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In the Streets

August 7, 2006 - 11:57am -- autonomedia
News
In the Streets

NeverForget writes:

"When the
Masks Fall…:

Anti-Semitism and the Left"

•“What the anti-semite wants, what he prepares, is the death of the Jew” (Jean Paul Sartre)

On the evening of the 1st of August in the year 2006 an event took place that not even those who thought they had an idea about the anti-Semitism of the “traditional” Greek leftwing parties could envisage. After a mass evocation of anti-Semitic hysteria a pack of supporters of the Greek Communist Party and its youth wing “broke through the pig’s chains” (as they proudly wrote in the Rizospastis – the party organ), protecting the Holocaust Monument in Plateia Eleytherias (“Place of Freedom”), and desecrated it with photos against the war in Lebanon.


The breaking of the taboo — upholding the respect for the memory of the victims of the Nazis, not by fascists, but by people calling themselves leftwing — is the latest climax of a recent series of anti-Semitic manifestations in both word and deed in which the Greek Communist party (KKE) has played a leading role.

July 28, 2006 - 1:31pm -- stevphen
Announcements
In the Streets

July 26th 2006 Communiqué from the Intergalactic Commission of the EZLN
Translation El Kilombo Intergalactico

ZAPATISTA ARMY FOR NATIONAL LIBERATION

MEXICO

July, 2006

Compañeros and compañeras adherents of the Zezta Internazional,
Brother and Sisters of Planet Earth:

This is Insurgent Lieutenant Colonel Moisés writing to share with you the results of more than seven months of consultation on the next Intergalactic Encounter. As we said in our November 2005 communiqué, the objective, the idea that is, of the Intergalactic is that it is really up to all of you to determine how we organize this Encounter.

We truly want all adherents to participate in its organization, that the Intergalactic not be a decision of the EZLN. In the seven months of consultation that have passed since December 1st, 2005, there have been preparatory meetings in different countries, as well as cybernetic consultations. From these meetings we have received proposals for the Intercontinental, on themes to be discussed as well as the date and place for the Encounter.

Like we said above, here we want to report on how the consultations have gone up until now, and the proposals and discussions that have come up. You should let us know if we are missing something and what it is that we are missing. We will be here working, and waiting for your input.

Our opinion is that we continue with more discussion and more proposals. We think it is necessary to continue thinking and accumulating ideas before coming together at the Encounter, seeing as it’s a fact that we’re going to have the Intergalactic, and that it will belong to all of us that create it.

July 17, 2006 - 3:18pm -- autonomedia
Events
In the Streets

Anonymous Comrade writes:

Dance for Your Rights!

Metropolis in Motion

New York City, July 22, 2006

This is an invitation to come
DANCE with us on July 22nd from 2pm to 4pm in front of the Mayor's house!* This is an open-air event to call attention to the Cabaret Laws which restrict dancing in NYC...

Here we are in a city of an estimated 15 million people,** and there are only 244 currently legal places dance... And that number includes "adult dancing" venues... Its time to dance in the streets and remind our city that DANCING IS NOT A CRIME!

We are a Metropolis in Motion!

http://metropolisinmotion.org

We will provide some music for us all to move & groove & shake to, but like all the best things in life *


YOU* are the one who will move & groove & shake the afternoon, so please --


Dress Up, Bring Friends, Bring Music, Bring your Congas & Guitar, your Tapshoes and Flamenco dress, Tamborine, Voice, Accordian & your joyful exuberant spirit!

Stay Informed, Get Involved, Questions & Join the list at:
info@metropolisinmotion.org>info@metropolisinmotion.org


Internet not your thing? Here's the Hotline: 1-646-365-3018

DETAILS:

The cabaret laws in NYC are an infringement of our constitutional right to freedom of expression. Originally passed in the 1920s to keep the races from intermingling, the laws are now used to fine and close down clubs and bars, and are increasingly used to target the political and underground art related nightlife. As such, we're staging a large-scale, participatory art/dance performance to build public awareness and gain media attention about the cabaret laws. We hope that our efforts will build support for court appeals challenging the constitutionality of the law.

*And/Or in the corner of Central Park closest to his house...

**Source: NYC Dept. of City Planning

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/census/popcur.sht ml

July 12, 2006 - 11:51am -- autonomedia
Analysis & Polemic
In the Streets

Liat Shlezinger writes:

The Old Man & The Blood
Liat Shlezinger

[Translation of Hebrew article with Ilan's comments.]

Ilan Shalif is already 70 but it does not prevent him arriving every Friday at the demonstration against the separation fence in Bil'in and confronting the soldiers of the Israeli IDF. Every Friday for the last year and a half, like a watch whose battery never runs out, he travels the road from Tel-Aviv to the Palestinian village of Bil'in.

"Armed" with only a yellow water bottle and matching yellow pouch, Ilan Shalif is on his way to another battle against the separation fence. Every Friday for the last year and a half, like a watch whose battery never runs out, he travels the road from Tel-Aviv to the Palestinian village of Bil'in. He has not missed even one demonstration... Well, he did miss one when he had an open-heart bypass operation [it was really two demos I missed then, and two more when I was banned from travelling to Bil'in after being released from police custody - I.S.]. But, he stresses that a week later he was back running with the kids [the Israeli Anarchists Against The Wall - I.S.] and dodging the rubber-coated bullets as they whistled by.

July 6, 2006 - 10:05am -- autonomedia
Analysis & Polemic
In the Streets

dr.woooo writes:

"The Civil War in Venezuela

Socialism to the Highest Bidder"

Nachie, for the Red & Anarchist Action Network (RAAN)

Over a period of two months spanning January to March in 2006, I backpacked through Venezuela in a reckless manner on behalf of the Red & Anarchist Action Network (RAAN), in search of first-hand information regarding the country's current political and social situation and in particular the "Bolivarian Revolution" proclaimed by incumbent president Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías.

My goal was to use the VI World Social Forum, held in the capital city of Caracas during the last week in January, as a launchpad to make the kinds of contacts necessary for this study to be a success. As an autonomous communist and affiliate of RAAN, my ultimate aim was to specifically seek out the contradictions that lay within the institutionalized Bolivarian movement and, therefore, to hopefully discover the sectors of Venezuelan society that were developing anti-capitalist critiques of Chávez's state-driven process.

June 25, 2006 - 6:07pm -- stevphen
News
In the Streets

KinderGarten Anarchists Welcome Bush

While Over 20,000 people marched in Vienna yesterday in
opposition to George Bush's arrival, Austria's "KinderGarten
Anarchists" (KGA) used the opportunity to meet other young
anarchists and spread their ideas to the youth of their
nation. George Bush became the first US president to visit
Austria in over 27 years yesterday as he arrived for an
EU-US summit similar to the one held in Shannon (Ireland) in
2004. Police bomb squads blew up three suspicious packages
and closed down the airport-city motorway in preparation for
the visit while planned protests passed off peacefully with
only a handful of arrests despite huge police numbers.

An anarchist bloc of around 70 masked up youths joined the
march to voice opposition to all politicians not just bush,
the anarchists also had a small contingent on a demo earlier
that day as 3,000 students walked out of school in protest.
This school demo was organised by Trotskyite and socialist
youth groups who are longer established than the
Kindergarten Anarchists.

Bob, a 16 year old anarchist and member of KGA, explained
how he felt Austrian politics was dominated by socialists
and reformists and how there needed to be a real alternative
to Capitalism, "I'm part of an anarchist youth group in
Vienna, we decided that it is definitely necessary to
demonstrate as anarchists against bush because the whole
mobilisation was coming from Trotskyites and reformists, so
we organised a meeting to talk about what to do."

June 22, 2006 - 12:41pm -- stevphen
Analysis & Polemic
In the Streets

Demoradical vs Demoliberal Regulation

By Alex Foti

Never a decline of the west has been more apparent. The US and its
European major ally, the UK, supported by minor bushist partners such
as Berlusconi's Italy and Aznar's Spain, have been inflicting
barbarism and spreading ethnic strife in Irak and elsewhere. The
continuous, structural human rights violations inflicted by the US and
its allies, from kidnappings and secret prisons in Europe, down to
Guantanamo, Abu Grahib and Haditha, are a crying shame for all
enlightened westerners: progressives have failed at stopping the
totalitarian forces – namely the salafi brand of sunni fundamentalism,
the neoliberal interpretation of evangelical protestantism, and shia
integralism supported by the islamic republic of Iran – that are
plunging the world in a clash of civilizations, where reactionary and
defensive identities prevail over transnational movements and global
issues of environmental balance and social justice.

Of course, the early XXI-century twilight of American neoliberal
hegemony and its European ramifications, as framed by the monetarist
and pro-corporate philosophy of the EU single currency and market, is
not without geopolitical consequences. On one side, Indian and
Bolivarian America have possibly dealt a lethal blow to the Monroe
Doctrine of unlimited US power on the Southern Hemisphere. On the
other side, China and India are rising giants beating the westerners
at their own game of globalization. Liberalziation of world markets
was set in motion in 1971-1973, when the end of international
Keynesism was officially proclaimed, and incipient energy crises and
financial deregulations started undermining Fordism and the
progressive forces that had developed under its wings. The 1980s and
1990s opened the gates to a new, more turbulent world, the world of
neoliberal regulation. This was an explicit conservative
counteroffensive against the unintended social (and anti-imperialist)
effects of postkeynesian regulation, reasserting the right to manage
and the economic privileges of financial elites in the new digital,
networked, flexible, postindustrial economy. The world of high
profits, high rents and low wages, of massive labor market and
financial deregulations, of large-scale privatization of public
assets, outsourcing and offshoring of manufacturing and services, and
widespread tightening of social spending. My contention is that
neoliberal regulation is now over: the 1999-2003 international cycle
of struggle, 9/11 and 7-7, the bushist rise to power and the invasions
of Afghanistan and Irak, repeated financial instability and
environmental disaster, have all undermined the political bases of the
Washington Consensus that constituted the essence of western policy
and geopolitical projection in the 1980s and 1990s. Globalization is
yielding to global regionalism, neoliberal multiculturalism is leaving
the place to bushist occidentalism, free trade is becoming managed
protectionism, while the professed multilateral internationalism of
the Clinton era has turned into a one-sided and naked (but failed)
attempt to unrivalled world hegemomy.

June 1, 2006 - 7:18am -- stevphen
In the Streets

Anarchism rises amidst the wreckage of Katrina

by Jordan Green

From Yes Weekly

Plans switch up from minute to minute to accommodate the
unpredictable crosscurrents of human need at Common Ground,
a volunteer-run relief organization with projects spread
throughout New Orleans and southeastern Louisiana.

Matt Robinson, a 37-year-old volunteer from Carrboro, NC,
who showed up in New Orleans around Thanksgiving last year
is assigned the job of site coordinator on the morning of
this third Sunday in May at St. Mary's of the Angels School
in the Upper 9th Ward. The structure is a drab, three-story
brick Catholic school building transformed into a relief
center, with volunteers' cots filling the upstairs
classrooms, an ad hoc kitchen set up under tarps off to the
side, a gymnasium that serves as a dining hall and bulk food
storage area, and tool sheds and decontamination stations
spread over the parish property.

As it happens Robinson's shift is spent mostly away from the
former school. Before the 7 a.m. morning meeting begins and
the volunteers receive their assignments, the site
coordinator drives a female volunteer who has fallen ill to
get medical assistance. The morning's work becomes consumed
with a series of errands, and it's early afternoon before
Robinson returns to sit down to a plate of kidney beans,
green beans and tofu in the dining hall.

In the meantime the Rev. Bart Pax, a stoutly built
Franciscan priest with graying hair and heavy glasses, shows
up to thank the volunteers and invite some of them to attend
10 o'clock mass at the church across the street.

About three months after the Upper 9th Ward officially
reopened, a Common Ground organizer came to him asking for
space to house volunteers, Pax says. As the priest struggled
to figure out how to rebuild the looted school building in
this isolated and poor African-American section full of
substandard houses built in the early twentieth century, at
low elevation even for a city mostly lying below sea level,
Common Ground appeared as a blessing.

May 26, 2006 - 6:04am -- nolympics
Reviews
In the Streets

Anonymous Comrade writes Review of Woodsquat

(West Coast Line 37/2-3)


by Tom Sandborn




“The laws, in their infinite majesty, forbid both the rich and the poor to sleep beneath the bridges of Paris,” observed a sardonic French writer during the 19th century. Not too much has changed in the intervening years. Capitalism still creates agonizing poverty at the bottom, excess wealth at the top, and a “justice” system designed to keep the aromatic, unsightly poor from bothering their social betters.


Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside neighborhood has served, almost since the beginning of European settlement here in the rain forest, as a holding pen for surplus labour and the marginalized poor who have fallen into capitalism’s spare parts bin. The neighborhood is, famously, Canada’s poorest and the home of one of the country’s largest concentrations of off-reserve native settlements.

May 14, 2006 - 7:31am -- stevphen
In the Streets

EuroMayDay in Helsinki: Flames and Repression

Aleksi

In Helsinki this year's EuroMayDay didn't go unnoticed. Everyone – from the streets, to TV and the tabloids – seems to be discussing the big issues: precarity and basic income.

The strength of the parade surprised everyone with about 1500 participants, which means that it was probably the biggest radical demonstration organized in Helsinki for decades. The atmosphere was jubilant and everybody was having a great party. Dancing, chanting, performance – and crowds of white-hatted Vappu-day Finns brought out of their holiday reverie by a wicked sound-system.

The reason for so much resonance, however, was not only the MayDay parade itself, but the clashes with the authorities that followed. After the demonstration, people gathered at the temporarily occupied space, the former railway warehouses called "Makasiinit", right across from the Finnish Parliament and next to the biggest media-headquarters in the country. The clashes were provoked by firemen and the police trying to extinguish the beautiful and peaceful bonfire in the midst of the celebrations. As the police moved in causing havoc, the media lapped up the “activists’ violence”, getting a lot of sensational material from the clashes and fireside revelry that night.

A lot of bad journalism followed. The clashes themselves were not engineered by activists, but were only the defensive reaction of party-revellers to the riot police’s attack. Nevertheless, the clashes were immediately depicted in the press as orchestrated by a gang of conspirators, and described as very violent and highly unusual in the Finnish context. Many news stories drew connections between the confrontations and the EuroMayDay parade, and links were often also made to the French riots.

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