Tag Archives: solidarity

Alternative Structures, Anarchism, Fortress Europe

You Can’t Have One Without the Other

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AntiNote: Although it necessitates writing the first (and hopefully only) AntiNote accompanying an Antidote writer’s work, I (Ed) feel some obligation to break the fourth wall and confess to you that I wrote this essay several weeks ago, days before my own departure for Serbia. Two things prevented Antidote from publishing it at the time: first, of course, our collective’s work preparing and coordinating direct solidarity efforts on the Balkanroute put the Zine in sleep mode for a time; there are only so many hours in a day. But secondly, I was a little unsure of the argument itself.

Fortunately, my experiences over recent weeks in Serbia—and the ongoing exchange of experiences happening among comrades operating elsewhere on the route—have made me much more confident. In other, more journo-speaky words, I have been able to independently verify all of the assertions I made—naively, I thought—in December. Continue reading You Can’t Have One Without the Other →

Fortress Europe, Que Se Vayan Todos

We Will Find a Way: Politics and Praxis on the Balkanroute

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AntiNote: the following is an interview that crimethInc’s Ex-Worker podcast included in their episode #43, Borders and Migration, Part I: Europe’s “Refugee Crisis”, released on 7 December 2015.

Alexandra is a comrade of the Antidote Writers Collective, we are proud to say, and has shared some very important and difficult thoughts with the Ex-Worker about her experiences on the Balkan route, from well before the precarious situation in the region was christened such. Her insights are for us especially crucial to sit with and consider as we prepare for our own participation in solidarity efforts “on the field.” As we imagine that our readers are motivated and engaged and either already working on the field, preparing a trip, or looking for ways to contribute from afar, we present these insights to you in the same spirit. Let us learn from her experiences and build on them.

The Ex-Worker publishes full transcripts in parallel to every audio episode they release. We present here only a tiny fraction (lightly edited for clarity) of the impressive document that is the transcript of episode #43. We encourage you to power through the whole thing, or (probably more enjoyable), listen to it.

Alanis: We wanted to hear from some radicals and anarchists directly involved in migrant solidarity struggles at the moment in Europe, so we put out some feelers. Many of the people we contacted were so busy with support work on the ground that we couldn’t set up interviews. But we did manage to catch up with a few folks who shared some valuable perspectives on what’s been going on with migrants in Europe and how anarchists have been responding.

We’ll now share a longer interview with Alexandra, an anarchist from Switzerland, who discusses her experience doing direct migrant solidarity work in Hungary and elsewhere, and her reflections on how her experiences on the ground confronted and sometimes conflicted with her anarchist visions.

The Ex-Worker: Alexandra, thanks for talking with us!

Alexandra: I’m happy to talk to you.

The Ex-Worker: You’ve spent some time in Röszke, Hungary, which has been one of the “hot spots” around conflict and solidarity with migrants in Europe recently. Can you talk a little bit about what you experienced there, why in particular these places have become so significant recently, and what kind of solidarity efforts are happening there?

Alexandra: I was with a group of people in Röszke in the middle of September—this is at the border between Serbia and Hungary. At the point when I was there, there was still an open space in the border where people could go through on the way to Western Europe, over Hungary.

What I think is important for context is that the situation is extremely volatile and chaotic at the moment in the Balkans, so the place where I was, Röszke, doesn’t exist anymore like it was then, because the border there is closed now. But other places, which are very similar but are just at a different spot on the map, have opened now. So just in case people would want to go and support the migrants, this place is basically not a hotspot anymore Continue reading We Will Find a Way: Politics and Praxis on the Balkanroute →

Alternative Structures, Fortress Europe, Motus

The Balkan Route: Winter Is Upon Us

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Self-organized solidarity and mutual aid initiatives have for months been the only thing preventing complete breakdown and disaster along refugee routes through the Balkans. But the ad hoc nature of this activism has shown its limits, and now that bureaucracies (both state and non-) have started lurching into “action,” the effect has been to limit autonomous efforts even further, without replacing them with something better. Quite the contrary: with winter coming, border, customs and immigration officials in many countries are making it harder for refugees to find relief, or it to find them. The result could be the equivalent of another slow-motion massacre, another trail of corpses, this time frozen instead of drowned. But it doesn’t have to be.

Winter Is Upon Us

by Antidote’s Ed Sutton
23 November 2015

On Shifting Ground

Even though refugees dropped off the radar of most dominant media almost immediately after a surge in public compassion when photographs of a dead Syrian Kurdish child, washed up on a Turkish beach, circulated virally in September, they are once again the focus of international debate. This time, sadly, it is as an outgrowth of the aggressive passions raised by the Daesh attacks in Paris. As such, this latest round of discourse has centered primarily on admission and settlement policies in Western countries and on the broader historical resonance, often of a terrifying sort, that the issue has suddenly been acknowledged to have.

While both of these topics are crucial, focus has not entirely returned to refugees—that is, we are still not talking about actual refugees themselves, where they are, and what it’s like there. There was a little of this, also in early September, when flurries of images out of Budapest’s Keleti train station or the Serbian-Hungarian border town of Röszke briefly brought attention to conditions on the as-yet-untitled “Balkan Route” following the August deaths by asphyxiation of 71 refugees in a truck in Austria.

Still, beyond the ever-unspooling string of obtuse headlines about new fences and border restrictions put in place by this or that country, for the last couple of months what little information has come out of the region traversed by the route—stretching from Turkey through Bulgaria or oversea to Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary, Croatia, and Slovenia—has largely been thanks to the documentation efforts of activists and refugees on the ground there. Continue reading The Balkan Route: Winter Is Upon Us →

Alternative Structures, Anarchism, Que Se Vayan Todos

Abolishing Work (1982)

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AntiNote: the following is an unauthorized reproduction in English of a thirty-some-year-old exploration of post-industrial society’s incapacitating delusions about work, how they are suspiciously similar on the right and the left, and how we might rid ourselves of them. Amidst the current wave of “Work—WTF?!” thinkpieces, let’s remember that we’re not starting from scratch here. Not that life, history, and politics are entirely just a depressing treadmill, but: why re-invent the wheel? Seems like a lot of unnecessary work.

Abolishing Work
(A work of words)

By Ruedi Lüscher, for issue #3 of the socialist journal Widerspruch (Zurich), June 1982

“A healthy civil society which provides the possibility of a life with dignity to every solid, hardworking citizen will not succumb to false sentimentality, and will make no concessions to it.”
—Ernst Nobs

“Democracy divides people into two categories: those who work and those who are lazy. Therefore, democracy is not meant for those who don’t have time to work.”
—Karl Kraus

Not everything strenuous is work. Also, some things considered work are fun. Housework doesn’t count as work, we are told, because it is a labor of love. Love, though, takes work too: relationships take work—beginning with working to win someone’s affection and ending with working through your loss of it. Sometimes work is physical labor; occasionally, though, one gets paid for simply talking—and, of course, it seems one can get paid handsomely for the work of others.

It’s arduous work, pondering all this. What is it, precisely, that we’re abolishing here? Continue reading Abolishing Work (1982) →

Divide et impera, Herstory, Social Protests

Lebanon: What’s Feminism Got to Do with It?

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Is there a need for feminism in the current protests in Lebanon?

by Lamia Moghnie and Stephanie Gaspais for Sawt al’ Niswa
(original post)

“A feminist reading can shed a light on relations and dynamics of power; on violence and discrimination from the state. This analysis is not secondary or parallel to other demands, but is at the heart of understanding the patriarchal practices of the violent state.”

In the past week, we met on several occasions as feminists, to discuss our role in the current series of protests in Lebanon.  We started joining the protests since Saturday 22 August as individuals, like many other people. We joined the crowded streets of Beirut, melting with the wider demands for basic rights—just female bodies in the streets.

We were confused. We reflected on our participation in these protests and on whether there is a need for a feminist discourse and impact within the social and political movements that were starting to form, or whether feminism should be placed aside for now, as a secondary concern to the more urgent demands for basic needs such as electricity, water and garbage collection. We decided to go to the protest square together, as feminists, and to hold banners that were not necessarily asking for specific demands, but rather reflecting topics and issues we wanted to discuss with the protestors. We felt that these topics were omitted from the more general demands:

Justice for women. Down with the patriarchal murderous regime  #Patriarchy_Kills_Me

The Kafala system is also garbage. Let’s not forget about the rights of foreign workers #SocialJustice

One Eye on Ain el Helweh, and One eye on Riad el Solh #solidarity

Leave the wall and take the parliament and the government down

We stood in the square and held our banners. Some protesters got upset, and some agreed with us. Continue reading Lebanon: What’s Feminism Got to Do with It? →

Letters Of Fire, Prison, Workers Unite

Iran: Workers Movement Statement on the Death in Custody of Shahrokh Zamani

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We’ll turn Shahrokh Zamani’s death into a banner of workers’ solidarity and unity

Note from the editors of People and Nature: This statement was put out by workers’ organizations in Iran after the suspicious death on 12 September of Shahrokh Zamani, a trade union activist who was in the fifth year of a prison sentence. Iranian friends are asking that it be circulated as widely as possible.

Shahrokh Zamani, a brave and tireless fighter for the Iranian workers movement, has died in Gohar Dasht prison. The news was received by all with total disbelief and utter shock. In our view, whatever reasons the authorities may give, the responsibility for his death lies completely with those who have imposed conditions of slavery on the workers of Iran and who have taken away their rights to organize and struggle for a better life, and with those who throw honorable and valiant human beings such as Shahrokh Zamani into dungeons. Continue reading Iran: Workers Movement Statement on the Death in Custody of Shahrokh Zamani →

Alternative Structures, Transcripts

“There’s A Lot We Can Do Ourselves.”

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Transcribed from the 27 June 2015 episode of This is Hell! Radio and printed with permission. Edited for space and readability. Listen to the full interview:

“Cooperatives are not just about doing good or creating change through our work externally, but also about bringing democracy and equality into the economy.”

Chuck Mertz: Imagine a world where you actually find your work to be something more than a job. Imagine, if you will, a world where a life’s work is actually fulfilling and expresses who and what you really are and believe, where the pursuit of happiness is actually happening every day. I know what you’re thinking. It’s hard to imagine. After all, this is hell.

But it’s actually happening, at least in some parts of our world. Here to tell us what steps we could take toward a happier place here on Earth: Rhiannon Colvin, who wrote the article Re-imagining the Future of Work, which is an extract from Resist: Against a Precarious Future, the third book in the Radical Futures series.

Thanks for being on This is Hell!, Rhiannon.

Rhiannon Colvin: Hello!

CM: Great to have you on the show. Rhiannon graduated two years ago, and after competing in the brutal graduate job market and researching solutions to youth unemployment in Portugal and Spain, she founded a group called AltGen, which supports 18- to 29-year-olds to set up cooperative businesses as an empowering and collaborative solution to youth unemployment.

You write, “Imagine that it’s 2025 and the world of work has changed. Today we do labor out of passion, not obligation. Nobody has a low-paid job or has to balance multiple jobs just to make rent. Work gives us meaning and direction, but it does not define who we are. The three-day working week means we have time to spend with friends and family, to contribute to our communities, and have a say in how society is run.”

That sounds fantastic. But are those things even the goal of today’s economy? And how much do you think we’ve forgotten that a functioning economy should give everyone a better quality of life?

RC: I don’t think that those are the goals of today’s economy, but they are the goals of many young people and progressive movements today. And it sounds like an unrealistic dream, but it’s something that really is possible through a number of different strategies I outline. In the UK, when people in government—or trade unions, even—talk about solutions to youth unemployment, they keep within the narrative of more and more jobs…in the same kinds of companies, in the same kind of way.

They don’t actually have any vision for what kind of future we want. Continue reading “There’s A Lot We Can Do Ourselves.” →