Today's Topics:
1. Greece, APO, Land & Freedom: Intervention in the Monastery
of Lazarists by the Students of KTHBE [machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. Greece, Athens, Libertarian Union ESE: INTERVENTION OF ERC
ATHENS IN THE INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL CHAMBER [machine
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
ATHENS IN THE INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL CHAMBER [machine
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. die plattform: New podcast: "No more empty promises?!" on
Youtube! (ca, de, it, pt)[machine translation]
Youtube! (ca, de, it, pt)[machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. Poland, ozzip.pl - Workers Initiative: Distance learning
nightmare. Through the eyes of the student [machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
nightmare. Through the eyes of the student [machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
5. Czech, OAF Ostrava: XR's direct action against Ceskaá
sporitelna and Raiffeisen bank [machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
sporitelna and Raiffeisen bank [machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
6. anarkismo.net: The Quote Of The Day:P. Kropotkin - who will
accept the challenge? (ca, de, it, fr, pt)[machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
accept the challenge? (ca, de, it, fr, pt)[machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
7. awsm.nz: Beyond May Day by Jeff Shantz
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
8. Greece, rocinante: Aristocrats who never worked, want us to
die at work! Everyone at the SETIP assembly on 25/4! [machine
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
die at work! Everyone at the SETIP assembly on 25/4! [machine
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
9. France, UCL AL #314 - Culture, Music:
Dubamix, "Communardes
Communards" (ca, de, it, fr, pt)[machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
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Message: 1
We republish the announcement of the students of the Higher School of Dramatic
Art of KTHBE ---- "Poetry, the need to imagine, to create, is as basic as the
need to breathe" ---- - Eugene Ionesco ---- It has been more than a year since
the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic with the state administration seeming to be
at least under the circumstances. This is reflected in all areas of social life
(eg National Health System, education, work) but also in the field of culture.
Throughout the pandemic, places of culture such as theaters, cinemas, concert
halls, etc., remain hermetically sealed. At the same time, the art schools, while
suspended from operation since November, are in a distance learning regime. We,
the students of the drama school of KTHBE, have been consciously abstaining from
these "lessons" for four months now,
So while the situation remains the same and unchanged for six whole months, the
Ministry of Culture and the supposed Civil Protection have not only not presented
any planning for the reopening of the cultural sites and art schools, but, in
addition to a vague information we received at the beginning April, seem to be
completely indifferent to the way students will find themselves back in their
schools. What makes the situation even more unfavorable is the fact that the
students of the drama schools - even the public ones - do not receive any student
care, with the result that many of us find it difficult to complete or even
continue their studies. their studies for purely financial reasons.
We, the students of the drama school of KTHBE, refuse to remain spectators in a
project that ends up degrading our studies and we finally demand a serious and
complete planning for our safe return to school. Also, we will not allow any of
our classmates and any of our classmates to be left out of school, who managed to
be so hard, due to financial difficulties and a complete lack of state planning
and provision.
Students of the Higher School of Dramatic Art of the
State Theater of Northern Greece
Video from the intervention:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=368172594489061&ref=watch_permalink
https://landandfreedom.gr/el/agones/367-paremvasi-sti-moni-lazariston-apo-tous-spoudastes-spoudastries-tou-kthve
------------------------------
Message: 2
On Monday 19/4 at 7 in the afternoon, members of ESE Athens proceeded with an
intervention by opening a banner and distributing texts in front of the
industrial and commercial chamber at Syntagma. This intervention is part of a
series of actions of the ERC nationwide against the new anti-labor law of the
government. The text that was shared can be seen here:
https://ese.espiv.net/2021/04/22/08/ ---- ESE ATHENS invites you to participate
in all the mobilizations of the following days: ---- Thursday, April 22 labor
gathering-march Propylaea at 6 p.m. ---- Saturday, April 24, a day of
multifaceted activities in neighborhoods with gatherings and marches ----
Thursday 6 May MAY DAY STRIKE STRIKE
https://ese.espiv.net/2021/04/22/02-8/
------------------------------
Message: 3
No more empty promises?! For a militant climate movement instead of more appeals
to those in power! A solidary commentary on the global climate strike on March
19th. ---- A few weeks ago, on March 19, the seventh global climate strike of the
Fridays For Future movement took place. Activists in 68 countries organized a
total of 1068 campaigns on this occasion, sending a strong signal for a
climate-friendly future and against the increasing destruction of the climate and
the environment. ---- The German offshoot of the movement alone recorded 250
actions - a clear sign that the climate movement is far from over in this country
too. As the platform, we took part in the campaigns in several cities. A central
theme of this air strike was #NoMoreEmptyPromises , so "No more empty promises".
Our in-house Climate Action Committee has taken this motto as an opportunity to
position itself in a lengthy, solidary commentary against pure appeals to the
rulers and parliamentary attempts by some climate activists. In the end, they
show perspectives for a different climate movement that no longer just stops
hoping for the politicians, but takes system change from below into its own hands.
The text was published in the run-up to March 19, but we have now decided to make
it accessible to more people and therefore recorded it for you. So now we wish
you a lot of fun listening and would be happy if you share it with your fellow
fighters and leave us feedback in the comments or by e-mail.
You can also find the text here:
https://www.dieplattform.org/2021/03/13/keine-leeren-versrechen-mehr-ein-kritisch-solidarischer-aufruf-zum-gobalen-klimastreik-am-19-maerz
/
-------
#Klimakampf #Klimastreik #FFF # 19_3 #Parlamente #Reformismus #DieGruene
#Parteien #Klimaliste #Revolution # socialbattle #Anarchismus # Social insertion
#Massenbewegungen #Deutschland
https://www.dieplattform.org/2021/04/19/neuer-podcast-keine-leeren-versprechen-mehr-auf-youtube/
------------------------------
Message: 4
I remember the day before distance learning was introduced, we were enjoying
ourselves; We will stay at home for two weeks, we will miss our English quiz,
etc. In the following weeks we were no longer laughing. A year later, we cry out
of powerlessness. "Powerlessness" is a word that describes well the uncolored
realities of distance learning. ---- I'm not the only one who misses seeing my
friends and acquaintances in school corridors. It's hard in the kennel, it's a
fact: we often stay in it late, we are overworked, some of us have problems due
to poorly developed public transport and carrying backpacks that are too heavy.
As a group, we publicized the issue in the media some time ago. "6 for students"
was described in, inter alia, in Tygodnik Powszechny . Despite the torments, the
sight of friends could always cheer you up and let you forget about everyday
school life for a moment. Contact with people is very important and plays a big
role in our well-being. In one of the analyzes, we read that 63% of teenagers are
unable to contact friends during a pandemic. Loneliness causes anger, sadness,
resentment, depression, feelings of worthlessness and emptiness, oversensitivity
and pessimism.
The pandemic has highlighted inequalities in Poland. Oko.press states: "In total,
as many as one third of all students are not able to effectively learn remotely."
Where are the liberals shouting "Constitution!" Now? Let me remind you that Art.
70 of the Constitution says: "4. Public authorities ensure universal and equal
access to education for citizens. To this end, they create and support systems of
individual financial and organizational aid for pupils and
students.[...]"Meanwhile, 1.5 million students do not have access to appropriate
computer equipment; others have to share equipment with the rest of the
household; or there is a problem with the lack of access to sufficiently fast
Internet.
The new form of teaching looks more like boring lectures than lessons. Don't get
me wrong, I am aware of how difficult it is to organize interesting lessons these
days. In addition, we are constantly attacked by external stimuli: parents behind
the door, a courier or a parent's friend rings at the door, or the equipment is
faulty. Our task is to concentrate fully for several hours. Fatigue is taking its
toll. Often our routine is: get up - start up the computer - go to sleep. It is
recommended to spend a certain number of hours a week in front of the computer
screen; for example, young people of my age (16-19) are limited to 28 hours a
week , yet remote teaching keeps us attached to computers for over 35 hours.
Domestic violence is not fiction. Ÿ Polish children and adolescents have
experienced domestic violence . For many, this is an unpleasant normality they
have to deal with. Before the pandemic and the school closure, classroom classes
were for some a respite from everyday home hell. The phenomenon only worsens over
time. Especially among families where there was a problem with the abuse of
various substances, e.g. such as alcohol, before.
Some argue that the pandemic will end any moment and normality will return.
Others say there will be a fourth wave in the fall, or that epidemics will recur
periodically - remote work and learning will become the standard.
What do we need?
The lesson day should be shortened immediately to compensate for the damage
caused by spending too much time in front of monitors; this can be achieved by
removing "stuffy subjects" such as religion, PE, and the fundamentals of
entrepreneurship from the curriculum - with full compensation, of course, for
teachers.
Funding should be increased for the purchase of computer equipment for students
and increased places in schools for distance learning for students who are online
excluded.
Institutions fighting against domestic violence need better funding.
It is difficult to deal with the lack of contact with peers, you can only
eliminate other problems so that this loneliness is not so annoying.
And you? Why do you feel powerless? Share in the comment.
Patryk Szynkowski
Red Youth of the OM-PPS West Pomeranian Voivodeship, a student of the 2nd grade
of high school
https://ozzip.pl/publicystyka/spoleczenstwo/item/2769-koszmar-zdalnego-nauczania-oczami-ucznia
------------------------------
Message: 5
We are reprinting a report from the event of the Ostrava branch of Extinction
Rebellion (XR), which took place on April 16. ---- Yesterday, protests against
the financing of the climate crisis took place throughout the Czech Republic. The
events were focused mainly on Ceska Sporitelna and Raiffeisenbank, as these banks
are the least transparent and their conditions for both existing and new clients
are quite weak. That is why we have decided to demonstrate against these banks,
but the problem is not just these two. ---- In Ostrava, we decided to create a
"crime scene" to depict the deaths from the effects of the climate crisis. ----
After the protest, two members of the movement decided to spray the branch of
Ceska Sporitelna with chalk spray. They wrote the year 2025, to which XR is
heading, to be carbon neutral.
Members of the movement who used the spray for this purpose were identified by
the police and then washed the chalk spray one after the other.
https://oafed.noblogs.org/post/2021/04/20/ostrava-prima-akce-xr-proti-ceske-sporitelne-a-raiffeisen-bank/
------------------------------
Message: 6
"No struggle can be crowned with success unless it offers itself a clear and
unambiguous formulation of its purpose. No destruction of the dominant order of
things is possible if at the time of the overthrow or the struggle that leads to
the overthrow, there is not alive in the mind the idea of what will replace what
must be destroyed. But neither is a theoretical critique of existing conditions
possible if the critic does not have in mind a more or less specific picture of
what will replace the existing situation. The ideal, the perception of something
better, is formed, consciously or unconsciously, in the mind of anyone who
criticizes social institutions. This is even more true for the man of action. "
P. Kropotkin
Related link: https://ilan.shalif.com/anarchy/glimpses/glimpses.html
http://www.anarkismo.net/article/32265
------------------------------
Message: 7
Perhaps few recurring events show the great disparity that exists between
activist subcultures and broader working class and poor communities in North
America than the May Day celebrations that happen each year (with a few
exceptions). Despite its proud origins in working class movements of resistance,
and its resonance in the mass struggles of the 1930s, May Day in Canada and the
US has become little more than a historical commemoration among certain
subcultures, an opportunity to (once again) unfurl black flags and distribute
pamphlets (largely to one another). For the most part May Day events are little
more than replays generally of the rote ritualism of the Left, with a bit heavier
symbolism and sentimentality.
Even as outreach moments, to share histories of class struggle and perspectives
on revolutionary politics and change, the May Day festivals in Canada and the US
have been massively unsuccessful. Typically people with some connection already
to the subcultures or with some awareness of, and interest in, radical histories
show up and participate while bemused members of the community glance fleetingly
at the parade or pay no attention at all.
On the whole May Day activities have little resonance or meaning for working
class and oppressed communities in North America, even where there is some
recognition of May Day or appreciation for its history-particularly among people
from backgrounds in working class cultures in Europe or Latin America.
This year, with the impetus of the Occupy waves a call has gone out for a May Day
General Strike. This is the familiar hope for May Day and one that many of us
have mobilized toward before (without any real capacity or promise to actually
pull off). This most recent call too has shown tendencies to privilege image and
symbolism-marches under insurrectionary rhetoric-over more modest organizing work
on building or extending militant infrastructures in our communities. Will May
Day be an opportunity for more than noisy marches and perhaps the stage for a few
more sources of riot porn? One can hope.
Having participated in numerous efforts to revitalize May Day in various Canadian
contexts over the last twenty or so years, I have also done some work to organize
May Day actions locally again this year as well. I have seen first hand the pull
of symbolism and myth and tendencies to default into black flag marches and the
distribution of sectariana that dominate too much of contemporary Left activity.
What is needed, well beyond May Day, is a real and honest assessment of forces
and, based on that assessment, strategies for developing the sorts of capacities
that might make the case for a General Strike more than a mythic yearning.
Perhaps a May Day call in the near future would be an opportunity for rooted
projects of resistance to celebrate their work and extend the real and grounded
connections they might be building in specific neighborhoods and workplaces.
A history forged in struggle
May Day celebrations of International Workers' Day emerged in a period,
encompassing the Industrial Revolution, of great class conflict as workers
seeking better working and living conditions opposed powerful industrialists
backed by governments and institutions of the criminal justice system that acted
to protect the claims of elites to property and profit. Class struggle, rather
than hidden away in workplaces, was often open, and often violent. Working people
recognized that they were being exploited by business owners and organized to
improve their lives and escape the exploitative conditions of their labor, not
only through improved working conditions but through calls for workers' control
of the industries in which they worked.
Chicago was the site of some of the most vicious crackdowns by state forces,
police and military, against labor organizing and unions. The first great
struggles for the eight hour workday initiated in Chicago. These were often
tumultuous and bloody struggles. In 1886, during a demonstration and rally for
the eight hour day, a dynamite bomb was thrown by an unknown person into a crowd
assembled at Haymarket Square. What is known as the Haymarket Massacre left
several people dead (mostly police killed by friendly fire) led to a violent wave
of repression against labor and community organizers and union members. It
resulted in the judicial frame up of eight people identified as anarchist labor
organizers (George Engel, Samuel Fielden, Adolph Fischer, Louis Lingg, Oscar
Neebe, Albert Parsons, Michael Schwab, and August Spies). Four were convicted and
executed while a fifth committed suicide while in prison. All of this occurred
despite that fact that the prosecution admitted that none of the defendants had
actually thrown the bomb.
Clearly the men were targeted because of their political perspectives and
activities defending working people against exploitation by business owners. They
were targeted because they posed a real or perceived threat to corporate property
and profitability. The personal identities of the accused men are even more
telling. Beyond being anarchist labor organizers, five of the men were German
immigrants and another was of German descent. Another was an immigrant from
England. Clearly class intersected with ethnicity and national origin in the
targeting of organizers for prosecution. At the time elites expressed much
concern publicly that immigrant radicals were "contaminating" the domestic
workforce with supposedly foreign ideas like anarchism and socialism. Such claims
have persisted throughout US history, with echoes in Canada, as a means of
discrediting labor and community organizers and presenting them and their ideas
as outsiders or aliens.
The Haymarket Martyrs, as they have come to be known, were clearly innocent of
the crimes of which they were accused, and for which five of them had their lives
taken. They were set up by the state, acting on behalf of business owners, as
scapegoats to serve as a warning to other labor and community organizers, and the
poor and oppressed more broadly, not to take up the struggle for working class
justice and equality. The Haymarket Martyrs were killed by the state largely
because they held more radical views on social inequality and injustice,
including anarchist and Marxist perspectives. To say their perspectives were
radical, if one looks at the origin of the term radical, simply means that they
went beyond surface explanations to get to the root of the problem.
The frame up, show trials, and executions of the Haymarket Martyrs serve, once
again, as a reminder of the role of power in the selection, promotion,
dissemination, or silencing of ideas. It is a clear illustration of the part
played by powerful groups, economic and political elites, in the privileging of
certain ideas over others. It shows that those ideas which confront and challenge
power and authority within unequal societies face imposing, even lethal,
obstacles in gaining a broad public hearing. The history of capitalist societies
is filled with examples similar to the tragedy of the Haymarket Martyrs. Working
class and poor people who oppose exploitation and oppression are arrested,
defamed, and executed on a regular basis. Indeed, this is the unspoken story of
criminal (in)justice in class based societies, including Canada and the US.
May Day celebrations globally, up to the present day, commemorate the Haymarket
Martyrs while asserting a public commitment to revolutionary working class
struggle. It is a celebration of the working class fighting spirit and should be
a cultural touchstone for all working class people in the US and Canada (as it is
for many globally).
In 1889 the first Congress of the Second International called for international
demonstrations in 1890 to mark the anniversary of Chicago protests. May Day as an
annual International Workers Day was formally asserted at the International's
Congress of 1891. Riots have broken out on various May Days in the US, notably in
Cleveland in 1894 and 1919. Calls have repeatedly gone out for May Day as the
start of a General Strike. In many countries workers' May Day has been recognized
as a holiday. Such has not been the case in the US and Canada, where Labor Day
(first weekend in September) has been instituted as a workers' holiday. Indeed in
the US Labor Day was explicitly chosen as a workers' holiday (recognized
officially by the administration of President Grover Cleveland) to avoid
commemoration of Haymarket and to lessen the possibility of riots. Perversely,
given that May Day was often a day for working class demands for universal peace,
the state capitalist countries, the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba, have used May
Day as a day for mass displays of militarism, with military parades.
Today, in Canada and the US, May Day is largely a focal point for anarchists,
communists, socialists, and some labor activists. Yet it might once again come to
mean something more for broader sectors of the working class. To do so efforts
will need to be made to go beyond the marches and parades and return May Day to a
meaningful celebration of rooted struggles.
Beyond ritualism
There is a rote ritualism that gives street demos and public expressions of
dissent priority over other strategies and tactics. Yet mass demos that bring
together atomized individuals without a real base or infrastructures supporting
the mobilizations have minimal real impact. As James Herod suggests:
But opposition movements gravitate again and again to these kinds of actions.
"Taking to the Streets," we call it. Yet we can't build a new social world in the
streets. As long as we're only in the streets, whereas our opponents function
through enduring organizations like governments, corporations, and police, we
will always be on the receiving end of tear gas, pepper spray, and rubber
bullets, and almost everywhere in the world but North America or Europe, real
bullets, napalm, poisons, and bombs. (2007, 3)
It seems highly likely, indeed almost certain, that the spectacular waves of
alternative globalization struggles from the summit protests since Seattle in
1999 to the ongoing Occupy movements launched in 2011, will lose momentum and
subside or drift into reformism in the absence of building real connections and
moving toward struggles for control in workplaces and neighborhoods. The realms
of workplaces, neighborhoods, and households have largely been ignored or
abandoned as sites of transformative struggle by current activist movements
(Herod 2007, 2). Workplace struggles, where they exist at all, are dominated by
bureaucratic mainstream unions focused on bargaining compromises with employers.
Household organizing has been largely overlooked by radical activists-apart from
those who retreat into their own (privatized and detached) collective houses.
Issues of mental health and wellbeing have been given too little attention in
movements focused on economics and politics in a more traditional and limited
fashion.
Building infrastructures of resistance
Anarchists recognize (or should) that struggles for a better world beyond state
capitalism must occur on two simultaneous levels. It must be capable of defeating
states and capital and it must, at the same time, provide infrastructures or
foundations of the future society in the present day. Indeed, this latter process
will be a fundamental part of the work of defeating states and capital.
Through infrastructures of resistance movements will build alternatives but, as
importantly, have capacities to defend the new social formations. These
infrastructures of resistance will directly confront state capitalist power. Thus
they will need to be defended from often savage attack. The key impulse is to
shift the terrain of anti-capitalist struggle from a defensive position-reacting
to elite policies and practices or merely offering dissent-to an offensive
one-contesting ruling structures and offering workable alternatives. Movements
need to shift from a position of resistance to one of active transformation.
There is a pressing need to take decision-making out of government bureaucracies,
parliament, and corporate suites and boardrooms and relocate it in autonomous
assemblies of working class and poor people. There is also a need to take
activism out of the atypical realms of demonstrations and protests and root it in
everyday contexts and the daily experiences of working class and poor people's
social lives.
This would serve to meet practical needs-of shelter, education, health, and
wellbeing-while also raising visions for broader alternatives and stoking the
capacity to imagine or see new possibilities.
Building infrastructures of resistance will directly affect movements in
practical and visionary ways. It will also challenge ruling elites by pushing
them into reactive, rather than purely offensive, and confident, positions. Such
infrastructures of resistance would shift possibilities for strategizing and
mobilization. They might render demonstrations unnecessary.
As Herod suggests:
"If we had reorganized ourselves into neighborhood, workplace, and household
assemblies, and were struggling to seize power there, then we would have a base
from which to stop ruling-class offensives like neoliberalism. If we then chose
to demonstrate in the streets, there would be some teeth to it, rather than it
being just an isolated ephemeral event, which can be pretty much ignored by our
rulers. We would not be just protesting but countering. We have to organize
ourselves in such a way that we have the power to counter them, not just protest
against them, to refuse them[and]to neutralize them. This cannot be done by
affinity groups, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), or isolated individuals
converging periodically at world summits to protest against the ruling class, but
only by free associations rooted in normal everyday life." (2007, 2-3)
Transformation must focus on controlling means of reproduction as well as means
of production. Focus on workers control alone leaves communities unable to
allocate resources effectively and efficiently to meet broader needs (social or
ecological). At the same time, community control without control of means of
production would be futile, a fantasy. Even more, leaving households as
privatized realms would reinforce an unequal gender division of labor and
reinforce the duality of public and private realms of which anarchists are
generally critical (Herod 2007, 13). At the very least, neighborhood assemblies
will constantly lose people who need to move in search of employment in the
absence of worker control of industry.
A new social world cannot be built from scratch. Nor does it need to be. The
mutual aid relationships and already existing associations that people have
organized around work and personal interests (clubs, groups, informal workplace
networks, even subcultures) can provide possible resources. At the same time,
many infrastructures are needed, even today, in working class and poor
neighborhoods and households, many workers have only loose informal connections
in their workplaces. In apartment complexes, households can link up in direct
assemblies to organize shared resources. Some might include cooking, maintenance,
laundry, health care, education, birthing rooms, and recreational facilities
(Herod 2007, 11).
Building infrastructures of resistance encourages novel ways of thinking about
revolutionary transformation. Rather than the familiar form of street
organization or protest action, within constructive anarchist approaches, the
action is in the organizing. There need to be already existing infrastructures or
else a radical or revolutionary transformation will be impossible (or
disastrous). On the need for pre-existing revolutionary infrastructures, we might
concur with Herod who suggests:
Workplace associations would have to be permanent assemblies, with years of
experience under their belts, before they could have a chance of success. They
cannot be new forms suddenly thrown up in the depths of a crisis or the middle of
a general strike, with a strong government still waiting in the wings, supported
by its fully operational military forces. (2007, 26)
Similarly general strikes cannot have a meaningful impact in the absence of
infrastructures of resistance. As Herod notes:
"General strikes cannot destroy capitalism. There is an upper limit of about six
weeks as to how long they can even last. Beyond that society starts to
disintegrate. But since the general strikers have not even thought about
reconstituting society through alternative social arrangements, let alone created
them, they are compelled to go back to their jobs just to survive, to keep from
starving. All a government has to do is wait them out, perhaps making a few
concessions to placate the masses. This is what Charles de Gaulle did in France
in 1968." (2007, 27)
Under general strike conditions essential goods and services would be absent.
Water, energy, food, and medical services would not be available without
alternative associations or capacities to occupy and run workplaces to meet human
social needs. These sorts of takeover themselves require pre-existing
infrastructures.
Unions
One of the infrastructures that requires a real alternative is the labor union,
institutions that have been at the heart of working class (and May Day)
struggles. For most anarchists, unions have lost any emancipatory capacities they
might have once held. Indeed, for many anarchists, unions were never geared
toward emancipation from capitalism, apart from the examples posed by a few
syndicalist unions such as the Industrial Workers of the World in North America
or the Conféderation National de Trabajo (CNT).
In some ways the role of radical capacity of unions is a moot point since
unionization rates have declined to miniscule proportions in industries in the
United States and Canada. There is presently an eight percent unionization rate
in non-governmental workplaces in the United States. It is likely that the union
movement will not recover, at least in its previously understood and recognized
forms. As Herod suggests:
Even if current labor activists succeed and rebuild unions to what they once
were, can we expect these newly refashioned unions to accomplish more than
previous ones did, at the height of the unionization drives of a strong labor
movement - a movement that was embedded in communist, socialist, and anarchist
working-class cultures that have now been obliterated? Hardly. (2007, 29)
So the door is wide open, the floor cleared for new forms of working class
workplace association or organization. Yet, there have been only halting,
experimental attempts to fill the void. Some have been false starts while others
hold some promise. Those that are most promising suggest a coming together of
rank and file activists and militants.
Unions manage the labor and wage relationship. They do not oppose it. They
represent a bureaucratic structure outside of the workplace rather than a
democratic free association of workers within it. In fact, mainstream unions
often work to stamp out or disband such associations where they do emerge in
workplaces and challenge management and ownership.
Unions were readily co-opted and indeed co-opted themselves to become little more
than mid-level managers of the contract and a range of working conditions (around
pay, hours, job descriptions, vacations). Unions became disciplinary agencies
against the autonomous activities of the membership. They prevent or manage
strikes, job actions, sabotage, and occupations. They mobilize against
absenteeism. There can be no meaningful workplace strike without some workplace
organizing. Militant organizing in the workplace requires rank and file
alternatives, such as flying squads, working groups, and direct action groups.
Conclusion
Anarchist revolutionaries must radically shift the terrain of anti-capitalist
struggles, moving to new battlegrounds rather than staying in the streets of
protest and the town squares of Occupy movements. For Herod and other
constructive anarchists there are three primary sites of struggle with which
anarchists must be engaged. These are the neighborhoods, workplaces, and
households. Successful organizing in these areas should provide means to defeat
states and capital, while also making the new world in the present-rather than
waiting for a post-capitalist future. This shift must involve offensive as well
as defensive strategies.
Movements have too often, for too long, been caught up in defensive or reactive
struggles-responding to pieces of harmful legislation or damaging public policy,
or opposing specific corporate or government practices. Such pursuits have
dominated the vision of movements and activists in the Global North. It has led
to a staleness of approach that fails to inspire people while leading instead to
frustration and demoralization as rote repetitions of rituals are played out in
response to external decisions by others (rather than asserting internal or
organic needs and desires of the people directly involved). Instead, movements
need to affirm their own wishes and visions of a better world.
Even more, the rituals of street protest do little to actually challenge power or
structure of inequality. Typically they simply serve to reinforce the notion that
liberal democracies allow spaces for dissent and divergent views. One might
question the amount of energy, resources, and time put into single issue
campaigns, street demonstrations, and camps on public lands. As a former Right
wing Premier of Ontario once remarked dismissively, in the face of mass street
demonstrations: "I don't do protests."
Yet spectacular ritual events like demonstrations, protests, and public
occupations dominate activist imaginations and organizational visions. This
demonstration fixation has hindered social movements in liberal democracies for
generations. The present period offers some new and encouraging openings-windows
of opportunity for radical perspectives and movements against and beyond states
and capital. To take advantage of this moment it is necessary to take a hard look
at the ingrained rituals that have come to dominate movements, particularly those
holdovers from periods of lesser mobilization.
References
Herod, James. 2007. Getting Free: Creating and Association of Democratic
Autonomous Neighborhoods. Boston: Lucy Parsons Center.
Beyond May Day | The Anarchist Library
https://awsm.nz/?p=9942
------------------------------
Message: 8
Notice of Tech Workers - Sector IT & Telecommunications Association
Anarchosyndicalist Initiative for Rosinante Hatzidakis bill The government of
optimum returns with a vengeance bill that wants to turn 135 years back labor and
our trade union freedoms. The bill is being prepared for a vote after Easter,
according to their statements, months after former Labor Minister Vroutsis' first
proposal, which was then approved by the cabinet. ---- Now Kostis Hatzidakis is
called to complete the work of Vroutsis. He is mainly known in the market and as
the man without a stamp! Others, of course, may remember him as the minister who
celebrated his birthday with a cake depicting himself as a superman next to the
public companies he first went bankrupt and then privatized. This man, therefore,
brings a bill that attacks the lives of workers in two parallel ways: increasing
overtime hours and circumventing our trade union rights and freedoms. It provides
the following vulgarly: > elasticity of 8 hours up to 10 hours / day depending on
the needs of employers, > promotion of individual employment contracts on
flexible terms
> increase of the annual limit of legal overtime to 150, > institutionalization
of the teleworking regime with the possibility of "split" distribution of daily
working time, > electronic file of union members and their votes, > further
obstacles to the declaration of a strike and windows for their announcement
illegal, > increase the necessary security staff strike days for some sectors >
extension of Sunday work and more Indeed, photographs and particularly our
industry, as against giants order you want to make "investments" in the country
provided labor and Weekends.
On the one hand, they are building an arena for the unimpeded bleeding of
workers, and on the other, they are trying to ensure that the labor force is
maintained, making their only collective voice, the unions, illegal. They
continue in the reactionary direction of the Katruggalo law and, in conjunction
with the recent anti-demonstration legislation, try to outlaw the trade union
movement.
8 o'clock is not a slogan! Our workforce is not being replenished with hourly pay
in the future. At a time when in other countries the discussion about 4-day work
opens and that working hours should be reduced, here we are told to surrender
soul and body to the appetites of our employers. They are looking for modern
slaves, but they will not find them in us! We work to live and we do not live to
work!
We are afraid of the worst, because we know very well that they are violating the
current legislation: with dismissals of pregnant women, with already unpaid
overtime, with demands for 13th and 14th salary returns, suspensions of
undeclared contracts and countless other employers' arbitrariness always with the
State!
In these dystopian years the collective organization of the workers is the only
weapon we have for the defense of our animals and this is something they know
very well, that is why they choose to strike it now. But be sure that the unions
will defend themselves and their members and will not accept any dossiers! So
let's state it once again in all tones:
The State is out of our unions and their procedures!
We can not fail to mention also the last accomplice of the State and Capital,
which once again gave a great performance. The reason, of course, for GSEE. After
first PASKE and DAKE claimed that they have not read the law, later they decided
to oppose the proposal of the unions and federations for a strike on May 6,
another strike on May 4, which this year will be a holiday due to Easter .
They would be funny if they were not tragic! With its pro-government and employer
attitude, the GSEE came not only to whistle indifferently at the abolition of the
8 o'clock, but also to try to sabotage in its own way the labor mobilizations! Of
course, we did not expect anything better from the willing employers! They used
to act as decorators in the attack we received, now they are only good for
painting blue and being thrown into the sea.
Once again, therefore, the need for the establishment of a labor confederation
that will serve our interests is urgent!
Even so, the GSEE strike sabotage will fall into the void! Labor centers,
federations and primary unions have declared a strike for May 6, among them our
union, SETIP!
We open the discussion in every workplace between colleagues about the
anachronistic abortion they bring us! We are participating en masse in the strike
of May 6 and we demand the immediate withdrawal of the Hatzidaki law!
We fight for a sectoral Collective Bargaining Agreement , for a collective
negotiation of the value and terms of our work! We bring to the debate the truly
modernizing demand for the 21st century: The demand for a reduction in working
hours and an increase in wages in a technology industry with profits of many
millions of euros, but which are never shared among the working class!
We participate in the General Assembly of SETIP on Sunday, April 25 at 11 am at
the Technical University of Zografou, in the central square of NTUA! > We are
organized in every place! > We strengthen our union with our voice! > We are
fighting for our lives!
http://rocinante.gr/aristokrates-pou-den-doulepsan-pote-theloun-na-mas-pethanoun-stin-doulia-olies-stin-sinelefsi-tou-setip-stis-254/
------------------------------
Message: 9
The imagination of the Paris Commune has been transmitted to us in particular
through the songs, whether they were composed before ( Le Temps des cerises, La
Canaille ), during ( La Journée du 18 mars ) or after the events ( La Semaine
sanglante , The International, She is not dead!, etc.). They are part of the
legacy bequeathed to us these few weeks carried by an emancipatory spirit. As we
are celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Commune this year, Dubamix is making
a modest contribution to it. ---- A few months after the release of his excellent
third opus, Camarades (still available for free download on the site but also in
physical, cd or vinyl versions on the Dubamix.net site), Dubamix (aka the
activist of the "red and black dub" ) Called together a few artists to celebrate
the Communards in their own way. The result is a mini album of four tracks mixing
covers and original creations against a backdrop of a varied, powerful, original
dub, supported by samples that are always well-felt which, for more than ten
years, has been Dubamix's trademark.
The comings and goings between evocations of the past and our present struggles,
between song and rap, gives even more force to the evocation of these weeks, of
their still living heritage and of what they oblige us today. The verses of Nada
and L'1consolable resonate particularly strongly in this dialogue between past
and present. The covers of La Semaine sanglante by Julien, the singer of Joke or
Versaillais, from Versailles by Daman and Fred Alpi remind us that we can be
heirs and heirs of a tradition without conservatism.
No nostalgia here. The Municipality is an inspirer, the fights of the Communards
and Communards are still ours here and now, and toasters, rappers, singers mingle
to affirm loud and clear that the Municipality is not dead: "The municipality is
alive in our neighborhoods. , our hearts, our Zads and our bitterness"! David
(UCL Grand Paris Sud)
Dubamix, Communarde, Communards , in presale on the Dubamix.net site, 4 tracks,
record / vinyl, 12 euros, digital soon for free download!
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Musique-Dubamix-Communardes-Communards
------------------------------
Communards" (ca, de, it, fr, pt)[machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
We republish the announcement of the students of the Higher School of Dramatic
Art of KTHBE ---- "Poetry, the need to imagine, to create, is as basic as the
need to breathe" ---- - Eugene Ionesco ---- It has been more than a year since
the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic with the state administration seeming to be
at least under the circumstances. This is reflected in all areas of social life
(eg National Health System, education, work) but also in the field of culture.
Throughout the pandemic, places of culture such as theaters, cinemas, concert
halls, etc., remain hermetically sealed. At the same time, the art schools, while
suspended from operation since November, are in a distance learning regime. We,
the students of the drama school of KTHBE, have been consciously abstaining from
these "lessons" for four months now,
So while the situation remains the same and unchanged for six whole months, the
Ministry of Culture and the supposed Civil Protection have not only not presented
any planning for the reopening of the cultural sites and art schools, but, in
addition to a vague information we received at the beginning April, seem to be
completely indifferent to the way students will find themselves back in their
schools. What makes the situation even more unfavorable is the fact that the
students of the drama schools - even the public ones - do not receive any student
care, with the result that many of us find it difficult to complete or even
continue their studies. their studies for purely financial reasons.
We, the students of the drama school of KTHBE, refuse to remain spectators in a
project that ends up degrading our studies and we finally demand a serious and
complete planning for our safe return to school. Also, we will not allow any of
our classmates and any of our classmates to be left out of school, who managed to
be so hard, due to financial difficulties and a complete lack of state planning
and provision.
Students of the Higher School of Dramatic Art of the
State Theater of Northern Greece
Video from the intervention:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=368172594489061&ref=watch_permalink
https://landandfreedom.gr/el/agones/367-paremvasi-sti-moni-lazariston-apo-tous-spoudastes-spoudastries-tou-kthve
------------------------------
Message: 2
On Monday 19/4 at 7 in the afternoon, members of ESE Athens proceeded with an
intervention by opening a banner and distributing texts in front of the
industrial and commercial chamber at Syntagma. This intervention is part of a
series of actions of the ERC nationwide against the new anti-labor law of the
government. The text that was shared can be seen here:
https://ese.espiv.net/2021/04/22/08/ ---- ESE ATHENS invites you to participate
in all the mobilizations of the following days: ---- Thursday, April 22 labor
gathering-march Propylaea at 6 p.m. ---- Saturday, April 24, a day of
multifaceted activities in neighborhoods with gatherings and marches ----
Thursday 6 May MAY DAY STRIKE STRIKE
https://ese.espiv.net/2021/04/22/02-8/
------------------------------
Message: 3
No more empty promises?! For a militant climate movement instead of more appeals
to those in power! A solidary commentary on the global climate strike on March
19th. ---- A few weeks ago, on March 19, the seventh global climate strike of the
Fridays For Future movement took place. Activists in 68 countries organized a
total of 1068 campaigns on this occasion, sending a strong signal for a
climate-friendly future and against the increasing destruction of the climate and
the environment. ---- The German offshoot of the movement alone recorded 250
actions - a clear sign that the climate movement is far from over in this country
too. As the platform, we took part in the campaigns in several cities. A central
theme of this air strike was #NoMoreEmptyPromises , so "No more empty promises".
Our in-house Climate Action Committee has taken this motto as an opportunity to
position itself in a lengthy, solidary commentary against pure appeals to the
rulers and parliamentary attempts by some climate activists. In the end, they
show perspectives for a different climate movement that no longer just stops
hoping for the politicians, but takes system change from below into its own hands.
The text was published in the run-up to March 19, but we have now decided to make
it accessible to more people and therefore recorded it for you. So now we wish
you a lot of fun listening and would be happy if you share it with your fellow
fighters and leave us feedback in the comments or by e-mail.
You can also find the text here:
https://www.dieplattform.org/2021/03/13/keine-leeren-versrechen-mehr-ein-kritisch-solidarischer-aufruf-zum-gobalen-klimastreik-am-19-maerz
/
-------
#Klimakampf #Klimastreik #FFF # 19_3 #Parlamente #Reformismus #DieGruene
#Parteien #Klimaliste #Revolution # socialbattle #Anarchismus # Social insertion
#Massenbewegungen #Deutschland
https://www.dieplattform.org/2021/04/19/neuer-podcast-keine-leeren-versprechen-mehr-auf-youtube/
------------------------------
Message: 4
I remember the day before distance learning was introduced, we were enjoying
ourselves; We will stay at home for two weeks, we will miss our English quiz,
etc. In the following weeks we were no longer laughing. A year later, we cry out
of powerlessness. "Powerlessness" is a word that describes well the uncolored
realities of distance learning. ---- I'm not the only one who misses seeing my
friends and acquaintances in school corridors. It's hard in the kennel, it's a
fact: we often stay in it late, we are overworked, some of us have problems due
to poorly developed public transport and carrying backpacks that are too heavy.
As a group, we publicized the issue in the media some time ago. "6 for students"
was described in, inter alia, in Tygodnik Powszechny . Despite the torments, the
sight of friends could always cheer you up and let you forget about everyday
school life for a moment. Contact with people is very important and plays a big
role in our well-being. In one of the analyzes, we read that 63% of teenagers are
unable to contact friends during a pandemic. Loneliness causes anger, sadness,
resentment, depression, feelings of worthlessness and emptiness, oversensitivity
and pessimism.
The pandemic has highlighted inequalities in Poland. Oko.press states: "In total,
as many as one third of all students are not able to effectively learn remotely."
Where are the liberals shouting "Constitution!" Now? Let me remind you that Art.
70 of the Constitution says: "4. Public authorities ensure universal and equal
access to education for citizens. To this end, they create and support systems of
individual financial and organizational aid for pupils and
students.[...]"Meanwhile, 1.5 million students do not have access to appropriate
computer equipment; others have to share equipment with the rest of the
household; or there is a problem with the lack of access to sufficiently fast
Internet.
The new form of teaching looks more like boring lectures than lessons. Don't get
me wrong, I am aware of how difficult it is to organize interesting lessons these
days. In addition, we are constantly attacked by external stimuli: parents behind
the door, a courier or a parent's friend rings at the door, or the equipment is
faulty. Our task is to concentrate fully for several hours. Fatigue is taking its
toll. Often our routine is: get up - start up the computer - go to sleep. It is
recommended to spend a certain number of hours a week in front of the computer
screen; for example, young people of my age (16-19) are limited to 28 hours a
week , yet remote teaching keeps us attached to computers for over 35 hours.
Domestic violence is not fiction. Ÿ Polish children and adolescents have
experienced domestic violence . For many, this is an unpleasant normality they
have to deal with. Before the pandemic and the school closure, classroom classes
were for some a respite from everyday home hell. The phenomenon only worsens over
time. Especially among families where there was a problem with the abuse of
various substances, e.g. such as alcohol, before.
Some argue that the pandemic will end any moment and normality will return.
Others say there will be a fourth wave in the fall, or that epidemics will recur
periodically - remote work and learning will become the standard.
What do we need?
The lesson day should be shortened immediately to compensate for the damage
caused by spending too much time in front of monitors; this can be achieved by
removing "stuffy subjects" such as religion, PE, and the fundamentals of
entrepreneurship from the curriculum - with full compensation, of course, for
teachers.
Funding should be increased for the purchase of computer equipment for students
and increased places in schools for distance learning for students who are online
excluded.
Institutions fighting against domestic violence need better funding.
It is difficult to deal with the lack of contact with peers, you can only
eliminate other problems so that this loneliness is not so annoying.
And you? Why do you feel powerless? Share in the comment.
Patryk Szynkowski
Red Youth of the OM-PPS West Pomeranian Voivodeship, a student of the 2nd grade
of high school
https://ozzip.pl/publicystyka/spoleczenstwo/item/2769-koszmar-zdalnego-nauczania-oczami-ucznia
------------------------------
Message: 5
We are reprinting a report from the event of the Ostrava branch of Extinction
Rebellion (XR), which took place on April 16. ---- Yesterday, protests against
the financing of the climate crisis took place throughout the Czech Republic. The
events were focused mainly on Ceska Sporitelna and Raiffeisenbank, as these banks
are the least transparent and their conditions for both existing and new clients
are quite weak. That is why we have decided to demonstrate against these banks,
but the problem is not just these two. ---- In Ostrava, we decided to create a
"crime scene" to depict the deaths from the effects of the climate crisis. ----
After the protest, two members of the movement decided to spray the branch of
Ceska Sporitelna with chalk spray. They wrote the year 2025, to which XR is
heading, to be carbon neutral.
Members of the movement who used the spray for this purpose were identified by
the police and then washed the chalk spray one after the other.
https://oafed.noblogs.org/post/2021/04/20/ostrava-prima-akce-xr-proti-ceske-sporitelne-a-raiffeisen-bank/
------------------------------
Message: 6
"No struggle can be crowned with success unless it offers itself a clear and
unambiguous formulation of its purpose. No destruction of the dominant order of
things is possible if at the time of the overthrow or the struggle that leads to
the overthrow, there is not alive in the mind the idea of what will replace what
must be destroyed. But neither is a theoretical critique of existing conditions
possible if the critic does not have in mind a more or less specific picture of
what will replace the existing situation. The ideal, the perception of something
better, is formed, consciously or unconsciously, in the mind of anyone who
criticizes social institutions. This is even more true for the man of action. "
P. Kropotkin
Related link: https://ilan.shalif.com/anarchy/glimpses/glimpses.html
http://www.anarkismo.net/article/32265
------------------------------
Message: 7
Perhaps few recurring events show the great disparity that exists between
activist subcultures and broader working class and poor communities in North
America than the May Day celebrations that happen each year (with a few
exceptions). Despite its proud origins in working class movements of resistance,
and its resonance in the mass struggles of the 1930s, May Day in Canada and the
US has become little more than a historical commemoration among certain
subcultures, an opportunity to (once again) unfurl black flags and distribute
pamphlets (largely to one another). For the most part May Day events are little
more than replays generally of the rote ritualism of the Left, with a bit heavier
symbolism and sentimentality.
Even as outreach moments, to share histories of class struggle and perspectives
on revolutionary politics and change, the May Day festivals in Canada and the US
have been massively unsuccessful. Typically people with some connection already
to the subcultures or with some awareness of, and interest in, radical histories
show up and participate while bemused members of the community glance fleetingly
at the parade or pay no attention at all.
On the whole May Day activities have little resonance or meaning for working
class and oppressed communities in North America, even where there is some
recognition of May Day or appreciation for its history-particularly among people
from backgrounds in working class cultures in Europe or Latin America.
This year, with the impetus of the Occupy waves a call has gone out for a May Day
General Strike. This is the familiar hope for May Day and one that many of us
have mobilized toward before (without any real capacity or promise to actually
pull off). This most recent call too has shown tendencies to privilege image and
symbolism-marches under insurrectionary rhetoric-over more modest organizing work
on building or extending militant infrastructures in our communities. Will May
Day be an opportunity for more than noisy marches and perhaps the stage for a few
more sources of riot porn? One can hope.
Having participated in numerous efforts to revitalize May Day in various Canadian
contexts over the last twenty or so years, I have also done some work to organize
May Day actions locally again this year as well. I have seen first hand the pull
of symbolism and myth and tendencies to default into black flag marches and the
distribution of sectariana that dominate too much of contemporary Left activity.
What is needed, well beyond May Day, is a real and honest assessment of forces
and, based on that assessment, strategies for developing the sorts of capacities
that might make the case for a General Strike more than a mythic yearning.
Perhaps a May Day call in the near future would be an opportunity for rooted
projects of resistance to celebrate their work and extend the real and grounded
connections they might be building in specific neighborhoods and workplaces.
A history forged in struggle
May Day celebrations of International Workers' Day emerged in a period,
encompassing the Industrial Revolution, of great class conflict as workers
seeking better working and living conditions opposed powerful industrialists
backed by governments and institutions of the criminal justice system that acted
to protect the claims of elites to property and profit. Class struggle, rather
than hidden away in workplaces, was often open, and often violent. Working people
recognized that they were being exploited by business owners and organized to
improve their lives and escape the exploitative conditions of their labor, not
only through improved working conditions but through calls for workers' control
of the industries in which they worked.
Chicago was the site of some of the most vicious crackdowns by state forces,
police and military, against labor organizing and unions. The first great
struggles for the eight hour workday initiated in Chicago. These were often
tumultuous and bloody struggles. In 1886, during a demonstration and rally for
the eight hour day, a dynamite bomb was thrown by an unknown person into a crowd
assembled at Haymarket Square. What is known as the Haymarket Massacre left
several people dead (mostly police killed by friendly fire) led to a violent wave
of repression against labor and community organizers and union members. It
resulted in the judicial frame up of eight people identified as anarchist labor
organizers (George Engel, Samuel Fielden, Adolph Fischer, Louis Lingg, Oscar
Neebe, Albert Parsons, Michael Schwab, and August Spies). Four were convicted and
executed while a fifth committed suicide while in prison. All of this occurred
despite that fact that the prosecution admitted that none of the defendants had
actually thrown the bomb.
Clearly the men were targeted because of their political perspectives and
activities defending working people against exploitation by business owners. They
were targeted because they posed a real or perceived threat to corporate property
and profitability. The personal identities of the accused men are even more
telling. Beyond being anarchist labor organizers, five of the men were German
immigrants and another was of German descent. Another was an immigrant from
England. Clearly class intersected with ethnicity and national origin in the
targeting of organizers for prosecution. At the time elites expressed much
concern publicly that immigrant radicals were "contaminating" the domestic
workforce with supposedly foreign ideas like anarchism and socialism. Such claims
have persisted throughout US history, with echoes in Canada, as a means of
discrediting labor and community organizers and presenting them and their ideas
as outsiders or aliens.
The Haymarket Martyrs, as they have come to be known, were clearly innocent of
the crimes of which they were accused, and for which five of them had their lives
taken. They were set up by the state, acting on behalf of business owners, as
scapegoats to serve as a warning to other labor and community organizers, and the
poor and oppressed more broadly, not to take up the struggle for working class
justice and equality. The Haymarket Martyrs were killed by the state largely
because they held more radical views on social inequality and injustice,
including anarchist and Marxist perspectives. To say their perspectives were
radical, if one looks at the origin of the term radical, simply means that they
went beyond surface explanations to get to the root of the problem.
The frame up, show trials, and executions of the Haymarket Martyrs serve, once
again, as a reminder of the role of power in the selection, promotion,
dissemination, or silencing of ideas. It is a clear illustration of the part
played by powerful groups, economic and political elites, in the privileging of
certain ideas over others. It shows that those ideas which confront and challenge
power and authority within unequal societies face imposing, even lethal,
obstacles in gaining a broad public hearing. The history of capitalist societies
is filled with examples similar to the tragedy of the Haymarket Martyrs. Working
class and poor people who oppose exploitation and oppression are arrested,
defamed, and executed on a regular basis. Indeed, this is the unspoken story of
criminal (in)justice in class based societies, including Canada and the US.
May Day celebrations globally, up to the present day, commemorate the Haymarket
Martyrs while asserting a public commitment to revolutionary working class
struggle. It is a celebration of the working class fighting spirit and should be
a cultural touchstone for all working class people in the US and Canada (as it is
for many globally).
In 1889 the first Congress of the Second International called for international
demonstrations in 1890 to mark the anniversary of Chicago protests. May Day as an
annual International Workers Day was formally asserted at the International's
Congress of 1891. Riots have broken out on various May Days in the US, notably in
Cleveland in 1894 and 1919. Calls have repeatedly gone out for May Day as the
start of a General Strike. In many countries workers' May Day has been recognized
as a holiday. Such has not been the case in the US and Canada, where Labor Day
(first weekend in September) has been instituted as a workers' holiday. Indeed in
the US Labor Day was explicitly chosen as a workers' holiday (recognized
officially by the administration of President Grover Cleveland) to avoid
commemoration of Haymarket and to lessen the possibility of riots. Perversely,
given that May Day was often a day for working class demands for universal peace,
the state capitalist countries, the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba, have used May
Day as a day for mass displays of militarism, with military parades.
Today, in Canada and the US, May Day is largely a focal point for anarchists,
communists, socialists, and some labor activists. Yet it might once again come to
mean something more for broader sectors of the working class. To do so efforts
will need to be made to go beyond the marches and parades and return May Day to a
meaningful celebration of rooted struggles.
Beyond ritualism
There is a rote ritualism that gives street demos and public expressions of
dissent priority over other strategies and tactics. Yet mass demos that bring
together atomized individuals without a real base or infrastructures supporting
the mobilizations have minimal real impact. As James Herod suggests:
But opposition movements gravitate again and again to these kinds of actions.
"Taking to the Streets," we call it. Yet we can't build a new social world in the
streets. As long as we're only in the streets, whereas our opponents function
through enduring organizations like governments, corporations, and police, we
will always be on the receiving end of tear gas, pepper spray, and rubber
bullets, and almost everywhere in the world but North America or Europe, real
bullets, napalm, poisons, and bombs. (2007, 3)
It seems highly likely, indeed almost certain, that the spectacular waves of
alternative globalization struggles from the summit protests since Seattle in
1999 to the ongoing Occupy movements launched in 2011, will lose momentum and
subside or drift into reformism in the absence of building real connections and
moving toward struggles for control in workplaces and neighborhoods. The realms
of workplaces, neighborhoods, and households have largely been ignored or
abandoned as sites of transformative struggle by current activist movements
(Herod 2007, 2). Workplace struggles, where they exist at all, are dominated by
bureaucratic mainstream unions focused on bargaining compromises with employers.
Household organizing has been largely overlooked by radical activists-apart from
those who retreat into their own (privatized and detached) collective houses.
Issues of mental health and wellbeing have been given too little attention in
movements focused on economics and politics in a more traditional and limited
fashion.
Building infrastructures of resistance
Anarchists recognize (or should) that struggles for a better world beyond state
capitalism must occur on two simultaneous levels. It must be capable of defeating
states and capital and it must, at the same time, provide infrastructures or
foundations of the future society in the present day. Indeed, this latter process
will be a fundamental part of the work of defeating states and capital.
Through infrastructures of resistance movements will build alternatives but, as
importantly, have capacities to defend the new social formations. These
infrastructures of resistance will directly confront state capitalist power. Thus
they will need to be defended from often savage attack. The key impulse is to
shift the terrain of anti-capitalist struggle from a defensive position-reacting
to elite policies and practices or merely offering dissent-to an offensive
one-contesting ruling structures and offering workable alternatives. Movements
need to shift from a position of resistance to one of active transformation.
There is a pressing need to take decision-making out of government bureaucracies,
parliament, and corporate suites and boardrooms and relocate it in autonomous
assemblies of working class and poor people. There is also a need to take
activism out of the atypical realms of demonstrations and protests and root it in
everyday contexts and the daily experiences of working class and poor people's
social lives.
This would serve to meet practical needs-of shelter, education, health, and
wellbeing-while also raising visions for broader alternatives and stoking the
capacity to imagine or see new possibilities.
Building infrastructures of resistance will directly affect movements in
practical and visionary ways. It will also challenge ruling elites by pushing
them into reactive, rather than purely offensive, and confident, positions. Such
infrastructures of resistance would shift possibilities for strategizing and
mobilization. They might render demonstrations unnecessary.
As Herod suggests:
"If we had reorganized ourselves into neighborhood, workplace, and household
assemblies, and were struggling to seize power there, then we would have a base
from which to stop ruling-class offensives like neoliberalism. If we then chose
to demonstrate in the streets, there would be some teeth to it, rather than it
being just an isolated ephemeral event, which can be pretty much ignored by our
rulers. We would not be just protesting but countering. We have to organize
ourselves in such a way that we have the power to counter them, not just protest
against them, to refuse them[and]to neutralize them. This cannot be done by
affinity groups, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), or isolated individuals
converging periodically at world summits to protest against the ruling class, but
only by free associations rooted in normal everyday life." (2007, 2-3)
Transformation must focus on controlling means of reproduction as well as means
of production. Focus on workers control alone leaves communities unable to
allocate resources effectively and efficiently to meet broader needs (social or
ecological). At the same time, community control without control of means of
production would be futile, a fantasy. Even more, leaving households as
privatized realms would reinforce an unequal gender division of labor and
reinforce the duality of public and private realms of which anarchists are
generally critical (Herod 2007, 13). At the very least, neighborhood assemblies
will constantly lose people who need to move in search of employment in the
absence of worker control of industry.
A new social world cannot be built from scratch. Nor does it need to be. The
mutual aid relationships and already existing associations that people have
organized around work and personal interests (clubs, groups, informal workplace
networks, even subcultures) can provide possible resources. At the same time,
many infrastructures are needed, even today, in working class and poor
neighborhoods and households, many workers have only loose informal connections
in their workplaces. In apartment complexes, households can link up in direct
assemblies to organize shared resources. Some might include cooking, maintenance,
laundry, health care, education, birthing rooms, and recreational facilities
(Herod 2007, 11).
Building infrastructures of resistance encourages novel ways of thinking about
revolutionary transformation. Rather than the familiar form of street
organization or protest action, within constructive anarchist approaches, the
action is in the organizing. There need to be already existing infrastructures or
else a radical or revolutionary transformation will be impossible (or
disastrous). On the need for pre-existing revolutionary infrastructures, we might
concur with Herod who suggests:
Workplace associations would have to be permanent assemblies, with years of
experience under their belts, before they could have a chance of success. They
cannot be new forms suddenly thrown up in the depths of a crisis or the middle of
a general strike, with a strong government still waiting in the wings, supported
by its fully operational military forces. (2007, 26)
Similarly general strikes cannot have a meaningful impact in the absence of
infrastructures of resistance. As Herod notes:
"General strikes cannot destroy capitalism. There is an upper limit of about six
weeks as to how long they can even last. Beyond that society starts to
disintegrate. But since the general strikers have not even thought about
reconstituting society through alternative social arrangements, let alone created
them, they are compelled to go back to their jobs just to survive, to keep from
starving. All a government has to do is wait them out, perhaps making a few
concessions to placate the masses. This is what Charles de Gaulle did in France
in 1968." (2007, 27)
Under general strike conditions essential goods and services would be absent.
Water, energy, food, and medical services would not be available without
alternative associations or capacities to occupy and run workplaces to meet human
social needs. These sorts of takeover themselves require pre-existing
infrastructures.
Unions
One of the infrastructures that requires a real alternative is the labor union,
institutions that have been at the heart of working class (and May Day)
struggles. For most anarchists, unions have lost any emancipatory capacities they
might have once held. Indeed, for many anarchists, unions were never geared
toward emancipation from capitalism, apart from the examples posed by a few
syndicalist unions such as the Industrial Workers of the World in North America
or the Conféderation National de Trabajo (CNT).
In some ways the role of radical capacity of unions is a moot point since
unionization rates have declined to miniscule proportions in industries in the
United States and Canada. There is presently an eight percent unionization rate
in non-governmental workplaces in the United States. It is likely that the union
movement will not recover, at least in its previously understood and recognized
forms. As Herod suggests:
Even if current labor activists succeed and rebuild unions to what they once
were, can we expect these newly refashioned unions to accomplish more than
previous ones did, at the height of the unionization drives of a strong labor
movement - a movement that was embedded in communist, socialist, and anarchist
working-class cultures that have now been obliterated? Hardly. (2007, 29)
So the door is wide open, the floor cleared for new forms of working class
workplace association or organization. Yet, there have been only halting,
experimental attempts to fill the void. Some have been false starts while others
hold some promise. Those that are most promising suggest a coming together of
rank and file activists and militants.
Unions manage the labor and wage relationship. They do not oppose it. They
represent a bureaucratic structure outside of the workplace rather than a
democratic free association of workers within it. In fact, mainstream unions
often work to stamp out or disband such associations where they do emerge in
workplaces and challenge management and ownership.
Unions were readily co-opted and indeed co-opted themselves to become little more
than mid-level managers of the contract and a range of working conditions (around
pay, hours, job descriptions, vacations). Unions became disciplinary agencies
against the autonomous activities of the membership. They prevent or manage
strikes, job actions, sabotage, and occupations. They mobilize against
absenteeism. There can be no meaningful workplace strike without some workplace
organizing. Militant organizing in the workplace requires rank and file
alternatives, such as flying squads, working groups, and direct action groups.
Conclusion
Anarchist revolutionaries must radically shift the terrain of anti-capitalist
struggles, moving to new battlegrounds rather than staying in the streets of
protest and the town squares of Occupy movements. For Herod and other
constructive anarchists there are three primary sites of struggle with which
anarchists must be engaged. These are the neighborhoods, workplaces, and
households. Successful organizing in these areas should provide means to defeat
states and capital, while also making the new world in the present-rather than
waiting for a post-capitalist future. This shift must involve offensive as well
as defensive strategies.
Movements have too often, for too long, been caught up in defensive or reactive
struggles-responding to pieces of harmful legislation or damaging public policy,
or opposing specific corporate or government practices. Such pursuits have
dominated the vision of movements and activists in the Global North. It has led
to a staleness of approach that fails to inspire people while leading instead to
frustration and demoralization as rote repetitions of rituals are played out in
response to external decisions by others (rather than asserting internal or
organic needs and desires of the people directly involved). Instead, movements
need to affirm their own wishes and visions of a better world.
Even more, the rituals of street protest do little to actually challenge power or
structure of inequality. Typically they simply serve to reinforce the notion that
liberal democracies allow spaces for dissent and divergent views. One might
question the amount of energy, resources, and time put into single issue
campaigns, street demonstrations, and camps on public lands. As a former Right
wing Premier of Ontario once remarked dismissively, in the face of mass street
demonstrations: "I don't do protests."
Yet spectacular ritual events like demonstrations, protests, and public
occupations dominate activist imaginations and organizational visions. This
demonstration fixation has hindered social movements in liberal democracies for
generations. The present period offers some new and encouraging openings-windows
of opportunity for radical perspectives and movements against and beyond states
and capital. To take advantage of this moment it is necessary to take a hard look
at the ingrained rituals that have come to dominate movements, particularly those
holdovers from periods of lesser mobilization.
References
Herod, James. 2007. Getting Free: Creating and Association of Democratic
Autonomous Neighborhoods. Boston: Lucy Parsons Center.
Beyond May Day | The Anarchist Library
https://awsm.nz/?p=9942
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Message: 8
Notice of Tech Workers - Sector IT & Telecommunications Association
Anarchosyndicalist Initiative for Rosinante Hatzidakis bill The government of
optimum returns with a vengeance bill that wants to turn 135 years back labor and
our trade union freedoms. The bill is being prepared for a vote after Easter,
according to their statements, months after former Labor Minister Vroutsis' first
proposal, which was then approved by the cabinet. ---- Now Kostis Hatzidakis is
called to complete the work of Vroutsis. He is mainly known in the market and as
the man without a stamp! Others, of course, may remember him as the minister who
celebrated his birthday with a cake depicting himself as a superman next to the
public companies he first went bankrupt and then privatized. This man, therefore,
brings a bill that attacks the lives of workers in two parallel ways: increasing
overtime hours and circumventing our trade union rights and freedoms. It provides
the following vulgarly: > elasticity of 8 hours up to 10 hours / day depending on
the needs of employers, > promotion of individual employment contracts on
flexible terms
> increase of the annual limit of legal overtime to 150, > institutionalization
of the teleworking regime with the possibility of "split" distribution of daily
working time, > electronic file of union members and their votes, > further
obstacles to the declaration of a strike and windows for their announcement
illegal, > increase the necessary security staff strike days for some sectors >
extension of Sunday work and more Indeed, photographs and particularly our
industry, as against giants order you want to make "investments" in the country
provided labor and Weekends.
On the one hand, they are building an arena for the unimpeded bleeding of
workers, and on the other, they are trying to ensure that the labor force is
maintained, making their only collective voice, the unions, illegal. They
continue in the reactionary direction of the Katruggalo law and, in conjunction
with the recent anti-demonstration legislation, try to outlaw the trade union
movement.
8 o'clock is not a slogan! Our workforce is not being replenished with hourly pay
in the future. At a time when in other countries the discussion about 4-day work
opens and that working hours should be reduced, here we are told to surrender
soul and body to the appetites of our employers. They are looking for modern
slaves, but they will not find them in us! We work to live and we do not live to
work!
We are afraid of the worst, because we know very well that they are violating the
current legislation: with dismissals of pregnant women, with already unpaid
overtime, with demands for 13th and 14th salary returns, suspensions of
undeclared contracts and countless other employers' arbitrariness always with the
State!
In these dystopian years the collective organization of the workers is the only
weapon we have for the defense of our animals and this is something they know
very well, that is why they choose to strike it now. But be sure that the unions
will defend themselves and their members and will not accept any dossiers! So
let's state it once again in all tones:
The State is out of our unions and their procedures!
We can not fail to mention also the last accomplice of the State and Capital,
which once again gave a great performance. The reason, of course, for GSEE. After
first PASKE and DAKE claimed that they have not read the law, later they decided
to oppose the proposal of the unions and federations for a strike on May 6,
another strike on May 4, which this year will be a holiday due to Easter .
They would be funny if they were not tragic! With its pro-government and employer
attitude, the GSEE came not only to whistle indifferently at the abolition of the
8 o'clock, but also to try to sabotage in its own way the labor mobilizations! Of
course, we did not expect anything better from the willing employers! They used
to act as decorators in the attack we received, now they are only good for
painting blue and being thrown into the sea.
Once again, therefore, the need for the establishment of a labor confederation
that will serve our interests is urgent!
Even so, the GSEE strike sabotage will fall into the void! Labor centers,
federations and primary unions have declared a strike for May 6, among them our
union, SETIP!
We open the discussion in every workplace between colleagues about the
anachronistic abortion they bring us! We are participating en masse in the strike
of May 6 and we demand the immediate withdrawal of the Hatzidaki law!
We fight for a sectoral Collective Bargaining Agreement , for a collective
negotiation of the value and terms of our work! We bring to the debate the truly
modernizing demand for the 21st century: The demand for a reduction in working
hours and an increase in wages in a technology industry with profits of many
millions of euros, but which are never shared among the working class!
We participate in the General Assembly of SETIP on Sunday, April 25 at 11 am at
the Technical University of Zografou, in the central square of NTUA! > We are
organized in every place! > We strengthen our union with our voice! > We are
fighting for our lives!
http://rocinante.gr/aristokrates-pou-den-doulepsan-pote-theloun-na-mas-pethanoun-stin-doulia-olies-stin-sinelefsi-tou-setip-stis-254/
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Message: 9
The imagination of the Paris Commune has been transmitted to us in particular
through the songs, whether they were composed before ( Le Temps des cerises, La
Canaille ), during ( La Journée du 18 mars ) or after the events ( La Semaine
sanglante , The International, She is not dead!, etc.). They are part of the
legacy bequeathed to us these few weeks carried by an emancipatory spirit. As we
are celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Commune this year, Dubamix is making
a modest contribution to it. ---- A few months after the release of his excellent
third opus, Camarades (still available for free download on the site but also in
physical, cd or vinyl versions on the Dubamix.net site), Dubamix (aka the
activist of the "red and black dub" ) Called together a few artists to celebrate
the Communards in their own way. The result is a mini album of four tracks mixing
covers and original creations against a backdrop of a varied, powerful, original
dub, supported by samples that are always well-felt which, for more than ten
years, has been Dubamix's trademark.
The comings and goings between evocations of the past and our present struggles,
between song and rap, gives even more force to the evocation of these weeks, of
their still living heritage and of what they oblige us today. The verses of Nada
and L'1consolable resonate particularly strongly in this dialogue between past
and present. The covers of La Semaine sanglante by Julien, the singer of Joke or
Versaillais, from Versailles by Daman and Fred Alpi remind us that we can be
heirs and heirs of a tradition without conservatism.
No nostalgia here. The Municipality is an inspirer, the fights of the Communards
and Communards are still ours here and now, and toasters, rappers, singers mingle
to affirm loud and clear that the Municipality is not dead: "The municipality is
alive in our neighborhoods. , our hearts, our Zads and our bitterness"! David
(UCL Grand Paris Sud)
Dubamix, Communarde, Communards , in presale on the Dubamix.net site, 4 tracks,
record / vinyl, 12 euros, digital soon for free download!
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Musique-Dubamix-Communardes-Communards
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