A.C.A.B.: A Manifesto

Posted on May 31, 2020 by Julius Gavroche

MANIFESTO AGAINST POLICE VIOLENCE / PUSSY RIOT x LASTESIS

This manifesto is co-written and co-performed by
feminists from Mexico, Chile and Russia. We unite our
forces to stop police violence. In solidarity we trust.
Pussy Riot x LASTESIS.

PART 1. LASTESIS

a feminist performance collective from Valparaíso, Chile; who created the activist performance piece “Un Violador en Tu Camino” (“A Rapist in Your Path”) that now is a feminist anthem worldwide.

Continue reading →
Posted in Commentary | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Solidarity With The Rebels In Minneapolis

Posted on May 31, 2020 by Julius Gavroche

An anonymous contribution to the understanding of a rebellion, posted on It’s going down (28/05/2020) …

The Following Editorial Looks At The Recent Revolt In Minneapolis In The Context Of Both The COVID-19 Pandemic And The Overall Social War In The So-Called US.

Between Looted Targets And Trillionaires: Solidarity With The Rebels In Minneapolis

Endlessly, we hear “why are they looting and burning their own community?” As if by geographic proximity, the Targets and Autozones and McDonalds and even the sacred small businesses have ever belonged to the workers and poor who now light them ablaze. At a time where historic unemployment and disparity meets skyrocketing corporate profits and the advent of the first ‘trillionaire,’ we hear the scolds and defenders of the present order mobilizing to shame those who are reclaiming their time, their labor and their lives. They remind us that there is a ‘correct’ way of doing things, that there are channels and representatives we must go through to seek justice. Meanwhile, the stores are burning, people are pushing police into retreat, and dancing in the streets.

Continue reading →
Posted in Commentary, News blog | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Minneapolis: Now This Fight Has Two Sides

Posted on May 29, 2020 by Julius Gavroche

From the CrimethInc, reading the Minneapolis riots …

Minneapolis: Now This Fight Has Two Sides – What the Riots Mean for the COVID-19 Era

The demonstrations this week in Minneapolis mark a historic watershed in the COVID-19 era. As we argued in March, there are some things that are worth risking death for. Perpetuating capitalism is not one of them. But some of us face threats even more deadly than COVID-19. It is worth risking our lives to fight for a world in which no one will be murdered the way that George Floyd was—and what is happening in Minneapolis shows that people are ready to.

Continue reading →
Posted in News blog | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Tomás Ibáñez: Anarchism as a way of life

Posted on May 29, 2020 by Julius Gavroche

A new way of life, not a new faith….

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist

To speak of anarchism as a way of life, as an ethics, takes us to difficult questions about what it is to be, to act, as an anarchist. And perhaps among what is most important about the written work of Tomás Ibáñez is that he has never shied away from confronting them directly, as he does in the work that we share below, translated from the french and published with Grande Angle Libertaire. And it is a reflection which calls up again the centrality of mutual aid in anarchist practice.

Existential Anarchism

(Grande Angle Libertaire, 25/05/2020)

If the reference to the “existential element” of a political option refers to the fact that, apart from a membership of simple convenience, people who commit to it integrate this political choice as a structuring element of their social and personal identity, with all of the repercussions that this has on their lives, it is clear that this is certainly present in anarchism, but also, from left to right, in the whole, broad range of political ideologies.

On the other hand, if this reference refers to the fact that a political option carries an existential dimension, the range narrows considerably and anarchism then presents itself, not only as one of the options which satisfy this condition, but again as one of those where it asserts itself most clearly. From my point of view, there is no doubt as regards this matter, the existential element is constitutively part of anarchism.

Continue reading →
Posted in Commentary | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Anarchists in pandemics past

Posted on May 27, 2020 by Julius Gavroche

As a compliment to our last post reflecting on current mutual aid initiatives in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, and for its own sake, we share an excellent piece published by the CrimethInc. collective on anarchist mutual aid practices during the cholera epidemic in Naples at the end of the 19th century.

The Anarchists versus the Plague: Malatesta and the Cholera Epidemic of 1884

In 1884, cholera tore through Italy, claiming thousands of lives. Despite a three-year prison sentence hanging over his head, Errico Malatesta joined other revolutionary anarchists on a daring mission to Naples—the heart of the epidemic—to treat those suffering from the disease. In so doing, he and his comrades demonstrated an alternative to coercive state policies that remains relevant today in the age of COVID-19.

The following text recounts the story of the outbreak and Malatesta’s intervention, including all the available primary materials about the Italian anarchists’ participation, some of which have not previously appeared in English. Much of the historical background is drawn from Frank M. Snowden’s excellent Naples in the Time of Cholera, 1884-1911. Thanks to Davide Turcato, the editor of Malatesta’s complete works; the Centre International de Recherches sur l’Anarchisme in Lausanne; and radical archivists and librarians everywhere who preserve anarchist history, enabling us to learn from the past.

Continue reading →
Posted in Commentary | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Mutual aid in pandemic times

Posted on May 26, 2020 by Julius Gavroche

The mutual-aid tendency in man has so remote an origin, and is so deeply interwoven with all the past evolution of the human race, that it has been maintained by mankind up to the present time, notwithstanding all vicissitudes of history. It was chiefly evolved during periods of peace and prosperity; but when even the greatest calamities befell men — when whole countries were laid waste by wars, and whole populations were decimated by misery, or groaned under the yoke of tyranny — the same tendency continued to live in the villages and among the poorer classes in the towns; it still kept them together, and in the long run it reacted even upon those ruling, fighting, and devastating minorities which dismissed it as sentimental nonsense. And whenever mankind had to work out a new social organization, adapted to a new phase of development, its constructive genius always drew the elements and the inspiration for the new departure from that same ever-living tendency. New economical and social institutions, in so far as they were a creation of the masses, new ethical systems, and new religions, all have originated from the same source, and the ethical progress of our race, viewed in its broad lines, appears as a gradual extension of the mutual-aid principles from the tribe to always larger and larger agglomerations, so as to finally embrace one day the whole of mankind, without respect to its diverse creeds, languages, and races.

Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution

The proliferation of mutual aid groups and organisations, often literally so-called, in response to the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on people’s daily lives, invites reflection.

Continue reading →
Posted in Commentary, News blog | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Greece: The politics of exception in times of the pandemic (2)

Posted on May 20, 2020 by Julius Gavroche

Greece is often presented as an example to follow in the control of the COVID-19 pandemic, having kept numbers of infection and death comparatively low. (the Guardian) What is so often ignored or passed over in these celebratory judgements is the blatant authoritarianism and violence of the exceptional political measures taken to “save the nation” and preserve its “health”.

In addition to migrants, the greek government is openly targeting all perceived forms of “deviance”, dissidence and rebellion in an open experiment with a permanent state of exception. The crisi(e)s of the state-capital feed an ever greater state.

From the CrimethInc. collective, we share a second report on the politics of exception in greece …

Continue reading →
Posted in Commentary, News blog | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Greece: The politics of exception in times of the pandemic

Posted on May 20, 2020 by Julius Gavroche

Greece is often presented as an example to follow in the control of the COVID-19 pandemic, having kept numbers of infection and death comparatively low. (the Guardian) What is so often ignored or passed over in these celebratory judgements is the blatant authoritarianism and violence of the exceptional political measures taken to “save the nation” and preserve its “health”.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the treatment of refugees on the country’s territory, a politics sustained and funded both by larger political interests (e.g., the European Union) and local nationalist and extreme right-wing political groups.

From Roarmag, a reflection on the politics of exception in greece …

Continue reading →
Posted in Commentary, News blog | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Raúl Zibechi: Mapping militant mutual aid

Posted on May 15, 2020 by Julius Gavroche

Raúl Zibechi has been actively chronicling examples of mutual aid throughout latin america that are of enormous importance for the understanding of what is politically possible in times of crisis and pandemic.

His work can be followed in spanish at desinformémonos: periodismo de abajo and at el salto diario.

Latin America: Collective solidarities and Covid-19

Raúl Zibechi (Toward Freedom, 10/04/2020)

“There are times of struggle, times of war and peace, and then there are times of pandemics,” writes Dilei over Whatsapp. She’s a member of the Landless Workers Movement (MST) from the Paraiba State, in the Northeast of Brazil, and explains how the organization is facing the current context. Within MST camps and settlements it was decided no one will go in or out to visit the city: everyone needs to focus on health care and the production of food within the community.

Continue reading →
Posted in Commentary, News blog | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Albert Camus: The plague is the concern of all

Posted on May 15, 2020 by Julius Gavroche

Reflections on our contemporary Albert Camus on times of the pandemic …

No longer merely metaphor: Re-reading The Plague by Albert Camus

Kristian Williams (threewayfight, 28/03/2020)

Albert Camus’ novel The Plague offers a portrait of a town under quarantine, ravaged by an epidemic. It tells us of life arbitrarily constrained and unjustly shortened, of human beings isolated by law and by disease, of panics and shortages, of despair and heroic sacrifice. It presents a grim picture of human life, but an affirming picture of human beings.  It ends with a clear moral, that “what we learn in time of pestilence” is that “there is more to admire in humanity than to despise.”(1)

Continue reading →
Posted in Commentary | Tagged , | Leave a comment