Saturday 23 June 2012
Sustaining resistance, empowering renewal (November)
Sustaining Resistance, Empowering Renewal
10th to 18th November 2012
Tools for Effective Sustainable Activism
10 day workshop in the Catalan Pyranees
This workshop, hosted in a wild part of the catalan pyranees, offers
personal and collective tools to make our activism more effective. They
can help us stay in it for the long haul, creating personal sustainability
and adding continuity to our movement building. They can also ensure the
collective dimensions of our activism exemplify the values we struggle
for. They can help us stay inspired, nourished, empowered and
strategically creative.
The workshop applies ecological/systems thinking, radical analysis and
holistic-participatory learning to the practice of activism and the
building of social movements. It offers practical methods for engaging in
the inner work that underpins effective social engagement. It will also
bring together activists from across Europe to share practice and
strengthen networks. Funding is available for some participants, but
places are limited.
For more information or application form please email info@ecodharma.com.
Website www.ecodharma.com
Views from the Quebec student movement
A special issue of Wi: journal of mobile media on the remarkable student movement against austerity and for freedom of speech and assembly, here (mostly in English, some French texts). Translations, photos and more here. Radical Canadian website rabble.ca on the protests here.
Thursday 21 June 2012
Self and determination: an inward look at collective liberation
Talk by Joshua Stephens at the London Action Research Centre, online here (41 mins).
[Later: a follow-on interview by Indyreader about the themes in his talk is online here.]
Discusses the overlaps of personal practices, political organising and ideas of social justice and change. A participant writes "The talk wove together autobiography, (post)anarchist theory, Buddhist practice and grassroots organising. It was accompanied by blackbird song and the call to prayer from the East London Mosque."
From the blurb:
A Thai Buddhist teacher by the name of Ajahn Chah once wrote, "We human beings are constantly in combat, at war to escape the fact of being so limited. But instead of escaping, we continue to create more suffering, waging war with good, waging war with evil, waging war with what is small, waging war with what is big, waging war with what is short or long or right or wrong, courageously carrying on the battle." At some level, we know this, intuitively. It's reflected back to us by political and economic institutions on a daily basis -- whether it's the language (and execution) of xenophobia, racism, and coercive force, or the promise of buying our way out of discomfort, insecurity, and pain. Those of us committed to forms of social transformation anchored to direct democracy have cause to take this quite seriously, as we effectively aspire to an unmediated politics; a world directly reflective of who we are. "The State is a condition, a set of social relationships," noted German anarchist Gustav Landauer, "it is a mode of behavior." Perhaps more ominously, French philosopher Michel Foucault famously declared, "Politics is war, continued by other means."
While utterly necessary, the overthrow of intolerable institutions does not magically equip us to build better ones. While complementary, the two are distinct tasks. In this unprecedented moment of rapidly unfolding, global social upheaval -- a moment that turns entirely on what we bring to it, and how we meet each other -- can we afford modes of behavior reproductive of war? Is there, perhaps, something deeply political about forging a relationship with oneself that, itself, is an act of refusal; a refusal of the impulse to control, dominate; a refusal to be conducted by our anxieties and fears; an anti-authoritarian mode of being?
*Joshua Stephens* is a board member with the Institute for Anarchist Studies and has been active in anti-authoritarian movements for the last two decades, drawing from mentors as diverse and dispersed as the Ruckus Society and Murray Bookchin's Institute for Social Ecology in the US, to Zapatistas in southern Mexico and the Popular Resistance Committees in Palestine. His work has spanned coordinating and training participants for direct action struggles around issues both local and international, co-teaching a course on classical and contemporary anarchist traditions at Georgetown University, and co-founding three workers cooperatives. He lives in Brooklyn, NY where he's active with the Occupy movement, and has spent the last two months traveling and interviewing anarchists in the eastern Mediterranean.
[Later: a follow-on interview by Indyreader about the themes in his talk is online here.]
Discusses the overlaps of personal practices, political organising and ideas of social justice and change. A participant writes "The talk wove together autobiography, (post)anarchist theory, Buddhist practice and grassroots organising. It was accompanied by blackbird song and the call to prayer from the East London Mosque."
From the blurb:
A Thai Buddhist teacher by the name of Ajahn Chah once wrote, "We human beings are constantly in combat, at war to escape the fact of being so limited. But instead of escaping, we continue to create more suffering, waging war with good, waging war with evil, waging war with what is small, waging war with what is big, waging war with what is short or long or right or wrong, courageously carrying on the battle." At some level, we know this, intuitively. It's reflected back to us by political and economic institutions on a daily basis -- whether it's the language (and execution) of xenophobia, racism, and coercive force, or the promise of buying our way out of discomfort, insecurity, and pain. Those of us committed to forms of social transformation anchored to direct democracy have cause to take this quite seriously, as we effectively aspire to an unmediated politics; a world directly reflective of who we are. "The State is a condition, a set of social relationships," noted German anarchist Gustav Landauer, "it is a mode of behavior." Perhaps more ominously, French philosopher Michel Foucault famously declared, "Politics is war, continued by other means."
While utterly necessary, the overthrow of intolerable institutions does not magically equip us to build better ones. While complementary, the two are distinct tasks. In this unprecedented moment of rapidly unfolding, global social upheaval -- a moment that turns entirely on what we bring to it, and how we meet each other -- can we afford modes of behavior reproductive of war? Is there, perhaps, something deeply political about forging a relationship with oneself that, itself, is an act of refusal; a refusal of the impulse to control, dominate; a refusal to be conducted by our anxieties and fears; an anti-authoritarian mode of being?
*Joshua Stephens* is a board member with the Institute for Anarchist Studies and has been active in anti-authoritarian movements for the last two decades, drawing from mentors as diverse and dispersed as the Ruckus Society and Murray Bookchin's Institute for Social Ecology in the US, to Zapatistas in southern Mexico and the Popular Resistance Committees in Palestine. His work has spanned coordinating and training participants for direct action struggles around issues both local and international, co-teaching a course on classical and contemporary anarchist traditions at Georgetown University, and co-founding three workers cooperatives. He lives in Brooklyn, NY where he's active with the Occupy movement, and has spent the last two months traveling and interviewing anarchists in the eastern Mediterranean.
Thursday 14 June 2012
Activism and research ethics
Occupy Research Collective Convergence (ORCC): Activism & Research Ethics - 30th June, London
This event may be livestreamed - see their website for more information.
First Event – 30th June
Occupy Research Collective Convergence (ORCC): Activism & Research Ethics
10:00-17:00 Saturday June 30th – Pearson Building, University College London, Bloomsbury, London, WC1E 6BT (enter from Gower Street).
See here for directions.
See here for directions.
- Are you researching Occupy or contemporary social movements?
- Are you involved in Occupy or other forms of activism?
- Are you interested in using research to take action towards creating other possible worlds?
- Are you keen on research which respects activism?
This
one day convergence will focus on the ethics of researching
within-and-beyond the Occupy movement. We would like this to be the
beginning of an ongoing conversation about the ways in which research
can complement, inform, challenge and present social movements and
radical politics.
This
convergence aims to provide an open space in which to share ideas about
the ethics of Occupy, activism and research. The agenda is fluid and
will be finalised collectively at the start of the day, but themes
might include:
- The ethics of Occupy and the role of critique in activism.
- Activism & institutional relationships; within and against the neoliberal university.
- Consensually researching consensus-based movements; research for/research about; approaching (re)presentation.
- Participatory methodology; research dissemination and freedom of access; radical publishing; militant research; collaboration and mutual aid in research.
This Convergence is being organised by the Occupy Research Collective.
We are an open network of activist-researchers working within and
around the Occupy movement. We aim to bring together a broad variety of
research and researchers, from students and academics, to social and
community researchers working outside academia, to unofficial
researchers – anyone interested in thinking and doing research for the
sake of activism, knowledge or other purposes. We want to experiment
with alternative, collective ways of doing, disseminating and
collaborating on research and publishing, helping to counter the
increasing neoliberalisation of the university and research
environment, and finding new ways to support each other as radical
researchers.
In the
meantime please join the email list (below) to start sharing and
discussing readings. If you have any questions, you can contact us:
By email: occupyresearchcollective@fastmail.co.uk
At our website: http://occupyresearchcollective.wordpress.com
And by joining our mailing list, at: http://groups.google.com/group/reading-occupy
At our website: http://occupyresearchcollective.wordpress.com
And by joining our mailing list, at: http://groups.google.com/group/reading-occupy
Please
distribute this call out widely through your friends, colleagues,
activist networks, or university (ask your school admin to forward it
to all students!).
Tuesday 12 June 2012
So We Stand summer school (deadline June 15)
Late notice just in of the So We Stand summer school in London:
SWS Summer School is
an intensive 1-week introduction to community organizing and social
change, taking place at sites across London from 7th – 14th July 2012.
It is free. Watch this space for the curriculum and surrounding events
will be launched soon.
The School is
designed for young people who see and experience economic injustice,
pollution and racism in their communities and want to find effective and
creative ways of fighting for social justice. In particular, it is
dedicated to building the skills of young; women, people of colour,
disabled, working class, and LGBTQI people as the next generation of
leaders in the social justice movement. So if you are aged 16 – 30 and
want support in how to effectively tackle these issues (or know someone
who does) then read on!
Continues here.
Friday 8 June 2012
Voices from Egypt
A fascinating text here from the Egyptian revolution, with some interesting echoes for European readers...
To you at whose side we struggle,
From the beginning of the Egyptian revolution, the powers that be have launched a vicious counter-revolution to contain our struggle and subsume it by drowning the people’s voices in a process of meaningless, piecemeal political reforms. This process is aimed at deflecting the path of revolution and the Egyptian people’s demands for ‘bread, freedom and social justice’.
Only 18 days into our revolution, and since we forced Mubarak out of power, the discourse of the political classes and the infrastructure of the elites, including both state and private media, continues to privilege discussions of rotating ministers, cabinet reshuffles, referendums, committees, constitutions and most glaringly, parliamentary and now presidential elections.
Our choice from the very beginning was to reject in their entirety the regime's attempts to drag the people’s revolution into a farcical dialogue with the counter-revolution shrouded in the discourse of a ‘democratic process’ which neither promotes the demands of the revolution nor represents any substantial, real democracy. Thus our revolution continues, and must continue.
Egyptians now find themselves in a vulnerable moment. Official political discourse would have the world believe that the technologies of democracy presently spell a choice between ‘two evils’. These are: Ahmed Shafiq, who guarantees the consolidation of the outgoing regime and its return with a vengeance, openly promising a criminal assault on the revolution under the fascist spectres of ‘security’ and ‘stability’, and the false promise of protection for religious minorities (against whom the regime systematically stages assault and isolation as part of its fear-mongering campaigns); and Mohamed Morsi, the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood whom we are expected to imagine might ‘save’ us from the ‘old regime’ through the myths of cultural renaissance - all while consolidating its financial stronghold and the regional capitalist hegemony that fosters and depends on it for a climate of rampant exploitation of Egypt’s people and their resources.
This consolidation, we are certain, will be accompanied by the subsequent marshalling of the military apparatus to protect the emboldened ruling class of the Muslim Brotherhood from the wrath and revolt of its victims: the multitude whom the leaders of the organization have historically fought by condemning and outlawing our struggles for livelihood, dignity and equality.
According to election officials, most voters themselves (75 per cent) have chosen neither Shafiq nor Morsi in the first round of elections. We refuse to recognize the choice of ‘lesser of two evils’ when these evils masquerade in equal measure for the same regime. We believe there is another choice. And in times where perceived common sense is as far from the truth as can be, we find the need to speak out once again.
We perceive the affair of presidential elections in Egypt as an attempt by the as yet prevailing military junta and its counter-revolutionary forces to garner international legitimacy to cement the existing regime and deliver more lethal blows to the Egyptian revolution. We ask you to join us in resisting the logic of this process that seeks to further entrench the counter-revolution.
Our struggle does not exist in isolation from yours.
What is revolution, but the immediate and uncompromising rejection of the status quo: of militarized power, exploitation, class stratification, and relentless police violence - just to name a few of the most basic and cancerous features of society in the present moment. These structural realities are not unique to Egypt or the Egyptian revolution.
In both the South and the North communities resist what we are meant to accept without questioning, rising up against the narrow realist perspective that tells us that democracy is merely choosing the lesser of ‘two evils’, and that the election of either represents a choice in government rather than what it is: an affirmation of the only government that exists - that of unbridled, repressive and dehumanizing capitalist relations. We stand in solidarity with the masses of precarious and endangered people who have chosen to defend their being from an aggressive global system that is in crisis; indeed, a sputtering system that, in its twilight hours, reaches for unprecedented levels of surveillance, militarization and violence to quell our insurrections.
We must make clear that despite the fact of the international political establishment’s praise of the ‘democratic’ nature of the first round of the Egyptian presidential elections, we strongly and categorically reject the outcome of these elections for they do not represent the desires of the Egyptian people that fought in the January 25th Revolution.
Furthermore, we categorically reject the elections themselves in principle, for the following reasons:
1. Even by the standards of the deceased and irrelevant systems of representation that once existed in the Global North, no ‘free and fair elections’ can take place under the supervision of a power-hungry military junta, vying relentlessly for continued political domination and the protection of their vast economic empire, so relentlessly, indeed, that no constitution exists to define the powers of any presidency. How can we tolerate a military dictatorship’s supervision of any political process when thousands of Egyptians continue to languish in the dungeons of military prison after undergoing arbitrary arrest, campaigns of systematic torture, and exceptional military tribunals.
2. The abuse of law in favour of the power mongering of the ruling military generals: in order to run the junta's preferred candidate, former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq, the Supreme Presidential Electoral Commission has simply and blatantly disregarded the law of political exclusion recently passed in order to ban the candidacy of any members of Mubarak’s regime from running in the presidential elections.
3. The absurdity of unlimited power concentrated in the hands of an electoral commission made up of central figures from the Mubarak era who are meant to supervise a ‘democratic’ process.
4. The vague programs marketed by the most strongly backed candidates fly in the face of the values and object of the revolution, the very reason why we are even having these elections today and the cause for which over a thousand martyrs gave their lives: ‘bread, freedom and social justice’.
If these elections take place and are internationally recognized the regime will have received the world’s stamp of approval to make void everything the revolution stands for. If these elections are to pass while we remain silent, we believe the coming regime will license itself to hunt us down, lock us up and torture us in an attempt to quell all forms of resistance to its very raison d'etre.
We continue on our revolutionary path committed to resisting military rule and putting an end to military tribunals for civilians and the release of all detainees in military prisons. We continue to struggle in the workplace, in schools and universities and with popular committees in our neighbourhoods. But our fight is as much against the governments and systems supporting the regime that suppresses us.
We are determined to audit loan agreements that did and continue to occur between international financial institutions or foreign governments with a regime that claims to represent us while thriving from exploiting and repressing us.
We call on you to join us in our struggle against the reinforcements of the counter-revolution. How will you stand in solidarity with us? If we are under attack, you are also under attack for our battle is a global one against the forces that seek our obedience and suppression.
We stand with the ongoing revolution, a revolution that will only be realized by the strength, community and persistence of the people; not through a poisonous referendum for military rule.
Comrades from Cairo
comradesfromcairo AT gmail.com
Egypt’s revolution: Bread, freedom, social justice and why global solidarity matters
Comrades from Cairo
2012-06-07, Issue 588
http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/82745
To you at whose side we struggle,
From the beginning of the Egyptian revolution, the powers that be have launched a vicious counter-revolution to contain our struggle and subsume it by drowning the people’s voices in a process of meaningless, piecemeal political reforms. This process is aimed at deflecting the path of revolution and the Egyptian people’s demands for ‘bread, freedom and social justice’.
Only 18 days into our revolution, and since we forced Mubarak out of power, the discourse of the political classes and the infrastructure of the elites, including both state and private media, continues to privilege discussions of rotating ministers, cabinet reshuffles, referendums, committees, constitutions and most glaringly, parliamentary and now presidential elections.
Our choice from the very beginning was to reject in their entirety the regime's attempts to drag the people’s revolution into a farcical dialogue with the counter-revolution shrouded in the discourse of a ‘democratic process’ which neither promotes the demands of the revolution nor represents any substantial, real democracy. Thus our revolution continues, and must continue.
Egyptians now find themselves in a vulnerable moment. Official political discourse would have the world believe that the technologies of democracy presently spell a choice between ‘two evils’. These are: Ahmed Shafiq, who guarantees the consolidation of the outgoing regime and its return with a vengeance, openly promising a criminal assault on the revolution under the fascist spectres of ‘security’ and ‘stability’, and the false promise of protection for religious minorities (against whom the regime systematically stages assault and isolation as part of its fear-mongering campaigns); and Mohamed Morsi, the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood whom we are expected to imagine might ‘save’ us from the ‘old regime’ through the myths of cultural renaissance - all while consolidating its financial stronghold and the regional capitalist hegemony that fosters and depends on it for a climate of rampant exploitation of Egypt’s people and their resources.
This consolidation, we are certain, will be accompanied by the subsequent marshalling of the military apparatus to protect the emboldened ruling class of the Muslim Brotherhood from the wrath and revolt of its victims: the multitude whom the leaders of the organization have historically fought by condemning and outlawing our struggles for livelihood, dignity and equality.
According to election officials, most voters themselves (75 per cent) have chosen neither Shafiq nor Morsi in the first round of elections. We refuse to recognize the choice of ‘lesser of two evils’ when these evils masquerade in equal measure for the same regime. We believe there is another choice. And in times where perceived common sense is as far from the truth as can be, we find the need to speak out once again.
We perceive the affair of presidential elections in Egypt as an attempt by the as yet prevailing military junta and its counter-revolutionary forces to garner international legitimacy to cement the existing regime and deliver more lethal blows to the Egyptian revolution. We ask you to join us in resisting the logic of this process that seeks to further entrench the counter-revolution.
Our struggle does not exist in isolation from yours.
What is revolution, but the immediate and uncompromising rejection of the status quo: of militarized power, exploitation, class stratification, and relentless police violence - just to name a few of the most basic and cancerous features of society in the present moment. These structural realities are not unique to Egypt or the Egyptian revolution.
In both the South and the North communities resist what we are meant to accept without questioning, rising up against the narrow realist perspective that tells us that democracy is merely choosing the lesser of ‘two evils’, and that the election of either represents a choice in government rather than what it is: an affirmation of the only government that exists - that of unbridled, repressive and dehumanizing capitalist relations. We stand in solidarity with the masses of precarious and endangered people who have chosen to defend their being from an aggressive global system that is in crisis; indeed, a sputtering system that, in its twilight hours, reaches for unprecedented levels of surveillance, militarization and violence to quell our insurrections.
We must make clear that despite the fact of the international political establishment’s praise of the ‘democratic’ nature of the first round of the Egyptian presidential elections, we strongly and categorically reject the outcome of these elections for they do not represent the desires of the Egyptian people that fought in the January 25th Revolution.
Furthermore, we categorically reject the elections themselves in principle, for the following reasons:
1. Even by the standards of the deceased and irrelevant systems of representation that once existed in the Global North, no ‘free and fair elections’ can take place under the supervision of a power-hungry military junta, vying relentlessly for continued political domination and the protection of their vast economic empire, so relentlessly, indeed, that no constitution exists to define the powers of any presidency. How can we tolerate a military dictatorship’s supervision of any political process when thousands of Egyptians continue to languish in the dungeons of military prison after undergoing arbitrary arrest, campaigns of systematic torture, and exceptional military tribunals.
2. The abuse of law in favour of the power mongering of the ruling military generals: in order to run the junta's preferred candidate, former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq, the Supreme Presidential Electoral Commission has simply and blatantly disregarded the law of political exclusion recently passed in order to ban the candidacy of any members of Mubarak’s regime from running in the presidential elections.
3. The absurdity of unlimited power concentrated in the hands of an electoral commission made up of central figures from the Mubarak era who are meant to supervise a ‘democratic’ process.
4. The vague programs marketed by the most strongly backed candidates fly in the face of the values and object of the revolution, the very reason why we are even having these elections today and the cause for which over a thousand martyrs gave their lives: ‘bread, freedom and social justice’.
If these elections take place and are internationally recognized the regime will have received the world’s stamp of approval to make void everything the revolution stands for. If these elections are to pass while we remain silent, we believe the coming regime will license itself to hunt us down, lock us up and torture us in an attempt to quell all forms of resistance to its very raison d'etre.
We continue on our revolutionary path committed to resisting military rule and putting an end to military tribunals for civilians and the release of all detainees in military prisons. We continue to struggle in the workplace, in schools and universities and with popular committees in our neighbourhoods. But our fight is as much against the governments and systems supporting the regime that suppresses us.
We are determined to audit loan agreements that did and continue to occur between international financial institutions or foreign governments with a regime that claims to represent us while thriving from exploiting and repressing us.
We call on you to join us in our struggle against the reinforcements of the counter-revolution. How will you stand in solidarity with us? If we are under attack, you are also under attack for our battle is a global one against the forces that seek our obedience and suppression.
We stand with the ongoing revolution, a revolution that will only be realized by the strength, community and persistence of the people; not through a poisonous referendum for military rule.
Comrades from Cairo
comradesfromcairo AT gmail.com
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