Viva Ella Bradbury – our comrade and friend.

Focus E15 Campaign

Our dear friend and comrade Ella Bradbury (known more widely as Ellie), died on Friday 6 September at the age of 29 in Mexico City. This deeply sad news is a great shock and immense loss to Focus E15 campaigners. We send our love and condolences to Ella’s parents, her three brothers and to her wider family and friends, and welcome anyone at any point to our weekly Saturday street stall 12-2pm on Stratford Broadway to remember Ella together.

Ella first made contact with Focus E15 campaign in May 2015 when she was studying for her Masters in International Politics and Human Rights at City University in London. She was researching the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo from Buenos Aires in Argentina, a group of mothers that stood up to the 1976-1983 military dictatorship under which 30,000 people disappeared. These women refused to give up their fight to establish…

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Urgent: Miguel Peralta Being Denied Normal Visiting Hours as Punishment for Hunger Strike

Voices in Movement

21st September, 2019

Denunciation against the prison director in Cuicatlán, Oaxaca, Martin Porfirio Reyes Magdaleno, for violating the visiting rights of Miguel Peralta and for harassing his visitors.

After pressure exerted yesterday against the prison director in Cuicatlán, Martín Porfirio Reyes Magdaleno, demanding the entrance of a compañera to leave Miguel with the serum and honey necessary to continue his hunger strike, today again we denounce that Miguel’s visitor was removed from the prison after just one hour, when the visiting hours in the prison are Wednesday through Sunday 9-5.

This took place in spite of the fact that Miguel was put into isolation in exchange for his normal visiting hours. However, the director didn’t fulfill this agreement. Miguel is isolated and they are not letting his visitors stay for the duration of the normal visiting hours.

Furthermore, the compañera visiting Miguel today was harassed by the director of the prison, telling her that it was better if she visit him, the director, and not Miguel.

We invite you all to maintain attentive to Miguel’s situation, as the attitude of the authorities clearly hinders the accompaniment of Miguel during his hunger strike.

We invite you all to pressure the prison authorities by calling +52 1 236 374 0313, demanding Miguel’s rights be respected.

If it is possible to call the National Human Rights Commission to make a denunciation, that would also be helpful.

Open Meeting on The 2nd of October

London Anarchist Federation

In September 2020 the government will be rolling out compulsory lessons about LGBT+ relationships nation wide. When this scheme was trialed in Birmingham earlier this year there was a backlash against it and a rise in hate crime in the area, with the far right trying to jump on the band wagon.

With the potential for a national backlash in 2020 and a year to plan ahead, our gender and sexuality working group want to start discussing what we might be able to do to fight that backlash in London and further afield.

We will be holding an open meeting at 19:00 on Wednesday the 2nd of October at Freedom Bookshop to get our strategic thinking caps on.

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Red And Black Telly: LABOUR CONFERENCE 2019.

Argentina Reels from Soy and Beef Expansion

Toward Freedom

Record yields of soy and a boom in Argentine beef sales to China have been accompanied by the loss of native forests, accelerated soil degradation and water pollution – the consequence of a model that pins hopes of limitless macroeconomic growth on agricultural exports.

Some experts call this “bad development.”

Under President Mauricio Macri, who ends his four-year term in December, Argentina slashed, and in many cases completely eliminated, agricultural taxes and export permits, cancelled restrictions on foreign currency exchanges, and devalued the Argentine peso. He also enhanced the role of the agriculture ministry, making it the Ministry of Agribusiness.

Wheat shipments tripled, and soy brought in a third of the country’s dollars. In 2018, foreign sales of beef hit over half a million tonnes. China was the main destination.

In 2018 Argentina exported 500,000 tons of beef to China. Photo: Jorge Royan.

Yet, ecosystems could not support the stimulus.

“In Argentina, it seems that there was no other option than transgenic [genetically modified, or GM] seeds, the use of agrochemicals and to fumigate villages with glyphosate,” said Enrique Viale, an environmental lawyer.

High prices, new stance

Macri’s promotion of – and good relationship with – the agriculture sector contrasted with the confrontational stance adopted by his […]

Red And Black Telly: THE “SUPREME” COURT PONTIFICATES.

Save our lungs!

HAVERING SPECIAL

Picture Credit: Jennifer Blatchford/Save Gooshays Village Green Group

When Harold Hill was first developed in the 1950s, the town planners put a big emphasis on the provision of open green spaces.   They were considered by many Harold Hill residents to be the ‘lungs’ of the estate, and local people were assured by the powers-that-be that they would never be built on.  Although there has been a lot of new housebuilding in the area over the years, they have largely kept their word about not destroying the green spaces.  Until now, that is!  Havering Council announced plans earlier this year to build 64 houses on Gooshays Green in Gooshays Gardens.

Although we cannot deny that there is an urgent need for new housing,  the proposed development on Gooshays Green appears to be poorly thought-out.  As well  as the fact it will deprive locals of a much-cherished green space, the development…

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Dorset Radical Bookfair – Anarchy in the Sticks!

Anarchy in the Sticks!

A nice review from our comrades at Bristol AFed

Bristol AFed rarely miss a chance to get down to support our friends in Dorset, and this year’s Dorset Radical Bookfair was a great opportunity to do so again. It’s Dorset’s third bookfair, and took place at a fantastic and friendly venue, the Corn Exchange, in central Dorchester. But before going any further, it’s probably worth asking ‘why a bookfair’?

Anarchist (and radical) bookfairs have been a staple of the anarchist movement since the 1980s in Europe and beyond, and serve various roles. First and foremost, they are one of the most coherent public faces of anarchism, giving us the opportunity to counter the negative stereotypes and misconceptions around anarchism, in a (mostly) welcoming setting. Secondly, they also give us a chance to raise much-needed funds for various projects. Thirdly, we use the bookfairs as a chance to go over…

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Interview: “The Subterranean Fire Of Class Struggle” (Lucien van der Walt)

Lucien van der Walt

The Subterranean Fire Of Class Struggle: Professor Lucien van der Walt, Department of Sociology (Rhodes University)
By Luke Alfred (2015)

PDF online here.  

“Reports of the death of the broad working class are greatly exaggerated,” says Lucien van der Walt with mild but discernible flourish. “Too many experts believed it anachronistic, passé. But if you look around internationally, and locally too, that’s just not the case. It is bigger than ever; its rumblings shake the world. It has now overtaken the peasantry as the biggest class, as the majority of humanity.”

Van der Walt, a Professor in the Department of Sociology, has a wide range of academic interests including anarchism and syndicalism, labour and left-wing history and politics, and working-class responses to neo- liberal economics. While he’s happy to admit that some of the grand political narratives like Marxism-Leninism and Third World nationalism have foundered, he nonetheless believes that…

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FASCISM AND ITS CURE

Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group

This article first appeared in The Anvil Vol 8 No 4, published 31st August 2019.

Mass murders, and attempted mass murders, committed by Fascists worldwide appear to be occurring at an accelerating pace. Since the Christchurch massacre in March, there has been the Gilroy Garlic Festival massacre in the US in July, the El Paso massacre in early August and an attempted massacre at a mosque in Norway about a week later. This is a phenomenon of the utmost seriousness.

A Fascist group is a conspiracy to murder and deserves to be treated as such. It is now clear, though, that Fascists carry out their deadly program not only through formal groups. Recent massacres have been committed by individuals who engaged in on-line discussions with other Fascists, each of them praising massacres and calling, in general terms, for their replication.

Street mobilisations of Fascists must be confronted and, where possible…

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