WORLD WORLDWIDE INTERNATIONAL - news journal UPDATE - (en) IFA: We are the IWA (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 The IWA is an international revolutionary workers' association. Founded

in Berlin in 1922, for over a century it has been fighting against all
odds for workers' self-management and libertarian organization.
Currently it has organizations in 21 countries and has expanded to new
areas of the globe. ---- One of the most well-known organizations in our
International is the CNT-AIT in Spain. Several years ago, a faction of
this organization managed, among other ways by conducting purges, to
take defacto control of all the increasingly centralized functions of
the organization. It also tried, without success, to disenfranchise the
majority of the IWA Sections and, when it failed, tried to "relaunch"
the IWA behind closed doors with just two other Sections. Finally, this
faction launched the International Confederation of Labor, (in Spanish
CIT), consisting of other organizations with other practices than the
International Workers' Association, IWA. The CNT-AIT remains the Spanish
Section of the IWA, retaining the same principles as the CNT-AIT prior
to the attempts to reform the organization on different principles.

One fact that must be stressed is that the Spanish section of CIT, which
has a cadre of professional lawyers, claims the exclusive right to the
name CNT and all the property that was ever held by the CNT-AIT. This
organization has effectively stolen the IWA archives which it keeps in
poor conditions in a warehouse outside Toledo, refusing even access to
it. It is also suing numerous unions of the CNT-AIT and a libertarian
ateneo as well, for enormous amounts of money. This decision to start
the suits was made by the lawyers, not by the general membership,
showing the authoritarian and vertical direction the union has taken.
These suits will be heard in court in September.

Among the things that this Spanish organization is claiming is that the
CNT-AIT cannot be called CNT-AIT because the AIT (Spanish acronym for
the IWA) does not exist.
This is a really audacious lie told by the Spanish organization of CIT,
as it knows absolutely that the IWA exists and has existed for over a
century.

We imagine from the legal documents that the unscrupulous band of
lawyers will try to use the state to conduct their war against
anarcho-syndicalists in Spain by claiming that the IWA has no legal
registration in Spain, whereas their organization complies with the
state laws, including providing information to the state about their own
members.

The lack of ethics in their arguments are appalling. All the more so due
to the fact that the name CNT-AIT is also shared by another organization
in the IWA, the CNT-AIT France. It was in France that many refugees from
the CNT-AIT went after Franco came to power and for years this
organization of comrades from France kept the IWA going in the post-war
era. Our comrades in France have also undergone some organizational
shifts and currently there are 3 organizations called CNT in that
country. Are they suing each other and claiming, like the Spanish do,
that "they cannot grow" because workers confuse their organizations? Of
course not. This is special vindictiveness against our Spanish Section,
the CNT-AIT of Spain for failing to follow the people who envision
themselves as some vanguard of their organization.

As the IWA, we all stand in solidarity with our Section, the CNT-AIT,
which we consider to be the continuation of the historic CNT-AIT in
Spain. We also express our disgust at the bald-face lies told by the
Spanish organization of the ICL (CIT), which use the state and statist
logic and try to claim we don't exist. It is absolute confirmation for
us that these people have made a break with libertarian ethics and goals
and have moved to a position to act against those who maintain them.

We are the IWA and we are not going anywhere. We are determined to
continue our struggle based on libertarian values and maintain a strong
horizontal structure in Spain and build new organizations around the world.

The Spanish organization of ICL (CIT), cries to the state's courts that
workers "confuse" their organization with CNT-AIT, that they "really
want to join them, but join CNT-AIT instead" and that this prevents them
from growing. How stupid do these people think workers really are? We do
not have those concerns because we think that people who join the
CNT-AIT know what it is and what it stands for. At the same time, after
having to suffer the bombastic claims of that faction in Spain, who
constantly claim and have claimed that the CNT-AIT is just a small,
insignificant faction of radicals as compared to their powerful and
numerous organization, such claims submitted to the court show the
hypocritical lengths to which they will stoop, contradicting their own
narrative which they have been pushing for more than a decade.

We are the IWA and we know what we stand for and we know who stands for
what in Spain. The state's courts may not like the union which stands
for social revolution in that country, it may prefer the watered down
legalist impostors, the ones who will bow to its authority in the end.
But our victory is to maintain our principles, which nobody has ever
managed to take away from us - but by firing squads, not by state
repression of any kind.

Long live the IWA and long live the CNT-AIT!

https://iwa-ait.org/es/content/nosotrxs-somos-la-ait
https://iwa-ait.org/content/we-are-iwa
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