Today's Topics:
1. Germany, FAU, Deliverunion is getting first Results.
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. Catalunia, Embat: It's not tourismfobia, it's dignity. (ca,
fr, it, pt) [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. black rose fed: RESPONSE: WHAT KIND OF FORMATION TO BUILD
WORKING CLASS POWER? By Tom Wetzel (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. Britain, freedom news - Argentina: Anarchist still missing
after police raid against Mapuche activists (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
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Message: 1
It was an unusual sight: on the 28th of June in Berlin about 70 Foodora and Deliveroo
riders dumped a huge pile of old bike parts on the street in front of the Deliveroo
offices in Berlin. This marks the second time the workers of the the international
start-up companies have taken to the streets in Berlin in their fight for better working
conditions. Wearing their distinctive pink and blue uniforms and shouting slogans like
"What do we want? Fair wages! When do we want them? Now!", they were joined in support by
members of the general public as they brought their protest right to the companies'
doorstep. ---- The action was planned by riders from both companies organising within FAU
Berlin since January of this year. As more and more riders are joining the union, they
also increasingly coordinate with similar campaigns across Europe, all using the hashtag
#deliverunion.
Across the board, they are drawing attention to their precarious working conditions and
low wages that are typical for workers in the growing so-called "gig-economy". Companies
like Foodora and Deliveroo are continually trying to save money at their workers' expense
in order to maximize their investor's profits.
To counter that trend, riders in Berlin have put forth a list of three main demands to the
companies. Those demands are first, a wage increase of at least one Euro extra per hour
or drop, second, a guaranteed minimum amount of hours or shifts per week, and third,
reimbursement for all of their their operating costs, such as bike parts, bike wear, and
mobile phone costs. It is this last demand in particular that the most recent action was
directed at. Workers in both companies are riding their own bikes through the city for
hours on end, and use their personal phones and data for work. On average, the resulting
costs - in particular the bicycle-repairs - take more than 10% off their wages.
Considering that riders are only making just above minimum wage to begin with, their real
earnings are far below the 12 € Deliveroo and Foodora are advertising in their recruitment
ads.
In the run up to the protest on Wednesday, Foodora and Deliveroo have been contacted
twice by the FAU, who are demanding negotiations on the riders' behalf. So far, Deliveroo
has refused to engage with the union directly. In statements to the press and internal
emails to the riders, the company insists that their workers are being treated fairly.
This has sparked growing anger and frustration amongst their riders, who feel that their
voices are not being heard. With support from their comrades at Foodora and FAU, they are
intent on putting pressure on the management until they agree to come to the negotiating
table.
Foodora, on the other hand, seems to be responding to the toll the campaign is taking on
their public image. In recent email-communications with FAU Berlin, Foodora have said
they are improving the system for shift planning and are trying to come up with a way to
compensate for bike repairs. On the morning of the demonstration Foodora agreed to
begin negotiations with representatives from the FAU Berlin, and offered two possible
dates for a first meeting. This is a victory for the campaign, and the riders are very pleased
Foodora seems to finally be taking their demands seriously. As a sign of good faith the
action outside of the Foodora office was cancelled, and while the negotiations are ongoing
and productive, no further actions will be taken against the company. Nevertheless, the
riders will watch the negotiation process closely and not be easily placated by a few minor
changes. Foodora have shown willingness to comply with some of our demands - now we
need to make sure their words are followed by action! To show our continued vigilance, the
protest on Wednesday continued with a large demonstration past the Foodora
headquarters in Berlin-Mitte.
If Foodora are willing to come to the negotiation table, we are left to wonder what reason
Deliveroo has to refuse not just official negotiations but any from of direct
communication with the union. Refusing even to acknowledge their workers' right to
organise, Deliveroo management have repeatedly attempted to downplay their demands and put
pressure on them to speak to the management individually. However, not only have
individual complaints not yielded any results - they also put riders at risk for loosing
their jobs.
Despite our continued poor working conditions and Deliveroo's hostile stance, we are
emboldened by the speed at which the #deliverunion-campaign is growing and by the
results it has already produced in such a small amount of time. Riders and their comrades
at the FAU will continue to stand together in solidarity and push for better working
conditions in both companies. "For riders, united, will never be divided!"
https://deliverunion.fau.org/2017/08/08/deliverunion-is-getting-first-results/#more-192
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Message: 2
Capitalism is a sick system. In spite of this, it usually gives the impression of face to
face with an extraordinary solidity. This is achieved thanks to a monolithic consensus on
the media, the political class and a wide network of opinion polls, friends and other
neo-liberalism supporters who spell on the social networks that act as public opinion . In
this country are the "common sense". Outside them there is nothing. His way of thinking is
expressed in a block, without cracks, at the right moment. It is an unbelievable
bombardment that leaves us unable to respond - except in our small circle of activists and
people who are aware of it. ---- In these days we are living a lynching operation against
the Arran youth organization (we take advantage to say that we fraternally support each
other with Arran ) who has carried out a mass tourism complaint action. For some years the
social movements of Barcelona have been alerting and denouncing the speculative tourist
model that renders capitalist rent of this land. Examples such as Barcelona '92 or the
Forum of Cultures are paradigmatic. The movements carried out actions similar to those
carried out by Arran, most of the occasions without media coverage. With all the same
Generalitat joins lynching against the activists of our colleagues, which tells us that
something else is coupled.
From Embat, Llibertària Organization of Catalonia we want to highlight the idea of the
disaster that is the economic model based on the speculation and commodification of all
things, turning our territory (whether it be Barcelona, the Islands, the coast, the
Pyrenees ...) in a more consumer object. Our society can not continue to accept passively
this socio-economic model so that there is no wealth at all. On the contrary, it leads to
precarious work - as Las Kellys could point out - seasonal work, security and dirt
problems, destruction of the natural environment, pollution, thousands of people,
gentrification of the neighborhoods, alienation of autochthonous people ... in short,
It's not tourist-phobia, it's class struggle. Mural in the neighborhood of Vallcarca.
Mass tourism is a rendezvous model. The capitalist produces nothing, manufactures nothing.
There is no tangible wealth, since it disappears when tourists leave. It should be added
that since the 70s and 80s the industrial fabric of our cities and towns has been
dismantled, leaving us more precarious and temporary jobs in a collective environment of
impotence and alienation. We have become dependent. By not being able to win the bread
with our effort we are offered charity. Social services are more full than ever, and now a
guaranteed minimum income is considered.
As a result, there is an absurd situation for which the industry is in Asia, which
manufactures the products we consume with avidity. Our revenues are the result of
increasingly poor jobs and poorer paid jobs due to de-industrialization. The only way out
is to work in the tourism sector.
Another aspect of mass tourism is the destruction of the environment. Paradoxically, a
greater number of tourists will need more infrastructure, and in addition less attractive
infrastructure will be the destination. Not only that, but despite the warnings of the
imminence of climate change and rising sea level, it is not being taken into account to
look for another economic model that guarantees the economic sovereignty of our land.
In short, the popular movement must carry out more actions to denounce the
precariousness of our lives and the destruction of our territory and our lifestyles. The
political situation that we live in Catalonia causes any action to be magnified because
it will link it with the referendum. We understand that social movements should be aware
of this gap and take advantage of it to the extent of their possibilities , always trying
to overwhelm the institutional response.
It is a fight against the vultures that disassemble us and make us out of our
neighborhoods to build hotels and turn our homes into tourist apartments. We denounce
elitist gentrification and the alienation of the indigenous community.
It is a fight for an alternative model to the speculative and rent, in which the
bourgeoisie of our house is delighted. Hence the lynch against Arran. It is a model that
robs us of all kinds of sovereignty and places our future in the will of "international
markets".
It is a struggle to prevent the precariousness of our lives while others fill their
pockets. The means of production (hotels, hostels, flats, restaurants, discos ...) are
private. They do not benefit us at all. On the contrary they exploit us. It's a class
struggle.
It is a fight for the territory. Mass tourism carries great pressure on the natural
environment. The future can not be a cement sea, or a line of houses that occupy the
entire coast.
For alive and combative neighborhoods. For a country worthy of being lived. For a people
standing.
Embat, August 2017
http://embat.info/no-es-turismofobia-es-dignitat/
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Message: 3
In a recent Socialist Worker piece Bill Keach asks the question, "Does the working class
really need a party of its own to fight for and advance its interests?" ---- In order to
make his case for a "revolutionary socialist party," the model favored by Leninists and
those in the tradition of Trotskyism and the ISO, he argues: ---- "Some on the left,
particularly anarchists, are opposed to the project of party-building, arguing instead
that spontaneous, diversified resistance to capitalism must be the basis for challenging
exploitation and oppression." ---- This argument starts by posing a false dichotomy since
there are various ways of conceiving how the working class can build and unify a movement
to "fight for and advance its interests." His claim that anarchism advocates movements
that will develop purely "spontaneously" is a strawman argument because in reality only a
minority of anarchists are "spontaneists" who believe that somehow a revolutionary mass
change in society could happen through such a "spontaneous" uprising.
Anarcho-syndicalists, for example, always placed a high emphasis on preparation,
organizing, grassroots popular education such as the storefront worker schools in Spain in
the '30s, and deep involvement in locations of struggle such as workplaces.
Leninists often argue that a vanguard party is needed to pull together the activist
minority - "vanguard" - from different social movements to be able to confront the whole
system. As Keach says:
"Socialists respond to such arguments by emphasizing that capitalist rule is enforced by a
highly organized state, dependent on top-down political parties, which in turn are
supported by a network of highly organized, ideologically driven, well-funded interest
groups and the corporate media. Only a political party organized by and dedicated to the
interests of working people can hope to take on these capitalist power structures."
The capitalist regime is indeed a complex system that has all sorts of fault lines, not
only struggle in the workplaces against the bosses, but against racism and gender
inequality, against worsening ecological destruction and the repressive aspects of the
state, as with the brutality and violence of the system of policing.
This requires that the oppressed and exploited majority build a "counter-hegemonic bloc"
to be able to have the forces to confront the power of the dominating classes.
But anarcho-syndicalists are also socialists - libertarian socialists - and they have
available in their theory a different way of conceiving of how the oppressed majority can
form a counter-hegemonic bloc. This can be put together in a more grassroots way via an
alliance of democratic worker-controlled unions and other social movement organizations,
building towards a cohesive class front. The links between active participants in the
various unions and social movement are important, but they do not need to be mediated
through a "vanguard party."
Moreover, this way of building a class front is more likely to avoid the problems that
have historically dogged the party model. Putting a vanguard party into control of the
state has historically been simply a transition to the empowerment of a new bureaucratic
boss class - defeating the liberatory goals of socialism.
Tom Wetzel lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, is active with Worker's Solidarity
Alliance and has organized around housing and transit issues in San Francisco.
If you enjoyed this piece we recommend Tom Wetzel's review of the classic "For Workers
Power" by Maurice Brinton looking at the Russian Revolution.
http://blackrosefed.org/wetzel-build-working-class-power/
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Message: 4
People were beaten, houses were burned, antique furniture burned, books were lost forever.
Hurricane Gendarmerie went through the town of Cushamen last Monday causing devastation in
the name of the Benetton fashion corporation, and one person is still missing - anarchist
solidarity activist Santiago Maldonado. ---- Santiago, who lives in El Bolson, is more
usually seen in Rio Library but has friends in Cushamen and had been visiting when he was
caught up in a raid which saw over 100 police ride into town and savagely repress the
local population. ---- Indigenous law specialist Elizabeth Gomez Alcorta reported in a
statement that Santiago went missing shortly after shots rang out as the raid, ostensibly
to protect a local railroad from being blocked, became more violent:
When the gendarmes fired shots they all ran, including Santiago. They ran to the same side
to hide among the vegetation and there are those who saw where Santiago hid. But between
the shots and the assaults, a second later they lost sight of him and heard an officer
shout "We have one." Then they approached a Gendarmerie van, opened the back doors and
several personnel surrounded the doors to block the view.
From that moment nothing else is known of Santiago and the community, along with
Santiago's mother and brother, have put in a legal bid to force the Gendarmerie to offer
up some answers on his whereabouts.
Santiago is just the latest in a long line of people beaten up and detained by local law
enforcement in recent months. Cushamen has become a focus point for landless Mapuche
workers who have set up the Pu Lof community on unused rural tracts around the town which
Benetton holds the deeds for, and has seen an explosion of violence from authorities,
which are intent on breaking the recuperation movement.
Last June reports circulated about a mass raid against homes on the Benetton-owned site,
which Mapuche have lived on for more than 1,400 years, breaking up houses in some of the
100 mostly rural communities which dot the region. Another series of raids in January saw
serious injuries to many local residents, including from point-blank use of rubber bullets
which led to the shattering of one man's jaw (CN: Serious wounding in pics).
According to community members, the repression on Monday was worse than last January.
Local resident Vanessa said:
They burned an entire house, burned the things that a Mapuche family who came from the
coast of Chubut had brought with them. They had just moved, there were things that were
covered with nylon for safekeeping in the climate which were 500 years old, all burned
along with tents and clothes and books - and a store of organic seeds.
Campaigners say the seeds are a key detail to understanding why there has been so much
persecution - Mapuche still preserve their seeds without genetic modification which stops
multinationals from selling their own tailored stock and creating a dependence on
copyrighted versions.
The land is part of a 9,000km estate owned by Benetton subsidiary Compañía de Tierras Sud
Argentino - an area roughly the size of Cyprus.
https://freedomnews.org.uk/argentina-anarchist-still-missing-after-police-raid-against-mapuche-activists/
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