PLEASE SHARE WIDELY.

Kasama received this shortly after the police ended their ransacking of the Seattle apartment. We will cover events and statements as they emerge.

Early morning, July 10, SWAT police forced their way into the Seattle apartment of organizers from the Occupy movement. The sleeping residents scrambled to put on clothes as they were confronted automatic weapons.

The neighbor Natalio Perez heard the attack from downstairs: “Suddenly we heard the bang of their grenade, and the crashing as police entered the apartment. The crashing and stomping continued for a long time as they tore the place apart.”

After the raid, the residents pored over the papers handed them by a detective. One explained: “This warrant says that they were specifically looking for ‘anarchist materials’ — which lays out the political police state nature of this right there. In addition they were looking for specific pieces of clothing supposedly connected with a May First incident.

When the police finally left, they did not arrest anyone.

This action targets well known activists from Occupy Seattle and the Red Spark Collective (part of the national Kasama network).

This apartment has been a hub for organizing the Everything 4 Everyone festival in August – to bring together West Coast forces for a cultural and political event building on the year of Occupy.

The E4E site will update this with more as we receive it, including hopefully statement from those involved. The raid is a heavy-handed threat delivered by armed police aimed at intimidating specific people – but also st suppressing the work to continue the Occupy movement in Seattle, and create E4E as a space for radical gathering.

Contact: Liam Wright, Red Spark Collective, redsparkcollective@gmail.com

sindromedistendhal:

Guía rápida de la Ley Orgánica del Trabajo

1. Prestaciones con el último salario

> CON EL ÚLTIMO SALARIO mensual devengado serán calculadas las prestaciones sociales al finalizar la relación laboral. Este cálculo se hará con base en 30 días por cada año de servicio o…

Esta disponible una guia rapida de la nueva Ley Organica del Trabajo de Venezuela por si la quieran leer. Vale la pena. :-)

From our comrades at the Bay of Rage.

“This pamphlet – written by a group of people of color, women, and queers – is offered in deep solidarity with anyone committed to ending oppression and exploitation materially. It is a critique of dominant forms of identity-based activism in the Bay Area and beyond, from  privilege theory to contemporary interpretations of the legacy of decolonization and national liberation struggles. The pamphlet addresses the institutional struggle over the meaning of antiracist politics, and in particular the impact of nonprofit organizations on shaping the rhetoric and priorities of social justice activism. We argue that prevailing discourses of personal privilege and political representation in fact minimize and misrepresent the severity and structural character of the violence and material deprivation marginalized demographics face. White supremacy, according to this politics, is primarily a psychological attitude which individuals can simply choose to discard instead of a material infrastructure which reproduces race at key sites across society – from racially segmented labor markets to the militarization of the southern border.”

“Our pamphlet argues that the history and legacy of struggles teaches us that, in stark contrast to the rhetoric used by many social justice nonprofits and activists in the Bay Area today, struggle cannot but put us in danger and increase our vulnerability to violent repression. The moment our struggle is even slightly effective, we are in danger. The choice is not between danger and safety, but between the uncertain dangers of revolt and the certainty of continued violence, deprivation, and death. There is no middle ground.”

Kasama would like to open a conversation:

What slogan(s) should communist and revolutionary forces project on May First?
How should we present ourselves to the people and among the people?

Lets brainstorm here together.

My commentary:

Whatever the slogans are, I think they should shy away from a tendency among communists (and activists more broadly) to be primarily reactive in nature. It seems to me that this has its roots in a period of lowered sights among radicals, in which the best we can do is hope to lessen the catastrophic effects of capitalism, rather than put forward our own ideas and vision. Communist slogans should reflect what society should be like, rather than pointing out what this society and its ruler should not do. The latter does have a place and role–denouncing police murder is a particular example–but on May Day our emphasis should be overwhelmingly focused on promoting communist principles and goals.

Additionally, it should reflect the language that has been taken up in the current period. That isn’t to say that we take up particular formulations that have emerged (“we are the 99%” being an example), but rather that we see that our current situation is marked by raised sights, openness to radical and revolutionary alternatives, and a resurgent willingness and desire to dream.

As an example (and less principally as an idea), there is a quote attributed to Che which goes “Sueña y serás libre en espíritu, lucha y serás libre en vida” (Dream and you will be free in spirit, fight and you will be free in life) which I think is reflective of the communist dialectic of theory and practice, while putting it in language that captures the essence of the moment. In Seattle, we have also been using the slogan “together we can be free” which I am also quite fond of.

In order to develop the best possible slogan, it may be worthwhile to sketch out some ideas of what characterizes our current situation, while also looking at what characterizations of communism will be taken up by a presumably diverse coalition of revolutionaries under a unified red banner. I’m sure there will be many that will want to take up a version of the uninspired “For a revolutionary workers’ state,” which I hope doesn’t get any traction in these collaborative efforts. Quite simply: rigid materialism doesn’t inspire anyone and it’s okay for slogans to veer idealist to avoid it.