Feminists We Love: Marissa Alexander

By Aishah Shahidah Simmons and Alisa Bierria

Today is the first day of Standing Our Ground Week of Action (July 25 – August 1, 2014) in Jacksonville, FL and everywhere in support of Marissa Alexander’s case. The Free Marissa Now Mobilization Campaign is a coalition of organizations and activists that has been mobilizing people in Jacksonville, across the US and around the globe to support the call for Marissa’s freedom.

Less than two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to break bread and talk with my sister and comrade Alisa Bierria, a Free Marissa Now member based in the Bay Area, about what Marissa Alexander’s case means for feminist social movements and the current push for grassroots support for her freedom during the week of action.

Since Ms. Alexander is under house arrest, I asked Alisa if she would partner with me on a Feminists We Love feature on Marissa Alexander. Ms. Alexander’s current struggle for freedom exemplifies many aspects of The Feminist Wire’s mission and vision. We are in unwavering solidarity with the movement to free her. If you aren’t aware of Ms. Alexander’s case or if you don’t have a full grasp of what’s at stake for Ms. Alexander, and by extension all women who are or will be in similar situations in the future; we hope that after reading this conversation you will be called to action.

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Anarchist CNT tried for Occupying Own Historical Property

Eleven members of the CNT have been judged for squatting (recovery) of a property

EVICTION FROM THEIR OWN HISTORICAL PROPERTY

by F. M. H. (en Castellano abajo) Eleven members and supporters of the CNT went on trial in the Criminal Court No. 4 of Zaragoza for squatting the old Hospice of San Jorge, in Padre Manjon Street, Zaragoza ,Delicias District from which they were evicted in February 2013 by the Police.

The Ministry of Labour, the property owner, asked for fines of 1,440 euros each for usurpation, while the prosecution – that dropped charges against two of them when a police officer admitted they were not inside the building – asked for 900 euros each.. Continue reading “Anarchist CNT tried for Occupying Own Historical Property”

How imposed Precarity, Anxiety and Isolation keep us Passive

This group argue that a big taboo is seeing how our anxiety is caused by the system and not just ourselves, and how exposing this can empower us to fight back.

Six Theses on Anxiety and Why It is Effectively Preventing Militancy, and One Possible Strategy for Overcoming It ¹

Reposted with the kind permission of the Institute for Precarious Consciousness: www.weareplanc.org

1: Each phase of capitalism has its own dominant reactive ‘affect’. ²

Each phase of capitalism has a particular affect which holds it together. This is not a static situation. The prevalence of a particular dominant affect ³ is sustainable only until strategies of resistance able to break down this particular affect and /or its social sources are formulated. Hence, capitalism constantly comes into crisis and recomposes around newly dominant affects.

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Spain takes hatchet to Internet Freedom

To Protect the Press,’ Spain Tries to Muffle the Internet

by Don Quijones • Reblogged with thanks (and added illustrations) from wolfstreet.com

I would like to begin this article by warning that it features no links to any other website, for the simple reason that the Spanish government is in the process of passing a new law that would make linking to other Spanish websites “taxable.” The law, commonly and rather misleadingly referred to as the “Google Tax,” forms part of a draft reform of Spain’s Intellectual Property Law that was hastily approved by the Spanish cabinet last Friday.

According to Spain’s Minister of Education, Culture and Sport, José Ignacio Wert, the reform will permit the reproduction of “non-significant fragments” (i.e. quoted and hyper-linked texts from other websites) without prior authorization, but it will also require the payment of “equitable compensation” for doing so. In other words, whenever a website aimed at “informing,” “educating,” or “entertaining” users links to another website, it will have to pay a fee to do so. Continue reading “Spain takes hatchet to Internet Freedom”

STOP new Amazon oil devastation

”There are always oil spills in the Amazon. Because the criminal predator oil companies care nothing for the environment, the health of the people or even the genocide of whole indigenous nations. this has been going on for 50 years, the biggest crimes being the 1000’s of spills and abandoned chemical lakes created over 30 years by Texaco (now Chevron) which even today uses it’s massive wealth to defend its impunity. Today while science proves that 60% of fossil fuels will have to stay in the ground to save us from catastrophic climate change, the race to extract continues worse than ever, with the connivance of ourselves, the 1st world fossil fuel junkies!

Amazon oil spill has killed tons of fish, sickened native people

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Barbara Fraser

Dead fish from an oil spill in the Peruvian Amazon are mixed with oil-covered twigs gathered by local residents. Fish are vital to the villagers’ diet and income. Reporters discovered there had been another smaller oil spill only 4 days before which the company claims was a ”normal maintenance procedure”

By Barbara Fraser Environmental Health News July 23, 2014

CUNINICO, Peru – On the last day of June, Roger Mangía Vega watched an oil slick and a mass of dead fish float past this tiny Kukama Indian community and into the Marañón River, a major tributary of the Amazon.

Community leaders called the emergency number for Petroperu, the state-run operator of the 845-kilometer pipeline that pumps crude oil from the Amazon over the Andes Mountains to a port on Peru’s northern coast Continue reading “STOP new Amazon oil devastation”