Today's Topics:
1. US, black rose fed: Tenant Organizing When Rising Rent Isn't
the (Main) Issue'' (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. France, Union Communiste Libertaire AL #301 - Town planning:
In the desolate spaces of the "smart city" (fr, it, pt)[machine
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. The latest Kate Sharpley Library bulletin is up on our
website (finally) -- and it's a double issue. (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. cnt-sindikatua: CNT calls to "maintain and extend" the
struggle for dignity after the general strike (ca, it, pt)
[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
5. cgt pv: CGT in Action "Alone to Danger" -- Chapter number 23
of CGT in Action (ca ) [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
6. cgt.org.es: EPA at the end of the fourth quarter -- SOCIAL
UNION COMMUNICATIONS (ca) [machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
7. Secretariado Permanente del Comité Confederal de la CGT:
For the Freedom of the Palestinian People, against the agreement
between the US and the State of Israel (ca, it, pt) [machine
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
8. SOHEIL ARABI: ANARCHISM MEANS FLYING FOREVER
(Translation by Hasse Golkar) (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
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Message: 1
Tenant organizing is once again on the map with much of the attention focused on soaring rents and gentrification in major metropolitan
areas such as Los Angeles and the Bay Area. But as Bay Area based Tenant and Neighborhood Councils (TANC) organizer Julian Francis Park
writes, tenant organizing has also been taking hold in smaller cities but centered around a different core issue: habitability. ---- By
Julian Francis Park ---- It wasn't until at least 2013 that the term "gentrification" slid into everyday conversation in the U.S. Spike
Lee's famous February 2014 impromptu speech probably helped, but it wasn't the cause. It was an effect of community organizing and research
on the phenomenon's increased prevalence. The strategies coming out of the invaluable work of tenant organizations in expensive coastal
metropolitan areas like Portland, Oregon, Los Angeles, Boston, the Bay Area, and Washington, D.C., often get taken for models of what to do
about tenants' issues, throughout their home states and across the country.
However, geographic concentration of poverty, for which I use the term "slumification," is actually increasing several times faster in U.S.
cities than gentrification, as a result of growing national and global race and class inequality, facilitated by a suite of policies and
political negligence that have undermined and isolated working-class, mainly Black and Brown, communities. And while much translates from
tenant organizing in superheated markets to tenant organizing in the rest of the country, much doesn't.
While rents skyrocket in some hot rental markets, the more numerous lukewarm-to-cold markets have higher numbers of the poorest overburdened
by rent. While gentrification may make some tenants fear eviction because their landlord wants to close the gap between what the rent has
been and what it now could be, many more tenants live in uninhabitable housing and fear retaliation if they complain.
The exceptions have been taken for the rule since the exceptional places are home both to the longest-lived tenants organizations and to
media outlets with national audiences. But looking for the rule means looking to the middle of the country, like Omaha, Nebraska, and Ames,
Iowa, or to coastal suburbs on the margins of hotter markets, like Concord, California, and parts of Palm Beach County, Florida. In areas
like these, the tenants movement is blossoming but the fights are around different issues.
Members of the Palm Beach County Tenants Union outside the Riviera Beach, FL city council meeting in November 2019 where tenants of
Stonybrook public housing complex spoke out against the conditions of toxic mold, roaches, rats, and the abusive management.
It's About Habitability
Though rent burdens are high in Palm Beach County due to low wages, rents are only 1 percent higher than they were in 2008, having fallen
after the mortgage crisis and then risen again. Palm Beach County Tenants Union's (PBCTU) organizing is focused around issues of
habitability. In the Rainberry Woods development of Delray Beach, where a majority of tenants are Haitian American, the homes aren't being
maintained, PBCTU member Rodolfo Plancarte says. "They're having water leaks, they have mold, roofs are collapsing." These are especially
common problems in the region, due to humidity and hurricanes. In May 2019, tenants in the independent Rainberry Woods Neighborhood Council,
together with homeowners, built pressure against corporate landlords who had purchased homes within the development by taking over the
Rainberry Woods homeowners' association. The HOA has jurisdiction to fine negligent landlords and place liens on their properties.
Meanwhile in a mobile home development populated largely by Guatemalan immigrant tenants in Lake Worth, an explicitly nativist, classist
code enforcement policy led city officials to aggressively red-tag homes for minor code issues or unauthorized additions, says Adam
Wasserman, a co-founder of PBCTU. Meanwhile, the city was "ignoring[tenants']actual complaints about broken pipes for their sewage"-which
would be the responsibility of the park owner, says Wasserman. Adding insult to injury, the code-violation notices came only in English.
Early in 2019, PBCTU protested the Lake Worth city commissioners, demanding that red-tagging stop until they hire a Spanish-bilingual code
enforcement official.
Difficulties with code inspections are a familiar to Omaha tenant organizers as well. An organizer with Omaha Tenants United (OTU) who asked
to be referred to as Simon for fear of reprisal from Omaha landlords, says, "if an inspector were to come into most of the buildings that
we're going into, and they were actually doing their job according to the law,[the buildings]would just be condemned." Early in 2019 Simon
told a local radio station, "Omaha has a big problem with slumlords taking advantage of people in affordable housing. Slumlords offer cheap
properties but oftentimes they use that for an excuse to not provide adequate services for their tenants or take advantage of them." Simon
cautioned that "slumlord is more of a rhetorical device. We always try to just say ‘landlords' wherever possible, to highlight that even the
‘good landlords' are still exploiting."
There's strong potential for tenant organizing in areas where conditions are really bad, says Simon. "You have agitation points kind of
ready-made for you." OTU has successfully supported tenants of Dave Paladino, whom Simon referred to as "the biggest slumlord in Omaha,"
whose buildings are in disrepair and who has been accused of confiscating tenants' security deposits and fabricating exorbitant fees. In one
case, OTU was able to eliminate $1,045 in fees and get $500 of a disabled Black tenant's $550 deposit returned by bringing dozens of
supporters to a negotiation the tenant had scheduled with management after voluntarily vacating a unit the tenant considered uninhabitable.
In Ames, Iowa, students at Iowa State University make up a large majority of renters. Several of the biggest issues tenants face stem from
the ways that Ames's rental market has shaped itself in response to this majority. "The student population increased pretty dramatically
earlier this decade[which]has caused a lot of property managers to rush to the area and really oversaturate the rental market with very
poorly constructed buildings that have mold, that aren't up to safety standards," Ames Tenant Union (ATU) organizer Preston Burris says. At
one such new building, The Madison, ATU gathered more than 100 petition signatures last year complaining of insufficient insulation and high
utility costs, among other problems. Unfortunately, managers refused to collectively bargain with tenants and the new tenants union wasn't
able to continue that campaign.
In Concord, California, a suburb in the San Francisco Bay Area, where rent increases are starting to become an issue, the underlying
condition of the homes is still a dominant concern. Betty Gabaldon, the president of Todos Santos Tenants United (TSTU), says her path to
becoming a tenant organizer began in 2016 when she received a $375 rent increase. "I decided to go knock on my neighbors' doors and see if
they were getting the same increase," Gabaldon says. They were-"and everybody was getting upset because they were all having issues with
their units." The building was overrun with bedbugs, the outdoor common areas and parking lot were filthy, and some individual units lacked
a working refrigerator or had rats coming in through punctured walls. With support from Eduardo Torres of the statewide group Tenants
Together, Gabaldon and a strong majority of her fellow tenants founded a tenants association and launched a partial rent strike, eventually
defeating the rent increases and winning improvements to their units and the building. The landlord fired the manager, Steve Pinza, and
hired a new one, who dealt with the bedbugs and rats, cleaned the property, and replaced broken appliances. When a new landlord took over in
2018, however, members of the association were, one by one, targeted with legal, no-fault evictions at the end of their lease, says Gabaldon.
Though her own organizing experience started with massive rent increases, Gabaldon says that in Concord habitability issues are the main
problem, combined with landlords "terrorizing" tenants with threats when they request repairs. Gabaldon gave further examples of Pinza
treating tenants poorly, on properties he owns. She said he has retaliated against tenants who were organizing by shutting off their water,
pressuring them to sign papers written in a language they didn't understand, and evicting them. In a July 2019 letter, Pinza threatened
tenants with rent increases and evictions if they joined with other tenants he was already in the process of evicting for organizing.
Tenant organizing propaganda from the Bay Area based Tenant and Neighborhood Councils (TANC).
With Weak Laws, Turning to Direct Action
While states like California, New York, and Oregon have moderately strong tenant protections and currently some political will toward
improving them, that is mostly not the case in other places. Beyond those states, only D.C., and localities in two other states, Maryland
and New Jersey, have rent control. A few places without rent control have, or are waging active fights to enact, protections from evictions
without good cause. Elsewhere, tenants may at best have rights to privacy, to their security deposit, and against retaliation, which are
difficult to enforce, and the right to live in habitable housing, which is difficult to enforce without risking eviction by landlord or by
inspectors. Passage of local rent regulations is prohibited in 60 percent of states, including Florida and Iowa.
Each organizer I spoke with told me about a hostile political atmosphere toward tenant protections in their area. Even in Concord, city
council intransigence toward implementing local protections was a crucial provocation for tenants to found TSTU this past summer.
In Ames, a town almost half-populated by Iowa State University students, organizer Preston Burris told me that ATU formed in part as a
result of city council passing a law in 2018 that would cap the number of rental properties in neighborhoods. (The law was overridden by the
state legislature.) Burris says tenants-students and non-students alike-are viewed as "not really part of the community." Landlords familiar
with student populations offer leases that don't run a full year, leaving all tenants without a home for a couple of days to a couple of
weeks in late July. This leasing schedule makes it difficult to rent out of season, despite Ames's many vacancies. Furthermore, landlords
take advantage of tenants' unfamiliarity with their rights to charge illegal carpet cleaning fees at the end of the term of their lease.
"Florida, right now, is completely hopeless on the policy level," says Wasserman of Palm Beach County. Florida's state legislature is ruled
not only by the interests of developers, landlords, and real estate agents, but also by the Republican Party, so tenant organizers are not
hopeful about state support. Even at the local level, fairly modest tenant-protection efforts can be a challenge. In the city of Riviera
Beach, for example, a law merely requiring landlords to pay for tenants' relocation costs when poor conditions make it necessary to move was
tabled in November 2019 when the council sponsor lost reelection.
Simon, of Omaha Tenants United (OTU), describes Omaha's tenant-protection laws as minimal. But, like Wasserman and PBCTU, he and OTU
understand this as an opportunity. Tenants affected by the trend toward slumification in these areas have inspired the formation of groups
dedicated to grassroots organizing, direct action, and solidarity, because these approaches make immediate improvements in tenants' lives
without having to wait on unlikely gains from legislative advocacy. Negligent policy environments have given such an approach unique
traction among growing numbers of tenants. If they engage in legislative campaigns, this typically extends from their grassroots efforts, as
in the case of PBCTU fighting red-tagging in Lake Worth, and OTU successfully opposing the awarding of development subsidies to Dave Paladino.
According to Simon and Wasserman, in many areas like these, if there are institutional nonprofits, those nonprofits still aren't organizing
to build tenant power, perhaps because of the political orientations of their foundation funders. Tenant organizing in Omaha, Ames, and Palm
Beach County is instead being spearheaded by volunteer-based groups solely motivated by politics and bonds of solidarity. These groups often
explicitly identify as anti-capitalist, despite the strongly property-rights-oriented attitudes of those in power. Many of them share
membership with local chapters of the Democratic Socialists of America and the lesser-known Marxist Center, which have made tenant
organizing a focus of their grassroots work. Popular wisdom suggests that putting radical politics out front can hinder building broad
support. But according to Simon, the notion that "the tenant/landlord relationship is inherently exploitive" is easy for many tenants to
understand and has not turned people away.
PBCTU and OTU both emerged out of mutual aid projects. In Palm Beach County, activists and community members who had been defending
immigrants from deportations got together to build a tenants union in 2017 after Hurricane Irma, which damaged many tenants' homes and which
landlords used as cover to mass-evict tenants. In Omaha, organizers with For the People, which offers free food and hygiene products, found
that landlord complaints were frequent among participants and decided to begin solidarity work with tenants in 2018. The ultimate goal of
OTU is to "build institutions through which people can use their collective power as tenants, in order to mitigate a lot of these abuses
that we see by landlords," Simon says. "For us, that means staying outside of the court system, not relying on legislative maneuvers. ... We
try to keep people out of the courts as much as possible because then we're playing on their playing field. ... And then we have to rely on
bourgeois law which is rather unreliable, obviously, in order to get results that win. So to that end we rely very much so on direct action,
directly confronting landlords with tenants." For example, another organizer with OTU, Mark Vondrasek, describes the case of an elderly
Black tenant who learned about OTU through a friend who'd also won results through direct action. This man had been washing his dishes in
his bathtub for years because he lacked hot water throughout the apartment, and the sink had leaked since moving in. He'd never gotten a
response from the landlord to complaints about the water and the leak. With OTU, the tenant wrote a letter about these and other issues with
his home, including faulty electrical wiring. Then the group turned out about 10 people to support the tenant in delivering the letter to
the landlord's home. The landlord wasn't present but watched the delegation on his security cameras and called the man right away. Shortly
after, the water and electrical were fixed.
OTU does not currently consider itself a tenants union-it intends to build up local tenant power to the point of founding one using an
organizing model called a "solidarity network." The idea is that a small volunteer group begins by taking on smaller, winnable cases, and
fights for them exclusively using collective direct action, mobilizing their own and the tenants' communities. Each fight generates new
experience and attracts new members. In OTU's vision for itself, which ATU and others are adopting, this process escalates, taking on more
difficult cases with more tenants, until they're confidently organizing full buildings of tenants.
OTU had its first win of this latter kind over the summer in a nearby suburb. There, tenants had already had code inspectors visit, to no
avail. With tenant leaders, OTU distributed surveys to the building's residents to collect complaints. From the survey results, they crafted
and hand-delivered a demand letter, calling for "mold inspections, repairs to the laundry room which had been flooding repeatedly and had
holes in the ceiling causing it to spill debris into the washer, and a $100 rent reduction until the pool was fixed." All demands were met
promptly.
PBCTU's most extensive campaign, with the Section 8 tenants of the Stonybrook Apartments, as of late 2019 had become a barricade-building,
direct-action eviction defense. Organizing in the complex began in April 2018, focusing on habitability issues, from mold to pests. By that
summer the association had launched a 20-person rent strike, which is within their rights under Florida's implied warranty of habitability,
and won relocation assistance for more than 40 of their members who had to move due to uninhabitable units. However, issues like the rats,
roaches, and mold persisted, and so tenants have continued and extended participation in their rent strike. In November 2019, PBCTU released
a statement defending the strike and claiming that it "spans the entire property." According to the management company, Millenia Housing,
Stonybrook includes 256 units. By late November Millenia had responded to the strike and accompanying legal action by seeking to evict
several of the tenants who had fought hardest for better conditions and resisted previous harassment. Among those targeted is Stonybrook
Tenants Association's President Crystal Lewis, whose car, in the early days of organizing, was vandalized in what she took to be attempted
intimidation.
Challenges and Mutual Support
Burris says Ames Tenant Union's efforts at The Madison at the end of 2018 were ultimately defeated, partly because management outflanked
them by making small concessions without recognizing the association of tenants, and partly because, even though "there was definitely
momentum to be found there, we were too inexperienced to really capitalize on it." In response to this inexperience, as well as difficulties
with members becoming burned out, this fall ATU began restructuring, dropping back to a focus on things that would be in reach of a core
activist team and planning for a slower escalation "to a place where we can really get that rank and file," says Burris.
This restructuring comes after Burris spent a summer connecting with other Midwestern tenant organizers at leftist conferences-he met up
with the Iowa City Tenants Union at Socialism 2019 in Chicago, Illinois, and at Red State 2019, in Lincoln, Nebraska, he attended a panel of
OTU members titled "We Took on the Biggest Slumlord in Our City and Won-You Can Too!" OTU offered Burris advice after the panel. OTU has
taken on mentorship with a number of newer tenants organizations in the region, including groups in Oklahoma, Indiana, and Illinois.
PBCTU has also mentored new tenant unions, including one in Miami. But because winning statewide tenant protections in Florida is viewed as
hopeless, Wasserman believes there's less value to coordinating statewide. He favors networks built around shared targets. For example, the
Stonybrook tenants' manager, Millenia, owns and operates properties all over the country. To strengthen their leverage, the tenants hope to
spark a coordinated movement against Millenia. This isn't easy because many of the places where Millenia owns property don't yet have any
tenants organization, but that's starting to change. "Mostly, it starts with us either hearing from or reaching out to tenants on the
ground," says Wasserman, "because the thing about Millenia is that they tend to own the worst property in every city they're in, which
always makes the news, and so you see on the news tenants actually talking about these conditions." Tenants at Millenia properties in
Galveston, Texas, for example, have been able to connect with the new Houston Tenants Union for support. "We should coordinate like we do in
the labor movement, coordinate all the workplaces against a single boss," says Wasserman. "That would be a good way to actually get this
movement functioning together."
Sharing experiences, building relationships, and taking action are the backbone of collective organizing. Across regions and landlords,
tenant organizers working outside of rapidly gentrifying areas are connecting with others facing similar conditions, sometimes even in
gentrifying areas. Gabaldon told me about a conversation she had with a tenant from Long Beach, in the heavily gentrifying Los Angeles
County, at the California Renter Power assembly in October. "He got a rent increase, and he got upset that the landlord was abusing the
other tenants because most of them didn't speak English. And when he started telling me this story it started sounding more and more like
mine. To know that other people are in the same movement as us, you know, it felt really good actually." Tenants Together, the organization
that first mentored Gabaldon, was among the assembly's conveners. Gabaldon and others founded their tenants union with the support of
Tenants Together and several local organizations, so they could build relationships locally in Concord. "Start talking to your neighbors,
that's the main thing," Gabaldon says. When asked what she expected the focus of the new union to be, she said, "We want to be doing more
actions. We also want other tenants to know that they're not alone."
Julian Francis Park is a poet, writer, and tenant organizer in Oakland, California active with Tenant and Neighborhood Councils (TANC).
https://blackrosefed.org/tenant-organizing-when-rent-is-not-main-issue/
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Message: 2
We tackle a cycle of articles on "cities of the future": at the heart of these, the use of digital data, but also a permanent reorganization
of urban space. ---- The traditional cities, with a city center occupying a preponderant place, are gone since the era of mobility. The
cities have spread out enormously and the spaces have become considerably different. These are the cities in which we live today, with their
commercial zones, their dormitory districts ... There is no organization of a coherent space, we move to go from one place to another. This
city made of odds and ends was not built by its inhabitants but by urban planners ; the spaces were imagined upstream and not developed
collectively by the users. Such a city is sprawling and concentrates many people on a small space, an anti-thesis of elementary principles
of ecology.
Build world cities
One of the new aspects that modernity brings to the city is the development of the digital space. More and more connected objects are
invading our intimate space permanently1, but it is also buildings, vehicles or various urban furniture that connect to each other. At the
head of the gondola for the connection objects of the "intelligent building" is the Linky meter which centralizes the electrical data of the
building, but also of the objects of each dwelling. Tests are carried out in France on connected districts: permanent data flows calculate
consumption, optimize energy distribution and "increase performance»Of cities (and reduce EDF's losses, for example). Another great aspect
of modernity is the "modular city": the architects who built buildings with a function will more and more be led to make buildings empty of
meaning and modular. We can already see these areas blooming, growing like mushrooms and as ugly as depersonalized. Urbanism here is still
owned by elites, cities and big companies, and housing very poor in diversity is bound to become hollow and movable, or modifiable.
One would think that energy-efficient neighborhoods, with modular functions, making it possible to transform habitats rather than destroy
them, could make urban space more respectful of the environment, more ecological. At least that is what their promoters claim, in a
capitalist logic. But these developments do not change the logic of growth. The cities are always growing, and we have just passed a new
speed in the destruction of agricultural land: the surface of a department now disappears every five years under the concrete. The uniform
space individualizes and divides us more and more. With the 'smart city», We will no longer really live in the city, our data will be its
raw material and it is she who will calculate our way of living.
Reinette Noyée (UCL Aveyron)
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Urbanisme-Dans-les-espaces-desoles-de-la-ville-intelligente
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Message: 3
KSL: Bulletin of the Kate Sharpley Library No. 100-101, January 2020[Double issue]has just been posted on our site. The PDF is up at: --
https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/g1jz9m ---- You can get to the contents list at https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/xd26zm ---- Contents
---- Looking back at the back issues "It seemed a simple idea: look through back issues of the Kate Sharpley Library's bulletin to find some
interesting articles, and then encourage people to read them and think about anarchist history..." ---- December 2019 message from the Kate
Sharpley Library "Particular thanks have to go the comrade who sent us historic copies of War Commentary and Freedom." ---- Mini-reviews:
Biographies (anarchist lives from around the world) ---- Death of a good comrade[Daniel Mullen]by Jack Wade (1942. From the First World War
to the Spanish Revolution, via the fight for Irish independence)
The Government of No One: The Theory and Practice of Anarchism by Ruth Kinna[Book review]by Sonny Disposition "This is a book devoted to
ideas, rather than a history. I found it thought-provoking: some is good, in some places I disagree with the analysis and in others I think
‘oh dear me, don't go there'."
Beyond a footnote: ‘Class struggle anarchism' "When and why did the phrase ‘class-struggle anarchism' come into use?"
Something should be done (or How to revolt)[book review]"Freedom is its own reward, and is exhilarating. And even when you lose, you know
that freedom is possible. That's why you should read this little book."
Miguel Garcia: a personal appreciation by Gerfried Horst "Regarding his own life, he said he felt satisfaction to have always acted
according to his principles. He told me that nobody could live without an ‘ilusión', which is not ‘illusion' in the English sense, but a
‘hopeful anticipation', a dream that may become true."
Dialogue in the form of soliloquy by Louis Mercier Vega (1946) "there is a sensible need to come up with a practical solution to the painful
contradiction between the dynamism of the young and the slightly amorphous wisdom of the old."
Extras on the website (just because we can't fit it all in the bulletin, doesn't mean you shouldn't have a look)
Speaking and Writing (Comment) by Albert Meltzer "This piece sheds a little light on how Albert's style of discussion was formed in a
movement where dealing with hecklers was a necessary skill, one where humour could be used for defence or attack."
Albert Grace by Joe Thomas "I have a vivid recollection of being rescued by Albert Grace in the course of having an ‘altercation' with a
mounted policeman."
W. A. Gape Half A Million Tramps (1936)[Review]by Barry Pateman "Half A Million Tramps constantly articulates the tension between what an
individual tramp may feel to be their rights and what charity, religion and the state decide these rights actually are."
Our Masters Are Helpless: The Essays of George Barrett edited by Iain McKay[book review]by Barry Pateman "You might disagree with him at
times but his striving to reach those who are not anarchists, using language that is clear and effective, is important and impressive. In a
time of apparent madness his assertion that anarchism is common sense remains an important message for us all."
The Trouble with National Action[Book Review]"This is not a book which is particularly concerned with government policy, nor with
maintaining ‘business as usual'."
Liz Willis: Obituary of the Solidarity member and historian, "she remained a ‘free rebel spirit' to the end."
Ken Williams (ex-East London DAM) has died. We hope to have an obituary in a future issue.
Biographies by Sergei Ovsiannikov (links to Russian anarchist lives including Anarchist Women in Maltsev Prison 1907-1908)
Kate Sharpley Library on Facebook
Kate Sharpley Library Website
Copyright © 2020 Kate Sharpley Library, All rights reserved.
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Message: 4
The CNT union has greeted the thousands of people who on Thursday have mobilized in the Basque Autonomous Community and the Navarre Regional
Community to ask for pensions, work and decent living. "The strike, an essential tool of the working class, has once again put these claims
clearly on the table and has been worth remembering that only through unity can we take steps towards such objectives," said the
anarcho-syndicalist center. ---- In an emergency assessment released this afternoon, the union - one of the participants in the call for a
general strike - has stressed that the struggle for dignity "cannot and should not end today or be reduced to a day of mobilization." "This
is demonstrated by the pension tide, which has been on the street for two years, and so we must demonstrate the trade union organizations,"
he said.
In this context, CNT has called to "maintain and extend" the mobilization campaign for work, pensions and decent life, while noting that the
path of consultation and social dialogue "are nothing more than false recipes of those who seek avoid, at all costs, that nothing changes. "
"Beware of promises and deceptions: patches are no longer valid," said the plant. Precisely, he has called to be alert to those who from the
institutions "will seek to deactivate the conflict or redirect it to rooms with carpet."
Similarly, the union has highlighted the "autonomous and transversal" nature of the pensioners movement. "Your fight without flags or
parties behind shows us again that only the people save the people," CNT said.
Finally, he has lamented the role held so far by the CCOO and UGT unions, whom he has asked to "publicly say which side they are on." "Above
all, we ask you to stop throwing lies to camouflage your shame," the organization added.
----------------------------------------------------------
CNT values the follow-up of the general strike positively
The CNT union has described as "very positive" the follow-up that the general strike for pensions, work and decent life in the Basque
Autonomous Community and the Navarre Regional Community has had. "We see, again, thousands of people in the streets, demanding clear,
concrete and urgent measures against precariousness," said the anarcho-syndicalist center, one of the organizers of this day.
In this sense, CNT wanted to influence the particular nature of this mobilization. "The pension tide, guided by the principles of autonomy
and transversality, has once again offered a gigantic show of dignity," he stressed.
The union has stressed that along with pensioners "women, students, migrants and many other victims of this brutally unfair system have
taken to the streets." "None of this will end today," he said. Only through the mobilization, unity and joint action of all and all of us
who want to build another present and another future can we change things. "
Also, CNT has called to participate in the different mobilizations that will be held this afternoon in numerous municipalities. "Nothing and
nobody will stop this tide," he said.
http://www.cnt-sindikatua.org/index.php/es/todas-las-noticias/1615-cnt-llama-a-mantener-y-extender-la-lucha-por-la-dignidad-tras-la-huelga-general.html
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Message: 5
ANONYMOUS: ---- We speak with Andrés Gallego , general secretary of CGT-LKN Euskal Herria, he tells us about the reasons why the
confederation has not called a general strike on January 30 with the nationalist unions of Euskadi. ---- From the forest firefighters of the
Generalitat Valenciana , Pablo, a CGT delegate at SGISE, explains the demands they have to improve the rights of workers and summon us to
the concentration of next Friday, January 31 in Valencia. ---- Ismael Furió , partner of CGT and General Secretary of Maritime Rescue tells
us about the appeal presented by the Boluda Group before the ruling of the Superior Court of Justice of the Valencian Community (TSJV) that
gave the reason to the General Confederation of Labor (CGT ) on the working day in Boat Service (Boluda Group), favorable to the interests
of the workers and on the wreck of the Rúa Mar fishing vessel.
María , fictitious name of the partner who has been fired from the APROP consortium, a consortium that is dedicated to the care and
assistance of people with profound disabilities.
HISTORICAL MEMORY, THE PENDING REVOLUTION
We talked with Cecilio Gordillo about the 10 years of the "ALL NAMES" exhibition .
LIBERARY FEMINISM LUCIA SANCHEZ SAORNIL
Emilia Nacher , nurse and activist explains her experiences in the flotilla of freedom and in the Saharawi refugee camps.
MUSICA
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club (What Ever Happened To My Rock And Roll (Punk Song)
Delirium Tremens (Ikusi eta ikasi)
Janes Addiction (Stop)
The Runaways (Cherry Bomb)
https://www.cgtpv.org/cgt-en-accion/cgt-en-accion-solos-ante-el-peligro
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Message: 6
"Either the rules of the" labor market "game change dramatically or we will remain precarious, impoverished and deceived until ... never
ending" ---- The two central problems, the precariousness and business abuse of a labor market whose horizon is full of uncertainties,
vulnerability and insecurity for the entire active population, whether employed, underemployed or unemployed, there will be no solution
unless the rules are radically changed of game, that is to say, the labor norms by which the wage and labor relation is governed. ---- The
EPA from October to December 2019, for the "media spokespersons" and for the vast majority of the political class, is but a sign of "good
news" symptoms, where the unemployed people are 112,400 less and the occupied ones reach almost The 20 million. Almost neither says that
both "positive figures" are the ones that have grown the least since 2013.
The "statistical" reality is that 1,383,000 people enter the occupation, while those who leave the occupation, that is, lose their jobs, are
1,395,000. At the same time it is not highlighted that 156,000 people have abandoned the statistics and have "left" the active population in
the last quarter, where? Of course, either to the submerged economy or have emigrated.
In the Spanish state there is less work than ten years ago: the total volume of hours of work, they are at levels very similar to those of
2009 and, if it is refined a little, we find an average somewhat lower than 630 million of hours, which remain almost 50 million below those
reached in 2008, the year where the scam crisis began to have its effects.
We are talking and living what is known as the job chop, where part-time work already accounts for almost 8% of all hours worked, that is,
50.9 million or, in other words, one in three people He has a part-time contract.
The labor abuse by the entrepreneur, is at its "wide" , with respect to unpaid work (overtime), and that in May 2019 a decree of
registration of working time came into force, but the control of the Inspection of Work is being at least deficient , the effect on
employment and public coffers (contributions and personal income tax) means that those hours of unpaid work time could have become 63,000
equivalent full-time jobs in autumn, and 55,000 in summer .
We are talking about a triple infraction: labor, social and tax, with non-payment of salaries and social contributions and the withdrawal of
income tax withholdings of almost thirty million euros per week. This illegality is concentrated in trade (345,100) and hospitality
(264,100), bags which are bulky in manufacturing (272,600) and teaching (246,900) and striking , by their amount in sectors strong union
establishment , 163,100 of public administrations and 143,000 of banks and insurance companies.
We are in a position of chronification of fraud and abuse, which only reflect the absence of labor and social rights caused by the
counter-labor reforms of the last 33 years, which naturalizes Social Injustice and considers the "farwest market" normal , in Hispanic
terms, the "market of the gentleman of the farm".
For the CGT the time has come for the facts, they no longer serve beautiful words or electoral promises, now is the time to repeal the Labor
Reforms and other regulations that have plunged the working class into a situation of precariousness and unbearable poverty for more weather.
Otherwise, CGT will take to the streets mobilizing the Working Class so that the political class finds out that, whoever governs we have the
right to have RIGHTS.
https://cgt.org.es/epa-al-cierre-del-iv-trimestre/?pk_campaign=feed&pk_kwd=epa-al-cierre-del-iv-trimestre
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Message: 7
This Monday marks the centenary of the Nazi Holocaust worldwide . The Holocaust consisted of the kidnapping, torture, labor and sexual
exploitation of people who did not fit the single thought model that reached power, not only in Germany, but in the old Europe that
collaborated with the Nazi Regime. That is, of national totalitarianism and based on religious supremacy also against all sexual, racial,
ideological and religious dissent. Although most of the people kidnapped and killed by the German State belonged to the Jewish religion,
they were also kidnapped, tortured and murdered lesbians and homosexuals, people with functional differences, ethnic minorities ... ----
Monday's commemoration, far from being a tribute to the State of Israel as a victim of Nazism, should have been precisely a wake-up call
against the totalitarianisms that today use the State to illegally occupy territories, detain and kidnap people with the goal of ending
People and Free Peoples.
Yesterday after all the Zionism media use of the Holocaust commemoration, the US announced a great agreement with the State of Israel, which
they call for peace, but which only refers to peace for Israel, as it continues in the line of not respecting Human Rights in the area, nor
the Oslo agreements, nor United Nations resolutions condemning illegal occupations.
As shown, the public petition of the corrupt, prosecuted and current President of the State of Israel to Felipe de Borbón asking him to help
him so that Israeli soldiers are not convicted of Crimes against Humanity, during his visit to Israel this week. Perhaps the very important
role that both have in the arms business explains the boldness of such requests.
In any case, CGT continues to denounce:
The detention, kidnapping and torture of the Palestinian People, which includes minors as targets of this genocidal war.
The illegal occupation of Israel in the territories of the Palestinian People.
Israel's aspiration for the sovereignty of the Jordan Valley and for Jerusalem to be the capital of its State.
That the successors of another genocidal dictator speak on behalf of the people who inhabit the different territories that make up the
Spanish State, much less, favor business or relations with the Zionist State while the occupations and the violation of human rights last.
The harassment and illegalization of the people and organizations that support peaceful boycott, divestment and sanctions actions against
the State of Israel.
The collusion of the International Community with the genocide of the Palestinian People and the repression of activists against the
violation of human rights in occupied Palestine.
Therefore, we join the international appeal to urgently mobilize against this Agreement between the US and the State of Israel. In Madrid,
the B--D-- Movement (of which we are part) has convened a rally in front of the US Embassy in Madrid, Calle Serrano 75, at 7pm .
Palestine is not sold
#RoboDelSiglo
https://cgt.org.es/por-la-libertad-del-pueblo-palestino-contra-el-acuerdo-entre-eeuu-y-el-estado-israel/
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Message: 8
SOHEIL ARABI, the anarchist political prisoner writes from the notorious Evin prison in northern Tehran, Iran ---- Anarchism means flying
forever. Since the very moment we open our eyes to this world, from all sides, a net of religion, nationality, language, "race", sexism is
thrown over our intelligence, as an obstacle to flight. When you talk to me about religion, race, language and superstition, then I try to
build wings out of these nets to fly towards the infinite freedom of thinking mind ---- Becoming an anarchist starts with breaking norm
structures. This is hugely difficult and expensive. But more difficult than that is to remain an anarchist ---- In fact, all brave birds fly
far away to distant places, but eventually halt somewhere their flight and are unable to continue more. Then they sit on the higher branch
of a big tree or on a big rock
Who else can say then that there is no infinite freedom anymore? Who else can say that they have flown as far as they could handle? There
are no birds capable of flying for endless eternity
Anarchism is a bird that moves against the definite characteristics called fate and laws, therefore it breaks the norm structure, goes
against Power and thus conquers the world and creates the change
The Anarchist development is not created of any chance, but is produced by the difficult path of libertarian struggle
Soheil Arabi[Evin Prison]January 5, 2020
Soheil Arabi: ANARKISMEN BETYDER ATT FLYGA FÖR EVIGT
SOHEIL ARABI, den anarkistiska politiska fången skriver från det ökända Evinfängelset i norra Teheran, Iran
Anarkismen betyder att flyga för evigt. Från den stunden som vi öppnar ögonen mot denna värld, så kastas ett nät av religion, nationalitet,
språk, ras, sexism över vår intelligens, som ett hinder för flygning. När du pratar med mig om religion, ras, språk och vidskepelse, då
försöker jag att bygga vingar av dessa nät för att flyga mot den oändliga frihetstänkandes himmel
Att bli anarkist börjar med att bryta sönder normstrukturen. Detta är kolossalt svårt och kostsamt. Men svårare än det är att hålla sig kvar
som anarkist
I själva verket flyger alla orädda fåglar långt bort mot avlägsna platser, men stannar slutligen någonstans med sitt flygande och inte
förmår att fortsätta vidare. Då sitter man på en mast eller en stor sten. Vem kan annars säga då att det inte finns något oändligt utrymme
för friheten längre? Vem kan annars säga att dom har flugit så långt man kunde orka? Det finns inga fåglar som förmår att flyga i en oändlig
evighet
Anarkismen är en fågel som rör sig emot de bestämda egenskaper vilka kallas för öde och lagar, därför bryter den söder normstrukturen, går
emot makten och på så sätt erövrar världen och skapar förändring. Den anarkistiska utvecklingen är inte slumpens skapelse, utan produceras
av den frihetliga svåra kampvägen
Soheil Arabi[Evinfängelset]5 januari 2020
https://asranarshism.com/1398/10/20/soheil-arabi-anarchism-means-flying-forever/
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