In March 2015, Bill Gates showed an image of the coronavirus during a TED Talkand told the audience that it was what the greatest catastrophe of our time would look like. The real threat to life, he said, is “not missiles, but microbes.” When the coronavirus pandemic swept over the earth like a tsunami five years later, he revived the war language, describing the pandemic as “a world war.”
“The coronavirus pandemic pits all of humanity against the virus,” he said.
In fact, the pandemic is not a war. The pandemic is a consequence of war. A war against life. The mechanical mind connected to the money machine of extraction has created the illusion of humans as separate from nature, and nature as dead, inert raw material to be exploited.
But, in fact, we are part of the biome. And we are part of the virome. The biome and the virome are us. When we wage war on the biodiversity of our forests, our farms and in our guts, we wage war on ourselves.
The health emergency of the coronavirus is inseparable from the health emergency of extinction, the health emergency of biodiversity loss and the health emergency of the climate crisis. All of these emergencies are rooted in a mechanistic, militaristic, anthropocentric worldview that considers humans separate from — and superior to — other beings. Beings we can own, manipulate and control. All of these emergencies are rooted in an economic model based on the illusion of limitless growth and limitless greed, which violate planetary bounda
“I GET KNOCKED DOWN, BUT I GET UP AGAIN, YOU’RE NEVER GONNA KEEP ME DOWN”
by ADAM LEWISIt’s one of the most ubiquitous choruses of the nineties, a boozy chant of a song that, to this day, is instantly recognisable.
Chumbawamba’s ‘Tubthumping’ is one of those freakish one-off singles — the sound of a band consolidating all their best ideas around one song so anthemic and infectious that it turned out to be undeniable, never to be repeated and doomed to “one hit wonder” status.
Both now and then, it’s often seen as a novelty single — and in many ways, that’s understandable. It’s a rowdy anthem, ubiquitous in pop culture and pub alike, pummelled by repetition to the point of cliché. On either side of its three week run at the top of the Australian charts were ‘Barbie Girl’ and ‘Dr. Jones’, two similarly ubiquitous hits. With all…
Report back from the 8th of March squatting action in Amsterdam [Video]
Amsterdam. Netherlands. Today, in honor of 8th of March, we organized a squatting action with demonstration. Due to security concerns, it was organized silently, sharing call-out in private channels.
Despite this, more that 60 comrades came to support our action! 3 banners (“Woman life freedom”, “Sex work is work”, “destroy patriarchy, fight capitalism, smash the state”) were dropped with flares from the windows of the squatted building. Police were present, but no one was arrested.
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We are told that there are not enough houses for everyone, that there are not enough spaces for the refugees and migrants coming here fleeing imperialist wars and economies that have been destroyed by (neo)colonialism.
It is unacceptable that the media blame migration for the fact that we all seem to struggle to find a home. This is an example of scapegoating migrants and refugees. .
There is no problem of a lack of space, there is no “housing crisis”, the only problem is the unequal distribution of wealth. The problem is capitalism.
We are being pushed out of our city by rising rent prices and gentrification. Social housing is being sold off privately and the lack of affordable housing means working class people are forced to leave the city.
Even people with essential professions such as teachers, healthcare workers and social workers are forced to move. People struggle to pay rent while speculators are given free range to do as they please.
Some private investors have hundreds of houses, for example, prince Bernhard has more than 600 houses, and the owner of this building, Anthonie Mans, owns over 100 other properties in the Netherlands.
Waiting lists for social housing are ridiculous and it can take from 8 to 14 years for people to get a place. But for every homeless person there is an estimate of 750m2 of empty building in Amsterdam.
Rent is theft. Maintenance of one room does not cost hundreds of euros per month. This money goes directly into the pockets of landlords or speculators.
The housing issue disproportionately affects women and queer people. For example, queer teenagers are more likely to become homeless.
People who experience domestic abuse are sometimes forced to stay in unsafe situations because they cannot financially afford to leave.
Landlords often discriminate against potential renters based on their ethnicity, income, gender, sexuality and ability. They are known to often be intimidating, unreasonable and feel entitled to tell us how to live our private lives.
Since the squatting ban came into effect, homelessness has doubled.
However, far too often there has been an uncomfortably close relationship between squatting and gentrification, and nowhere does this ring more true than in Amsterdam.
Squatting has historically been a movement against gentrification, the extortion of rent and a rejection of the institution of private property all together- but in the last years rather than fighting gentrification some squatters have been actively leading it way. Working together with the state in order to try and hold on to the little ‘free spaces’ and legalized squats that are still left (often without success).
We reject this position and strategy. We want housing for all, not just for a select group of ‘artists and freethinkers’. We need to speak to our oppressors from a position of power, not beg them to throw us some crumbs. The city belongs to all that live in it, and it is time that we take it back.
Sex workers are told they are not allowed to work while other contact professions are – this only contributes to the further stigmatization of sex work.
The government is closing windows in Amsterdam supposedly because it wants to rescue sex workers from human trafficking and bring down crime, not only is there no empirical evidence that closing windows would help with this, taking away someone’s workplace will more likely only make their situation more precarious and dangerous.
Moving sex workers away from the city center to a less rich neighborhood to remove “disturbance” from the rich neighborhood, falls into a structural pattern of stigmatizing sex work and stigmatizing the working class. If the state really cared about sex workers, rather than victimizing us they would give material support during this pandemic, or allow us to work.
Sex work is work. Fighting for worker’s rights means fighting for sex workers rights as well.
The history of the 8th of March is very radical and inspirational. It even was the starting point of Russian revolution!
But what happened to the 8th of March and feminism in general? Capitalism.
As the modern economic learned how to commodify and take profit from the protest against it, feminism wasn’t an exception. As a result, when people hear the word feminism, they don’t always think about radical, intersectional and anti-capitalist feminism.
They think about a type of feminism that says there should be “more female politicians”, “more girl bosses”. This is called “liberal feminism”, but it’s more like a meticulously crafted advertisement campaign.
Liberal “feminism” doesn’t really care about socially oppressed groups even if they are women. It refuses to see the root of gender inequality, it tries to be fair, but stops half-way.
Liberal feminism fails to recognize the relationship between capitalism and patriarchy. But if we oppose patriarchy, we should oppose capitalism and vice versa.
While women have to go to work, when they get home they still have to do house duties and provide emotional support, this is also work but work that is undervalued and unpaid.
Instead of fighting the problem, which is capitalism, liberal feminism has people fighting for ways to coexist with it.
Such ideology paints the intersectional feminist movement as “crazy-man-haters”.
With the help of capital, they buy your attention from screens of your laptops/tvs/phones with “feel good girl power” movies, songs etc. They sell you nice clothes with “feel good girl power” slogans. They are giving you a discount to buy cosmetics in the honor of 8th of March “strong ladies day”.
In this way they are erasing the history and the meaning of such an incredibly important day for all women.
The 8th of March is the day to remember the struggle of the women that came before us! It is the day to show solidarity with women who struggle today! It is the day, to celebrate our fight against capitalism and smash this damn patriarchy!
As long as the 1% rule the world, even if half of them are women, the lives of the 99% will not be better!
As fem folks we are often told not to take up too much space. We are socially conditioned to keep our mouths shut and our legs closed. Not to dream too big or breath too loudly.
But we are being strangled and we are expected to smile. There is no space that is safe under this patriarchal capitalist system.
Solidarity is the only solution. Stand by those who are fighting their own oppression, their struggle is your struggle, their fight is our fight. We are not free until all are free. We will not let ourselves be the collateral damage of this crisis.
We will not let ourselves be pushed out of this city! It’s time to take back space!
As feminists, we know that struggle involves work and it involves love. We stand in solidarity with the Kurdish women who have been imprisoned by the Turkish state, who are fighting in the mountains of Kurdistan and who are building new ways of life across society in all four parts of Kurdistan.
We stand in solidarity with Angel, the refugee woman who came to the Netherlands to find safety but was murdered by the Dutch immigration system. She was a political struggler! She was a trans woman! We stand in solidarity with her and all immigrants!
There is no space that is safe under this patriarchal capitalist system, so we have to fight back.
Today, March 8, we commemorate International Working Women’s Day, a historic date on which we raise the struggle for the political, social, economic, and sexual rights of women, lesbians, and transgender people of the oppressed classes. Today, we aim to put an end to the systematic violence of patriarchy and support the revolutionary workers’, popular and anti-colonial struggle.
First proposed by a group of socialist women at the Second International Conference of Socialist Women in 1910 in Copenhagen, the day was initially intended to promote women’s civil rights. Later, it became a day of agitation, mobilization, protest, and strike for the lives and liberty of women and dissidents of the gender system across the globe.
From the protest for women’s labor and political rights in the industrial states at the beginning of the 20th century to the revolt for bread and peace by working women that began, along with other strikes and demonstrations, the Russian Revolution of February 1917, March 8 as International Women’s Day was slowly consolidated through the active struggle of working-class women.
Therefore, we rescue such great attainment that allows us to remember the achievements of the feminist movement against patriarchal oppression. March 8 also allows us to appropriate the debates and proposals our predecessors had and build spaces that enable us to raise our voices against the injustices and violence of this capitalist, patriarchal and colonialist, system of domination.
The international commemorative day has had multiple banners of struggle that vary in each territory and time. Highlighting among them there’s the struggle for suffrage and equal pay, the recognition of care work and other tasks relegated to the private sphere performed mostly by women, the struggle for the decriminalization and legalization of abortion and access to contraceptives, and the abolition of gender-based violence materialized in high numbers of sexual abuse, femicides, and transfeminicides, among others.
We also highlight the date as a space for women and dissidents that have historically allowed the organizational articulation of the feminist movement.
Lately, and has been characterized by massive mobilizations, most recently by the International Women’s Strike with beginning in Spain, the #NiUnaMenos movement in Argentina and Latin America, and the struggle for legal, safe and free abortion in countries around the world.
Today we, working women, experience, on the front line, the social and economic crisis resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, which uncovered types of violence and patriarchal domination often made invisible as the exploitation of feminine labor in the private sphere and subordination to the male figure within it. COVID-19 also facilitated the resurgence of domestic violence, harassment, and the increase in cases of femicides, transfeminicides, and sexual abuse due to confinement, which is why we mobilize on March 8 with such heartfelt urgency.
However, while we recognize the importance of the feminist struggle in our times, we are aware, and therefore reject, the existence of white, bourgeois, and binary “feminism” that seeks to become hegemonic to the detriment of the oppressed.
Thus, we raise, out of our social and grassroots organizations, disputes against patriarchal oppression from below and through direct action.
We are also alert of the influence of the State on this plurality of currents present within feminism which seeks to accommodate the struggles and demands of working women within its institutions, to corset them in its machinery.
On the commemoration date, we also stress the importance of women and dissidents in the struggle for the rights of the working class and those oppressed by the system of capitalist domination, highlighting the activism of militants such as Teresa Claramunt, Luisa Capetillo, Lucia Sánchez, and Virginia Bolten, for the rights of women and dissidents, for the curbing of environmental exploitation, for the abolition of the State and the end of all oppressions, looking at the revolutionary transformation of reality.
Thus, through mutual support, class solidarity, and collective care, and through the critique of the construction of a political theory based on traditional hierarchical, binary, and exclusionary conceptions of gender too, we fight for socialism and freedom for all.
Therefore, we commemorate March 8 as a day of the revolutionary struggle for our emancipation that, as Emma Goldman wrote in The Tragedy of Woman’s Emancipation (1906): “Should make it possible for women to be human in the truest sense.
Everything within her that craves assertion and activity should reach its fullest expression; all artificial barriers should be broken, and the road towards greater freedom cleared of every trace of centuries of submission and slavery”
For the liberation of the oppressed, Long live those who struggle!
☆ Alternativa Libertaria/ Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici (AL/FdCA) – Italy ☆ Anarchist Communist Group (ACG) – Britain ☆ Αναρχική Ομοσπονδία – Anarchist Federation – Greece ☆ Aotearoa Workers Solidarity Movement (AWSM) – Aotearoa/New Zealand ☆ Coordenação Anarquista Brasileira (CAB) – Brazil ☆ Die Plattform – Anarchakommunistische Organisation – Germany ☆ Embat – Organització Llibertària de Catalunya – Catalonia ☆ Federación Anarquista de Rosario (FAR) – Argentina ☆ Federación Anarquista de Santiago (FAS) – Chile ☆ Federación Anarquista Uruguaya (FAU) – Uruguay ☆ Grupo Libertario Vía Libre – Colombia ☆ Libertäre Aktion – Switzerland ☆ Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group (MACG) – Australia ☆ Organización Anarquista de Córdoba (OAC) – Argentina ☆ Organización Anarquista de Tucumán (OAT) – Argentina ☆ Organisation Socialiste Libertaire (OSL) – Switzerland ☆ Union Communiste Libertaire (UCL) – France ☆ Workers Solidarity Movement (WSM) – Ireland ☆ Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (ZACF) – South Africa
Today’s piece pays homage– and it must– to the brave women of Chile and around the world who are standing up for their right to be free from sexual and gender-based violence..
Its an amazing performance video, easy to learn and now reproducing in women’s demos all over Latin America
see full lyrics in Spanish, English and German BELOW
Original Performance, Collective LasTesis, Santiago, Chile, November 25, 2019 wherethe Pinera Regime has been deploying sexual violence, torture and disappearances in response to recent anti-austerity protests.
From Brazil to Chile and the Caribbean, individuals and collectives have taken matters into their own hands, urging and forcing governments to recognize the terrifying numbers of femicides and the undisputable right to choose.
When I was in high school, I learned about Magali García Ramis’s “Solo para hombres en la semana de la mujer” (or, “Only for Men on Women’s Week”). It’s an essay the Puerto Rican writer penned to observe the concept of manhood, one that has been historically intertwined with a morbid obsession of war, pain, and humiliation.
“We [women] didn’t have to prove with forced and external pain that we are strong,” García Ramis writes. “We proved it by birthing you and feeding you while you could fend for yourself.”
@Federacion Anarquista Gran Canaria 18h 25 March 2021:
We report: the civil guards ask that they be declared excluded and that the Provincial Court judge him. The case has been postponed until it is decided whether Ruyman should go to the Provincial court. Our opinion: the pressure has scared them. Later we will share beautiful images.
Informamos: los guardias civiles piden que se les declare aforados y que les juzgue la Audiencia Provincial. La vista se ha aplazado hasta que se decida si sigue en el Penal o va al Provincial. Nuestra opinión: la presión les ha asustado. Después compartimos imágenes preciosas.
Informamos: los guardias civiles piden que se les declare aforados y que les juzgue la Audiencia Provincial. La vista se ha aplazado hasta que se decida si sigue en el Penal o va al Provincial. Nuestra opinión: la presión les ha asustado. Después compartimos imágenes preciosas.
On March 24, the exemplary Spanish democracy will celebrate a new farce, a trial for another police and judicial set-up that only seeks to hide another case of torture by the State Security Forces and Bodies. The prosecution requests 1 year and 6 months in jail, in addition to a 770 euro fine, to our colleague Ruymán Rodríguez for allegedly having kicked a civil guard in the barracks where he was being held and tortured after an illegal arrest.
The trial is framed, suspiciously, in an aggravated repressive wave that has ended with Pablo Hasel and Elgio convicted for their letters, and with several detainees in the protests that have been organized as a result of it in several cities of the State. Faced with increasing inequality, the absence of a future and opportunities, and uncertainty, the State’s response is to arm itself and strike.
The Free 