MORE FROM THE WIDE WORLD OF ANARCHISM:
Here's a few little tidbits from the wide world of anarchism for today:
The Zabalaza Federation of South Africa (see our links section under Platformist Links) has put up an online version of the autobiography of Alan Lipman. Now 80 years of age, Lipman was an ex-member of the Communist Party of South Africa who had engaged in guerrilla activities against the apartheid regime. Disillusioned by the USSR's invasion of Hungary in 1956 he left the CP and eventually gravitated to anarchism. Since the end of apartheid he has moved back to South Africa where he has become active with the Zabalaza Federation. To see the text go to http://www.zabalaza.net.index02.htm . This is also the place to give a further plug for the Zabalaza's online library, one of the finest sources of downloadable pdf pamphlets in the world.
Speaking of pdfs, the Workers' Solidarity group of Ireland has prepared a new translation of 'The organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists'. This is the text from the 1920s that has inspired much of modern "platformism", though no known group follows it slavishly. The new text contains all the relevant documents of the old, including not just the Platform but also correspondence, clarification and controversy by Makhno, Archinov, Malatesta and modern commentators. There are also a number of new supplementary commentaries and introductions.
For downloading see the following addresses:
A. In North America for a letter size version http://www.struggle.ws/pdfs/leaflets/platformUSletDuplex.pdf
B Europe and elsewhere the A4/A5 version at
C. For an A4 unfolded version if you don't have a duplex printer
This is the place for another plug. The Workers' Solidarity Struggle site also contains a wealth of downloadable pdfs other than the one mentioned here.
Then there's another item from San Francisco, USA. This is the pamphlet 'Fare Strike! First Hand Accounts' about the 2005 San Francisco Fare Strike against service cuts, driver layoffs and fare hikes in that city on the part of Muni (San Francisco Municipal Railway). The concept of a "fare strike" is hardly new. It was tried recently in Vancouver (2005) and in Chicago in 2004. A few decades ago it was a popular tactic in Italy under the heading of "self-reduction" and was tried in Vancouver as far back as the 1970s.
The pamphlet is published by Insane Dialectical Editions who have a list of many other pamphlets. Their physical address is Box 3684, Oakland, CA 94609, USA, and their email address is contact@FareStrike.org . The home page of the Fare Strike pamphlet and the organization is http://idpeditions.org/farestrike .
Finally, a little note from the other side of the world. The Russian anarchist site Avtonom has issued a call for a protest on April 26th on Chernobyl Day in Minsk, Belarus. They are inviting people from all across Europe to join the Belarus anarchists in forming an anarchist bloc at this protest which opposes the schemes of the Belarus government to build new nuclear plants and also to "whitewash" the effects of Chernobyl by historical revisionism. The article in English can be seen here and here. For the English section of the Avtonom site consult our links section.
That's it for now.
Molly
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