#44: 2015 Year in Review! In our first episode of the new year, the Ex-Worker looks back over 2015 and its highlights, lowlights, and everything in between. We summarize some of the year’s key news developments, including tech developments and struggles around gender, anarchist publishing and media, a hilarious look at mass media coverage of anarchism, and our reflections on the last year of the podcast itself and our new year’s resolutions. You’ll also hear some analysis of some of the important themes within anarchism and revolutionary struggles in 2015, including an extended discussion on identity and solidarity, a review of the AK Press anthology “Taking Sides”, and reflections on our relationship to mass movements. The anarchist news website “It’s Going Down” contributes their end of year thoughts, a new project called “The Spaces Between” sets out to document US anarchism outside of its major urban hotspots, and a supporter offers an important update on NATO 3 prisoner Jared “Jay” Chase. We also received a number of detailed and inspiring year in review reports from anarchists around the world… but we’ll save those for our next episode.

You can download this and all of our previous episodes online. You can also subscribe in iTunes here or just add the feed URL to your podcast player of choice. Rate us on iTunes and let us know what you think, or send us an email to podcast@crimethinc.com. You can also call us 24 hours a day at 202–59-NOWRK, that is, 202–596–6975.

Last month, we concluded the To Change Everything US tour, bringing together anarchists from Latin America, Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and North America to compare notes on the uprisings and social movements of the past decade. In the course of 65 days, we presented 59 events in 57 towns, speaking with well over 2000 people altogether. To hear an audio recording from one of the presentations, tune in to episode 44 of the Ex-Worker Podcast.

Many people have seen the booklet and video we are distributing on the theme To Change Everything; we wanted to follow up by initiating intercontinental conversations about strategy and liberation. In the digital age, it is more important than ever to meet and debate and form bonds in person. If you met us on this trip, please stay in touch and help brainstorm what we should do together next.

We had a wonderful tour. For those of us from the US as well as overseas, it is instructive to take in the entire country in a single continuous trip. It gives you the lay of the land. Here is what we saw.

Read the report.

We participated in the following dialogue with members of the French news source Lundimatin, comparing the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States with the situation in France today. This interview is available in French on their site.

Bonjour, France, and welcome to team War on Terror! For fourteen years, you’ve looked askance at us across the Atlantic, raising your eyebrows at US foreign policy. Now you get to have your own state of emergency, your own far-right party in power, your own warrantless wiretapping and waterboarding scandals and Department of Homeland Security. Where will you put your Guantanamo Bay? (Finally, French fries and Freedom fries will mean the same thing!) For maximum effect, consider starting a new war that has nothing to do with the cause of the attacks, so you can destabilize another region and draw additional populations into the conflict.

We Americans know all about this stuff. For decades now, the US has been the policeman of the world, while social democratic France has been its comfortable bourgeoisie. But in the 21st century, everyone has to take part in policing. To preserve France, the liberal alternative to the US, it is now necessary to copy the US model of anti-terrorism. Permit us to show you the ropes.

Read the discussion.

#43: Borders and Migration, Part I: Europe’s “Refugee Crisis” – One of the major news stories of 2015 has been the flow of hundreds of thousands of migrants from Syria and beyond into Europe, and the social and political crises this has precipitated. In Episode 43 of the Ex-Worker, we take a look at Europe’s so-called refugee crisis from an anarchist perspective. This episode adopts a “mix tape” format, pasting together excerpts from a variety of sources to offer an impressionistic look at how and why people move across the world, the barriers thrown up by states to impede and control them, and popular resistance against the system of national borders. We begin with reflections from the CrimethInc. Contradictionary, To Change Everything, and past Ex-Worker episodes on borders and continue with excerpts from interviews with No One Is Illegal activist Harsha Walia, author Vijay Prashad, and a Swiss anarchist active in migrant solidarity struggles in Europe, as well as essays from an activist convergence against climate change, Calais Migrant Solidarity, and Mask Magazine’s “Asylum” issue; and conclude with reflections on the Islamic State attacks in Paris from the CrimethInc. blog. You’ll also hear updates on anti-anarchist repression in Spain and anti-government demonstrations in South Korea, a report-back from the Rebel! Rebuild! Rewild! action camp in eastern Canada, and an announcement for a new prisoner publication, plus news, upcoming events, and more, in one of our most packed episodes yet!

You can download this and all of our previous episodes online. You can also subscribe in iTunes here or just add the feed URL to your podcast player of choice. Rate us on iTunes and let us know what you think, or send us an email to podcast@crimethinc.com. You can also call us 24 hours a day at 202–59-NOWRK, that is, 202–596–6975.

In Paris, on November 13, 129 people were killed in coordinated bombings and shootings for which the Islamic State claimed responsibility. European nationalists lost no time seeking to tie the attacks in Paris to the so-called migrant crisis, even though many of the refugees are fleeing similar attacks orchestrated by ISIS.

Tighter border controls won’t protect us from attacks like the one in Paris, though they will go on causing migrant deaths. Airstrikes won’t stop suicide bombers, but they will produce new generations that nurse a grudge against the West. Government surveillance won’t catch every bomb plot, but it will target the social movements that offer an alternative to nationalism and war. If the proponents of Fortress Europe succeed in suppressing and segregating us, we will surely end up fighting each other: divide and rule. Our only hope is to establish common cause against our rulers, building bridges across the boundaries of citizenship and religion before the whole world is carved up on the butcher’s block of war.

Read the complete editorial.

Since their successful defense of Kobanê against the Islamic State a year ago, the Kurdish resistance movement has captured international media attention. Meanwhile, their experiments in forming a stateless society in the autonomous cantons of Rojava have fascinated anarchists across the world. But in order to understand the Kurdish resistance in Rojava (western Kurdistan), we need to take a broader look at struggles for freedom and autonomy across the region. We interviewed two members of a network of internationalist anarchists in Germany who have spent time in Bakur (northern Kurdistan), learning from the struggles taking place there. Beginning with a historical overview of the emergence of the Kurdish movement and the PKK’s “new paradigm” of the last decade, they describe how their experiences in Kurdistan have reframed their understanding of anarchist struggles elsewhere across the globe.

Read the interview.

In this new feature on the struggle in Rojava, we offer an overview of the history of transnational Kurdish resistance, culminating in the present moment of crisis in the conflict with ISIS and the Turkish state. Drawing on repeated trips to Kurdistan during which he met with youth militias in Cizre and visited Kobanê immediately after its liberation, our correspondent traces the trajectory from the founding of the PKK to the Suruç massacre, spelling out exactly what is at stake in this struggle.

Read the feature.