"Crisis and revolution" in English

Crisis and Revolution: now available in English and free-to-download
 
Activists from across Europe have just finished preparing the English language edition of Crisis and Revolution, a book by the Madrid-based activist research group the Metropolitan Observatory. The book focuses on the relationship between financialisation, the current crisis and contemporary social movements. It was written as a concrete intervention in the context of the 15M movement, but also of the European movements more broadly.

You can download it here: http://www.observatoriometropolitano.org/wp-content/uploads-observatorio/2012/05/CR_eng_02.pdf

You can read a review in the latest issue of the journal Interface: http://www.interfacejournal.net/current/

Poem for the Anti-fracking Campaign

A nice poem by Dave Lordan here.

Crisis and revolution in Europe

... is the title of a new book from the Madrid-based Observatorio Metropolitano group, written for the Spanish 15M / indignados movement but now translated and edited for a wider audience. The whole thing can be downloaded, free, at this site. A review of the original can be found here.

3 Occupy Galway protestors arrested for using chalk

A crazy story here...

Right up there with "damage to a police boot with his teeth".

Quebec students defy protest control law

A good post from Common Dreams on how students protesting against austerity in education are refusing to obey a new law under which you are only allowed to protest where the police say you can. There is also now a website where people can assert their right to protest, called "Someone arrest me!"

The new law also closes 25 higher education institutions until August in a pretty overt admission that the state has no actual answer to student protest other than to ban it, send students home or use rubber bullets, tear gas and noise bombs.

The Real News Network has a great video (with transcript) of the protest against the law. Thanks to the new law, this protest was also the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history and probably one of the largest anywhere.

And look here - it didn't take long at all for the police to become unable to enforce the law. Which isn't strange at all when you think that the reason freedom of assembly etc. has become a right is not because governments like the idea but because in many countries they can't actually prevent people from assembling freely. It doesn't stop them trying every so often - and it becomes important to "take the liberty" once again. Of such things are human rights made.

That's life ... in Mayo

Farmer threatened with fines and prison by Mayo County Council

Mayo County Council (MCC) has issued an eviction notice to the landowner
of the field where the Rossport Solidarity Camp is located. Mayo farmer
Gerry Burke has been threatened with fines of over €12,000 and two years
in prison.

No warning letters were issued, and the deadline for removal of the
campsite given was 17th May, less then a week after the letter was
received. The Camp has only moved into this field in the last three weeks.

According to the letter, MCC may come at anytime now and physically
enforce the eviction notice. This comes the same week as the eviction of
Galway's Occupy camp in Eyre square, where over 50 Gardai showed up at
dawn and cleared the campsite. [1]

Rossport Solidarity Camp Spokesperson Con Coughlan comments, 'The council
has recently been accused of corruption by one of their own counselors.
But it doesn't take an insider to see the corruption. Mayo County Council
has recently received a payment of €8.5 million from Shell, so of course
they will bend over backwards for their paymasters."

Farmer Gerry Burke comments, "The council turns a blind eye when Shell
puts up fencing and huts in Glengad without planning permission, but is
willing to imprison people for a few tents in a field. The council is
targeting those of us who are legitimately protesting against the Corrib
Gas project- this isn't about planning law, it's about money."

Gerry Burke continues, "We haven't heard a peep from the council regarding
the mass community complaint that was made two months ago, yet a few tents
go up and within three weeks we have an eviction enforcement notice."

In March the local community submitted 104 letters of complaint to Mayo
County Council, with 112 signatures. The complaint reads: "When dealing
with MCC many people experience an attitude of arrogance towards and
dismissing of people who are directly affected and critical of the Corrib
Gas Project. Phone calls are not being returned and inquiries are not
properly addressed and dealt with. There seems to be a tendency towards
punishment by association." [2][3]

The Rossport Solidarity Camp is an environmental camp which leaves as
light an ecological footprint as possible, creating their own electricity
with wind turbines and solar panels, composting and using grey-water
systems.

ENDS

For verification contact:
Con Coughlan 085.114.1170

[1] Occupy Galway camp removed
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/0516/breaking1.html

[2] Mass community complaint about Corrib Gas Project construction and
haulage works
http://shelltosea.com/content/mass-community-complaint-about-corrib-gas-project-construction-and-haulage-works

[3] Locals complain to Council about disruption caused by Corrib
construction
http://www.mayonews.ie/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=14987:locals-complain-about-disruption-of-corrib-construction&catid=23:news&Itemid=46

Occupy, Indignados and the left

An interesting and accessible introduction here by Christophe Aguiton and Nicolas Haeringer on how the newest social movements stand in relationship to the labour movement in particular.

Lecture series: radical social movements in Ireland

5 Wednesdays in May 2012, a series of public lectures on radical social movements in Ireland, is being given at 6:30 pm in Ireland Institute 27 Pearse Street, Dublin 2 each Wednesday in May.

The series is a partnership between Occupy University, DCTV and the Ireland Institute and each talk is being filmed live by DCTV.

The first two lectures by Patrick Bresnihan on hedge schools and Fin Dwyer on the land league respectively, are available on the DCTV’s 5Wednesdays page, and eventually all of the lectures will be archived there.

This Wednesday, the 16th, Dr. Emmet O’Connor will give a talk on syndicalism.
On Wednesday 23rd Conor Kostick will speak on soviets.
The final talk, on Wednesday 30th of May will be given by Mary Cullen who will discuss the first wave feminism.

The sessions are chaired by Professor Helena Sheehan.
All welcome.

Interface 4/1. The season of revolution: the Arab Spring and European mobilizations

Interface: a journal for and about social movements http://interfacejournal.net

Volume four, issue one (May 2012): The season of revolution: the Arab Spring and European mobilizations

Issue editors: Magid Shihade, Cristina Flesher Fominaya, Laurence Cox. Guest editor (European special section): Mayo Fuster Morell
http://www.interfacejournal.net/current/

Volume four, issue one of Interface, a peer-reviewed e-journal produced and refereed by social movement practitioners and engaged movement researchers, is now out, on the special theme "The season of revolution: the Arab Spring" with a special section “A new wave of European mobilizations?”

Interface is open-access (free), global and multilingual. Our overall aim is to "learn from each other's struggles": to develop a dialogue between practitioners and researchers, but also between different social movements, intellectual traditions and national or regional contexts. Like all issues of Interface, this issue is free and open-access.

This issue of Interface includes 403 pages and 31 pieces in English, Catalan and Spanish, by authors writing from / about Australia, Canada, Catalunya, Dubai, Egypt, India, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Palestine, Poland, Senegal, South Africa, Spain, Swaziland, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, the UAE, the UK and the US among other countries.

Articles in this issue include:

§  Magid Shihade, Cristina Flesher Fominaya and Laurence Cox,
The season of revolution: the Arab Spring and European mobilizations

The Arab Spring:

§  Austin Mackell, Weaving revolution: harassment by the Egyptian regime (action note) and Weaving revolution: speaking with Kamal El-Fayoumi (interview)

§  Samir Amin, The Arab revolutions: a year after

§  Vijay Prashad, Dream history of the global South

§  Jeremy Salt, Containing the “Arab Spring”

§  Azadeh Shahshahani and Corinna Mullin, The legacy of US intervention and the Tunisian revolution: promises and challenges one year on

§  Andrea Teti and Gennaro Gervasio, After Mubarak, before transition: the challenges for Egypt’s democratic opposition (interview and event analysis)

§  Bassam Haddad, Syria, the Arab uprisings, and the political economy of authoritarian resilience           

§  Steven Salaita, Corporate American media coverage of Arab revolutions: the contradictory messages of modernity

§  Ahmed Kanna, A politics of non-recognition? Biopolitics of Arab Gulf worker protests in the year of uprisings

§  Aditya Nigam, The Arab upsurge and the “viral” revolutions of our times

§  Cassie Findlay,Witness and trace: January 25 graffiti and public art as archive (practice note)

Special section: a new wave of European mobilizations?

§  Eduardo Romanos Fraile,“Esta revolución es muy copyleft”. Entrevista a Stéphane M. Grueso a propósito del 15M

§  Marianne Maeckelbergh, Horizontal democracy now: from alterglobalization to occupation

§  Fabià Díaz-Cortés i Gemma Ubasart-Gonzàlez, 15M: Trajectòries mobilitzadores i especificitats territorials. El cas català

§  Puneet Dhaliwal, Public squares and resistance: the politics of space in the Indignados movement

§  Donatella della Porta, Mobilizing against the crisis, mobilizing for “another democracy”: comparing two global waves of protest (event analysis)

§  Joan Subirats, Algunas ideas sobre política y políticas en el cambio de época: Retos asociados a la nueva sociedad y a los movimientos sociales emergentes (event analysis)

Other articles:

§  Marina Adler, Collective identity formation and collective action framing in a Mexican “movement of movements”

§  Nancy Baez and Andreas Hernandez, Participatory budgeting in the city: challenging NYC’s development paradigm from the grassroots (practice note)

§  Magdalena Prusinowska, Piotr Kowzan, Małgorzata Zielińska, Struggling to unite: the rise and fall of one university movement in Poland 

§  Jim Gladwin and Rose Hollins, The Water Pressure Group: lessons learned (action note)

This issue’s reviews include the following titles:

§  Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, Why civil resistance works: the strategic logic of nonviolent action. Reviewed by Brian Martin

§  Firoze Manji and Sokari Ekine (eds), Africa awakening: the emerging revolutions. Reviewed by Karen Ferreira-Meyers

§  Amory Starr, Luis Fernandez and Christian Scholl, Shutting down the streets: political violence and social control in the global era. Reviewed by Deborah Eade

§  Rebecca Kolins Givan, Kenneth Roberts and Sarah Soule (eds). The diffusion of social movements: actors, mechanisms, and political effects. Reviewed by Cecelia Walsh-Russo

§  Florian Heβdörfer, Andrea Pabst and Peter Ullrich (eds), Prevent and tame: protest under (self) control. Reviewed by Lucinda Thompson

§  Observatorio Metropolitano, Crisis y revolución en Europa: people of Europe rise up! Reviewed by Michael Byrne

§  Arthur Lemonik and Mariel Mikaila , Student activism and curricular change in higher education. Reviewed by Christine Neejer

§  Rebecca MacKinnon, Consent of the networked: the worldwide struggle for internet freedom. Reviewed by Piotr Konieczny

A call for papers for volume 5 issue 1 of Interface is now open, on the theme of "Struggles, strategies and analysis of anticolonial and postcolonial social movements " (submissions deadline November 1 2012). We can review and publish articles in Afrikaans, Arabic, Catalan, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Maltese, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish and Zulu. The website has the full CFP and details on how to submit articles for this issue at http://www.interfacejournal.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Interface-4-1-CFP-vol-5-no-1.pdf
 
The next issue of Interface (November 2012) will be under the title “For the global emancipation of labour: new movements and struggles around work, workers and precarity”.     

Interface is always open to new collaborators. More details can be found on our website: http://interfacejournal.net.

Please forward this to anyone you think may be interested.

Social movements and democracy: can the ECB be challenged?

Elites like the word "democracy", when it means "our right to make decisions for everyone". The reality of democracy, even in the most banal forms, is something else again. Like the Irish in recent referenda, the Greeks are now being told that they have voted the wrong way, and threats have been quick to follow.

Conversely, "cautious hopes are being expressed" by the great and the good that M. Hollande, despite his election promises, will not be ruled by "ideology" (meaning the voters' massive rejection of austerity) and will instead behave "responsibly" (i.e. in ways that suit political and financial elites).

Another version of "we're democratic, but only when it suits us" comes from the city of Frankfurt, home of the European Central Bank, which has been the hard core of austerity politics, outgunning even the IMF in its commitment to making the poor pay for the crisis. The city has served twelve separate bans on a planned weekend of demonstrations against the troika, and responded to a request for talks with a thirteenth.

Irish people with longer memories will remember something similar around the 2004 EU summit, when the presence of demonstrators within earshot was too embarrassing for our then leaders. It is worth remembering who they were not embarrassed by: Bertie Ahern (Mahon Tribunal), Tony Blair (WMD), Jacques Chirac (suspended prison sentence for misuse of public funds), Silvio Berlusconi (where to start...)

In both cases, of course, people refuse(d) to let governments suspend the freedom of assembly, the right to demonstrate or the freedom to have your voice heard: these things are human rights, not within the gift of leaders to grant or withdraw as it suits them. They will try to do so with sad predictability, just as every few years Dublin Corporation tries and fails to stop people giving out leaflets and putting up posters - among the few means of getting political voices heard without vast advertising budgets.

Human rights, like democracy, are not something "they" give us. They are something which we have to make real despite our current rulers - in practice, and around controversial issues. This is one reason why social movements are so important: once elites are really committed to something, they will clamp down on other voices, and other needs, and the reality of democracy and human rights (rather than endless official rhetoric about how important they are) has to come from below.

The writer Ken MacLeod put this very clearly, expressing some genuine "European values":

"Hey, this is Europe. We took it from nobody; we won it from the bare soil that the ice left. The bones of our ancestors, and the stones of their works, are everywhere. Our liberties were won in wars and revolutions so terrible that we do not fear our governors: they fear us. Our children giggle and eat ice-cream in the palaces of past rulers. We snap our fingers at kings. We laugh at popes. When we have built up tyrants, we have brought them down."

Of course the Frankfurt city administration don't want protests against the European Central Bank. And of course people are going to protest anyway. That's democracy.

Anarchist Bookfair, Saturday May 26th

The 7th Anarchist Bookfair will take place in Dublin the weekend of 26th May 2012 at Liberty Hall, Eden Quay.

Meetings include Eyewitness Afghanistan - the current political situation in Afghanistan as told through interviews conducted with Afghan politicians, artists, religious leaders, community organizers, journalists and activists; a Forum on Radical and Underground Publishing; Racism in the Recession with a speaker from the Traveller community; The Sue Richardson panel: My Life in Struggle, Women Speak - a forum on women in activism; Is it kicking off in Ireland? – discussion on the Irish response to austerity; a talk on Dublin’s Other History hosted by the authors of the popular blog Come Here to Me, a GP speaks on the Right to Choose, a debate on the fiscal treaty referendum as well as introductions to anarchism and the WSM.

The Bookfair will also host a showing of “Bernadette: Notes on a Political Journey” with a Q&A session with director Leila Doolan and  “The Viking Way”, a documentary about how Iceland responded to the crisis. 

Bookstalls carrying an array of radical literature will be set up for the day. Among the organisations from home and abroad will be: PM Press, AK Press, WSM, RAG (Revolutionary Anarcha-Feminist Group), Manchester Anarchist Federation, Solidarity Books, Look Left magazine, Organise and Just Books, Oxfam, the Irish Labour History Society, Corporate Watch and Freedom Press. 

Several campaign groups will be present with information stalls including: IPSC (Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign), Choice Ireland, Shell to Sea, LASC (Latin America Solidarity Centre), FEE (Free Education for Everyone), AFA (Anti Fascist Action) and the Campaign against Household and Water Taxes. 

More details at http://www.wsm.ie/bookfair