#militant unionism
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Happy birthday to the IWW
#iww#117 years#solidarity unionism#industrial democracy#syndicalism#revolutionary unionism#militant unionism
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if your strategy is “vote blue no matter who” while refusing to ever demand better of your politicians, you’re essentially giving the democrats a free pass to become as awful and rightwing as they want as long as they remain marginally better than republicans, who incidentally are also becoming more and more awful and rightwing. so you end up with this situation where both political parties are just perpetually shifting towards fascism, with no real opposition from anyone. really great strategy for maintaining democracy you got there.
#i don’t think you’re pushing biden left guys#the best way to escape this is to get organised and build a mass leftwing movement with the goal of fundamentally disrupting#american capitalism#rebuilding a militant union movement that can disrupt the war machine is a good start#free palestine#us politics
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How do I improve my workplace?
I don't think a single person has worked for more than 10 minutes and has thought "This is literally perfect. I want this 'til retirement."
There is always something that can be improved at work, even if it is incredibly minor. There are always micro-managing bosses, there's always broken equipment that never gets replaced or fixed, and there's always someone who has to bring in their own equipment because the office stock has run out.
And you won't be the only one who has these issues. No doubt everyone else is also thinking the same thing.
So how do we resolve this? Well luckily for us, we have a wealth of historical events that we can look into and find some great examples!
Of course, all of the following examples are most effective when coordinated with your co-workers. So make sure you've had a few one-on-one chats, got to know who you can trust, and get organised!
Be aware, your boss or manager will not take kindly to these actions, so be prepared to fight against pushback.
1. Slow down!
Productivity is all that matters to your boss. As long as "line go up" at the end of the day, they'll continue as always. The only way to grab their attention is to threaten that.
Slowdowns (or go-slows) are a very direct way of affecting that all-important line. Suddenly the boss is faced with an issue: "Line go down. :(".
The slowdown is a great way of showing just how much effort workers normally put in. Just how much they actually produce. And just how much is threatened when they take the gas off ever so slightly.
2. Good work, kid!
Sometimes affecting productivity will have unwanted negative effects. Doctors often worry that their patients' well-being would be affected, even temporarily. Bus drivers might be concerned that they'd be getting other people in trouble with their bosses by stopping service. Luckily, there is a way around it.
When you don't want to affect productivity, but still want to frighten the boss, hit them in the wallet. The Good Work Strike is a type of direct action where workers will continue to carry out their job but at a greater expense to the boss. Bus drivers might let people on for free, doctors or hospital administrators might not process medical bills, and extra admin work might not be carried out in favour of meeting the needs of a customer.
Quite often this means a better all-round service, as the worker is more focused on their work, rather than the "bullshit" work around the edges.
3. Complying... Maliciously!
How many times has your work been slowed down by needless reporting, strange and confusing rules, and bizarre workplace practices that the new manager has decided to implement? And how many times have you just ignored them, because you know that they make your job unworkable?
Well lucky for you, this can be used to your advantage...
Working to the rule (Work to Rule) is just that: following every single rule and regulation to the T, regardless of how long it takes. Suddenly, productivity goes down, and the boss starts to panic!
4. Sorry boss, I'm not feeling too well today...
Some industries in the UK, mostly public sector roles, are legally prevented from striking. This presents an issue when trying to figure out what to do to threaten the bosses' productivity or income. If you can't do that, then they can just ignore you. But there is a way around this.
The Sick-In is an action where several employees all report as sick on a given day. Sometimes, even the idea of a sick-in is enough to get results. And even a workplace all calling in to check how much sick leave they have left has done the trick.
Be aware that this can go south fairly quickly if someone decides to snitch beforehand. Find people you can trust!
5. Just Do It™
Historically, the best way to get something done is to do it yourself, bosses be damned. Organise with co-workers and pull something together without waiting for the boss to issue decrees from above.
To give an example, in San Fransisco, there was a coffee house with an owner who was incredibly poor at managing money (but he managed to get paid pretty consistently interestingly enough). Workers there would be paid weeks and sometimes months late.
The workers there took it into their own hands and began to pay themselves directly from the cash registers, leaving receipts to document where the money had gone.
Immediately there was an uproar from the owner, but the pay slips would arrive on time after that.
If something should be happening that isn't... Just do it!
6. Not just a Foo Fighters song...
I'll preface this with the following: these tactics are almost guaranteed to get you fired. Additionally, you might potentially piss off a load of co-workers as well. This should probably only be applied when tactically necessary.
You've tried everything. You're currently on strike, and the boss has brought in a load of scab workers. What's left?
As an aside, Monkey Wrenching refers to techniques used to sabotage, incapacitate, or destroy machinery or tools used for production.
In a railroad strike in 1886, scabs turned up to work to suddenly find that there was a load of equipment missing. Crucial small pieces of trains were missing, and couldn't run without them. Suddenly, the scabs were faced with the fact that there wasn't much they could do here and had to sit on their hands.
In one of my previous jobs, my manager had asked me to add a surcharge to a charity donation tool we were creating. There was nothing in the specification about the surcharge, and the money would be sent directly to his business account. There were only a couple of developers who knew the system well. And what a shame, our laptops would suddenly begin to bluescreen. A small drop of water here, a magnet placed too close to a hard drive there, these unforeseen events delayed the project enough that it was never taken up.
Wrapping things up
These are a few tools that workers can use to prove to their boss that he needs them more than they need him. Of course, it should go without saying, these tactics can and will get you in hot water. Discretion is advised.
Additionally, these tactics can only be effectively employed with help from your fellow workers. A single worker carrying this out will only ever be crushed. Sure, sabotage feels great, but at best it only really resolves one bad day, at worst it's adventurism. A collective of workers carrying this out can absolutely scare a boss onto the straight and narrow. It also leads to more permanent changes in the workplace - and sometimes across the whole industry!
This is also not an exhaustive list of everything you can do, only some of the more militant actions. Sometimes you will be lucky enough to have a boss that doesn't immediately reach for the chopping block. Tactics should be applied where and when they are necessary.
Notice as well that I didn't specifically talk about strikes. Strikes are GREAT. But once they've been employed, there isn't much room to escalate (legally) should the bosses refuse to back down. Of course, if needs must, strike away, but it's not the only tool in our arsenal.
As always, stay safe, and remember you're stronger together than you are alone.
Stay safe and solidarity, fellow workers! xox
#organising#solidarity#union organising#how to beat your boss#organising actions#militant action#syndicalism#revolutionary syndicalism
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a very satisfyingly righteous thing is happening with teamsters truck drivers right now. the company in question sucks so much they’ve almost gone bankrupt like five times in the last twenty years. they squeezed a huge pay cut plus an end to pension contributions out of the union during the recession. they squandered $700 million in pandemic bailout funds. (i can also say with inside info they suck so much they forgot to factor in daylight savings time the last time they redid their bid schedules so turn drivers have to just wait an extra hour for loads until the time changes again lmfao)
now they’re in mega debt that’s all coming due at once and they want to change the work rules of the current contract to squeeze more money out of labor and are crying to the teamsters that if they don’t come to the table the company will implode and the union president said nah dawg we’re done bailing your ass out and tweeted a picture of a gravestone with the company logo on it
#union#teamsters#labor#its also important because it marks a real shift in labor rhetoric toward the openly militant#the fuck around era is ending#the time of finding out has begun
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reading about philip josephs and the early anarchist movement in aotearoa and i am Fascinated by the existence of nihilism as a political stance
#it basically stood in opposition to reformism#the idea is ''gradual change is pointless and will never actually change anything; the current order needs to be completely uprooted''#the movement originated in late 1800s latvia i think?? it was a more militant wing of a widespread jewish anarchists union#im curious if. sorry to disco elysium all over real politics but. i believe theres an innocence of nihilism introduced in the 70s#i wonder if the politics of nihilism in elysium are inspired by/based on irl nihilist socialism at all#i wouldnt be surprised tbh the elysium authors seem pretty familiar with anarcho-communist theory and history#or sorry not necessarily a more militant wing of the bund but a more radical one idk if the nihilists actually Did anything#and the bund were a marxist union not an anarchist one they just radicalized people who then became notable anarchists#anyway. wild
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Image 1: This picture as a background existed on the Broodhollow website's pre-September 5th, 2013 blog format.
Image 2: More viewable. Here's its transcribed text:
Four Hours in Trucks
The men are boarded into trucks and their trip to and from the ranch might take all of four hours. There they put in a nine-hour day receiving wages from 17 to 25 cents an hour for the time actually spent in the fields. Laborers admit that the farmer has no direct contact with the men in such a set-up, as the work is handled through labor contractors.
(Next: Resettlement Camps for Transitory Workers.)
Charges that farm maintained camps were in the same condition as those of the squatters were made by Mr. Brumm, who charged the State Division of Immigrants and Housing "had failed to establish any kind of system of adequate housing facilities. The commission apparently prefers to act only in an advisory capacity rather than attempt strict regulations." He said. Supporting this contention he quoted a statement from Earnest C. Hehr, a director of the Associated Farmers:
"Due to the general slump in fruit prices for many past years, the matter of proper housing has been greatly neglected. The fact has been recognized by the Department of Immigrants and Housing and they have purposely been very lenient. Housing conditions in most orchard areas are in need of improvement or correction."
Whether immigrant workers 'squat' or pay rent cabins on a ranch, problems are the same. Families are crowded into limited quarters: water, toilet facilities are either insanitary or dangerously inadequate; garbage disposal is often neglected.
606 in One Camp
Following the crops through the state, Irving Moore observed that many of the squatter camps were established on the edge of irrigation ditches. The heavily silted water was used for bathing, drinking and laundry work alike. The water problem proved even more acute in the Imperial Valley where workers had to buy water from service stations, occasionally involving long drives in their dilapidated autos to and from their camps.
County camps, notably the one at Shatter, Kern County, offer few comforts to the transit worker as some 600 people camp out in the sandy fields without bathing or washing facilities, it was reported. No shade is theirs as they trudge across the barren fields to the single well.
Near larger valley towns the whole issue of camp facilities is deftly side-stepped by the system of hiring the men by day, driving them out to the fields and returning with them at nightfall.
#broodhollow#let me know if i got any part wrong#I didn't expect this to be about labor condition struggles#i wonder how this could fit into the narrative? planchette's child labor is the only major labor mention... the bottlefly boy's shifts at#the mill were mentioned once i think? because broodhollow is about tracking history & the mystery of what male broodhollow workers are up#to in their cave maybe it'll wrap around to be about workers in some way?#ive thought for a long time about getting that 1000$ kickstarter reward where you could get your own character in broodhollow...#i love broodhollow so much i would make sacrifices to get that reward next kickstarter. if i got that opportunity i would ask for the#character to be a labor union militant. now reading this i think there's more to pushing broodhollow in that direction than i thought#there was.
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Haven't heard from family in days. I feel like it's time to accept they're gone. I know in my heart Palestine will, one day, be free, but it wasn't supposed to be like this.
We feared another Nakba, and it happened. 700,000 pushed out of their homes in 1948 to 1 million being forced to leave their homes in 2023.
We thought it couldn't get worse or more deadly than the Israeli invasion in 2014, and it happened. We lost 2,251 people in 50 days then. Now we're past 2,300 in one week.
What I heard most from my grandmother the first days it's that "this time is different". And I feel like a rock is crushing my heart in pieces because i've been hoping that speaking out, teaching people about the historical oppresion of Palestine would help but it's not helping. Nothing is changing.
I feel like I'm screaming into a void. There's some sympathy from people online, until I see content documenting Palestinian oppresion being flagged as 'hate speech' or check the comments of any updates on Gaza and it's: "blame it on hamas", "tell them to give up hamas", "the hamas asked for it". They're not even among civilians!!!!!
My heart feels full seeing the manifestations in favor of Palestine, then I see police forces breaking protests apart and remember that the people that can actually save Gaza don't care.
If there's nothing left to do but to watch the extermination of my people, then I'm going to beg for anyone reading this to please don't forget. Please.
Israel is hiding behind Judaism to commit genocide against Gaza. Netanyahu supported the Hamas militant group to prevent the establishment of the Palestine State, and now he's using them to justify his agenda of ethnic cleansing. He abandoned Israelis and left them to die because he cares more about seeing Gazans dead!
Every single person and institution supporting and financing Israel is complicit. I hope the deaths of every Palestinian haunts you for the rest of your lives and that you never find an ounce of forgiveness, for you do not deserve it.
Just as in the Iraq War, the US government is financing and cheering for the slaughter of millions of innocent Arab lives. The media is complicit by engaging in biased propaganda and other nuclear powers, such as the UK and Germany, are complicit too. You are fascists and war criminals and every drop of Palestinian blood is in your hands. I hope every single day, for the rest of your lives, you look in the mirror and see nothing but the blood you've helped spill.
This serves as yet another proof that not a single Western in a position of power, be it in the media or in government, sees Arabs as humans beings.
For decades, the US has comitted terrorism and crimes against humanity in the Middle East and has NEVER been held accountable. Over one million in Iraq; over 150,000 in Afghanistan; and now they'll turn Gaza into a graveyard. Punishing selected soldiers over the years does not erase the fact that the American military and its government validates their crimes during execution and are never punished for it.
Please never forget: Joe Biden is a genocidal terrorist, Rishi Sunak is a genocidal terrorist, the American Democrat Party and UK's Labour Party are led by genocidal terrorists, the European Union is led by genocidal terrorists, fuckass Walt Disney Company is led by genocidal terrorists; every celebrity that called for Palestinian death or stood by silently while ignoring our suffering is a genocidal terrorist.
May Allah protect the people in Palestine and grant the martyrs the highest level of Jannah. Wallah what keeps me here is knowing that the Akhirah is theirs. May Almighty Allah grant us imaan and Taqwa as high as the people of Gaza. Ameen.
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"wow you think Me, Some Guy, not buying groceries for a week won't put any meaningful pressure on the economy. do you want me to do NOTHING then how is that any better?"
you are already doing nothing, in the most literal sense. 'dont go to work or buy groceries' is the most straightforward description of 'doing nothing' that i can imagine.
the thought does not count. palestinians are not tinkerbell. doing "something" is not better than "doing nothing" if the "something" does not have any meaningful effect. you might as well be saying "thoughts and prayers for palestine is better than nothing". like, is it?
i obviously don't want anyone to do 'nothing'. if you want to be able to participate in real solidarity strikes, then join a union. if your workplace isn't unionized, start organizing and unionizing. if you're already part of a union, take an active role in union politics, vote for pro-palestinian union reps and against zionists. yes, this takes time. yes, gazans are dying daily. the best time to establish a militant labour movement capable of solidarity strikes against imperialist violence was years ago, the second best time is now. in the meantime, if you want to do something that has an impact on a shorter timeframe: join palestine action UK or US to become part of direct actions targeting the infrastructure of imperialism. buy esims so gazans can communicate with the outside world.
i know it is comforting to feel like you have individual power. but you don't. you are utterly powerless in the face of this, i'm sorry, but that's the truth. you can only wield power as part of a group. organized mass action is a fundamental element of what a strike is and why it works. a one-man strike is just a vacation. yes, it is frustrating! but don't let that drive you to despair or self-delusion, but instead to a clear-headed pursuit of the base of power needed to actually help.
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3 thoughts on this:
Economy - Israel's economy took a hit in October that was comparable to the economic tremors caused by the COVID-19 outbreak. It is effectively in a major recession today. The longer they drag out this war, the worse their economic condition will be. Foreign capital will continue leaving the country as it seems incapable of stabilising. While the continued use of reserves means 300,000 Israelis will be unable to work, not to mention the millions of dollars Israel has to spend to mobilise its reserve every day. The longer the war goes on, the more people will end up leaving the country. 470,000 have left in October and November with no intention of returning while over 300,000 settlers are internally displaced. Both of those numbers are bound to go up as the war continues. This means that Israel is missing hundreds of thousands of Israeli workers. A few weeks ago, Israel struck a deal with the Indian government to get 100,000 workers after tens of thousands of worker migrants fled the country. That plan fell through thanks to Indian trade unions. Now Israel is turning to African States in a desperate attempt to replace the Gazan workers it's currently genociding. We will see if that plan works as Africans are by and large pro Palestine. Plus the Yemeni naval blockade is growing more and more intense every week as a direct response to the genocide in Gaza. In short, Israel's economy can't withstand a long war. America cannot help prop up the economy as it will soon be facing its major economy issues in the coming years including a housing crisis and likely a recession.
Military defeats - Israel cannot defeat Hamas. It cannot win a war inside Gaza. It failed to do so in 2014, it's failing right now. It has lost hundreds of military vehicles including the (formerly) vaunted Merkava-4. The estimated number of injured soldiers stands at 10,000+ while the Resistance is still intact and capable of carrying out dozens of military operations against IDF and the surrounding cities and settlements every day. The IDF has never looked more weak than it is right now. Hezbollah has been employing a military strategy dubbed the escalation ladder, in which one end of the ladder is no war and the other end is total war. It has continuously escalated against Israel, attacking deeper and deeper into its territory, and it will continue until there's open war between Israel and Lebanon. The point of the escalation is to give Israel time to leave Gaza but as that's not something the Israeli government is planning on doing, we're looking at a region war in 2024 (so far we have a regional conflict and whilebits serious, it's not yet war). Just like it can't win in Gaza, Israel can't defeat Hezbollah and occupy Southern Lebanon like its leaders have been threatening to. It certainly can't take on the Ansar Allah group in Yemen.
West Bank - every week, there are clashes between Israeli forces and the Resistance in the West Bank and it's growing more and more intense. The best way to describe the region is 'powder keg.' Israel has responded to Oct 7th by detaining thousands of Palestinians and killing hundreds. There's a growing popularity of Al Qassam Brigades and other militant groups in Gaza. There also seems to be coordination between the Gazan and West Bank resistance groups, as in they would carry out operations at the same time. The longer the war on Gaza goes on, the more likely that war will also break out in the West Bank.
Many, many more Palestinians will die. This plan, more than anything, is a call for the continued slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.
But the longer this goes on, the closer Israel gets to collapsing.
#yemen#jerusalem#tel aviv#current events#palestine#free palestine#gaza#free gaza#news on gaza#palestine news#news update#war news#war on gaza
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United Auto Workers (UAW) President Shawn Fain lambasted the mass arrests of pro-Palestinian protesters on college campuses across the country, while emphasizing the union’s call for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
“The UAW will never support the mass arrest or intimidation of those exercising their right to protest, strike, or speak out against injustice,” Fain wrote Wednesday on the social platform X. “Our union has been calling for a ceasefire for six months. This war is wrong, and this response against students and academic workers, many of them UAW members, is wrong.”
Hundreds of students and faculty members have been arrested over the past two weeks as pro-Palestinian protests roil college campuses nationwide. Demonstrators have taken to university yards and streets and started encampments to protest Israel’s wartime campaign in Gaza and call for a halt in U.S. aid to Israel.
Tensions spiked in New York and California on Tuesday night, resulting in the arrest of hundreds of demonstrators.
The New York Police Department on Tuesday went through a second-story window of a building at Columbia that was seized by demonstrators. Police cleared out the protesters, and videos quickly circulated on social media showing the arrests at Columbia, which has served as ground zero for the mass college protests that have quickly spread across the country.
New York Mayor Eric Adams on Thursday confirmed around 300 people were arrested.
At the University of California, Los Angeles, counter-protesters clashed with pro-Palestinian demonstrators when they attempted to dismantle the encampment on that campus. Los Angeles Police Department officers responded, but it was not immediately clear how many arrests were made and whether there were any injuries.
The leadership at UAW 4811, the union chapter representing postdoctoral scholars and researchers of the University of California campuses, voted on Wednesday to hold a strike authorization vote as early as next week should the “circumstances justify.”
“Should the university decide to curtail the right to participate in protected, concerted activity; discriminate against union members or political viewpoints; and create or allow threats to members’ health and safety, among others, UAW 4811 members will take any and all actions necessary to enforce our rights,” UAW 4811 wrote in a statement.
Fain on Wednesday said the UAW is calling for the release of students and employees.
“And If you can’t take the outcry, stop supporting this war,” Fain added.
The UAW backed a long-term cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war in December. The war has lasted nearly seven months since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks against southern Israel, during which the militant group killed about 1,200 people and took 250 others hostage.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign in Gaza has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials.
#UAW#university encampments#ucla#columbia#united auto workers#unions#free palestine#end the occupation#Palestine#usa#protests#strike#uaw strike
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Tips for organisers - Avoid "mass begging"
At times, protests can be fun, empowering, and driving... At worst, they can be depressing and incredibly disempowering.
They also tend to "preach to the converted", and fail to engage an audience that isn't already on board.
"Protest hopping" can be a trap. They don't actually build any sort of power in the long run. There are plenty more direct actions you can do instead! See my previous post...
This isn't to say "never protest ever". But more to establish that it should definitely not be a primary focus - or a secondary one for that matter!
#tips for organisers#union organising#union organizing#union#tips and tricks#lefty#leftist#leftism#militant#direct action#protest#protests#are protests useful
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welcoming an MP who cut her teeth scaremongering about migrants and refugees, who denounced ‘militant unionism’, who was a member of the far right european research group, who came after marcus rashford because he was campaigning to help impoverished children, is anti-abortion, had a second job while serving as an MP, and was suspended from parliament after trying to influence a judge presiding over the trial of her former husband who was convicted on three accounts of sexual assault. quite the day for keir starmer.
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RE "revolutionary leftists are revolutionary because they know they can't win electorally."
It astounds me a little that there are leftists who think that a communist revolution is more likely to work than, like, fifty years of community-building and electoral politics. Sewer socialism, union activism, and other boring activities have brought much more success in the U.S. than agitation for a revolution.
What I mean is, setting aside the moral concerns (violence is bad, even when it's necessary, and if there are practical alternatives then we should pursue them), I am not a revolutionary leftist because I think we would lose a revolution. For one thing, there is a considerable right-wing element in the country that is much better prepared for this kind of thing, and I think that the majority of the institutions in the U.S. would pick fascism over communism if they had to choose, but also, prolonged violent action is ripe for breeding authoritarianism.
Goatse is concerned that "the party" might "abandon or neglect its primary ends," but what is leftism if it is not, at bottom, an attempt to improve the living conditions of all people, et cetera et cetera? To the extent that social democratic parties successfully pursue this end to some degree, they're better than than an ostensible communist party that talks the talk but commits human rights abuses. And, more than the fact that U.S. leftism has some pretty fierce opposition that would probably fare better if The Revolution happened tomorrow, I think that, even in winning, we would lose, because what came out the other end would look a lot more like Stalinism.
I think one thing the hardcore revolutionaries in OECD countries don't realize is that the reason they can't marshal support for their revolutions is that the socialists won most of the issues that were salient in the early 20th century--workers got more rights, better pay, unions were legalized, etc., etc. But it didn't take restructuring the whole political economy to do it, which is immensely frustrating if you believe that any society without your ideal political economy is inherently immoral and impure, so in order to justify an explicitly communist platform you have to rhetorically isolate it from the filthy libs and feckless demsocs who it turns out have been pretty effective within the arena of electoral politics in which supposedly nothing can ever get done, and treat them as of a piece with the out-and-out fascists and royalist autocrats of the 1920s and 30s.
Which, you know. Is not persuasive to most people! Most people understand intuitively the vast gulf between the SPD and the Nazis; they see that, milquetoast and compromising though they may be, the center-left can deliver substantive policy improvements without the upheaval of a civil war or political purges, and this is attractive to people who are not of a millenarian or left-authoritarian personality.
Which isn't to say that communists don't often make important points! It sucks having to fight a constant rearguard action against the interests of capital rolling back the social improvements of the 20th century, and it sucks that liberal governments in Europe and North America have historically been quite happy to bankroll and logistically support fascists and tyrants in the third world against communist movements (which invariably only exist as communist movements because these same fascists and tyrants have crushed more compromising movements and only the most militant organizations have managed to survive).
But I agree with you: communists also talk a big game about how liberalism is the real fascism (what's that line from Disco Elysium I see quoted everywhere about how everybody is secretly a fascist except the other communists, who are liberals?), while also being awful at democracy. Suppressing dissent because your small clique of political elites is the only legitimate expression of the people's will (which you know, because you have declared it to be so) really is some rank bullshit. A system with competitive elections is still, well, a system with competitive elections, even if those elections are structurally biased in certain ways; all the bloviating that attempts to justify communist authoritarianism cannot really obscure the fact that authoritarian systems are cruel and brittle, regardless of the ideology being served.
#world's worst leftist#i'm not a huge fan of capitalism#but i am a huge fan of democracy#liberalism rules actually#and its highest expression is probably democratic socialism
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Paris, yesterday (03/23/23). This is an excerpt from a video by journalist Amar Taoualit posted on twitter
This is what they’re doing to a peaceful, registered-with-the-proper-authorities march.
You can hear protesters shouting “children! there are children!” and “that’s my grandfather! my grandfather is on the ground!”
I think some families felt safe going because traditionally, union-backed, “registered” marches are peaceful and the riot police waits until they officially end, when only the more radical protesters are left, to attack. Not saying that is fine, but there was a tacit agreement for peace during the first hours of a protest. (That’s exactly what happened in Lyon yesterday, and there were also a few kids among protesters. It ended up being fine but it made me very anxious to see them, and it looks like I was right to worry.)
Things turned extremely violent in the night. I don’t feel like chronicling it, but suffice to say there were more that 900 fires in Paris. I don’t know what to think of the overwhelming silence from international media on the subject.
Anyway, I know that in principle we should all be able to protest and the police shouldn’t attack, and we’re supposed to be a democracy and we shouldn’t bow down to wanna-be autocrats that want to suppress our voices, etc.
La réalité c’est que pour quelques temps en tout cas, il faut laisser nos enfants à la maison, et que si vous êtes âgé, malade (asthmatique !), déjà blessé, personne handicapée, etc. il vaut peut-être mieux passer votre tour pour ces manifs-là. Il y a d’autres façons d’agir.
Notamment, je suis sûre que les syndicats ont besoin d’aide logistique et d’argent, et LFI, dont les députés sont sur le terrain, sur les piquets de grève, a certainement toujours besoin de plus de militants (j’ai pas ma carte chez eux pour être claire, mais je pense que c’est le parti qui soutient le plus sincèrement le mouvement).
Les députés LFI Louis Boyard (au centre) et Carlos Martens Bilongo (à droite), dans une manifestation le 20 mars. Photo de @teamroscoes (merci !!)
La député LFI Mathilde Panot au piquet de grève des éboueurs de Vitry-sur-Seine le 16 mars (photo de son twitter)
^ these are pictures of lawmakers from the leftist France Unbowed party participating in protests.
#i feel like crying#j’ai envie de pleurer#compatriotes comment ça va aujourd’hui?#tw violence#france#protests#french politics#strike#unions#police violence#police brutality#social justice#up the baguette#réforme des retraites#video#edited because I misheard the shouts about a protester’s grandfather
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The politics in Lancer the mech pilot TTRPG seems center left to me. A good way to explain what's going on in that game's universe is with this overly long metaphor:
Imagine an alternate history where Nixon somehow beat JFK Jr to the white house, and once in office he lets Kissinger go nuts setting fascists up on an accelerated schedule. That's what Union's Second Committee was like. Then Tricky Dick procedes to nuke Vietnam a couple times. That's the Hercynia Crisis and that FTL Piston weapon launch. JFK and company ride the shock and horror of approaching nuclear war into office on the promise of de-escalation and enforcing civil rights, and they deliver. That's the coup that formed Union's Third Committee. Kissinger, Nixon, and the entire pentagon/raytheon corp take over NASA in Cape Canaveral, Florida where they form a tolerated corporatocracy in exile. That's basically Harrison Armory on the planet Ras Shamra. Now a United liberal-leftist front of America is actively trying to tear down dictatorships around the world that Kissinger set up (he got assassinated at some point in this time line) and replace them with socialist democracies. That is Union's Justice/Human-Rights Department and a few other government branches. So far they've had some success although people are pointing out that it's a bit hypocritical that the liberators are using weapons from corporate conservative states where civil rights are discretely curtailed. That's what's driving political discourse in 5016u in Union's legislative body, the Central Committee and it's myriad political parties.
So yeah Lancer's political intergalactic landscape is a bit like modern day? Except also cthulhu is giving out reality-breaking tech to militant civil rights advocates and random civilians? That's what HORUS basically is, btw.
Now that I've written this out, it would make for a good american alt-history with mechs campaign in Lancer...
#henry kissinger#lancer rpg#alternate history#union's third committee#union's second committee#harrison armory#science fiction#table top role playing#ttrpg#mech#mecha#usa politics#usa history#richard nixon#john f kennedy#us history#us politics#horus
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Degrowth cannot be achieved without an internationalist, anti-imperialist solidarity to be carried out through a variety of tactics. While a plethora of labor unions have issued statements in support of the Palestinian struggle for liberation, unions as a whole have yet to adopt more militant strategies toward disrupting the war machine and challenging genocidal capital at the point of production. An end to weapons production is directly tied to the project of degrowth, whose basic principle is to sustain life through a reconfiguration of the social relations of production rather than to destroy life for the sake of profit and economic growth.
Erica Jung and Calvin Wu, A Mirror of Our Immediate Future: On Green Imperialism and Palestine
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