Essays

Long live anarchy: Hong Kong’s first Black Book Fair

  • Posted on: 17 November 2017
  • By: thecollective

ed. note: The Black Bookfair is underway this weekend. Find more information on their website here

by Karen Cheung, via Still/Loud

When Ahkok attended London’s anarchist book fair last year, he was stunned by the scale of it all: some 60 booths and 50 forums, from heated discussions—one was cut short by a fight—to emotional healing workshops for social activists. There was even a section for kids, because “Why can’t there be more play facilities for children at protest sites?”

Ahkok and his friends soon decided that Hong Kong, too, needs an anarchist book fair.

Lucy Parsons bio reveals new facts about the birth, ethnicity of the 'Goddess of Anarchy'

  • Posted on: 15 November 2017
  • By: thecollective

From the Chicago Tribune

By Mark Jacob

Lucy Parsons, an anarchist firebrand who was one of the most enigmatic Chicagoans ever, might fit in better today than she did during her own time a century ago.

She was a black woman married to a white man. Scandalous then, no big thing now.

Working to death

  • Posted on: 15 November 2017
  • By: thecollective

via Wandering Cannibals

I was reading on Contrainfo concerning an anarchist blood drive for a comrade injured in a foiled attempt to set a bus on fire. According to the communique:

During the night of October 26, 2017, at about 9:30 p.m. a group decides to go out into the street and face the imposed normality near the faculty Juan Gomez Milla of the University of Chile.

It is right in the street intersecting Captain Ignacio Carrera Pinto with Passage Challacollo where they decide to intercept a micro-bus of the route 325, managing to stop it and bring down the 12 passengers who were traveling. At the same time benzene is sprayed into the machinery and they struggle with the driver to make him descend.

Christos Tsakalos: ”The Point is That People Should not Leave from Prison Dehumanized.” (Greece)

  • Posted on: 14 November 2017
  • By: thecollective

”I am speaking neither as an anarchist nor as a member of the C.C.F.Christos Tsakalos clarified as we spoke on the phone. ”I am speaking as a member of the Committee of Struggle from Korydallos Prison, which represents 1500 prisoners who have been protesting the past two weeks against the new correctional code, which will result in the violation of the basic rights of prisoners in case it passes”, he explains and highlights that there is an existing network in Greece’s prisons and the mobilizations will escalate if the government does not make concessions.
He also stated that a Ministry of Justice official who went to Korydallos Prison and discussed these matters with the committee found the demands to be fair. Nevertheless, he clarified that this was his own personal stance and not that of the Ministry. ”We will go to extremes because we understand that they are trying to create a prison within the prison” says Christos, who was detained in solitary confinement from 2015 through to 2017, on the other end of the phone line.

The loneliness of the crowd

  • Posted on: 13 November 2017
  • By: Anonymous (not verified)

From 325

‘The loneliness of the crowd’ – Another reflection on the events at this year’s London Anarchist Bookfair (UK)

Anarchists are no strangers to conflict or violence. Yet we feel that the way the conflict unfolded at this year’s London Anarchist Bookfair was deeply disturbing and should have nothing to do with anarchism. The organising collective have, as a result of events on the day and subsequent reactions, issued a statement announcing that they will not be doing a Bookfair again next year. What we would like to talk about here though is the worrying climate in which the events took place, and the dangers of dogmas in the anarchist milieu.

Insurrection Cannot Be Negotiated

  • Posted on: 12 November 2017
  • By: thecollective

From Mpalothia by Imprisoned Conspiracy of Cells of Fire FAI-IRF Member Panagiotis Argyrou

Time is the illness of reality. In prison, time seems to poison the atmosphere. The air thickens as though it is flooded with lead filings and each and every day our lungs are infested with this oxygen so toxic that it weighs on us again and again, more so with each passing day.

London Bookfair ‘won’t happen in 2018’

  • Posted on: 10 November 2017
  • By: thecollective

via Freedom News

Following a confrontation at this year’s London Anarchist Bookfair sparked by two people handing out anti-trans leaflets, and a subsequent online firestorm, the Bookfair organisers have released two statements on what happened, announcing they will not be holding one in 2018.

The decision ends a 34-year run for the event, which was the largest of its kind. The collective’s statement is reproduced below:

Anarchism through the Silver Screen

  • Posted on: 10 November 2017
  • By: thecollective

From CrimethInc.

Why Are Anarchists Suddenly Showing up in so many Korean Films?

This year, several major films from South Korea depict rebels or outright anarchists. Okja portrays the Animal Liberation Front; Anarchist from Colony tells the story of Park Yeol and Fumiko Kaneko, two anarchist nihilists who have become national heroes in Korea; A Taxi Driver dramatizes the Gwanju uprising of 1980. Why are anarchists suddenly appearing in Korean cinema? What’s the context behind these films? And how can they inform how we frame our own narratives in a time of resurgent nationalism and unrest?

Nicholas Apoifis, Anarchy in Athens: An Ethnography of Militancy, Emotions and Violence

  • Posted on: 10 November 2017
  • By: Anonymous (not verified)

Review of
Nicholas Apoifis, Anarchy in Athens: An Ethnography of Militancy, Emotions and Violence (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017)

In his Ph.D. thesis Anarchy in Athens: An Ethnography of Militancy, Emotions and Violence, the Australian sociologist Nicholas Apoifis has taken on one of the hottest topics in recent anarchist history, namely the anarchist movement of the Greek capital.

To a Trodden Pansy: Remembering Louis Lingg

  • Posted on: 9 November 2017
  • By: Anonymous (not verified)

From Plain Words

Louis Lingg was born on September 9, 1864 in Mannheim, Germany. Early in his life, he began working as a carpenter, eventually involving himself in revolutionary struggles. His politicization compelled him to evade military service, so he fled Germany for Switzerland, only to be expelled in 1885. That summer, Lingg immigrated to the United States, settling in Chicago, one of the epicenters of the vibrant German-American anarchist movement.

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