Fork In The Road?

         Let’s imagine the coming year, it will be a year of struggles, as the wealthy, pampered, privileged class will struggle hard to get us to accept the “normal” we used to know before Covid19. On the other hand there should be a struggle by the many to make sure we never go back to that unequal, unjust “normal” we used to know. If we return to their “normal” it will be very one sided, they will do their normal visits to Monaco and St. Moritz, looking at a new luxury yacht and running their eye over a larger mansion, all accompanied by opulence. However, our side of their return to “normal” will be working harder for less, wage cuts/freezes, slashed working conditions and austerity sabotaged social services. So why do it? 

      Of course after such an devastating year and possibly two, of authoritarian rule, harsh and inhumane conditions, added to the suffering and death of loved ones, there will be some sort of burning desire to get back to some sort of “normal”. Despite all that, we have to be rational, that yesterday's “normal” has gone forever, and if you give it some thought, it was a dreadful unjust and unequal “normal”. We now must choose, which of the two roads will we struggle towards, their brutal exploitative “normal” where millions were exploited, oppressed, alienated and ravaged by wars and famine in the midst of plenty. Or will we take on the struggle for that new “normal”, one of our choosing, one of our shaping, a “normal“ where we bury the profit motive, see to all our people’s needs, and build a sustainable society based on mutual aid, co-operation, free association, and respect and dignity for all. 

 

       On looking at the situation before us, it doesn’t seem a difficult decision to make, but the action required will take courage, determination, solidarity and that long term view that we will never allow our grandchildren to be exploited and abused by a pampered and privileged bunch of parasites, as we were for generations. The alternative is that at the end of this pandemic, we pick up our shackles and fasten them to our ankles and aimlessly follow where our masters’ chains pull us, and bind our grandchildren to a heritage of bondage. Their "normal", or our new "normal"?

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Anarchist Guide.

       There are lots of thoughts, ideas and desires, in the thinking of the coronavirus and the next stage, how to survive this crisis, where do we go from here, what shape do we want the new normal to look like. So some sound advice and fresh ideas are always welcome and as anarchists we should be leading the way in those ideas and actions, pointing to that new normal.

    The following is a short extract from an excellent article from Crimethinc 

Surviving the Virus: An Anarchist Guide
Capitalism in Crisis—Rising Totalitarianism—Strategies of Resistance

     The pandemic is not going to pass in the next few weeks. Even if strict confinement measures succeed in cutting the number of infections down to what it was a month ago, the virus could resume spreading exponentially again as soon as the measures are suspended. The current situation is likely to continue for months—sudden curfews, inconsistent quarantines, increasingly desperate conditions—though it will almost certainly shift form at some point when the tensions within it boil over. To prepare for that moment, let’s protect ourselves and each other from the threat posed by the virus, think through the questions about risk and safety that the pandemic poses, and confront the disastrous consequences of a social order that was never designed to preserve our well-being in the first place.
This text offers medical advice for dealing with the virus; this one addresses the importance of mutual aid. You can find a list of mutual aid initiatives in the US here and in Germany here. Learn more about rent strike initiatives here and here. You can print out a zine version of this text here. For an introduction to anarchism, try this.

Continue reading HERE:
And a message from Thessaloniki: 

 Thessaloniki: Against the authority virus

Here is a translated excerpt :
       Interventions with sprays and pamphlets outside: Agios Dimitrios hospital, the Euromedica clinic on Lambraki str, Bioiatriki on Olympiados str, a medical equipment store on Egnatia street and various pharmacies.

« A cage went in search of a bird »

      So where are we at? We, who compromised by changing at least a little of our lifestyle. Because we got scared, because we found excuses, because maybe we found comfort in this inactivity, because this, that. However the time has come. The time when the numbness goes away and anger overflows. And it is up to us to find paths within this and every other unprecedented condition. So as to break the monotonous sound of the tv news bulletins, the sound of the sirens of the cop vehicles, replacing them with those of running to exhaustion, noises of racing feet, our breaths, our lives.
     The day that is arising is ominous. So, it’s time to discover our capabilities and act, holding our anarchist consciousness as a compass.
    Beyond blind obedience, the State infrastructure, the mechanisms of domination, the permit papers. Carving our own paths, away from the suggestions of the State and the technocratic system.
      Time to remember that the fires that weren’t lit are our fault and that always when silence falls, we must become the flashbang that breaks it.

LET’S FIGHT WITH ALL OUR STRENGTH AGAINST THE AUTHORITY VIRUS

“DISEASE” IS BLIND OBEDIENCE

Anarchist Assembly Against the State Machine

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What To Do.

        This pandemic has brought many moments of standing at the window just looking out. During one of those sessions of gazing aimlessly out the window, some words rattled through my head, so I just wrote them down.

A Pandemic

Confined to barracks no end in sight
Ordinary socialising now forbidden
Reality that doesn’t seem quite right
Open house all invites hidden
No hugs, no squeezes, no gentle kiss
Any close contact, tinged with fear
Voices received through social media
Invisible enemy prowling near
Repressive laws come with doubt
Undying desire to be out and about
Social contact now made to disappear

Ah well, I suppose it is better than going insane.

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Our New Normal.

      We have to be ever vigilant to make sure this new framework that has been imposed on us does not become the "new normal". These new measures that we were first asked to comply with and now have to obey by enforced legislation, like all controls brought into being by state legislation, have a habit of remaining on the statute book. They remain there in the tool kit of the state to ensure control over the population. It is up to us to make sure that, when this is over we reclaim our lives and live them as we wish, but with society structured differently to ensure that we finally see the shackles of this present oppressive and exploitative system dumped in the bin of history with the label, "Our Darkest Hour", after all, having exploited us for centuries, it failed us drastically in our hour of need. We know we  can build a better and fairer world, we just have to come together in communities of co-operation and mutual aid, freed from the cancerous profit motive. We the ordinary people must create our own "New Normal".

This from Acorn, Winter Oak:

    We don’t want your “new normal”.
    We don’t want the “smart” fascist future you have been trying to sell us for so long and which you are now trying to force upon us with lies, fear and all your infrastructures of control.
     We don’t want to be little submissive cogs in your machineries of greed and exploitation.
      We don’t want to be told how to live and what to think.
     We don’t want to be locked up indoors at your majesties’ pleasure, only allowed out of our cells to labour for your profit.
      We don’t want to be distanced, isolated and alienated.
     We don’t want to be the individually-wrapped slices of human flesh on which you gorge.
     We didn’t want your first industrial revolution – when you threw us off our land and caged us in your dark satanic mills – and we certainly don’t want your fourth.
     We don’t want to be cut off from the living world and confined to your sterile fake reality.
     We don’t want to be policed and preached at by your drones and robots.
     We don’t have to ask your permission to enjoy the world in which we belong – we will do so whenever, however and with whomever we choose.
    We are not prepared to be patronised, humiliated or microchipped.
    We refuse to plug ourselves meekly into the matrix of your total control.
    We want you to bear in mind that you do not own us, that you cannot buy us and you will never control us.
      We want you to know that we are free and will remain so unto the grave.
      We want you to realise that when our time comes, we will make you pay for what you are doing to us. And we want to remind you that there are very many more of us than of you

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