We continue to share, in the english language, news and reflections on the Vio.Me factory occupation-coorperative, in Thessaloniki; on this occasion, a call for solidarity, as the occupation is once again threatened with appropriation.
The Vio.Me occupation resists as an example in europe not only of workers’ self-management, but of the needed connections that can and must exist between a self-managed factory and the broader society of which it is a part, for the former to contribute to develop non-capitalist forms of social organisation and mutual aid.
From the Working Class History collective, two excellent podcast episodes on the Stonewall riots and radical gay politics of the time and today. A further contribution to radicalising pride.
A call of solidarity from a comfortable distance may seem impotent against the violence of the repression being waged against the sudanese rebellion. And yet in our weakness, we cannot but, with words, express our desire to see the rebellion resist and create a world beyond that which up until recently seemed seemed to be a fated destiny.
Even in the face of so much terror being thrown against the uprising, there is an undoubted courage and beauty in this rebellion, in all rebellion.
After months of protests, strikes, occupations, the sudanese State has unleashed a wave of repression against the insurrection. Yet even in face of this terror, millions have now joined a general strike to bring down the regime.
Rebellions are contagious, and with algeria also in revolt, the region’s authoritarians sense fear; the moment when everything becomes possible.
To share, reflections on the insurrection in sudan (and algeria) and a call for solidarity …
Psychosis: A severe mental disorder in which thought and emotions are so impaired that contact is lost with external reality.
It is unclear whether the metaphor of being in “touch with reality” is adequate to understand human life in general, or human social and political life more particularly. And if it is flawed, then to read contemporary politics as “psychotic”, in contrast to a presumably “rational” politics of bygone days, is itself problematic. Have we not always been at war, socially, or have not societies always been constituted by the temporary balance of contending forces and worlds? If so, then Bifo’s brief reading of our times, which we share below, may be of limited importance. But it is by no means without interest and invites further reflection.
Solidarity with Rouvikonas (group-member of Anarchist Federation – Greece)
STATEMENT AGAINST REPRESSION OF RESISTANCE IN GREECE
After being identified following the attack on the Parliament, on May 21st – an action in support of Dimitris Koufontinas, a comrade imprisoned for life on a hunger strike – two activists must collect 60,000 euros before 14 June, otherwise they will spend up to 10 years in jail. (Links to the financial support below.)
The Prime Minister and Ministry of Justice are once and for all trying to put away Giorgos Kalaïtzidis, co-founder of ROUVIKONAS and Niko, both members of the same group and famous Greek resistance fighters. In fact, both are prosecuted not for a civil offense, but this time for a crime. By utilising an old law on the protection of historic monuments of great value – a law almost never used, intended for the likes of the Acropolis or Delphi – the state has found a way to trap our comrades who until now were always careful not to cross this legal boundary into committing criminal offenses.
As a result, Giorgos and Nikos face up to 10-years in prison and are being asked to pay a gigantic security deposit of 30,000 euros each (60,000 euros in total) by the 14th of June, that is, three weeks before the legislative elections. That the law is being used to quickly lock up several well-known members of the group and to offer a resounding media show is clear. The hardening of the repression against the group (whose last sentence in April amounted to 3,000 euros or ten times less) is one of the aspects of the state manipulating public opinion right now. As a part of the European and local elections, Tsipras,- the Greek Prime Minister – has just called for early parliamentary elections and will play his role on the 7th of July as an outsider facing the right. The right-center of the electoral spectrum hates Exarchaia (a district of Athens well known for art and resistance), the Anarchists and other revolutionaries, and is preparing to enable Mitsotakis -the leader of the right – to “evacuate Exarcheia in a month” and to “imprison the red and black bandits”
For the past two months, Tsipras has been striking with all the horrors of the right and flexing his position of authority: six refugee squats have been evacuated, the Exarcheia district is daily harassed by the police, a TV show about the district which announces its near end, the political prisoner Koufontinas brutally deprived of his supervised exit permits to see his son, and now members of Rouvikonas about to go to jail.
This attack on the resistance movement in Greece is probably the hardest since Tsipras came to power. No group has resisted so much in recent years as Rouvikonas: daily, like an elixir against the resignation that Tsipras is trying to provoke. Almost every day, we have heard about Anarchy and resistance in the news and in the press. Almost every day, more and more people said that nothing is finished. Because our solidarity is as unbreakable as is our will to fight, we will stand and support our comrades everywhere, by all means, as we struggle.
Support Giorgos, Nikos and all members of ROUVIKONAS!
‘Q’ then, will never be a coherent letter tacked as a bridge on some list of identities. The past decade shows the poverty or ruin of every attempt to do so. We’ve said already that these words are magic. We might add that they are wyrd – the Old English for fate and all the other invisible and nonlinear causalities we are woven into and which gives us the modern word ‘weird’. The queerest insurrection demands the weirdest, the most enmeshed in the unseen, the most in relationship with all that teems just beyond the normative filter we are still fighting to unlearn. Find those who straddle that filter, a foot in each world. Share your methods, share what you’ve learned, share the stories of your dead. The dead we hold in common make us family – some other form of kinship than the Norm and its terror. We need each other today more than ever. We want to win this time, to win all the time, and the dead want that too.
Mary Nardini Gang
In June of 1969, the Stonewall Riots of New York City marked the beginning of an open contestation of institutionalised heterosexuality in contemporary radical politics. It was by no means the first gesture of rebellion against hetero-normativity, but with time, its resonances have served as a potentiality for proliferation of similar and multiplying rebellions. But on this, the 50th anniversary of the riots, gay-lesbian, or more broadly today, LGBTIQ insurrection, has never been more subject to political and market appropriation. The rebellious have been made an identity, becoming thereby representable. And if resistance continues to their in the “liberal West”, today, even an Oreo Cookie can try to pass as gay friendly, no doubt to be consumed by homo-nationalists.
The caricatural obscenity of the commodification of “pride days” is stripped bare by the ongoing parade of violence that is directed at LGBTQI populations throughout the world, including in the “West”, where the government of sexuality and demographics cannot abandon the safeguarding of heterosexuality to something as unpredictable as desire.
Surreptitiously or openly, LGBTQI insurrections are increasingly policed, domesticated and/or repressed. And to then hope that all of this can be addressed through petitions, boycotts, appeals to established politicians, is to ignore the vital lesson of the Stonewall Riots: that they were riots for a new world.
To celebrate “pride” in our own way, we share two texts by the Mary Nardini Gang, a third by Nova Ishtar Daggers-Drawn, in defence of queering revolution and a video re-telling of a story of oppression, one story, of human desire …
[Prison] relieves us of the responsibility of seriously engaging with the problems of our society, especially those produced by racism and, increasingly, global capitalism.
The death of north-american political activist, Roz Payne, takes us back not only to her life, but to an extraordinarily intense moment of radical politics in the united states.
It is impossible to say what was most significant politically in all that Payne dedicated herself to. We will mention only the Vermont commune movement of the late 1960’s, a movement that was easily the largest and most sustained effort to put an end to capitalism through rural communes and cooperative forms of life, in the country’s recent history.
Below, we share a testimonial of Payne’s life by David Van Deusen, a short article on her political life, a short text by her on the Newsreel Collective (of which she was a founding member), and final account by Van Deusen on the Vermont commune movement, in which she was also involved.
The resonances of the gilets jaunes movement(s), as captured by Jacques Fradin. It is a reading of the insurrection that does not hold back or step away from criticising the “Left”, and beyond.
The essay was already published in English by the enough is enough collective, and we share their translation here with minor changes.
here I am once more sitting in front of the poetry audience that is sitting benevolently in front of me looks at me and is waiting for poetry as always I have nothing to tell it as always the poetry audience knows this very well it certainly doesn’t expect an epic poem from me seeing that it’s done nothing to inspire one in me the ancient poet indeed as everyone knows was not the one responsible for his poetry it was his audience that was really responsible since it had a direct relationship with its poet who depended on his audience for his inspiration and for his remuneration his poetry developed therefore according to the intentions of his audience the poet was no more than the individual interpreter of a collective voice that used to narrate and judge this is certainly not our situation this isn’t why you’re here today in this room the person you’re listening to is unfortunately not your epic poet.
Nanni Balestrini
Poet, author, essayist, visual artist, revolutionary: all of them together, for none of them could exist without the other in Nanni Balestrini’s life.
The Stonewall riots and Pride at 50
From the Working Class History collective, two excellent podcast episodes on the Stonewall riots and radical gay politics of the time and today. A further contribution to radicalising pride.
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