struggle

The New Black Jacobins: On the Rejection of the Clergy in the Ferguson Revolt

Written by Paolo Mossetti, 06.11.2014

 

The cruelties of property and privilege are always more ferocious than the revenges of poverty and oppression. For the one aims at perpetuating resented injustice, the other is merely a momentary passion soon appeased.

- C. L. R. James

 

Something new and important happened during the “weekend of resistance” in St. Louis, Missouri. The event, organized by the campaign group Hands Up United plus a myriad groups from across the US, was billed as four days of civil disobedience, mass protest and debates to respond to the killing of an unarmed 18 year-old by a white police officer on August 9 in Ferguson.

What happened there went beyond the routinely protest against police violence and grotesque militarization of urban space. It entered a deeper confrontation: that taking place between the younger and the older generation of black activists. A generational divide that may probably mark and set the tone for the future fights to come.

On October 12, I was one of the 2,000 people who attended an interfaith rally at St. Louis University’s Chaifetz Arena. The event featured noted author Cornel West as keynote speaker, in front of an audience composed by a majority of black people and a numerous contingent of “white allies” (as they are dubbed in activist circles) cheering at every intervention. It was the “American tradition” of civil rights movements ready for the usual show-off.

Catastrophic Socialization, Apocalyptic Capitalism and the Struggles (Version 1.0)

Written by Sabu Kohso, 25.02.2014
The world is already apocalyptic. Just not all at the same time.
To be overcome: the notion of apocalypse as evental, the ground-clearing revelatory trauma that immediately founds a new nomos of the earth. In its place combined and uneven apocalypse.
--Evan Calder Williams[1]
 
I am not referring here to the microapocalypse of death: everybody dies, and even if everybody dies at the same time (I mean everybody), what is the problem? The earth becomes a cleared tape and why the angels grieve?
--George Caffentzis[2]
 
There is no need to fear or hope, but only to look for new weapons.
--Gilles Deleuze[3]
 
1. Catastrophic Events Articulating Apocalyptic Process
 
Due to the magnitude of calamity, there have been many discourses seeking to make sense of the Fukushima disaster and its aftermath: on the worsening dread of the crippled reactors; on radiation spread via distribution of irradiated food products and imposition of disaster debris by the central government; on the renewal of pro-nuclear, re-armament and market-centrist policies of the present Liberal Democratic Party administration; and finally, various types of voluntary actions of the people beginning from radiation monitoring of food and environment to information exchanges via internet to legal battles to street actions.

It all started with a siege: what happened in Italy on October 18th and 19th

Written by Oana Parvan, 29.10.2013
Hopes and dreams in the Susa Valley
Some two months ago the national housing activists met the NO TAV* movement in the sunny green Susa Valley. The plan was a week of national mobilization culminating with a general strike (of the rank-and-file unions) followed by a mass demonstration against austerity and precarity in Rome. Putting together the whole Italian movement sounded like wishful thinking. No one could imagine what was going to happen.
 
Weeks of hard work and national coordination followed. Bit by bit the 19th October general uprising was taking shape. The week before was marked by numerous appropriation events: from empty buildings being squatted by students to families sieging shopping centers for food at fair prices.
 

From Resistance to Victory: on the logic of emancipatory warfare

Written by Federico Campagna, 29.09.2013
Resistance

Humans seem to be inescapably bound to a position of double pressure. On the one hand, they are constricted by the limits of the mortality of their flesh, and by the finitude of the resources which surround them. On the other, they endure the weight of a system of abstract thoughts which, as well as ‘lifting’ them above the mortal world, also threatens them with sets of impossible demands. It is within this structure, I believe, that we should understand the meaning and practice of resistance.

At the same time stuck and enhanced by these two invisible neighbors, human life unfolds as constant negotiation between them. In its struggle to resist the pressure of mortality, and in their quest for what we could define synthetically as ‘health’, humans employ their ability for abstract thought. This is what is at heart, for example, of the development of science, technology, art and philosophy, but also, and most importantly, of politics.  Perhaps it is politics, understood as the management of all available resources with the aim of enabling the enjoyment of life, above any other human practice, that constitutes our way of resisting the uncanny proximity of death.

Per Una Società Senza Capitalismo, Per Una Democrazia Senza Parlamento

Written by Giovanni Dursi, 06.08.2013
La prima idea da dimenticare, quando si comincia ad occuparsi della “trasformazione sociale” ed a viverla quotidianamente, è che la “politica” possa essere un quieto mestiere con cui si costruiscono perfetti edifici di parole. Le passioni che animano l'attività trasformatrice della presente realtà sociale non sono alimentate dalla “necessità di pensiero”; semmai, alcune fantasie e visioni corroborano, come “gioco di pensiero”, il concreto percorso antagonistico-duale di fuoriuscita dall'atrocità d'una condizione materiale che codetermina forme individuali di vita da negare e formazioni economico-sociali da mutare radicalmente ed irreversibilmente.
 
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