Socialist Alternative

MELBOURNE, Australia, 27 March: Black Power and socialist activists from Australia, the US and Indonesia caught up at the Melbourne Aboriginal Youth Sport and Recreation gym in Fitzroy. Legends of struggles old and new got to trade stories and share a laugh. From left to right Billy X Jennings (Black Panther Party, USA), Gary Foley (Aboriginal Tent Embassy and Panther, Australia), Brian Jones (International Socialist Organization, USA), Surya (People’s Liberation Party, Indonesia)

All will be speaking at the Marxism Conference! Don’t miss out: www.marxismconference.org.

MADRID, Spain, 21 February: “We rescue people, not bankers.” Firefighters in Madrid have joined colleagues across Spain in declaring they will no longer play any role in evictions of people struggling with their mortgages or rent.

Last Wednesday a group of firefighters in A Coruña had refused an order to kick down the door to an apartment to help with the eviction of 85 year old Aurelia Rey, who had been living there since 1979. Statements in support of the firefighters’ action, and pledges to follow their example, have come flooding in. A statement from the firefighters’ union in Seville reads, in part:

“We express our repulsion at the attempt to discipline fellow fire fighters of A Coruña for their refusal to facilitate an eviction… We will not be made the instruments of an unjust system that kicks an 85 year old onto the street because they are unable to pay one month’s rent. We enter houses to protect and save people and personal property, never to save a bank.” 

Since the beginning of the global financial crisis in 2008, more than 350,000 Spaniards have received eviction notices. Just in the last week, four Spaniards facing eviction took their own lives.

Once again, it is the solidarity of ordinary workers that has proved the best antidote to the barbaric injustices inherent to the capitalist system, and which points the way forward out of the nightmare of crisis and austerity suffered by workers across Europe and the world today.

Simon Olley.