Showing posts with label protests. Show all posts
Showing posts with label protests. Show all posts

Tuesday 7 November 2023

Free Events.

 

          If you are in and around Glasgow on the dates on the poster below, it would be well worth paying a visit to the Electron Club CCA 350 Sauchiehall Street Glasgow. There will be a very interesting series of events, See the poster below. talks/discussion/information/ and all the events are free. Glasgow's Spirit of Revolt will be there, Hope to see you there.

Visit ann arky at htps://spiritofrevolt.info  

Saturday 29 April 2023

Keelie 40.

 

        Glasgow Keelie 40 is now out and available for free on the streets at pickets, protests, rallies and marches. You'll also get your free copy in some pubs cafes etc, watch out for it a grab your free copy. As usual it is filled with info on events and meetings to help you get involved in the struggle for that better life for all, and of course digging the dirt on this corrupt and exploitative system that shackles us to the profit making machine for the few. 

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info 

Saturday 29 October 2022

Keelie 36.

 

          Once again the Glasgow Keelie hits the streets, a new issue another power packed free paper to get you to join the protests to protect or living standards and change society for the better for all of us. Issue 36 of The Glasgow Keelie is out there, you'll find us on the streets, at protests and pickets, in pubs and cafes. Look out for it and grab your copy. You could join us and write a small article about the gripes you have about this greed driven society that heaps misery and poverty on millions of our people. Or you could collect a small bundle to distribute among you friends and workmates. You can contact us at https://glasgowkeelie.org/ and https://www.facebook.com/ClydesideRevolts

See you on the streets.


Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info  

Tuesday 25 October 2022

SubMedia.


   

        SubMedia, System Fail No.17 like its previous issues, spans the world, touches  on protests, uprisings, famine, war, anti-war resistance and that awkward interview with Liz Truss, informative stuff, always worth a watch and spreading far and wide.


Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info 

Monday 5 September 2022

It's Time.



             You would imagine by now the ordinary people of this country and other countries, would have realised that no matter what authority was in power, they never have the interests of the ordinary people as an agenda. Without traveling too far from my home, history tells us we, the ordinary people, have to always struggle and fight for any semblances of having fairness and justice, and so often we have failed. Have a glimpse of our fair city's history
            Let's go back to 1787, Glasgow weaver strike for better conditions, The 39th Regiment of Foot, under the command of Colonel Kellet was sent. With them went the Lord Provost, the Sheriff-Substitute, a Magistrate and others intent on dispersing the weavers. The groups met at a spot near Drygate Bridge. The soldiers were ordered to open fire, 3 weavers were killed outright and three were mortally wounded. A considerable number were wounded. How many can only be guessed at. 
          15 February 1800: Unemployment and high taxes during this period caused wide spread demonstrations which culminated on the 15th. of February 1800 when angry and hungry crowds took to the streets. They marched along Argyle Street attacking meatsellers and grocers’ shops. Meanwhile vast crowds in the districts of Townhead and Calton were also smashing into similar types of shops. The authorities felt compelled to call out the troops to disperse the rioters. 
        1812 Weavers strike: 1812 saw in Scotland until that date. The weavers were on strike in an attempt to protect their living standards. The strike was on the whole a peaceful protest, though the Magistrates and the Government claimed otherwise in an attempt to become heavy handed with the strikers. The strike lasted three months and eventually run out of funds and collapsed. Because of this strike Trade Unionism was declared illegal in Scotland and remained so until 1824. Seven of the strikers were arrested and charged with 'illegal combination' and were each sentenced to 18 months in prison. 
          6th. March 1848: There was a serious riot in the city of Glasgow on the 6th of March 1848. It came about when the unemployed operatives had expected a distribution of provisions. The provisions never appeared and the starving and angry crowds set off up Irongate and other main streets of the city centre breaking into food and gun shops. Business in the city came to a stand-still and all city centre shops closed. The people continued to march through the streets shouting 'bread or revolution'. Eventually the 'riot act' was read. Other groups marched off in other directions entering food shops and demanding bread. The authorities, alarmed at the events sent to Edinburgh for more troops. The following day crowds again gathered at Bridgeton where 'out-pensioners' were under arms. A young boy threw an object at the troops and was arrested but the crowd stormed the arresting group and rescued the boy. Police Superintendent, Captain Smart gave the order to fire: five of the crowd were shot. The Military continued to patrol the streets and the crowd still lined the streets for some days. All public offices were securely guarded.
         1915 rent strike:  1915 saw Glasgow and Clydeside districts gripped by a massive grass roots movement against large rent increases imposed by landlords. Over 25,000 tenants refused to pay rent increases. The struggle spread to the Clydeside engineering workshops and shipyards, forcing the government to introduce the 1915 Rent Restriction Act. 
          Glasgow's Bloody Friday: In 1919 the struggle for a shorter working week came to a head with a strike which had the support of practically all the workers in the area. Marches and demonstrations were organised. One massive demonstration in George Square caused the authorities some concern and the police baton charged the crowd creating mayhem. The government fearing revolution sent English troops with tanks into the city. 
 
 
      Of course this is just a snapshot of the struggles of the ordinary people of our fair city, there were many, many more and this is typical of all countries across the globe. We can jump forward and today in the UK there are strikes by post workers,  bin collectors, railway workers, dock workers, warehouse workers office staff, and many many more groups, all struggling for a decent life, just as the weavers of 1787 tried. In all these years nothing has really changed. Surely now with all the continuing hardship, poverty destitution and our knowledge of the system, is the time to make that change and bring an end to a society based on profit for the few. Time to create that better world where, we see to all our people's needs, a world of mutual aid based on co-operation between communities freed form the greed driven profit motive. Workers, stay home and the system collapses.
 


Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info  

Wednesday 28 July 2021

Opinion.

My Humble Opinion From What I’ve Seen.
        Why I think protests against closures are bound to fail. Councils are by law prevented from running a deficit, they are compelled to balance the books, and the financial structure is engineered so that each year, because of inflation, rising wages (meagrely) maintenance and repairs etc. they have to make savings, “efficiency saving” which translates into closures and/or lay-offs of staff. Barmulloch community centre is closing, let’s suppose that the whole district mobiles to such an extent that the council concedes and keeps it open, it still has to look elsewhere to swing its axe to balance that inefficient budget. Should the council decide, to hell we will run a deficit for a few years and try and sort this out, then the government sends in its “managers” to run the city over the heads of the people. Remember Derek Hatton and Liverpool in the 80’s. 
  
 
     On a national government front, the game is rigged in favour of the large financial institutions who have the power to bring a country to economic disaster. Some 30 years ago approximately, these same financial institutions decided that privatisation was the best way to re-capitalise the system and more or less dictated to states that they had to follow this policy or find themselves outside the financial markets, economic doom. Of course they can force the issue in other ways, remember Greece 2010, Greece according to the EU financial mafia, was carrying too much debt, so sent in a team of their financial managers to sort it out, over the heads of the elected government, how it should be tackled, ordering the privatisation of lots of Greece’s profitable assets, altering labour laws etc. while loading them up with more debt, “the bailout”, so the privatisation policy continues merrily on its way. This debt of course has to be paid by the people. Some ten years on by 2017, unemployment in Greece was still at 22% and one third of the population still living below the poverty line, conditions haven’t changed much since then, this is how states repay their debt to the financial Mafia. You’re appealing to the minions who are forced to follow the rules set my the financial Mafia. They may now and again get some bubble gum and popcorn, but those who dictate the direction of the governments are sitting in their grand mansion counting their pieces of gold, and they like what they have and are not in any shape or form going to change the system that has given them such wealth, power and privileges. They will gladly bring down a country, should they not play be their rules. The UK is not immune, remember 16th September 1992, Black Wednesday? UK joined the European Exchange Rate against the wishes of the financial Mafia, who then engineered a fall of the pound to such an extent that the Chancellor raised interest rates three times in one day in an attempt to save the pound from becoming worthless, eventually gave up and withdrew from the European Exchange Rate. Privatisation is the direction set out and being implemented, and it is not going to stop because you shout at a councillor. Public assets will be disposed of one way or another, either by phoney community takeover or straight privatisation and placards are not going to stop the relentless march of the corporate world to gain all public assets of any worth.
        So what should we do? I suppose be anarchists and have one aim and one aim only, not to appeal to the system to be fairer, not to encourage people to follow a doomed path of asking to be treated fairly, but work hell for leather on destroying the system completely. The system will not change in any dramatic manner by dialogue, appeals and petitions, the system can cope very well with these methods of protest, and if the powers that be think these are getting too nasty for their liking, they have the armoury to stifle it, police, judiciary, prison system. 
           I tend to think that people of Peru and Colombia are getting close to the direction by burning police stations, banks, corporate buildings and looting supermarkets, but first you have to flood the streets with your anarchist ideas, literature, meetings, stalls etc. until there is enough of the population who have finally realised, the system has to be destroyed, not petitioned, if we want a free, fair, just, sustainable world, that sees to the needs of all our people. 
Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info     

Tuesday 31 July 2018

Today's Scapegoats, The Migrant.


           More on the state's brutal savagery in seeking total control, pick a country, and there will be state repression either on its own citizens or as is common place now, the modern scapegoat, migrants. This example is from Athens, but, today, it could be any city in Europe.
   Freedom For All Migrants.
          Hicham, is a North African-born migrant, living in Athens for the past 10 months. He is a member of our squat community of Exarchia, and an active participant in the free public bath initiative. Hischam was arrested in June this year on Kallidromiou st. in a police control check.
He has been held in the dungeon cells of Kallidromiou police station ever since. Hicham, who is a Europe-wide organizer of unions and activists of unregistered refugees, was held completely incognito for the first ten days, and denied any contact with the outside world, including his Belgian wife and child. Like so many migrants he gets no regular access to visitors, no legal advice, no translation, no information about his case and future. Instead he gets constant humiliation, violence and psychological torture from the repressive, racist organs of the state. Conditions in these police cells are inhuman, more like lightless, airless underground pits, conditions that are designed to crush the prisoner, leading to severe depression and mental illness.
        Combined with denying them any information about the length of detention, this amounts to torture. Though Hicham has legal papers in Belgium, he is caught in the trap of the state judicial system. Indefinite detention means what it says – indefinite.
         The state’s fascist politics unfolds in its full magnitude in its treatment of migrants. They are the scapegoats, stripped of all dignity. The scope is international, the borders of Europe now an untold war. Daily killings, torture, mass imprisonment and abducted deportations have all become commonplace. New concentration camps are planned outside of Europe, without regard for the humanity of their inmates.
        Hicham’s case is only one example of thousands of migrants and refugees imprisoned in administrative detention around the country. The only reason, not having the right papers! This is the fascist nature of the system which categorizes and criminalizes people in order to exploit them. Only solidarity can make these people visible, and their cases known. This occurs in Exarchia at a time when the state is implementing a plan for total control and subjugation of this neighborhood, because it is a neighborhood of resistance!
         Renewed police sweep operations have become a weekly routine, and many refugees and members from our squat communities have been controlled, beaten and detained. Exarchia is and should remain a place of direct political action, of self organization of the oppressed, a site of diversity and freedom. Militants, migrants and prisoners alike, we can only defend our community through unified action against the state. Solidarity is our weapon, and our key.
And much nearer home, Glasgow.
        Sorry a bit late with this for the protest, but you can still take action and join one of the support groups, links below.

Protest - Stop The Mass Eviction of Refugees Tonight 6:00 Buchanan Street.

      PROTEST: Glasgow stands with 300 refugees facing mass eviction from
their homes over the next week.

        The mass eviction of 300 refugees is set to take place across Glasgow
city over the next week. Serco who are the private housing firm who deal with accommodation for refugees have deployed beyond disgusting tactics to displace people from their homes. Serco will issue "lock change" notices on Monday giving residents a week to get out with nowhere else to go.
       With the night shelter and housing schemes already massively stretched, hundreds of people in Glasgow will be facing street homelessness and will be extremely vulnerable.
        "This is, ultimately, a brutal consequence of Home Office using deliberate destitution and homelessness as a key immigration enforcement policy. Alongside the use of private asylum accommodation providers" - Stuart McDonald, MP for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth & Kirkintilloch East

This display of a brutality is not the values of the citizens of Glasgow and we are urging people to join our protest against this mass eviction. Speakers on the day to be announced. We also recommend writing to your elected representatives urging them to take action and sharing this with friends and family. If you want to learn more about organisations working on these issues or find out more about what it's like to go through the asylum process - here are some useful links:

Refugee Survival Trust - http://www.rst.org.uk/
Glasgow Night Shelter - https://glasgownightshelter.org/
Glasgow Asylum Destitute Action Network -
Positive Action in Housing - http://www.paih.org/
Scottish Refugee Council - http://www.scottishrefugeecouncil.org.uk/
Govan Community Project - http://www.govancommunityproject.org.uk/
Ubuntu Women's Shelter - http://ubuntu-glasgow.org.uk/
Scottish Detainee Visitors - http://sdv.org.uk/
Maryhill Integration Network - http://www.maryhillintegration.org.uk/
Maslow's Community Shop Govan -
Right To Remain Toolkit - https://righttoremain.org.uk/toolkit/
Report on Asylum Destitution in Scotland:
https://digitalpublications.parliament.scot/Committees/Report/EHRiC/2017/5/22/Hidden-Lives---New-Beginnings--Destitution--asylum-and-insecure-immigration-status-in-Scotland
Visit ann arky's home at radicalglasgow.me.uk

Monday 1 January 2018

Happy New Year.

      Happy New Year to all the world.  Well 2017 has gone and 2018 comes with all our hopes and desires, the gift of tomorrow is ours if we desire it enough, but you have to admit, that was one helluva party!!
2017 New Year's Revolutions from Happy New Fear on Vimeo.

Sunday 17 July 2016

Anti-Trident Protests.

         For others who didn't know about the July 16th. Protest against Trident, it was happening across this country, mainly in the Glasgow and Clyde area, where these weapons are situated. These are not defensive weapons, all we have to do is remember Hiroshima, one bomb, and a city with its inhabitants incinerated, civilians, men, women and children.



Published on July 16, 2016
        As the 'British' Parliament prepare to 'debate' the renewal of the trident missile weapons system based at the Gareloch in west of Scotland, concerned citizens throughout the country express their dissent. This is Dumbarton, 15 minutes from the base which houses these weapons of mass destruction. The 'debate' takes place on Monday 18 July and although all but one of Scotland's MPs will vote against it, there is no doubt that the Tory Government and its Red Tory cohorts in the so-called Labour Party will vote to impose this horror on Scotland and its people. Shameful affront to democracy.
Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk
 

Planting Seeds.

       Saturday July 16th. saw demonstrations across the country against the abomination that is the Trident nuclear weapon system. Glasgow held its protest against these weapons of mass destruction at the Donald Dewar statue, at the top of Buchanan Street. The usual colourful array of banners, posters and leaflets were on display, Greens, Unions, anti-detention, refugees welcome, anti-austerity, Communist Party and various socialist groups. Alas I didn't see any anarchist presence, I did chat to two anarchist in the crowd, but no leaflets, no papers, no literature of any sort.
       I always feel these events are ideal places to put out our ideas, these are people who have a gripe with the system, people who are prepared to stand up and protests against what they see as a wrong. If we don't put our ideas on their table, then when they are looking for answers, they wont pick up ours. At these events it is not just the committed that you can make contact with, but the general public, the passers-by, the curious, it is a most fertile ground to plant your seeds. We should be there, putting our ideas out there with the myriad of material that surfaces at these events. We have to meet other's ideas with our ideas when ever and where ever they surface. After all it is the ordinary people that we have to reach, those on the street. 

THE PROPAGANDISTS.

When the hordes run with their flaming torches,
When they light the torch of freedom
Burning all injustices
Scorching all hypocrisies
Making a bonfire of poverty
Throwing dogma, patriotism and religion on the flames,
I’ll be there, among them with my box of matches.

Some photos from Saturday.
Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Wednesday 11 May 2016

When Will We Abolish Slavery??

        Look around and what we see is blatant greed and corruption by the wealthy and powerful, with the people growing more and more aware of this looting and a realisation that the ballot box is just an illusion to fool the subservient. So protests grow, turmoil increases and the system cracks and starts to crumble. In the capitalist system protest and direct action is the only road to real change, justice and freedom. The states answer to this threat is to lock more people up in cages, believing this will solve the problem. However, people in cages are still people, and their resolve to be treated as such will always be there and grow.
        Across the system those locked up are also turning to direct action as much as they can within the confines of the brutal state incarceration. Prisoners direct action is growing, in Greece there is a constant battle within the prison system in America across several states prisoners are on strike, and the latest in Europe is in Belgium, where several prisons have prisoners roiting, to the extent that the Belgian government has sent in the troops. Slavery is not dead as long as we have prisons and those locked up used as productive units to make profit for large corporations, as happens in every country in Europe. In America, prisons are nothing more than large production units useing the inmates as slave labour. All those who are protesting, striking, taking direct action, within the prison system must be able to call on the support and solidarity of all those outside the cages, we are all fighting the same system, exploitation,injustice and corruption.
      A small chronology of the riots spreading the Belgian prisons, where guards are on strike for more than two weeks now…

On Monday 25th of April, the prison guards of all prisons in the French speaking parts of Belgium went on strike, in total 21 prisons. The prisoners are confined in their cells. All activities, like the walk, shower, visit, legal counsel, are cancelled. The police took over the control of the prisons to assure security.

After one week of guards on strike, and with conditions rapidly deteriorating inside, incidents start to spread in many prisons. In some prisons, the situation could be called catastrophic. Prisoners only receive food once a day, didn’t go out of their cells in more than ten days, hygienic conditions are terrible with infections and diseases spreading.---------
Read the full article HERE:
And in America, prisoners strikes are growing.



      Alabama prisoners who have been on strike for 10 days over unpaid labor and prison conditions are accusing officials of retaliating against their protest by starving them. The coordinated strike started on May 1, International Workers’ Day, when prisoners at the Holman and Elmore facilities refused to report to their prison jobs and has since expanded to Staton, St. Clair, and Donaldson’s facilities, according to organizers with the Free Alabama Movement, a network of prison activists.

      Prison officials responded by putting the facilities on lockdown, partially to allow guards to perform jobs normally carried out by prisoners. But prisoners told The Intercept that officials also punished them by serving meals that are significantly smaller than usual, a practice they have referred to as “bird feeding.”----------
Texas.

       Claiming that they are treated like slaves, inmates from up to five Texas prisons have orchestrated a historic workers’ strike. A lack of access to quality food and water, low wages, overcrowding, and poor working conditions were among their complaints.

Striking inmates are refusing to leave their cells for work assigned by Texas Corrections Industries (TCI), a publicly traded company.

        Established in 1963 under the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, TCI uses prison labor to make a variety of products “from hand soap to bed sheets, from raising livestock to making iron toilets and portable buildings,” all of which are sold to local, state, and federal government agencies, as well as public schools, and hospitals ‒ and prisoners receive none of the profits, according to a letter outlining the reasons for the strike.--------

     PRISON INMATES around the country have called for a series of strikes against forced labor, demanding reforms of parole systems and prison policies, as well as more humane living conditions, a reduced use of solitary confinement, and better health care.

       Inmates at up to five Texas prisons pledged to refuse to leave their cells today. The strike’s organizers remain anonymous but have circulated fliers listing a series of grievances and demands, and a letter articulating the reasons for the strike. The Texas strikers’ demands range from the specific, such as a “good-time” credit toward sentence reduction and an end to $100 medical co-pays, to the systemic, namely a drastic downsizing of the state’s incarcerated population.

       “Texas’s prisoners are the slaves of today, and that slavery affects our society economically, morally and politically,” reads the five-page letter announcing the strike. “Beginning on April 4, 2016, all inmates around Texas will stop all labor in order to get the attention from politicians and Texas’s community alike.”---------
Well worth reading these articles in full.
Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk


 

Monday 14 July 2014

Workers Know Your History, July 14, Bastille Day.

      July 14, Bastille Day, food for thought?? Back in 1789 things were pretty crap for the ordinary people. The government of the day was screwing the people, who were finding it hard to get enough food, poverty and deprivation was everywhere, well not really everywhere, just among the ordinary people, the upper echelons of society were living in lavish unearned opulence, sound familiar? The people got pissed off and took to the streets, much as we do today, not a lot has changed in the structure of our society. However on that particular day, July 14, 1789, they decided to attack that symbol of authority enforcement, the prison. Take away the ability to enforce, and authority starts to melt away. Of course in France today, Bastille Day has been claimed by the state, and turned into a massive military parade and symbol of state power, it didn't have to be that way, it could be different next time.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Tuesday 18 March 2014

On The Streets Of Bosnia Herzegovina.


      In country after country people have been taking to the streets to show their contempt for the existing capitalist system. From Brazil to Spain, Greece to Italy, Turkey to Egypt, Bahrain to Australia, Canada to France, and so it goes on. It is always difficult to get a true picture of what is actually happing as these uprisings occur, as our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, with its short attention span, and distorted vision, spews out its loaded propaganda. Now the babbling brook of bullshit has shifted its hall of mirrors to the Ukraine, and as the mouthpiece of the Western corporate empire, it vomits its bile against the Russian empire. Where does that leave the people?
      Recently we had the people of Bosnia Herzegovina on the streets demanding change, but the babbling brook of bullshit, as usual, dropped that and jumped to the next "hot news", Ukraine, to paint its surrealist picture of the facts. So it is good to get some honest information from what was actually happening on the streets of Bosnia Herzegovina.


Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Friday 27 December 2013

Thursday 1 August 2013

The Price Of Resisting Capital.


      Honduras is one of the poorest countries in the world, 64% of the population live on less than $2 a day, this figure is worse in the rural areas. It is estimated that unemployment runs at around 36%. Roads to villages are almost non-existent, homes are usually one room. It is common for the family to have no toilet but to simply go outside when the need arises. Clean water is a luxury that many never see.
     As usual big business moves in and exploits the varied mineral resources, including zinc, lead, silver and gold, but none of this ever reaches the majority of the population.
     Another large development that is taking land away from the indigenous people and giving them little or nothing in return is the construction of a large hydroelectric dam in the territory of the indigenous Lenca. This project has met with strong opposition from the local and surrounding communities and recently the paid a high price for their resistance.


      Tomas Garcia was a father of seven who would have turned 50 this December. He was a husband, father, brother, and community leader, serving as an auxiliar and on his community’s Indigenous Council. On Monday, July 15, his life was brutally taken away by the Honduran military when a soldier shot and killed him at close range in broad daylight in front of 200-300 people. He did not have a gun, he did not hurt anyone. His crime? Opposing the construction of a hydroelectric dam being illegally constructed in his Indigenous Lenca community's territory against their will. Why Tomas? He was one of the first to arrive, leading the delegation that had come to deliver a message to the companies constructing the dam at their installations in Rio Blanco. A soldier fired at him not once, not twice, at least three times from only 6 or so feet away, according to eyewitnesses.
Read the full article HERE:















ann arky's home.

Saturday 22 June 2013

On Opposite Sides Of The World.


      The protest in Brazil seems to be gathering momentum as the days go by. From 200,000 across the country to well over 1 million people on the streets voicing their disgust at a system that puts profit and spectacle before welfare. Meanwhile the President offers the usual pie-in-the-sky, if they all go home and a few representatives chat with her government, that same utterly corrupt bunch whom the people no longer have any respect, then they can make a better Brazil. I have a better suggestion, the government go home and leave the people to create the Brazil that they want.
Brazil Yesterday:

       In Turkey the state apparatus has come down extremely hard on the protesters, the most vicious attack was on the people in Gezi Park. They were enveloped in tear gas and beaten, and those who ran to a nearby hotel to escape the gas and violence, were followed and the hotel also filled up with tear gas. According to the Turkish Medical Doctors Association, at least 7,000 protesters have been injured since the protests began. Though the people may be leaving the streets, it doesn't mean that they now accept that they have a democratic government. The protest seems to be shifting from Istanbul to Ankara, the capital. The hatred and disgust is still there, and probably hardened by the state's response to their protest. The reason some of them are off the streets is the shear force and brutality of the Turkish state apparatus. 






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