zaterdag 1 augustus 2026
WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE ITALY - news journal UPDATE - (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #20-26 - Yesterday's memories for today's challenges. 25 years since the G8 in Genoa (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]
There are events that mark a watershed in history, whether we're talking about History with a capital "H" or personal stories. For the generation that emerged from activism in the wake of '68, it was certainly the state-sanctioned massacre in Piazza Fontana; for many of my generation, it was the G8 summit in Genoa in July 2001. I certainly don't want to compare the two events, which had completely different gravity, contexts, and dynamics, but both marked the moment of "loss of innocence" for so many people. And that's why, even though twenty-five years have passed, the burning memory of those days remains vivid, as if it were yesterday. And so it's important to talk about them and reflect on them, even though the world has changed radically in the meantime, in many ways for the worse.
To talk about Genoa, we need to talk about the transnational movement that was called "Anti-Globalization," especially by the mainstream media. Although it had existed in an underground form for some time, it gained global resonance with the protests against the WTO (World Trade Organization) summit in Seattle at the end of November 1999, when tens of thousands of people took to the streets, intent on protesting and blocking the gathering of the world's powerful by any means possible. Amid the noise of smashed windows and barricades against the police, the gestures of those helping to alleviate the effects of tear gas and the irreverent parades of the clown army, a new, powerful, and multifaceted international movement emerged to challenge the world's masters. From that moment on, wherever a forum of international organizations (IMF, World Bank, OECD, NATO, etc.) was held, tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated and besieged the physical venues of the summits.
Beyond its spread across every continent, the movement's other important characteristic was its ability to unite not so much ideas as diverse street practices. Indeed, in varying ways each time, for almost two years there was no such devastating division between "good" and "bad"-the bane of so many mobilizations-but a plurality of approaches that managed to coexist: from the clown army to the pacifist march, from the black bloc to the union strike. The institutions responded with increasing violence, until March 2001, when protests at the Global Forum in Naples ended with a police massacre in Piazza Plebiscito and the torture of those detained and taken to the Raniero barracks. Then, in June 2001, in Gothenburg, a police officer put three bullets in the back of a 19-year-old protester who, fortunately, survived. A clear foreshadowing of what would happen in July.
The G8 in Genoa was supposed to represent, in the minds of many, the high point of that movement, but instead it marked its end, along with the attack on the Twin Towers in September of the same year.
One of the causes was that the many souls who gathered in the Genoa Social Forum, the network that organized the counter-summit, effectively reproduced the old hegemonic and authoritarian logic of the political and trade union apparatuses, failing to embrace the new forms of agreement and shared practices typical of the anti-globalization movement in other countries.
Thus, state violence, deployed in all its ferocity, had an easy time dividing the movement, instilling doubt and suspicion. This was despite the fact that the "forces of law and order" had been clear since the morning of Friday, July 20: massacre everyone without hesitation. The murder of Carlo Giuliani, the savage beatings in the streets, the torture in Bolzaneto, and the massacre at the Diaz school were not "accidents," but the product of a long-planned plot. A practical lesson in real democracy, more effective than a thousand subversive speeches. Despite this, many souls on the pacifist and institutional left will continue to speak for years of democracy betrayed.
The "Anarchists against the G8," to which many of the Italian-speaking anarchists who traveled to Genoa belonged, chose to ignore the siege of the red zone where the heads of state were located, demonstrating instead in Sampierdarena, in proletarian Genoa, the site of the great workers' struggles.
We focused on a general strike, creating strike committees in various cities that led to territorial assemblies. We focused on radical objectives and social roots. In the issue of Umanità Nova that was published in Genoa, we wrote: "International demonstrations, like today's in Genoa, have been and will be important because they highlight the destructive, violent, and irreformable nature of various supranational organizations, but they cannot represent the focal point of a process that must necessarily develop elsewhere. The strength of this movement lies in its ability to combine radicalism and rootedness, to act and think locally and to act and think globally, and it must not wither away in mere protest against the powerful. Otherwise, it risks becoming a sort of counter-globalization tour operator, specializing in trips to exotic lands. A kind of Camel Trophy of subversion, complete with pre-programmed emotions. Or, worse, of acting as a movement's platform for a bloodless institutional left chasing positions and new faces. Politicians of every stripe, in need of legitimacy, took part in the Genoa Social Forum. (...)
This is a world that runs, running ever faster, and just as quickly grinds out experiences, paths. And even social movements that cannot escape the spectacle, the insane logic that, senselessly mimicking the rules imposed by marketing, rapidly consumes, suddenly rendering obsolete, even the capacity to criticize, transcend, and deny the established. It is a trap to be avoided, by displacing the adversary, multiplying one's own ability to clear new ground, autonomous zones, and free spaces. To overcome the numerous impasses in which it risks becoming stuck, the movement must be able to spread across the territory like dust, building conflictual relationships that feed on the capacity to intentionally construct other worlds, other relationships, other lives. Every day, everywhere. The urge to radical action that can draw nourishment from deep roots, from a vision capable of profoundly innervating the present, can be the sign of a revolutionary movement capable of building its own future in the here and now. As anarchists, we have begun, not without difficulty, to move in this direction, the only one capable of gathering the most fruitful demands of these movements. But it can and will be We must do more."
We believe those words are more relevant than ever. History has made it clear that only where large movements have emerged that have managed to combine a strong territorial presence with the method of mass direct action, not just among militant minorities, have governments and bosses become fearful.
The choice to strive for radicality and deep roots is therefore for us the main legacy of those July days, a challenge that is renewed every day in the struggles we promote and experience. A constant act of confrontational subtraction from the established, combined with the practice of self-management and daily struggle.
A comrade who was there
To read and download the Umanità Nova special released immediately after the G8:
umanitanova.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Le-tre-giornate-di-Genova.pdf
https://umanitanova.org/36486-2/
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
WORLD WORLDWIDE SOUTH AMERICA BRAZIL BRASIL - news journal UPDATE - (en) Brazil, OSL: Building a unified strike of education and public sector workers in São Paulo from the ground up! (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]
The march on May 20th, from Largo da Batata to Palácio dos Bandeirantes in São Paulo, should be understood as part of a broader process of organization and confrontation, whose central challenge is to transform indignation into organized social force. It cannot be seen as the end point of mobilizations in education and public universities at the beginning of 2026. The true objective of the mobilization should be to strengthen ongoing strikes, expand work stoppages, and build, from the grassroots, a general strike of education and public sector workers against the privatization, dismantling, and repression policies carried out by successive governments of the State of São Paulo, specifically by the current governor, Tarcísio de Freitas, of the Republicanos party.
We will not march to the Palace to perform a symbolic gesture or simply to undermine the current government's electoral performance. We advocate taking to the streets to boost the concrete organization of workers and students, strengthen occupations, expand the categories in struggle, and advance in building a movement capable of inflicting real defeats on the dominant classes' project for the public service in São Paulo, especially in education. Rights are not won by changing governments, but by the collective strength of the organized working class and direct mobilization.
Unifying struggles based on concrete demands
The unity necessary to confront the government and university administrations cannot be built on vague slogans or top-down agreements. It needs to emerge from the concrete demands of the categories in struggle.
Technical-administrative staff and university professors face squeezed salaries, outsourcing, and precarious working conditions. Students fight for student retention, housing, assistance, and against the dismantling of public universities. In basic and technical education, teachers grapple with overcrowded classrooms, class closures, the rise of private education platforms, the erosion of pedagogical autonomy, precarious contracts, and a lack of adequate working conditions. Meanwhile, students in public schools suffer from a lack of infrastructure, insufficient investment in laboratories, libraries, and adequate food, as well as increasing dropout rates driven by the need to work in increasingly precarious conditions. At the same time, workers in general face high costs, super-exploitation, and fight for demands such as the end of the 6x1 work schedule and a reduction in working hours without a reduction in pay.
At the same time as it dismantles public services, the government deepens state repression, especially against poor and marginalized youth. The increase in violent police operations in the peripheries, massacres, abusive approaches, and the militarization of popular territories express the same authoritarian policy that seeks to impose, by force, attacks on education, public service, and social rights. Police violence in the favelas and the presence of the Military Police within universities are part of the same project of social control and repression of popular struggles.
The struggle waged at USP, Unicamp, and Unesp against the presence of the Military Police on campuses concretely expresses this necessary unity. The invasion of university spaces by the Military Police, authorized by the Tarcísio government, represents a direct attack on university autonomy and the right to student and union organization and mobilization. Defending "Out with the Military Police from the Campus" is not an abstract slogan: it is defending the public university against repression placed at the service of the rectors and business interests.
What threatens the government is the advance of strikes and direct mobilization.
The Tarcísio government and the business sectors that direct the state's educational policy will not be defeated by institutional speeches or parliamentary pressure. What effectively threatens the project of privatization and subordination of the university to the market is the advance of strikes, occupations, and direct action organized from the mobilization of the grassroots.
For example, the strike and occupation of the USP (University of São Paulo) rector's office brought the model of university management, subordinated to political and economic elites, back into question. The State's response was police repression, with bombs, batons, and violence against students and workers. This demonstrates that the government recognizes where the real danger to its interests lies: in the capacity of workers and students to paralyze services, occupy spaces, and expand collective mobilization.
Therefore, the main challenge for the coming period is to transform actions and marches into instruments to expand existing strikes and encourage new work stoppages. The march on the 20th should serve to connect categories, strengthen strike committees, expand assemblies, and advance in the construction of an indefinite general strike in education, articulated with the entire public service.
Against the emptying of the struggle and the electoral logic
We defend active participation in mobilizations and reject both positions that distance themselves from concrete struggle and attempts to transform the movement into an electoral platform or instrument of political conciliation.
The construction of a consequential mobilization requires political independence from governments, university bureaucracies, and the business interests that support the privatization project.
The central task is to strengthen self-organization from the grassroots, articulating students, education workers, and other sectors of the public service in a common struggle against the dismantling of public services and state repression.
Only collective mobilization can defeat the privatization and repression project.
The history of São Paulo's universities demonstrates that neoliberal attacks always advance accompanied by authoritarianism and repression. This was the case with the Serra Decrees in 2007 and is happening again now under the Tarcísio government. But history also shows that government retreats only occurred when there were strikes, occupations, and massive mobilization.
Recent experiences of struggle at USP show that it is possible to simultaneously confront the state government, the university administrations, and the university bureaucracy. Each strike built, each assembly strengthened, and each occupation organized expands the capacity for resistance of the working class and youth.
Everyone to the march on the 20th as an important step towards building a Unified General Strike
We will stand alongside education and public service workers, students, teachers, administrative staff, and workers in general in the march on May 20th, at 2 PM, gathering at Largo da Batata, strengthening a mobilization process that must go beyond the march itself and point towards building a Unified General Strike against the privatization, dismantling, and repression imposed by the Tarcísio government and the ruling classes. The march should serve to unify concrete struggles against wage cuts, outsourcing, the precariousness of schools and universities, cuts in student support programs, the advancement of the privatization of public education, and the growing police repression against students, workers, and peripheral youth.
Libertarian Socialist Organization
May 2026
https://socialismolibertario.net/construir-pelas-bases-uma-greve-unificada-da-educacao-e-do-funcionalismo-publico-de-sp/
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE GREECE - news journal UPDATE - (en) Greece, APO: Thessaloniki - "Free Women" fourth issue (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]
From the mountains of the Zapatistas to Palestine, and from the streets of Iran to the communities of Sudan and the borders of fortress Europe, women continue to be on the front lines of resistance. In a world of wars, displacements and exploitation, the communities of struggle and solidarity that are born transcend states, borders and national identities. In the face of nationalism, militarism and patriarchal violence, we insist on standing with the oppressed of this world and with the common struggles for life, dignity and freedom.
And through every small and large uprising, an internationalist cry continues to echo across the planet:
REFUGEES WORKERS OF THE EARTH THE HELL-DAMNED
THE REBELS HAVE THE RIGHT
*First presentation of the issue, on Sunday, June 21st at Farganis Park in the context of the 2nd TWO-DAY FREE SPRING
*in the coming period you will find it in hangouts, squats and bookstores.
https://apo.squathost.com/thes-niki-eleftheres-ginekes-ekdosi-tetartou-tefchous/
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Source: - A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE IRELAND - news journal UPDATE - (en) Ireland, Organise: Third Rally in Solidarity with Obsidian and Echo 5 (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]
The third rally took place in solidarity with the sacked workers from Obsidian and Echo Piercing Studios in Belfast at 2pm on Sunday 14th June. Members of Organise! IWA and our Piercing Industry Union were joined by other Union members from Belfast and beyond. --- The five young workers, 4 women and one trans man, were sacked on April 30th in what, a speaker from Organise! IWA informed the rally "was clearly revenge for winning a health and safety dispute". We also heard from Gray, one of the sacked workers, who described longrunning issues with victimisation, no reasonable adjustment by the management for a chronic health condition and the arbitrary withdrawal of apprenticeships as "punsihment". These and other collective issues prompted the workers to get organised, start discussinng their concerns (which of course their employer did not like) and attempt to get them addressed collectively. The workers joined Organise! IWA and set up their own Piercing Union and requested a collective meeting with management.
As this developed the workers became aware of the seriousness of not having been fully vaccinated against Hepatitus B in a working environment in which they were routinely exposed to bodily fluids. As their employer continued to refuse to move on any concerns - including their safety - the workers removed themselves from an unsafe working environment on Saturday 7th of March. Simultaneously the Belfast International Working Women's Day parade was making it's way through the city centre. Just over two weeks later, on Friday 20th March, the workers were invited back to work in roles that guaranteed their safety, "focused on non-piercing or non-fitting tasks," with no loss of pay for reduced roles. They also received pay for the shifts they would have worked had they not been forced to remove themselves from an unsafe working environment. Antibody tests and vaccination appointments took place on the 24th and 26th of March and the issue with vaccinations resolved. This was a significant victory.
However it was a victory that would not go unpunished. The first fulltime workers started returned to work on Thursday 26th and Monday 30th of March followed by part-time workers as their shifts were rostered. The final part-time worker, Sofia, returned to work in her part shop floor role on the 1st April, having been told to expect a back to work interivew and "retraining". Instead Sofia was left to cover the managers lunch. On the managers return she was handed a letter informing her she was suspended pending the outcome of an investigation that could result in dismissal! Over the next day or two the entire non-management staff of Obsidian and Echo Piercing Studios received the same letter.
Disciplinaries were arranged with the employer and her HR company Peninsula HR to accomodate representation from Organise! IWA. Twenty minutes into the first disciplinary thaat representation was declared "not legal" and kicked out of the online meeting. Under threat of deciding the findings without them one worker went ahead with his disciplinary under protest and the other workers submitted written responses. They were allowed no opportunity to arrange alternative representation and their protests about the legality or Peninsula HR's actions were ignored. With new staff already employed the workers were, unsurprisingly found guilty of gross misconduct and sacked on the eve of May Day. Their request for appeals have been ignored - contrary to the company's own disciplinary procedure and Labour Relations Agency guidance.
As at previous rallies speakers reminded those gathered in solidarity and passersby that the ex workers have called for a boycott of Echo and Obsidian Piercing Studios, that the case is being brought to tribunal and that we will be protesting outside Obsidian Piercing Studio until the workers have won reinstatement.
To help keep the dispute going and to alleviate the hardship these young workers are facing as a result of their vengeful and unfair dismissals we also urge supporters to contribute to their crowdfunder
https://organiseanarchistsireland.com/third-rally-in-solidarity-with-obsidian-and-echo-5/
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE FRANCE - news journal UPDATE - (en) France, UCL AL #372 - Culture - Watch Nicolas Defossé, A Bigger Place (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]
"A bigger place": this is what Nicolas Defossé wanted to show. Having lived in Mexico for over fifteen years, the filmmaker spent five years filming in the ejido of Tila in Chiapas. An ejido is a collective land, a status inherited from the Mexican Revolution of 1910, and whose defense is central to the Zapatista revolution. --- Here, the inhabitants are not part of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), but their desire for self-governance is the same. In 2015, they expelled the police, notoriously violent in Mexico, as well as the city hall, from this town of twenty-five thousand inhabitants. The documentary immerses us in this community facing the challenges of self-management. The opening scenes are exhilarating, showing residents in a state of heightened self-reliance, determined to expel activists from a political partywho have been banned in the ejidoand busy deliberating on what to do with their belongings, including umbrellas (spoiler alert: burn them).
After these exhilarating first minutes, we discover the harsher reality of daily self-governance. The ejido must act as both police and justice system, dealing in particular with domestic violence and alcohol-related problems, which are very prevalent in the community. What to do, for example, when a man has assaulted his partner and a young child? Replicating the practices of the old police is out of the question, so the ejido innovates... We would have liked to learn more about these justice practices and their long-term effects.
Throughout the film, we understand the constant pressure faced by the residents, from attempted incursions by political parties or state representatives to the looming threat of paramilitaries (the Tila ejido was one of the worst massacres in Chiapas in the 1990s), a threat that ultimately materializesafter the film's end. But the difficulties are also internal: young people are leaving, some neighborhoods are more involved than others in collective tasks (the perennial problem of self-management), as are certain social classesthe "teachers" seem strangely unconcerned about garbage collection. The film allows us to take the time for deliberations to understand how the residents make decisions.
While the colonial aspect is addressed, notably through the presence of a large festival and a traditional community game, the limited presence of women in the documentary is regrettable. Their political role seems minor... is this really the case? What do they think about it? We will never know.
Benefiting from beautiful cinematography and excellent sound editing (despite slightly cluttered visuals, given the film's focus on extended time), this documentary remains a rare glimpseat least from a French perspectiveof this experiment... or revolution?
For us, so far away, hearing this echo from across the ocean allows us, at least, to continue believing that another world is possible.
Agrippine (UCL Nantes)
Nicolas Defossé, Un lugar mas grande, in theaters April 22, 2026, 115 min.
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Voir-Nicolas-Defosse-Un-lugar-mas-grande
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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