AMERICAN ANARCHIST MOVEMENT:

COMMON ACTION GENERAL ASSEMBLY:

The following item from the Anarkismo website is about the platformist organization Common Action which is based in the American northwest. Molly wishes them all the best in their efforts.

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Common Action General Assembly Report:
From Saturday, September 19th to Sunday, September 20th members of the anarchist organization Common Action met in Seattle, WA for our fifth general assembly. Common Action members from Seattle, Tacoma and Olympia were in attendance. There was an incredible amount for us to talk about, vote on and brainstorm together! We also had several skill shares and open working group meetings. In upcoming months our members will be facilitating workshops at the Seattle Anarchist Bookfair and the ecoNvergence in Portland, OR. Our publication Intersections has just enjoyed another recently printed issue, with the next issue coming out in December. At general assembly we agreed to sponsor the Northwest tour for John Duda’s new book Wanted: Men to Fill the Jails of Spokane! January 2010. Common Action branches have been very active over the past six months, engaging in local struggles and developing our own projects.

• The Seattle branch has been busy with numerous projects, but focused heavily on hosting several public events this summer. In July along with Casa Latina Workers Defense Committee and Seattle Solidarity Network, members’ hosted Vancouver based No One Is Illegal for a two-part event on migrant justice movements.

• The Kitsap branch has been focusing on issues of local public transportation, and they are preparing to hold an interest meeting.

• The Olympia branch launched their free clinic campaign with success, gaining local media attention and involvement from the community. Olympia branch members have also begun working on a foreclosure resistance campaign.

We spent a good portion of the weekend focusing on internal education. Through clarifying activities we continued working on our conceptions of transformative justice, and began our introduction into the ideas of collective liberation. This included group conversations and exercises to engage all of our collective experiences in the process. Throughout the weekend we continued to discuss and question our strategy and tactics as an anarchist organization in the northwest. How best can we connect with other organizations and struggles regionally and nationally? How can we be most relevant? By the end of the two days our strengthening theoretically and tactical unity was clear. As times goes on Common Action continues to develop in line with our collective principles and communal struggles.

Contact us at nwcommonaction@gmail.com or join the Common Action Announcements listserv: http://groups.google.com/group/nwcommonactionannouncement for the occasional e-mail about sponsored events, publications, reports, and other fun stuff.
Related Link: http://www.nwcommonaction.org

INTERNATIONAL ANARCHIST MOVEMENT-MEXICO:

MEXICAN RESISTANCE TO THE ECONOMIC CRISIS:

As the economic crisis deepens across the world people are developing methods of resistance other than hoping for government to bail them out. This is true of Mexico, as set forth in the following article from the Northwest Common Action via the Anarkismo website.

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Economic Crisis: Anarchist Solutions From Mexico:

As the United States enters what may be an extremely prolonged economic crisis, the Mexican anarchist Gustavo Esteva recommends that we learn from how people have coped in his country, which has lived La Crisis for over two decades with no end in sight. He also points out that in both countries, politicians have reacted by throwing money at the problem – a non-solution if there ever was one.

One real solution has been El Barzón, a movement formed to defend debtors from the banks. Their tactics have ranged from counseling farmers on how to hold on to their property to forming roadblocks when the banks try to repossess their homes. They have even brought home the crisis to those responsible by tarring and feathering bankers.

Members of El Barzón have worked closely in solidarity with the Zapatista uprising in the state of Chiapas that began in 1994. Today, autonomous Zapatista communities are run by Councils of Good Government, where decisions at the village level are made through the consensus of all the community,and at the regional level by delegates that rotate yearly, selected by the village assembly. Two years ago, during the presidential elections, Zapatistas and their supporters across the country organized the “Other Campaign” - an anti-electoral movement that contrasted the empty promises for change offered by candidates both left and right with the need to develop community-based organizations run by principles of direct democracy, like that practiced by the Zapatistas. The most devoted supporters of the Other Campaign have been street vendors, sex workers, and other groups ignored by politicians.

The southern state of Oaxaca has also experimented with direct democracy in recent years. In response to an attempt at strikebreaking by an unpopular governor, the people of Oaxaca organized a Popular Assembly which organized takeovers of government buildings, as well as radio and television stations. For five months, there was not a single police man on the streets of the capital, but crime dropped to record lows as neighbors who had never met each other spent the nights in the streets together. In rebellion, petty gangsters found a cause to redirect their energies towards, defending people from the brutal repression that arrived with the federal police in late 2006. As the immigrant rights movement burst on to the North American political scene that year,Oaxaca's popular assembly also found an echo with assemblies found in Oaxaqueño communities from California to Chicago and New York. Today,Oaxaca is famous for its political graffiti – which often denounces in the same breath the ruling conservative party, the leftist opposition,and the Stalinists of the Popular Revolutionary Front. All share different beliefs and ideologies, but all compete to rule over the people – goals that are alien to assembly-based forms of social organization.

Even though the fire of the 2006 rebellion has died down, the tinder remains dry. The teacher's union (which played a crucial role in Oaxaca) went on strike again in August, this time in Morelos. These strikes are also revolts against the union bureaucracy,whose national leaders are fully complicit in the government's plans to privatize education and who sell out their rank-and-file at the earliest available opportunity. In early October, the army was called in to break the strike, and to repress the indigenous communities that supported it.

There have been countless more revolts across Mexico, including a prisoner's uprising this September in Tijuana, in response to torture of inmates. It is certain that Mexico is headed towards some sort of social upheaval - especially as migrant workers in the United States are beginning to return home in the face of job shortages and ICE raids. The business class in Mexico is getting nervous, and the rich have been marching, dressed in white, for more jails, and for workers to abandon their strikes. Obviously, Mexico is different from the United States in countless ways, but when we look south we may be seeing our future. Furthermore, the basic principles used by Mexican radicals – primarily, distrust of all politicians(right or left), and insistence that power remain at the community level – would make a good guide for North Americans in the dark days ahead.
Related Link: http://www.nwcommonaction.org

AMERICAN ANARCHIST MOVEMENT/ECONOMIC CRISIS:

AN ANARCHIST RESPONSE TO THE ECONOMIC CRISIS:

The following is from the Common Action organization, an anarchist network organizing in the American Northwest. It comes via the Anarkismo website. As Molly has mentioned before any realistic response to the economic crisis has to involve a response "from below". Politicians, being the creations and the captives of the "powers that be", have little incentive to act in favour of ordinary people unless pressured. Here is as report of what such pressure entails. What should be noticed is that is actions are merely resistance. They are not any positive program. That awaits future developments amongst libertarian socialists. Still...resistance is at least better than doing nothing.

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Economic Rescue From the Bottom Up:
The working class is too big to fail
Across the country, home foreclosures and job layoffs are on the rise. While we worry about our paychecks and homes, the government is giving money to banks that are “too big to fail” and asking them kindly to prevent a collapse of the economy by lending it out. We have little direct control over Wall Street, but anything we can do to prevent foreclosures and evictions from Main Street to Martin Luther King Way will directly impact the local economy.

So how did we get here?In the 1990s, the Republican-controlled Congress deregulated the banking industry. For years, banks made a fortune by making risky loans, bundling them, and selling them to other banks while lying about the risk. Many borrowers were lied to about the terms of their loan and their ability to pay. As long as house prices rose, the banks were happy to profit off the mortgages, mortgage-backed securities, and other unregulated speculative side bets.

But when interest rates started rising and home prices started falling, many homeowners couldn't afford their higher mortgages but also couldn't sell their homes. To make matters worse, the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA) was rushed through Congress in 2005,making it harder to prevent foreclosure. When banks started foreclosing on homes, they realized that the mortgage-backed securities they bought were worth much less than they thought. As the banks saw the value of their assets drop, they all tried to sell at the same time, which caused the value of their assets to plummet. Next thing you know, banks started failing, and the government began planning a bailout.

Many working people who depend on a paycheck to survive are rightfully skeptical about the bailout. Why should we care if banks fail, and why should renters care about the plight of homeowners?

The answer is that our economic problems are all connected. The mismanagement of the financial industry has led to a credit crunch in which many businesses are unable to get short-term loans, which they need in order to consistently make payroll. Without the loans, companies must scramble to get cash, or lay off their employees. A further worry is that working people, unsure of their income and without access to consumer credit, will spend less, causing businesses to lay off workers to cut back supply.

Meanwhile, home foreclosures turn former owners into renters. While homes sit empty, apartment building occupancy goes up, driving rent up. If you own your home, it loses its value. If you rent, your rent goes up, and you can't even get a loan to buy a foreclosed home.

It all adds up to a downward economic spiral. The bailout proposals are an attempt stop the cycle by helping out those at the top. The trouble is that bank CEOs know that it's in their self-interest to hold on to the bailout money and try to ride out the economic crisis. The CEO of Merrill Lynch recently said of the bailout cash, "At least for the next quarter, it's just going to be a cushion.

"Democrats and Republicans alike would have us believe that the crisis and any solution to it is beyond our control. But the true threat of the crisis is its impact on the broadly defined working class – those of us who depend on a paycheck to keep our homes and feed our families. It is our participation in the economy that keeps it all going. If we stick together, we can build a grassroots bailout from the bottom up—because the working class is too big to fail.

Across the country, working people are fighting back with eviction and foreclosure resistance. As Howard Zinn explains in A People’s History of the United States, this tactic helped save homes during the Great Depression. This resistance prompted government-imposed foreclosure moratoriums and led to the introduction of federal New Deal programs in1933.

Throughout the past year, the Bank Tenants Association, organized in Boston by City Life / Vida Urbana ( http://www.clvu.org/ ),has resisted foreclosures. By taking direct action and blockading foreclosed homes, they have succeeded in forcing banks to renegotiate terms. In other cases, homeowners were allowed to pay rent after a foreclosure rather than be evicted only to have the house sit empty.

In Detroit, Moratorium NOW! ( http://www.moratorium-mi.org/ ) has succeeded in preventing a foreclosure and prevented evictions of tenants in foreclosed rental properties.

And here in the Pacific Northwest, the Seattle Solidarity Network ( http://www.seattlesolidarity.net/ )has had successes in related struggles. In June, they successfully helped tenants win their legally entitled relocation assistance from their landlord when the Green Lake Motel was shut down.

As news of these wins spread, more communities are standing together to fightback for a real economic rescue—from the bottom up.
Related Link: http://www.nwcommonaction.org/

ENVIRONMENT/ANARCHISM:


TAR SANDS AND ITS OPPOSITION:

The following article was recently published at the Anarkismo web site, but it come originally from 'Intersections, the journal of the (relatively) new Common Action organization in the American Pacific Northwest. This is a platformist group with members in four major cities in their area. This will be the second attempt to form such a federation in the Pacific Northwest, following an attempt a in 2002, the Northwest Anarchist Federation that gradually fizzled out by the end of 2006. Hopefully this one will be more successful than the last.
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Crude Profits:

A great environmental and social catastrophe has been brewing in northern Alberta. As the price of oil skyrockets, drilling companies are trying new, experimental methods for obtaining crude. One of these is the extraction of crude from the tar sands lying beneath the Athabascan river basin. To extract oil from the tar sands, forests must be leveled. Alberta's rate of deforestation is now second only to the Amazon. In practices similar to the Mountaintop Removal Mining of the Appalachians, the rich topsoil is carted away to be disposed of. The oil-rich sands lying underneath are taken to processing plants where they are boiled at extremely high temperatures until crude oil can be separated from the sand.



The process is very water intensive, and water used to extract tar sands is contaminated forever. Already the water level in the Athabascan River has dropped three meters, and production is expected to increase five times in the upcoming years. Indigenous communities across Canada have already been experiencing massive shortages of drinkable water, and the tar sand developments will only make it worse. Nearby Fort Chipewyan provides a tragic example of what is to come. Cancer and leukemia rates increased five times since the developments began, and citizens are unanimously demanding an end to the extraction of tar sands. Canada's government has refused, because in their eyes public health is less important than "the market." Said Chief Eli Moonias of the Nishnawbe, "I wonder how different the response would be if the residents of Toronto were without access to water.



"Pipelines are also a source of controversy among indigenous groups, who assert that they do not reap the benefits of the pipeline, but will be the ones to suffer the consequences of any ruptures. Chief Patrick Mitchell of the Stellat'en stated that "I only speak for my own First Nation here, (but)…we would look to physically stop any work being done" on the proposed Gateway pipeline. The Trans-Mountain Pipeline, which runs down to Ferndale and Anacortes in northern Washington, is also to be expanded.



The tar sands development is not providing needed jobs to the region. On the contrary, Alberta's business community is terrified that there will not be enough workers available to carry out their plans. To construct the needed processing facilities, guest workers are being brought in from overseas, and receive no protection from Canadian labor laws. These guest workers, who now outnumber traditional immigrants, are kept segregated from unionized workers and receive the most dangerous jobs. They do not have the right to organize or apply for a work permit, which would give them protection from their employers (as well as the ability to quit and find work elsewhere in Canada), never mind citizenship. Already two Chinese men have lost their lives in an easily preventable accident when a container fell on them. No one knows their names.



Guest worker programs are becoming popular the world over, from Canada to Dubai, and recently the US Congress has debated adopting one in our country as well. However, these programs are little more than a new form of indentured slavery, with one crucial difference – in colonial America, a worker who had completed their term of servitude became a free citizen afterwards. Modern guest workers are instead deported when their boss no longer needs them. The Alberta Federation of Labor, which is actively opposing the tar sands development, has stated that "we believe the labour movement has a responsibility to defend these workers. We believe they deserve the same rights as any Canadian worker…independent of the wishes of the employer that brought them here."
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To learn more about the issue of the Tar Sands see the websites 'Tar Sands Time Out' and 'Oil Sands Watch'. Other websites such as Climate Ark and Global Community Monitor also have good material on the issue. For the labour related side of things mentioned above the website of the Alberta Federation of Labour has articles such as 'Temporary Foreign Workers-Alberta's Disposable Workforce', 'Battleground Fort McMurray' and 'The Truth About Labour Shortages in the Oil Patch'.
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What is the journal 'Intersections' ? The following is an introduction to their first issue. To find out more about their organization go to the Northwest Common Action website.
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Announcing INTERSECTIONS, Vol. 1, Issue 1:
Newsletter of Common Action
Common Action is proud to announce the publication of our newsletter Intersections. Written with regular people in mind, the newsletter strives to connect community issues to anarchist ideas, serving as a paper that any neighbor might find interesting, informative, and reliable. It can be left in laundromats and bus seats just as easily as a radical bookstore.



This issue's contents include:
* Whose Streets? Gentrification in Seattle by Andrew Hedden and Jacquelyn Hermer
* Northwest Anarchist People of Color Gathering: A Report-Back by Brooke Stepp
* Hope, Change, and Direct Action by Greg A and Jeremy
* Crude Profits by Joshua Neuhouser
* Advice Column by Sally Darity



Intersections is available as a PDF for reading and single page printing, and 11" x 17" printing.Please visit our website to download it : http://nwcommonaction.org/
To get a hard copy, or to let us know what you think, hit us up at nwcommonaction@gmail.com
Related Link: http://nwcommonaction.org/

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