World Workers' Movements Newswire Archive

Iran's Islamic regime must be held accountable for its crimes against humanity.
Thousands of political prisoners been killed as a 'enemy of God ' under ' Islamic Law'

“Iran Tribunal” aims to raise the awareness of the international community and the civil societies by exposing the horrific magnitude of this human tragedy.

Reflections on the Lagos state government’s onslaught on doctors
A recent crackdown on doctors in Nigeria is symptomatic of a wider state attack on the working class.

Barely half a year after it burst on the scene, the Occupy Wall Street movement is splintering left and right. This was inevitable in a movement that was united only in what it opposed and could never put forward a positive program, whether of reformist "demands" on the capitalist state or of revolutionary action against it. Liberals, who latched onto Occupy hoping it could pressure the Democratic Party in a more populist direction, want to expel "black bloc" anarchists. Reformist social democrats rail against "ultraleftists" in Occupy and cozy up to the labor tops. On the other side, many (but not all) anarchists oppose unions. Some are simply arrogant petty-bourgeois labor haters. Others are grappling with real problems, but with skewed analysis and dead wrong conclusions. Discussion of recent workers' struggles, from Wisconsin to West Coast longshore, underlines that the key question is leadership, but not just replacing one set of bureaucrats with another. Unions have always faced vicious anti-labor laws, but we have the power to defeat them. It is necessary to drive out the pro-capitalist bureaucracy, the labor lieutenants of capital, in order to turn the unions into instruments of revolutionary class struggle.

What is to be done when capital and government abandon the people? It is a question that social movements throughout Europe and the US have begun to raise with a creative political militancy unseen in decades.

Anti-workfare protesters brought chaos to London’s West End yesterday after the annual Trade Union May Day march and demonstration. A roving mob of around 350 people successfully shut down countless shops and businesses who use forced labour under the Government’s workfare schemes.

THOUSANDS of trade unionists and activists poured into the streets of Manila and other key cities to celebrate May Day amid renewed hopes that the two latest efforts at labor unity will provide strong impetus to their uphill battle for labor and trade union rights.

May Day statement of "Collective Action". In it we outline our analysis of the problems facing the anarchist movement in the UK and offer a call out to all independent anarchist communists to participate in our project to re-visit our political tradition, re-group and re-kindle our political action.

In Greece, the initial austerity measures developed into a full blown shock policy of devaluation of capital, which has deepened the recession and increased public debt. A main ingredient of the politics of devaluation of capital is the depreciation of labour power which aims at the weakening of the power of the working class by establishing permanent austerity and disciplining mechanisms, and by the creation of a large reserve army. Furthermore, this depreciation of labour power is facilitated by the institutional abolition of collective bargaining agreements, a process which, to a great extent, undermines the very function of the labour power representation mechanisms…

The idea of the worldwide Children's Revolution on May Day is for the women and children in the environmental movement to lead the marches all over the earth, and show that the World Revolution is peaceful and will save humanity from being driven to extinction by the burning of fossil fuels.
The proposal for the worldwide Children's Revolution is for kids' marches to be at the front of all the protests during the global General Strike, and for everyone else to lend their support by displaying banners reading “CAN YOU SAVE THE HUMAN RACE?” to help ensure the survival of future generations.

Fake health food store Holland & Barrett faced angry demonstrations at 20 different locations yesterday as part of a National Day of Action Against Workfare.

Due to lack of time article copy-pasted from  http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/mar/31/petrol-crisis-thatcher-moment-tories

This is a call for a 5 day weekend beginning Friday April 27th, culminating in global General Strike on Tuesday May 1st. We propose using this mobilization as a tool for realizing more global solidarity and mutual aid while creating and strengthening the necessary relations and conditions for revolutionary potential – here and now. We will strike, assemble, block and shut down the circuits of capital!

Parecomic book on alternatives to capitalism and a kickstarter drive to support it.

And the Night was not Unruly ......
Night Pickets at the Mayr-Melnhof Packaging plant in Bootle, Merseside.

Our second episode on the Occupy movement includes two veterans of the show. Firstly, Chris Hedges presents an address entitled "Nonviolent Citizen Resistance to War and Globalization". Secondly we hear a range of voices addressing Occupy Oakland on the need for concerted resistance, including Derrick Jensen. We hear music by David Rovics and Mankana.

"One simple demand"
- Critical Reply to "Adbusters Tactical Briefing #26 - Anarchic Swarms"
 http://www.adbusters.org/blogs/adbusters-blog/adbusters-tactical-briefing-26.html

This week we look at what Morris Berman terms the centuries long programming of American society. We begin with a talk he gave after the publication of his new book Why America Failed, and conclude by learning how debt has warped the human psyche over millennia, by reading Cruelty And Redemption, chapter 4 of David Graeber's Debt, The First 5000 Years.

Workers have re-occupied the 'Republic Windows and Doors' factory that was occupied in 2008. The factory is now owned by 'Serious Materials', and so the occupation has earned the amusing and appropriate title #seriousoccupation on twitter. Circa 65 workers occupying the factory following threat of closure and loss of jobs, eerily reminiscent of situation...

Repost from libcom plus additional links below

There is no doubt that Greece is on the verge of a dramatic political change, following years of banker-dictated austerity measures which have slashed living standards for all but the super-rich. But there is much doubt about exactly what will happen next. Are Greek workers about to storm heaven, or will they be crushed under fascist jackboots? I think there seem to be four main possibilities.

Throughout the world working people are being dumped with the debts of the corrupt politico-economic elites and greece is no exception. Only a FAIR bailout package will be accepted which requires serious reform of a rotten Greek political system. But will this imply such reform throughout the EU?

Taken from Contra Info:

Aspropyrgos, Attica: Neo-Nazis ‘support’ the Greek Steelworks strikers, and workers’ spokesmen and several other strikers welcome the scum warmly, instead of kicking their ass

The Republic of Ireland was one of the original PIGS, or heavily indebted states targeted by bankers after the great crash of 2008. Under the previous Fianna Fáil government, the Irish working class was pummelled with hammer blow after hammer blow, as dictated by the international finance elite, but offered little resistance when compared with their counterparts in Portugal, Greece and Spain. To some extent, this could be attributed to the treacherous machinations of the trade union bureaucracy. But in recent weeks, with the Fine Gael administration of Enda Kelly continuing the onslaught, a small but significant section of workers have taken matters into their own hands, and occupied their workplaces.

This morning (Tuesday 31/01/2012) a small demonstration took place outside of Cambridge Shire Hall, but it was about something very big indeed.

In fact, decisions made today in that building will change many peoples' lives forever, as there was a meeting by county councillors to decide which rural bus services are to have their funding cut.

On January 28 around 300 protesters gathered at the American embassy to oppose the increasingly bellicose rhetoric against Iran and Syria. Called by the Stop the War Coalition under the title of ‘Stop the war before it starts: don’t attack Iran/Syria’, the protest was in many respects something that seasoned activists in the anti-war movement would be all too familiar with. Well-meaning, if often slightly tedious and repetitive speeches, a few chants and the promise to build an enormous opposition that could finally scupper the imperialists’ plans once and for all. However, it soon became apparent that this was not going to be simply ‘business as usual’. In a somewhat embarrassing indictment to the approach of ‘as broad as possible’ typified by the coalition, several speakers were booed or chanted down, and fights broke out between protesters. At one point a group of Iranians from the London Green movement lined up against supporters of the Syrian Baathist regime under the sway of Bashar Al-Assad. It was not pretty.

We recognize that the strike on 27 January called by the USB, Unicobas, Orsa, SICobas, Snater and USI unions is an opportunity for this renewal of the ability to mobilize of the workers’ movement in Italy and as anarchist communists, we declare our solidarity with the workers of all kinds and with all those who join the strike and participate in the demonstration in Rome on Friday 27 January.

Build Power & Show Power through Mass Participatory Bold Action

To show our power, on May 1st, 2012, we will be organizing for such a mass participatory and bold collective action: a national general strike, mass boycott, student strike/ walk-out and mass day of action. We will be organizing within our unions- or informal workplace organizations where there’s no union or the union isn’t supportive- to hold a one-day general strike. Where a strike is not possible, we will be organizing people to call in sick, or take a personal day, as part of a coordinated “sick-out”. Those who are students will be walking-out of their schools (or not showing up in the first place). In the community, we will be holding a mass boycott and refusing to make any purchase on that day.

We, the 99%, will build our power and show our power until we've occupied our workplaces, our communities, our schools, our lives, our world... until we've occupied everything!

KENT HAS ONE OF THE WORST WORKPLACE DEATHS RECORDS SAYS UNION-UCATT- AS UK SURVEY PUBLISHED