Today's Topics:
1. France, Alternative Libertaire AL #269 - ecology, Industrial
wind power: a matter of networks (fr, it, pt) [machine
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. Greece, MARCH 8 - DAY OF RESISTANCE AND STRUGGLE By A.P.O.
(gr) [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. US, Workers Solidarity Alliance (WSA) Ideas and Action:
W.S.A. - International Women's Day statement
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. libertarian communist: After the fall by Rosa Soros
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
France is participating in the European "effort" to increase the production of renewable
energies. Wind turbines have been seen to flourish in the region, with more than doubling
by 2023. However, they are the subject of local disputes, as in Saint-Victor-et-Melvieu,
in Aveyron. ---- The State has taken the lead in fully exploiting its "wind resources" at
several major sites. This has been done since 2013, in the form of an agreement between
municipalities and farmers - a mayor accepts a project in return for the taxes imposed -
all of which are overseen by the regions. Once the capacities have been assessed, the
licenses distributed and the wind turbines constructed, they must be connected to the
grid. Owned by the municipalities, almost the whole of this network is managed by RTE
(Electricity transmission network), a subsidiary of EDF.
This system, with its public inquiries and other intermediaries, was considered to be too
long and tedious, and was therefore simplified by the 2015 Energy Transition Act. It can
be seen from the following Is the source of the resources, not the demand or concerns of
the inhabitants[1]. A transfer of costs is made to the benefit of the overall energy mix
at the expense of the municipalities, while a whole body of legislation is put in place to
encourage the expansion of this system.
Colonization and defense
The south of the Massif Central is recognized as one of the great French wind deposits. In
the early 2000s, projects began to take shape, and local committees of struggles or
associations formed to defend the territories. These struggles are often called NIMBY (not
in my backyard) by industrialists, because they put forward the defense of the landscape,
the direct nuisances of wind turbines for humans and for animals.
The weakness of these struggles is that they are made in a fragmented way, in places and
against different industrial colonizers. In Aveyron, following the announcement of the
installation of a large electric transformer, a new wrestling collective was created in
the commune of Saint-Victor: the Amassada[2]. The enemy this time is the same on all the
sites, it is RTE, which decided to install several transformers in the region to which to
connect all the wind turbines, one central (very high voltage or THT) that would serve to
provide In electricity in particular Spain and Morocco.
The hut of the Amassada, place of struggle and sociability
The collective denounces the pointlessness of the project from the point of view of a
region where the electricity needs are covered by the hydroelectric. In addition, the
owner of the installations (the commune) will have to relieve a small million euros,
reflected on the invoice of subscribers of the network. However, the infrastructure is not
only costly but also more harmful than the municipality will shelter.
This is a very common and yet curious product of the mentality of "green" capitalism: wind
becomes a resource, a resource that is marketable (or "shareable" for positive minds).
Except at Saint-Victor, the question of the superposition of productions (and therefore
their impact) is raised. If a municipality has water and wind in abundance, must it
necessarily submit to the collective interest? Even if it is to suffer the consequences?
For the State and EDF, the issue is resolved. They have enumerated in the energy
transition law that electricity would be the energy of tomorrow (whether nuclear, wind or
solar), the only question to be solved is transport. The current owner of RTE, François
Brottes, was the editor of this law, he was able to put all the arrangements advantageous
for the development of EDF. For example, the "simplification" of the procedures for
setting up the network, which means that the public consultation has little value (in
Saint-Victor it was simply a matter of deciding which ground would be sacrificed).
And worse: until 2012, EDF valued infrastructure on the Stock Exchange as part of its
property capital, while the municipalities were the real owners. This situation having
been made illegal, François Brottes restored it. In 2014, it was he who had passed the
decree of landfill of waste to Bure. At this level, we can not therefore speak distinctly
of renewable or fossil energies ... it is the "great mix".
Increase in the electric fleet
During the cold January wave we could hear Minister of the Environment Segolene Royal on
the subject: "It is no longer a question of ending nuclear power, it is only by the
convergence of energies that, We manage to pass the winter. " So no more for dismantling,
but the increase of the electric park by adding provenance. This is probably the only
answer that these vandals are able to state in the face of the urgency of energy sobriety.
In this global context, Amassada called for a major demonstration against "the transformer
with a thousand wind turbines" on 21 January 2017.
At the stage of the process of installation of the transformer, only the prefect's
agreement is needed to kick-start the work. In response, on January 21st in Rodez, 400
people mobilized and made a procession through the city, to the rhythm of an anti-RTE
choir. The Amassada had for the occasion built a "dragon of caddies" full of rubbish,
which they left a memory before the prefecture to symbolically bury the project.
Caricatures of the main protagonists of the project (and José Bové, very involved in the
wind) were hung on a false electric pylon.
Several collectives took the floor to accuse the elected officials who ignore them, as
well as members of the government like Ségolène Royal, about the "big mix" so much touted
- when there is no wind on the Lévézou plateau To the seventy-four wind turbines! For any
reply, the mobile gendarmes gassed the demonstration. Yet, anger is legitimate, especially
on what wind power should bring to the communities concerned. Today they know only the tax
increases, while a neighboring municipality, without wind turbines, has been able to set
up infrastructures for collective purposes like a grocery store ... Energy must remain a
service of local development, And not of international speculation.
Reinette drowned (AL Aveyron)
[1]See Alternative libertarian No. 244: "Industrial wind: The wind is money" .
[2]More information on https://douze.noblogs.org
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Eolien-industriel-une-affaire-de
------------------------------
Message: 2
Internationalist and class solidarity with the struggles of women -- Against patriarchy,
the state and capitalism ---- The first text, along with corresponding messages
internationalist solidarity from comrades of anarchist groups and organizations (Anarchist
Federation-London, Grupo Libertario Via Libre-Colombia, Alternativa Libertaria-Italy, Red
Dawns-Slovenia, La Alzada-Chile and Sunbirds-New York) , included in the 37th edition of
the anarchist newspaper Meydan, which now faces persecution by the Turkish state. The
issue is devoted to March 8 and, as every year, issued by the Anarsist Kadinlar (Anarchist
Women). The second text was sent to us by the comrades from Turkey, to be published in
Greece in view of the March 8th. ---- Solidarity with women who struggle around the world
Patriarchy is one of the foundations of the world power and a key element of social
reproduction. Current events - such as the rise of gender-based violence and exploitation
in the workplace, human trafficking and the conditions suffered by women refugees trip
uprooting and incarcerated in concentration-camps intensified as the systemic crisis
intensifies, the attack the dominant and effort ekfasismou society.
As women, apart from exploitation and oppression imposed total at bottom, are experiencing
oppression and in the field of gender segregation, as another form of oppression resulting
from the dominant system structure. In this sense, the struggle of women for their
liberation from the shackles of patriarchy is an integral part of the struggle for the
demolition of state and capitalist coercion.
As an anarchist, but we put forward that the liberation of the oppressed is their own work
and not an enlightened leadership that will act on their behalf. We are well aware that
freedom neither granted nor given away, but defined and conquered through the same struggles.
Behind them convenient for dominance myths, distorting the case of female emancipation
presenting it as a demand of "equality" in power management, history lurks bloody militant
women's struggles, the strikes which pioneered immigrant seamstresses in the US in the
late 19th and early 20th c., from which traces its roots back to March 8, as the Mujeres
Libres, paving a path as today.
So we welcome women's struggles around the globe: from Chiapas as the Rotzava and from
Turkey to the US. As anarchists we stand together with the words and actions of struggling
women, who meet in a raised fist and a solidarity gaze, which arms our determination to
destroy every human form of oppression of man by man, to build together a world of
equality, solidarity and freedom.
Group against patriarchy
Anarchist Political Organisation (Federation collectivity)
Solidarity with the Anarchist Women from Turkey
We are women, we are those who live from birth to death, ignored, neglected and
subordinated because of our sex, wherever we are. With our weapon solidarity, we must
stand as women against patriarchy.
We are those exposed to harassment, rape, violence of men every class and every culture.
We are those who steal their life. We need to be organized in order to survive.
We are those oppressed, in emergency regime in our own country from the conservative state
policies. We are those who are imprisoned, tortured and captured. We must resist any such
treaty.
We must fight against oppression, attacks and massacres! We need to get out on the streets
and create freedom!
We must create freedom by our own will, our own forces, with our self-organization. On
March 8 should find ourselves in the streets around the world. We must shout the slogan
"Long live women's solidarity".
Long Live March 8th, long live freedom!
anarchist Women
Highlights of female workers' struggles in the early 20th century in the US
The origins of March 8, the day proposed in 1910 to honor women's matches, lost deep in
time. According to one version, on March 8, 1857 was a clothing worker strike in New York.
Other sources place the beginnings of the "Women's Day" in a protest strike in 1908 in the
same city, while others argue that it is derived from more than one class struggles. But
the truth is that these roots are located at a time marked by demonstrations and worker
strikes in America, immigrants in their majority, representing the most wild exploiting
piece in factories and craft, and which came into conflict with bosses and the police,
while, through their decision to organize and fight, found in a fierce confrontation with
established and compelling gender roles who wanted dependent families and their husbands,
unable to react to the caretakers in the labor sweatshops and jittery ahead repression.
In the winter of 1909-1910, broke the strike which became known as the "Uprising of
20,000" paralyzing 600 crafts women's clothing in New York, whose greatest was Triagle
Waist and Leiserson, a sector in which women accounted 70% of employees. The largest
proportion were girls under 20 years, immigrant Jewish and Italian women. Their
determination was that determined the declaration of strike. On November 22, 1909, in the
packed hall of the Cooper Union in Manhattan, Clara Lemlik listened for more than four
hours the men to talk about the disadvantages and dangers awaiting their workers if they
descended into a general strike. Eventually he got to step and said: "I heard all the
speakers and I do not have any more patience. I am a worker, one of all those on strike
against intolerable conditions. I'm tired of hearing the speakers talk with generalities.
Here we came to decide whether to go on strike or not. I suggest you go down a general
strike - now! ".
The proposal reflected the will of most attendants and roused wave of enthusiasm in the
packed hall. The strike lasted three months and was unprecedented for employers, who used
every means to them in their arsenal to the break: police, scabs, thugs who beat the
workers on picket lines. It reported that fathers and their husbands were trying to
prevent them from coming down the road "for their safety", and so the same had to collide
on many levels within their family environment and communities in order to continue match.
During the strike were arrested more than 723 girls and 19 imprisoned. Typical for the
climate, was the statement of a judge, while ekfonouse the verdict against any laborer for
"riot incitement": "strike against God and Nature, whose laws dictate that man earns his
bread with sweat. Do strike against God! ".
In February 1910, the strike ended with the signing of an agreement which provided for
increases in wages, shorter working hours and equal treatment for members of the union,
but without changing the harsh operating conditions, the devaluation of the lives of
workers and employers terrorism premises Working with tragic consequences one year later.
On March 25, 1911, fire broke out in the multi-storey building which housed the factory
Triangle Waist - one of the companies that had been the focus of the recent strike
complaints about the miserable working conditions prevailing. There he worked for more
than 10 hours a day, six days a week, about 500 women, mostly immigrants, among them many
girls and even 13 to 14 years, with their sewing machines. When the fire broke out on the
eighth floor of the building, workers were locked inside the factory. This tactic was
established to prevent the entrance of the club members, but also tonergatrion output
during work. The fire spread instantly, resulting in the death of 146 women. The company
owners who were tried in 1914 were acquitted. Their responsibility was limited to payment
of the minimum compensation. The tragedy shocked the city and newspapers were quick to
express sympathy for the victims. However, for workers facing taunts and threats Some time
ago, when striking against the same circumstances that led to the death of their
companions, anger overflowed. In a huge memorial ceremony, Rose Schneiderman, speaks the
following reason:
"I would be a traitor against those charred bodies if I came here to talk about
brotherhood. We your good citizens judges and found you missed.[...]It is not the first
time that girls burnt alive in this city. Every week I learn that one of my colleagues
died prematurely. Every year thousands of us are maimed. The men and women's lives are so
cheap and property so sacred. We are so many for a job and burned 146 of us little
consequence.[...]
have we try, you good citizens. We see you now, you have a few dollars to give as charity
mothers and brothers who mourn. But whenever the workers strike to resist the only way we
know the face of unbearable conditions, then comes the arm of the law to stifle us. The
state officials have to say only words of warning. We warn that we must be peaceful,
otherwise there is the prison. Whenever rouse the fist of our law pushes by force back to
unliveable life conditions.
I can not talk about brotherhood to you gathered here. It spills too much blood. From my
experience I know that the salvation of the workers is their own affair. And the only way
to do that is a strong labor movement. "
Bread and roses. In 1912 broke the strike of textile in Lawrence, Massachusetts, defying
conservative unions of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), which argued that it would
be impossible to organize a large number of migrant workers that the largest proportion
were women. In addition, registered members in the AFL was only white men. Not accepted
within the American Blacks and until 1918 prohibited the integration of women in trade
unions - even in industries like textiles which constituted the majority. The AFL opposed
the strike, which was supported by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), calling it
"revolutionary and anarchist."
The strike had actually spontaneously characteristics and broke out in a town completely
controlled by large textile companies, where the machines entrance had gone to layoffs and
they needed basically cheap and unskilled labor, leading to work largely young girls and
guys and an exhaustive intensification of production, leading to diseases and deaths. The
workers lived in buildings owned businesses, where standard practice to stack several
families in shared apartments, trying to survive in extreme conditions of hunger and poverty.
Typically, the mortality rate for children under 6 years of age was 50% and 36% of men and
women in textile dying before the age of 25.
"This strike had two innovations: the organized and took the lead on this women, and also
there was a conscious decision to join in the struggle workers of different nationalities.
Each meeting and meeting of the association translated into 25 different
languages.[...]The strikers of Lawrence formed human chains moving their bodies in front
of the factories to prevent the entry of strike-breakers and police stormed that attempted
arrests. Women were particularly combative and effective in preventing strike-breakers.
When arrested, they refused to pay guarantees. Just coming out of the detention center,
they returned to the picket lines. A frosty morning, police katevrexe with the water
hoses. Those able to catch a cop on a bridge, took away his uniform and almost throw him
in the river. At the trial that followed, a lawyer said: a police officer can accomplish
ten men, but need ten officers to cope with one woman. "
The strikers responded to police attacks by throwing pieces of ice and breaking factory
windows. To suppress strike out at least three dead workers. Among them Anna LoPizzo, an
immigrant from Italy, he received a bullet in the chest when police opened fire on
strikers, during conflicts.
Ludlow. In autumn 1913, descended to strike the miners in the Rokferler mines in Colorado.
The strikers evicted from company houses and set up camp, where for months they organize
their lives and their struggle hundreds of families of migrant workers. In April 1914 the
National Guard called to permanently suppress the strike. It attacks with weapons in the
camp and firing scenes, leaving behind 25 dead women, men and children.
"With the outbreak of the strike something changed in women of settlements. (...)
According to the United Mine Workers Journal of October 16, in Sopris women were more
militant and with much effort prevented them "clean" the "yellows" workers. And on
November 30, when the scabs arrived in Ludlow, women were at the forefront of the crowd
and shout down them, brandishing sticks baseball, reinforced with rivets. Women
highlighted the vigorous resistance to the disarming of Ludlow (...).
At best moment to strike, friendships, liberated from restrictive everyday settlements,
discovered the opportunity to flourish, were generous. (...) And now not questioned
defiantly just the past and their agkylomena customs, but the deeper structure of the
industrial world itself. In unexpected possibilities appeared to strike, to give
opportunities for action and expression, these women may have much more to gain than to
men. With a subtle but significant way, the course of the strike had completely changed
the very nature of male relationships and women. "
___________________________________________________________
1http://trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu/primary/testimonials/ootss_RoseSchneiderman.html
2 http://www.workers.org/ww/1998/bread0129.php
3 Zeese Papanikolas, «Amoiroloitos, Louis Tikas and massacre in Ludlow"
Group against patriarchy
Anarchist Political Organisation (Federation collectivity)
------------------------------
Message: 3
On March 8, 1908, thousands of women left their jobs in the sweatshops of New York City's
Lower East Side and took to the streets to demand our rights as women and as workers. In
1917, our sisters in Russia followed suit and helped to bring about the revolution that
overthrew the Tsarist autocracy. And in Spain in 1936, the anarchist women of Mujeres
Libres helped to free our sisters from centuries of oppression. ---- In more recent times,
women have played key roles in the civil rights and anti-war and wages for housework
movements of the 1960's and early 1970's. In 1990's and into the 21st century, women
workers are still in the forefront of the continued struggle against sweatshop conditions
in many industries and services. This vibrant movement has already won important
victories, both against the institutions of power in our society as well as against the
more subtle systems of oppression that pervade the personal relationships of women.
The Workers Solidarity Alliance honors these women, as well as the countless others in
every corner of the world, who, generation after generation, rise up against inequality,
oppression, and domination.
We salute the struggles and the sacrifices our sisters made.
Still, the dream of freedom, equality, and peace for all people is far from reality. Every
day, women, including transwomen and gender non-conforming individuals, continue to
confront sexism and gender essentialism in their personal relationships as well as sexual
harassment and violence on the job, in the streets, and at home. Millions of women workers
are still ruthlessly exploited. The right-wing and religious fanatics threaten women's
most basic right to control our own bodies. With each day of the Trump administration, new
legal assaults on women are unleashed.
The roots of sexism and all oppressive relationships are intertwined deep within the
systems of hierarchy, authority, and militarism that dominate society. These principles
are the basis for every modern state and established socio-economic power. We know that
this is not simply "the way it is." There are other, better possibilities for a more
livable world. Faced with overwhelming webs of oppression and subjugation, we must fight
back and take control of our own lives. We can begin by organizing with our sisters and
brothers in our communities, our schools, and our workplaces.
We strive for a society in which one person or group of people do not dominate or exploit
another. In such a society there would be no basis for sexual oppression, domination or
class exploitation. We must work to replace the institutions of power, the nation-state,
and capitalism with a worldwide system of grassroots empowerment and self-management of
all facets of social and economic life. See the dreams of these women workers fulfilled;
join us in a movement with an extraordinary history and an inspiring future.
Help us build this new world of freedom and self-management.
Workers Solidarity Alliance
wsa.corresponding.secretary[AT]gmail[DOT]com
Related Links:
http://www.workersolidarity.org/
http://ideasandaction.info/
------------------------------
Message: 4
Artwork by Bahar Mustafa ---- Since the election of Donald Trump as President of the
United States and the international public's response to it, you'd think America has
suddenly become a hive of racists and fascists. This is not to suggest that Trump's
presidential campaign and subsequent victory hasn't emboldened the far-right and white
supremacists in the States: we've seen white nationalists attempt to intimidate Black
Lives Matter protesters at Trump rallies; a sharp rise in armed anti-Muslim protests by
right-wing extremists in places like Arizona, Atlanta, and elsewhere across America; and
an anti-fascist protester shot and in critical condition by a Trump supporter at an
alt-right Milo Yiannopoulos event on the day of Donald Trump's inauguration. While we are
correct to respond and respond fiercely to this wave of reaction, we need to be careful
not to get swept up in the tide of liberal discourse that would have you think that Donald
Trump is the Devil and if he is defeated then the people will be free! It goes without
saying, Donald Trump is a vile, racist, misogynist, shit-stain and an authoritarian: but
racism and white supremacy in America is nothing new - when Trump falls, who will replace him?
The United States was literally built on the savage onslaught and pillaging of its
indigenous people and on the backs of black slavery. The United States has a shameful
legacy of public lynchings, racial segregation, and criminalisation of black people and
non-black people of colour - and neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton did or could do
anything to challenge the structurally racist foundations on which the USA was built, and
continues to sustain itself. Institutional racism from the top down begins with racist
legislation, such as the infamous Jim Crow Laws enforced up until 1965, and is enacted
sharply at the bottom with attacks on black, Brown, Jewish and Muslim communities, such as
the horrific Charleston church shooting by white supremacist Dylan Roof. In a sobering
documentary, ‘13th' the mass incarceration of black people in America is considered the
modern day slavery, and demonstrates how since its abolition a clause known as The
Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution abolished slavery
and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. This conveniently coincided
with the State's campaign to criminalise and prosecute black people in huge numbers,
making them a legitimate and expendable source of free labour. Racism and the prison
industrial complex continues to uphold capitalist production and represent the interest of
the State.
The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in the States are an ultra-violent white supremacist organisation
that spans 150 years (established first in 1865) whose membership is about 30,000 strong.
They are one of the only far-right extremist groups who have a collective knowledge and
history of organising that has been passed on from generation to generation. They've never
been smashed the way most other far-right and fascist groups have. We need to understand
this in the context of the legacy of racism, colonialism and imperialism that the United
States is built upon and stop this sudden panic as if things were getting better until
Trump came along.
Racism and colonialism is sewn into the very fabric of the "Red, White and Blue", and we
need to look beyond the more explicit manifestations of white supremacy and nationalism in
order to defeat them. It's easy to destroy the Devil if it wears its horns so gaudily: but
if it's hidden behind a pearl necklace, a rehearsed smile, and speaks of feminism while
simultaneously supporting a war which kills hundreds and thousands of brown women in the
Middle East, the Devil will continue to walk among us. Hilary Clinton, the 'lesser of two
evils' candidate supported the 1994 Crime Bill by her husband and then President, Bill
Clinton, which saw extraordinarily harsh sentences for low-level crime, targeting
predominantly black people and destroying thousands of working class ethnic minority
families. Hilary Clinton would not have been the answer to America's problems. Hilary
Clinton would not have stopped the mass murder of working class black people at the hands
of police. Barack Obama did not stop the mass detention and deportation of undocumented
migrants under his administration (in fact, Obama deported more immigrants than any other
US President!).
Trump and his supporters are not the cause of the problem, but a sharp reactionary symptom
of liberalism and capitalism in crisis.
This isn't to say that we should ignore the swell of fascist and far-right support Trump
has fostered: there is a reason over 800 polling stations in the Southern states were
closed and people were being intimidated outside polling stations by Trump supporters.
There has to be a militant and organised working class movement in the States to resist
this. For example, Black Lives Matter, American Antifa groups, and Standing Rock
protesters are doing incredible and inspirational things. Former Republican working class
communities are now mass organising in their workplaces and neighbourhoods because they've
seen that the elite do not represent their class interests. But there needs to be a joined
up resistance: not just in the States but internationally.
As revolutionaries we need to build international working class solidarity and resistance
to this onslaught by the reactionary elite. We need to move beyond parliamentary tactics
because they're defunct. We need to stop resorting to single issue struggles where we
fight simply for equality. I don't want to win equal rights to that of my white, male
counterpart because I don't think what he has is good enough! We need to fight for class
emancipation and real liberation. We need to stop using identity politics and the language
of privilege as sticks to beat each other with, and the Left needs to challenge the
sexism, racism and academic elitism that exists within it. We don't need allies - we need
comrades. When Trump falls and we're asked, who will replace him? Let's fight so the
answer is us.
Author: Rosa Soros
http://libcomgrp.weebly.com/weblog/after-the-fall-by-rosa-soros
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