Today's Topics:
1. Bangaladesh, bandilang itim: Wrath Over Pride: A call-out
post to "radical" cis (het) men and their inadequacy in gender
struggles By Bandilang Itim (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. Bangaladesh, bandilang itim: Black Cross: A Proposal for an
Abolitionist Prisoner by Simoun Magsalin. (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. Holad, vrije bond: Housing Action Days (nl)
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. Derry Anarchists, international: THE OPPRESSED CLASSES RISE
UP AGAINST RACISM AND DISCRIMINATION (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
5. Greece, DYSINIAN HORSE APO: [PATRAS]Call of the women's
initiative against patriarchy in the course of pride on Saturday,
July 11, 18:00, Olgas Square [machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
6. France, Union Communiste Libertaire UCL - UCL tract, Unite
against the layoff epidemic (fr, it, pt)[machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
7. London Anarchist Communists: No safety, No return! - No
Safety, No Work Public Zoom Meeting (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
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Message: 1
Written by Adrienne Onday and originally published at friendship anarchy. ---- I want to talk about gender issues in
"progressive/radical/revolutionary spaces" before Pride Month ends because it's so important. I need to call out cis (het) men1 in
radical/progressive spaces-especially the anarchist, Marxist, or generally progressive men that I see around or know. ---- I understand that
when it comes to gender issues, cis (het) men in radical spaces don't want to talk about issues they do not have expertise on or experience
of. There's value in not wanting to talk over women and the LGBTQIA+. However, your silence is harming us, too. Your silence is violence to us.
I have been talking about the need for more men to speak up when women and the LGBTQIA+ get harassed or discriminated against for years.
Still-there has not been a single cis (het) man who stood vocally with women and the LGBTQIA+ in my spaces. No "radical" cis (het) man has
called out misogyny or rape culture and connected these realities to how our radical spaces are still arenas of struggle in the gender
aspect. No "radical" cis (het) man has talked about transphobia especially when it comes out in the news cycle. No "radical" cis het man has
even spoken up in support of or in allyship with or anything about women and LGBTQIA+ rights and welfare especially during Pride. Not even a
single word in the sea of takes against police brutality-even when it's so easy to connect Pride and anti-cop stances because of fucking
Stonewall.
"Radical" cis (het) men have not stepped up to the responsibility of becoming more proactive allies and support in the gender struggle, nor
taken any sort of initiative to learn more, whether by asking those who experience these realities or by doing some reading and Googling
themselves.
I'm fucking sick of it as a queer woman. "Radical" cis (het) men are so fucking privileged to be able to keep silent and keep ignoring us
and our realities because they can afford to see themselves as anything but their gender. They can choose to prioritize the label "activist"
or "organizer" or "socialist," down to the names of the dead old men they politically align with, but they will never see themselves as a
"man," because they can ignore their being cis (het) men-because their being cis (het) men, to them, has never shaped their political
beliefs and experiences. Their being cis (het) men is not part of their struggle and therefore cannot be propagandized or worked on to them.
Meanwhile, women's and the LGBTQIA+'s radicalism and politics will always, always, always be deeply intertwined with their womanhood or
queerness. The reason we are radical is because the world is fucking shit to us because we're women and LGBTQIA+ on top of being poor or of
color or indigenous or disabled. The reason we get involved in politics is because we ourselves want to get involved with dismantling the
oppression that comes the moment we are born women or identify as LGBTQIA+.
The reason we as women and the LGBTQIA+ in radical spaces are radical is because we know and understand that we cannot separate the
different parts of ourselves from each other-thus our politics has to take our womanhood, queerness, poverty, color, indigineity, disability
together-because these are all different lines intersecting to make our lives oppressed under a system that says being any of these traits
alone means you're subhuman, and being any combination of these traits means you go lower in the subhuman category.
We're already directly oppressed on a daily basis whether we are in political spaces or not. We not only get discriminated, talked over, or
silenced but harassed, abused, raped, assaulted, even murdered for being women and/or LGBTQIA+. But the fact that we even have to deal with
this shit-with "radical" cis (het) men either being straight-up garbage to us or thinking they're good enough because they're not garbage to
us while doing absolutely nothing to help correct shitty situations or dismantle structures that are oppressive to us-in our very own
political spaces is exhausting.
This is especially true for anarchist and Marxist men, who I have noticed can have the worst contradictions when it comes to their professed
radicalism.
Anarchist spaces here are male-dominated. It always hurts to see their proclaimed commitment to "liberation and equality for all" and their
other commitment to fight with Marxists when they can't even call out fellow anarchist men who are shit to women and LGBTQIA+. Not one
anarchist man in my knowledge called out this guy named Sid when he started spouting misogynist and homophobic garbage at me. It was only
another woman who offered me assistance in situations with him-never mind that I reached out to other anarchist men who him.
In fact, I don't even know if there is any stance against misogyny, sexism, homophobia and transphobia in anarchist spaces. I see some
well-connected anarchist groups (like those running Tagay Collective) working with groups or people that have been called out for
transphobia, such as Deep Green Resistance, which the IWW itself has referenced a stance against from the Institute of Anarchist Studies.
It makes me wonder what kind of liberation anarchist cis (het) men really fight for when they can't even take a stand against the oppression
others experience. Frankly, it's not a liberation I want. I'd rather die redefining liberation myself than work with such a narrow
definition that leaves me and other women and LGBTQIA+ as nothing but footnotes or addendums instead of fundamental aspects of the struggle.
Meanwhile, there are too many instances of harassment, homophobia, and even rape, that I have either personally experienced or heard from
survivors and friends of survivors from Marxist and other generally progressive spaces. Survivors either get ostracized or have to adjust
themselves by lying low or distancing from their groups, communities or organizations because abusers, harassers or rapists are "good and
effective speakers/community organizers/etc."
This is all to say: "radical" cis (het) men-you are not doing enough, if you are doing anything at all. To echo what my best friend, a
nonbinary anarchist themself, said: even if you're not the problem, it does not mean you are part of the solution.
Not being transphobic or misogynistic or a harasser does not let you off the hook. That should be the norm in the first place. If you were
truly radical, you would step up and help dismantle this whole thing. The bare minimum is to vocally express your withdrawal of or refusal
to support others who are misogynistic, sexist, homophobic, or transphobic and to stand against them until they stop being misogynists,
sexists, homophobes, and or transphobes.
For the anarchist cis (het) men out there: don't just support someone because they're fucking anarchist. Have some standards. If that
anarchist espouses values that are harmful to others, they're HARMFUL. Movements that make concessions with the things we are trying to
fight ultimately succumb and become (more like) the system we fight against. We cannot and should not make concessions when human lives and
dignities are on the line, because this opens up more opportunities for increased repression and oppression.
This is a reason why there are so few women and LGBTQIA+ anarchists in your spaces and why we choose to create our own spaces
ourselves-because your values are shit and your spaces and talking points do not address our needs. When we talk to you about our needs,
virtually NOTHING happens. For all the machismo you perform in fighting with Marxists, you have ZERO ability to confront fellow anarchist
men about shitty behaviors. I know we must address these things more constructively, but the caveat to that is you actually need to address
these things first. You can't keep saying you'll leave these matters up to the women and the LGBTQIA+ because:
Women and the LGBTQIA+ cannot keep being the only ones to respond to this. We're already dealing with the shittiness of the system on our
own and in our everyday lives-don't make us parent and take care of cis (het) men especially when men who cause us harm are not entitled to
any of our emotional energy and risk of safety (And yes! You are literally putting us at risk by letting us handle misogynistic, sexist,
homophobic, or transphobic men on our own!);
You need to be involved in this and let other men know disgusting behavior and ideas will not be tolerated because you not saying anything
enables disgusting men to keep having disgusting behavior; and
There are barely even any women, much less LGBTQIA+, in your spaces. How can you expect people who aren't there to speak up? And how can you
expect your spaces to be radical and revolutionary when you don't foster the necessary radical values that allow genuine inclusivity and
plurality and democracy and liberation?
For all "radical" cis (het) men of any stripe, ideology or walk of life: just because you call yourself a radical doesn't mean you are, and
just because you call your space radical doesn't mean it is. It is part of your responsibility as radicals to call out misogynistic, sexist,
homophobic, or transphobic behavior when you know of it. How can you know that injustice exists and not speak up against or about it? You
have to address the injustices of the system while fixing your own backyard-otherwise you're nothing but hypocrites who use your radicalism
to feed your ego.
"Radical" cis (het) men-you need to step the fuck up. Your silence is literally harming us. If you were truly for liberation, you must also
be actively for our liberation as women and LGBTQIA+, because liberation is not a monolith, assumed to be the same thing for everyone; it is
nuanced and attuned to the different needs and desires of different people.
We are only truly liberated if all of us-the poor, the people of color, the indigenous, the disabled, the LGBTQIA+, the women-if every
single one of us is liberated from the oppressive realities we experience. You, "radical" cis (het) men, are only as free as we are. Or, as
Fannie Lou Hamer more succinctly put it: nobody's free until everbody's free.
And this is a threat, to "radical" cis (het) men and their spaces: we can create spaces of true liberation without you, but you cannot
create spaces of true liberation without us. The reason we demand you to step up and take responsibility as cis (het) men is because we know
the dominant positions you have in radical spaces that we want to be better. But if things will not change-if you will continue to
perpetrate gender violence or to be silent in the face of our oppression-we can, we will, and we will continue to make spaces and entire
worlds without you, and you will be left with your patriarchal ideas of what freedom is without ever knowing what liberation could be.
For those who might not know: cis is shorthand for "cisgendered," meaning your gender matches your assigned sex at birth, while het is
shorthand for "heterosexual" or straight. I put het in parentheses because the behaviors I am calling out are not only present in
cisgendered heterosexual men but sometimes even cisgendered homosexual or bisexual men; however it is often in cis het men that the
behaviors are observable. This specification is important because of the way cis men are raised in a society that privileges their
experiences and realities while treating any other experiences and realities as wrong or deviant or subhuman.[?]
Tags
Adrienne Onday, English, gender struggles
https://bandilangitim.noblogs.org/2020/07/08/wrath-over-pride/#more-710
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Message: 2
With the Terror Bill now becoming Terror Law, we can expect an increase of arrests and suppression from the State. Indeed just one day after
the signing of the Terror law, eleven protesters were warrantlessly arrested and became known as the Cabuyao 11. It is in this climate that
having an abolitionist prisoner support group may be necessity. What follows is a sketch of a Black Cross organization, a proposal for an
organization that would do prisoner support and advocate for prison and police abolition. The abolitionist advocacy would be what
differentiates the Black Cross from other prisoner support groups. ---- The Black Cross, or Krus na Itim in Tagalog, is a kind of
organization that already exists in other countries and dates back to the Czarist Russia and the Russian Revolution. The Black Cross is an
organization primarily for the support of prisoners, especially political prisoners. It is an institution for supporting us in the face of
State tyranny. It is not a centralized international organization like its older brother the Red Cross, but rather a decentralized network
of Black Crosses that all work independently of another, though they may confederate into one body if they so choose. The Black Cross is
primarily a toolkit for us to use and organize in our own local contexts.
This proposal is by no means concrete or fixed in stone. What the form of the abolitionist prisoner support group would take-or even if it
is named "Black Cross" or "Krus na Itim"-would be up to the founders of the organization. This proposal contains guides and suggestions for
what an abolitionist prisoner support group could do and achieve in the fight for a better world. (For brevity I shall refer to the proposed
organization as "Black Cross.")
The Proposal in Brief
We need a prisoner support group as infrastructure in the face of State repression especially with the Terror Law. This prisoner support
group could be called Black Cross or Krus na Itim.
This Black Cross would differentiate itself from other prisoner support groups by also advocating for police and prison abolition. Abolition
is an urgent demand in the face of severe state repression.
The urgent task for prisoner support will include organizing a general bail fund and a legal defense fund for all people to be detained by
the State.
Material support to prisoners can include but is not limited to sending letters, books, and other materials to prisoners, solidarity actions
in support of people on the inside, and visitation of prisoners.
Prisoner support also includes supporting struggles on the inside such as hunger strikes or work strikes.
Prisoner support must be non-sectarian in nature.
This Black Cross must work with the larger prisoner support network including human rights and legal assistance groups.
Being against policing and against prisons, the Black Cross ought organize like the future liberated society we envision. This would mean a
commitment to organizing non-hierarchically and free from coercion.
While Black Crosses in other countries are anarchist in tendency, the Black Cross or Krus na Itim for the Philippines ought be open to
everyone who believes in the abolition of police and prisons.
Prisoner Support
The primary task of the Black Cross is support for prisoners-particularly the political prisoners-that will be targeted as "terrorists" by
the State. Because our political work and advocacy is targeted for State repression, it is up to us to build the infrastructure that will be
resilient in the face of that repression. This infrastructure to support prisoners will be part and parcel for the fight for a liberated future.
A general bail fund and a legal defense fund. The Black Cross can have a general bail fund which local and international sympathizers could
donate to. This general bail fund would be part of the resistance to incarceration and would be part of how we get people out of prison. The
beneficiaries of the bail fund would be political and labor prisoners who would receive money to be used for their bail. Currently bail
funds are created as needed rather than permanent fixtures. A permanently existing bail fund has its uses such that it would be a single
point of reference for both local and international donations which would make it easier to donate to regularly. A general bail fund would
also likely be easier to account for than several dozens of ad hoc bail funds. Of course the finances of the general bail fund ought be
public and transparent so donors and the public would know the money really goes to the release of the detainees. A general legal defense
fund can also be organized under similar lines and for similar reasons.
Material support for prisoners. Aside from bails and legal defense, material support ought be given to prisoners. This can be done through
the sending of letters and books to prisoners to actually visiting them at their detention facilities. For detainees who are women, they
would likely need hygiene kits such as menstrual pads and the like. Makeup and lipstick are also good things to donate as these help the
detained improve their dignity while on the inside. For detainees who are trans, if we cannot have them freed we must push for their gender
to be affirmed. Of course freedom is better than being detained, but it would be a disaster for say a transwoman to be placed in an all-men
detention facility.
Solidarity campaigns. Above all we must call for the release of prisoners and detainees whether through dropped charges, no charges, bail,
or parole. This can be done through the use of solidarity campaigns that would provide information about prisoners to the general public and
build support for their release. In the meantime, we must also call for improving their living conditions. We can easily recall how police
regularly mistreat detainees, at one point stuffing multiple detainees in a small hidden room during the height of the disastrous "War on
Drugs." In a recent anecdote from a member of the Cosmic 10, they noticed how their cell got lighting only because their warrantless arrest
was closely scrutinized and noted how their cellmates were without lighting for days before. Constantly emphasizing the institutional
dehumanization inside prisons will drive some support for abolition.
Support for prisoner strikes. Solidarity actions would also include raising support for detainee and prisoner struggles on the inside.
Prisoners' struggles like work strikes or hunger strikes ought be publicized with solidarity actions. Such acts of collective action can
render State violence inutile in the face of such ardent resistance.
Collaboration with the rest of civil society. This prisoner support must be done in collaboration with other prisoner support groups like
Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG), Task Force Detainees, and human rights groups. All collaboration must keep in mind the abolitionist
framework of the Black Cross. This means that while the Black Cross would, for example, conditionally support police reform, the ultimate
stance ought be towards its abolition; in concrete terms, this would see the defunding of the police rather than say instituting piecemeal
reforms that pour more money into policing like body cams. Similarly, prison reform should be geared towards drastically lessening the
prison population and rejecting incarceration as a default mode of punishment.
Non-sectarian support. It is important that the prisoner support be non-sectarian in nature. Even while we may have political and
programmatic differences between groups, our support to prisoners ought be on the basis of being against the systems of policing and
incarceration rather than on the basis of political allegiance. Unconditional support to all political prisoners on the basis of
abolitionism is a totally different matter from endorsing their political positions or from political alliances like popular fronts or
united fronts. Should the Black Cross default to a tendency-based support, its abolitionist perspective would be a sham. Our support to
prisoners ought be based on a universal belief that no one ought be incarcerated. Monikers like anarchist, social democrat, or national
democrat are all the same to the State apparatus of policing and abolition. In the face of State tyranny our weapon is our solidarity.
Prison and Police Abolition
What would make the Black Cross different from other prisoner support and solidarity groups is that its underlying and uniting ideology is
prison and police abolition.
The COVID-19 pandemic has seen the State use the institutions of policing and incarceration as the first response. Instead of treating the
pandemic as a health issue the State treats it as a security issue. The result is that police incarcerate scores of people with little
regard to the fact that the pandemic spreads easier inside detention facilities. Scores have been beaten by the police and a few even shot
to death by police during the Quarantine of 2020. An unknown number of detainees and prisoners are dying of unknown causes during the
pandemic and the State cares not if they die. There is no quarantine behind bars and the State does not care.
Prevent the State from defaulting to coercion. We must remove the institutions of policing and incarceration from the toolkit of the State.
That way the State is forced to deal with issues without coercion and must instead actively build consent and collaboration instead of
simply commanding obedience. By removing the institutions of coercion that the State relies on, we would be creating the foundations of a
better society based more on consent and collaboration rather than coercion. This could also be the beginning of concrete steps towards the
"withering away" of the State in the Marxian sense, creating the possibility of giving way to noncoercive forms of social organization.
Why police abolition? The Philippines is among the highest in the world in terms of police killings. Police do not protect us, they protect
Capital and the State. The police are not there to protect you from crime, though they do pretend that is their function. Indeed, the police
sometimes commit the crimes themselves as in the case of the rape and assassination of Fabel Pineda in Ilocos Sur. The function of police is
to break strikes, to assault protesters, to evict families, to shoot people. These are not socially useful functions to society. All over
the world the experience of the oppressed with the police is always that of brutality. The police are an institution of control and
domination. It is an armed occupying force occupying on behalf of the State. The Philippine National Police is a direct descendant of
colonial policing like the Spanish-era Guardia Civil or the American-era Philippine Constabulary and their function is always the same: to
protect Capital and the State. There will always be a double standard with regards who is policed; one can just look how thousands of
Filipinos are rounded up for the smallest of "quarantine violations" while Senator Koko Pimentel who willfully endangered people by
strolling about while COVID-19-positive remains a free man. Whatever positive function that the police may have can be done by other
institutions like the fire department or medical frontliners. Community security can be better organized by communities themselves rather
than by a violent gang of cops. Our safety ought be the responsibility of our communities rather than by a consistently violent police
force. More can be said and I will leave it up to the future Black Cross to say so. It will suffice for our needs that this concept is
introduced.
Why prison abolition? The Philippines has the 10th largest prison population in the world. Prisons are not build for people like Imelda
Marcos (who is convicted of plunder), they are built for controlling working class people and marginalized groups. Besides, putting the
plunderers and oligarchs in prison is not the same as the destruction of their power that allows them to continue plundering. Even the
imprisonment of dirty cops would not be concrete efforts towards the dismantling of an inherently violent institutions. If so, then prisons
are not institutions made to hold the truly dangerous people in our society like the plunderers or cops. Prisons are built for you and me as
a threat to keep us in line. Some crimes are committed because of material circumstance, for example stealing food to eat or stealing things
to make money. By imprisoning people who commit crimes because they are poor you do not solve the root cause of the problem which is
poverty. Poverty cannot be solved by imprisoning people; indeed people are less able to provide for their families and loved ones while
imprisoned so incarceration worsens poverty. Some crimes are committed because of mental illness or personality disorders. Imprisoning these
people will not cure them of mental illnesses nor provide avenues to improve themselves. As political theorist and scientist Peter Kropotkin
eloquently says, prisons are "universities of crime" where the harsh environment of prisons potentially make people worse rather than better
people. More can be said and I will leave it up to the future Black Cross to say so. It will suffice for our needs that this concept is
introduced.
Anti-Capitalism. As a final note, anti-Capitalism must be implicit in the organization as Capital is very much complicit in the construction
of police and prisons. Capital uses the threat of homelessness and hunger in much the same way as the State uses the threat of police
violence and prison sentences against the working class and marginalized groups. I do not think that prisons and policing can be abolished
without also attacking Capital which benefits enormously from the institutions of policing and incarceration.
Organizing the Black Cross
Black Cross as an inter-organization abolitionist alliance. As I am presenting this proposal to a forum of youth radical groups gathered
together in shared opposition to the Terror Law. Perhaps the Black Cross can be started as a collaborative project between groups, an
abolitionist alliance with a mandate for prisoner support. The Black Cross can start as a coordinating body between organizations that would
organize around the general bail fund and the legal defense fund. As a coordinating body, tasks and various functions (like treasury) could
be rotated between organizations with members within member organizations also rotating to fulfill tasks. In this manner, the Black Cross as
a non-sectarian abolitionist prisoner support alliance is made more feasible.
The Black Cross ought not be an anarchist-only project. In other countries, the Black Cross is known as the Anarchist Black Cross or ABC and
is specifically anarchist. However because the anarchist milieu in the Archipelago is relatively small and our tasks for prisoner support
and prison and police abolition are urgent, I would recommend that the Black Cross for the Philippines be open to all radicals who believe
in prison and police abolition. Our task is too urgent to be limited to the anarchist milieu; this must be a project that all who desire
liberation can participate in.
Organizing non-hierarchically. If we are to build a future free from domination and coercion, we must start so in our organizations like the
Black Cross. The vision of a society free from the coercive apparatus of prisons and police ought guide how we organize ourselves now. Thus
I think the Black Cross ought organize non-hierarchically. This means using tools such as consensus and consensus-building in making
decisions. The rotation of tasks also helps in preventing the concentration of power into individual positions.
Avoid leaders. The Black Cross ought not have an easily definable leader. The tactic of organizing non-hierarchically also has a real
benefit in terms of avoiding State repression. Leaders are a dangerous thing, not just for followers, but for the leaders themselves. The
State is likely to target leaders for repression. It would be safer for all that the Black Cross organize non-hierarchically with tasks done
in rotations and decisions done collectively rather than by a person or a cadre. That way, the rotation of tasks prevents a person from
being too important that if they were captured by the State the organization can still function without them.
Confederalism. Should multiple Black Crosses form in various parts of the Archipelago, they would ideally confederate with each other. With
confederation comes mutual support in the struggle against policing and incarceration. Confederation ought nor mean the end of autonomous
organizing however, but rather as a coordination of autonomous struggles. Rather than a centralized leadership I would imagine a
spokescouncil composed of revocable delegates from each chapter. Decisions ought remain with the chapters themselves with the delegates
merely relaying the discussion.
A note on the name. Ought we call this organization the "Black Cross" or "Krus na Itim" or perhaps "Krus Negra"? The name matters not and
what is urgent is the program of prisoner support and police and prison abolition. However I think the name Anarchist ought be excluded from
the name as the Black Cross or Krus na Itim ought be open to all who believe in abolition. I will leave it up to the founders to choose what
exact name is appropriate.
Concluding Remarks
The proposal for an abolitionist prisoner support group is made more urgent by the day as more and more are imprisoned and incarcerated for
speaking truth to power. While prisoner support groups already exist, there is an urgent need for one that is specifically abolitionist, a
framework the Archipelago still lacks.
Society has progressed beyond the need for police and prisons. The horrific backlash the police and prisons inflict upon society are its
resistance to its abolition. I hope this proposal would assist in the construction of a larger prisoner support and abolitionist movement
and I dream for a world where prisoner support would no longer be necessary with the abolition of policing and incarceration.
Some Resources
ON THE BLACK CROSS
Anarchist Black Cross, "Starting an Anarchist Black Cross Group: A Guide" (PDF)
Anarchist Black Cross Federation, "ABCF Guide to Political Prisoners & Prisoners of War Support" (PDF)
Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin, "A Draft Proposal for an Anarchist Black Cross Network"
ON ABOLITION
Critical Resistance, "On Policing"
CrimethInc., "What Will It Take to Stop the Police from Killing?"
CrimethInc., "Seven Myths about the Police"
CrimethInc., "Why Fuck the Police"
Angela Y. Davis, "Are Prisons Obsolete?"
Peter Kropotkin, "Prisons: Universities of Crime"
Emma Goldman, "Prisons: A Social Crime and Failure"
Nathan Goodman, "When Prisons Enable Crime"
Scott of the Insurgency Culture Collective, "The Anarchist Response to Crime"
Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement, "Burn Down the American Plantation"
Tags
https://bandilangitim.noblogs.org/2020/07/06/black-cross-a-proposal-for-an-abolitionist-prisoner-support-group/
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Message: 3
On Friday and Saturday 31st of July and 1st of August, HOUSING ACTION DAYS will take place in The Hague. The theme for Friday is social
housing and precarious modes of housing, and the theme for Saturday is the selling out of the city and gentrification. During these two days
we will make a collective fist against precarity and the housing shortage. ---- In the past couple of years the city has become the stage of
a social struggle. Capital is increasingly controlling housing and public spaces. The city is transformed into a revenue model, a new
apparatus for a select group to accumulate wealth. This has drastic consequences for many of us. De waiting lists for social housing are
ever lengthening, rents are already way too expensive and the political unwillingness to take up these issues is stifling. In the inner
city, one loft gets restored after another and only expensive private sector housing is built. Hip coffeehouses and their terraces are
spreading like an oil spill.
We don't want a city merely for consumption,
but a city in which we can live!
-
Paired with the gentrification, the state's net to control public spaces tightens. Concurrently to being forced to pay increasingly high
rent for increasingly small spaces, we are being dispossessed of the streets: hanging out in the street is perceived as suspicious and will
get you castigated for gathering. The only places where you can still gather in public are parks or sports field - but never without the
supervision of cameras. Our living spaces are shrinking, we will no longer put up with this shit anymore!
For this reason, let us meet on 31st of July and 1st of August, to take action against the selling out of our cities and our lives. We
invite everyone to come to The Hague, the belly of the beast, to struggle for the right to live and to the city!
Mail: woonopstanddenhaag[at]riseup.net
Twitter: @woonopstand070
More information: woonactiedagen.wordpress.com
https://www.vrijebond.org/woonactiedagen/
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Message: 4
The murder of George Floyd in the United States by the police has unleashed a wave of popular outrage in that country and throughout the
world. Massive demonstrations, direct action against the police and in response to repression have been common these past weeks. This
murder, adding to thousands of others, revives the widespread protests of 2014 in the United States, following the many murders of black
people, especially youth. ---- This fact has brought to the fore the profound racism that exists in today's societies. In Europe, thousands
of immigrants are demanding their rights and to be treated on an equal footing with the white population, and the right to be given refuge
is also being demanded for the thousands of people who try every day to cross the Mediterranean or get from Turkey to Europe, an attempt in
which many of them die and are harshly repressed or housed in refugee camps, which increasingly look like jails.
This phenomenon highlights the historical role of racism in the construction of capitalist society. The expansion of capitalism - long
before the Industrial Revolution - had a central element: the looting of entire continents, the genocide of entire populations, the
appropriation of territories, resources and bodies by European states and their bourgeoisie, in order to achieve the accumulation of capital
later invested in the development of machinery and industry in the 18th century. It was this colonial strategy of looting resources
throughout the Americas, accompanied by the slave trade and human trafficking in Africa and South America, which allowed the consolidation
of capitalism.
Then, in another stage of deployment of the system, already in the 19th century, the European imperialist or colonial expansion over Africa,
Asia and Oceania developed, with a countless number of deaths, rapes and looting, repeating the conquest made a few centuries before in
America, now in the rest of the planet. Thus capitalism expanded to the rest of the world and became a global system. Pillage, destruction
and genocide are inherent to capitalism; it is in its DNA. The same happens with racism or patriarchy; capitalism is built on the
exploitation of bodies, transforming them into territories and elements that enable its functioning and reproduction.
Racism is a structural element of the capitalist system. Because in order to plunder the rest of the planet - including within the developed
countries - the capitalist system and the ruling classes need to establish who is subjected to domination and plunder. The European
conquerors and colonial masters soon found the legitimation of this decision in pseudo-scientific "race theories", which claimed the
existence of different "human races" and ordered them into hierarchies, the head of which was supposedly always "the white race", that is,
the Europeans themselves.
Thus, racism placed, and continues to place, a large part of the planet's population, even entire continents, in subordinate positions. This
is why we see the relationship between developed countries and underdeveloped countries. The capitalist system based on the division between
social classes, has to a great extent organized those classes, also on the basis of racial discrimination or skin color. Apart from racism,
there are other factors that play a role, some of which are intertwined and mutually dependent, such as the construct of the nation, which
divides oppressed men and women and devalues all those who do not belong to the national collective. Thus, the nation constitutes one of the
foundations of racist and capitalist normality.
In Europe and America, the majority of black and non-white people are poor and carry all that legacy of the colonial history we mentioned.
Black and non-white people always have the lowest paid jobs, without social security or benefits, poor access to health and housing, and
constant harassment and police violence as demonstrated in the US, Europe, but that we also see in the favelas of Brazil with a real process
of organized killing of the young black population.
In other words, racism is not a derivation of the economic structure of capitalist society, it is not a secondary problem. On the contrary,
we must say that the capitalist system has been installed on the basis of racism and racial discrimination, a system that is not exclusively
economic. It is a global system, where the ideological-political aspects play a relevant role, as well as the legal aspects that capital
uses for its expansion, the repressive aspects, the communication aspects, etc.
On the basis of a racist discourse, the capitalist system keeps zones of the planet condemned to hunger and constant invasions and wars.
This is necessary for this genocidal system to continue; as it is also necessary, from time to time, to "change its face" to show itself
differently and allow, for example, the arrival in the US government of a black president like Obama. It was precisely under the Obama
administration that there was an upsurge in police violence against the black population, in a clear demonstration that racism is structural
to the system, nested in its repressive forces and in racist and white supremacist groups - although not only in them at the societal level
- and has a clear class component. The liberal face of capitalism has allowed for a small minority of the black population to gain access to
power and to the ruling classes, but only for the purpose of renewing itself as a system and becoming stronger. "Liberal capitalism" and
"the democratic State" has not ceased to be racist because it places a black president or businessman in a privileged position; it is surely
becoming more technical in order to increase the degree of plunder and oppression of social majorities across the planet.
For this reason, from the point of view of Politically Organized Anarchism we speak of the need to build a Front of Oppressed Classes, which
brings together all those sectors that are oppressed and dominated by the system. Formal and precarious
workers, peasants, indigenous populations, migrants, unemployed and displaced people, that is, all those sectors that in their daily life
suffer the consequences of the capitalist system have a place of struggle in such a Front. This is the social subject that today is
manifested in revolts all over the world and is the subject that must be built with a perspective of organizational strengthening of the
people for the processes of rupture, of social revolution that we promote and yearn for.
Because the capitalist system is not merely an economic system or one that is detached exclusively from its economic bases, we understand
that the struggle against racism and the state violence that sustains it is also a struggle against the structures of the capitalist system,
a system of hunger, death and violence against the oppressed of the world, whatever the color of their skin or language. Precisely, against
that state which has not been "neutral" in the expansion of the capitalist system but a central and organizing element of it - we call then
to always favor and support self-organization and the struggle of each and every one of oppressed!!
As the economic and political powers treat as "others" those who do not swear allegiance to them; thus, they assume the role of "guarantor"
of each conflict in the social sphere for their own survival, racist and discrimination attacks in society increase. While capitalism and
the state are increasing their repression and militarization in the social sphere with new chemicals, bullets and civilian racist
mobilizations, the police and military; now is the time fight against them!
LONG LIVE THE STRUGGLE OF THE OPPRESSED CLASSES AGAINST RACISM AND ALL FORMS OF OPPRESSION!
FOR THE BUILDING OF PEOPLES' SELF-ORGANISATION AND A FRONT OF OPPRESSED CLASSES!
UP WITH THOSE WHO FIGHT!
Federación Anarquista Uruguaya (FAU)
Embat-Organització Llibertària (Catalunya)
Federación Anarquista Rosario -FAR (Argentina)
Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front -ZACF (South Africa)
Anarchist Communist Group (Great Britain)
Anarchist Federation (Greece)
Bandilang Itim (Philippines)
Devrimci Anarsist Faaliyet - DAF (Turkey)
Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group-MACG (Australia)
Aotearoa Workers Solidarity Movement -AWSM (New Zealand)
Coordenaçao Anarquista Brasileira-CAB (Brazil)
Anarchist Union of Afghanistan and Iran-AUAI (Iran /Afghanistan)
Organización Anarquista de Córdoba -OAC (Argentina)
Union Communiste Libertaire (France)
Alternativa Libertaria /FDCA (Italy)
Organisation Socialiste Libertaire-OSL (Switzerland)
Workers Solidarity Movement- WSM (Ireland)
Die Plattform-Anarchakommunistische Organisation (Germany)
Libertaere Aktion (Switzerland)
Tekosina Anarsist - TA, (Kurdistán sirio - north east Syria)
facebook.com/derry.anarchists/posts/2734394153460984
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Message: 5
Posted in: Women's Initiative Against Patriarchy , Processes - Events - Concentrations . Leave a comment ---- We keep the flame of the
stonewall revolt alive. ---- In recent months we have been living in a situation of incalculable humanitarian catastrophe and unprecedented
social crisis, where the criminal and murderous nature of the state-capitalist system for the majority of society and especially for its
most vulnerable and poor sections is emphatically highlighted. The state and capitalist system of organizing society, which is already
condemning millions of people to death from starvation, disease and war, is trying to maintain its privileges and position of power. From
the dismantling of public health structures through underfunding, layoffs, hospital closures, resulting in the availability of minimal
intensive care beds, in relation to real needs, to the benefit of businesses and bosses, at the same time as more looting labor conquests,
with employer arbitrariness and impunity growing in the midst of a pandemic, with layoffs, uninsured work, over-exploitation.
The response of the state and capital to the needs of society was to invoke individual responsibility and the obligatory confinement of
people in their homes with the aim not of eliminating the pandemic but of discipline and control. At the same time, no progress has been
made in improving the health system, either by hiring new staff, by opening new beds at ICUs, or by supplying medical equipment.
At the same time, "Staying Home" was not possible for many people, for the homeless, refugees and migrants, prisoners and, of course, for
women and children who experience domestic violence in their own homes. . State campaigns to combat domestic violence are at least
hypocritical as we know that this system as it feeds and is fed by the patriarchy and has no disposition to rupture.
Then, "staying home" could not be possible for all those who worked day and night in supermarkets, call centers, hospitals, etc. under
destructive working conditions and with minimal -to minimal- protection measures. At the same time, the patriarchally structured society
wants the woman to fully shoulder the household and the upbringing of the children in combination with all the above. At the risk of their
lives, working women continued to go to work every day, which made them even more burdensome, especially in the case of single-parent families.
Finally, the criminal conditions faced by both migrants in concentration camps and those incarcerated in prisons and psychiatric clinics
place these people in a constant state of danger. There, overcrowding, miserable living conditions and a lack of medical care foretell a
frightening future, as fast transmission seems inevitable. A typical example is the death of the prisoner Azizel Deniroglou, who died
helplessly in her cell, in the prisons of Thebes. Also indicative is the fact that migrant women were denied access to hospitals during the
pandemic, even during childbirth.
During this unprecedented, socially, period, the patriarchal violence that already existed intensified for women but also for LGBT people +
individuals. Patriarchy is a cornerstone of the world of power and a key element of its social reproduction. Like any form of power, it
exists, is cultivated and is imposed at every level of social organization. In addition to the total exploitation and oppression imposed on
those below, there is also oppression in the field of gender-based segregation and sexuality.
In response to the oppressive nature of the patriarchal system, on June 28, 1969, the Stonewall Uprising took place , on the occasion of the
police raid on the Gay Bar '' Stonewall Inn'' of New York. The events that took place in the streets of New York in those days are
considered decisive for the development of the organization of the American and international homosexual movement. Oppressed homosexuals
have claimed their visibility and rights on the streets. In the aftermath of the uprising, dozens of LGBTQ organizations were formed that
encouraged people not to hide their sexual identities and propagated their active participation in struggle initiatives. It is worth noting
that with the Stonewall uprising, the issue of sexual preferences took on a political face. The memory of the Stonewall uprising lives on
today with the holding of pride in places worldwide. The memory of the Stonewall uprising inspires all of us.
Today, in the midst of a pandemic, the state is intensifying the repressive planning that it had begun to implement in the past. The
occupation of entire areas, the evacuation of occupied areas and structures of the movement, the persecution and arrest of militants, the
upgrading of the repressive corps, are now combined in a plan of a comprehensive counter-insurgency campaign, at a time when the state is
already carrying out a new sweeping attack and intends to sharpen it. Thus, comes the recent bill for the suppression of demonstrations
submitted to the Parliament and attempts to impose conditions on the conduct of demonstrations, criminalizing their bodies with specific
offenses, attempting to limit them through intimidation and physical repression of protesters.
Today, it is more relevant than ever to restore the characteristics of the then-insurgents. To be on the road, to fight together: lgbtq +
people, women, pupils, students, workers of the Plebian strata against a system that breeds oppression, gives birth to sexism and
homophobia, against a system that does not fit us. To resist the regime frameworks defined by the sovereignty and to organize with our own
characteristics, anti-institutional and self-organized. To organize and unite class and through our existence on the road to fight every
form of power and oppression knowing that only a world of equality, freedom and solidarity can fit us all.
INTERNATIONAL AND CLASSROOM STRUGGLES FOR THE REMOVAL OF SEXUAL SEPARATIONS
NO STEP BACK-NO SUBMISSION
IN THE STREET TO CRUSH THE CONSTRUCTION
AGAINST STATE, CAPITAL AND PATRIARCHY FOR EMPLOYMENT AND ANARCHY
POREA: Saturday 11/07 at 18:00 from pl. Olgas.
Women initiative against patriarchy
https://ipposd.wordpress.com/2020/07/10
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Message: 6
Since the end of containment, announcements of layoffs and the closure of production sites have been raining. In the automobile industry, in
aeronautics, in tourism, in the press, in telecoms or even in catering it is life-saving for the profits, and the employees in the trash !
However, the profits accumulated in recent years should largely help to alleviate the financial difficulties linked to the health crisis.
Only our struggles will make them back down. ---- Renault, Ryanair, Airbus, Altice, Castorama, Nokia,... many large groups are announcing
layoffs for the coming months. But that's without counting the thousands of little boxes that will do the same without the spotlight, the
thousands of CDD not renewed, the thousands of temporary workers bluntly blunted. As a result, millions of additional workers are at risk of
becoming unemployed, even though the conditions for receiving this allowance have recently been tightened.
An unbearable blackmail
While Renault announced in mid-May the closure of 4 factories, to pass the pill at the end of May of the final closure of a factory, Ryanair
took advantage of the crisis to blackmail. The bosses tell the employees: lower wages or layoffs, it's up to you ! This flawed choice
naturally aims to make people accept drastic wage cuts, while the layoffs will undoubtedly come later.
But all say the same thing: there is no more money in the coffers, the health crisis would have impoverished them ! However, profits have
been accumulated in recent decades, yet billionaires are doing well ...
Consume more to support businesses ?
The government's solution is all found ! Savings accumulated during confinement must be used to support businesses. Note already that many
people have not been able to accumulate savings, on the contrary, poverty has exploded ! Partial unemployment, non-renewal of contracts,
cessation of moonlighting ... the government pretends to forget all these situations and " does not care about the ecological emergency ".
And for those who have been able to save some money, is it really up to them to support companies to prevent layoffs ? There is money in
this country, some even have their pockets full ! This is where we should go to find it, not the few hundred euros kept here or there to
deal with the hard knocks.
Download the leaflet in PDF
A broad battle against layoffs and precariousness
To stop this wave of layoffs, there needs to be a broad movement, rooted in the boxes concerned, led by workers. Coordination of these
struggling companies will be essential to put an end to the employers. And this movement must include the question of precarious workers:
increase in unemployment benefit, systematization of permanent contracts. With a central watchword: it is the employees who must decide.
Libertarian Communist Union, July 8, 2020
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Unissons-nous-contre-l-epidemie-de-licenciements
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Message: 7
Many workers are being asked to work in unsafe environments. Many more will be asked to do so as they return to work over the coming days
and weeks. ---- The Anarchist Communist Group (ACG) is launching a No Safety, No Work campaign. This is a campaign to be led by workers
trying to keep themselves and others safe at work in the time of Covid 19. We know that the working class cannot rely on employers or the
government to keep us safe. ---- Tens of thousands of people have died in this pandemic, and even more are killed in the work place every
year. None of these deaths were inevitable but were the results of the greed of the bosses and the rulers of our society. As more and more
people are returning to work, the government has not passed a single law guaranteeing workers safety but has issued guidance to employers.
This is not enough to keep us safe.
See more here:
https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/campaigns/
https://www.facebook.com/No-Safety-No-Return-105770057868876/?eid=ARDBeXhi4LOZUZBD6Unvs2S-OGJs9ovZiKNgsyvZtRBZkE7k8-BxlPirFmXK0ozPXykweQ55yzvvvPzw
Public Zoom meeting to discuss the No Safety, No Work campaign by the ACG. Link to the meeting via the eventbrite.
https://www.facebook.com/events/706520666585711/?notif_t=plan_user_invited¬if_id=1594172201289759
Tuesday, 14 July 2020 from 18:30-20:00
https://londonacg.blogspot.com/2020/07/no-safety-no-work-public-zoom-meeting.html
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