Dec 2022 – Page 18

Posted on November 21, 2022 by Chiapas Support Committee… Leave a Comment via thefreeonline

**Zapatista Women at the 1st International Gathering of Women Who Struggle, Caracol IV – Morelia.**

By: Raúl Zibechi

All the efforts of the ruling class are focused on eliminating or flattening differences in the ways of life, in the daily practices of peoples, classes and individuals, with respect to the dominant culture. For this purpose, entire regions are militarized, genocides and exterminations of populations have been taking place for five centuries.

The forced evangelization promoted by the conquerors aimed to destroy the political and cultural autonomy of the native peoples, which was rooted in communal ways of life and diverse spiritualities but unyielding to the dispossession of nascent capitalism. It was not a question of religions, or of true or false gods, but that peoples should not continue to live in their own way, according to their customs.

The destruction of the English peasants’ way of life was key to the implementation and expansion of capitalism, as Karl Polanyi analyzes in The Great Transformation. For this, violence from above was employed, stripping the peasants of their communal lands to turn them into vagabonds who would end up as workers imprisoned in the satanic mills, key pieces of the industrial revolution.

The offensive against taverns and other workers’ spaces at the beginning of the 20th century sought to destroy the spaces where workers spent their free time to relate to each other in ways different from those imposed by capitalist logic, turning them also into territories of cultural autonomy and organization of their resistance, as James Scott explains in Domination and the Arts of Resistance.

We can go back to the days of slavery (when quilombos and palenques were spaces of freedom and revolt), or land in our days (when soccer stadiums, which were spaces differentiated from the working class, become mechanisms of accumulation by dispossession and financial speculation), to verify that the history of struggles is also that of the destruction and reproduction of differences of class, skin color, gender and sexual diversity.

The war suffered today by the native and black peoples of the entire continent, the peasants, women and youth who resist, is aimed at stripping them of their way of life and making them dependent on capital. To force us into service. To turn us into wage slaves, who for less than a minimum wage, dedicate our lives to lubricate capitalist accumulation.

by maxr0che at The Bristol Activist on November 30, 2022 Car Images: Simon Holliday via thefreeonline

Direct Action, Feature, Leave a comment

For months a small group of activists have targeted the large, polluting cars of the wealthy, deflating their tyres in the dead of night. With unparalleled access to the group, Max Roche explores what it means to be a Tyre Extinguisher

Lentil or mung bean? An obvious debate to be having on the streets of Clifton in the early hours of a rainy October morning.

There are few signs of life around at this hour, save for the occasional drunk student and a small group of mask-wearing climate activists who call themselves the Tyre Extinguishers. There are no petrol bombs or sledge hammers here though, just a small Tupperware box of legumes and some printed leaflets.

With the lentils distributed around the group, they set off to patrol the nearby streets in search of a particular prize – a sports utility vehicle (SUV). Amongst the architectural grandeur of Clifton, it doesn’t take long to locate what they’re looking for.

Barely fifty metres up the road, a member of the group crouches down on the pavement, his hands darting fervently around the rim of a car wheel to locate the dust cap. Unscrewing it, he carefully places the lentil over the valve before re-tightening the cap, forcing the lentil into contact with the valve. A gentle hiss radiates out into the night and is soon smothered by the wind.