Today's Topics:
1. Britain, Brighton Solfed: Landlady Makes Threats Instead of
Owning Up: SolFed's Campaign Intensifies (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. libcom: Joint protest of workers against wage theft in
Bulgaria (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. Poland, rozbrat: About the new TIKN publishing series Trojka
Brotherhood [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. HOUSING IS A SOCIAL RIGHT - TO ORGANIZE THE SOCIAL-CLASSIC
SELF-ASSOCIATION, Posted by dwarf horse APO (gr) [machine
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
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Message: 1
Brighton lettings agency MTM is facing a growing campaign by a group of tenants organising
with Brighton SolFed for compensation after they paid £34,320 in rent to live in damp and
infested accommodation for a year. Recently, the landlady made a series of threats against
the tenants. These include informing their places of study about the dispute, and
attempting to get them blacklisted by agencies in the city and "all landlord associations
in the country". Regarding the former threat, we have informed the landlady that the
tenants' places of study are already aware of the issues these tenants faced and have been
sympathetic toward the situation. Regarding the latter, we have informed the landlady that
passing on personal data contravenes the Data Protection Act, and that we would begin a
campaign to get her HMO licensed revoked if she carried out such a threat.
More broadly, the landlady's actions are indicative of the uneven and abusive power
dynamics that exist between landlords and tenants. Landlords think they have the right to
exercise total control over tenants' lives, whilst renting substandard accommodation to
them for extortionate rents. However, with the support of Brighton SolFed, these tenants
are showing this landlady - and other landlords in the city - that when tenants work
together, we are able to turn the tables and take control of our lives. Tenants in
Brighton are (literally) sick of living in poor quality accommodation whilst being ripped
off by agencies and landlords, but we are fighting back and demanding safe living conditions.
So far, we have held two pickets that have been overwhelmingly well received by the
public. A number of passersby have told us of their own problems with MTM, whilst others
have talked about their problems with other letting agencies and landlords in the city. On
social media, commenters have expressed their sympathies with the tenants following their
own mistreatment by MTM.
Tenants in Brighton and beyond will be all too familiar with the problem of damp
accommodation and the effect it has on one's physical and mental health, with an
investigation by The Argus last year finding a number of properties in the city riddled
with damp. The mould that results in these situations often triggers health problems such
as asthma, which has been an issue for one of the tenants who is now fighting back.
SolFed has supported the tenants in trying to find an amicable solution to this dispute,
yet these efforts have been met with inadequate offers of compensation, and now with
threats by the landlady. SolFed and the tenants are now stepping up our campaign. Our
public campaign will continue until the tenants receive adequate compensation. If you
would like to support these tenants against this bullying landlord and the indifference of
MTM, keep in touch with us via our website and social media, to look out for information
about forthcoming actions.
Having trouble with MTM and want to join these tenants in fighting back against their
exploitative practices? Get in touch with SolFed by sending an email to
housing@brightonsolfed.org.uk, or a text to 07427239960.
An injury to one is an injury to all!
SolFed and the tenants are now stepping up our campaign. Our public campaign will continue
until the tenants receive adequate compensation. If you would like to support these
tenants against this bullying landlord and the indifference of MTM, keep in touch with us
via our website and social media, to look out for information about forthcoming actions.
An injury to one is an injury to all!
http://www.brightonsolfed.org.uk/brighton/landlady-makes-threats-instead-of-owning-up-solfeds-campaign-intensifies
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Message: 2
On September 5, at 10:00 AM, around 150 workers from different cities and companies
organised with anarcho-syndicalist Autonomous Worker's Union came together in solidarity
and marched in front of the Bulgarian Parliament. Their demands were for immediate payment
of their salaries and for criminalization of wage theft. ---- We remind that in the past
year, thousands of workers in Bulgaria were robbed by their bosses which sparked a wave of
strikes and protests across the country. ---- This protest was the first step of the joint
campaign against the bosses, organised by workers from different cities and sectors. Its a
result of a several assemblies conducted in the past months when workers from the retailer
company Picadily along with workers from Max Telecom decided to organise with Autonomous
Worker's Union and to seek solidarity from workers from other sectors. Later, the
initiative was joined by miners from Bobov Dol, dressmakers from Dupnitsa and chemical
factory workers from Dimitrovgrad. This protest was the first coordinated action conducted
by the workers but the plan is to continue with the joint actions until all of the demands
are met. Here are some of the most important demands:
1. Immediate payment of due wages and benefits
2. Criminalization of wage theft
3. Prohibition on transferring ownership of an enterprise if it owes salaries
4. When an enterprise is in bankruptcy, the workers must be first in the list of creditors
before the banks.
This campaign against the bosses is something unique in the recent bulgarian history. Its
the first time when workers from different sectors decide to self-organise together in
solidarity, outside the bureaucratic unions, using the tools of grass-roots syndicalism.
http://libcom.org/news/joint-protest-workers-different-sectors-against-employer-iniquity-bulgaria-07092017
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Message: 3
The word "tikkun" in kabbalistic tradition means repair - repair the world. And the world
repaired, as the kabbalists describe it, resembles the world of an anarchist dream very
well: all power goes out, the law is devoid of any content. ---- Repair requires not so
much the destruction of evil as the search for and protection of what in this world can
save. Kabbalists talk about the sparkles of the divine light that are already here, only
to find them and free them. Gilles Deleuze will write about a "community of explorers"
filled with "faith, but rather confidence - not faith in another world, but trust in this
world." Repair can only be done inside this world and only with our hands. ---- Faith in
the world has nothing to do with incipient satisfaction. In 2000, the French collector
Tiqqun pointed out that the only way out of the night that we are thinking today is to
abandon the fortress of identity, discovering that everything we are is ultimately not
ours, foreign, temporarily used. Instead of attaching to the spectacle of Polishness,
Europeanness, Fighting Poland or the career of a senior manager - we need the courage to
go, wander, migrate. What connects us with others is the common experience of beings who
are surprised by themselves.
In the journey towards communion with others, we can support books that let you see
something unfamiliar, think differently than before. For the Tiqqun group, one such book
was the Community, which is coming to Giorgio Agamben. In 2001, eleven years after the
publication of this book, Agamben added a section titled "Tiqqun de la noche". This is a
sign of sympathy for the French collectivist, but the nighttime tikkun is also a practice
of reading the holy Shavuot holy night by texts that help to fix the world.
In Yiddish, the language of the Jews of Eastern Europe, the word "tikkun" was "tikn". It
is no coincidence that at the beginning of the twentieth century in our part of the world
anarchism has gained a particularly strong response among the Jews. Michel Löwy argued
that liberal ideals link with the tikn concept of a particular relationship - the affinity
of choice.
The "Tikn" series is created in cooperation with the Publishing House of the Trojka
Brotherhood. We intend to publish short texts whose authors and authors do not always
declare themselves "anarchists", yet they have an affinity with the anarchist ideal. We
want these texts to become widely available, we want to free them from academic gravity
and bring them back into widespread use. We believe that these small and cheap booklets
that you can easily carry with you will help repair the world.
www.bractwotrojka.pl
https://www.facebook.com/SeriaTikn/
http://www.rozbrat.org/kultura/ksiazki/4562-o-nowej-serii-wydawniczej-tikn
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Message: 4
HOUSING IS SOCIAL RIGHT ---- The aggravation of the attack by the state and the bosses on
the majority of society continues, through the looting of social wealth. The suffocating
grid that they have set up around us creates even more favorable conditions for the
ever-increasing disintegration of social achievements of the past decades. ---- Already,
basic social commodities such as electricity, water, feeding, health, housing have been
targeted. Especially for the first residence, it has long been routed by the state and the
banks. The development of a militant and intransigent movement against auctions has, in
many cases, effectively blocked their conduct, inside and outside the courts. ---- Today,
the inability of the state and capitalist system to draw consensus on its plans leads to
the method of electronic auctions through the legislation of a relevant online platform.
The insidious manipulations of bosses, bankers and political exponents will fall into the
gap. No attempt to evict will be tolerated. Safeguard our neighborhoods, apply social
solidarity and class self-organization in practice.
The only alternative is solidarity and social and class struggles. Employees themselves,
the unemployed, the youth to live in our own hands, organize and fight collectively,
self-organized and uninvolved, in every social and workplace, in schools and faculties,
workplaces, neighborhoods and roads. For the total rupture with their world that generates
poverty, impoverishment, death. For a society of equality, solidarity and freedom, where
housing will be self-evident good for all and not commodity
TO ORGANIZE THE SOCIAL-CLASSIC SELF-ASSEMBLY
NO HOUSE IN HAND TABLES
CONCENTRATION OF EVERY WEDDING TO 3.30 AT THE PATRIES HOLIDAYS
anarchist group "dwarf horse" - a member of the AP
ipposd.wordpress.com
https://ipposd.wordpress.com/2017/09/06
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