We decided to devote the autumn issue of the anarchist review Existenceto a seemingly mundane topic - food. And right from the start we have toadmit that we had a great time. In fact, we devoted ourselves more tocooking and (if possible) dining together, and some of us also took careof the gardens and gardens, which, despite the summer heatwave, produceda lot of goodies to our delight. ---- When we take a closer look at thetopic of food, we find that it abounds in an incredibly large range ofdimensions. It is surprising that it is not reflected more in anarchisttheory. As far as we know, it enjoyed attention in green anarchistpublications for a time, and its political dimension became the maintheme of one of the issues of the zine Illness of the Mind in 2004. EvenExistence touched on it in issues devoted to localization and ethicalconsumption.The fact is that we take food for granted a bit disdainfully, but formany people in the world, even in the Western world, it is far from sucha given. Therefore, within the main theme of this issue of Existence, welook at food from many different angles. Food is a necessity, a basichuman need to which everyone should have an unconditional right. Butunder capitalism, food has become a tool of extortion, which determinesconditions in the labor market and makes workers hostage to it. We seehow the state tries to suppress activities that point to the huge sumsspent on armaments, while the people are not getting the basics. Food isa medium of solidarity that is very different from charity maintainingthe status quo. Food proved to be a weapon in the hands of the workersand an important aspect in the struggle for the right to the city. Foodis at the center of self-help activities and often becomes the nexus ofimportant self-governing relationships. Food can show the way to wherewe live, however much the agrarian industry tries to commodify it forits own profits. Food is one way to mitigate the climate crisis andfight for biodiversity. Food affects our and public health, and throughit we can show our compassion for other living creatures, nature andpeople. Food is the glue of communities and the infrastructure of theanarchist movement itself revolves around it.In addition to an extensive, albeit essentially brief, introductoryarticle on the topic, we publish the texts "Political Economy" fromlibcom.org, "Radical Agriculture" by anarchist and social ecologistMurray Bookchin, an interview with members of the Prague collectiveHomeless Cooks and the Pilsen collective of the Planetary Anarchist ofthe Food not Bombs initiative. Further, the topic is developed indifferent directions by excerpts from the chapters of the very inspiringbook Nourishing Resistance: Stories of Food, Protest, and Mutual Aid,which was published this year by the anarchist publishing house PMPress. You will also learn about activist kitchens and more specificallyabout one local that calls itself Cocina Perdida. All of this is thencompleted by a very fresh contribution from a rural member of theAnarchist Federation, who started an informal consumer activity for hisfriends from the city.Further in Existence you will find an article about the controversialCzech anarchist of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, KarlVohryzko, who was on the one hand very active and capable, but on theother hand he was a scourge of the movement. The column devoted topersonalities continues with the obituaries of the 82-year-oldanarcho-feminist Neala Janis Schleuning, the 89-year-old Spanishanarchist Agustín Torres Ramos and the 60-year-old Italian anarchistAlberto Gazzarri. We also remember the anarchist fighters who diedfighting the Russian invasion of Ukraine - Dmitry Petrov, YevgenyOsijevsky, Finbar Cafferkey and Cooper Andrews.In one of the earlier issues, we covered the topic of house projects.Now we return to it in the form of an interview - we present one suchproject that exists within Shared Houses and is called První vlastovka.Its protagonists have already bought their own house in Prague and arepreparing to renovate it.As always, there are regular columns. The introductory one is devoted tothe activities of the local movement and informs, for example, about theopening of the new Prague infoshop Trhlina, about events within theframework of International Women's Day, for climate justice, againstclerofascists, in support of the fight against Putin's invasion, againstthe mistreatment of the homeless, etc. A special place is dedicated theanarchist May Day and the anarchist book festival in Prague. In thesection of the Anarchist Federation, you can read, for example, aboutthe Olomouc group's campaign, the international week of solidarity withanarchist prisoners, the collection "4x4 against the invasion" or theinternational anarchist meeting in St-Imier, Switzerland. In the textsof the A3 wall newspaper, we focus on one successful strike, policeviolence against the homeless, the actions of the current government,the hatred of some Roma towards Ukrainians, the authoritarian trend inFrance and the downplaying of violence against women. The magazinecloses with reviews of the books Manifesto of the socialist movement,Punk raging, Jedu do Magadan, brochures from the anarchist publishinghouse Spinkdistro and the collective Dekonstrukce, and two issues of thezine Hrmot (the last one had a bit of a typo).We wish you an inspiring read... and bon appetit.https://www.afed.cz/text/8034/existence-c-2-2023-jidlo_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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