Workers Solidarity Movement

A talk from the 2013 Anarchist Bookfair which will discuss emergent radical queer politics which resist assimilation and question the foundations of gender and sexual identity

The austerity policies of the latest phase of capitalism have wreaked havoc on the lives and living standards of working class people across Europe and beyond.  The struggles in which communities find themselves as they attempt to resist these policies have a lot to learn from each other.  As we strive for a better world and to build communities free from poverty, exploitation and hopelessness we need to find time and space to listen to each other, to find common cause and to support each other’s struggles.

On April 5, 2013 Mónica, a 70 year old woman with Alzheimer’s, was scheduled to be evicted from the apartment she has lived in since 1974. In the shadows of Real Madrid’s Santiago Bernabéu Stadium located right around the corner from her apartment building, community members and organizers from the Popular Assembly of Tetuan of the 15M movement (indignados) and the Mortgage Victims Platform (PAH) gathered outside her building at 10AM chanting “This eviction! We’re going to stop it!”

A question. If depression is the inability to construct a future, does depression not appear very like the world’s prevailing mood or zeitgeist right now?  As I write, the immense working majority faces into continued hierarchy, exploitation and polarisation, characterised by, among other things, ecological catastrophe, austerity without end, technocratic governance, nuclear annihilation, escalation of war... Compounding these dilemmas is our collective inability, real or illusory (I am not sure which), to construct an alternative future.

Today, it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.  And yet. Something else is stirring. 2011 occasioned a shared, transnational impulse of ‘outrage’, ‘indignation’ and ‘enough’ against the cruelties of global financial institutions and the petty thuggery of enthralled states. The occupation of the world’s squares was simultaneously an impulse of ‘hope’, ‘solidarity’ and ‘the commons’, directed towards a dimly perceived yet somehow more just, more humane future. Tracking their emergence, evolution, fading, and re-emergence around the world – now in Cairo, then in Syntagma, here in Zuccotti Park, there in Puerta del Sol - Paul Mason, BBC journalist and author, has provided an insightful record and (somewhat more questionable) analysis of these revolts.

This Saturday morning Cypriot people woke up to the news that they were about to be robbed. In a pre-planned ambush scheduled to coincide with a local bank holiday weekend, Eurozone apparatchiks threatened to bankrupt the Cypriot banking system by immediate withdrawal of the ECB liquidity support.

The "deal" forced on the Cypriots by Frankfurt means a "bail-out" of the banks to the tune of 17 billion euros, roughly equivalent to the annual GDP of the Republic that makes up the EU-recognised part of this divided island. But only 10 billion will be provided by the ECB and IMF, the other 7 billion will be taken by a combination of a 1.4 billion privatisation programme, but in bulk by robbing anyone with a bank account in Cyprus.

In Sydney's Sun Herald there's a graph of unemployment in Europe with the title "Painful Recovery" it has percentages from Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and the overall EU.It says "Monthly unemployment. Ireland's unemployment is no longer surging but that is largely because 1600 people emigrate every week to find work". So apparently all that guff about how generous social welfare is in Ireland is a lie, as thousands seek work elsewhere and quite a few in Australia. (Sunday March 10th page 29).

Over a quarter of a million people demonstrated against government austerity and Troika rule in Lisbon this Saturday gone. Hundreds of thousands more demostrated in towns and cities the length and breadth of Portugal. The biggest demonstrations against austerity yet in the Eurozone. Who's afraid of the Eurozone's most rebellious PIG? The Irish media, apparently, given the failure of RTE, Irish Times or the INM stable to cover the story. Maybe they think we'd get funny ideas? In any case, the next time someone tells you about media censorship in place like Russia, China and North Korea, don't forget to mention the Irish media's coverage of Portuguese resistance to the Troika. 

This Sunday, 3rd March, Swiss voters, by a whopping majority of by 68%, struck fear into the corporate world by backing a citizen’s initiative referendum to curb top executives pay. Over two-thirds of the citizenry backed a package of proposals including a ban on “golden hellos” and “golden parachutes”, making shareholder votes on pay binding on corporate boards, requiring yearly term limits to board membership and requiring pension fund shareholder votes to be transparent, along with jail terms for executives that break the rules. The citizen’s initiative passed against the background of vocal screeching from the united ranks of the corporate elite, Switzerland’s largest multinationals including Nestlé, Credit Suisse, Novartis, ABB and nearly all the political parties.

Following on from a very large anti-eviction march of 10's of thousands  in Madrid on Saturday today, 22 February, 2013, over 100 neighbors, anti-foreclosure activists, and 15M organizers stood together to prevent Nieves and her children (ages 6 and 9) from being evicted from their apartment. Although they have lived in their apartment for years, Nieves’ ex-husband’s parents are trying to force out their grandchildren so that their son (Nieves’ ex-husband) and his new family can live there. Her ex-husband has faced charges of domestic abuse and there is currently a restraining order against him legally preventing him from having anything to do with his children. He has also failed to pay child support on numerous occasions.

The Dublin anarchist bookfair returns to Liberty Hall on the 6^th of April for our 8^th annual edition, and the theme 1913-2013 - Rebuilding a Movement from Below.

Help with promotion by signing up for the Bookfair event on Facebook