insurrection

Statement from a Comrade and Baltimore Native About the Uprising There

Posted on by in Letters Of Fire, Outrage & Agitation, Streets & Squares and tagged , , .

by Josh Baltimore for SIC
29 April 2015

I’m heading home in two days.

There is something very important happening not only in Baltimore, but across black America. As of now there have been no reported deaths at the hands of protesters in a city where 250 people are killed a year, nearly all of those homicide victims being black. In spite of the fires and the looting, the young people of Baltimore are still showing a greater restraint in their conflicts with police and store-owners than they have shown in their conflicts amongst each other. I say this because for years it has been my family too that has done some of the killing and much of the dying.

Why is it that the current uprising has, in spite of its violence, not tilted toward a shooting war between whites and blacks, cops and kids, landlords and tenants, bosses and workers, given the fact that the shooting war between young black men across the region is invariant? Because young black people still value the lives of their structural enemies more than they value their own. The engineering of what is possibly the most efficient self-cannibalizing social organism in history – the nightly shootouts, the stabbings, the overdoses – is a project that has been centuries in the making.Continue Reading

“Violence” at Blockupy: Enough with the Hypocrisy!

Posted on by in Letters Of Fire, Outrage & Agitation, Streets & Squares and tagged , , , , .

AntiNote: We encountered this article in German at Eisbrecher Wuppertal (via Linksunten Indymedia) shortly after the clashes around the grand opening of the new European Central Bank headquarters in Frankfurt last Wednesday. True to form, the dominant German-language media (and even much of the ‘alternative’ media) has been apoplectically clutching its pearls about the targeted property damage that the first phase of #M18 protests included in their largely successful blockade of the ribbon-cutting—while the dominant English-language media has been mostly silent.

This is a crying shame, considering that Blockupy 2015 represented a significant expansion and escalation of the continent-wide anti-austerity movement and should be considered in this context. This article provides some background on Blockupy (which grew out of the global Occupy movement and has learned and grown in the face of violent state repression—where nearly every other Occupy site faltered), and proposes applying similar levels of targeted militancy more broadly.

“Violence” at Blockupy Frankfurt: Enough with the Hypocrisy!
by some activists from Wuppertal, Germany
20 March 2015

In the country which is the world’s fourth-largest arms exporter, there were hours-long street clashes last Wednesday [18 March 2015]. After the massive repression faced by Blockupy activists in 2012 and 2013, state power lost control—at least for a short time—of entire sections of the city of Frankfurt.

Of course, the discourse over “violence” has dominated media reports. We should gladly engage in these discussions, so that conditions might change and we can finally put an end to the real structural violence all around us every day under capitalism.

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Riots gegen den Rassismus des 21. Jahrhunderts

Posted on by in Outrage & Agitation, Revelations, Streets & Squares and tagged , , , , .

Aus aktuellem Anlass stellen wir hier die Übersetzung der Broschüre: “Ferguson: Mike Brown & die Riots gegen den Rassismus des 21. Jahrhunderts” ein. Sie stammt aus dem autonomen Blättchen Nr. 19 und behandelt Hintergründe und den Ablauf der Proteste und Aufstände im August diesen Jahres.

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Rassistische Spannungen in Missouri

Die rassistischen Spannung und Trennung sind konstant in der Geschichte Missouris. 1820 wurde der Missouri-Kompromiss verabschiedet, der Missouri als Sklavenstaat anerkannte, um das „Gleichgewicht der Macht“ zwischen Sklaven- und freien Staaten im Kongress zu bewahren. St. Louis war eines der Haupt-Auktions-Zentren, wo Geschäftsleute und Einzelpersonen Sklaven kaufen und leihen konnten. Im frühen 20. Jahrhundert stieg, aufgrund seines Industriezentrums und dem Reiz von Fabrikjobs die Afrikanisch-Amerikanische Immigration nach St. Louis an. Es kam zu Ressentiments und Spannungen von Weißen gegen die schwarzen Migrant_innen. Schließlich kochten die Spannungen im Sommer 1917 über, als weiße Mobs begannen, Feuer in den Häusern der schwarzen Siedlungen zu legen.Continue Reading

Fuck them, they make three thousand a month

Posted on by in Autonomy, Edifice & Artifice, Revelations and tagged , , , .

This text originally appeared on 9.2.2014 at http://www.lupiga.com/vijesti/glasnik-pregazene-generacije-o-sarajevskim-neredima

By Faruk Šehić, recipient of the European Union Prize for Literature

What actually happened that Friday 7th of February, what wild force was it that had awoken in the people and taken control of the streets surrounding the buildings of the Presidency of BiH and the Canton of Sarajevo? The day before, it had begun in front of the building of the cantonal government during one in a long line of workers’ protests. Amateur footage on the internet documented police brutality and police ineptitude to deal with the situation which quickly escalated. It was to be expected that Friday would be even worse and with even more tension than that first day when the uprising began spreading through the streets of Tuzla. Around noon on the Friday, the building of the cantonal government in Tuzla was set ablaze. After I saw that on state TV, I headed toward city centre.

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Protests Across Bosnia Are A “Collective Nervous Breakdown”

Posted on by in Autonomy, Revelations, Streets & Squares and tagged , , , .

“He who sows hunger reaps anger,” warned the red graffiti on a Sarajevo government building this week. The message hinted at the depth of poverty and disillusionment in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) that has driven people to join demonstrations across the divided country, where the unemployment rate is about 40 percent. Protesters have since stormed and ransacked government buildings in Tuzla, Zenica, Mostar, and in the capital city of Sarajevo, where the headquarters of the presidency was also set ablaze. Some protesters allegedly threw firecrackers and stones at police, who responded with rubber bullets and tear gas. Hundreds have been injured. On Friday, activist Darko Brkan called the protests “a collective nervous breakdown”.Continue Reading

Below and Behind the June Uprising

Posted on by in Autonomy, Revelations, Streets & Squares and tagged , , .
By Raúl Zibechi

Raúl Zibechi explores the autonomous and horizontal forms of organization, direct action and consensus decision-making behind the Brazilian uprising.

The huge mobilizations in June 2013 in 353 cities and towns in Brazil came as as much of a surprise to the political system as to analysts and social bodies. Nobody expected so many demonstrations, so numerous, in so many cities and for so long. As happens in these cases, media analyses were quickly off the mark. Initially they focused on the immediate problems highlighted by the actions: urban transport, rising fare prices and the poor quality of service for commuters. Slowly the analyses and perspectives expanded to include the day-to-day dissatisfaction felt by a large part of the population. While there was widespread acknowledgement that basic family income had risen during the last decade of economic growth, social commentators began to focus on economic inclusion through consumption as the root of the dissatisfaction, alongside the persistence of social inequality.Continue Reading