Today's 5 Topics:
1. Australia, Sydney anarchist affinity: The rent is too damn
high! (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. France, Alternative Libertaire AL - your rights, The 5
golden rules into custody by Redac (fr, it, pt) [machine
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. France, Alternative Libertaire: policy, Paris: The workers
of a construction site helping manifestant.es to escape police by
AL East Paris , AL Saint-Denis (fr, it, pt) [machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. Britain, south-wales anarchists: Arms fair faces resistance
in Cardiff - VIA Stop the Cardiff Arms Fair (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
5. France, Alternative Libertaire AL #259 - Antipatriarcat,
Universalism, enemy of feminists? (fr, it, pt) [machine
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
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Message: 1
Guest post by Christian, a participant in the Sydney Solidarity Network. ---- A few months
ago, a Facebook event called “rental horror stories” popped up in Sydney. Within days, it
had gone viral. Hundreds and hundreds of people almost overwhelmed the page with story
after story of mould, flooding, broken appliances, broken walls, broken roofs, fungi
growth, pest infestation, exorbitant rents and arbitrary evictions. The page even made it
into a few articles in the mainstream media. ---- To put it mildly, housing in Australia
is a nightmare. Last year, rents in Sydney increased at record levels to reach a median of
$500 per week for a one-bedroom apartment. The country as a whole was declared to be in
the midst of a “rental affordability crisis” which was leading to “social catastrophe.” In
Melbourne, over 80,000 investor-owned properties were reported to be lying more or less
permanently vacant and unused. In Sydney over 90,000 homes were similarly unoccupied.
Meanwhile glowing articles get written about people such as Nathan Birch, who at age 30
already owns 170 houses (apparently it’s “about 170” but he’s “lost count” of the exact
number).
So it seems strange that given how intolerable the situation is for so many people, there
have been few, if any, largescale efforts by tenants to collectively do something about this.
In other English-speaking countries, tenant organising is undergoing a resurgence. Last
year, for instance, 80 students at University College London won £100,000 in compensation
for substandard and rat-infested accommodation after they refused to pay rent for seven
months. In March this year, again in the UK, 130 students living at Goldsmiths University
announced that they would not be paying rent until the price of college dorm rooms was cut
by 30%. Tenants in Bristol have been organising to win repairs and prevent rent increases
in the wider community, while there are a plethora of active tenants’ campaigns in the US
where areas like Portland, San Francisco and Brooklyn are facing skyrocketing rents and
gentrification.
There’s no reason we can’t do the same thing in Australia. While landlords are hard to
target and it’s difficult to know what, if any, other properties they own, the real estate
agencies they lease out properties through (and who also take a cut of the rent) are much
more vulnerable to public pressure. When landlords won’t repair properties or threaten to
evict tenants, the real estate agencies they work with could have protests staged outside
them, pickets could be set up at property inspections to warn other potential renters of
the risks of going through that agency, and real estate offices could be targeted with
mass phone-ins to disrupt business. While there are databases in some states to keep
records of people who break tenancy agreements, there are heavy restrictions on the sort
of information that can be kept in these databases, and it’s not possible to use them to
blacklist tenants for any kind of protest activity.
Over the last couple of years I’ve been involved in a group called the Sydney Solidarity
Network, which has successfully taken on businesses who’ve paid below the minimum wage or
cheated their employees out of entitlements. The methods we used were extremely simple: we
stuck up bold, eye-catching posters asking passers-by if they’d been ripped off by their
employer, got contacted by people who had been, then together with the affected worker we
confronted the boss and demanded restitution, backed up by the threat of further protests
if it wasn’t forthcoming – and in almost every case, we won our demands without needing to
go any further. I never quite got over just how easy it was to make employers cave in, and
it’s quite likely that many real estate agencies would give in to tenants’ demands if
placed under similar pressure.
There are a lot of advantages to organising this way with other renters. For one thing,
the housing crisis in Australia is widely felt and affects millions of people. On top of
that, things like lower rents, repairs, and protection from eviction are inherently
appealing, and will make life better in a real and tangible way. Finally, it’s not that
had to get started: you could begin by getting organised with the people that you live
with, then expand out to neighbouring houses and the rest of the suburb with postering,
letterbox drops, door-knocking, and local public meetings. Eventually, a tenants’ group
covering your suburb and a few adjacent ones could be set up to take action against
landlords and real estate agencies.
The housing crisis in Australia doesn’t seem as if it’s about to go away any time soon.
While Facebook events can be useful, and cramming ever more people into sharehouses can
alleviate some of the pressure, more and more it seems like the only way to improve the
situation is for tenants to organise together and fight to win.
http://www.anarchistaffinity.org/2016/04/the-rent-is-too-damn-high/
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Message: 2
You were interpellé.e during a demonstration and placé.e in custody. What to do? What not
to do? ---- 1. Do not be intimidated by the threat of a custody extension ---- The police
did not power, it is the decision of one or a magistrate (judge or prosecutor.) So accept
nothing because of this threat. See details below ---- 2. Ask to see a physician ----
That's the thing to do, especially if you are under medical treatment or blessé.e. It will
be possible to be issued a certificate of non-compatibility with custody (GAV). And if,
during the first twenty-four hours you have not had access to the doctor as requested, it
creates a procedural defect which may be favorable to you later. See details below ---- 3.
Never accept a judgment in immediate appearance ---- It is always better to have a good
time to prepare his defense with his avocat.e. In immediate appearance, defense tends to
be sloppy, and the penalties to be heavier. See details below
4. Never compromise someone
You have every right to remain silent during the hearing or by a police officer. Instead,
declare your identity. You can make a minimum declaration, but avoid any statement which
might involve someone other than you. See details below
5. Never respond to provocation
Or an agent tries to coax you to obtain confessions or that insults you to get you out of
your hinges, keep your distance and stay stoic. Do not put your finger in a spiral that
will be difficult to get out. See details below
THE CUSTODY, HOW DOES IT WORK?
?1 / What is custody?
It is a measure of deprivation of liberty, which is applied to persons suspected of having
committed an offense or a crime punishable by imprisonment.
This measure is permitted by 62-2 and following of the Code of Criminal Procedure, and
possible from 13 years. It must have only intended to prevent the suspect to remove any
evidence to flee, to establish any strategy.
It is taken by the administration (the police), but under control of justice: the police
must inform the prosecutor of any investment in GAV per the minutes that mentions the
reason for the detention. The prosecutor may thus at any time hold or release the person held.
2 / How long it lasts?
In principle, custody lasts up to 24 hours. But it can be extended:
48 hours only by decision of the prosecutor,
72 hours or 96 hours (in the drug business, organized crime and terrorism)
or 144 hours in case of terrorist risk; in which case, it is done under supervision of a
judge.
Warning: if the police threatening you extend your custody (including tearing your
statements), it claims to have a power that it does not: it is the prosecutor or judge who
has the power.
At the end of the custody, two possibilities:
output without prosecution,
the prosecution, which can take many forms: an investigation, subsequent convening
immediate appearance.
The immediate appearance is extremely urgent procedure since the person is found a few
hours after the end of the custody. It is quite possible to refuse to be tried immediately
and request that the case be referred to a later date (up to six weeks). Please note, this
means that the judge will decide whether it puts the person in custody or on probation
(freedom but with obligations) pending. It is essential to provide performance guarantees
(proof of address, payslips, family record book etc.).
If the case is complex, it is best to prepare his defense and thus to have a period.
3 / What are my rights and what will happen if we do not notify me?
Upon placement, the police must inform the person of all of his rights:
the offense is suspected of having committed,
the right to be examined by a doctor
the right to inform a relative and his employer, and if it is of foreign nationality, the
consular authorities of the State of which he is a national,
the right to be assisted by one or a lawyer chosen by him or appointed, from the beginning
of the proceedings,
the right to be assisted by an interpreter if he speaks French poorly,
the right to remain silent during his hearings,
the right to make submissions to the magistrate who decides on the extension of the GAV.
If these rights are not notified, there is procedural: see below.
4 / Do I have to "declare" and answer the questions I am asked?
No: we can choose to remain silent, it is a right that should even be notified at the
beginning of the investment. It is recommended even when we do not know if other people
are in custody and that their statements may intersect, contradict, and harm other people.
So silence is not only possible but indicated in many situations. Although it is thought
to be able to "stitch" or not to tell the minimum, we do not control the consequences that
implies.
If, however, says it has the right to read and correct his statement before signing it,
and especially, we have the right to refuse to sign if it is considered that what is
written is incorrect.
5 / What are the exact roles of the lawyer and the doctor?
The lawyer can:
30 minutes talk with the person,
access documents related to its GAV (notification of Human Rights and of the hearing if
there were, all other elements of the case such as the hearings of the co-authors of the
victims and investigative actions, not are not accessible, which explains why it is often
better to remain silent).
attend hearings, and under these make written submissions,
ask questions and provide information to the prosecutor.
You can be represented by the lawyer you ask, or by a public defender office remunerated
by the State. It is better to have contact with a lawyer or with which it was previously
agreed, the fee is known, and which he or she knows it accepts compensation via legal aid
( even if one does not pay anything at the stage of GAV, if we again need his services
after, it will avoid to change counsel).
Namely: Legal fees are free and there is no scale. However, they must not be excessive and
now the Honorary Convention is mandatory, even if in the urgency of the detention, this
can be difficult to establish immediately.
The lawyer is bound by professional secrecy. It is best to explain all the facts for it to
be able to defend yourself effectively. If you do not wish that certain elements are
brought to the attention of the prosecutor, judge or police, just ask counsel not to
disclose them.
The doctor may:
check the physical condition of the GAV, the state of physical and mental health
(including note of recent injuries, which could be related to violence against the person)
Consider with a view to prevention (suicide, addiction ...), collecting human grievances,
heal, deliver drugs or control the continuity of care when needed,
After the exam, write a certificate of compatibility or incompatibility in custody.
The doctor acts on judicial application and is paid by the state, but remains independent
and subject to confidentiality: it is forbidden to give the police information about your
health.
6 / What is a procedural? How it can be useful?
A procedural defect is the fact that the procedure prescribed by law will not be
respected: for example if you do not inform the person of one or more of the rights
mentioned above, if it prevents his lawyer, etc. Specifically, the reporting of procedural
defects often allows to recognize the "nullity" of the GAV when there are prosecutions: in
which case the court shall not use any of the documents,
Warning: the procedural defect necessarily not enough to convince the magistrate es to
abandon the action taken to custody. So: never bet on the fact that you have observed
defects to get away with it. Prepare your defense as if there was no procedural error.
7 / What if the cops threaten me or insult me?
At the moment especially not get into the game; repeating that the police control lots of
ways to get what she wants, including handling, and it is probably going to use them to
make us 'crack'. Once out, it will be possible to complain, preferably directly to the
public prosecutor, by registered mail.
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Les-5-regles-d-or-en-garde-en-vue
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Message: 3
Forty people arrested on Tuesday morning in Paris. Valls Cazeneuve and decided to knock,
to intimidate the high school and high school students. Do not let go of the case! ----
Tuesday, April 5, Action Youth Day against the proposed El Khomri law. At 11, a first
appointment was given instead of the Nation, for the usual mass start high schools in
eastern Paris in the event of the afternoon. With about 500 people, is a "small" demo,
less numerous than the previous times. ---- The police will take this opportunity to play
blackjack and gas. ---- While the small crowd begins to rise Boulevard Diderot, framed by
police in front and behind, first attempt: a squad of cops seeps in the middle of the
procession and cut into two sections. ---- The protests and the beginning of fuss this
causes, they backtracked. Then at it again. But this time, having once again cut the
motorcade in two, they deliberately attacked the first section of the demo, with banners.
It's almost confusion: the cops are blocking the first half of the demonstrators and
protesters in the corner of the boulevard, and begin to call people. The second half of
the insult, shout slogans, "Free our comrades." They are told to handle baton blows and gas.
Congratulations, guys BTP!
Meanwhile, part of manifestant.es began to climb the wall against which they and they were
blocked. On the other side: a construction site. The workers flock pose a ladder and help
them to escape through the roof. Nice gesture! The high school and high school students
will remember this solidarity at a forthcoming strike in construction!
Enraged, the cops soon intervenes between the wall and the protesters, now completely
caught in the trap. The second half of the demonstration continued on, chanting his
disgust with Labor Law through the streets of the capital.
Two paddy wagons later, forty people are leaving for custody. Thinking perhaps it is
futile to saturate the police in the morning, the cops let spin the other for an identity
check.
The struggle continues! Free our comrades!
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Paris-Les-ouvriers-d-un-chantier
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Message: 4
One of the UK’s biggest arms fairs (DPRTE) met resistance on 16th March in Cardiff town
centre. ---- NB Since some people are facing ongoing legal cases, we can’t say everything
we would like to in this report; but even with some of the most powerful details left out,
we think it’s a story worth telling. ---- The day started early; two people outwitted
security to occupy the venue’s rooftop with a banner before the event had begun. ---- As
delegates started arriving, a lively crowd ensured they were very aware they weren’t
welcome. Around 150 people (including banners and surreal props) were there to challenge
the event; not bad for first thing on a weekday morning. ---- Meanwhile Cardiff Food not
Bombs had set up a structure and were providing food and music, and a place to relax or to
chat with intrigued passers-by.
Unfortunately, during the morning the police arrested 4 people on various spurious
grounds. The two people on the roof were also arrested at the end of the day.
Of course, what happened on the day was just the tip of the iceberg – from bus stop
subverts to comms blockades, from pickets of the venue (the Motorpoint Arena) to
leafletting sessions, a lot of unseen work by all sorts of people went into making this
happen.
With DPRTE possibly returning to Cardiff in March 2017 it’s time to keep up the pressure
and organise a campaign capable of shutting down this monstrosity for good.
Contact Motorpoint Arena and encourage them not to host DPRTE 2017.
Support those arrested at their court hearings. Watch the StCAF blog for details.
https://southwalesanarchists.wordpress.com/2016/04/06/arms-fair-faces-resistance-in-cardiff/
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Message: 5
Universalism maintains an ambiguous relationship with feminism. This notion has been put
on the mask of a masculine universal limited (as in the universal male suffrage) or
colonial (as in the Sermon on the colonization of Jules Ferry). Today the so-called
Republican universalism coats reactionary and racist speech. But universal as mankind,
abolishing the differences between sex classes could also be a feminist claim. ---- When
Delphy published in 2010 a book entitled A universalism so special, it marks well, by the
very choice of the title, the ambivalence that is attached to the notion of "universal".
The title refers to the fact that the notion of the universal is used as a mask of
particular interests and relative values under cover great humanist principles. But the
title, this denunciation, calls for the establishment of a new universal that would be
truly universal this time: that of real equality between men and women, and even beyond,
to the constitution of humanity in which sexeseraient classes abolished.
The route of Delphy illustrates the intimate connection between antiracism and feminism.
While she is in the US, in the 1960s, she worked alongside the movement for civil rights
for black Americans. The US feminist movement has borrowed from the African-American
movement: even the term "sexism" is forged on the model of "racism".
When in the late 1980s in France broke the first case of the veil, Christine Dephy,
historical figure of the French feminist movement, is one of the first to denounce the
manipulation of the cause of women by players who previously if were little concerned.
This instrumentalisation of feminism to racist and colonialist purposes is not new. She is
a former French colonialist rhetoric of the speech. This was demonstrated Felix Boggio
Éwanjé Sword & Stella Magliani-Belkacem in a polemic, White Feminists and the Empire,
published in 2012.
Feminist discourse, based on a decolonial thought, highlighted the Islamophobic use made
of the concept of secularism in the French context with the 2004 law on religious symbols.
This particular use of French secularism appears when it refers to other contexts, such as
the Anglo-Saxon or Nordic countries, where the school and the public service will
accommodate the wearing of "hijab".
Feminist demands of Universal
So while some of the actresses feminism have highlighted the racist and colonialist use of
universalism, others have tried, at the same time, in the context of other cases or in
other geographical contexts of rely on the springs of universalist discourse to assert
their rights.
In France, the collective of Locs (Lesbians of Color), composed of racialized feminists,
many of whom have fled a national context where their right to free sexuality was denied,
denounced excision or homophobia in the name of a feminist claim presented as having
universal value.
Similarly, at the time of drafting the new Tunisian Constitution, after the 2010-2011
revolution, women in this country are opposed in the name of universal equality of rights
between men and women, to introduction of the concept of "complementarity of the sexes,"
which introduced the existence of a profound difference in kind between men and women.
Thus, it is possible to see that feminists have both denounce the manipulation of the
universalism of the colonialist interests service and use the universal concept as
emancipatory against oppressive situations.
This ambivalence in relation to the universal is not unique to feminism. Authors such as
Cornelius Castoriadis and Claude Lefort were able to show that the universalist rhetoric
of human rights could play a dual role: both of oppression and used by the oppressed to
denounce oppression was made to them. Thus, it is possible to mention, for example, the
claim by associations of a "right to a normal family life" as guaranteed by international
conventions as the basis for the regularization of undocumented parents.
Internationalism against universalism
Nevertheless, the question about the strategic position of universalism in the protest
movements of the nineteenth century dates already. Indeed, Marxism is the proletariat the
bearer of a universal mission to achieve in all countries advent of communist society. But
the universal is not a principle that can be obtained immediately. Rather, what must be
decisive in the immediate context, is unity on a class basis and non-operated National es
worldwide, "Proletarian of all countries unite! "It is only in the future as"
International will be the human race. "
But this unity of the proletariat is made on the basis of forgetting the proletarian. The
one Flora Tristan declares that "it is the same proletarian proletarian". Indeed, radical
feminism of the second wave in the 1970s, said for his part the unity of women regardless
of their social class: the sorority.
A narrow path
But since the 1990s, feminists "third wave" questioned the idea of sisterhood, showing
that between women, there are significant differences in living conditions, opportunities
and interests according to their social class, skin color, religion, sexual orientation...
This third wave feminism while denouncing racist practices by some feminists, who in the
name of feminism, are opposed to the headscarf, considered a sexist oppression sign women.
As often, the path is narrow to avoid falling between Scylla and Charybdis.
How remain atheist without being accused of Islamophobia? How to be anti-Zionist without
being accused of anti-Semitism? How to claim feminist without being accused of racism? How
denounce homophobia without being accused of occidentalocentrisme? These are issues that
divide social movements (particularly the feminist) and prevent forward. However, we can
not sweep them to maintain "unity" of the social movement.
We can see, the times are not simplistic positions and punch. It is difficult to hold
together atheism, feminism and anti-racism without being accused of falling into either
camp: not enough for some, for others too... This is probably one of the roles of the
Libertarian Communists in public debate today to maintain that difficult balance facing
those who are always prompt-es to sacrifice one of the poles in the name of the urgency of
the situation, to reconstruct the main fronts and secondary fronts...
The current existence of a Kurdish revolutionary movement fighting Daech and claims to
feminism shows that feminism is not a Westerner. The desire for emancipation and struggle
against oppression are not the monopoly of the bourgeois Enlightenment. In all regions of
the world, at different times, there have been social movements who revolted against
social inequality, economic, women's oppression, or religious oppression.
It is thus possible to warn against two risks. The temptation to think that the Western
movements have a monopoly forms of invention of the struggle against oppression. But also
tend to think that the speeches are oppressed and liberation movements are united. There
are often a variety of positions. It is our probably not reduce the plurality of those
votes and choose who we will alliance.
Irène (girlfriend AL)
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?L-universalisme-ennemi-des
