The misunderstood and misrepresented, the inseparable twins, anarchism, and autonomy.
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views and poetry from an anarchist perspective.
The Hague. Netherlands. On Friday and Saturday 31st of July and 1st of August, HOUSING ACTION DAYS will take place in The Hague. The theme for Friday is social housing and precarious modes of housing, and the theme for Saturday is the selling out of the city and gentrification. During these two days we will make a collective fist against precarity and the housing shortage.
Originally published by Woonactiedagen.
In the past couple of years the city has become the stage of a social struggle. Capital is increasingly controlling housing and public spaces. The city is transformed into a revenue model, a new apparatus for a select group to accumulate wealth. This has drastic consequences for many of us. De waiting lists for social housing are ever lengthening, rents are already way too expensive and the political unwillingness to take up these issues is stifling. In the inner city, one loft gets restored after another and only expensive private sector housing is built. Hip coffeehouses and their terraces are spreading like an oil spill.
We don’t want a city merely for consumption but a city in which we can live!
Paired with the gentrification, the state’s net to control public spaces tightens. Concurrently to being forced to pay increasingly high rent for increasingly small spaces, we are being dispossessed of the streets: hanging out in the street is perceived as suspicious and will get you castigated for gathering. The only places where you can still gather in public are parks or sports field – but never without the supervision of cameras. Our living spaces are shrinking, we will no longer put up with this shit anymore!
For this reason, let us meet on 31st of July and 1st of August, to take action against the selling out of our cities and our lives. We invite everyone to come to The Hague, the belly of the beast, to struggle for the right to live and to the city!
Mail: woonopstanddenhaag [at] riseup.net
Twitter: @woonopstand070
More information: woonactiedagen.wordpress.com
You will find posters and leaflets here: https://woonactiedagen.wordpress.com/info/promomateriaal/
Another political fault line has been opened up by the rapidly spiralling events of 2020.
As we wrote yesterday, the Covid scare has found us sharing the anti-authoritarian analysis of people beyond the usual anarchic spheres, while many supposed comrades are bizarrely supportive of the official state narrative. However, the current street uprisings across the USA, sparked by the murder of George Floyd, have revealed a peculiar limit to some people’s opposition to the nascent global police state.
Unlike us, they have not found hope in the sight of thousands upon thousands of people of all races reclaiming the streets of dozens of cities, overturning police cars, setting on fire the buildings used to oppress them. They apparently don’t think that it is reasonable, or helpful, to come together and physically resist the state and its hired thugs! In taking this stance, they reveal that they have understood nothing about the system which has controlled and exploited us for so long, and which is now dropping its liberal mask to reveal its true totalitarian nature. They have not grasped that its so-called “democracy” is fake, that the “reforms” it sometimes offers us are illusory, that the avenues it provides for us to try and change things are all time-wasting dead-ends. Most of all, they have failed to see that the whole of the system’s control of us is built on violence.
As this article explains: “The capitalist state was created by violence, is maintained by violence and is always prepared to resort to all the forms of violence at its disposal to resist challenges to its power. “The ‘law’ itself, that foundation of its control over the population, is the flag of convenience under which this violence is carried out.
“Physically attacking someone is violence, even if you happen to be dressed up in some fancy clothes provided by the state. “Physically confining someone in a locked space, with the constant use and threat of force, is also violence, even if you put on a stupid wig to announce what you are going to do to them. “Bombing someone is violence, as is shooting them, torturing them, spraying them with chemicals. “Wearing down someone’s resistance, forcing them to follow your rules, to live the way you tell them to, by means of a permanent, lifelong threat of violence if they step out of line is also, needless to say, violence”.
We cannot hope to win our freedom by obediently playing by the rules the system has written to protect itself from us. We have to break through the barriers it has built to keep us in our place, not least the psychological ones. One of these barriers is the idea that it is “wrong” to resist state oppression, that “the law” must be respected. This deeply conditioned response even leads some to assume that breaking the law to fight the system must necessarily be some kind of cunning trap into which we must diligently refuse to fall!
The biggest barrier of all is the notion, implanted in our minds virtually from birth, that we can never defeat the system. Resistance is futile, they tell us. There is no alternative, another world is completely impossible. There is nothing you can do about this. Stay home, shut up, submit.
But this is a complete lie! If it was true, why would they invest so much effort into policing us, surveilling us, imprisoning us, constantly devising new laws and techniques to chain us?
It is because the tiny ultra-rich elite, who run the system for their own selfish benefit, are very aware that they are hopelessly unnumbered. They are scared of us! They know full well that if ever we broke through the barriers of fear and disempowerment with which they surround us, if ever we overcame the divisions with which they separate us, we would be able to bring their capitalist prison-world crashing down.
Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk
We are many, they are few. We will be victorious!
Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.ukOur friend Andreas is dying… (July 2, 2020)
… and everyone is watching. What has been happening to Andreas in jail in Naples for at least a year is a result that both the German and the Italian state are responsible for. In spite of his poor health, Andreas is denied adequate medical care despite promises to the contrary by the hospital management. He is brought to a hospital every hour for questionable or senseless examinations and then back to prison.
Andreas was diagnosed with cancer at least a year ago, it spread all over his body and he had unspeakable pain. He can hardly walk anymore, just eat more baby food, he loses blood and is often unconscious for days. His Italian lawyer is fighting at all levels, but transfer to house arrest has now been refused.
Andreas is doing very badly, suicide seems to be the only way out for him in the current situation.
Both the Italian and the German state know Andreas’ state of health. Nobody lifts a finger, fundamental human rights do not seem to apply to prisoners. What happens here is murder. And every suicide in jail is nothing else, because behind bars there are no free decisions.
We cannot stand by, although we are infinitely sad and angry and have no ideas what to do.
Continue reading →
Read the full article HERE:As the COVID-19 pandemic has undermined healthcare systems and economies of even the most advanced nations, mutual networks and self-organizing efforts have sprung up across the world in a show of pandemic solidarity. With the police murder of George Floyd, the U.S. has seen further spread of self-organizing: from bond and mutual aid funds for protesters to citizen patrols in Minneapolis and a police-free autonomous zone in Seattle. As the first attempt to abolish police and replace it with community-based, transformative justice are underway in the U.S., we may want to look at the communities that have been experimenting with self-organization without recourse to the states that oppress or dispossess them, such as Rojava in North East Syria, Cooperation Jackson in Mississippi and Zapatistas in Chiapas. Zapatistas, in particular, have spent the last 26 years organizing their communities autonomously from the state across all spheres of life—from police and justice system to health care, economy and education. As we witness the limits of the imaginable being radically shifted, the Zapatista experience is more relevant than ever.
We have come through the start of the industrial age and moved on to the hi-tec age, but every move into every industry comes with its on particular problems. Practically every industry is linked to an industrial disease. We have silicosis, lung disease prevalent among stone masons, potters grinders etc.. Then there is pneumoconiosis, mainly among coal miners, caused by breathing in fine coal dust and carbon dust. Arc-welders are at risk of manganism, manganese poisoning brought on by exposure to the toxic effects of the fumes from welding rods melting as the are used. Painters are at risk from neurological deficits from solvent‐exposure, which include impaired colour vision, cognitive defects, tremor and loss of vibration sensation. There are many more links with occupation and disease, but we are seldom told of these dangers when you apply for the job. Health and safety regulations go some way to protect workers from these dangers but usually these measures are re-active and only come after years of suffering and campaigning.
As a young man starting my trade in the Clydeside shipyards in the 1950’s, I was ignorant of the dangers of asbestos, and as it was widely used, all of us were exposed to the horror of death from mesothelioma, an asbestos induced incurable cancer. It was not that the dangers of this substance wasn’t known, medical papers had been written about the danger from asbestos exposure as far back as the 30’s, but it continued to be used up to and including the 60’s. The employers didn’t abandon asbestos willingly, it took campaigning and legislation to finally attempt to get rid of this killer substance. That is the pattern in most of industries, its dangers are only restricted by campaigning and legislation. The profit motive drives industry, not the well being of the employee. Most industries can be made safe, but it usually requires investment in safety equipment and training and that costs money which in turn cuts into the profit. So safety in industries will always come lower down the ladder, and as times get harder, corners are cut in safety to prevent cuts in profit. The economic system we have at present does not lend itself to the welfare and well being of the workers, only when the workers control all the industries will their well being be at the fore front of production.
There was executed the analysis of morbidity and disability rate in workers with occupational diseases (poisoning) of the Republic of Bashkortostan for the period from 2010 to 2014. There is reflected the sectoral distribution of the relative indices of the occupational morbidity. There are selected factors of labor and the labor process, promoting occupational diseases (OD). The leading place in the structure of primary morbidity is held by OD related to physical overload and functional overexertion of certain organs and systems; the second - by diseases associated with exposure to physical factors; the third - by diseases from exposure to workplace allergens. This is followed by illness (intoxications) caused by exposure to chemical factors, industrial aerosols. The share of OD from exposure to biological agents and professional tumors in total accounts for about 2.0% of all cases of OD revealed for the first time.Also:
Read the full article HERE: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.