What exactly is the “system” that we are fighting?
Eric Laursen
The system is the state, a complex mechanism that includes government, capitalism, patriarchy and imperialism. It will not go away until we force it to.
“The system” is back. And it is high time we talk about it again.
Fifty years ago, in the days of the Vietnam War, the counterculture and widespread questioning of government, a lot of prominent writers, not to mention day-to-day activists, used this bit of shorthand to describe the power they were fighting against. Today, in the era of dark money, neoliberal capitalism, police impunity and US American forever wars, we still need a way to think coherently about these problems, about the forces that produce them and we need to figure out how to fight back — without lapsing into some left version of QAnon.
“News” from the Notre-Dames-des-Landes ZAD (zad for ever blog, 14/05/2021) …
A lighthouse to cancel the end of the world
In the fields of Notre Dame des Landes, in western France, stands a disobedient lighthouse. It was built far from the sea, exactly where the control tower of a new international airport was supposed to be built. This short 17 minute film documents its construction by a ragged crew – including deserting architects, an ex-homeless kid, art activists, a ceramicist, a few farmers and a genius welder whose day job was building the world’s biggest cruise-liners in France’s largest shipyard.
We post a reflection on binary-gender oppression and the grounds for strategically contesting it, ‘in commemoration of “pride,” an introduction to the production of subjectivities’, originally published on dehiscence (01/06/2021). We want to thank Robin Peignot for sharing this with Autonomies.
Photograph: Felipe Figueroa/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock
Over two days (May 15 and 16), chileans were called upon to vote for representatives for a “Constitutional Convention”. The results were a victory for “the Left”, announcing thereby the end of the Pinochet era constitution of 1980, the neoliberal touchstone for the country’s governments ever since.
For some, it was the triumph of the country’s collective insurrection begun in October of 2019 and only humbled by the coronavirus pandemic.
“Allende is smiling”, we could then read, perhaps confirming the watch words that “Chile will be the tomb of neoliberalism”, as it has hitherto been its laboratory. (Carta Maior 19/05/2021)
To cite but one sympathetic newspaper report, among so many others …
Chile’s established political elite has been roundly rejected at the polls six months ahead of a pivotal presidential election, as the country turned to a progressive new generation to write the next chapter in its history.
Resounding victories for leftist and independent candidates saw right-wing politicians crash to dismal electoral defeats alongside those with links to Chile’s transition to democracy.
Elections on May 15 and 16 for local and regional offices and for members of the Constitutional Convention have completely changed the national political landscape in Chile. The Right, gathered around president Sebastián Piñera, was dealt a major blow, and the ruling centrist coalition, Concertación, collapsed spectacularly. The Left and social movements swept the contest, winning a series of vital political offices and, perhaps most importantly, majority representation in the assembly responsible for drafting Chile’s new constitution.
The two-day mega election — deciding mayorships, municipal councils, regional governorships, and the composition of the Convention — is a milestone, the impact of which will resonate for decades to come. By winning substantial representation, the Left made good on the promise of radical change announced by the popular revolt that broke out on October 18, 2019. Just as importantly, a clear signal was sent that Chile’s reigning transitional regime — brokered at the end of the dictatorship between the center-left, the Right, and the military — is on life support.
…
Chile has taken a decisive step toward ending the neoliberal and antidemocratic constitution of 1980. Its next steps must be toward a sweeping structural transformation of society led by the people and the working class. What happens over the next two years as the Constitutional Convention advances will determine the political contours of the future for years and decades to come.
If notes of caution are made – pointing to the difficulties and obstacles that still lie ahead in “radically” changing the legal foundations of the society -, the overall sentiment seems to be celebratory. And in some way, understandably so. History, events, processes, can only be read linearly and homogeneously through blinding ideological filters. But our scepticism in regard to the announced victory is read from the ground up, from the fact that so few participated in the vote, from what the “October” insurrection generated – something that can in no way be fitted into a constitution -, and from the fact that constitutions are relevant – if at all -, if they remain beholden or secondary to collective creativity.
We share the thoughts of Raúl Zibechi on the subject …
As the visible part of the iceberg, the question of the district of Sheikh Jarrah is only symptomatic of what one could call colonial contempt, the reflection of a white supremacist heritage, that of something anchored in the most toxic forms of nationalism that Europe could generate during the last century.
On the impossibility of the Palestinian: deconstructing epistemic borders, embodying a praxis of liberation
But here, as with most of the other matters in the question of Palestine, we need to connect things with each other, and see them, not as they are hidden […], but as they are ignored or denied.
Edward Said, The Question of Palestine
What the news shows us, once again, is the centrality that the colony in fact occupies in the construction of the collective myth of the Israeli nation. Indeed, from the perspective of a Fanonian reading, we can clearly perceive the central role that race plays in the emergence of the so-called Israeli national identity and how it ultimately forges the very body of that identity.
… civilization cannot be saved from the center. The only way to create a “civilized,” socially acceptable society is by abolishing capitalism and creating other, mutually recognitive ways of living. The task is urgent, the windows of opportunity are closing.
John Holloway
The Zapatistas’ surreal struggle for life — and against capitalism
A delegation of the Zapatistas is sailing for Europe. Not to conquer, but to connect and to join hands with other insurgents and join them in struggle.
In the name of the Zapatista women, children, men, old people and, of course, others, I declare that the name of this land, which its natives now call “Europe,” will from here on be called SLUMIL K´AJXEMK´OP, which means “Insurgent Land” or “Land that does not give up, that does not faint.” And that is how it will be known by its own and other people as long as there is someone here who does not surrender, does not sell out and does not submit.
These are the words that, according to SupGaleano, will be spoken by Marijosé when they set foot on European soil after crossing the Atlantic Ocean in La Montaña, the boat that set off from Mexico on May 3 and which is expected to reach the Spanish coast some time in June.
State, power and society in Latin America: an interview with Raúl Zibechi
From state violence and neoliberal extractivism to Colombia’s general strike and Zapatismo: militant journalist Raúl Zibechi reflects on the state of Latin America today.
On May Day 2021, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of Colombia during one of the country’s darkest periods in recent memory. Four days earlier, a general strike — which is still ongoing as we speak — had been called to denounce the neoliberal package proposed by the government of Ivan Duque. The state responded to these protests with an unprecedented use of violence, killing dozens of demonstrators.
This comes during the so-called post-conflict period, following the signing of a peace accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in 2016. And yet, the increase in assassinations of environmentalists and land defenders across the country shows that the response to the protests is in fact very much in keeping with patterns of violence and militarization.
Meanwhile, in the Atlantic Ocean, seven Zapatistas are aboard a ship named La Montaña as part of theirJourney for Life voyage, the first stage of which will bring them to Europe. The delegation, having accepted invitations from numerous organizations, is on its way to share the “histories, pain, rage, successes and failures” of the Zapatistas with the continent of Europe.
These two stories embody the two opposing realities of Latin America in the 21st century. In one, you have the consolidating power of the state and a rights regime in crisis. And on the other, you have the new futures of solidarity and community being forged by societies adjacent to the state.
The COVID-19 pandemic temporarily upended the anti-austerity rebellions, the movements against patriarchy and other contentious politics that emerged at the end of 2019. However, they have now resurfaced in different ways, from being channeled into new transformative electoral campaigns to the growing autonomous turn seen across Latin America.
The militant journalist Raul Zibechi is one of the most prolific writers and political thinkers on social movements in Latin America. From the caracoles in Chiapas to the barracks of Aymara community members in El Alto, Bolivia, for many years Zibechi has walked the paths made by those who are living and organizing in opposition to state power.
Today, Zibechi continues his practice of accompaniment, covering societies in movement during the COVID-19 pandemic. He explores the elements of quotidian encounters among groups and peoples on their own terms, defying the dominant institutional and state-centered frameworks of the social sciences that see the state as the only operative site of power. The following is an excerpt of our ongoing dialogues, providing a broad and nuanced analysis of this current epoch, exploring power from above and below alike.
This interview was completed prior to the most recent escalation of Israeli aggression in Palestine, which is why it was not part of this dialogue. Zibechi does, however, offer the statement regarding Israeli state violence:
[The situation in Palestine] highlights the double standards of the West, which rants against Venezuela but looks the other way when the dead are Palestinian children, as if those lives did not matter. Do they matter? Perhaps, for Biden and the state as a whole, the lives of Palestinians matter as much as those of Black people in America’s suburbs. It is important that we understand how crimes against Black people in Brazil, against Indigenous peoples and pueblos in Colombia, against Palestinians, and against Black people in the USA, are not separate but connected. There is only one crime: the war of capital against the peoples and Mother Earth.
Time is the popular strike’s worst enemy. As supply shortages begin, the community could turn against the blockade points. But the poverty and state neglect are so extreme in these resisting sectors that the youth have nothing to lose and much to gain.
We think the reproduction of daily life and labors of care are fundamental. They are what enables the revolt to develop each day. These labors take the forms of neighborhood community kitchens and networks of affection that are growing stronger due to the murders, torture, disappearances, sexual abuses, and the escalation of systematic violence deployed by the Colombian state headed by Ivan Duque’s Uribista administration.
The text that follows was an intervention by Raoul Vaneigem in the Oaxaca “Commune” of 2006 whose resonances extend well beyond the events here referred to, with the insurrection in colombia coming directly to mind.
We thank the Not Bored! collective for sharing their translation Vaneigem’s text with us.
“Instead, We Became Millions”: Inside Colombia’s Ongoing General Strike
Despite brutal state repression, Colombia’s general strike has continued strong now for 23 days. The revolt has largely been leaderless and solidarity has expanded to include an impressively wide array of Colombian society: Indigenous and Afro-Colombian movements, queer and trans people, workers, students, people whose precarious employment has been lost to the pandemic. As in many other recent uprisings around the world, this one has been driven first and foremost by youth who know that their only hope to have any future at all is to fight for it. Millions are united in their rejection of unlivable conditions and horrific police violence.
A reflection on spain’s 15M, a reflection whose resonances extend beyond the limits of that country. (Lobo suelto! – 14/05/2021)
I see no point in remembering 15M if it is not to try to prolong its energy, its power of scandal and disorder. Where is it located today? In a point of view. 15M is an untimely historical break that offers us a perspective to think about Spanish politics; a perspective, a space to see and hear, which opens with the following cry: “they call it democracy and it is not”. That statement first asks us a question: if it is not democracy, then what is it? And where does it come from?
To struggle against the “system”
From Roarmag (05/06/2021) …
What exactly is the “system” that we are fighting?
Eric Laursen
The system is the state, a complex mechanism that includes government, capitalism, patriarchy and imperialism. It will not go away until we force it to.
“The system” is back. And it is high time we talk about it again.
Fifty years ago, in the days of the Vietnam War, the counterculture and widespread questioning of government, a lot of prominent writers, not to mention day-to-day activists, used this bit of shorthand to describe the power they were fighting against. Today, in the era of dark money, neoliberal capitalism, police impunity and US American forever wars, we still need a way to think coherently about these problems, about the forces that produce them and we need to figure out how to fight back — without lapsing into some left version of QAnon.
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