Here is an unofficial statement by the online editor of the Montreal IWW's website on the "violence" decried by the media, and the real violence (and hypocrisy) of our corrupt political-economic system.

Violence!
Alors que les libertés civiles et l’habeas corpus ont été suspendu à Toronto pour la durée du sommet, que la police a multiplié les arrestations et les perquisitions sans mandat, les éditorialistes et les commentateurs politiques montent aux barricades pour défendre un système pourri de l’intérieur contre la « violence » des méchants casseurs.

Mais cette dénonciation cache la réalité d’un système qui carbure à la violence, à l’oppression, à l’exploitation. Si elle est spectaculaire, la casse matérielle n’est rien comparée à la violence quotidienne du capitalisme. Ce n’est pas une violence que l’on voit parce qu’elle ne fait pas les manchettes, mais elle fait beaucoup plus de victimes que les quelques vitrines et automobiles qui ont fait les frais de la colère populaire à Toronto en fin de semaine.

Ceux que les éditorialistes et les faiseurs d’opinions des monopoles médiatiques oublient quand ils dénoncent les manifestants, ce sont les 2 canadiens par jour qui meurent au travail, la plupart du temps suite à une négligence des patrons; ce sont les milliers de blessés au travail, qui sortent souvent de cette expérience ruinés et détruits; ce sont les syndicalistes colombiens que Coca-Cola fait assassiner; ce sont les immigrants qui triment à 3$ l’heure dans des emplois précaires et inhumains, traqués par la police de l’immigration; ce sont ces femmes qui, viellies prématurément par des années de travail trop dur et sous-payé, à supporter les caprices des boss et leur insolence, finissent leur vie sur l’aide sociale parce que plus personne ne veut d’elles; ce sont les travailleurs chinois d’Apple, qui se suicident pour échapper à leur sort misérable; ce sont ces familles qui perdent leur maison aux États-Unis, en Espagne, en Irlande, parce que des banques rapaces les ont plumés comme des poulets; ce sont ces millions de travailleurs, partout sur la planète, qui vivent dans la peur du lendemain, du chômage, de la pauvreté abjecte; ce sont ces enfants qui, le premier juillet, se retrouvent sur le troittoir ou dans des taudis, faute de logements abordables; ce sont les travailleuses domestiques phillipines, à qui les agences qui les placent disent qu’il est normal de se faire violer, et qui se voient refusées jusqu’à la CSST; ce sont ces travailleurs migrants qui cueillent nos tomates, font les récoltes dans nos champs, et qui sont bafoués, volés, humiliés par des entreprises sans scrupules; ce sont ces milliards d’humains qui, sur terre, triment toute leur vie pour que quelques-uns aient tout, et tous les autres, rien.

C’est ça, la violence. Ça fait partie du capitalisme, et ça ne disparaîtra qu’avec lui.

Les Péladeau, les Desmarais, les Rémillard – bref les propriétaires des média – n’en ont rien à foutre de ces gens qui subissent la violence quotidienne de leur système; ce sont des gens qui n’ont pas intérêt à ce que le système change, à ce qu’une plus grande justice s’installe. Ce sont eux qui ont tout, qui décident tout, avec leur amis des classes dominantes. Ils ne veulent pas que l’on remette en question leur pouvoir, leurs revenus, leurs richesses.

Alors ils achètent des gens, des « intellectuels », qui produisent un discours pour servir leurs intérêts, pour convaincre les gens que le problème, ce n’est pas la violence quotidienne du capitalisme, qui tue, mutile, torture et exploite.Ils veulent que l’on croit que le problème, ce sont les casseurs, les manifestants, ceux qui sont indignés par l’injustice et qui la trouve intolérable.

Ces gens ne veulent pas que l’on voit les rencontres du G20 pour ce qu’elles sont: des réunions antidémocratiques, cyniques, dans lesquelles les riches et les puissants se partagent le monde en fonction de leurs seuls intérêts.

Ces réunions sont tellement anti-démocratique que la constitution et la charte des droits, que les éditorialistes chérissent en paroles quand elle garanti le droit de propriété, ne s’applique plus pour limiter l’arbitraire policier, pour garantir la liberté de circulation, la liberté d’expression. Le Canada n’est un État de droit que dans la mesure ou aucune opposition ne menace leurs maîtres, où rien ne conteste réellement leur pouvoir.

Un dernier mot sur la stratégie
Certains ont critiqué la stratégie – si s’en était une – de la Convergence des luttes anticapitalistes, qui a appelé les gens à venir manifester à Toronto. Ces critiques soulignent que le résultat était prévisible, certains déplorent que la casse nuise à la conquête de l’opinion publique, d’autres pensent qu’il faut tenter de développer les forces de changement social sur un terrain plus local, mais mieux enraciné.

Toutes ces critiques ont du vrai. En particulier je pense que les militants et les militantes devront tenter de construire des forces de changement social là où leur travail peut aller en profondeur, là où ils peuvent s’enraciner dans leurs lieux de travail, leurs communautés, leurs milieux de vie.

Mais le débat sur la stratégie et la tactique ne doit pas occulter la question politique de fond derrière les récents événements de Toronto. Par leurs actes, les manifestants ont d’abord et avant tout fait résonner la voix des sans voix, et ils en paient maintenant le prix.

Et c’est là l’essentiel.

—————-

À l’heure d’écrire ces lignes, je n’ai pas pu consulter les membres du syndicat au sujet de la position que nous souhaitions adopter face aux événements de Toronto et aux manifestations contre le G8/G20. Comme le sujet est d’importance, j’ai pris sur moi, en tant qu’éditeur responsable du site, de réagir à chaud. La position exprimée ici est donc personnelle, bien que je crois qu’elle respecte les politiques des IWW et l’esprit général qui nous anime.

===============
While civil liberties and habeas corpus were suspended in Toronto for the duration of the summit, the police have stepped up arrests and searches without a warrant, editorial writers and political commentators mount the barricades to defend a rotten system of inside against the "violence" of evil thugs.

But this masks the reality denunciation of a system that thrives on violence, oppression, exploitation. If it is spectacular, the material damage is nothing compared to the daily violence of capitalism. This is not violence that we see because it does not generate headlines, but it is far more victims than the few shop windows and cars that have borne the brunt of popular anger in Toronto this weekend .

Those editorial writers and opinion makers of media monopolies forget when they denounce the demonstrators, they are the 2 Canadian per day who die at work, mostly due to negligence of employers, are the thousands of injured work, which often come out of this experience ruined and destroyed, it is the Colombian trade unionists as Coca-Cola is killed, they are the immigrants who toil for $ 3 an hour in precarious and inhuman, hunted by the police of the immigration, it is these women, premature aging by years of working too hard and underpaid, to support the whims of bosses and their insolence, ending up on welfare because nobody wants them; Chinese workers are Apple, who commit suicide to escape their plight it is those families who lose their homes in the United States, Spain, Ireland, because banks raptors have plucked like chickens; what are these millions of workers around the world who live in the fear of uncertainty, unemployment, abject poverty, it is these children who, on July 1, are found on sidewalks and in slums, lack of affordable housing are the phillipines domestic workers, to whom the agencies that place say it is normal to be raped, and who are denied until the CSST these are migrant workers who pick our tomatoes are crops in our fields, and who are abused, robbed and humiliated by unscrupulous companies, are the billions of humans on earth, toiling all their lives so that few had any, and all the others, nothing .

That's violence. That is part of capitalism, and it does not disappear with him.

The Peladeau, the Desmarais, Remillard - brief media owners - do not give a damn about those people who suffer daily violence in their system, they are people who have no interest in seeing that the system changes , to that greater justice moves. It is they who have everything, who decide everything, with their friends of the ruling classes. They do not want to call into question their power, their income, their wealth.

So they buy people, intellectuals, producing a discourse to serve their interests, to convince people that the problem is not capitalism's daily violence that kills, maims, torture and want exploite.Ils is believed that the problem, what are the rioters, protesters, those who are outraged by injustice and who finds it intolerable.

These people do not want you see the G20 meetings for what they are: anti-democratic meetings, cynical, in which the rich and the powerful divide the world according to their own interests.

The meetings are so anti-democratic constitution and bill of rights, the editorialists cherish words when it guaranteed the right of ownership, no longer applies to limit the arbitrary police, to guarantee freedom of movement, freedom of expression. Canada is a rule of law to the extent that any opposition threatens their masters, where nothing really deny their power.

A final word on strategy
Some have criticized the strategy - if it was - the convergence of anti-capitalist struggles, which called people to come out and show in Toronto. These critics point out that the result was predictable, some were disappointed that the case of harm to the conquest of public opinion, others think that we should try to develop the forces of social change on a site more local, but more firmly.

All of these criticisms were true. In particular I think Activists should try to build forces of social change where they work can go deeper, wherever they may take root in their workplaces, their communities, their living environments.

But the debate on strategy and tactics should not obscure the fundamental political issue behind the recent events Toronto. By their actions, protesters were first and foremost is the resounding voice of the voiceless, and they are now paying the price.

And this is essential.

------

At this writing, I could not see union members about the position we wanted to adopt in dealing with events in Toronto and the protests against the G8/G20. As the topic is important, I took upon myself, as editor responsible for the site, respond to hot. The position expressed here is personal, although I think it meets the policies of the IWW and the general spirit that animates us.

All this information is from the Defend CSAAWU Campaign Facebook page, organized with help by the Cape Town branch in formation. Please take a moment to join the facebook page and see what you can do to support farm workers rights in South Africa.


A Backgroud of South African Farms

There is outright poverty and poverty wages, the social fabric in rural areas is falling apart, there is social decay with increasing alcohol abuse, drug abuse, teenage pregnancy, early school leavers, HIV/AIDS and other social problems as well as the increase of violence against women. Violence in general is a very big problem as there is no culture of respect for human rights from the farmer/farm managers and thus the farm community and workers do not know what it is to live in an environment where you can freely exercise your democratic rights as enshrined in our country’s constitution. If you join a union even the very little you have is under threat by union bashing farmers. What is required is a fundamental change to the very structure or rural society – our mandate is to bring hope to the poor and defenceless on farms, to restore human dignity and confidence amongst the rural working class is central to our campaigns. To empower the rural working class to free themselves!

More than 1.7 million have been evicted from farms since 1994 and evictions continue to be daily occurrences. Apartheid conditions still reign supreme in rural areas and especially on farms. Master-servant relationships and apartheid practice go unchallenged by political parties and especially the state, despite the fact that apartheid was declared a crime against humanity by the world. Intimidation of farm workers by farmers is a powerful weapon which keeps the rural masses in poverty. Intimidation takes many forms including assaults on farm workers, women and children which continue unabated and the police and legal system continue to fail the poor. The use of labour brokers push wages down and poverty to the extreme. Is this not violence against a poor and defenceless people?

The white farmer’s have a mighty organisation in Agri-South Africa, with wealth and influence to back them whilst farm worker organisations remain weak and poor. White farmers own about 87% of productive land, only 3% - 5% of farm workers are organised and the vast majority of black people are landless. These uneven relationships in terms of power and access to land contribute to these inhumane conditions on farms and the confidence of farmers to maintain their apartheid practices. CSAAWU has thrown its full weight into building a strong mass based rural movement (ALARM) with other progressive farm organisations and NGO’s to get the balance right in terms of power and land.

A background of CSAAWU

CSAAWU was formed because of the appalling conditions of farm workers and farm dwellers on South African farms. There is extreme poverty, no benefits for workers and farm workers constitutional and human rights are continuously undermined, including their right to join a union of their choice. Farm workers houses are in very bad conditions (see our pictures) and not fit for human habitat, there are also no toilets and workers and their families have to make use of the bush. This is the case on the majority of South African farms.

CSAAWU was launched 3 years ago and is registered at the Department of Labour as a trade union. CSAAWU membership now stands at 1000 paid-up members and 500 unpaid members. Our members are located in the southern part of the Western Cape and Cape Metro. Our union mandate is to fight for a living wage, better working conditions for all farm workers, land for the landless and a better rural life, free of want and hunger for all farm dwellers. Since CSAAWU’s inception 3 years ago the union has decided not only to focus on labour matters but also on access to land for the landless and community issues: Thus the launching of the ‘TEEN ARMOED VELDTOG’ (TAV) – Anti-poverty campaign. We have since taken up many struggles to unite the community and workers around common issues confronting them.

CSAAWU Demands to address poverty and assist in restoring human dignity by negotiating with farmers for the following:

1. A minimum wage of R 2500 (approximately $ 342) per month for farm workers
2. Property rights: the houses people stay in become their property
3. Families without houses on farms to be provided with houses by farmers
4. Houses to be upgraded as houses on most farms are in terrible condition
5. Transport to be provided to school, hospital and shops
6. In cases where school fees are still paid, to be paid by farmers
7. Compensations to retired farm workers
8. A 13th cheque
9. A good pension fund
10. Crèche facilities
11. Land to be made available to support food security (food gardens)
12. Three months paid maternity leave
13. Five days family responsibility leave
14. Workers must be paid for 45 hours a week if it rains
15. Training and development of farm workers must happen by using the Agri-Seta funds

Union Policy:

1. No union official to earn more than a skilled worker
2. All union leaders are subject to recall
3. Union structures under the discipline of members
4. Members respect union policy
5. Collective decision making and consultation
6. Mandate of members being carried out
7. No secret meetings with the bosses without the knowledge of workers
8. No changing mandate of members without their knowledge
9. Negotiations are not the responsibility of individuals but the collective responsibility of hte entire union leadership
10. A wage conference before wage negotiations
11. Shop Stewards to have a minimum of one meeting a month with members
12. Grievances of members must be brought to management/farmers attention no later than 48 hours after they have been reported to the union
13. Shop Stewards to have monthly meetings with management to address shop floor issues
14. Continued deepening of workers democracy through experience
15. Officials will not be paid overtime as the unions is still developing a mass base
16. Fundraising should be done by all CSAAWU members
17. Union income is minimal considering the task facing it

From Libcom.org:

CNT: Make Spain’s general strike indefinite

Spain's fifth general strike hasbeen set for September 29th amidst massive public sector cuts and attacks on job security passed by the ruling Socialist Party - an

d the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo is calling for it to be made indefinite.

Following a one day public-sector strike earlier this month the union is warning that “gesture strikes” will not be enough to force the government to change course.

In a statement after the June 8th event they said: “The government’s plans to stabilise the economy through reducing the public deficit by 11% have placed the cost of the economic crisis on the shoulders of the disadvantaged.

“It is evident that the proposals are designed to satisfy banks and employers by compromising with the neoliberal designs that prevail in the EU.”

“If there had been earlier mobilisations the government would not have dared to present the measures announced and would have had to cut elsewhere. It would have had to seek income where the money really is – on the bench, through corporate taxes, inheritance, hedge funds etc.

“We believe it is a mistake to continue ‘negotiating’ labour reform, which is simply a concession to employers. The only possiblility for correcting this situation is to fight this economic aggression through social confrontation, to continue and expand protests to all sectors.”

“These great evils can only be treated with great remedies, and such remedies do not include, of course, a 24-hour general strike which, assuming that UGT and CCOO (the two major reformist unions in Spain) dared to actually convene one, would act only as a giant safety valve for employee discontent.

“An indefinite general strike paralysing the country until the government withdraws anti-worker and anti-social actions would by contrast act as a binder for workers to recover their class consciousness and act together, with an eye to the destruction of the capitalist system through social revolution which is the only truly effective medicine against congenital diseases of the system.

Larger TUC-style unions called the public-sector strike on June 8th, which the left claimed got 75% of public sector workers out (state sources put it 16%) and saw tens of thousands of people on the streets in protest. The public sector accounts for around 2.5 million jobs in Spain. However the measure has made little impact on narrowly-passed plans to slash 5% from public sector pay, part of a 15 billion euro package of austerity measures being implemented in the next few years.

Other measures include the uncoupling of pension payments from inflation, an end to tax breaks for new parents and cuts in public investment and development aid of up to 6 billion euros. The Party is also taking the opportunity to “free up the labour market” by making it easier to hire and fire workers, a measure which would be likely to help drive a general strike outside the public sector.

Its actions, taken as Spain is threatened by international markets over its debt ratio, are widely seen as a betrayal of the electoral promises which put the Socialist Party (PSOE) and Jose Zapatero into power in 2004 on the back of widespread discontent with the right, though anarchist groups in the country have pointed to the situation as emblematic of party politicians’ inability to represent working people.

In an editorial for the periodical CNT, the union noted: “Economic crises are inherent in the capitalist system and will, unfortunately for humanity, regularly occur as long as the system exists.

“At the end of the day, the problem lies in the balance of power between two social classes with conflicting interests - the bourgeois class, which holds exclusive ownership of the means of production and distribution, and the proletarian class, which has no more than their manual and intellectual labour to sell as dearly as possible. The salary of the employee, and therefore the worker himself, is just another cost of production like machinery, electrical power or fuel.

“And when the worker is considered this way, not as a human being but as a cost to be cut without a second thought, you can do with them what you will, without remorse. That is neither more nor less than what capitalists do with us now.

“We can not remain silent before these measures announced by the government, which will result in yet more desecration of labour right to add to a long list of infamies imposed since this pompously-named “democracy” came into existence. Lowering the salaries of officials and freezing or eliminating pensions, among other measures, are not appropriate ways to solve the so-called crisis, and will have the determined opposition of the CNT.”

- Discussion thread on libcom.org

- An edited version of this article first appeared in Freedom anarchist newspaper

from Tronto Media Coop:

Sacco and Vanzetti in Ottawa: How Media and Police are Politicizing the RBC Arson Case

BLOG POST posted on June 23, 2010 by Jesse Freeston

On August 23rd, 1927, Ferdinando Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed in Massachusetts. The two were convicted of a double-murder committed during an armed robbery. The trial and media coverage focused on the political ideology of the two men, treating as secondary the material evidence related to the crime itself. The two men were members of the Galleanist Anarchist movement, and the trial was a watershed moment in the campaign to delegitimize the global anarchist movement as a whole.

The politicization of the trial extended to Judge Webster Thayer, who allegedly referred to the defendants as "anarchist bastards." This is one example of the many ways that the pair’s political activities and beliefs were invoked in a way that prohibited a fair trial from proceeding. Some of the most renowned thinkers of the day spoke out against the prejudice surrounding the trial, such as Upton Sinclair and Walter Lippmann. Fifty years later, a Massachusetts government commission confirmed the trial had been unfair and Governor Michael Dukakis declared a "Sacco and Vanzetti Memorial Day."

Sacco and Vanzetti come to Ottawa

On Saturday, Ottawa police announced the charging of three well-known Ottawa activists in connection with the May 18th arson of a branch of the Royal Bank of Canada. What follows is not a comment on the event in question, nor the guilt or innocence of the accused, but a condemnation of the treatment of the accused by the media and Ottawa police.

Much like Sacco and Vanzetti before them, these three are already receiving prejudicial media coverage. An inordinate amount of time and column inches are being dedicated to the activism that the three were known for. The CBC, for example, reported on Claude Haridge’s participation in a Palestinian rights march, and his attendance at the so-called 'Activism Course' hosted by former University of Ottawa professor Denis Rancourt. Rancourt has accused the CBC of insinuating this is evidence against the three.

The RBC arson was clearly a political act, as evidenced by the video that was released with it. Therefore, the politics of any suspect are a relevant discussion. But that discussion should not replace discussion about the material evidence, much less be presented as evidence in and of itself. Nor should it come at the cost of media oversight of the police investigation.

Ottawa Police fan the flames

The Ottawa Police have added to the show-trial appearance of the case. The original statement from the Ottawa Police, during a Saturday morning press conference, was that .50 caliber "sniper-style" ammunition was recovered during a raid of Haridge's home. The police sent out a release later in the day to say that the ammunition was actually 7.62mm. Both kinds of bullets are legal, but 7.62mm ammo is not used in sniper rifles.

It’s difficult to believe that trained firearm users, like police detectives, could confuse the drastically different looking bullets (see picture). Much less believable that such an error could make it into an important press conference. Const. Katherine Larouche, spokesperson for the Ottawa Police, told me that the bullets were found in a case marked “.50 cal,” which led to the erroneous press release. When asked if that meant the police didn't open the case before reporting their findings to the media, she declined to comment.

Many media outlets did correct the error, many didn't. Regardless, the damage has been done. Haridge will be thought of as a potential sniper and few will read the corrections.

During the press conference, the police also made a point of calling the bullets "military-grade". The ammunition expert I spoke to was surprised by the use of this term. Under international law, military ammunition must be 'jacketed' to stop bullets from exploding inside the victim. Thus they are less dangerous than other forms of ammo, such as hunting ammo that is designed to kill an animal as fast as possible. It is unclear why the police would use such a misleading term, but the media ate it up nonetheless.

Adding to the police's influence on the public's perception of the accused--keep in mind that it's the Ottawa public that will eventually form the sitting jury--are statements by Ottawa Police Chief Vern White. White has publicly called for the RCMP to file terrorism charges against the three, referring to the accused as "domestic terrorists." Lawrence Greenspon, lawyer for one of the accused, believes the police chief is acting irresponsibly, given that civilian life was not the target of the attack. Direct or indirect targetting of civilians is a necessary factor in most definitions of terrorism. However, Canada's controversial post-9/11 anti-terrorism law is much more ambiguous on this point.

"The charges are essentially damage-to-property-related charges," Greenspon told the Ottawa Citizen. "There's no talk of terrorism by anybody except our chief of police."

Greenspon also scolded federal Public Safety Minister Vic Toews. Toews held a news conference on Saturday in which he said:

"The dedication and tireless work of police has once again succeeded in making our communities safer."

Greenspon accused Toews of violating the accused's right to the presumption of innocence.

Police and media endangering G-20 protesters

The treatment of the case by media and authorities has not only jeopardized the right to due process, but also the safety of protesters descending on Toronto this week for the G20. In their Saturday evening report on the ammunition discovery, CTV News--Canada's most watched national newscast--reported that "police say (the ammunition discovery) could indicate the kind of violence to expect at next week's summits."

The Globe and Mail--Canada's most-read daily newspaper--ran an article by Colin Freeze which reported that, “the seizure (of ammunition) is stoking police fears about what they could be up against when protesters amass during the G8/G20 summits next week.”

Some are viewing these statements as pre-justification for repression by the Toronto Police. This becomes very worrisome when viewed alongside the force's recent history of brutality, including accusations of murder in the death of Junior Manon on May 5th.

Let's put this into context: thousands of justifiably angry marchers, artists, journalists, parents, children, and others with grievances surrounding the G-8/G-20 summits are being targeted because legal ammunition was found on one man who should be presumed innocent until proven guilty.

This narrative was seeded by Ottawa Police Chief White. “I ask Ottawa residents to remain vigilant, before and during the G8-G-20, and continue to report any suspicious activity to police,” reads the lone quote attributed to White in the force's first press release on the arrests. At the police's Saturday press conference, representatives of the Toronto Police were present. A five-hour drive from their jurisdiction, no reason was given for their participation, but the effect was to reinforce the connection between the Ottawa arrests and the activists in the streets of Toronto. A connection that appears in every single report on the arrests that I have encountered.

The irresponsibility of the media lies not in reporting these police statements, but in doing so without a hint of analysis on either the logic or the consequences these statements can have.

Anyone remember Montebello?

While the media and police give credence to an irrational fear of protesters, they ignore the very real security concerns of those in the street. Worries that are founded in recent history.

In 2007, the Sûreté du Québec (Quebec’s provincial police force) were discovered mobilizing rock-wielding agents provocateurs at the Security and Prosperity Partnership meeting in Montebello (see video here, and police admission here. That same day, thousands of peaceful protesters were tear-gassed, shot with rubber bullets, and beaten by hundreds of police officers. No government inquiry was ever opened to determine the source of the order to send rock-carrying officers into the crowd. No member of government or police was ever disciplined. Numerous social justice and civil liberties groups screamed about the precedent the lack of accountability would set for future convergences.

Enter the G-8/G-20, the first conference of international heads of state in Canada since Montebello. Sid Ryan, president of the Ontario Federation of Labour, suggested provocateurs might be used again to incite violence. Violence that might be interpreted by the media as justification for the conference's controversial $1 billion security budget. The head of the Toronto Police Association, Mike McCormack, responded by calling for Ryan's resignation, adding that "(Ryan) should be writing fiction because obviously he isn’t dealing with reality."

The Harper administration has ignored requests for a pledge that provocateurs won't be used this week like they were in 2007.

In November 2008 the IWW Vancouver branch gave Tom Morello one of our shirts. Well, check out look at this photo of him wearing it at the 25th Anniversary show of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, alongside Bruce Sringsteen, Billy Joel, Jackson Browne, and John Fogerty. Good company.

Pretty cool. Here is a youtube clip of Bruce Stringsteen and Tom (wearing
Vancouvers shirt) rocking out to the Ghost of Tom Joad.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLFLrTnue9s&feature=related

Call for Support (Sending Faxes and E-mails)


Dear Comrades,


ZSP [Polish Syndicalists] Warsaw kindly asks the sections to please send faxes and emails this weekend or Monday morning to the firms Turret Development in Poland and the Alter Group in the US. On Monday we will be visiting the office of Turret Development in Warsaw to demand they pay for plane tickets for 21 stranded Chinese workers and it would be helpful if they already have received faxes and emails before then.



21 Construction Workers Stranded in Warsaw


The workers came from the Xantung province to work in Poland. They paid huge money to an agency for these jobs and one-way tickets to Poland. They were hired by a company called Turret Development. Turret Development is owned by American businessman Michael Alter, president of the Alter Group, one of the ten largest commercial real estate developers in the United States. Alter has been investing in real estate in Poland and using cheap Asian labour for this work.


The people worked last year on the Wola Tower construction site in Warsaw, After that, they were sent by Turret to work in Lodz and in Olawa, doing finishing work in new flats during the winter.

This transfer of the workers was done illegally: Turret has no construction projects in these cities. It is unclear still whether they worked for a subcontractor related somehow to Alter's business (he has 15 companies registered in Poland), or they were subcontracted to another firm.


Turret Development at one point decided that they no longer desired the services of the workers and let them go.


The law in Poland is that work visas for citizens of countries like China expire immediately upon termination of the work contract with the employer who organized it. Upon termination of the contract, workers must leave the country within a few days. If they do not, they are considered illegal in the country and face deportation. Deportation is accompanied by a stamp in the passport which bars the worker from returning to work in the whole European Union for 5 years. Also, the workers may be held in detention for many months.


When Turret fired the workers, the local director decided to inform the Border Police and asked them to deport the workers. This was already some time ago. These people found other jobs but lost them because of problems with the Border Police.


Currently they are in a precarious situation. They are camped out on the lawn of the Chinese Embassy, which is out of Polish jurisdiction. Theoretically, the moment they cross the street, they may be arrested and deported.


Demands


Currently, there is no possibility to be rehired by Turret Development since it has no construction projects this year. Since, according to the law, the workers can only legally work for Turret, and since they already had bad experiences trying to work illegally, they would like to return home to China. We will demand that Turret Development take responsibility for the workers it is using and pay for their tickets home.

We will also be demanding to the authorities that no stamps be put in their passports for overstaying their visas in Poland.



Faxes / Emails


We ask that people send faxes and emails this weekend or before 12:00 local time on Monday.

Addresses:

Tomasz Dabrowski

Prezes

Turret Development
ul. Racławicka 114
02-634 Warszawa
tel: (+48 22) 30 10 156

fax:(+48 22) 30 10 152

e-mail: turret@turret.com.pl

office@turret.com.pl


Michael Alter

President

The Alter Group

5500 West Howard Street

Skokie, IL 60077

tel: (+01847) 568-5902

faxe: (+01847) 676-4302

e-mail: malter@altergroup.com



SAMPLE TEXT (You can change if you like)


Stop Exploitation of Workers! Buy Plane Tickets for Stranded Chinese Workers


Turret Development in Poland hired a group of workers from China to work on the Wola Tower construction project in Warsaw. It then illegally sent them to work in Olawa and Lodz before terminating their contract and contacting the Polish border guards about their deportation. Currently, 21 of these workers are stranded in Warsaw with no money to return home.


Turret Development and Alter Group: You have responsibilities towards the people you invite to work for you! Enough exploitation of cheap foreign labour!


We demand that you help these people return by buying them plane tickets.


Signed

The 'Belgrade Six' were released today, on the first day of their court hearing.

All six were charged for 'International Terrorism', maximum penalty 15 years imprisonment, for an action at Belgrade's Greek embassy which caused 18 Euros worth of damage.

The Belgrade Six have been imprisoned since their arrest in September 2009. They faced blackmail and abuse.

On the 24th of August 2009 a window of Belgrade's Greek embassy was painted with an anarchist A, had a window smashed and had minor smoke damage caused to it.

The action was carried out to protest the Greek State and to express solidarity with Todoris Iliopulos. Iliopulos was in an extremely critical situation, on the verge of death: he had been on hunger strike since July 10. His hunger strike was related to his imprisonment after the uprisings of December 2008 in Greece.

Although prisoners from that time had been released, Iliopulos was facing various charges for the December events on false testimony made by police.

The most known anarchist in Serbia, Ratibor Trivunac from the Anarcho-Syndicalist Initiative (ASI – the Serbian section of the International Workers’ Association) was interviewed in the press the day after the action at the Greek embassy. He stated that he did not know such a group and that this was not the way anarcho-syndicalists usually chose for their struggle.

However, he, just like the others from ASI, refused to condemn this act, which they considered to be nothing in comparison to the damage done by the repressive Greek state.

On September 3-4, six members of ASI were arrested, including Trivunac.

The case of the Belgrade Six has brought back recent memories of the region's dark political past, and their acquittal is seen as a major event in itself.

Activists in Stockholm, Sweden, were amongst the first internationals to find out about the release. Fifteen activists braced the snow and held a solidarity demonstration for the Belgrade Six outside the Serbian embassy of Stockholm today. The Serbian Ambassador came out to the demonstration to announce the breaking news.

Good News, everyone! A german court ruled today against the previous ruling that FAU could not act as a Union or call itself one. The judge's argument focused on freedom of speech as afundamental right.

the following is a poorly translated press release from the FAU:'

FAU wins Berlin trial of trade union freedom

Berlin, 06.10.2010

Before the Berlin Court of Appeals today the preliminary injunction to de facto prohibition against the FAU Berlin was lifted. As a result, the union may call again as such.

Neuhaus judge stressed the importance of freedom of expression as a fundamental right. He questioned whether the applicant either as Babylon cinema in general come to demonstrable harm, when the FAU occurred in the operation as a trade union. The question of the collective ability to play no role.

In December 2009 the management of the FAU Berlin had also prohibit by injunction to call himself a trade union or trade union base. The Berlin FAU, as the strongest union in the plant had previously submitted a labor contract to negotiate.

"We are pleased that they have failed to banish the strongest and most active trade union in the movies. The ruling allows militant unions to be active. It has also shown that the means of injunction is not sufficient, may order a crippling industrial action, "said Lars Röhm, General Secretary of the FAU Berlin.

The Free Workers Union (FAU) is an anarcho-syndicalist trade union base, which advocates a militant operation working from the bottom.


Press: FAU Berlin Verbotsferfahren 10/06/2010

[For more information on today of the trial will be published here within the next few days to fau.org.]

12 Pei Wei workers were unjustly fired after they collectively decided to miss work in order to participate in the May 29 Demonstration Against the passage of SB 1070 hate bill, a bill which requires police officers, if they form a “reasonable suspicion” that someone is an illegal immigrant, to determine the person’s immigration status, effectivly legalizing racial profiling in Ariziona.

The Phoenix IWW came out for a June 5 informational picket demanding that Pei Wei reinstate with back pay all 12 fired workers.

orignially posted on Libcom.org

Anarcho-syndicalism in the 20th Century: a review


A review of Vadim Damier's 'Anarcho-syndicalism in the 20th Century' by Jared Davidson

For those who can read Russian, Vadim Damier’s two-volume study of the International Workers’ Association (IWA) is a comprehensive history of the worldwide anarchist labour movement in the early 20th Century. For the rest of us, Malcom Archibald has translated what is essentially a streamlined version of Damier’s larger work into English. Anarcho-syndicalism in the 20th Century is a broad survey of a movement often marginalised by Marxist academics, and is a welcome addition to the existing literature on anarcho-syndicalism. As Damier illustrates, anarcho-syndicalism was far from a outmoded, ineffective or petty-bourgeois movement — the practice of direct action and revolutionary struggle controlled and self-managed by the workers themselves extended to all countries of the world.

Damier: “Its appearance in so many settings has created a daunting task for historians who would do justice to its scope and diversity.” Exploring this diversity and its development from revolutionary syndicalism, its theoretical and tactical differences as it was practiced worldwide, and historical examples of anarcho-syndicalism in action, the reader gets a sense of how hundreds of thousands — indeed millions — of workers embraced the ideology of anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian communism, and put those ideas into practice.

The actions of anarchist-influenced workers and their struggle for freedom truly was an international movement. Although Europe is often the focus for historians, Damier does a great job in showing that stronger and numerically larger movements existed in Latin America — not to mention Japan, Korea and China, Africa, Eastern European nations and even Australasia. And although Damier does examine in detail the Spanish Revolution (and the fatal rejection of core anarchist principles by the leadership of the CNT), the international framework used throughout the book is a refreshing change from Eurocentric anarchist historiography and Spanish Exceptionalism.

The origins of the international syndicalist (and in turn anarcho-syndicalist) movement is explored in the first chapters. Using examples from around the globe, Damier argues that an explicit shift from revolutionary syndicalism to anarcho-syndicalism was signaled in 1919. In a speech made by German anarchist Rudolf Rocker at the 12th Congress of the FVdG (Free Association of German Trade Unions), a synthesis of anarchism and revolutionary syndicalism was put forward in opposition to co-opertaion with parliamentary activity, political affiliation, and co-operation with the German Communist Party. According to Damier, Rocker’s ‘Decleration about the Principles of Syndicalism’ helped clarify the ideology on which the anarcho-syndicalist movement was to be based.

Damier dedicates valuable space to the years up to and including the 1922 congress of the IWA, as it included debate on how anarcho-syndicalists should organise themselves, what tactics and structures enabled the most effective struggle, and what role they saw for their organisation after the revolution. The FVdG congress certainly influenced the IWA’s own decleration, the ‘Principles of Revolutionary Syndicalism’. As W. Thorpe points out, the decleration “signified an important advance in syndicalist thought, since it confirmed and made clear what had often only been implied in pre-war European syndicalism”. It put forward more strongly the opposition to political parties, the methods of the Bolsheviks and their associated trade unions, and moved past the political neutrality of the 1906 Charter of Amiens.

In Rocker’s 1919 speech, he had made it clear that the role of the anarcho-synidcalist union was not to manage the successful revolution. Instead, the management of production and consumption were to be transferred into the hands of Councils: “the organisation of enterprises and workshops by economic councils, the organisation of the whole of production by industrial and agricultural associations, and the organisation of consumption by workers exchanges”. The explicitly anarchist communist Argentine Regional Workers’ Federation (FORA) in its ‘Memorandum’ “catergorically rejected the notion that labour unions — organs which arose under capitalism in response to capitalist conditions and fulfilled a service as the best means of worker resistance against the State and Capital — would be transformed in the course of revolution into the basis and ruling organs of the new society”:

“With the liquidation of the capitalist production system and rule of the state, the syndicalist economic organs will end their historic role as the fundamental weapon in the struggle with the system of exploitation and tyranny. Consequently, thse organs must give way to free associations and free federations of free producers and consumers”.

Debates around structure and industrialisation continued into the 1920’s and 30’s. These were essentially debates between communist modes of distribution and a collectivist revisionism, which for sections of the French CGT and the German FAUD seemed more suitable to the industrial development at that time. Once the bearer of anarchist communism, many of the FAUD’s leading activists began to see distribution according to need as a ‘crazy idea’, calling instead for the study of capitalist economic categories, distribution according to ‘productivity’, and that ‘rationing by means of monetary regulation’ was ‘fairer’ than anarchist communism. The idea of stages of development crept into the movement. French theoretican Pierre Besnard advocated organisation in imitation of capitalist economic formations, so that the unions could become the nervous system of the new society, the organs of economic coordination and planning. The first stage, which Besnard called ‘libertarian communism’ would involve the preservation of the monetary system and distribution ‘according to labour’. Only the second stage (’free communism’) would carry to completion the ideal of a self-managed communist society.

For some in the IWA this signaled a dangerous influence of capitalist thinking, the depature from anarchist communism, and a slide towards centralisation and Marxist ‘gigantomania’. The FORA were particularly critical, and as Damier argues, presented one of the first thorough critiques of the Marxist viewpoint on history and historical determinism. “The new, free society should not develop according to the laws of the old society... but represent a decisive, radical break with it”. Socialism was not just an economic problem, but also a cultural and psychological one which extended outside of the factory gates. The self-activity and struggle of the workers themselves was more important in the destruction of capital than some linear stage of revolution outside of their control.

The Japanese federation Zenkoku Jiren were even more vocal in their opposition:

“The current system, they said, was based on the division of labour and the consequent hierarchy; this division and its attendant mechanisation deprived workers of any responsibility and required coordinating and administrative authorities incompatible with libertarian communism. Therefore the structure of the future free society could not be compatible with the existing authoritarian and capitalist structure. The new society must surmount industrialism with its soul destroying division of labour and base itself on a different conception of the interrelation of production and consumption, but with the emphasis on consumption”.

Instead, they argued for anarcho-syndicalism which challenged the continuation of society into groups according to occupation, the preservation of the factory system and centralisation, and the organisation of society on the basis of industrial unions. These would simply perpetuate the division of labour and the hierarchy of management. Instead, the free association of communes and councils would unite consumption and production after the revolution: organising according to a capitalist framework in the here and now would hinder, not help, these future structures.

The above arguments illustrate the diversity within the anarchist labour movement during it’s development. Damier also shows that these developments were important for a visible minority, if not the majority of workers in the 20th Century. In many cases struggle was more influenced by the ideas of Bakinin and Kropotkin than Marx or Engels — a point especially relevant now that Marxist-Leninism is relegated to the dustbin of history, and as workers look for a real alternative to both state socialism and capitalism. In illustrating the international movement and it’s debates, Damier makes available important themes for a new generation of anarchists, and helps point to current understandings of anarcho-syndicalism (such as ‘Strategy and Struggle’ by the Solidarity Federation). Although there were (and are) variants within the movement, it’s clear from Damier’s research that ‘Strategy and Struggle’ has historical precedence.

Unfortunately, the book gets a little sparse on actual examples of contemporary anarcho-syndicalism — only briefly touching on the splits within the IWA after World War Two, and more recent struggles. However, to have a broad survey of a movement and it’s ideas in one place is a valuable resource in itself and worth checking out. Anyone interested in a basic history of anarcho-syndicalism, the IWA, and a libertarian alternative to capitalism will be well pleased.

From Issue 1 of the Irish Anarchist Review, May 2010

The IWW and The Making of a Revolutionary Working Class Counter culture

Review: The IWW and The Making of a Revolutionary Working Class Counter culture
Paperback. Charles H Kerr (2003)

A number of years ago Franklin Rosemont, Illinois based and a wobbly red card carrier himself, carved out a massive slab of social history called Joe Hill: The IWW and the Making of a Revolutionary Working Class Counterculture contributing to the mythology of the IWW that haunts the imagination of so many radicals.

Whatever about an unfortunately dated show-card cover – inside there’s a breathtaking orgy for the mind of the contrary worker. So with that said, you are probably expecting a short biography of Joe Hill disguised as a review, and with good reason.

Hill’s background was Swedish, he emigrated to the states and laboured in the San Pedro docks and became involved in the IWW there; leading him to furore into Mexico “under the Red Flag” of it’s revolution and later to travel to Canada to support the 1912 Fraser River railroad strike.

And of course along the way he knocked off a dozen or so labour movement standards in strike camps across the country, songs that’d eventually make their way across the Atlantic to our own pubs with time. Towards the end of 1915, he was fitted up as a “stick up man” in Salt Lake City for the murder of an ex-cop.

So from the start Rosemont is forced to build his Hill narrative from “an armful of solid facts, some strong possibilities, and a bedraggled suitcase of educated guesses” - apart from some oral histories and letters passed down, there wasn’t much to sketch his life from.

An old wobbly, Richard Brazier, who matched Hill’s traits of song and migratory labour, summed up the biographical problem facing Rosemont rather neatly: “we wobblies were very restless men and, as we were mostly migratory workers, were on the move continually...Most of us were only concerned with the present, and our origins and pasts were seldom talked about.”

What’s been left to float down the stream of history to us about Hill is mostly legend. Myths themselves exert a mobilising passion on us but to learn from history, as Rosemont’s wants us to, requires clear cutting through any approach that hoists Hill up as another “superman, saint and saviour” or an almost comic book like abnormal “proletarian super hero.”

These popular caricatures of Hill as “labour’s supreme organiser” imply a herding of the masses, and are deeply antithetical to the every day wobbly disdain, Hill’s own included, for them ordering us from above. As the author points out, this hagiography writing arose from the Stalinist cultural tradition’s attempt to integrate Hill into their political pantheon, much like how our lot squabble over the bones of Connolly.

The book can be read in a number of ways; on one hand it rescues the IWW from Stalinist critics that fashionably flounced after Russian Bolshevism; it gives insight to the politics and personalities of the union itself and rescues Hill the man. But as suggested by the subtitle, it’s Rosemont’s treatment of how the IWW built a counter hegemonic working class culture that is the most interesting facet of this brick thick work.

Hill’s life path becomes a tool for Rosemont, a scaffolding around which to thread an examination of the wider wobbly milieu and the culture it generated. From this angle he quickly sketches the IWW as a deeply indigenous radical traditional, both uniquely American and working class: spawned from the melting pot of immigration, where democratic ideals flirted with European socialisms and a heavy refusal of the dogmatism prevalent among the early American left.

Born in an era of capitalistic expansion and the brute pitting of class interest against class interest in dusty company towns, places where the mediation of a welfare state was an idlers dream; the wobblies argued that the self-organisation of working people against exploitation, to provide themselves a means to life, required, direct, rather than later action. One cartoon bluntly puts it: a migratory worker chases a pork chop being waved by Lady Liberty while a shop keeper, under a sign engraved “working man’s friend,” shouts from his porch: “Hey lad! Why don’t you stay in one place and vote the socialist ticket?”

Rosemont places huge importance on everyday collective intellectualism, a practice he finds uniquely special to the early wobblies. From the vantage of the 1970’s, Fred Thompson, an IWW old timer in Chicago, reminisced about the “marxism in overalls of his youth,” how his fellow wobs used theory as a method of getting at reality. Resisting divisions into intellectuals and activists, Wobs met through study groups and in workers colleges, being both familiar with the exploitative character of work from theory and experience, they ribbed in iconoclastic songs about old “Karl Marx’s Whiskers.”

The alternative to is presented in a cartoon from One Big Union Monthly called The Ass in the Lion’s Skin. The American Communist Party, or the Comical Party as the Wobs had it, pops up as a Frankenstien’s monster – not patched together from those dispossessed by a modernizing capital, but hewn from poorly digested ideologues,
a clumsy vaudeville villian, wearing Lienknecht’s hat, Lenin’s coat and Gorky’s hair and totally alien to the experiences of American workers.

We all know the IWW was a union movement, but Rosemonts focus bends more towards it as a social movement of class, with its union halls evoking parallel principles for how culture and society could take shape once the shell of capital was cracked. This culture was important to the IWW, both as a method of leaving organisational stains in workplaces constantly washed over with high turnovers, and to spread politics in a lightening fast, almost viral manner.

It made use of the social technologies of working class people during the period and its philoso- phy of disobedience was carried as much on the informal rail road of migratory hobo’s travelling through the circuits of capital from harvest to dock than through it’s official publications.

In 1914 a Californian economist Carleton Parker surveyed eight hundred casual labourers, noting half were familiar with the Wobbly programme: “where a group of hoboes sit around a fire under a rail way bridge many of the group can sing IWW songs without the book. This was not so three years ago.”

Much has been written on the failings of the IWW, but its real success was contributing a tense residue of emerging ideology of class power to American popular culture, one that accompanied and flanked their organising, hammering away in song that “if the workers took a notion, every mine and every mill, will at their command stand still” as well as organising shops.

Rosemont makes clear how other organisations of the left published papers to be consumed by workers reaching into libraries for pre-cast models straight off the assembly line as it were. Taking a different approach, the Wobblies put out material by pissed off workers and for other bored workers. Their writings were quirked with the consequences of alienation, often spilling over into a romantic vision and a poetry that could animate their struggles through immense criticism of life as lived.
Just because they’d become radicalised, they refused to think themselves out of their class. So, within the IWW literature he presents, class isn’t talked about just in theoretical terms. It was given the nuance of different characters and contemporary behaviors, creating a point of identification for the reader and birthing the social actors that could carry out the great Wobbly liberation.

On the other side of the great Wobbly class divide we have the masters and their Pinkterton detec- tives, “sky pilot” clergy and most famously of all, illustrated in the form of Mr Blockhead, the sniveling work place fool that buys just about everything the boss has to tell him.

The book could equally serves as perfect coffee table fodder with pages and pages of simple yet gorgeous humorous art leaving you reeling with thoughts of how impoverished our contemporary movement is despite the reign of knock off Photoshop copies.

The first generations of Wobs used silent agitators - stickers stuck prominently around workplaces, in a technique scammed from the hobo habit of leaving marks on safe places, or near their camps. Many echo contemporary adbusts. One has the stripes of the American flag replaced with lines accounting for patriot driven anti-radical legislation, and another has the HMV dog listening to his masters voice crackle “be concentrated, work hard!”

Card games were used to illustrate anti-capitalist economics too, simple graphics dotting the IWW’s politics around the deck. Missing a Mister Block cartoon, an early paper even carried a joke futurist etching of a square to represent that common arselick.

Their habit of soap boxing of course was a very immediate form of communication, utilizing talented story tellers and orators that cleverly used manufactured folklore to emphasize, for example, anti-racist solidarities such as the origins of the IWW “wobbly” pronunciation from a Chinese chief and other ways to push back capital. One such character, Jack Phelan known as the “silver tongued boy orator,” fought in Mexico like Hill, and always stood up, with an umbrella over his head whatever the weather, and let roar “help, help I’m being robbed!” Once a crowd gathered he’d launch into: “I’m being robbed by the master class” in an intriguing mashing of performance art into radical street rhetoric.

Many of the classic IWW songs, such as “Long Haired Preacher” were parodies of Salvation Army hymns, an organisation union soap boxers battled with for street corner space before speaking from the stoop. Often banned by the local judiciary, leading to mass jailings as more and more ploughed into towns like Spokane to take the place of the busted.

Its possible to be critical of Rosemount, letting his own words bite back against him, he describes one of his tangential paths from Hill a “digressive and admittedly speculative discussion.” And some of it really is.

Rosemont ends up seeking the Wobbly spirit in the world of the culturally hip, from surrealism to beat poetry, and by pleading to the images of these later sub culture rather than seeking out class counter cultures he veers way off. None of this denies the books stature as a worthy contribution in the absence of a more controlled and schematic approach to the autonomous counter culture bred by the IWW.

The book doesn’t really focus too much on why the IWW collapsed. Though the vicious anti-red repression and foreigner hysteria; how it was stamped into the ground and politically ruptured by others on the left during the twenties does get a look in. Maybe Rosemont saw little point poking around the corpse of the wobbly movement?

If the almost “what if” banter of the biographical aspect is a failing, the real value of Rosemont is read between the lines; how he smacks down ahistorical visions of working class culture. Asking us to look at what we have around us, what oddities and networks are already out there piercing through the shell that we can give revolutionary definition to, along lines suggested by Piet Mondrian, creating “images of what society must one day make a reality.”

Here’s where such social history is a viagara to the impotence of thought put into revitalising our radical labour movements. The radical cultural utopianism incubated and informing the IWW’s working class horizontalism, bred a movement that could sit alongside the daily lives of workers where an old time crafts unionism couldn’t, allowing them to express their dreams beyond work and build organizations relevant to the structural forms of employment foisted on them by a shifting capitalism.

That’s an organisational form we are starved of today and a pattern of resistance our own constantly moving service industry and out-sourced hobo’s could well do with. Pick up Rosemont if you want to look back for inspiration to push ourselves forward, not if you want to salivate over the wistful obscurity of history or write photocopied odes to dead movements.