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Love and Rage Electronic Edition Febr. 02
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
LOVE AND RAGE
Electronic Edition
FEBRUARY/MARCH 1993
Part 2
THE REAL AGENDA IN SOMALIA
by Mitchel Cohen
"To give food aid to a country just because they are
starving is a pretty weak reason." -- Henry Kissinger
MONTHS BEFORE THE UNITED STATES sent troops to Somalia to
supposedly protect food supply lines from the pilferage of evil
warlords, Italy was completing arrangements to ship that nation's
toxic wastes to Somalia, with nary a protest from the US. UN
environmental chief Mostafa Tolba then said that the dumping could
aggravate the destruction of Somalia's ecosystem and threaten
further loss of life in the ravaged nation.
Africa, writes Silvia Federici, a professor at Hofstra University
and editor of the Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa's
newsletter, is being turned into the chemical/nuclear dust-bin of
the world, the region where expired pharmaceutical products, toxic
wastes, and materials banned in other countries, from medicines to
pesticides, are dumped. Combined with other information gleaned
from first-hand accounts but generally unreported in the corporate
press, a much more insidious picture of US involvement in Somalia
is emerging, one closely paralleling the odious, but accurate,
observation by Henry Kissinger, even as US Government officials
try to paint a more benign humanistic portrait of its motives for
public consumption.
How badly we long to even need to believe that the US Government
would, maybe this time, actually feed people because they are
starving, no strings attached! We want the government to work that
way; but it doesn't, and it won't. Nor will it reveal its own role
in creating all the misery to begin with. It's time we took Henry
Kissinger's maxim at its face as an accurate representation of how
US policy works, and stop fooling ourselves into believing the
lies spun for us which enable the ruling class to slip in its
murder and mayhem by riding the Trojan Horse of our suddenly eager
morality.
Although people have been and continue to be desperate for food in
particular areas of Somalia, the country as a whole is not racked
by generalized mass-starvation, chaos and random violence. In
fact, explains Rutgers professor Said Samatar, who is from
Somalia, these horrors are occurring only in a limited portion of
Somalia, notably in the ... southwest between Mogadishu, the
capital [where all the press are clustered], and the regions
surrounding Baidoa and Kismayu. The rest of the country is
relatively peaceful and well-governed by an alliance of
traditional elders and local leaders that has re-emerged in the
wake of the collapse of the central authority ... In the entire
country there is only one [`warlord'] General Aidi is worthy of
the name. And even he does not exercise supreme authority over a
horde of followers whom he can deliver either to the field of
battle or to the negotiating table. We cannot allow the US
Government the luxury of framing the issues for us (mass
starvation, warlords, chaos), and thereby orchestrating our
emotions and controlling the terms of the debate.
Here's an example of how such manipulation works: The US claims
that up to eighty percent of all relief is being stolen which is
the current justification for sending the troops. But Rakiya
Omaar, who had been the director of Africa Watch until the middle
of December (before she was summarily fired by Human Rights Watch
Aryeh Neier for not mouthing his approved liberal version of the
government's line), cites relief organizations such as Save the
Children and the International Committee of the Red Cross as
enduring a loss rate of only five to ten percent, a fairly
constant figure in all famine relief. Right now, reports Omaar,
Mogadishu which was in the most desperate situation of all the
Somalian cities and is the focus of US media attention is totally
flooded with food and anybody can buy rice; it's very cheap. The
mortality rate, she says, had dropped and the overall situation
had been improving before the troops were sent. Many relief
workers in Somalia go even further, complaining that their efforts
are being hindered by the US military intervention: We can't get
to people we used to, and they are dying, said James Fennell of
CARE. Before the troops hit the beaches, relief agencies had hired
guards to ride shotgun on trucks, losing some supplies to looters
but also reaching many thousands of people who were too weak to
seek help in feeding centers. [But] the Marines first move in
Baidoa was to disarm the airport security force, tough exsoldiers
CARE had hired as escorts. ... Tibebu Haile Selassie, deputy
director of UNICEF in Mogadishu ... said, `the situation is worse
than it was before.'
Much of Somalia's economic life is organized around the growth and
export of cattle (traditionally camel meat, although that is
changing), which utilizes the large pastoral spreads provided by
nature in that region. Throughout Africa, the vastly different
natural landscapes, social and economic arrangements, and deposits
of natural resources make it inappropriate to apply certain
generalizations about the continent to individual African
societies. Nevertheless, the policies of the International
Monetary Fund, World Bank, and international capital such as the
forced development of export crops, even though that destroys
local self-sufficiency and dispossess small-plot farming,
concentrating the ownership of land in a few giant corporations
are a universalizing force on the continent, and resistance to
them is widespread despite or, possibly, because of the variety of
societies. This common imposition enables us to apply to Somalia,
today, observations Silvia Federici had written several years ago
about Africa in general:
Africans' resistance to capitalist discipline must be emphasized
given the tendency in the US to see Africans either as helpless
victims of government corruption and natural disasters or as
protagonists of backward struggles revolving around tribal
allegiances (a myth perpetrated by the Western media). In reality,
from the fields to the factories, the markets and the schools,
struggles are being carried on that not only are often unmatched
for their combativeness by what takes place in the `First World,'
but are most `modern' in content. Their objective is not the
preservation of a mythical past but the redefinition of what
development means for the proletariat: access to the wealth
produced internationally, but not at the price capital puts on it.
European colonialism's failure to break the back of the village
structures in Africa, including much of Somalia, had cut deeply
into world capitalist profits from that continent. Beginning in
1977, when Somali dictator Siad Barre was dumped by the Soviet
Union and became a client of the US, the International Monetary
Fund has imposed a series of stringent regulations on Somalia. And
for 15 years, villagers throughout Somalia have resisted the
hardline US/IMF policies. Only in those areas around the capital
mentioned above, where IMF measures were able to break down the
traditional structures and be fully imposed, do we find the kinds
of hunger, disease and disruption of peaceful village life that so
powerfully stir our compassion. And even there, the starvation was
caused by the imposition of a brutal central authority in Somalia,
not by its collapse (contrary to the current US
government/media/liberals' line); all the misery we're called on
to fight today in those areas are a direct result of US/IMF
measures.
Of course Somalis are resisting the foreign attempts to dump toxic
wastes there and to forcibly proletarianize their communities.
That resistance, over the past decade and one-half, prompted the
US government to arm troops loyal to now-deposed Somali dictator
Said Barre. The situation is reminiscent of the US arming of
Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and Noriega in Panama. These were US
clients, owned and paid for by American tax dollars. And, like
Hussein, Barre often turned those US and Soviet-made weapons
against dissident Somali movements. As Alexander Cockburn
reported, Somalis do not forget Siad Barre's massacres in the late
1980s of some 150,000 northerners in the former British
Somaliland, or his near total destruction of northern towns like
Hargeisa with the help of South African bomber pilots and US
logistical backup and diplomatic protection. More than
half-a-million Somalis were rendered homeless and forced across
the desert into Ethiopia.
Cockburn goes on to detail some of the resistance to the
imposition of capital a resistance rooted in the village social
structures that so frustrates the US and IMF elites: Although
devastated by Siad Barre in the 1980s and in urgent need of seed
and agricultural assistance, Somaliland is not in the desperate
straits of sections of the south, and its chief political
organization, the Somali National Movement, makes a decent case
for exercising its right to self-determination.
In May of 1991 the S.N.M. convened a congress of some 5,000 people
and chose an interim government with an interim legislative
assembly of 140 people. Although the Isaak clan is dominant, the
S.N.M. has reached out to minority groups. Los Angeles-based Sael
Samater - his brother Ibrahim is the president of the interim
legislative assembly - regards US/UN intervention as `John Wayne'
talk. He outlined for me the suspect motivations of various
players, including [UN Secretary General Boutros-Boutros] Ghali,
Islamic fundamentalists backed by Saudi Arabia and the Emirates,
and even Italy, whose interest in the affairs of its former colony
is as intense as Germany's toward its former dependencies of the
Nazi years, Croatia and Slovenia. Among its hidden rationales,
then, military intervention provides a way of annulling the
rebirth of Somaliland and, in the same breath, the force needed to
roll back the enormous gains won by the national liberation front
of Eritrea, after decades of war there against Italy and Ethiopia,
and the military hardware of both the Soviet Union and the US.
As images of US troops in foreign lands again fill our t.v.
screens, we in the US are being primed for the latest round of
imperialist colonization under the pretext of feeding starving
people at the point of a bayonet. From the start we were inundated
with breathless propaganda about evil Somalian warlords, soon to
be exposed, no doubt, as worse than Hitler, just in case Somali
resistance forces put up a fight against the uninvited machine-gun
toting guests. Thus, already in place are the quick
rationalizations required to rally American liberals around US
policy despite their occasional squeamishness over the bloodier
aspects of imperialism.
Unfortunately, many progressive people living in the US and in
Europe still cling to notions of progress that entail destroying
other people's antiquated ways of living in order to make things
better for them and to save them from themselves. This 20th
century version of the white man's burden is capitalism's
ideologically liberal complement; it seeks a cleaner imperialism
one hopefully without death-squads and it launches its crusades
against militant resistance by demonizing those who just can't see
the light. It calls for, as non-violently as possible, removing
the weapons from the hands of those natives who, not knowing
what's best for them, resist attempts to modernize their
communities and pull them into liberalism's version of the 21st
century, by any means necessary.
And so we now find American newspaper coverage of Somalia laced
with terms like warlords, gangs, violent bands, chaos, random
violence - a way of framing the situation that is accepted and
regurgitated by progressives as much as by the government. The
white supremacy concealed in North Americans' demonization of bad
Negroes versus those seemingly more docile and compliant with the
interests and intentions of international capital is used to
justify armed intervention, all the while remaining well within
the boundaries of the dominant liberal ideology.
Clearly, whatever hunger exists in Somalia is a direct result of
US/IMF/World Bank policies over the years, policies that have
spawned a strong resistance movement in Somalia, like everywhere
else - although we hear nothing of it in the press. None of
capital's goals can be accomplished without first crushing (or
co-opting) those movements. Consequently, there's more to the US
invasion of Somalia than meets the stomach. Progressive people in
the US cannot allow ourselves to be seduced into endorsing the
schemes of capital, which has learned to conjure up
morally-appealing pretexts precisely for that purpose, when:
1) Hunger wouldn't exist there in the first place if it was not
for capital's economic intervention over the last decade;
2) Mass-starvation in Somalia is limited to those areas where
capital was able to fully implement its programs, and not
throughout the society, contrary to what we're being led to
believe;
3) The food-supply lines are not under particularly heavy attack,
certainly no greater than anywhere else in the world;
4) US troops were not invited by Somalia, or any Somalian regional
councils or authorities; in fact, Somalis were themselves
specifically not invited to participate in any talks concerning
armed intervention;
5) Troops are used to disarm all resistance to the imposition of a
US-mandated central authority; and
6) The US, along with the former USSR, is responsible for arming
Somalia to begin with, arms the US troops may soon be facing in
battle.
What are capital's real goals in Somalia? In a phrase, the
recolonization of Africa, which includes:
1) establishment and strengthening of military bases;
2) dumping of toxic wastes;
3) rolling back the successful liberation struggle in Eritrea and
the growing movement in northern Somalia;
4) guarding the oil-shipping lanes; and
5) deepening the proletarianization of the African working class
in order to generate cheap, dependable labor and the extraction of
precious natural resources.
Thus far, the meaningful ways in which daily life is organized in
Somalia's supposedly chaotic, decentralized traditional villages
have circumvented most prior attempts by international capital and
colonial powers - unloved, uninvited and making no pretext of
their need for a non-chaotic central authority - to impose
capital's wholly unnatural rhythms on African life. The US, under
the pretext of feeding starving people (a situation it caused,
along with the IMF and World Bank, to begin with), is attempting
to use its might to Latin Americanize Africa by busting apart the
communal village networks once and for all as England had done to
collective usages of land at home by military enforcement of the
Enclosure Acts of the 1600s making the continent fit for
capitalist accumulation. The New World [Bank] Order's hot toxic
breath is blowing up the hunger in the sands.
-30-
EUROPEAN NEWSBRIEFS
Italy: Jewish Youth Invade Nazi Headquarters
[Not published in the printed Feb/Mar issue, but interesting]
ROME, ITALY -- On November 6, 1992, group of Jewish youth ransaked
the headquarters of a neo-nazi group - smashing windows,
confiscasting nazi paraphernalia, and physically fighting
fascists. That was the third time in three weeks that Jewish
Italian youth, mostly in their teens and early twenties, went on
the offensive against fascists. The leader of the Western
Political Movement, the neo-nazi group whose office was smashed,
vowed revenge, but the youth promised to fight back! from Profane
Existance #18, which cites the NY Times
-30-
Rallies Mark Anniversary of Franco's Death
THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE death of the Spanish state's former fascist
dictator, Generalissimo Francisco Franco, was marked by rallies
and memorials around Spain on November 20th.
While rallies honoring Franco have been fairly routine since his
death in 1975, what's disturbing is the number of young people
participating in these events recently, and the rise in the level
of racist violence in the last few years. While many of the older
generation lament the days of law and order under the old regime,
younger fascists, perhaps taking the lead from their German
counterparts, are going on the offensive. Attacks on immigrants,
leftists and anarchists are rising throughout the peninsula.
In Zaragosa, on November 20th, 800 people attended a church
service in memory of Franco and ex-dictator Primo de Rivera. The
eulogy was crashed by 300 skinheads who shouted slogans throughout
the service against immigrants, the monarchy, and the police, as
well as Viva's to Franco and other fascist contemporary heroes.
The skinheads followed up the church service with a march to the
Casa Okupada de la Paz, a squat which houses anarchist groups like
Ateneo Libertario (publishers of El Acratador) and Insumismos
(draft resisters). The police surrounded the house while fascists
and squatters threw bottles, bricks and hurled insults at each
other and the police. There were only about 20 people in the house
at the time. The fascists were dispersed by police and later
returned to the house, but 200 anarchists, Insumisos, and leftists
had gathered in the meantime with a stockpile of bottles, chains
and sticks. They squared off in the street in the middle of
traffic until police reinforcements arrived.
For more info write (perferrably in Spanish):
Ateneo Libertario
Casa Ocupada De La Paz (Sagasta 52)
Apdo. 3.141
50.080 Zaragosa, Spanish State
-30-
Neo-Nazis Set Up Shop in Poland
DZIEWKOWICE, OPOLE VOIVODSHIP, POLAND - A group of neo-nazis from
Germany, the National Offensive, has set up headquarters in this
southwestern Polish village. Nazi literature is sold in local
stores. Throughout the region, memorials with German-language
plaques have been erected to nazi soldiers killed in combat. The
National Offensive claims their aim is to restore a "Greater
Germany," stretching all the way to Lithuania. So far no specific
acts of violence have been linked to the group, but Poles in the
area are concerned.
-- from the Polish-American Journal, January 1993
-30-
Anti-Nationalist Serb Shot
[NOVI SAD, CROATIA - Petar Babic, a Serb and a member of the Extra-
Nationalist Commission, was postering the following text when he
was beaten by a Serbian mob in October 1991. In November 1991 he
was found dead, killed by a bullet.]
The reemergence of nationalism throughout the world is a
phenomenon of importance too great to be ignored.
Nationalism will define us, divide us, and dominate us; it has no
place in the struggle towards self-realization, free global
interaction, and liberty. Categorize humans you cannot. Nations
are false divisions. We are one because we are all human beings.
We are separate because we all recognize the viability of free
personality. Where and when we were born is nothing but a cosmic
accident.
Independence movements are the veneer of national hatreds and
political trickery. Don't buy the lie.
Your oppressor isn't just there. It's all around you. It might
even be yourself.
Power to the people, not to their nations.
The borders we build are the borders we will have to live behind.
--from the Extra-Nationalist Commission
-30-
Women in Black Against War
BELGRADE, SERBIA -- Every Wednesday since October 1992, Women in
Black Against War, an anti-fascist group, has demonstrated on the
streets in protest of all nationalist politics. Their prime target
is the fascist Serbian regime. They call on all women to engage in
all types of civil disobedience. The following is text excerpted
from a Women in Black demo flyer:
"Fascist leaders of Serbian politics continue to destroy all
positive inter- ethnical communications. They have segregated
streets, classrooms, families, and cities. They are drawing lines
on mountains and corridors through the countryside... They have
stopped all electricity, water, and telephone systems in
Bosnia-Hercegovina. People die by the minute. No matter which
names they have, they die of the cold, illness, and hunger...
[The Serbian leaders] have been ceaselessly killing, torturing and
raping for a year and a half already. They have banished more than
three million lives... We are left without words to express our
horror and anger. They haven't stopped yet... The misery in which
we live should not frighten us, but incite us to resistance. It is
strange that we have not yet started to scream."
Women in Black Against War
c/o Stasa Zaja
Dragoslavia 9/10
11000 Belgrade
Serbia
Center for Anti-War Actions
Prote Moteje 6
11000 Belgrade
Serbia
-30-
Fascism on the Rise in Bulgaria
Among the youth here there have recently appeared disturbing
nationalist, neo-fascist, racist and anti-semitic tendencies. In
Sofia, as in the west, this has occured mainly with skinheads.
They support neo-fascist ideas and endorse racism and violence.
Groups of these youths attack other, innocent youths on the main
streets of Sofia. They provoked the terror at Club 113 of the
University of Sofia. There is nothing left for us to tell you
except:
"HIT THE NAZIS IN THE MUG!"
Federation of Anarchist Youth
Antonio Grozdev
18 Nikola Slavkov St., ET.3, Ap.6
Sofia 1463
Translated from French.
Originally appeared in Action Newsletter, # 1
-30-
SPANISH ANARCHIST NEEDS SUPPORT
GERARDO, A 27-YEAR-OLD ANARCHIST and CNT (Anarcho-Syndicalist
union) member from Barcelona) has just been jailed for six years
two months and one day for burning the Spanish flag way back in
1983. He had lost his final appeal.
On August 7, the CNT held a noisy demo through Barcelona to
support him, blocking traffic on main roads and throwing fireworks
at banks and the Ritz. No one from the demo was arrested. Just
before the demo, Gerardo was moved to a far off penetentiary from
the Modelo prison to prevent a protest at this notorious jail.
The CNT is calling for a pardon especially, since on July 3 a
court let off twelve Catalan Nationalists for burning flags in
1988. The difference is that Gerardo burnt the flag because he is
against all states, not to fight for a new Catalan one.
We call on all supporters to act! Call the nearest Spanish
Consulate or Embassy and raise Gerardo's case.
Send Letters and cards of support to:
Gerardo C. Ferre
C.P. Brians, Aptdo de Correos 500.
08760 Martorell, Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain
-- info from International Solidarity Network & London Black Cross
-30-
ANTI-FASCIST-ACTION FIGHTS THE RIGHT IN BRITAIN
by Rachel Rinaldo
[Not published in the printed Feb/Mar Issue, but worth reading]
SEVERAL YEARS AFTER THE militant poll tax riots and
demonstrations, it looks like political resistance in Britain is
at a low point. Few serious squats remain, most of the
anarcho-punks have been disillusioned or caught up in the New Age
Traveller's movement, and even Class War could not raise a
contingent for a demonstration at the European Summit in
Edinburgh. As in the rest of Europe though, fascism is alive and
well here in Britain, recruiting on the housing projects of cities
like London, Glasgow, Manchester, and Edinburgh.
Anti-Fascist-Action (AFA) has chapters throughout England and
Scotland and is probably one of the most active groups around
these days. They are dedicated to fighting fascists, such as the
British National Party (BNP) and nazis, through propaganda and, if
necessary, physical confrontation. AFA started the autumn with a
successful action in London, where they prevented hundreds of nazi
skinheads from getting to a Blood and Honour gig where the band
Skrewdriver was playing.
I've been involved with AFA Edinburgh for several months, but they
formed about a year ago. In that time AFA has: plastered the city
with stickers and graffiti (and wiped out BNP graffiti); held gigs
at the Unemployed Workers' Center; had stalls at local clubs;
picketed a bookstore for selling a book by a nazi revisionist
historian; and written letters to the local BNP members. AFA
Edinburgh and Glasgow also attended an annual anti-racist march in
Glasgow, which twenty-five sieg- heiling BNPers tried to disrupt.
Most recently, we've put up posters all over town, with a picture
of local BNP members and their addresses and phone numbers, urging
people to write nasty letters and harass them by phone. AFA
members have been known to make annoying phone calls to local
fascists and nazi skins at odd hours of the morning.
AFA is an alternative to mainstream/liberal groups, most of which
won't even recognize the existence of fascism in Britain. Groups
like the Anti- Nazi-League are mainly fronts for various left
parties and do little besides hold placards at big demonstrations.
AFA especially concentrates on rooting out fascism in working
class communities, the favorite recruiting place of the BNP. The
mostly wealthy fascist leadership targets disaffected youth in
such areas, turning their anger away from the establishment and
towards neighboring minority communities.
Not surprisingly, AFA gets a lot of criticism from the so-called
left. An editorial in the University of Edinburgh left student
newspaper called groups like AFA the violent fringe and leftist
thugs. Other groups within Edinburgh have sharply criticized the
anti-BNP posters and our confrontational tactics. But it is a pipe
dream to think that merely by distributing leaflets and holding
demonstrations, the fascists will go away. This kind of thinking
on the majority of the left has fed the recent rise in fascism in
Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and even Sweden, where Jewish
cemeteries have been desecrated. Mass demonstrations are
important, but the reality of fascists on the streets must be
dealt with before they can terrorize the local community and
recruit vulnerable youth.
-30-
MEXICO CITY ANTI-COLUMBUS DAY ACTIONS
The majority of anarchist collectives from the Mexican capital
gathered in two meetings (September 20 and October 6) and decided
to organize an anarchist contingent in protest of Columbus Day.
We decided to participate in an all night vigil in front of the
National Palace in the Z¢cala (public square) on the night of
October 11. And we decided to hold a protest march from the Palace
to the Columbus monument, on the Paseo de la Reforma, on the
morning of the 12th.
These actions were part of the coordinated activities of the Love
and Rage Network. And so on the 11th at 9 pm we began to gather in
front of the National Palace. The collectives participating were:
Colectivo Brigada Subversiva, Colectivo Cambio Radical, Grupo de
Apoyo Amor y Rabia, Colectivo S¡ntoma, Colectivo Ideolog¡a,
Expresi¢n y Acci¢n, Colectivo Acci¢n Libertaria, Colectivo
Destrucci¢n de Ideolog¡as, and KUT. At midnight we pitched a tent
that gave us shelter throughout the night. The palace was
surrounded by two reactionary groups, the Escuela Filos¢fica de la
Nueva Mexicanidad (The Philosophy School of the New Mexican) and a
group of concheros (dancers) contracted by the PRI (Institutional
Revolutionary Party, the party/dictatorship in power).
Despite a heavy rain we remained there until 9 am, when we began
the march to the monument of the Genovese murderer. The flyer we
produced calling for a Black Block was more effective than we had
anticipated, with many showing up at the last minute. More than 70
people participated, including some foreigners a woman from Spain,
another woman from Germany, and a man from Food Not Bombs! in San
Francisco.
The crowd seemed ready for anything, and we were surprised to see
our desires materialize. On leaving the Z¢calo we took the
streets.
The police (and the grenadiers) didn't know what to do. They
talked among themselves and then asked us unexpectedly: Where are
you going? What party are you from? What march are you part
of?
Our responses were chants: Salinas and Columbus to the firing
squad! We're gonna resist, not celebrate! Death to the State,
Long Live Anarchy! We're Indians and Anarchists and we don't
celebrate the quincentennary! Death to the church, down with the
celebration! I'll shit on the celebration! Only fascists celebrate
genocide!
We took the Paseo de La Reforma after blocking traffic
leading onto it. We jumped on the monument to the imperialist
bully, painting the sculpture in red and throwing whatever we
could at it to try and destroy it. We put up banners and
surrounded the monument, repeating our chants.
The Mexico City, national, and foreign press mobilized to cover
what was the first demonstration against the celebration, while
the police (and the invariable grenadiers) decided to keep watch
around us. After giving homage to the great admiral, we headed
back to the Z¢calo, handing out flyers to all the passersby and
decorating all the luxury cars in our path with
counter-quincentennary stickers. Once back in the square we
interrupted with shouts the celebrations and rituals of the
Escuela de la Nueva Mexicanidad
The yellow and bourgeois press, while they accused us of being
vandals, marginalized elements, and gang members, were obligated
to report on a black block that marched to shouts of A, A,
Anarchy!"
-30-
AFTER COLUMBUS DAY, ACTIONS CONTINUE IN MEXICO
AFTER THE MARCH of the anarchist Black Block on October 12th
against the Quincentenial, various anarchist collectives from the
region agreed to organize two demonstrations in coordination with
the Love and Rage Network.
The first to occur was on the 23rd of October at 3 pm in front of
the yankee embassy, calling for the release of American political
prisoner, Kenny Tolia, and for the repeal of Mumia Abu-Jamal's
death sentence and his release. About 30 people participated. For
over 4 hours, protesters yelled anti-state and anti-imperialist
slogans and called for the release of the imprisoned comrades.
They waved banners and placards at motorists and passersby on the
Paseo de la Reforma, during rush hour on Friday, while others
passed out leaflets and gathered signatures.
Then on October 30, we demonstrated for the release on Peruvian
anarchist prisoner Andres Villaverde. The collectives Cambio
Radical, Fuerza Positiva, Brigada Subversiva, Ideolog¡a, Expresi¢n
y Acci¢n, Zyntoma, and the Love and Rage/Mexico Supporting Group
organized a picket outside the Peruvian embassy, calling for an
immediate review of the case of Andrs Villaverde and his release
based on the lack of evidence against him.
With banners and placards, demonstrators blocked the street, by sitting
on the pavement, while others passed out flyers and collected signatures.
After three hours of civil disobedience, we abandoned our position to
deliver petitions to the embassy.
To close out the month of solidarity and action, on November 1st
some anarchists carried out a direct action against McMurders
(McDonald's) in the Arag¢n Central Commercial Plaza in the wee hours
of the night. Bricks and other objects were used to break the windows of
the imperialist restaurant, and anarchist, anti-imperialist, and animal
liberation graffiti was left all over the commercial center.
-30-
EMMA GOLDMAN ANARCHIST WIMMON'S COLLECTIVE FORMED
ON SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 7, a meeting of wimmin with common anarchist
politics took place in Mexico City. As a result, we young wimmin
formed the Emma Goldman Anarchist Wimmins' Collective.
At the meeting we created a declaration of principles.
Anti-authoritarian, anti-state, anti-capitalist, anti-racist,
revolutionary, and anti-sexist positions were stated. On this last
point we made clear our rejection of patriarchy, that is the
sexist society in which we live, the sexual violence and the
everyday abuse that wimmin are subjected to.
We outlined our belief that our struggle is for liberation,
emancipation, self-determination, and self-management for wimmin.
We explicitly stated our unquestionable right to reproductive
choice, the inalienable right to abortion, and the right of access
to health care for all wimmin without exception. We manifested our
rejection of the imposition of the authoritarian heterosexuality
of the patriarchal family and the traditional adoption of sex
roles. We supported attempts to move towards a plurality of
human-sexual relations, including the recognition and support for
the struggles of lesbians, bisexuals, and gay men.
We plan to produce a bulletin containing the decisions made at the
first meeting, including the Declaration of Principles. The goals
and purpose of the bulletin are to spread anarcha-feminist ideas
and to win over more wimmin, so that our movement can strongly
develop here in Mexico.
Another important focus of the collective, given the problems
confronting wimmin due to the prohibition of abortion, is the
wimmin's health question. Because of a lack of sexual education,
and reproductive rights, we plan to helpspread, practice and
educate about alternative methods of abortion, like menstrual
extraction.
Information on this page from Grupo de Apoyo Amor y
Rabia, Mexico
For more information write the collective:
Amor y Rabia
Apartado Postal 11-351
C.P. 06101
Mexico D.F. MEXICO
-30-
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@ _Love & Rage_ is a Revolutionary Anarchist newspaper produced
@ by the Love and Rage Network. The Love and Rage Network is a
@ continental network of groups and individuals in Canada, Mexico,
@ and the United States. Subscriptions to the newspaper cost:
@ $13 for first class (fast, envelope), $9 third class (slow, no
@ envelope), $13 international (outside of United States), free for
@ prisoners, GI's, published bimonthly.
@ Please write to us at POB 3, NY, NY 10012
@ email: lnr%nyxfer@igc.apc.org
@ or: loveandrage@igc.apc.org
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