The Free

Police Attack Occupied Utopia: Errekaleor Under Siege: Solidarity Appeal

Waiting to greet our friends with firecrackers and flags on June 3rd

The largest squat and self-managed district in the Spanish state is in Gasteiz and is called Errekaleor and has at least 150 inhabitants. At the moment it is besieged by the Ertzaintza, the Basque police forces in the service of speculation and the Spanish State .

Over 10,000 people came out to defend the occupied anti-capitalist neighbourhood on June 3rd. Dozens were injured or arrested by riot police who dug up the street to cut electricity cables to the barrio.

The mayor of Vitoria, Gorka Urtaran, has promised that he will destroy the amazing revolutionary Errekaleor project and evict the occupiers, including many children and a 3 month old baby, whom the PNV politician defined as “anti-system”

Who are We?

By Anonymous Contributor .. Errekaleor Bizirik is an occupied neighborhood at the edge of Vitoria-Gasteiz, Araba, in Euskal Herria (Basque Country). We are a project based on the principles of ‘autogestion’ (self-management or autonomy), consensus based decision making, feminism, anti-capitalism, and Basque cultural reinvigoration.

We are the biggest occupied space on the Iberian Peninsula, with over 25 acres of land and 150 inhabitants. Among us are children, elderly residents, blue-collar workers, the unemployed, students, teachers, and a variety of local wildlife. Our project includes a 5-acre organic farm, a bakery, a bar, a social center, an old church turned music venue, a library, a theater, a free shop, a recording studio, a publishing house, and a school with language classes. Continue reading “Police Attack Occupied Utopia: Errekaleor Under Siege: Solidarity Appeal”

Syrian Democratic Forces begin ‘great battle’ for Raqqa

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said an operation to begin liberating the city had already begun, coordinated with a US-led military coalition.”We declare today the start of the great battle to liberate the city of Raqqa, the so-called capital of terrorism and terrorists,” SDF spokesman Telal Silo, Turkmen Seljuk Brigade member, told reporters in the village of Hazima, north of the city.

“With the international coalition’s warplanes and the state-of-the-art weapons they provided to us, we will seize Raqqa from Daesh.”He asked civilians inside the city to keep away from IS positions and from the front lines. IS has been fortifying the city ahead of the coming assault, setting up barriers and covering the street to hide fighters from aircraft overhead.SDF leades announce start of Raqqa campaign

Full General Command of SDF declaration:

“After a long struggle, our forces and the forces carrying out a joint struggle against terrorists have marked in history their legends of heroism. Continue reading “Syrian Democratic Forces begin ‘great battle’ for Raqqa”

Anarchist Lighthouse shines for 30 years in Barcelona’s Raval

summarized translation en catalá abaix. “Those who have known and lived with El Lokal, see it as a beacon for social movements in the city, a center of constant social and political unrest; a space for training, debate, organization and coordination of local and international struggles. Always ready, always on the ball.

see also…New Mutual Aid Hotline Blocks dozens of Evictions, Threats and Toxic Capitalism

Last Sunday we celebrated its 30th birthday at the adjacent ‘Agora Juan Andrés Benítez’ occupied space, which is named in memory of a neighbor killed by the Mossos local police in 2013- with a debate that brought together some of the anarchist and autonomous struggles of today. Continue reading “Anarchist Lighthouse shines for 30 years in Barcelona’s Raval”

Manifestaçom em solidariedade co CCSO Escárnio e Maldizer · 10 de junho ás 21h na Alameda (Compostela)

abordaxe

DEFENDAMOS OS CENTROS SOCIAIS
DEFENDAMOS O ESCÁRNIO E MALDIZER

Bloco a bloco desfam-se os muros
Se nos tiram os espaços, multiplicamos a solidariedade

No ano 2014, um grupo de vizinhas de Compostela okupamos o antigo local da agrupaçom de baile e canto tradicional Cantigas e Agarimos fechado desde o 2011. O C.S.O.A Escárnio e Maldizer aparecia assi como um espaço para a gente no casco velho da cidade desenhado hoje para o turismo maciço e afastado das necessidades da vizinhanza. Durante três anos trabalhamos intensamente neste projeto; reabilitamos o edifício; enchemo-lo de ideias, diversas, que procediam de diferentes tradiçons políticas e sociais. Co passo do tempo, esse frio edifício em ruinas convertiria-se efetivamente no Escárnio e Maldizer erguido em contra das mais profundas raizes que sustentam o hetero-patriarcado capitalista; dizemos solidariedade, apoio mutuo, autonomia, horizontalidade, autogestom.

Neste 30 de maio de 2017 despejavam o Escárnio e Maldizer: cubriam as suas…

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Anarchism or Vanguardism? Critique of Guerrilla Ideology of the IRPGF

main text from nothingiseverlost.. shared with thanks

Guerrilla ideology reduces all revolutionary questions to quantitative problems of military force. Nothing could be more disastrous. – James Carr,

Power does not come any more from the barrel of a gun than it comes from a ballot box. No revolution is peaceful, but its “military” dimension is never central. The question is not whether the proles finally decide to break into the armouries, but whether they unleash what they are: commodified beings who no longer can and no longer want to exist as commodities, and whose revolt explodes capitalist logic. Barricades and machine guns flow from this “weapon”.

The greater the change in social life, the less guns will be needed, and the less casualties there will be. A communist revolution will never resemble a slaughter: not from any nonviolent principle, but because revolution subverts more (soldiers included) than it actually destroys.

To imagine a proletarian front facing off a bourgeois front is to conceive the proletariat in bourgeois terms, on the model of a political revolution or a war (seizing someone’s power, occupying their territory). In so doing, one reintroduces everything that the insurrectionary movement had overwhelmed: hierarchy, a respect for specialists, for knowledge that Knows, and for techniques to solve problems — in short for everything that plays down the role of the common man. – Gilles Dauve, When Insurrections Die

“Revolutionary” acts are no longer appraised in terms of the situation in which they are embedded, the possibilities they open up or close. What happens instead is that a form is extracted from each one of them. A particular sabotage, occurring at a particular moment, for a particular reason, becomes simply a sabotage. And the sabotage quietly takes its place among certified revolutionary practices on a scale where throwing a Molotov ranks higher than throwing rocks, but lower than kneecapping, which itself is not worth as much as a bomb. The problem is that no form of action is revolutionary in itself: sabotage has also been practiced by reformists and by Nazis. A movement’s degree of “violence” is not indicative of its revolutionary determination. – The Invisible Committee, To Our Friends

The whole gun thing, it just makes me really hot. – Charlie Kelly, Gun Fever Too: Still Hot

Over the past few months, the International Revolutionary People’s Guerrilla Forces (IRPGF), a new anarchist group fighting in Rojava, have published a fair few interviews and texts setting out their positions. On a purely defensive level, I certainly appreciate anyone fighting against ISIS in the name of international antifascist solidarity, but the IRPGF go way beyond this and repeatedly present themselves as the representatives of anarchism in the area, carrying out a project that will be “valuable to the entire anarchist community worldwide”.

With that in mind, I think it’s legitimate for others in that “worldwide community” to raise a few questions about the IRPGF’s ideology, and how it relates to the cause they claim to be advancing. Continue reading “Anarchism or Vanguardism? Critique of Guerrilla Ideology of the IRPGF”