Workers Solidarity Movement

As predictions for the death toll from the Haitian earthquakes rise over 200,000, ABC News have reported that planes carrying medical equipment and relief supplies are having to compete with soldiers for the valuable slots at Port-au-Prince airport which was taken over by the US military after the quake. Since the start of the great anti-slavery republican insurrection nearly 220 years ago, Haiti has been presented as a dangerous place incapable of running its own affairs and requiring foreign intervention. Yet the reality is its people were the first enslaved population to deliver themselves from slavery and also carried out what was only the third successful republican insurrection on the planet. The threat of this good example was rewarded with centuries of invasion, blackmail, the robbery of Haiti's natural resources and the impoverishment of its people. This articles summarizes that history of intervention and the resistance to it in order to put into context what is happening in Haiti after the quake.

This audio interview, conducted by mobile phone on Monday evening, covers the protests at the COP15 summit in Copenhagen.
Ronan who was a member of WSM in Ireland has been living in Denmark for a year and a half and is involved in a new Libertarian Socialist group and the local infoshop in the autonomous Youth House.

This is an excellent work. It is wide ranging, both in terms of subjects covered and geography. The latter makes a welcome break from most accounts of anarchism, which are sadly all-too Eurocentric. The former sees anarchist analysis expanded from the usual subjects of political authority and economic class into gender and imperialism (and national liberation struggles). It covers such perennial issues as anarchist organisation (including ‘Platformism’), the Spanish Revolution and a host of others.

If the recession is hitting everyone, who is buying the Goldvish mobile phone? This diamond-encrusted mobile costs a cool €1 million. See www.goldvish.com. And you can write the cheque with a limited edition Montblanc fountain pen for $25,000 (€17,072).

Over hundred years ago this year, a huge campaign arose around the world to save the life of Francisco Ferrer. A Catalonian by birth, Ferrer was an active anarchist and well known across Europe and the Americas for his radical views on education. Ferrer’s enemies were not for turning though and the campaigns failed. He shot to death by firing squad on October 13th 1909. Born to Catholic parents outside Barcelona, Ferrer became involved at a young age in anti-royalist activities in Spain. He fled to Paris to escape the Spanish authorities and there became involved with anarchism and the great love of his life: education and learning.

During his recent visit to Dublin, Workers Solidarity took the opportunity, over “bad coffee”, to chat to 93 year old Roma Marquez Santo about some of his experiences of the Spanish revolution. In 1936 Roma was a metal worker and a member of both the UGT trade union and the POUM, an anti-Stalinist communist party.

At the end of October a visiting speaker from the South Africa ZACF was hosted by the WSM in Dublin and Cork. The audio of the Dublin talk will be found below. The opening section of the talk looks at the very recent repression of the shack dwellers movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo at the Kennedy road informal settlement. Several people were killed and over 1000 displaced when an ANC led gang targetted the settlement and a meeting that was in progess there.

The six anarchist syndicalists arrested last September in Belgrade are now being charged with international terrorism.

On Thursday 29th October, the Civil Police of Rio Grande do Sul, under the command of Governor Yeda Crusius, broke into the premises of the Federação Anarquista Gaúcha. Police seized various materials such as posters, minutes of meetings, the hard disk of a computer and also the contents of refuse containers that were at the headquarters. They also tried to intimidate those who came to show their solidarity and names contained in the records of the organization's website. Two comrades were arrested and charged. [In Greek] [In Português]
[Français] [In Italiano]

Recording of a WSM branch education that looks at 'what is class' and outlines many of the different classifications that have been used before asking whether this is right approach to the question at all. Followed by a brief discussion of class in relation to Joe Duffy phone ins demanding a public sector pay cut.