P-CRAC's Worker & Parasite # 1 - This Is P-CRAC!

Worker & Parasite # 1
This Is P-CRAC!
Worker & Parasite is the weekly Editorial of P-CRAC's News and Information Blog.






Greetings Comrade-Enemies,

P-CRAC, as you know, is a Collective of Pie-Card Anarchists and this is our first edition of Worker & Parasite, our weekly blog Editorial. To that end we will use this first installment as an explanation of what we are and what we stand for. More to the point, however, an articulation of what we most earnestly yearn for...

We yearn to be free from the constraints of ideology and purity. We yearn to be free of our Unions failing to win against bosses. We yearn to be free of Anarchism as a fringe movement of freaks, idiots, and armchair warriors. We so declare ourselves free!

We reject your fringe existence as useless in building a real movement of working people in this world. We reject your absurd visions of labor that vacillate between a total rejection of workers' struggles and a sick fetishization of workers themselves. We reject your rigid ideologies, with their self-destructive limitations and arbitrary rules, as we whole-heartedly embrace the glorious ideas that are held within them. We reject your so-called Anarchist purity and declare ourselves filthy with the possibilities of success!

We work towards building a labor movement that is inclusive of all workers. One that beats bosses and operates in the real world we live in. One that can effectively challenge authority and power, gaining concessions and fighting on past them. We embrace mainstream Unionism as a movement of the working class and counterpose it to Syndicalist and Anarcho-Syndicalist organizations that, by their very existence, push the average person away from our movement.

Without a mass movement of working people, Anarchism is nothing but a quaint word from history. We build movements.

This is Class War!

This is P-CRAC!

Zapatista leader Ramona dies

Zapatista leader Ramona dies
-Aljazeera

Saturday 07 January 2006

A Maya Indian rebel leader and women's rights champion who became a Mexican heroine to anti-globalisation activists has died after a battle against cancer.

Comandante Ramona, a diminutive Tzotzil Maya woman and the first Zapatista rebel to appear publicly in Mexico City after a brief but bloody uprising in 1994, died on the way to hospital in the southern state of Chiapas, said Marcos, the Zapatista chief, on Friday.

"Mexico has lost one of those fighters that matter, and a piece of our hearts has been ripped out," Marcos told supporters during a speech in Chiapas.

Continued...

Brazilian Anarchists Foolishly Try to Engage the English Speaking Anarchist World

Brazil: Coletivo Comunista Anarquista

Who We Are, What We Want, The Path We Follow

The Coletivo Comunista Anarquista (CCA - Anarchist Communist Collective) is an organizationalist-especifist and federalist anarchist political grouping with a horizontal structure that seeks to act as an active minority inside the social movements - without transforming them into "puppet fronts" under the pretext of efficiency, but always seeking to instill into them a combative and revolutionary character. We are faithful to the principles of direct democracy, self-management, federalism, mutual aid, direct action, revolutionary solidarity, class struggle and self-defence. Our objective is an anarchist communist society, in other words social and economic self-management and political federalism; anarchism therefore has the duty to interfere in the current reality, so as to alter people's material lives and not only to limit itself to the level of ideas. In order to bring about change within the society in which we live, it is necessary for us to work as an integral part of the various popular struggles, in the neighborhoods, in the factories, in the fields, in the universities, and so on. Because for us "anarchism does not originate in abstract reflections of an intellectual or a philosopher, but in the workers' direct struggle against capitalism, in the needs of the workers, in their aspirations of freedom and equality, aspirations that become particularly alive in the best heroic period of the life and struggles of the working masses" (the Platform).

Continued...

NATIONAL DAY LABORER COMMUNITY RESPONDS TO VIGILANTE ATTACKS

NATIONAL DAY LABORER COMMUNITY RESPONDS TO VIGILANTE ATTACKS

Day workers across the country will peacefully respond to coordinated vigilante actions organized by Connecticut Citizens for Immigration Control and local cells of the so-called “Minutemen.”

The recent wave of attacks is nothing new to the day worker community. Throughout 2005, similar attempts to incite violence and generate chaos against day laborers were experienced in Phoenix, AZ., Herndon, VA, and elsewhere. In Redondo Beach, CA, Joseph Turner, founder of Save Our State, encouraged members of his group to bring baseball bats to an anti-day labor event, noting “if we’re lucky, we’re gonna need them.”*

“History inevitably judges and condemns efforts like these to scapegoat those with the least among us as shameful, regrettable, and immoral,” said Pablo Alvarado, National Coordinator of NDLON. “In contrast, the dignified response of disenfranchised communities against this type of mistreatment always serves as an example to us all.” Within this spirit, day workers will respond with exemplary peaceful, dignified, and respectful actions while reaffirming and redeeming the legacy of the real Patriots who came to this country in search of a better life and to build a more perfect Union.

Continued...

Parecon Debate: A Tale of Two Nothings

Parecon Debate - NEFAC

Some have described Participatory Economics (Parecon) an anarchist economy because of its principles of Self-Management and equity, which are intended to challenge hierarchy and other authoritarian apparatus. Northeastern Anarchist has hosted a debate among anarchists around Participatory Economics.

Continued...

Tell McDonalds farm workers aren't "lovin' it"

Tell McDonalds farm workers aren't "lovin' it"
-United Farm Workers

McDonalds restaurants purchase cheese and french fries from companies that buy milk and potatoes produced at Threemile Canyon Farms in rural eastern Oregon, the largest dairy in the world that also grows about 5,000 acres of potatoes.

In May, the United Farm Workers began appealing to McDonalds about grievances voiced by Threemile Canyon farm workers: sexual bias that included farm co-owner A.J. Bos vowing, "I don't want women at the farm--they are only good for the bed," according to sworn declarations from current farm employees; on-going threats, retaliation and firings of pro-union workers; and high levels of ammonia emissions. The UFW has organized the majority of the farm workers at Threemile Canyon, who have called on the company to recognize and bargain with their union.

The UFW asked McDonalds to use its influence to resolve problems confronting workers at Threemile and to convince the farm to settle its dispute with the UFW. After months of "investigation," McDonalds--which boasts about its code of conduct to ensure the restaurant's suppliers do the right thing by their employees--still has not taken any action. McDonald’s code states, "We hold our suppliers responsible for ensuring adherence to our standards in their facilities and in subcontractor facilities that produce products for us...We will not do business with suppliers who fail to uphold our standards, in action as well as words."

Please send your e-mail today. Tell McDonalds it's time for this mammoth international corporation to live up to its code of conduct and help ensure just and fair working conditions for all workers at Threemile Canyon Farms.

Continued...

AFSCME Sex Scandal! Exclusive P-CRAC Report

* EXLUSIVE P-CRAC REPORT * EXCLUSIVE P-CRAC REPORT *

Editor's Note: AFSCME is one of the largest Unions in the U.S. Gerald McEntee is president of this Union. Jim Schmitz is the Director of Organizing and Field Services for this Union. This email was sent to President McEntee and blind copied to hundreds and hundreds of people across the country. No one could know for sure. P-CRAC has removed the last names of the husband and wife as we really only hate Jim Schmitz. Its people like Jim that give Pie-Cards a bad name. Hope you get fired motherfucker!


From: Christopher [XXXX]
Sent: Wed 1/4/2006 12:36 PM
To: Gerald W. McEntee

Subject: Roni [XXXX], and Jim Schmitz

Hello, I am the spouse of Roni [XXXXX], and we are currently in a contested divorce. As many of you know, her inappropriate relationships and sexual affair with the director of organizing, Jim Schmitz, as well as her extra travel days with Jim Schmitz in places like Albuquerque, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Chicago, St. Louis, Columbus, New Orleans, and other cities (some of which I believe were not necessary for one of Mr.Schmitz level and position to attend ie: abuse of power), while leaving her family at home with a dying Grandmother has led to the demise of our marriage. Despite my repeated attempts to get Mr. Schmitz to stop pursuing my wife ("for the sake of my children and family" a direct quote) he continued to abuse his position and follow Roni to many cities throughout the Midwest.

That leads me to this request: If any one has any additional information that will help in the settlement of this dispute, and would like to clean up the field education staff and organizing staff from inappropriate travel expenses and family damaging values and behaviors while traveling on the road, please contact me via a reply to this email.

At a time when AFSCME is struggling financially and is claiming the moral high ground to Congress and the President on issues like government spending and the budget, this type of behavior from AFSCME's senior staff reflects very poorly on its rank and file members, and sends a very strong negative message to what this Union is about and represents. As evidenced in the 2004 election, unethical and immoral behavior that damages spouses and children in two families and leaves subordinates wondering what behaviors will be tolerated while on the road, can spell demise for the Democrats as well as AFSCME's organizing goals in the coming year. Help me send a message to the morally bankrupt leaders of AFSCME like Jim Schmitz and say "your behavior will not jeopardize this Union in 2006, clean up your act!" The focus of the field education department and organizing department should NOT be on personal lecherous affairs, but on winning a stronger position in the workplace and government for its brothers and sisters in solidarity; especially the most vulnerable such as child care workers!

Again thank you for those who have already come forward to help me take a stand against this type of behavior in our unions.

Sincerely,
Christopher [XXXXX]

Nestor Makhno: Anarchy's Cossack

Nestor Makhno: Anarchy’s Cossack
By Alexandre Skirda
Published by AK Press

Book Review
by Jose Antonio Gutierrez - OCL-Chile - Red and Black Revolution

This was a much awaited book. Published originally in French back in 1982, its English version finally saw the light of day, and the wait was well worth it. For those who are not familiar with the subject, the Makhnovists were a libertarian movement, deeply rooted in the traditions of anarchist-communism, that developed an experience of revolutionary changes in the economic and political structures of the backwarded Ukrainian society. To defend the gains of the Social Revolution, they launched a guerrilla warfare in Ukraine against a number of enemies: foreign troops, Nationalists, Whites, different warlords and Bolsheviks.

The flaws that are commented upon don't invalidate the work but they make it more directed to an anarchist public, than to a non-anarchist one; and unfortunately, the information provided here is quite strong and well researched, and would be very valuable to discuss with a broader leftist audience, but the language make it a bit difficult, as it sounds sectarian. We are still waiting for a further history on the Makhnovist movement that is done in such a fashion that allows us to start that discussion around the methods of the revolution under the light of this historical experience.

Continued...

Vulture in a Coal Mine

Morning Report 1/5/06
Vulture in a Coal Mine

Underground miners are famous for taking canaries down to their workplaces. When the canaries start gasping and dying, it's time for everyone to go back up to the surface before they, too, die.

Unfortunately for miners, "king of bankruptcy" Wilbur Ross, rescuer of dying industries (but not of dying miners), is waiting for them. He's not the canary in the coal mine. He's more like the vulture.

Continued...

Defining Definitions of Anarchism

"Anarchism",
from The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1910.
Peter Kropotkin

ANARCHISM (from the Gr. av, and aoxn, contrary to authority), the name given to a principle or theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived without government - harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between the various groups, territorial and professional, freely constituted for the sake of production and consumption, as also for the satisfaction of the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a civilized being. In a society developed on these lines, the voluntary associations which already now begin to cover all the fields of human activity would take a still greater extension so as to substitute themselves for the state in all its functions. They would represent an interwoven network, composed of an infinite variety of groups and federations of all sizes and degrees, local, regional, national and international temporary or more or less permanent - for all possible purposes: production, consumption and exchange, communications, sanitary arrangements, education, mutual protection, defence of the territory, and so on; and, on the other side, for the satisfaction of an ever-increasing number of scientific, artistic, literary and sociable needs. Moreover, such a society would represent nothing immutable. On the contrary - as is seen in organic life at large - harmony would (it is contended) result from an ever-changing adjustment and readjustment of equilibrium between the multitudes of forces and influences, and this adjustment would be the easier to obtain as none of the forces would enjoy a special protection from the state.

Continued...

Marxist "analysis" can be funny

A Good Inning for Workers in the Great Game of Class Struggle

By Norman Markowitz
politicalaffairs.net - Marxist Thought Online

The class struggle is in some respects like a baseball game. There really isn't a time clock, as there is in most other team sports, but a series of innings that can go on indefinitely, where one team has its chance to score and then has to take the field to keep the other team from scoring. Although there is a set number of innings, with extra innings if the game is tied, teams keep on playing until someone wins, even if curfews force the game to be restarted at a later date or rainouts compel it to be replayed entirely.

Continued...

UFCW Grows Hair Band

Rock on my brothers and sisters. Rock on.

Who ever said unions couldn't be hip and with it? Check out this cutting edge way to turn on the youth to organizing! Well, the youth of 1985 anyway.

Tune In To Organize

Insane Fred Phelps Becomes More Insane

Thank God for 13 Trapped Miners in fag-infested West Virginia.

"The Lord shall send upon thee cursing, vexation, and rebuke, in all that thou settest thine hand unto for to do, until thou be destroyed, and until thou perish quickly; because of the wickedness of thy doings, whereby thou hast forsaken ma " Deut. 28:18.

WBC knows West Virginia very well, having led picketing missions there in religious protest and warning. They mocked our message, despised our words, and misused our people, until the wrath of the Lord arose against West Virginia "till there was no remedy." 2 Chron. 36:16.

See The Insane PDF

Salt of the Earth Revisited

UNLIKELY MOVIE STAR: Fifty years later, Clinton Jenks reflects on Salt of the Earth
San Diego CityBEAT - Sam Sokolove


Clinton Jencks isn’t an easy man to get on the phone. When I called to set up an interview, there was a nearly five-minute period of silence after his wife Muriel answered. When Jencks finally picked up the receiver, he considered the request politely, but cautiously: What paper is this for? What’s the circulation? He didn’t sound entirely reassured by the responses, but we set up a time to meet nonetheless.

Jencks has good reason to be cautious. Fifty-three years ago, as an international union representative of the Amalgamated Bayard District Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers Local 890, he was convicted in El Paso of violating the oath of the non-Communist affidavit required of union officials under the Taft-Hartley Act. Sentenced to five years in prison, he was preparing for incarceration when the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the conviction on the grounds that the defense was intentionally kept unaware of “inconsistencies” by government witnesses. As it turned out, Jencks was convicted largely on false testimony given by an aide to the Communist-hunting Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

Continued...

Anti-Union Media

Thursday, January 5, 2006

'Right to Work': for a union . . .

By D. Eric Schansberg
Special to The Courier-Journal

Labor unions continue to be in the news sporadically. This summer's 50th anniversary of the AFL-CIO merger was ironically paired with a maverick union group's decision to break from the pack (the "Change to Win Coalition"). Then, just in time for Christmas, unionized transit workers in New York City hamstrung the Big Apple by going on strike.

Locally, in recent weeks, Gov. Mitch Daniels cited Indiana's "closed shop" laws as a significant reason behind Colgate's decision to leave Southern Indiana. And "right-to-work" bills have been introduced in both Kentucky and Indiana -- "open shop" laws that would allow workers to join a firm that has union representation without being forced to join the union and pay dues.

Continued...

La Cucaracas

WSF Caracas: Shroud for Venezuela’s social movements
by Rafael Uzcategui - CRA - El Libertario, Venezuela

* A member of the group promoting the Alternative Social Forum explains why the World Social Forum (WSF), taking place in Caracas during January 2006, is another attempt by the Chavez government to impede the autonomous development of social struggles in the country.

During the week of January 24 to 29, 2006 the polycentric version of the VI World Social Forum as well as the II Social Forum of the Americas will take place in Caracas. The event has generated great expectations since this city is the epicenter of what since 1999 has been known as the “Bolivarian Revolution”, with much impact in Latin America and wide popularity among diverse social and left movements in the world. The fact that Venezuela is the second continental seat of the WSF is a tacit backing of the governmental performance of President Hugo Chavez, as happened at the time with the local government of the Workers Party in Porto Alegre during its slow but true climb to the presidential chair. Is this backing of the government related to the actual strength of the social movements of Venezuela? Or, to say in different words, what contributions the WSF in Caracas will make towards the process of consolidation, expansion and articulation of the country’s social movements? To answer this question we will first make a brief review of the nation’s contemporary history.

Continued...

Self-Styled Greek Style

Greek 'anarchists' bomb Athens
03/01/2006 17:24 - (SA)

Athens - Three bomb blasts claimed by a Greek anarchist group went off early on Monday in Athens, damaging several cars and an office of the ruling political party, the Athens News Agency said.

The bombs, homemade devices made from gas canisters, went off overnight in three separate parts of the city, and caused no injuries.

Seven cars, including a Finnish embassy vehicle, were burnt, and the entrance to a district office of the conservative New Democracy party was slightly damaged.

An unidentified man later called a private television station to claim the actions on behalf of Anti-State Justice, a self-styled anarchist group which had as yet not claimed responsibility for an attack.

The man said the action was carried out in solidarity with anarchists currently on trial for arson.

Small extremist groups in Athens routinely employ homemade petrol and gas canister bombs to attack buildings and vehicles associated with banks, corporations and foreign interests.

The attacks are designed to cause material damage and rarely cause injury as they usually occur in the early hours of the morning.

Finland's ambassador to Greece, Ole Norrback, said he believed the blast which hit the diplomat's car was not targeting Finland or its representatives, "but was rather a coincidence".

It is likely that an anarchist group was responsible for the explosion "as similar incidents have taken place before in Greece", he said.

0 + 0 = 0

North American Anarchist Thought Since 1960
by ChuckO Munson

I'm currently working with Jason McQuinn (editor of Anarchy magazine) on an anthology of anarchist writings, theory, and art, titled "North American Anarchist Thought Since 1960." The book will be a representative sampling of North American anarchist thought and creativity over the past 45 years.

Continued in ChuckO's mom's basement...

Resurfaced like a broken mini-sub

The Wobblies Resurface in New York, Targeting Starbucks and FreshDirect

By DANIELA GERSON - Staff Reporter of the Sun
January 4, 2006

The Wobblies are back. Organizers with the 101-year-old Industrial Workers of the World - a radical union that once included "Big Bill" Haywood, Helen Keller, and "Mother" Mary Harris Jones - recently launched efforts in New York to organize Starbucks, illegal immigrant workers, and the online grocer FreshDirect.

"Abolition of the wage system" is their banner.

Continued...

Workers set tyres on fire during protest in Iran capital

Workers set tyres on fire during protest in Iran capital

Iran Focus

Tehran, Iran, Dec. 31 – Some 200 workers from the Miral glass factory held a demonstration and set fire to tyres south of Tehran Saturday morning in protest to their employers’ refusal to pay their overdue salaries.

The glass workers gathered outside the site of their factory near the Tehran-Saveh Highway

They complained that despite five to 25 years of service, many of the workers had not received their wages for the past 10 months.

State Security Forces were called in when the protestors blocked traffic on the road by burning tyres.

Continued...

On krugerrands and class war

Trade Unions and Revolution
by Zabalaza

THE WORKPLACE STRUGGLE

The working class creates all wealth under capitalism.

Because of our position in society only we, as the producers of all wealth, are capable of destroying the class system and other forms of oppression and creating a free, stateless, classless society based on direct democracy, and distribution according to need.

As the producers of wealth, only we, through workplace action are a force capable of powerful mass actions against the present set-up even in the pre-revolutionary period.

So why don’t we use our numbers and power and recreate society in our own interests? The main reason is that we are told that we are not capable of doing so, by the schools, media etc. These teach us that the workers can only follow orders and that this is the natural order of things.

However, this pro-capitalist propaganda that teaches us to feel powerless and that hides the truth of class rule is challenged by the experiences of the masses when we struggle to force the capitalist system to meet our needs for education, housing, jobs, wages, freedom from racism etc. In particular, workplace action, the use of our collective power that runs the factories, offices, mines, schools etc. to stop them gives us a glimpse of our potential power.

Continued...

After Reports to the Contrary, Only One Miner Survives

After Reports to the Contrary, Only One Miner Survives

By JAMES DAO and JOHN O'NEIL
Published: January 4, 2006

SAGO, W. Va., Jan. 4 - In a heartbreaking turnaround, officials this morning first announced that 12 of 13 miners trapped in a West Virginia coal mine had been found alive, and then three hours later disclosed that all but one of them in fact had died. The reversal left relatives who had gathered at the mine in Sago, W. Va., stunned and furious.

Continued...

Revolutionary Fortune Cookies

29 THESIS

1. The future looks like the margin
2. Use weather as an ally
3. To live outside the law you must be honest
4. Never defend a fixed position
5. The principle object of study is the opposition
6. Professionals are predictable to the extent the are disciplined
7. Expect to carry out difficult duties with no recognition and no reward
8. Creativity plus marksmanship equal victory
9. Politics in command
10. Man is as wolf to man-the reality of our situation
11. Amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics
12. The goal-cause ruptures at the core of society and considerably weaken the state
13. The majority is always wrong
14. Criticism plus self-criticism equals transformation
15. The state is a mechanism to reconcile the factions of ongoing class war
16. Crime doesn’t play
17. Left vs. right is a false contradiction, the actual demarcation is revolutionary vs. counter-revolutionary
18. Every tool is a weapon if it is utilized correctly
19. If we do not end the state the state will end us
20. The concept- political soldier
21. Resist leadership and practice leaderless resistance
22. Observe the coyote- devious, without manners or ego, s/he has survived all the technology arrayed in a campaign of extermination
23. Use liberals as human shields and conservatives as ballistic cover
24. Mistakes will be made, learn from them and move on
25. The dilemma can only be solved in the streets, fully armed
26. Revolutionary discipline depends on political consciousness
27. Exploit the enemy’s contradictions
28. Dogma and karma are not mutually exclusive
29. There are no thesis

By Rachel Couri Memorial Committee

Drunken Micks Have an Opinion on Everything

The Trade Unions
Workers' Solidarity Movement Positon Paper on Unions

1. WHO CAN CHANGE SOCIETY

1.1 Anarchists know that "the history of all previously existing societies has been the history of class struggle". At every stage in the development of society - from ancient times through feudalism to the present day - there has been an oppressed class whose labour has created the wealth of society, and a ruling class which controlled that wealth. At almost every stage the oppressed have not accepted their lot without fighting back. There were the slave revolts of Greece and Rome, the peasant risings of the middle ages, the revolutions of the 1600s and 1700s.

Continued...

Welcome to CrimeStink

Greetings, dissident.

History is not something that happens to people—it is the activity of people. In every moment, in every decision and gesture, we make our culture, our life stories, our world, whether we take responsibility for this ourselves or ascribe this power to executives, politicians, pop stars, economic systems, or deities.

In a society which glorifies their power and our passivity, all thought which challenges this passivity is thoughtcrime. Crimethink is the transgression without which freedom and self-determination are impossible—it is the skeleton key that unlocks the prisons of our age.

CrimethInc. is the black market where we trade in this precious contraband. Here, the secret worlds of shoplifters, rioters, dropouts, deserters, adulterers, vandals, daydreamers—that is to say, of all of us, in those moments when, wanting more, we indulge in little revolts—converge to form gateways to new worlds where theft, cheating, warfare, boredom, and so on are simply obsolete.

This webpage is one of many manifestations of the underground network through which we work to realize these daydreams, to take the reigns of our lives and make our history rather than using the same energy to insist we are being made by it. If you have illicit ideas and intentions of your own to share, you're invited to join us here.

The CrimeStink Ex-Wankers Website

Liberals With Bats

Turning the Tide Vol. 19, #1
It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over: Editorial
Anti-Racist Action

It has recently become fashionable among some pundits to declare that the war in Iraq is over, that the Bush presidency is effectively over, or even that the U.S. Empire is dead or dying. Frank Rich opined in the NY Times that the war in Iraq is over, it's just that Bush doesn't realize it. Kim Scipes wrote for Z Magazine that "It's the Beginning of the End-For the Empire, Not Just the War." In CounterPunch, Gabriel Kolko recently wrote a piece entitled, "Defeated in Iraq, Bankrupt at Home, Despised Around the Globe (And That's Just the Good News): The Decline of the American Empire." Perhaps this is a reflection on the left of Bush's belief that he can rule by fiat, or what the Czar in Russia called a "ukaze" - the idea that declaring it makes it so, as in his infamous declaration on Iraq: "Mission Accomplished." Perhaps the left is so tired of defeats and defeatism that it wants to simply declare victory. But as Bush has learned to his chagrin, saying something is so doesn't make it so. Although defeatism has plagued the people's movements (at least in the US) since the days of COINTELPRO, it will not be overcome by simple declarations of success. As African revolutionary Amilcar Cabral said, "Tell no lies, claim no easy victories."

Continued...

White Shadow

TimWise.org
The Official Home Page of Author/Activist Tim Wise

"What societies really, ideally, want is a citizenry which will simply obey the rules of society. If a society succeeds in this, that society is about to perish."
--James Baldwin, "A Talk to Teachers," 1963

Tim Wise is among the most prominent anti-racist writers and activists in the U.S., having spoken in 48 states, and on over 400 college campuses, including Harvard, Stanford, and the Law Schools at Yale, Columbia, and Vanderbilt. He has trained teachers as well as corporate, government, media and law enforcement officials on methods for dismantling racism in their institutions, and has served as a consultant for plaintiff's attorneys in federal discrimination cases in New York and Washington State.

Visit This Crackity Ass Cracker's Website

Searching for Labor's Role

Searching for Labor's Role

By George F. Will

Thursday, December 29, 2005

In one of the biggest successes in the history of organized labor in the South, the 4,700 janitors working for Houston's four largest cleaning companies recently joined the Service Employees International Union. The janitors, most of them immigrants, earn an average of $5.30 an hour -- 15 cents more than the minimum wage -- without health care benefits. The mobilization of the janitors is one sign of why Andy Stern, head of the SEIU, is today's most important -- perhaps the only really important -- labor leader.

Continued...

Love, Labor, Loss

Love, Labor, Loss
A Child's Death Stirred Andrew Stern To Challenge Himself -- and Unionism

By Lynne Duke
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 3, 2006; Page C01

A daughter's death left an unexpected gift. After the sorrow ripped his heart and the confusion left him dazed, Andrew Stern began to discover it -- began to see what Cassie, his 13-year-old, had passed on to him.

Continued...

Urgent Anarchist Update!!

NEFAC has NOT taken a position in favor of Quebec Independence

Dear comrades,

It appears that a brief communique on our 12th conference has been badly misunderstood by a few international comrades. A rumor is circulating saying that NEFAC decided to take a position in favor of Quebec independence. We are surprised to learn this! If we indeed adopted a discussion paper on the issue of the Quebec National Question, we did not take a position in favor of independence. We are as anti-nationalists as ever. In order to put the record straight we are distributing the text that was adopted in principle at our recent conference.

In solidarity

The NEFAC International Secretary

Continued...

TWU Faction Urges Workers to Vote No

TWU Faction Urges Workers to Vote No

Jan 2, 2006 2:33 pm US/Eastern
(1010 WINS) (NEW YORK) Members of a dissident faction of the Transport Workers Union Local 100 on Monday urged workers to vote against the tentative agreement that ended last month's strike, saying they were opposed to paying for health care and hadn't been told about a side agreement concerning pension funds.

The ``contract agreement serves the interest of the MTA and not our members,'' said TWU executive board member Ainsley Stewart at a news conference near Union Square Park.

Continued...

Rescuers accelerate pace; no sign of trapped miners

Rescuers accelerate pace; no sign of trapped miners

Tuesday, January 03, 2006
By Paula Reed Ward, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

TALLMANSVILLE, W.Va. -- Rescue crews today stepped up the pace in trying to get to 13 miners trapped by an explosion in the Sago Mine, the president of the company that owns the mine said at a briefing this morning.

Continued...

Collective Solipsism in Action

Art and Unrest: Out of the Coffee Shops and Into the Streets

You may remember the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) from picket lines and protests, but on January 5th you will have an opportunity to see another side of the Edmonton Branch of this dynamic fighting union. The IWW is about more than just bread-and-butter issues; it is also cultural organization belonging to a world that does not yet exist. Art need not be partisan to be political; there are few things more revolutionary than individual expression in a world where economics dominate culture.

The IWW is continuing its long-held practice of supporting working class art and culture. From Joe Hill to the early Modernists, the IWW has been at the forefront of the struggle not just for bread, but for roses too. On January 5th, 2006, join us at the opening of our ArtShow at Remedy Café.

Address: 8631 109 Street NW
Time/Date: 7pm, January 5th, 2006
Contact Info: edmontoniwwevents@hotmail.com

Why Staff Unions are Anti-Union...

What happens when UNION organizers try to organize? The Culinary gets a taste of labor UNREST by ANDREW KIRALY

Article

Culinary Union story inaccurate, hurtful

Editor's note: Organizers for the Culinary Workers Local 226 submitted 71 letters in response to Andrew Kiraly's April 7 cover story, "The Culinary Union's Dirty Little Secret." A sampling of those letters follows.

Letters to the editor

The year in review

Wrap up article

Zapatistas leave jungle for tour of Mexico

Zapatistas leave jungle for tour of Mexico

LA GARRUCHA, Mexico (AP) — Wearing a ski mask to protect his identity, the leader of Mexico's Zapatista rebels railed against the country's government and free trade to kick off a six-month tour of Mexico aimed at reshaping the nation's politics.

Standing in front of a mural of Mexican revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata — the rebel group's namesake — the Indian rights movement's spokesman Subcomandante Marcos said Sunday the enemy "has many faces but one name: capitalism."

Continued...

Just what we all needed...

Kansas Anarchists Exposed calendar for sale!

The 2006 Kansas Anarchists Exposed calendar is hott off the presses and in our hands! Spread the word that this full-sized wall calendar with beautiful black and white photographs of nude and semi-nude Kansas anarchists is available now for only $8 a piece (or $6 each for an order of 10 or more), and we work out deals with infoshops and other bulk retailers.

The photos are of people of different genders, sizes, ages, and races, and were taken consensually, with full participation from the person being photographed. The proceeds of this collective project go to support anarchist projects and people in the Lawrence area and abroad. The calendars will be available at the Solidarity! Revolutionary Center and Radical Library, 1119 Mass. St. in Lawrence.

To order, send check, money order, or well-disguised cash to:

Kansas Calendar Collective
c/o KMA
po box 442438
Lawrence, KS 66044

or contact vanessa at:
ibringdreams@hotmail.com
or (785) 843-1105

Thanks a bunch, and have a naked new year!
-the kansas calendar collective

Aaaah... the sheer idiocy amazes!

OF JARGON, CANT, & GOBBLEDYGOOK
Editorial (Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed)
by Lawrence Jarach

There is an overflow of ambiguous (at best) terminology in much contemporary anarchist discourse. From a refusal to define terms (of both approval and abuse), to an insistence on ahistorical usage, a swarm of writers in various periodicals have taken to foisting their own meanings onto their pet words. Slogans replace intelligent discussion, buzzwords enforce conformity. Privilege, empowerment, technology, work, movement, spirituality, coalition building, democracy, civilization, intellectual, direct action, people of color, dual power, middle class, leftist, progress, communism, anti-imperialism, over-educated, unity, science, and yes—often and especially—anarchy…

Continued...

Mexican labour rights activist jailed

Mexican labour rights activist jailed

On December 29, Martin Barrios Hernandez, President of the Mexican Human and Labour Rights Commission of the Tehuacan Valley, was arrested by the intelligence division of the Puebla state police and transported from his home city of Tehuacan to the state capital of Puebla where he is being held in state prison. The arrest comes exactly two years after Barrios was kidnapped and beaten by unknown assailants.

Continue...

Harry Bridges: A Biography

Harry Bridges
A Biography

Note: In order to raise awareness and properly pay tribute to our union's history, we present the following article taken from the book The Men Who Labor published in 1937. It describes the events surrounding the infamous BLOODY THURSDAY and the life of Harry Bridges, the founder of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union (ILWU). The boyhood life of Bridges is briefly examined to demonstrate what influences exerted themselves upon this incredible man as well as his work as a sailor and longshoreman, his arrival in the United States, and concluding with his rise to power as a maritime union officer. Learn from history....

Continue...

P-CRAC Endorses ATHA

The Pie-Card Revolutionary Anarchist Collective officially endorses ATHA: Anarchists That Hate Anarchists as the most delightfully un-PC, fun, and non-doctrinaire anarchist discussion group available in todays cesspool of anarchist dialogue.

Group URL: http://groups.myspace.com/HateMorons

Crew Rushes to Get to Trapped W.Va. Miners

Crew Rushes to Get to Trapped W.Va. Miners

Rescuers in W.Va. Get Ready to Drill Toward 13 Miners Trapped Underground After Explosion

By VICKI SMITH Associated Press Writer
The Associated PressThe Associated Press

TALLMANSVILLE, W.Va. Jan 2, 2006 — A coal mine explosion that may have been sparked by lightning trapped 13 miners 260 feet below ground Monday, and rescuers went in to find them after waiting almost 12 agonizing hours for dangerous gases to clear.

The condition of the miners was not immediately known. Four co-workers tried to reach them but were stopped by a wall of debris, and the blast knocked out the mine's communication equipment, preventing authorities from contacting the miners.

Continued...

Why Malatesta should've simply eaten Rudolph Rocker for breakfast...

Syndicalism and Anarchism by Errico Malatesta

The relationship between the labour movement and the progressive parties is an old and worn theme. But it is an ever topical one, and so it will remain while there are, on one hand, a mass of people plagued by urgent needs and driven by aspirations - at times passionate but always vague and indeterminate - to a better life, and on the other individuals and parties who have a specific view of the future and of the means to attain it, but whose plans and hopes are doomed to remain utopias ever out of reach unless they can win over the masses. And the subject is all the more important now that, after the catastrophes of war and of the post-war period, all are preparing, if only mentally, for a resumption of the activity which must follow upon the fall of the tyrannies that still rant and rage [across Europe] but are beginning to tremble. For this reason I shall try to clarify what, in my view, should be the anarchists' attitude to labour organisations.

Continued...

Marginally better than the Wobs, but still rather daft

Who We Are

Workers Solidarity Alliance is an anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian organization of activists who believe that working people can build a new society and a better world based on the principles of solidarity and self-management.

Our view is that such a society will be brought about only by working people building their own self-managed mass organizations from the ground up. Independent working class organization exists to some extent today in the form of rank-and-file committees, tenants unions, workers centers and other formations that might represent the forerunner of such a movement.

We participate in current struggles and in the existing unions to fight for the rights of working people in the here and now, while working to build new, self-managed unions in the workplace and self-managed community organizations.

In building organizations that are run directly by their membership, we not only create more effective organizations for fighting the bosses in day-to-day struggles, we will also be laying the foundation for a new society run by working people.

We believe that the working class is in a prime position to overthrow the power of the bosses, given its essential economic role in society. It is we, the workers, who provide the capitalists with the skills, knowledge and labor that give them their profits. Without us, no plant or office could run, no ship could sail, no train could run, no periodical printed, no office cleaned, no document typed, no food produced, no food served. Without us, you could not use the internet.

We see the fight against racism, gender inequality (patriarchy), and oppression of gay people as essential elements of the struggle for an egalitarian, self-managed society.

Workers Solidarity Alliance
National Office
339 Lafayette St, Room 202
New York, NY 10012
tel: 212-979 8353
fax: 973-773-9337
Contact us: wsany@hotmail.com

Continue to WSA website...

Visit this idiotic historical society for a good laugh

Welcome to the official website of the Industrial Workers of the World.

Here you'll find just about all you'll need to join the IWW labor union and begin organizing your workplace to build the "One Big Union" in your community. The IWW, now in its 100th year, has a long and celebrated history, but if you're unfamiliar with us, read our mission statement.

Continue to The IWW...

Furious Five dies in a whimper

The Furious Five Revolutionary Collective was formed with the idea of being a political group for anarchist-communist organizers working within popular, mass organizations in San Jose. Reaching outside the South Bay, we met with other like-minded comrades, who gave birth to a much bigger project.

Meeting other anarchist individuals who aside from their anarchist politics held on to popular organizing as their political work, we shared the idea of forming a space to meet and work with each other. In the process of sharing and learning from these anarchist individuals and organizations we noticed that F5, as a collective, could not exist inside another organization if people who knew us saw us as protagonists of that group.

The collective has disbanded to become part of a larger organization, presently being formed. We understood that if our reputation, be it positive or negative, got in the way of anything we were trying to do, it would be better to dissolve that identity so our work would go on to be noticed before our name or reputation.

We would like to think that we have helped challenge and have been challenged in developing new anarchist theory and practice, through conversations with people within and outside our political vision.

Whatever materials you access through this Web site will no longer be available online, but may be obtained upon request.

We carry a new world, here in our hearts.

Furious Five on the web

TWU Local 100 Settlement

Contract 2005: Was the Strike Worth It?

How do you measure success in a strike? A strike changes the rules. It's no longer just about the demands you had when negotiations started. There are two things to consider. First, a strike raises the stakes. You have to avoid defeat at all costs. Second, did you come back with more than was on the table when you went out.

On both fronts, the 2005 transit strike was a big success. Thousands of members stood up and told the TA that they were tired of being abused. It's about respect. We were up against the Mayor, the Governor, the MTA, the rabid dog news media. We had to watch the MTA attempt to use our own International to try and get us to cross our own picket lines. But we stood strong and came back proud.

Continued...

NEFAC Workplace Position Paper: Fact or Fiction?

The struggle toward libertarian communism must be brought about by the whole of the working class, the workplace and labor unions are an essential point of agitation and struggle. Anarchist-communists must organize within the ranks of labor unions, active in this struggle as both advocates of social revolution and as fellow workers in a collective battle against exploitation.

Class struggle is by no means confined to workplace. Class conflict occurs everyday in neighborhood-based battles for decent housing, the fight for welfare, the battles for access to quality education, the struggle against prisons and police brutality, in the arena of popular culture, and especially against racism, sexism, and other oppressions that stratify and divide the working class. However, as anarchist-communists, we have a particular strategic interest in workplace struggles due to the ability to directly challenge the material interests of the capitalist class

Independent rank-and-file tendencies within existing unions, coupled with workplace resistance groups, solidarity networks, and, eventually, workplace assemblies and coordinating councils, provide a glimpse at the kind of self-managed workers movement needed to not only effectively challenge the employers, but also develop the unity and revolutionary class consciousness needed to overthrow the capitalist social order.

Continued...

P-CRAC

The Pie-Card Revolutionary Anarchist Collective is Born.

We reject contemporary anarchist views on Pie-Cardism as the reactionary foolishness that it is. We are relevant to the working class. They are not. This is a simple equation.

Most anarchists are morons.