State Savagery.

         There are still those members of the general public think that prisons are place where the state puts "bad" people, and it puts them there to protect the general public. This is a gross distortion of the truth, prison are there to protect the powers that be from the general public. They are state institutions of repression, places to put those who would dare to challenge the present structure of power, wealth and privilege for the few. They are built to intimidate those who might consider following those who challenge the status-quo. The other misconception is that they are places of reform, to prepare you for a better life once back out of their clutches, the fact is that they hope by the time you leave their repression cages, you will be a broken, submissive, "law" abiding subservient citizen.   

          Prison are relics for a bye-gone age of barbarity, they are state instigated and funded dens of savagery, barbarity, inhumanity and human degradation. However it takes an army of deluded/deranged people to take the job of locking their fellow humans in cages at somebody else's bidding. Within those walls the prison population has as high as 80% with substance addiction, mental health problems and learning difficulties, a whole section of vulnerable people who should be receiving some form of social and welfare care. Instead they are subject to arbitrary violence, degradation and lack of any decent medical facilities. We can't have a civilised society as long as one prison cell remains. Freedom and justice can only arise from the dust of the last prison.
The following is an extract of an article from It's Going Down:

 

      An interview with anarchist political-prisoner Eric King with the Seattle-Tacoma chapter of Black and Pink.
        In this time when authorities refuse to keep people safe from COVID-19, when rebellion is a fresh on our minds, and when the abolition of police and prisons is becoming a clear necessity to more and more people, we’ve got something to learn from an anarchist political prisoner like Eric King. Eric vandalized the office of a government official in Kansas City, MO, in solidarity with the Ferguson uprising, was arrested in September 2014, and then was sentenced to ten years for the window he broke in June 2016. Such a sentence is horrible, but not shocking. Prisons, after all, do more to keep hierarchies safe than people. 

        Eric is now facing a bogus charge of assaulting an officer that could land him another 20 years inside. At the time of writing this, he has been hit with a mail restriction and can’t receive letters of support. But we can make ourselves aware of his case and learn from his words.
        The following is an interview with Eric conducted through snail mail by the Seattle-Tacoma chapter of Black and Pink, a queer/trans abolitionist group that focuses on building community across prison walls.
       Black and Pink Seattle-Tacoma: How would you characterize FCI-Englewood’s response to COVID-19?
         Eric King: Dreadful! At least in the SHU. People were brought in without being tested, staff was never tested. Our tiers were not cleaned more than once a week, we were only given 3 showers a week. No bleach was used anywhere. We were given masks, but staff/admin was so slack with their usage. Now we have a massive outbreak. The entire SHU was ill and staff refused to acknowledge or test us, until on Thanksgiving when things were so bad a med officer had no choice but to test 3 of us… all positive. A few days later they test everyone else, ALL positives. Then, AFTER we all are very sick, they institute a SHU lockdown, they start bleaching the showers between use, etc. Warden Greilick failed. None of us have been given anything for it, not even info about symptoms and how to make it less. Greilick failed, 600+ cases, all preventable.
       B&P: What’s something about being in prison that you feel like people outside don’t understand, and need to know? Were there expectations you had about prison that shifted once you were incarcerated?
        EK: I’m not sure people realize or care about the amount of psych games these people play. It is violent. Withholding mail for weeks or months claiming you don’t have any, searching your cell and vandalizing your family photos. Placing you intentionally around people who wish to harm you. I’ve seen cops lie and tell a group a certain person is a rat just to get that person fucked up. Happens all the time and isn’t limited just to unit cops. Medical will see you on your death bed and say you just need more water. People die because of this gaslighting. You file your grievances as you’re supposed to and get told they never got filed, that YOU are lying. It’s a miracle there aren’t staff murders every day. Instead people internalize this bullshit and give up, or turn anger on fellow convicts instead of toward the system baring down on them. It’s an effective spirit breaker. I honestly thought in prison it’d be “us vs. them” … it isn’t… it’s us vs. us while they laugh and manipulate us. Devastating.
     B&P: What do you notice about how different populations in the prison are treated? How has your position affected your treatment?
      EK: Different groups get treated different for sure, usually to stir resentment and violence. Gay and transgender people get treated abysmally by all races/gangs AND staff. They are demonized and treated as less than scum, often left vulnerable to attack or staff harassment.
     My position as an anti-racist / anti-fascist person has been used to create divisions and separation. At USP-McCreary while in the SHU, staff mocked my “Antifa” face tattoo and assured me they were going to get me jumped… and they did. Mail is ALWAYS horribly delayed and often arbitrarily rejected, email has to be read and approved before being sent out – which can take days. I’ve been denied phone calls for 2 years after a website posted about me and my wife was denied visiting access due to her “ideology.” Staff talks big shit trying to instigate violence, subject you to a large amount of searches and property confiscation… you get targeted.
      B&P: What sustains you while you’re inside? What support are you getting that is really making you feel supported?
      EK: The support that feels the “most,” is when people/groups do things outside of me, on their own. Things like banner drops, fundraising, getting writings or info published to various sources. Being kept relevant and alive. In the near future it will be trial support: either showing up, posting about it, encouraging others to come, things like that. I have an amazing family who is outlandishly loving and supportive, I am very present in their lives. I have great friends and supporters who look out for me super tough. These things sustain me. Also, I am very secure in myself. My ethics and my belief in myself, in my future. These things carry me throughout the day. They won’t beat me.

Read the full article HERE 

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk   

Insurrection??

          There has been a lot of coverage of the "insurrection" in Washington DC on January 6th.. So it is good to hear an analysis of the events from anarchists and those of that ilk from that side of the pond, They'll be much more in touch with what goes on in that patch of the planet.

This from It's Going Down:

 

      

        A critical anarchist analysis and critique of the recent events in Washington DC and the response from the political Center and mass media. 

 

       So much could be said about the spectacle recently witnessed at Washington, DC’s federal capitol building, however we will write a quick statement, hoping to further understand the situation as well as to assert a need on behalf of comrades in the States who face both imminent and ongoing grassroots violence and parallel state repression. Essentially, what we saw was not an insurrection or revolt; what the world witnessed was a permitted fascist temper tantrum.
      On January 6th, 2021, the American government gathered for its ritual of certifying the Electoral College results, signifying the transfer of power to a new president. It is an archaic ritual that—because it began prior to modern travel, and faraway states needed the months after the election to travel across the country by horse and carriage to participate—is held in January rather than immediately following the election’s outcome in November. This event was seen by both Trump and his followers as the last ‘hoorah’ to disrupt the transfer of power from the far-right Republican Party to the moderate right-wing Democratic Party.

       The US security state’s very different approach to the MAGA mob versus an antifascist, anarchist, or abolitionist demonstration was made quite overt on the 6th. It was so obvious, in fact, that mainstream media outlets have seized upon it, in their embarrassing public displays of trying to grasp just why the police put on their kid-gloves with these self-indulgent cowards seeking to reinforce the very worst of what already exists in the US, storming a building that has its very own police force (with an annual budget of more than $500 million).
     The police tolerance exhibited for Trump’s supporters was purposefully obvious. It has been public information that the extreme Right in the US have chosen to infiltrate law enforcement and political positions of power (even cited in a report by the FBI) ever since the fall of the guerrilla neo-Nazi group The Order in the mid-1980s and white supremacist Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of an Oklahoma City federal building in 1995 that killed 168 people. Both were inspired by the white supremacist bible at the time, the fictional novel The Turner Diaries (1978), which featured a similar assembling of fascists identifying as ‘Patriots.’ Apart from formally rampant white supremacy throughout the American police force, every single police union had endorsed Trump in the US in the run-up to the 2020 election. While police tend to be more diverse in the US compared to many countries around the world, the original purpose of the police in the US was to catch slaves and crush unions, so it is inevitable that regardless of race, there is an element of fascism in such a uniform.
       If Black Lives Matter, anarchist, or anti-fascist banners were raised on this day, there would have been mass arrests, far more intense brutality, and a likely massacre. While five people have died due to the events of the 6th, one being a police officer who died due to being beaten to death with a fire extinguisher*, and only one demonstrator due to police violence; the other three literally died due to their own stupidity and maintained their white privilege even in their humiliating deaths. If this was not a white supremacist event—or an ostensibly fascist event—dozens would have been killed by the police.
       Apart from the daily mass murder of people of color and poor people in the US by police, the fates of Kyle Rittenhouse and Michael Reinoehl, for some very recent examples, help to explain the behavior of the police on that day, how they acted in parallel to their grassroots fascist counterparts.
      Kyle Rittenhouse murdered two people during a demonstration against the shooting of Jacob Blake—a Black man shot seven times in the back in front of his children by a white police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The event left Blake paralyzed, but the officer who shot him will face no charges despite video evidence. Rittenhouse is currently on trial for his murders, and was allowed to move freely past the police line just shortly after killing people. Michael Reinoehl, on the other hand, was a self-proclaimed antifascist from Oregon, who in self-defense shot a fascist during a Trump protest. Reinoehl went on Vice News shortly after the event to proclaim the action was in self-defense, and one day later, he was shot over 50 times by federal police. Trump openly bragged about Reinhoel’s assassination. With few exceptions, his fate was rarely discussed in the media, but shows the obstacles and struggle revolutionaries face versus the permitted ‘rebellious’ behavior of fascists and other fanatics for the misery of the world today. The courts are no different. The sentencing and investigations that inevitably follow the actions of the right are managed in a way resembling obligation, rather then the passionate and brutal judicial attacks by the state on revolutionary movements seeking liberation.

Read the full article HERE: 

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk   

Water Is Life.

      Imperialists are thieving bullies, who stride across their subservient dominions plundering and pillaging, taking what they wish. Anything that will enrich its coffers or increase its power, will simply or brutally be taken. Today the biggest of those thieving bullies is the U$A. One of the most precious resources of to day is fresh water, and in arid lands it is even more precious as it is necessary to farm the land and make it livable for the indigenous population. So the anger of a people who see that water supply being redirected to their rich and powerful imperial master is understandable and is therefore righteous anger, and deserves our full support and solidarity.
      To deprive a people of water is to slowly kill them, it is death by state contract, it is murder authorised by state legislation. These are all aspects of the present day state system bound up in capitalist economics and brutal imperialism. There is a better way.

The following article is from It's Going Down:

        English translation of a report from Difusión Comunista Anárquica about the recent uprising in defense of water in the Mexican state of Chihuahua.
      Since Wednesday July 29, self-organized protests by campesinos and community members have kicked off in the municipality of Rosales in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. These coordinated actions have been directed against government buildings and other representations of the Mexican state, like CONAGUA (Mexico’s National Water Commission).
       They are an expression of the refusal by the local population to be denied water from the “Las Virgenes” dam so that the Mexican state can cover a debt it has with the United States. This dam is one of the principle sources of water for the local population, who use it mostly for agricultural activities and consumption. It should be noted that this area, like much of the northern states that border the United States, is characterized by dry and desert-like conditions. The absence or scarcity of water implies a vulnerability to productive activities that bring sustenance and life to the communities in the region.

      In addition, the Mexican state has used both the military and national guard, and has threatened the deployment of more state forces, beneath the pretext of supposedly combating “aguchicoleos,” a term being used to refer to the illicit or clandestine stealing of water from a non-authorized source. However, the only theft and deprivation that exists in the region is that which the state carries out against the people, in order to pay off its debt with the United States.
      This was part of the agreements reached a few weeks ago during AMLO’s visit with Donald Trump. The threats have escalated, along with demonstrations of resistance. There is now the possibility of the massive deployment of the national guard and police to the region. The head of CONAGUA, Blanca Jimenez, has requested the massive deployment of state forces to intimidate and stop the direct action of the people against representations of the Mexican State.
       The theft of water is one of the many practices carried out by international capital. These actions take place in open and shameless collaboration with left sectors and progressives who are no different than the scum of these governmental administrations (PRI, PAN, MORENA, PRD, etc.). Protected by the rule of law and the democratic order of civilization, they try to keep us submissive and quiet, spitting on each one of us as if we decide to get out and take the streets without previous notice, responding when our compañerxs in struggle are arrested and sent to the dungeons of capital.

Immediate freedom for the prisoners of the revolt in Chihuahua!

In defense of water and life, for the proletarian struggle!

For communism and anarchy!

 Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

The Awakening.

         Portland USA is not on our mainstream media news very much at all. The media have a habit of reporting rioting in places our lords and masters call "enemies" but seldom report much when it is happening on the streets of our "friends". So continuous riots being brutally attack in a "friendly" nation is just not news.  
        However, Portland USA has seen it citizens on the street in violent clashes with the authorities and the police since the daylight, public execution, by a police officer, of George Floyd, and it is still going on, getting met with ever greater military style police violence. This is surely worthy of reporting.

The following report from It's Going Down:

 A report from the front lines of Portland from Defend PDX.

by Misanthrophile
      In the beginning, we were many. We were thousands. Exploding into the street after watching a video of horror both strange and all-too-familiar: a video of a nine-minute murder, of a killer indifferent to the pleas of the bound man he choked and crushed to death. Broad daylight, on film, unprosecuted. Another police murder. Another black person dead.
     As the video circulated, things began to shatter. Hearts. Trust. Restraint. Patience.
     We marched through these streets–our streets–to the sound of shattered windows. We screamed the names of the dead to the heavens as though they might be able to hear, as though we might rouse them and reverse the brutality that ended their lives. From above: silence. Some crimes are unforgivable, irreversible. But the future is not yet written: we could stop this from happening again, we must stop it by any means necessary. Voices united in a pledge, a pact: “No Justice, No Peace.”
     There was no justice, and so there was no peace. The police quickly set aside their PR platitudes and came for us in force. The cacophony of flash bang grenades rattled windows, nerves, teeth. Thick, sputtering clouds of tear gas choked downtown and incapacitated passersby as the protesters scattered, terrified by this sudden brutality. The pain is unbearable. Your eyes swell and burn: you become blind. Fire in your lungs, your mouth, your stomach. You retch and spit. Every instinct screams that you are dying, panic fills you: you flee.
     We could not withstand it, at first. Mass protests disintegrated into terrified individuals, scattered to the winds.
     “We have to do better,” we told each other, clothes rank with mace and sweat. Sheltering with a friend, a stranger, a new comrade. Sharing a beer, watching Hong Kong YouTube videos. Thinking. Learning.
     Not all the protesters returned, but the ones who did learned quickly. With one voice we sang our lessons. “Slow in the front, protect the back!,” we chanted as we learned to march at a steady pace. “Walk, don’t run!” we called out as we learned to fight back panic and remain calm in the face of fire. “Stay together, stay tight!”: a song we knew from the start, soon augmented with a second line: “We learned to ride the terror. “Be Water,” we said to each other as we regrouped after the police broke the group with gas and fear. We learned painfully that debates on direction had to be conducted carefully to avoid splitting and quickly to avoid police attention. Hand signals I had learned in the Army discovered again by an army of Gen-Z warriors: stop, regroup, left, right, quiet down.
     After a week of this, the city passed an ordinance against tear gas. The cops now needed new tools to hurt us and so we learned the brutality of the police line. Of charging cops with batons. Of an entire canister of crowd control mace emptied into the faces of protesters. We learned that cameras save lives and so every phone became a weapon. The police knew this too. They began to target journalists.
      The police made the mistake all authoritarians and cowards make: because they are driven by fear, they believe others are too. We learned to ride the fear, live with it, transmute it into rage and commitment. We learned in lock step, we learned together.
     As we became accustomed to their tactics, the police tried new ones. Every time they escalated, we learned to become more resilient, creative, unpredictable. We went to their police union. They instantly declared a riot and drove us away with batons and thick clouds of gas. We went to the North precinct. They drove us into the residential streets and claimed we tried to burn them alive. Lies and lies and lies, mainstream media eating it up; we existed in a world no one seemed to know about or believe, we were alone but we had each other. We did not stop
    And then the feds arrived.
    We do this every night.” Same shit, different day. Nothing to be afraid of.

Read the full article with videos HERE:

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Concessions Or!

 

        The "Black lives Matter" movement is not unique to this era, it has been part and parcel by black Afro-Americans for generations, under different names, as they struggled for justice and equality. This time round it is probably the largest of those movements, as it has spread across borders, not just of states, but of countries. Despite the apparent resistance from the establishment, like in the past, there will be concessions granted to take the insurrectionist element out of the movement. On the streets to lots of people white power matters, but to the established corporate body that rules America and else where, what really matters is that power remains with that corporate body and the present economic system survives. Black white halfway in between, makes little difference to the massive corporations, what matters is power, control and the survival of their sacred system of economic exploitation of all humanity.
       The past "Black lives Matter" movements have brought about changes, black Mayors, black officers in the military, and even black millionaires, but the real power still lies with the corporate oligarchs and the economic system that they live by, who see groups of people as a source for exploitation and will gladly play up one against the other.
        This time round, will the "Black lives Matter" settle for more steps towards equality with their exploited whites, or, and it looks more encouraging, will it, linked to all shades of human colour, evolve into a real movement for change by bringing down the corporate monster that lives by this economic system of exploitation.

       The following is an extract from an interesting article from It's Going Down:

       A third reason that Black Awakening is important, and the one I’m most concerned with here, is that it includes an invaluable discussion of ruling-class responses in the face of mass upheaval. In the broadest terms, Allen argued that

“In the United States today a program of domestic neocolonialism is rapidly advancing. It was designed to counter the potentially revolutionary thrust of the recent black rebellions in major cities across the country. This program was formulated by America’s corporate elite—the major owners, managers, and directors of the giant corporations, banks, and foundations which increasingly dominate the economy and society as a whole—because they believe that the urban revolts pose a serious threat to economic and political stability. Led by such organizations as the Ford Foundation, the Urban Coalition, and National Alliance of Businessmen, the corporatists are attempting with considerable success to co-opt the black power movement” (17).

Allen saw this program as emerging in the context of “several interlocked responses” to the rebellions from different sectors of the white power structure:

On the one hand there was the orthodox liberal who prescribed more New Deal welfarism as an antidote to the riots… [Another was] the shrill voices emanating from the embattled metropolises–voices demanding more policemen, more troops, more weapons, heavier armor, and tougher laws…. But between these two camps, there has arisen a third force: the corporate capitalist, the American businessman. He is interested in maintaining law and order, but he knows that there is little or nothing to gain and a great deal to lose in committing genocide against the blacks. His deeper interest is in reorganizing the ghetto ‘infrastructure,’ in creating a ghetto buffer class clearly committed to the dominant American institutions and values on the one hand, and on the other, in rejuvenating the black working class and integrating it into the American economy. Both are necessary if the city is to be salvaged and capitalism preserved” (194).

One of the architects of the neocolonialism program, who receives special attention in Allen’s study, was McGeorge Bundy. Child of an elite Boston family, Bundy spent five years as national security advisor to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, then left in 1966 to become president of the Ford Foundation. With this job change, Bundy shifted from a leading role in designing U.S. political-military operations in Vietnam to a leading role in designing establishment responses to the Black Liberation Movement.

Bundy quickly set a new tone as Ford Foundation president. In August 1966 he told the National Urban League’s annual banquet, “We believe that full equality for all American Negroes is now the most urgent domestic concern of this country. We believe that the Ford Foundation must play its full part in this field because it is dedicated by its charter to human welfare.” With Bundy as its head, the foundation broadened its grant-giving from relatively tame civil rights organizations such as the NAACP and Urban League to the more militant Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Allen explains that CORE appealed to the Ford Foundation because it talked about revolution but offered an “ambiguous and reformist definition of black power as simply black control of black communities,” fortified by increases in government and private aid. “From the Foundation’s point of view, old-style moderate leaders no longer exercised any real control [in the ghettos], while genuine black radicals were too dangerous” (146-47). In Cleveland, Ford financed a CORE-led voter registration and voter education campaign, which in November 1967 helped Carl Stokes win election as the first Black mayor of a major U.S. city.

Read the full article HERE:

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Man's Inhumanity.

       Pick your country, and you'll find that it has its prisons, and those incarcerated in those institutions of state repression, will be treated as if they had ceased to be human. What shocks me most is that the inhumane treatment heaped on the prison inmates is carried out by others who profess to be human. I know that their training, funding and implementation is by the state, but who picks a job that helps to lock other humans in cages and subjects them to arbitrary violence and degrading circumstances. No doubt they go home to their families, laugh and go to the pub, and somehow blend in with those who still hold onto those special characteristics that make us human. You'll stand beside them in the super market, sit beside them on the bus, and in our ignorance accept them as normal human beings, but are they? They belong to the far too large a group that put on uniforms, obey instructions and show little or no human feelings to those they ill treat and beat up. I feel it is glaringly obvious that there is something far wrong with a society that tolerates those humans who can show no compassion to another human being and also gives them positions of authority. The police, the prison guards, the military, the politicians who support and organise these groups and the corporate institutions that need these facilities most be removed if we want a decent, fair and just society.

The following, not unique but typical, is from It's Going Down:

       Statement from Indigenous prisoners in struggle in CERSS No. 5 in Chiapas denouncing prison authorities as COVID-19 continues to take its toll at the prison.

To the Public
To the Networks of Resistance and Rebellion
To the National Indigenous Congress
To the Zapatista Army of National Liberation
To the National and International Sixth
To the Network Against Repression and for Solidarity
To the Media
To the Human Rights Defenders and Non-Governmental Organizations
To the Independent Organizations
To the Indigenous People of Mexico and the World
To the Civil Society of Mexico and the World
       We are Indigenous prisoners, Adrián Gómez Jiménez, of the organization, La Voz de Indígenas en Resistencia and Germán López Montejo and Abraham López Montejo, of the organization, La Voz Verdadera del Amate. Both organizations are adherents to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, EZLN. We are currently imprisoned in CERSS No. 5 in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas.
      Compañerxs, brothers and sisters. We want to bring to light the situation we face as prisoners due to the health emergency brought by COVID-19, which has caused many people to lose their lives across the globe.
     The coronavirus outbreak was first known here on May 21, 2020. After the death of a prison official, Artemio Jiménez Estrada, two other workers from this prison have already died. José, who was in charge of the tortillas in this prison, died of COVID-19. Also, Manuel Cordero, who worked in the labor area has also died of COVID-19. We used to order our materials from him.
      Here in CERSS No. 5, there is an outbreak of COVID-19. Today, June 13, the inmate Mario A. has died. He was abandoned by the authorities who didn’t even realize he had died.
     Mario A. should have been released from prison because he had diabetes and other illnesses. He fought for house arrest but the unjust authorities denied him that. He should have been released. These are the injustices we face in this prison, injustices caused by government officials. We will never know if the cause of Mario’s death was COVID-19 because we know that he was never tested. What we do know is that he died in prison, from abandonment and negligence, on part of the prison authorities, who treat us like disposable objects who can die in total impunity.
     Previously, prison authorities denied the outbreak of COVID-19 here in CERSS No. 5. According to them, they had it under control with the safety measures they had in place. Let’s see what excuses and lies they come up with now regarding the death of this inmate.
      We want to mention that they did not even inform us of the death of Manuel Cordero or José. They never appeared on the radio news. They want to maintain the image that everything is under control.
     We will not remain quiet about what is happening in this prison where there is an outbreak of COVID-19. We don’t know who will be the next inmate to die victim of the coronavirus, but meanwhile we remain in danger. We continue denouncing that prison authorities have denied us our COVID-19 test results. We should be well-informed about this mortal pandemic, but it is quite the opposite.
       If they continue denying us our test results, we will carry out an action to demand that we receive our documents, because we have the right to know the results.
      Lastly, we invite the state, national and international independent organizations, the state, national and international human rights defenders, to continue demanding true justice and freedom for the political prisoners, prisoners of conscious and prisoners in struggle.
      Uniting the voices of the Mexican people, true justice will triumph.
Respectfully.

Adrián Gómez Jiménez
Germán López Montejo
Abraham López Montejo

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Profit Or A Future?

       It is amazing to think that activists were fighting to save the forests in the 1990's, and here we are in 2020 and watching probably the biggest forest on the planet being logged and burnt. We seem to have learnt nothing, the corporate parasite class are still plundering and destroying the planet for no other reason than greed for profit. It is obvious that this would not be able to continue without the blessing of the various states involved. The state and the corporate body are two sides of the same coin, and dialogue and negotiations seem to have failed to stop their plundering and destruction. It will take organisation, solidarity and direct action by the majority of the people to crush this system and bring this murder of the planet and killing of the human species to an end.
     I personally have never been at ease with the policy of spiking trees, however I wasn't there fighting that particular battle, perhaps if I had been, my opinions might have been different.

       The following article is from It's Going Down:  

      This weekend marks the 30th anniversary of the bombing of Earth First! organizers Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney.

      The 30th anniversary of the bombing of Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney is May 24, 2020. Usually, Judi’s comrades in the Bay Area commemorate that event every year by going to the place where the bomb exploded under Judi’s car seat as she drove through Oakland, to mark the moment, as well as bringing people together for discussions of radical activism and solidarity. This year will be different in the time of the pandemic. But the date will be marked, nonetheless, as a memory against forgetting.

Judi Bari said, many years ago:

Starting from the very reasonable, but unfortunately, revolutionary concept that social practices which threaten the continuation of life on Earth must be changed, we need a theory of revolutionary ecology that will encompass social and biological issues, class struggle, and a recognition of the role of global corporate capitalism in the oppression of peoples and the destruction of nature.

I believe we already have such a theory. It’s called deep ecology, and it is the core belief of the radical environmental movement.

      Her perspective and analysis shed light on why she was considered dangerous to the corporate status quo and targeted. On May 24, 1990, a pipe bomb planted in the car of Earth First! activist Judi Bari exploded, sending her and fellow activist Darryl Cherney to the hospital in Oakland—Judi with life-threatening injuries, since the bomb had been hidden directly under her driver’s seat. Judi and Darryl were on their way to a roadshow event, organizing for Earth First! Redwood Summer. That explosion, and the subsequent attack on Earth First! as well as Judi and Darryl, by the FBI and Oakland police would forever change the face of forest activism in the redwoods and elsewhere. The bomber was never found, partly because the FBI never conducted a serious investigation, choosing instead to blame and harass Earth First! activists, attempting to frame Bari and Cherney for bombing themselves. A lawsuit filed by Judi and Darryl against the FBI and OPD for violation of Constitutional rights was ultimately successful in 2002, vindicating Darryl and Judi, but coming five years after Judi’s untimely death from breast cancer at the age of 47.

       Redwood Summer was a mass mobilization of students and others who came from across the U.S. to protest the deforestation of the redwood region in Northern California, being decimated by the corporate chain saw. It was modeled after civil rights mobilizations in the south in the 1960s. The summer of civil disobedience and protest in the forests did proceed, in spite of the monumental disruption caused by the bombing and attempts to frame and tear apart Earth First!, and changed the face of direct action organizing at the time.

         There was a planned exhibit dedicated to Judi at the Mendocino County Museum that would put the bombed car and other artifacts of the time on display, to have opened May 1. The pandemic has postponed all of that, but we encourage people to watch the feature-length film, Who Bombed Judi Bari? on YouTube. It tells the story of the bombing, Redwood Summer, Earth First! and much more.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Organise.

 

        Like the article says, "these are dark days", also very confusing, because none of us have lived through such a situation before in our life time. Also, information can be conflicting, loaded in this direction or that direction. Forces with wealth in mind pushing for "get the economy growing again" and those with concern for people's lives, "human life and wellbeing is paramount". It would be easy to cover your ears and just ride this one out, but for sure that would lead you back to the callous failed and exploitative system that brought us to this situation.  Now more than ever we have to focus on what we had, its poverty, its greed driven market economy, its perpetual struggle for a half decent life for most of us, while the few piled up unimaginable wealth and its accompanying power and privileges. That can't be on our desire for normality, we have a golden opportunity as we come together to help each other, through this nightmare, to make that the foundation of our new normal. We are learning day by day that we can organise to see to our needs, simply by co-operation and mutual aid. We should not let that desire to be part of a caring community that doesn't seek profit, just the well being of each other to disappear, and give in to the forces of the market economy. We have felt the burden of that model for centuries and the weight never lifted off our shoulders, and still the few wallowed in opulence cradled in pomp and power. That can never be our normal again. 

The following from It's Going Down:

 From SubMedia,

         These are dark days. As the COVID-19 crisis turns our world upside-down, the social isolation and atomization of capitalism has given way to full-blown social distancing. At a time when we most need to come together, we’re told that human contact can kill us. Alarm bells are flashing everywhere as the dead pile up, the economy burns, and more and more people’s mental health deteriorates. This is the most severe and far-reaching global crisis that most of us who are alive today have ever experienced. Its a terrifying, alienated, and stressful time. It’s also no time to give up. No time to turn on Netflix, bury our heads in the sand, and wait for things to pass. Certainly not for anarchists, or anyone who calls themselves a revolutionary.
       These are dark days. As the COVID-19 crisis turns our world upside-down, the social isolation and atomization of capitalism has given way to full-blown social distancing. At a time when we most need to come together, we’re told that human contact can kill us. Alarm bells are flashing everywhere as the dead pile up, the economy burns, and more and more people’s mental health deteriorates. This is the most severe and far-reaching global crisis that most of us who are alive today have ever experienced. Its a terrifying, alienated, and stressful time. It’s also no time to give up. No time to turn on Netflix, bury our heads in the sand, and wait for things to pass. Certainly not for anarchists, or anyone who calls themselves a revolutionary.

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What Is Property?

 

        As we look around, it isn't hard to see that all that was common and open to all is fast disappearing and being gobbled up into that great  bucket of "Private Property". More and more of the planet and all that is on it, is being owned by fewer and fewer, and more and more we find that the vast majority of people have lost all that was common, Why? Quite simply, capitalism a system that is built on the principle of the few gathering more and more wealth and therefore property, at the expense of the many. We are fast reaching the stage where all the planet will belong to a few who control the corporate and financial juggernaut that is capitalism. In this system, property is power.

This from It's Going down: 

        All power structures are rooted in ideology. A shared belief in this ideology is what keeps the structures of power in place. Under capitalism, the edifice of social control is built on the collective illusion of private property, and the sanctity of the so-called ‘free market’. Any moves taken to challenge this logic will therefore provoke pushback from the system’s indoctrinated cheerleaders, and will certainly catch the attention of the repressive and recuperative functionaries of the state. But as the saying goes… you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. And you definitely can’t overthrow capitalism without messing with people’s stuff.

So…. what is property, anyway? And what do anarchists have against it?

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Our Resistance Must Be International.

        Perhaps I go on and sound like a broken record that is stuck in a track, but I do believe that what is happening in Exarcheia, Athens, is of the utmost importance to all free thinking minds, though it is not the only struggle against state repression that is going on at the moment. Any attack by any state on the freedom of the individual or group that challenges the authoritarian methods of the state is an attack on all our freedoms. What brutal actions one state gets away with the others will look at and borrow when they feel the need. As well as supporting those who are at the receiving end of this brutal attack, we can also learn from their methods of  resistance, as our turn may come sooner than we expect. The Greek state is not unique, it is doing what they all do, attempting to subdue those who wish to think for themselves and shape their lives around mutual aid, co-operation, respect for all, self help and an end to the destructive force of capitalism. It is all a matter of degree, what the state thinks it can get away with in its drive for total control. They will do it with subtle persuasion, smoke and mirrors of propaganda, or by brute force. To the state, to achieve its aim of total control, "all options are on the table", likewise, our desire for freedom and justice should hold the same rules. Authoritarianism is international, our resistance must be international.
This from It's Going Down:

The Greek Anarchist Movement Responds to Assault on Exarchia

Listen to the podcast HERE:

        In this episode of the It’s Going Down podcast, we speak with a long-time anarchist based in the Greek neighborhood of Exarchia. This discussion takes place at a time when the new government, New Democracy, is in the middle of launching a violent assault against the neighborhood which for decades has been a hotbed of anarchist activity, squats, guerilla gardens, rebel art, and is largely a cop-free zone.
       In our discussion, we speak about the history of Greece from World War II up until today as well as the history of the anarchist movement itself, focusing primarily on the last 11 years, and speaking largely on the massive insurrection that broke out in 2008. We then discuss the coming to power of the far-Left Syriza government and their betrayal of social movements as well as the current refugee crisis, and how anarchists have responded by setting up a large network of squats.
       We also talk about the continuing threat of the far-Rigth in Greece, primarily Golden Dawn, as well as the coming to power of a new far-Right party, New Democracy, who campaigned heavily on clearing the anarchists, refugees, and squatters out of Exarchia. We talk about how the movement is responding to the recent wave of violent evictions, raids, and police attacks, and how this mobilization in solidarity with the neighborhood might signal a new turning point for the anarchist movement.
      While its frightening that a ruling party would come into power off of playing up fears and anger directed against the anarchist movement, squats, and refugees, anarchists are hopeful that the energy that is erupting on the streets of Athens will continue to grow.

  

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How Best To Get The Scum Fascists Of Our Streets.

        In Portland USA, the fascists and others of that rancid breed, show up, en masse, on a regular basis, all kitted out in their armour and armed, in an attempt to terrorise, beat up, and on occasions, kill those who they see as not part of their pure white, fundamental Christian, American paradise. They are on these occasions accompanied by an even greater number of more kitted up and well armed riot police and government agents from various strand of the state, to ensure a safe passage for the festering fascist mob. They are meet by antifascists who are usually outnumbered by the combined forces of the fascists and the state minders, and as a rule the antifascists are the ones that end up being beaten up and arrested by the police. At least one among the antifascists has called for a rethink of tactics and a different approach, perhaps we should all do likewise. Perhaps a muscle flexing face-off might not be the best approach, I do agree we can't ignore them, and they must be defeated.

      The following from It's Going Down:
A critical reflection on the mass antifascist actions in Portland on August 17th. 

 

 

      Since Trump’s election, the Alt-Right, fascists and neo-Nazis (as well as racists and misogynists of all stripes) have been bolder than ever. Around the country they have stabbed people, beat people up, and shot at them.
       In Portland, of course, they have descended nearly every other month for the past two or three years with the intention of instigating a street brawl and provoking anarchists and antifascists, as well as to doxx and threaten people’s safety. And people up and down the west coast have responded. We have allowed ourselves to be provoked each and every time, showed up in the hundreds or thousands, and gotten our asses kicked. We’ve had some shining moments, to be sure, but at the end of most of these demonstrations, all the antifascists I know – and I assume many others – leave feeling demoralized, disempowered, and sometimes in the ER scared to death about our friends lives. Neither the fascists nor the antifascists have changed tactics in these demonstrations. While the police get better at crowd control, become more and more violent, and put more money and energy into investigations, we continue to let ourselves be provoked and show up to do the same damn thing as the month and year before.
       The day before the demonstration on August 17th, a friend said to me, “We have to get these fuckers. The scope of their violence is so intense.” Yes, the fascists are violent and they routinely attack POC, queers and random bystanders. They should be attacked, and I would certainly celebrate if they all killed themselves. But these Portland demonstrations no longer feel like they are actually about attacking anyone. I show up terrified, knowing today might be the day I see a friend get shot. Given their guns and the police response, I do not show up expecting us to do anything more than be a symbolic gesture. Antifascists can talk a big game about how “we are going to show them.” We can show up with bats and batons and pepper spray. And yet, at every demonstration, our goal becomes to not end up in the hospital and maybe get a couple good punches in.
        On August 17th, we stood around for about an hour before the Alt-Right left the park and crossed the bridge, and then we walked aimlessly around the park because we had no other plan than the one we’ve always had. This is not an attack. It doesn’t show us our own strength, and it certainly doesn’t show them our strength.
       At this point, “antifa” feels like a brand name, not an ideology. My politics are larger and deeper than the image embodied by that word. As anarchists, we are inherently antifascist. I am not interested in being defined as “antifa” because we are so much more than that. There are plenty of “antifa” in the antifascist demonstrations who are not anarchists, who do not seem to have politics outside of beating up fascists in the street.
      At every demonstration, I’ve seen supposed antifascists using violently misogynistic and transphobic language, even making rape threats against the fascists. Those people are not on my team. If we were to encounter people like that outside of these demonstrations, they would be our enemies, not our friends. If making fascists bleed is the only thing have in common with each other, what are we fighting for? Where was the 200 person black bloc in Portland when 700 migrants were arrested two weeks before? Are those fascists not worth fighting because we can’t meet them in the street in a flashy muscle-on-muscle fight in front of the media?
       I do not want to fight for or with people who think it’s acceptable to make rape threats, or who use disgustingly misogynistic language. But Joe Biggs announces he is coming to town, and we all team up like we are one big antifa family. And in Portland, the “antifa” feels like a dog that comes when its name is called and gets kicked.
       When the fascists show up in Portland, how can we respond differently? PopMob will have their demonstration, which brings a lot of people in costumes and party attire, and that’s great. But the fascists thrive on us – the black bloc – showing up, too. So what if we didn’t show? I am not saying we should stay home. I am not saying we should not respond. But there is a lot of truth in the idea of “not giving them what they want.” Liberals use that phrase to mean we should stay home, but that is surrender, and we will not surrender.
        There are so many other ways of showing up the day of a fascist demo that do not involve having a face-off with them at the waterfront. We are creative. We are anarchists. We have so many enemies throughout the city that can and must be attacked. An attack on one fascist is an attack on all of them, and we don’t need to stand at the waterfront flexing our muscles in front of their body armor and their guns to strike a blow against them. Think of what 200 people in bloc could accomplish if we were not surrounded by 700 cops, the FBI, and the national guard. Think of how many other opportunities there are. Think of the fascists temporary glee when we don’t show up at the waterfront, only to find out that while they were waiting for us, we have taken action – and won – on another front.
       We need to refind our creativity. We need to remember how to make demonstrations joyful. We need to stop letting ourselves be provoked, and instead become the provocation.

More on the Portland fascist antifascist recurring battles.

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Spain And Lesson For Today.

         From Its Going Down, the film Living Utopia is well worth watching, an informed insight into the working class struggles in Spain in the early 20th. century

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        In this episode of the It’s Going Down podcast, we speak again with historian Mark Bray about the anarchist movement in Spain as well as the Spanish Civil War and Revolution that broke out in 1936 against a fascist coup. We discuss how the movement grew, in all its complexities, and Bray describes the discussions and tensions over tactics and methods of struggle contemporary anarchists with find many similarities with. We then discuss what was achieved during the period of the revolution, from the taking over of industry in some cities, to the communization of land and agriculture in rural areas, to attacks on patriarchy and class society within everyday life.

      We also discuss the betrayal of both the revolution and the antifascist resistance to Franco, not only by the major world powers in the face of a fascist coup by general Franco which was supported by Hitler and Mussolini, but also by the Stalinist forces who destroyed the revolution and literally attacked the anarchists.

      We also talk about the various groups, tendencies, and formations that existed throughout the Spanish anarchist movement, from the labor union the CNT, the insurrectionary anarchist federation, the FAI, the Libertarian Youth movement, the role of anarchist infrastructure and press, and the anarcha-feminist group, Mujeres Libres.

       Beyond just a blow by blow of the revolution, we spend a lot of our time talking about how the Spanish anarchists organized and built a counter-society that existed and in many cases still does, for generations.

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