Now" marched on the ICE
facility and are disrupting the July 4th parade with a demand to shut down the
concentration camps.
A police officer with right wing militia tattoos on his arm arrest Jewish activists
protesting concentration camps at an ICE facility in New Jersey on July 1 , 2019. Similar
actions are taking place on the 4th of July.
Village destroyers, from Washington to Trump, have always known which side they're on -
the side of slave owners and land speculators, prison wardens and generals, white
supremacists and killers, politicians and capitalists - we need to have a better idea of
what the creation myth of this nation is to better understand that the US today is just a
visceral embrace of what it always was. We should call that creation myth for what it is:
a myth. Just as the Iroquois warriors and Black freedom fighters who fought against the
village destroyer Washington and the system of oppression he represented, we need to
follow in their footsteps, and join the growing movement to shut down these concentration
camps, and create a world where there are no more village destroyers.
Brendan Maslauskas Dunn is a member of the Black Rose Anarchist Federation who lives in
Mohawk and Mahican Territory in Upstate NY.
http://blackrosefed.org/the-counter-revolution-of-1776-the-genocide-of-1777-and-the-village-destroyer-washington/
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Message: 3
Date: Sun, 7 Jul 2019 11:04:45 +0300
From: a-infos-en@ainfos.ca
To: en <a-infos-en@ainfos.ca>
Subject: (en) Spain, CGT, salvamento maritimo: About us (ca, it)
[machine translation]
Message-ID: <mailman.35255.1562486690.970.a-infos-en@ainfos.ca>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"; Format="flowed"
We want to welcome you to the State Trade Union Section of Maritime Rescue of the General
Confederation of Labor (CGT) and invite you to participate in what constitutes the basic
core of our union model: the practice of mutual support and solidarity, the basic effort
of everyone and every one of us to collaborate in pursuit of a society without exploited
or exploiters. ---- It is not possible to face reality alone. The workers have always
benefited from mutual support; in the block, in the street, we see every day that the
union is strength. Every day is more necessary the active participation, in union and
social, of comrades who assume responsibilities and commitments.
No doubt you will agree with the CGT in the dissatisfaction produced by the practices of
the so-called "majority" unions: mobilizations that are aborted from the top,
obscurantisms, dependence on entities outside the union, negotiations away from the
decision of the workers, cronyism when not complicity with capital, agreements behind the
backs of those affected ... In short, a union model that for years ceased to be a useful
tool for workers to become a tool of the state and entrepreneurs.
Faced with this, the General Confederation of Labor constitutes a union and social
alternative useful to workers, which employs the historical means that we have endowed
both in external functioning and in external practice: class syndicalism, autonomous,
Self-managed, federalist, internationalist and libertarian. An anarcho-syndicalist
organization that is governed by the principles of honesty, coherence, transparency,
firmness, solidarity, assembly and, above all, the illusion in a union and social project
alternative to the exploitation of man by man: a world without exploited or exploiters.
It is necessary to further strengthen the union option represented by the CGT, an
autonomous, participatory, combative and eager option to change society. An option in
which we will be with you hand in hand, neither more nor less.
State Trade Union Section of Maritime Rescue.
http://salvamentomaritimo.org/quienes-somos/
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Message: 4
We announce a new group of the Anarchist Communist Group in the Dover and Folkestone area.
Anyone there or elsewhere in South East Kent should contact us via the ACG national
address info@anarchistcommunism.org
Meanwhile our West London group is continuing to develop. They can be contacted at
londonacg@gmail.com
https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2019/07/05/dover-and-folkestone-anarchist-communist-group/
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