Pear Nuallak – being irreconcilable in ESEA contexts

Posted on 17/01/2025 - 17/01/2025 by muntjac

being irreconcilable in ESEA contexts

I deleted “space” off the title and replaced it with “context”. I am sick of “space” being used as a vague word to describe everything from industries to rooms. Let us be more specific!

Indeed, I crave specificity, but I am afraid I did not do justice to my desires recently, when I shared a warm university room to discuss criticality and politicised engagement within ESEA spaces.

The thought that weighed on me was this: I should not have been there. Someone from Kanlungan or a solidarity group should have been there. A staunch trade unionist, a seasoned organiser. I keep wanting to spill out my insecurities, explain my identities and experiences and credentials, but that individual egotistic self is part of the problem. Boring. You don’t need to see my insides, what I am saying needs to hold up and that’s that. Why the fuck am I worried that I didn’t do a good job when it’s ludicrous that I can grift around like this in the first place?

Let’s call this self-criticism. I’m sick of thinking about my career and hearing about others’ careers. That is not the same as discussing labour conditions.

I wish I had been braver and said something like this from Being In The Room Privilege by Olúfémi O. Táíwò:

The facts that explain who ends up in which room shape our world much more powerfully than the squabbles for comparative prestige between people who have already made it into the rooms. And when the conversation is about social justice, the mechanisms of the social system that determine who gets into which room often just are the parts of society we aim to address. For example, the fact that incarcerated people cannot participate in academic discussions about freedom that physically take place on campus is intimately related to the fact that they are locked in cages.

When I leave the university room someone else is gonna clean it.

I should have said very simple things like: disabuse yourself of the notion that spectacles of mass will free anyone and escalate your actions accordingly. We must continue to resist immigration raids. If a support role is more your capacity, join your local copwatch network. Sign up for arrestee support and Legal Observer training. Look out for all the participants at your local encampment. Ensure you’re attending to the material and emotional needs of people abandoned and vulnerablised by the state, which at times means risking your job if you have mandatory reporting duties. Like my friend Kirstin said, we need to recognise that in this moment we’re opposing fascism. Let’s act like it!

At the launch of Rifqa last year, one of my editors, Brekhna, asked Mohammed El-Kurd about the importance of representation. He began his answer with ‘Well, what are we representing?’

Can we get real about answering this? What do our frameworks allow us to see and prioritise?

I know I am just saying words. Typing them, rather. I’m not under any illusions that we’re gonna post our way to liberation. We may for example talk about who gets to access and control digital space but what does that mean? Certainly an audience member was correctly and excitingly sceptical, especially because we drifted away from a question on future organising. But I still return briefly to this topic because I want to use this as an opportunity to insist on specificity of language. By “access to digital spaces”, do we mean instagram reach or fibre optic cables being bombed? We have seen how the state can and will institute blackouts and how our phones are absolutely full of incriminating data–and these devices are of course produced through minerals and labour extracted from the bodies and earth of the Global South–so we need to bring about organising and information security which does not rely on our current technologies. I recall from an anarchist forum that there’s someone at 56A infoshop interested in this.

In the context of resisting state violence, visibility is simply not the goal. When we talk about “seeing ourselves” maybe what we’re really talking about is liberal spectatorship, of spotlit role models rather than the practicalities of avoiding state surveillance and intervening against racialised hypervisibility. What would our conversations look like if, to gloss A. Sivanandan, we interested ourselves in the racism that maims and kills? I simply cannot understand why “representation” on the screen and stage is described in explicitly existential terms while multiple genocides are being carried out by the imperialist project of the West. I reject such a framing with my lungs, heart, and teeth because I know a lack of theatre roles is not starvation, dispossession, martyrdom. We are misrepresenting state violence by eliding genocide with arts careers.

Of course in theory these are not irreconcilable positions (i.e. you can be active about representation in the CCIs while also mobilising against state violence). You don’t need to pick up a weapon to be a revolutionary figure. Culture itself is a site of struggle. As Louis Allday writes, Ghassan Kanafani and the late Refaat Alareer fought the Zionist entity through their revolutionary art and cultural criticism and were martyred for it. This is because they understood the seriousness of the struggle on the cultural front and acted accordingly. In his introduction to the 2022 English translation of On Zionist Literature, Steven Salaita writes:

Kanafani was a searing and incisive critic, at once generous in his understanding of emotion and form and unsparing in his assessment of politics and myth […] Anything that threatens centers of power earns the label of “political,” perforce a negative evaluation, and the disrepute that comes along with it. Power therefore comes to embody the apolitical. This sort of environment is unwelcoming of critics such as Kanafani.

These writers did not desire a vague representation or to rise through the ranks of imperialist cultural industries, but what they wrote about and how they shared that work furthered the cause of Palestinian liberation, the Palestinian experience under the conditions of settler colonialism, building political energy and internationalism against the different faces of imperialism. That is existential representation!

Contrast this with how some ESEAs discuss the importance of representation. Think about the language we use to describe certain problems – I have noticed that a vocabulary filled with “representation” is inevitably accompanied by terms like “opportunities”, “competition”, “entering white spaces”, “bureaucracy”, “data”, “tick box”, “checklist” &c. What do these words allow us to see? Does a conception of “tick boxes” help us see who’s targeted to work the most precarious, dangerous jobs? Might we be able understand how certain jobs are criminalised by conceptualising work through “opportunities”? Can a reference point of “entering white spaces” open our understanding of how border securitisation enforces white supremacy? Does “data” include challenging information-sharing with police, and can “bureaucracy” adequately describe the formalised xenoracism that migrants struggle against to secure their settlement here? We should get clear and honest with ourselves about the ideology attached to such language: neoliberalism, the slick reduction of all human life to the logic of the market. (N.B. yeah, you can beef with me about whether “neoliberalism” is a useful way of examining the irreducible nature of capitalism.)

Along the same lines, for the past few years, I have noticed a persistent circular reasoning behind the importance of representation–

Representation is important because it’s representation because it’s important.
There is a link between fictional representation and real life therefore representation is important because it’s linked to real life.
We need to change things through representation in bureaucracy so bureaucracy can change because of representation.
We need to be represented in data so we need to collect data so we can change things because it’s important and it’s important to change things so we need to collect data to be represented in data to be–

–and so on. Round and round it goes, like a washing machine.

To speak of data, have we noticed that this vocabulary of “over-” or “under-representation” is the language of data analysis and policy work? For example, “ethnic minority over-representation in the criminal justice system” is office-speak for police violently targeting Black populations (in itself a genocide). Which do we think more appropriately registers what is at stake here? Does a language of representation force non-Black Asians to reckon with our role in counterinsurgency through anti-Blackness, normalisation of zionism, our currently inadequate opposition to police intervention for “Asian hate” and hate crime data collection (in itself criminogenic, as Dylan Rodríguez notes)? Of course not. Because the point is to just see ourselves, only ourselves. This vague language fogs up the mirror so we can shine it clean, brightening our own image.

Saturating conversations in any and all contexts with the language of representation advances the ideology and class interests of liberal ESEA professionals as the solutions to the problems they’ve identified are, in essence, improved career opportunities. The representasians will write the books and papers and screenplays, perform roles centred on their stories, organise rallies with police support, get the research funded and present it, tour the speaking circuit, facilitate workshop after workshop–which, of course, implicates myself and most other freelancers working this grift. I can criticise and complain and invoke my working class parents and my state school education–and I am still in that room.

Afterwards, when I’ve pretend to know anything about anything, I will get love2shop vouchers worth fifty quid because I have done my job. Then, long after I’ve gone home, outsourced cleaners will do theirs.

The more specific and detailed your group objectives are, the less it matters if you disagree about other things (generally speaking & caveated to all hell). If you’re never specific, then you never have to show your discernment.

This feels like the appropriate point to bring up a major rupture in ESEA organising which I feel has not yet had adequate public discourse. The wound has festered. I had thought of bringing this up during the panel talk in answer to whether or not the “ESEA space” had changed or what we could do differently in the future, but I didn’t trust myself to verbalise these sensitive details, so I will share it with you now in writing.

On June 21 2021, Remember & Resist, my friends who organise against state violence by advancing the abolitionist project in ESEA contexts, released their full statement on the fallout of the Demonstration of Unity, a rally organised by ESEA groups intended to take place the previous month. The event disintegrated due to a lack of transparency, accountability, and commitment by some of these other groups, especially around platforming a speaker, A. I first heard about the legal issues in 2017, and his former partners and their supporters were still struggling against a defamation case brought by him 4 years later in 2021, coinciding with the Demonstration of Unity.

I emphasize this timeline because harassment and abuse eats up so much time and hearts and bodyminds. Abusive behaviour is enabled over the years by a whole raft of interpersonal and legal structures. It simply doesn’t go away if you ignore it or silence it; the resulting and deliberate implosions pull in new targets, not just people but anything we might try to create, since what we’re able to make is the sum of our relations, not the product of individual genius. Even its second- and third-hand effects are deeply felt. Abuse parasitises the political energy, care, and compassion we so urgently need to nurture. In organising contexts this is compounded by treating survivors and their supporters like troublemakers, telling us we need to set aside “personal problems” so the big stuff, the real problems, can be solved. There are key ideological and practical reasons why this is absolute nosense. We cannot wait until later to resolve abuse because abuse itself obstructs effective organising. Resisting abuse of power in all its forms is integral to the struggle. As grassroots research by Salvage Collective shows, in practical terms the outcomes are consistently the same: the people (usually men) remain in positions of power, groups close ranks around them to protect themselves and isolate survivors and their friends, who are inevitably pushed out. This is so that financial and social capital, access to employment on projects / campaigns / events / services, public platforms and venues and other sites of organising & production &c are still controlled by the core group(s), ensuring nothing is redistributed.

This is how it happened in long-established leftist organisations such as the SWP and MFJ. This is how it happened in the nascent conglomeration of groups claiming to progress ESEA causes. The dismissal, victim-blaming, and harassment compounds the burnout of organising. So when I hear others say that we’re being too harsh on ESEA groups or that “just like other groups” we need to have agreement and unity to get things done, it makes me wonder what we’re actually doing here. Because we’ve already shown that “just like other groups” we’re capable of actively creating unsafe spaces for survivors and anybody else who struggles against sexual violence and abuse of power. Since a key tenet of ESEA rhetoric (such that it exists) is insisting on our victimhood and innocence, this reads to me as a reluctance to own our potential to cause harm just like anybody else. “Calling out”, disagreement, and conflict are presented as problems-qua-problems, but exactly what they’re “calling out” &c is left vague, a magic trick: presto! Complainants become malcontents and we never get round to tackling the pre-existing power structures and group dynamics. Such repeated experiences would make anyone angry, impatient, exhausted. Can we grasp that all at once? To think through Audre Lorde’s uses of anger, do you refuse to listen because my tone is harsh or because you’re afraid my words contain information that will change your life?

Returning to the statement by Remember & Resist, I encourage close attention to this footnote:

Some groups decided to call for a strong police presence to “ensure safety” of attendees unaware of the cancellation, which led us to have to coordinate legal observers the night before.

This encapsulates the failure of certain liberal ESEA groups to understand the disciplining role of state violence, whether it’s the HKPF or the Met. If we heed the call to view racism through a lens of state-sanctioned predilection to premature death (vide Ruth Gilmore Wilson), and we understand the police as violent protectors of bourgeois colonial interests empowered by the state to kidnap, detain, violate, maim & cause death with impunity, then… what does it mean when we call on such forces to protect a demonstration on “ESEA unity”, if not capture of the identity by reactionaries? What did we need to be kept safe from, when it was members of our own community that said and did harmful things?

In co-ordinating legal observers in advance, the members of Remember & Resist did more to practically advance the cause of “unity” than anyone who insisted cops could keep us safe. As Kevin Blowe from Netpol wrote in his call for solidarity not service provision, this forward planning is in itself a form of relation, of co-operation rather than prioritising a big demonstration and leaving overstretched volunteers to pick up the pieces later.

Four years on, little has changed. The British ESEA liberalism held by certain groups is so trapped in its own image that a spectacle of mass is prioritised over informed and practical deployment of any meaningful organising, learning nothing from recent struggles against state violence from within / against Asian contexts, from abolitionist feminist practices, from Palestinian liberation movements and their repression in the west.

But I hear you protest: we really are learning! please don’t shout at us, we’re trying ever-so hard! And perhaps, indeed, we are not so different. In my early radicalisation from liberalism, I agreed with the need to decolonise and admired decisive protest action—but I also viewed it all as “activist stuff”, actions that were probably secret and specialised that you had to be very brave to do, and that my struggle (fighting in online comment sections about whether a book and its author was racist or not) was also important. I actually believed that we were each advancing an anti-racist cause, we were just doing it in our own way, from our own positions. Then I started volunteering with local queer creative groups, and quickly learned that the struggle against racism, gentrification, homelessness, criminalisation, institutional transphobia, policing, poverty, borders &c needed to approached all at once. The police aren’t just out on the streets, they’re in our safeguarding practises and community centres. I had to learn quickly that the state has been explicit in its intentions to create targeted harm in the name of order, and that we need to actually see the state as it is, not how we want it to be, in order to come up with practical solutions to meet people’s needs. We can’t afford to be trapped in an image.

And I hear you say, But we can’t do everything at once, do you want us to BURN OUT? What about OTHER GROUPS who all agree on things to do stuff, why can’t we just agree as well? Do you want us to be PERFECT all the time? I ask you, where in anything I have said or written have I ever demanded perfection of you personally—and do I have the power to not only ask that of you but somehow enforce it? And where are these other mythical groups with perfectly aligned beliefs? To draw on my experiences in queer community, we have had to actively & collectively (amongst many things) combat transphobia and gentrification and police in our social services and arms manufacturers at Pride! So I’m not picking unfair targets, I am in fact trying to be consistent. (Which probably then prompts certain people to say, But surely our situation is different. Round and round it goes, like a washing machine.)

I believe it’s past time to be honest that there are irreconcilable positions within ESEA groups. We’re not struggling from different places and we actually do not want the same things! Why soften that? It goes beyond a matter of disagreeing on what we feel should be prioritised: some of us want to decisively oppose state violence and imperialism through coalitional struggle and creating spaces of mutual care, placing this as our political centre. That informs and energises anything we do, from art to support services to bricks thrown at weapons factories (which I know nothing about, obviously). And some of us want better representation in the census, screen, and stage, the whole world shrunk into a white space bounded by four straight lines, rather than reckoning with the intimacies of four continents. Sorry to pull out this by now corny paraphrasing of Marx, but surely the point is to change the world, not just interpret it.

Rather than seeing liberals as passively unradicalised, people who aren’t quite there yet, still learning, I find Dylan Rodríguez’s framing of militant liberalism to be clarifying. Either own it or take up another position with firm intentions, contextualised according to our specific skills, knowledges, and communities–and have the humility to know when we lack this range, accept conflict & join already existing movements where applicable.

What if you look at where you already are and what you’re already doing, and try answering the following question: What would it mean for our practices to start at the point of resisting, critiquing, and analysing state violence?

[Changes: 08/06/2024 small edits for typos, clarification, phrasing]

Sans Nom – Guadeloupe: seizing the opportunity of a blackout

Posted on 16/01/2025 by muntjac

Guadeloupe : saisir l’occasion du black-out…

Guadeloupe: seizing the opportunity of a blackout…

On Friday October 25 in the French colony of Guadeloupe, shortly after 8:30 a.m., striking EDF employees in a month-long dispute with their management invaded the control room of the Pointe Jarry thermal power plant, shutting down its 12 engines*. Given that this power plant supplies almost all the electricity on this archipelago of 380,000 inhabitants, this provoked “a generalized electrical incident” – in other words, a blackout that lasted 39 hours and 28 minutes, until the evening of October 26 and the full restoration of electricity on the island.

Following the impromptu shutdown, the authorities dispatched gendarmes half an hour later to regain control of the control room, and then issued a prefectoral decree requisitioning the employees needed to get the thermal power plant back up and running, which took several days. On the street side, given that the blackout was set to last, the prefect also decreed a curfew (7pm-6am) for the night of the 25th to the 26th throughout Guadeloupe, then in 11 communes for the following two nights (10pm-5am): Abymes, Baie-Mahault, Basse-Terre, Gosier, Lamentin, Le Moule, Morne-à-l’Eau, Pointe-à-Pitre, Petit-Canal, Sainte-Anne and Sainte-Rose… to ensure that no one takes advantage of the blackout to carry out property transfers or targeted destruction. Officially “to limit the movement of people who might take advantage of the lack of light to damage property…”.

Which, of course, is exactly what happened! So, let’s take a non-exhaustive look at what happened in Guadeloupe when alarms, cameras, street lamps, neon lights and cell phone masts were suddenly deprived of juice…

Looting and backhoeing

In just a few hours on the night of October 25-26, eleven businesses were looted in the Pointe-à-Pitre and Abymes area. These included a supermarket, a bank and three jewelry stores.

What’s more, a backhoe was used against the jewelry stores to break their iron curtains, as well as against a Bred cash dispenser, which was literally ripped off the front of the building thanks to the skilful work of the masked driver of the machine…

Flaming barricades and retaliation

Flaming barricades were also erected in Pointe-à-Pitre, Les Abymes, Baie-Mahault, Le Lamentin, Le Moule, Morne-à-L’Eau and Sainte-Anne, in order to break the state monopoly of territorial control, but also to “facilitate the destruction”, according to Harry Durimel, mayor of Pointe-à-Pitre: “It’s the same method of creating places of attraction for the forces of law and order when they act elsewhere”. And when the latter try to intervene, the rioters have plenty to answer with, according to the official report from the Guadeloupe prefecture, which states, for example, that between 2.45 a.m. and 3 a.m. in the Pointe-à-Pitre area, police forces were fired on three times with live ammunition against the territorial security brigade and the RAID.

In all, the fire department was called out to extinguish 27 dumpster fires and 6 burning vehicles.

Destruction of school buildings

In the Baie-Mahault commune, the first night of the blackout saw more attacks and ransacking of schools than businesses. In addition to the Cora Mayeko, Merosier Narbal and Edinval schools, which were visited by the rioters to express their appreciation, it was the Collège de Gourdeliane in particular that bore the brunt of the blackout: after a thorough ransacking, high flames engulfed a large part of the college’s administration building, including the principal’s office, which went up in smoke. The preschool was also ransacked, with the headmistress’ office and the kindergarten across the street completely destroyed. On the second night of the blackout, a jewelry, perfume and handbag store in the commune was also attacked with an angle grinder.

In terms of repression, the first sentence handed down on Monday October 28 was 18 months in prison, six months suspended, for looting a telephone store in Pointe-à-Pitre, with “an obligation to reimburse the civil parties, an obligation to work” and placement “under an electronic bracelet, as the Basse-Terre prison is 245% overcrowded”. In addition, concerning the voluntary origin of the blackout itself, the management of EDF Guadeloupe has lodged a complaint against several employees for “endangering others, sabotage and destruction of public utility property”. The investigation has been entrusted to the Pointe-à-Pitre Research Unit (S.R.).

As for the looting of jewelry stores, supermarkets and banks, as well as the burning of schools, several investigations have also been opened… with the paradox that while the blackout had blinded the city’s video surveillance cameras, some of the protagonists and their friends were still willing to freely provide images of the looting to the investigators on social media networks…

* Guadeloupe, an archipelago in the middle of the Caribbean, is a non-interconnected zone, which means that it has to generate its own electricity to meet demand in the territory. Nearly 70% of its electricity production relies on thermal energy: fuel oil for EDF and wood pellets for Albioma, which was still running on coal until July. The stoppage of power plant engines by the strikers has led to an imbalance between electricity supply and demand, forcing the grid operator, EDF Archipel, to shut down the entire island to prevent irreparable damage to equipment.

[~~Local press~~ summary, October 25-28, 2024]

Translated by Act For Freedom Now

Guadeloupe: seizing the opportunity of a blackout…, island in the southern Caribbean Sea

Biographies of Anarchist Fighters in Territories Dominated by the Iranian State

Posted on 15/01/2025 - 20/01/2025 by muntjac

Taken from Fugitive Distro.

9 Biographical Sketches of Iranian anarchists.

In zine format, Reader / Printable

Also avalible on our Ko-Fi

Sudanese Anarchist Gathering – Dispatches From Khartoum

Posted on 15/01/2025 - 20/01/2025 by muntjac

Taken from Fugitive Distro

10 communiques from anarchists in Khatroum, Sudan sent to British anarchist magazine organise.

Avalible as a zine to read and print here. Also avalible on our Ko-fi

Call For Submissions! Issue 2: Insurgency & Counter Insurgency

Posted on 12/01/2025 - 12/01/2025 by muntjac

We’re really grateful for how popular the first issue of the magazine has been! It kinda took us by surprise and made us scramble a little bit to get it out on time (Well, a whole season late) Thank you everyone who shared, printed, wrote, subscribed or bought the magazine!!

A4 Printable Version

For this second issue, we’re looking for texts on Insurgency & Counter Insurgency.

Please try to have your proofread submissions in by April 1st, the magazine will be out on the 1st of May.

Essays, Reportbacks, Critiques, Poetry and Interviews* by Global Majority** anarchists and anti-authoritarians that present a critical look at ‘the social movement’ and anarchists & other radical’s relationship to it. Let’s talk about the repressive tactics the police, their defenders and their false critics have used against anarchists and others looking to do more than pose for photographs.

We’re tired of failing, we’re all sick of the pointless A-to-B marches in broad daylight that get us little more than photographed and kettled.

We’re bored of endless meetings that split hairs in four and overly waffle-filled analysis that benefits no one besides the person writing it.

We know there’s a better way to fight and that people are already at it. We just need to educate each other on how to turn the heat up.

You do NOT need to write in an academic register.
There is no minimum length, but a maximum would be around 4000 words, anything larger than that might be better off as an individual zine. (Which we’d love to help with!)
Off topic pieces are okay as long as they’re bangers.

*We can conduct these, over signal, over email or in person if given enough time, context and suggestions.

**Global Majority in this context refers to the people(s) who make up the majority of the world’s population, i.e. everyone but white people.

Submission Tips

Please send your articles as Plain Text inside of the email itself, having to re-format these from PDFs or Word/OpenOffice files takes time and slows down our emails.

Currently we are not accepting images as this would drive the print cost too high, sorry!

Our editorial crew’s first language is mostly English, but you can submit in other languages as long as we can get it translated.

fawnarchy@grrlz.net

Dedan Kemaathi – Harehills & The Roma-led Uprising in England

Posted on 11/01/2025 - 18/01/2025 by muntjac

Published as a collaboration between ourselves and the Malcom X Movement, follow them on Twitter or their website; mxmovement.blogspot.com

The peice is also avalible as a zine in readable and printable formats. Its also being sold on our Ko-Fi with the proceeds going towards the MX Movment.

Mischaracterisation and misrepresentation of the Roma community by the state has crept into the thinking of all marginalised groups argues Dedan Kemaathi. As a result, the July unrest and protests in Leeds have been misunderstood and a chance for unity against the racist state lost.

Introduction

After 14 years of intensifying far-right Tory government attacks on the poor and rising racism by the government and state, on the 18th of July the Roma community of Harehills area of Leeds conducted a protest and uprising against the police and authorities over the forced removal of four Roma children between the ages of 7 and 14 from their family home. Police forcibly dragged the children resisting and crying into a marked police van in front of many the children’s family and Roma residents. The depth of anger was clear on the streets as police struggled to deal with hundreds of very angry people who attacked the police using stones and bottles etc and burned down a local bus and set-up burning barricades. Police several times had to retreat from the resistance, indicating that it was one of the most intense outbreaks of resistance against the state seen in years.

Instances of non-white people in Leeds rising-up against police brutality and racism has happened at least five times since 1981. However, the root causes that trigger these social reactions from the poor and oppressed have not gone away but continue to intensify as we see the continuing rise of the far-right linked to the growing global crises of colonial-capitalism which seeks growing fascist measures to ensure its monopoly of power and pursuit of super-profits by means of increasing immiseration and division of working-class people.

The Roma are one of the most oppressed racialised groups of people in Europe and beyond. The Roma in Harehills are mostly from Romania (the terms ‘Roma’ and ‘Romania’ are not interchangeable and denote different identities, but one can be a Roma from Romania), but Roma are a dispersed oppressed group scattered across mostly West Asia, Europe and North America, especially the USA. Ignorance or wilful ignorance towards the Roma in Harehills has meant right-wing and far-right forces (but also some in the Muslim community inadvertently or deliberately platforming far-right figures) have been able to exacerbate the instrumentalisation of the Roma community to advance their narrow agendas.

The Roma uprising in Harehills came about less than two weeks into a Labour government led by the new Prime Minister Kier Starmer, after 14 years of growing far-right politics and culture by Tory governments, not least the formalisation of far-right politics into the British state with the Brexit victory in June 2016 which launched new offensives on oppressed working class people including the ‘hostile environment policy’ push that saw the targeting of different migrant communities including the Windrush scandal, the Rwanda expulsion policy, the Bibby Stockholm barge, the scapegoating of migrants in temporary accommodation including hotels and the weaponisation of crossings over of migrants on small boats in the English Channel.

The Roma uprising in Harehills pointed towards a potential strength of united oppressed working-class struggle for collective rights and demands, but the impact of growing far-right culture in Britain has meant that oppressed communities have divided and demobilised. At the same time this is a constructed situation in relation to an organised and insurgent racist community seeking to ‘get Brexit done’, a challenge that was presented to them by the Tories and other far-right leaders such as Nigel Farage that ‘getting Brexit done’ meant basically the total expulsion of those deemed to be non-white in Britain. Instead, British mass racism saw more Africans and Asians arriving as some East European people left, with organised and British-state and media feeding this racist scapegoating and division.

By the end of July the mass racist British mob had been whipped-up in its hysteria to such an extent that a five-day race-riot of racist mobs broke out across mostly northern England: targeting families in their homes; attacking mosques; storming or attempting to burn down at least two hotels housing asylum seekers[1]; and attacking non-white people as they travelled in their cars. The Roma-led Harehills uprising was central to the most recent incidents that were then manipulated by racists that culminated in the pogrom-style racist attacks at the end of July.

Histories of Uprisings in Leeds

Leeds is a major town in north England in the county of Yorkshire. Like many other similar places of former industrial production and factories, it saw the decline of the industrial base which was speeded up as new and larger numbers of people from the global south diaspora were invited here by the British state to service the post-war economy from the late 1950s onwards. Migrants from the former British colonies were brought here to do the jobs that British workers were reluctant to do. Experiencing institutional racism at all levels of society – in education, policing, local authorities and so on – Caribbean and Asian heritage and other African and Asian working class youth became radicalised and conducted their first uprising against their conditions on November 5th 1975 in Chapeltown, a working class area most known for its residents of Caribbean heritage. The resistance was targeted intensely at police, with Caribbean youth being mobilised and inspired by the global surge against racism and colonialism and in its specific inspiration towards resistance and justice by anti-colonial Rastafarianism (a form of Pan-Africanism) and related Reggae.

Again, in July 1981 Caribbean working class youth led another bout of resistance in Chapeltown, which was at a similar time between 1979-1981 when African, Caribbean and South Asian youth were rising up in a dozen urban centres across England and resisting their conditions of growing poverty and racism. There was another clash in Chapeltown in June 1987 after 17 year-old Marcus Skellington suffered racist police brutality, followed by days of resistance. Then on 10th of July 1995, after several heavy-handed police raids on homes, the deprived, mixed Caribbean and South Asian area of Hyde Park saw another uprising by local youth. On 5 June 2001, South Asian, mostly Muslim youth rose up against the police and with violent protests against, once again, police brutality. On this occasion, South Asian Muslim youth felt that the time to stand-up for themselves had arrived, as similar resistance was being conducted by their counterparts in Bradford, Oldham and Burnley that summer. In addition to racist police brutality, poor housing and poverty they also faced the added pressure of rising racism amongst the white English community who in the period of 1993 until 2018, voted in scores of councillors from the far-right racist and Neo-Nazi British Nationalist Party. For the next near quarter of a century, all these problems of growing fragmentation and alienation of non-white people, increasing racist hostility from the British state and population and rising poverty, continued apace. The Roma community in Harehills are subjected to the same racist oppression that Caribbean, African and Asian communities suffer, but with perhaps even more institutional and mass prejudice against this little understood community.

Who are the Roma?

The Roma, sometimes referred to as ‘Romany’/’Romani’, are widely understood to be a people who originate from present-day North India and Pakistan (Pakistan is a state formed in 1947). They are said to be possibly from the regions of Rajasthan, Kashmir and Sindh provinces. Research suggests they migrated out of India westwards from around the 10th century, with perhaps this migration starting earlier. They retain a considerable amount of the Indic influence in Romany languages (particularly Gujarati, Punjabi and Rajasthani) and the cultural beliefs of many retain elements of Hinduism. In European settings, they are often either Christian or Muslim by confession and have been for many centuries. Since their arrival in European countries they have been treated as outsiders, sometimes their experiences are compared to the oppression of Jews historically in Europe. Roma often look visibly as outsiders in whiteness as they are non-white, although in the UK census of 2011 the category of ‘Roma’ was added for the first time but in a sub-category under the “white” ethnic group.

The fact that the British state decided to give the only option to Roma respondents to identify themselves under a “white” category is typically manipulative of the British state’s colonial approach. Many Roma are clearly not visibly ‘white’, and also they are treated as a non-white group, ie., outside of whiteness in their overwhelmingly racist treatment. The British state has for a long time, and especially since the Second World War tried to co-opt sections of the Roma community. Obliging Roma to put themselves down as ‘white’ in the census will add to the British colonial divide and rule policy, in part to prevent the Roma from identifying with other non-white oppressed communities.

Looking back at their histories in Britain, it was in 1530 that the first laws expelling Roma from England were introduced under King Henry VIII. Often Roma people are termed as ‘gypsies’, something that is generally not accepted by Roma. In 1554 during the rule of Queen Mary, the English Parliament passed the first Egyptians Act which made meant anyone found to be a ‘gypsy’ could be punished by death. This legislation was not repealed until 1780. Other similar laws with a similarly genocidal framework also occurred in other European countries from the 16th century until 1945. In 1783 Heinrich Moritz Gottlieb Grellmann developed so-called ‘scientific racism’ in relation to the Roma people. The 1800s saw a million East European Roma migrate to the USA. In 1899, the Bavarian police (now in present-day Germany) established the “Central Office for Fighting the Gypsy Plague” in Munich, which was a way of monitoring and oppressing the movements of the Roma people. The period of Nazi persecution and genocide saw somewhere between 500,000 and 1.5 million Roma lives being lost. From 1956 attempts were made by different states to forcibly settle the few remaining nomadic Roma.

With the 2004 enlargement of the European Union (EU), countries with sizeable Roma communities saw some of them migrate to Britain. These countries included: Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia. In 2007, Bulgaria and Romania joined the EU, a move which saw some Roma migrate from these two states to Britain.

In Leeds more than one in five residents live in poverty (176,376 people), while 31.3 percent of the city’s children and young people (55,780 youngsters) live in poverty (above the national average of 29 percent). 38 percent of residents of Harehills and neighbouring Gipton described themselves in the most recent Census as being from Asian backgrounds, 36 percent white and 17 percent black. Roma people live 10 years less on average than non-Roma, and experience more of the risk factors in and around mental health challenges. There are estimated to be over 5000 Roma people in Leeds, but there has been little information on the conditions of health and other life experiences. According to census analysis, almost 20% of Roma people live in the most deprived 10% of England (higher than the national average). One in three work in ‘elementary’ jobs, and nearly two in five adults report no educational qualifications at all. According to one study conducted in 2023 by Lancaster University, Anglia Ruskin University and Law for Life, Roma residents in Leeds struggle to understand government and other services due to the language barrier. The study found insufficient translators being available and Roma needing to use their children to translate for them. Some had difficulties accessing translators, and had been put under pressure to use family members to interpret. These were extra barriers to the support they needed.

As the Roma uprising in Harehills was triggered by racist behaviour of social services and police, the report from 2023 also focused on this aspect as data shows an increasing number of Roma children in the care system. While in 2009, there were around 30 Gypsy/Roma children who were ‘looked after’, by 2015 this had risen to 250. The figure stood at around 600 in 2023. The report stated that:

“a lack of trust, based on historic discrimination, has damaged the relationship between Roma families and children’s services in England … The research found that Roma communities tend to mistrust and fear authorities due to their experiences of historic persecution across Europe. It also found that social workers, when dealing with Roma children, frequently conflate the impacts of poverty with neglect. The challenges faced by Roma families in their interactions with children’s services are deeply rooted in experiences of historical discrimination, societal biases, and systemic failures in processes.”

Co-author of the report Professor Margaret Greenfields, of Anglia Ruskin University (ARU), said:

“The trajectory of Roma history in Europe has included centuries of marginalisation and discrimination, including attempts at cultural annihilation involving the forced sterilisation of women and removal of children to the care of non-Roma families and placing of children in ‘special schools’. For many Roma people, both in the UK and internationally, these experiences create an often well-grounded fear of authority.”

Another report suggests addressing these issues requires a comprehensive approach, including cultural sensitivity and competence training for professionals, “addressing discriminatory practices and combating wide-spread negative stereotypes, supporting the legal empowerment of Roma families, and conducting further research to understand and respond to the specific needs of the Roma community in the British context.”

Can the System Cater to the interests of the Roma and Other Oppressed? Reform or Rebellion under Growing Racism?

For those who are seeking empowerment for the Roma and other oppressed communities by colonial states; for those who are seeking a society that is actually re-organised to serve the interests of the oppressed rather than the oppressors, it is important to primarily focus our minds and conversations around the challenges or even possibilities of reforming a white supremacist colonial system and state. The debate over reforming the colonial system or smashing it and replacing it with an anti-colonial society is an old one that is most graphically illustrated in the popular mind between the reformist civil rights approach in the USA context in the 1960s of Dr Martin Luther King Jr and the more revolutionary approach of Malcolm X / Malik El-Hajj Shabazz and the ‘daughters and sons of Malcolm X’, the Black Panther Party/Black Liberation Army. A nuance here is that Dr King himself came over more to the position that the USA racist system could not be reformed. If we look rationally at the situation whereby working class oppressed people are being increasingly stripped of their political, cultural, social and economic rights and conditions, we can understand that the colonial-capitalist system is unable to provide for the oppressed, that its existence is predicated on the growing exploitation, oppression and monopolisation of power away from and against oppressed communities.

Both wings of the colonial system. – Democrat/Republican, Labour/Tory, liberal/right-wingers – are wings of the same system, and both wings feed the same system and the same global white supremacist global ruling classes. We have to be honest with our communities that there has been nothing but general deterioration on every level for them/us globally and in the ‘colonial centre’ in places like England for many decades, and more pressure and injury and death is being imposed by the system as we go forward.

In certain moments when the contradiction between the oppressed and the oppressor is magnified and results in a larger social reaction, we can see that the oppressed do act in these moments that they understand this perfectly, and that is what happened in the different uprisings in Leeds including the one led by the Roma in Harehills on 18th July this year. The intensity of the resistance against the police in the uprising showed in direct action that the oppressed reject their treatment by this racist state, that there is no negotiation with the colonial state on the latter’s terms but in this moment on the independent terms of the oppressed.

The state is directly and indirectly employing the far-right and extreme racist forces and frameworks to keep oppressed communities insecure, anxious and divided, and as such they are unable to really attempt to come together around what they have in common. A central part of this in the wake of the Roma uprising in Harehills was to state that the violent protest is just born out of some innate cultural or biological propensity to senseless violence. The racists and politics in general has for years tended towards a place where there is no ‘seeking truth from facts’ but the near total construction of all manner of lies and fabrications, untruths, manipulations and racist conspiracies which are believed by massive sections of society. This racist and far-right industry of lies and false conspiracies has also recruited a considerable section of non-white people, which is also one of the aims of these racist projects, especially if they are far-right racist in a ‘civic nationalist’ sense and not a racialist neo-Nazi type.

Nigel Farage is a leading politician in Britain, perhaps the most popular politician amongst Brits. He is also a leading racist. In response to the Harehills uprising Mr Farage asserted that “the politics of the subcontinent are currently playing out on the streets of Leeds”. The Roma haven’t resided in the Indian subcontinent for at least 1000 years. It was Nigel Farage who literally defined the mass meaning of Brexit as a mass influx of non-white immigrants to Britain in the now infamous Brexit poster. The point of this racism is to squeeze all non-white people into one category of the dehumanised other and outsider who needs to be expelled to ‘save’ Britishness and Britain. Another leading racist and former far-right Tory MP, now far-right Reform Party MP Lee Anderson, conjured up yet more ‘invasion to the land of milk and honey’ fantasies stating:

“import[ing] a third world culture and you get third world behaviour … I want my country back.” The former Tory minister for immigration Robert Jenrick, victim-blamed the Roma for ‘their’ failure to integrate into a system that doesn’t and can’t ‘integrate’ them.”

The Roma were framed by the far-right as Asians and especially as Asian Muslims, in line with their fear-mongering racist lies about Muslims and Islam that has been a mainstay of their messaging for decades if not generations. Roma have different religious beliefs. Some are Muslims, some are Christians. The Roma in Leeds tend to be mostly Christians. The potential and actual strengths of the oppressed has always been unity based on being oppressed under the white supremacist colonial system and not solely and narrowly around factions of tribe, region, religion and nationality. Some voices in the Muslim community, reacted to the far-right lies that the Roma involved in what was happening in Harehills were Muslims, by saying that actually the Roma are ‘European and Christian’. Whilst this was obviously done to expose the inconsistency of far-right narratives, it also had the unintended consequence of implying ‘Roma are actually part of your problematic camp of European Christians.’ This perpetuates the exact colonially divisive framework that the racists use.

Local resident in Harehills and Green Party councillor Mothin Ali caught the attention of another leading far-right racist figure Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, better known as Tommy Robinson, when at the conclusion of the election count for local council elections in May earlier this year, Ali stated that his victory was dedicated to the Palestinians and proclaimed ‘Allahu Akbar’ in his victory speech. The protests for Palestine have been used centrally by the state and the wider British racist community to heighten racist pressure on communities, especially Muslim communities. Ali’s comments on Palestine and his open Islamic affiliation were piled on by Yaxley-Lennon and his supporters on social media. The Daily Mail, which has promoted all manner of British colonial filth for more than a century, chimed in, accusing Ali of “causing outrage” with his comments, when the real cause of outrage is racism being internalised across the British population. Ali explained his experience around this:

“It got really, really threatening after that. My phone started going off every few minutes, it was ‘die [P-word], die’ and ‘I’m gonna kill you’. They started posting pictures of my kids and all that sort of thing. I shut my social media down. I deleted Twitter, I came off Facebook. I wasn’t expecting it, I thought probably I’d get some criticism afterwards but I never thought it would be as crazy as it was. It was relentless, day after day. There was an incident where someone turned up at my house, someone let my tyres down, someone phoned the police and made a death threat and was asking about my security. It’s just horrible, absolutely horrible. But people here know what I’m about.”

When the Roma uprising occurred, videos of Ali walking amongst the protestors were twisted into a lie by this far-right community wrongly claiming that Ali was engaged in stoking the violent protests. In fact, Ali was not inciting or rioting, but was trying to protect the police, and stop people throwing bins and crates on the blazing barricades. He himself gathered water from nearby homes and was filmed hand-cupping water to throw onto the burning barricades. The metaphor here is very apt speaking to James Baldwin’s ‘The Fire Next Time’ which spoke of the righteous violent resistance and uprisings of Black people. However, ironically it is Ali in this metaphor who is the one who wants to put out all the righteous fires of the oppressed that are beacons toward liberation and freedom.

Ali argued: “some of the police officers over the last few years I’ve got to know and I didn’t want them to get hurt. I thought, this is what a councillor is supposed to do.” Isn’t protecting police officers that you like and are friendly with – from an institution that is proven to be institutionally rapist, racist and homophobic – something that a councillor is supposed to do? According to the colonialists and its system: yes. In the liberal and the reformist position borne out by the colonial state, advocating for the protection of the police and trying to make a racist system work for victims of racism is the only thing available to oppressed people.

Ali argues further:

“We need to be able to reach out to the communities, people who are quite isolated, bring them into the system, and say ‘Look, this is the value of voting, this is the value of education, the schools aren’t your enemies, the teachers are trying to help you.’ Build that level of trust, because there is a massive level of distrust. And we’ve got to make sure they’re welcomed into the system, not forced into the system.”

Who is the pronoun ‘we’ in these regards? It seems to be those who are trying to make the system ‘work’ alongside the system itself, but isn’t a capitalist, white supremacist racist and colonial system doing what it is supposed to do in oppressing and exploiting? People have been voting, but every government, councillor and MP does not and cannot do anything for the poorest and most oppressed because the system makes it impossible, because the system is functioning as it is designed to function. With the growing insurgency of racist Britons, with the state and government folding into every rise in the level of fascism, everyone is being targeted for greater dehumanisation.

Whatever the best intentions of those trying to engage with the state, recent events have made clear in quick succession that the state and its institutions are the issue that requires change. Conformity from oppressed communities can no longer be seen as a solution to their problems. As Malcolm X explains, only total separation away from the colonial system is the means by which oppressed communities can achieve anything for themselves collectively. The oppressed who have relatively little to lose ‘in the fields’ have to contend with the colonial buffer class ‘in the house’ that is in many ways the first line of protection of the oppressors. So what are the situations around the challenges of oppressed communities asserting their own rights in such a struggle for dignity and liberation as it relates to the situation of the Roma oppressed community and others?

Conclusion: Challenges of Unity & Struggle in Growing Coloniality

As is often the case in community uprisings of the colonised, and similar to the Roma-led uprising in Harehills what we see are other demographics of the colonised joining in the uprising and resistance in many ways. People from other colonised backgrounds who were not Roma joined in the uprising on 18th July. In Britain before the Brexit victory and especially after it, Brexit (or “Empire 2.0” as it was known in the British civil service) was and is employed by the British state to ensure the division and taming of oppressed communities. This new Brexit order is meant to keep and has kept pushing racist divisions so colonised people don’t reach-out and find the actual truth of their condition that uniting and struggling together against the entire racist system is in their immediate interests. In this context, are there any political realities and forces that exist in Britain that seek to unite and develop a political struggle in a united anti-colonial manner? The tragic but honest answer to this is no.

The examples of successful struggles that unite colonised communities in the context of a state in the ‘West’ are arguably those led in the late 1960s by the Black Panther Party such as the Chicago-based ‘Rainbow Coalition’ and the BPP’s initiative of things like the United Front Against Fascism conference organised by the Black Panther Party and held in Oakland, California, from July 18th to 21st 1969. The BPP had hundreds of African (‘-American’) people organised into an efficient community and self-defence struggle drawing in hundreds of thousands of others and people from other racialised communities including Native Americans, Asians, and those in the white community who rejected white supremacy and colonialism. The challenge is to develop a program of engagement on council estates and high streets (as Leila Khaled has argued in her biography) to serve the people, love the people, and become a part of them in a framework of radical anti-colonial grassroots self-organising. The uprising in Harehills and then community resistance (mostly by street organisations of young people or ‘crews’ etc) against the mob attacks a few weeks later showed that openings for uniting the oppressed come out regularly around once or twice a year. The problem is that there are people few and far between attempting to increase capacity at the grassroots towards developing the relationship-building required to articulate a new social movement of solidarity and resistance.

Going forward we still have a growing racist mass mob in Britain that seeks nothing but the mass expulsion of non-white people, something which the Tories directly stoked and fed with their Rwanda removal policy, Bibby Stockholm barge and attack on Windrush migrants from the Caribbean, as well as their demonising narratives around Muslims and migrants more generally. Calls for mass expulsion of our communities are growing in Britain. British PM Kier Starmer has insisted that sharp draconian sentences are passed on some of the racist mob which has slowed down some of the bigger organised racist attacks although smaller level racist attacks continue. At the same time the new Labour government has to be on the defensive as most Britons are demanding more racist policies and accusing Starmer of being ‘two tier Kier’ which is a popular far-right slogan that asserts that there is one standard of policing for non-white people and another more repressive one for white Britons. This is of course a totally fabricated nonsense, but what it means is that non-white communities will be seeing (even more) harsher policing.

This entire situation clearly indicates the growing exposure of the contradictions of the system. Thus far, the colonial state is effectively managing communities in a way that is resulting in further social depression and fragmentation as the state and its non-state racists close in ever further around the proverbial neck of our communities. Examples of unity and resistance exist in the world today, not least in Palestine which sees a Palestinian people made up of people from different backgrounds united in a struggle against a white supremacist colonial settler entity. In the colonial centre we have also seen examples of this framework. Will we see new generations and forces pick up the challenges that lie in front of us?

[1] Protests outside such hotels by far-right groups have become frequent and normalised in recent years: according to The Guardian newspaper, in 2022 there 253 such ‘visits’ by the far-right to hotels accommodating asylum seekers, twice as many as the year before.

Liao – The Equality Society: A Preliminary Archival Reconstruction of The Chinese American Anarchist Movement

Posted on 10/01/2025 - 10/01/2025 by muntjac

Kindly borrowed from;

https://www.thecommoner.org.uk/the-equality-society-a-preliminary-archival-reconstruction-of-the-chinese-american-anarchist-movement/

“Anarchism is still the most beautiful ideal, and I think someday it will come,” wrote Lau Chung-Si (Ray Jones) from a small apartment in San Francisco. At the time he put these words to paper in 1974, he was a relic of another time. Jones was a Chinese man who, in 1909, immigrated to the United States and quickly became enamoured with the ideas of anarchism. He was involved in a collective of Chinese American anarchists in San Francisco named Pingsheh (Equality Society). He also attended meetings held by other anarchist organisations, as well as the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). To date, not much has been written about the Chinese anarchists in America, but what has been written has focused on Ray Jones and the Equality Society. While acknowledging and continuing to use the Equality Society as a focal point, I am putting forward a preliminary analysis of the beliefs and praxis of Chinese American anarchists and their international connections as a part of a broader project of conceptualising Asian anarchism.

Information regarding Chinese American anarchists in America is fractured and spread far and wide. Most of the information analysed here was sourced from the Ray Jones Papers and the Him Mark Lai Collection at the UC Berkeley Ethnic Studies library. By cross-referencing of multiple sources, including first-hand accounts by the Chinese immigrants, newspapers distributed by the Chinese anarchist collectives, the writings of contemporaneous socialists and IWW members, and other miscellaneous materials, it is possible to reconstruct an image of the Chinese American anarchist movement, its involvement in the revolutionary struggle for anarchy, and their relationships to other political groups.

Racism & Radicalization

The Chinese American anarchist movement was born from the unique condition of being Asian immigrants who were exploited by American capitalists and unfairly excluded from unions by Marxists and reactionary trade unions such as the American Federation of Labor. It was the IWW’s acceptance of Chinese immigrants that ultimately led them to the philosophy of anarchism. These Chinese Americans deeply held anti-State and anti-capitalist principles and were in favour of anarchist communism, under which they engaged in the praxis of direct action. These Chinese American anarchists worked with groups within the larger anarchist movement on local, national, and international levels. Their adherence to anarchist principles and collaboration with other groups led to struggles locally with capitalist and State repression along with alienation from their homeland due to hostility from the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party) and the Chinese Communist Party.

Chinese immigrants failed in their attempts to join labour unions to combat the abysmal material conditions and exploitation that they faced under capitalism. A dogmatic belief in perverted formulation of Marx’s theories led many Marxists and like-minded socialists to exclude the Chinese immigrant proletariat from socialist labour unions and movements. In the 1900s, the Socialist Party of America was one of the largest socialist organisations in the United States. Their stance on Asian labourers was made clear by the “Summary of the Majority Report” at the 1910 Socialist Conference, which advocated for the:

‘…unconditional exclusion of Chinese, Japanese, Coreans [sic] and Hindus, not as races per se, not as peoples with definite physiological characteristics—but for the evident reason that these peoples occupy definite portions of the earth which are so far behind the general modern development of industry, psychologically as well as economically, that they constitute a drawback, an obstacle and menace to the progress of the most aggressive, militant and intelligent elements of our working class population.’

This is indicative of how many Marxists and adjacent socialists grouped Asian labourers as impediments to the revolution due to some perceived underdeveloped psychological and economic conditions. This line of thinking can largely be attributed to their understanding of Marx’s theory of historical materialism, which posits that a society needed to reach a certain stage of capitalist development before widespread class consciousness and revolutionary potential is possible. Since Marxists did not see Asian countries as having already reached that state of capitalism, they viewed the incorporation of Asian labourers as “fruitless and reactionary” and against the interest of the American working class as it would only hamper their revolutionary potential. However, the refusal to accept Asian labourers into unions cannot solely be attributed to racist revisions to Marx’s theories.

White supremacy was extremely prevalent in America which allowed those influenced by racism and xenophobia to add to the ongoing exclusion of Asian labourers. At the Socialist Conference, “Comrade Untermann … claimed that it was impossible to get the Asiatic laborers to understand the principles of labor organisation, much less of socialism.” This attitude demonstrates a belief of the racial inferiority of the Asian workers in comparison to their counterparts. While this supremacist view was common at the time, other socialists at the Socialist Conference challenged this thinking for being inherently racist — but to no avail. The anti-racist advocates were a minority at the Conference.

Despite anti-Asian biases being quite common amongst the American proletariat and socialist organisations, the heavily anarcho-syndicalist-adjacent IWW staunchly rejected any such sentiment as untrue and instead welcomed Asian labourers. The IWW’s view was articulated in the Industrial Union Bulletin’s coverage of The Proceedings of the Third Annual Convention’s “Resolution on Anti-Asiatic Persecution”:

‘In the past year several riots have occurred on the Pacific Coast directed against Asiatics on the ground that they are cheap labor … These Asiatics have, whenever an attempt has been made, shown their ability to organize, better their conditions and to stand true to their class … The interests of the working class are the same no matter what their race, creed and color and are diametrically opposed to the interests of the capitalist class, and … these outbreaks but serve to further divide the workers where they should be united, and therefore serve the interest of the master class, therefore, be it resolved … that we condemn the A.F. of L. [American Federation of Labor] as well as other so-called labor organizations who have in this respect aided the masters.’

The treatment of Chinese labourers as “cheap labor” by the bourgeoisie served as a means to cause conflict within the proletariat. By paying the Chinese little and engaging them primarily for physical labour, the bourgeoisie encouraged white workers to see them as inferior yet simultaneously as a threat to their economic position. This, in turn, caused division within the proletariat on racial lines which only benefited the capitalist class. The discrimination against Asian workers manifested in their exclusion from unions such as the American Federation of Labor and was countered in part by the IWW’s condemnation of labour unions that excluded Asian labourers.

The IWW accepted Chinese immigrants into its ranks and was “the only organisation that [had] ever done any organising among the Japanese and Chinese in [America].” The Asian labourers acted as other proletarians and had effectively organised for better conditions as described in the Industrial Union Bulletins (IUB):

‘None of the Japanese or Chinese who become members fail to realise their duty as to paying their dues and keeping in good standing. This cannot be said, truthfully, of all the “whites.” The Japanese and Chinese can be organised as rapidly as any other nationality. and when once pledged to stand with you, no fear or doubt needs to be entertained as to them, during labour trouble.’

The IUB emphasised that Asian labourers were just as effective and trustworthy as the white labourers, and were easily organised. Their actions showed that Marxist analysis of the revolutionary potential of the Asian immigrant proletariat was false and that the IWW’s recognition that the proletariat should be united by class against capital, regardless of race, was correct. Acceptance of Asian immigrants by the IWW led to the immigrants not only joining the IWW, but also adopting anarchist ideals in their own union called the Unionist Guild of America in order to focus on struggles more specific to their material conditions.

Praxis & Principles

The principle at the core of anarchism is that all hierarchies are inherently oppressive and must be abolished. While the Chinese American anarchists fought for the deconstruction of all hierarchies, they placed an emphasis on critiquing the interconnected systemic oppression caused by the hierarchical structures of the State and capital. In their publication, Anarcho-Communist Monthly (ACM), they wrote:

‘[The private property system (Capitalism)] is when capitalists monopolise all production tools and production items, use the monetary system, and force us workers to be their wage slaves. We workers were forced by hunger and cold, so we sold our precious labour to them to do everything for them. We workers make everything in factories and cultivate various plants on farmland. However, everything we produce is owned by the capitalists.’

They viewed capitalism as a form of slavery under which they rented out their bodies in exchange for monetary compensation. Despite the workers labouring tirelessly to manufacture and farm goods, in actuality, they owned none of what they produced. Instead, their labour was stolen by the capitalist system under which both themselves and their labour were owned. However, besides capital, they acknowledged another hierarchical structure that contributed to the disparity between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie: the State.

The Chinese American anarchists acknowledged that the State was a tool wielded by the bourgeoisie to oppress the proletariat. In ACM, they wrote that:

‘Capitalists have occupied all production machines, not making them available to society, and depriving workers of their blood, sweat and lives … however, the government continues to defend the capitalists; if the workers have some demands on the capitalists, the government will immediately do its best to suppress our workers, intimidation, and even killing … the government must be overthrown and cannot be allowed to continue!’

Their analysis of society continued to critique the private ownership of the means of production by the bourgeoisie as it made the workers’ lives significantly worse. Furthermore, they added that the State always defended the interests of the ruling class. As the proletariat agitated through strikes and unionisation for better working conditions, the State would suppress the workers through tactics ranging anywhere from intimidation to full on massacres. Hence, the hierarchical structures of capital and the State were intertwined, and so, the Chinese American anarchists advocated the abolition of both.

The Chinese American anarchists desired to see a world antithetical to the current one with the State and capital replaced by anarchy and communism. In opposition to both the current system and their authoritarian counterparts on the left, they advocated for “free communism.” The Chinese anarchists described free communism as following the principle of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” and how it could manifest in society:

‘That returns all property … to the common people, and the land to farmers. The villagers’ and peasants’ associations plan production, and the factories belong to the workers. The labor unions organized by the workers plan production, and distribution … Everyone works, everyone participates in all life decisions, there is no ruler, everyone freely enjoys the common products, and makes the best use of their talents and abilities.’

This conception of society aligns with the anarchist communism described by their primary inspiration, Pytor Kropotkin, as well as other classical anarchists while implementing elements of anarcho-syndicalism that were likely picked up from their work with the IWW. They wanted well-being for all, meaning that all needs would be fulfilled and work would be enjoyable. Additionally, these Chinese American anarchists wanted horizontal organisations in which each person had a say in the decisions made by their communities. This typically took the form of federated council structures that would elect a secretary to represent them for a limited time; these secretaries would advocate for their council’s position in larger district, provincial, and national gatherings. They believed that this could only be achieved through a society in which the proletariat owned the means of production with relationships characterised by free association.

As anarchism is a philosophy of praxis, the Chinese American anarchists’ means of abolishing hierarchies were intrinsically unified with their ends. They aimed for social revolution through the spreading of class consciousness and by using direct action to work toward their goals in a material way. The Equality Society published two newspapers: ACM and Equality. The purpose of these newspapers was to be the Chinese American anarchists’ “cry, [their] flag, and the sound of a bell that [aroused their] comrades” that “[promoted] anarchism and [recorded] news about the anarchist movement … [and] paid attention to the situation of Chinese workers in Europe and the United States.” The distribution of this literature was used to foster class consciousness within the Chinese immigrant proletariat by means of education. The content of a typical issue of either publication ranged from informative essays on the injustices of hierarchies of State and capital, to explanations of the ideas of anarchist communism, to critiques of Marxist-Leninist ideology, and to discussions on current events within their community and the broader anarchist movement. However, the “small monthly publication with black characters printed on white paper [was] not [their] main job, nor [was] it [their] only weapon.”

The primary form of direct action that the Equality Society took to fight against the State and capital was aiding unions and strikes. They distributed notices with support for the 1934 West Coast Waterfront Strike and the The National Dollar Stores Strike, among others. While the Chinese American anarchists critiqued the strikes on issues like “the capitalist collaboration with the union leaders” and were “not yet satisfied with the limits of their demands,” they were otherwise extremely supportive of these strikes, “viewing them as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for [the] Chinese workers to liberate themselves.” Additionally, they viewed strikes as a way to:

‘…spread [their] own ideals among the working class. In order to promote the class consciousness of workers, consolidate partial strikes into general strikes, and transform the general strike mechanism into an armed revolution of the working class against capitalism and the state! This is the solution!’

For them, strikes held a two-fold purpose, the first and more obvious one being to agitate for better working conditions and the second being for the further spread of class consciousness. The Chinese American anarchists viewed strikes in individual industries as a path to a general strike federated between all industries which would give rise to the proletariat’s revolutionary potential. The revolutionary potential could then be harnessed by the proletariat to enact a social revolution to dismantle the oppressive systems of the State and capital, which they viewed as the solution to oppression.

Comrades & Connections

However, for any revolutionary movement to exist, there needs to be more than a single group working toward it. While the Equality Society was certainly the largest group of Chinese American anarchists, there was another notable collective based on the other coast. The New York-based Jue She (Awakeness Society) was established by:

‘…[t]he Chinese in New York [that] have always expressed sympathy for the anarchist communists. Recently … some of the hard-working elements among them established the Awakeness Society in order to study knowledge, increase their knowledge, explore the truth, and transform society.’

These Chinese American anarchists from New York performed essentially the same tasks as that of the Equality Society, their primary difference being geographic location. Interestingly, according to the historian Paul Avrich, “Its main figures were Yat Tone and Eddie Wong, who had come to New York from the Equality Group in San Francisco.” While there were other notable members, such as Gray Wu, who were not part of the Equality Society, the Chinese American anarchists in New York drew much of their inspiration and praxis from the experiences of the Equality Society in San Francisco. This established transcontinental connections between the Chinese American anarchists on both coasts, though their reach went well beyond just these two groups.

The Chinese American anarchists embraced proletarian unity and worked with a variety of different groups to achieve their revolutionary ends. The Equality Society most frequently worked with the IWW and local anarchist groups, primarily from immigrant communities. As noted in Equality:

‘The city’s Jewish, Russian, Italian, and Chinese anarchist comrades … picnic meeting on the 23rd of last month in this city … In addition to speeches, there were also music and ball games to add to the fun. It was also suggested by a Russian comrade that the four groups should unite in the future and hold a regular meeting every Saturday night to facilitate communication.’

The collaboration with other immigrant groups allowed for the Chinese American anarchists to create solidarity within their area through meetings. The purpose of these meetings was to foster bonds between the groups in order to build community rather than wholly being focused on their revolutionary project. Meanwhile, the Awakeness Society had a cooperative restaurant called Jade Mountain that “[raised] money for The Road to Freedom.” Connections with other anarchist groups allowed for solidarity and organisation in their communities. However, these networks spanned far beyond just locally.

The Chinese American anarchists were also connected to anarchists abroad. For example, they were in correspondence with Emma Goldman and the Equality publication was “co-organized by our comrades who live in Europe and the United States.” Additionally, the Equality Society was in frequent contact with the noted anarchist translator and writer Ba Jin and the mainland Chinese anarchists, as well as anarchists in Japan. Jones in particular corresponded with Ba Jin on current events in China and the publication of the Equality in Shanghai, as well. Meanwhile, analyses and overviews of the material conditions and revolutionary movements in China and Japan were frequently published in Equality and ACM, such as “Chinese Anarchism and Organizational Issues” and “The Anarcho-Syndicalist Movement in Japan.” Yet while these transnational connections allowed for communication and solidarity with the wider anarchist movement, it also came with consequences.

Opposition & Obstruction

Chinese American anarchist activities in China led to oppression as their anti-hierarchical beliefs put them in opposition to both the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese American anarchists described their position in Equality:

‘In the past, the Communist Party and the Kuomintang both wanted to help [people]. Now, although the Communist Party is still active everywhere and the Kuomintang is still in dictatorship … and the general public have nothing but resentment and resistance towards them.’

The Chinese populace viewed both the Kuomintang and Communist Party as having abandoned the people, instead prioritising their party’s political revolution to gain power. This led not only anarchists but also the general public to resent both parties instead of siding with either. In the ensuing clash with the Kuomintang, various anarchist operations were crushed by the party. Work on the aforementioned Shanghai-based edition of Equality was put to an end after “[their] distributing site [was] discovered by the Kuomintang.” The Chinese State decided to target these anarchists because they presented a threat to the status quo.

Chinese American anarchists’ principles also led them to trouble within the community of Chinese Americans in the United States. During the Sino-Japanese War, Ray Jones stuck to the anarchist principle of being anti-war as “the army, navy, air force … are all used to fight for the property of the country’s [bourgeoisie], and to … kill … the people.” As the anarchists deviated from the nationalistic tendencies harboured by their fellow immigrants, they faced consequences. Jones’ adherence to his beliefs led to him being physically assaulted at the San Francisco branch of Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association due to his refusal to contribute to the war fund.

Due to the Chinese American anarchists’ spread of libertarian ideas that opposed State and capital, they faced repression at the hands of the United States government. In many cases there was collaboration between the State and capital as Chinatown “employers … turned to the headquarters of the persecution for assistance, which was, of course, cheerfully rendered.” In this, the Chinese American anarchists’ analysis of the State as a protector of bourgeoisie class interests was shown to be true. The actions against the Equality Society mostly took the form of police raids upon their headquarters and arrests of their members. In a 1928 issue of Chung Sai Yat Po, a local news publication, it was reported that:

Two Chinese people were arrested: they were brought to the precinct. The prosecution’s case against them accused them of illegally distributing leaflets … The Immigration Bureau sent translators to translate the “May Day Special Issue” and “Equality” pamphlets. Many of them were printed by the Equality Society … The group is suspected of spreading anarchism.

The United States government targeted the Chinese American anarchists for raising class consciousness through the distribution of literature. This was indicative that the United States government was somewhat threatened by the Chinese American anarchists’ efforts to educate the proletariat on the ideas of anarchism, pushing for an understanding that would endanger its monopoly of violence. Yet despite the arrests of the Equality Society’s members and confiscation of their literature by the police, they were “still determined to work hard on [their] work as usual.” The Chinese American anarchists were unyielding in their pursuit of the anarchist cause.

Conclusions

Though these hopeful revolutionaries made meaningful change and supported the proletariat to the best of their ability, the Chinese American anarchist movement died out following World War II. It was likely that this happened due to a combination of factors: continued repression by the State and capital, the Chinese immigrant proletariat embracing rising Maoist currents, and the general decline of the international anarchist movement.

The Chinese American anarchist movement was one that was uniquely formed from the exclusion of the Chinese immigrants from the wider American Left. Once they had adopted anarchism, they were steadfast in their anti-hierarchical beliefs, demonstrated through their attempts to move closer toward equality by the use of direct action. The international connections of the Chinese American anarchists allowed for them to communicate with the wider anarchist movement, although this sometimes resulted in additional state repression both in China and the United States. The work of the Chinese American anarchists remains relevant to this day, demonstrating that while the revolution may not come tomorrow, it is essential to continue grassroots efforts to organise and educate communities on the oppressive nature of hierarchies and how to combat them, both individually and collectively. Those who strive toward a more egalitarian world must not give up hope. In the words of Jones, “In this dark world … I seek brightness.”

Bibliography

Anarcho-Communist Monthly (San Francisco, CA). “告工人” [Tell Workers]. June 1934. Translated by Liao (April 2024). Carton 1, Folder 35, Him Mark Lai Papers, Asian American Studies Archive, Ethnic Studies Library, University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley, CA.

Anarcho-Communist Monthly (San Francisco, CA). “奴隸問題” [On the Slavery Problem]. August 1934. Translated by Liao (April 2024). Carton 1, Folder 35, Him Mark Lai Papers, Asian American Studies Archive, Ethnic Studies Library, University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley, CA.

Anarcho-Communist Monthly (San Francisco, CA). “紐約覺社成立” [New York Awakeness Society Established]. November 1934. Translated by Liao (April 2024). Carton 1, Folder 35, Him Mark Lai Papers, Asian American Studies Archive, Ethnic Studies Library, University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley, CA.

Anarcho-Communist Monthly (San Francisco, CA). “告民眾” [Inform the People]. November 1934. Translated by Liao (April 2024). Carton 1, Folder 35, Him Mark Lai Papers, Asian American Studies Archive, Ethnic Studies Library, University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley, CA.

Anarcho-Communist Monthly (San Francisco, CA). “奴隸問題” [On the Slavery Problem]. July 1934. Translated by Liao (April 2024). Carton 1, Folder 35, Him Mark Lai Papers, Asian American Studies Archive, Ethnic Studies Library, University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley, CA.

Anarcho-Communist Monthly (San Francisco, CA). “三藩市總罷工失敗的檢討” [Reflection on the Failure of the San Francisco General Strike]. September 1934. Translated by Liao (April 2024). Carton 1, Folder 35, Him Mark Lai Papers, Asian American Studies Archive, Ethnic Studies Library, University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley, CA.

Avrich, Paul. Anarchist Voices. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996. Accessed February 10, 2024.

Burgess, David. “Workers and Racial Hate.” Industrial Worker (Seattle, WA), June 4, 1910. Accessed February 10, 2024.

Chung Sai Yat Po (San Francisco, CA). “所聞之文字嫌疑,本埠警差前晚” [Rumors Heard, Local Police Dispatched Last Night]. March 23, 1928. East Asian Library, University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley, CA.

Equality. “敬告勞動民眾” [Warning to Working People]. n.d. Translated by Liao (April 2024). Box 1, Folder 18, Ray Jones Papers, Him Mark Lai Collection, Asian American Studies Archive, Ethnic Studies Library, University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley, CA.

Equality (San Francisco, CA). “我們的宣言” [Our Manifesto]. July 1927. Translated by Liao (April 2024). Carton 1, Folder 34, Him Mark Lai Papers, Asian American Studies Archive, Ethnic Studies Library, University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley, CA.

Equality (San Francisco, CA). “無政黨與共產黨不同” [The Difference Between Anarchism and Marxism]. n.d. Translated by Liao (April, 2024). Box 1, Folder 18, Ray Jones Papers, Him Mark Lai Collection, Asian American Studies Archive, Ethnic Studies Library, University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley, CA.

Equality (San Francisco, CA). “本刊啓事” [About this Publication]. July 1927. Translated by Liao (April, 2024). Carton 1, Folder 34, Him Mark Lai Papers, Asian American Studies Archive, Ethnic Studies Library, University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley, CA.

Equality (San Francisco, CA). “中國無政府主義與組織問題” [Chinese Anarchism and Organizational Issues]. August 1927. Translated by Liao (April, 2024). Carton 1, Folder 34, Him Mark Lai Papers, Asian American Studies Archive, Ethnic Studies Library, University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley, CA.

Equality (San Francisco, CA). “一個問題的問答” [Questions and Answers]. September 1929. Translated by Liao (April, 2024). Carton 1, Folder 34, Him Mark Lai Papers, Asian American Studies Archive, Ethnic Studies Library, University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley, CA.

Equality (San Francisco, CA). “小消息” [Some News]. November 1927. Translated by Liao (April, 2024). Carton 1, Folder 34, Him Mark Lai Papers, Asian American Studies Archive, Ethnic Studies Library, University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley, CA.

Equality (San Francisco, CA). “消息” [Notice]. July 1928. Translated by Liao (April, 2024). Carton 1, Folder 34, Him Mark Lai Papers, Asian American Studies Archive, Ethnic Studies Library, University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley, CA.

Equality (San Francisco, CA). “我們現在應該怎樣做呢?” [What Should We Do Now?]. July 1928. Translated by Liao (April, 2024). Carton 1, Folder 34, Him Mark Lai Papers, Asian American Studies Archive, Ethnic Studies Library, University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley, CA.

Industrial Union Bulletin (Chicago, IL). “Japanese and Chinese Exclusion or Industrial Organization, Which?” April 11, 1908, 3. Accessed February 10, 2024.

Industrial Union Bulletin (Chicago, IL). “Local Executive Board.” March 9, 1907, 3. Accessed February 10, 2024.

Industrial Union Bulletin (Chicago, IL). “Proceedings of the Third Annual Convention.” 1907, 400-08. Accessed January 11, 2024.

Industrial Union Bulletin (Chicago, IL). “Roumanian Workers’ Response.” July 13, 1907, 3. Accessed February 10, 2024.

The International Socialist Review (Chicago, IL), June 1910. Accessed January 11, 2024.

Jin, Ba. Letter to Ray Jones, “R. Jones Archives at Asian American Studies, University of California, Berkeley [Letters],” 1920-1950. Transcribed by Yamayuchi Mamory (October, 1995). Box 1, Folder 5, Ray Jones Papers, Him Mark Lai Collection, Asian American Studies Archive, Ethnic Studies Library, University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley, CA.

Jones, Ray. Interview by Him Mark Lai. San Francisco, CA. January 14, 1973. Box 121, Folder 34, Him Mark Lai Papers, Asian American Studies Archive, Ethnic Studies Library, University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley, CA.

The One Big Union Monthly (Chicago, IL). “The Chinese and the I.W.W.” March 1, 1919, 8.

Shuyao. History of the Meizhou Gongyi Tongmeng Zonghui (Unionist Guild of America). Translated by Him Mark Lai. San Francisco, CA: Chinese Historical Society of America, 2008. EPUB.

Kropotkin, Pytor. The Conquest of Bread. Paris, France: Tresse et Stock, 1892. Accessed April 11, 2024.

Wong, Jane Mee. “Retrieving an Asian American Anarchist tradition.” The Anarchist Library. Last modified March 4, 2008.

Zimmer, Kenyon. “‘No Right to Exist Anywhere on This Earth’: Anarchism in Crisis.” In Immigrants Against the State: Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in America, 166-205. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2015. PDF.

Zimmer, Kenyon. “Positively Stateless: Marcus Graham, the Ferrero-Sallitto Case, and Anarchist Challenges to Race and Deportation.” In The Rising Tide of Color: Race, State Violence, and Radical Movements across the Pacific, edited by Moon-Ho Jung, 128-58. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2014. PDF.

“We Shall Prevail” – Lessons from the Sudanese resistance committees

Posted on 09/01/2025 - 10/01/2025 by muntjac

This short peice is also avalible as a flyer in readable and printable formats. Its also on our kofi to order in sets of three.

The Sudanese working class have always stood and fought for their freedom, from the multi-century struggle against British, Ottoman and Egyptian imperialism to the ongoing struggle against the neocolonialism of the UAE. In recent history, the Sudanese working class have come together to topple dictatorship after dictatorship. October 1964: Ibrahim Abbud’s regime was brought down by a general strike. 1985: Muhammad Numeiri’s dictatorship felt the same fate following years of industrial action across many sectors, often tied together with the student movement.

December 2018-19: President al-Bashir was deposed following a relentless campaign of strikes and sit-ins, many of which were brutally suppressed by the Army and Police. Most notably a demonstration outside the armed forces headquarters being massacred by the army, 100 people were martyred. The military coup of the civilian government that took over after the 2019 revolution is what led to the ongoing war and the displacement of millions. Despite this the workers, students and youth of Sudan have formed resistance committees, direct-democratic assemblies, often organised online, these initiatives have helped get food and medicine to people who needed it while steering people away from siding with government forces or the RSF—two sides of the colonialist, genocidal coin.

تسقط بس
Just Fall

“We, anarchists of Khartoum, are members of the “resistance committees” and we raise our flags during marches with the rest of the revolutionaries, and we promote anarchy by writing graffiti on the walls. We oppose all types of authoritarianism. We are for freedom of expression and individual autonomy.”

Sudan: Anarchists Against the Military Dictatorship

لا تفاوض، لا شراكة، لا شرع
No Negotiation, No Partnership, No Haggling

In December 2018, students in the city of Atbara, furious over an overnight doubling of bread prices, took to the streets in protest. Their actions ignited demonstrations across Sudan, as widespread anger over the economic conditions under the dictatorial regime boiled over. The SPA—a coalition of several labour unions and others—called for widespread protests forcing the regime to begin to crumble. The informal unions and political parties who took a leadership role in the early parts of the uprising later on became co-opted by the military forces. The emergence of the Sudanese anarchist movement in late 2019 as well as the learnings from the repression from the 2013 uprising, influenced the broader politics of the resistance movement in the streets.

To avoid state repression of the protects, the people organising in the neighbourhoods—called for the formation of neighbourhood resistance committees (RCs). Localised committees of people that would organise and coordinate protests in their areas. Initially, the RCs served primarily as a tactical response: grassroots cells that stretch security forces’ resources across multiple areas, thereby reducing the risk of brutal repression. Over time, the committees evolved into spaces for local people in the neighbourhoods to express their political demands. While the competing neo-colonial interests fought for control of the political narrative, the RCs positioned themselves as independent political actors. Beyond organising protests, the resistance committees took on additional responsibilities, such as providing basic services and coordinating public actions.

Even though the RCs were operating leaderless, the nature of post-colonial nationalism that’s present in modern Sudan limited opportunities for going beyond nation-statehood. A severing with the state once and for all. Furthermore, Due in part to social constraints around women’s late-night involvement, the people who tended to be at the late-night meetings were mostly young men. Meanwhile, in the protest actions themselves, women and girls often outnumbered men.

For now, the resistance committees provide an example of local spaces where people can encounter each other.

السلطةسلطةشعب
Power is the power of the people

Following the outbreak of conflict in April 2023 between rival armed factions, Emergency Response Rooms (often referred to as ERs) emerged in many parts of Sudan. Modelled loosely on the local, grassroots structure of the RCs, the ERs quickly provided vital humanitarian relief. The Emergency Response Rooms illustrated a new phase in the social revolution as local emergency response people organised statelessly and autonomously against the conflict. Without state institutions, they assumed responsibility for operating health facilities independently. Over time, the scope of the ERs expanded, encompassing assistance for people fleeing active conflict zones, mobilising communities to repair or maintain water and electricity infrastructure damaged by ongoing clashes, operating community kitchens, and distributing emergency rations—often with the support of local and diaspora donations.

السلام والحرية والتضامن
Peace, freedom and solidarity

References

“Flowers Will Emerge from the Desert”: Interviews and Communiqués from Sudanese Anarchists Available at: https://muntjacmag.noblogs.org/files/2024/12/Flowers-Sudan.pdf

Khartoum City Resistance Committees Coordination Press Release Available at: https://resistancecommittee.com/en/press-release-august-31-march-khartoum-city-resistance-committees-coordination/

You’re Always on That Phone: How Being Online Sustained Sudan’s Youth Revolution

Available at: https://logicmag.io/issue-21-medicine-and-the-body/youre-always-on-that-phone-how-being-online-sustained-sudans-youth/

Sudan: Anarchists Against the Military Dictatorship Available at: https://cs.crimethinc.com/2021/12/31/sudan-anarchists-against-the-military-dictatorship-an-interview-with-sudanese-anarchists-gathering

The Revolution in Sudan: Interview with a Resistance Committee Organizer Available at: https://itsgoingdown.org/the-revolution-in-sudan-interview-with-a-resistance-committee-organizer/

Organising under a Military Dictatorship: An Interview with Sudanese Anarchists Available at: https://libcom.org/article/organising-under-military-dictatorship-interview-sudanese-anarchist-gathering

The Future of the Resistance Committees in Sudan Available at: https://spectrejournal.com/the-future-of-the-resistance-committees-in-sudan 

Barbarism in Sudan: a desperate appeal for help from Sudan’s anarchists! Available at: https://freedomnews.org.uk/2024/04/22/barbarism-in-sudan-a-desperate-appeal-for-help-from-sudans-anarchists/

Written by Sunwo and Mutt.

Support the Sudanese Anarchist Gathering

Posted on 02/01/2025 - 08/01/2025 by muntjac

The Sudanese Anarchist Gathering formed in 2018 during the December Revolution. They are a group of young men and women that met during demonstrations and in universities despite political repression against student organising.

We have prepared a zine of texts by sudanese anarchists which can be downloaded for free or ordered from our ko-fi, with proceeds being donated to the Sudanese Anarchsit Gathering.

If you are an org or group of friends who want to put on an event to support the Sudanese Anarchist Gathering or other Sudanese people resisting war and genocide, get in touch and we can send you a box of the zine for free.

Below is a post we are sharing from the CNT-AIT, cut and paste from a repost by Freedom Press

Translated from Actualité de l’Anarchosyndicalisme.

Content warning: contains accounts of war crimes, including rape.

In the previous issue of Anarchosyndicalisme, the CNT-AIT echoed the call for solidarity from anarchists in Sudan.

Since a terrible war broke out on 15 April 2023 between two military factions – the Rapid Support Forces (or Janjaweed militias) against the official army – civilians have been living in a climate of “pure terror” because of a “ruthless and senseless conflict”, denounced by the UN with general indifference. At least 15,000 people have died, and more than 26,000 have been injured, but these figures are certainly underestimates.

There are 11 million internally displaced people, 1.8 million people in exile, and 18 million people at acute risk of starvation. 8 million workers have lost their jobs and their income. 70% of areas no longer have water or electricity, 75% of hospitals have been destroyed, 19 million students have stopped studying, 600 industrial plants have been destroyed and looted, as have 110 banks, 65% of agriculture has been destroyed, 80% of inputs (fertilisers, pesticides, agricultural machinery and harvesters) in the Geziera irrigated area – the largest in the world – have been looted and destroyed, etc.

The media and activist silence surrounding Sudan is allowing soldiers on both sides to commit genocide with impunity. The conflict between the two clans has many components: ethnic, with its trail of reciprocal genocides (according to the UN); “imperialist”, because each of the two opposing groups is supported by various foreign powers that covet Sudan for its natural resources and its strategic location. But above all, it is a “counter-revolutionary” war. By putting the country to fire and blood, it has crushed the hopes of the civil and democratic revolution. And drove many of the revolution’s activists into exile. By completely destabilising the country, this war has enabled the leaders of the former regime to remain in power without being tried for the crimes they committed over decades (during the military dictatorship and then the coup d’état).

The Revolutionary Committees, in which our anarchist companions participate, are trying to maintain their activity, but this is becoming increasingly difficult with the escalation of violence by the two military factions.

Following the appeal for solidarity, we received more than 1,200 euros (including 200 euros from the companions of the Kurdish-language anarchist forum, KAF), which we were able to pass on to our Sudanese companions. This solidarity enabled them to organise humanitarian distributions of blankets, hygiene products (sanitary pads, soap, toothpaste) and infant milk. A reception area for children was organised, with drawing materials and elementary classes, giving the children a chance to escape the madness of war.

But today, the situation is becoming impossible. The violence of the military groups is unleashed. The Janjaweed militias are behaving like barbarians towards civilians. They murdered our companion Sarah after raping her. For their part, the soldiers are arresting and torturing revolutionaries, accusing them of being allied with the Janjaweed. Our companions urgently need to seek shelter in neighbouring countries. We are relaying their desperate appeal to the international anarchist movement.

If you would like to make a contribution, please send cheques made payable to CNT AIT to CNT-AIT 7 rue St Rémésy 31000 TOULOUSE, or via PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/cntait1

Greetings from the revolutionary comrades of Sudan to all the anarchists of the world!

After the regime attempted to destroy and dismantle the glorious December Revolution, the outbreak of the 15 April war caused the displacement of 15 million Sudanese, the suffering of the entire population, the onset of famine and the deterioration of the humanitarian situation. And now the Islamic brigades have launched campaigns targeting revolutionaries and have made numerous arrests and surrenders.

The group of Sudanese anarchists invites you to show solidarity with it so that it can continue its great liberation activity and take it up again, including from abroad.

We would like you to help us get some of our companions out of the country, where they are threatened with arbitrary arrest.

Down with the fascist military regime, down with the Janjaweed brigades!

No to the arrest of revolutionaries, No to the torture of revolutionaries!

Long live the Free Revolution of December!

=======

WHAT CAN YOU DO IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE PEOPLE OF SUDAN?

You can do a lot, individually or with a few people. The important thing is to talk about Sudan so that as many people as possible are informed about what is happening there!

1) Keep up to date with the situation in Sudan via the SudfaMedia [French].

2) Send messages of solidarity to contact@cnt-ait.info, and we’ll pass them on to our fellow anarchists in Sudan.

3) Talk on social media to your family, your friends, and your work colleagues about Sudan, its revolution and the abomination of the army, the rapid forces and the Islamists. A 4-page explanation of the situation can be downloaded here [in French].

4) Organise leaflet distributions [French], press tables, solidarity collections and events in solidarity with the Sudanese people and against the massacres.

======

**العسكرللثكناتوالجنجويد_يتحل**

Military in barracks and militias (janjawid) must disband

**لاتفاوضلاشراكةلامساومة**

No negotiation, no partnership, no haggling

ضد_الحرب

Against war

**السلطةسلطةشعب**

Power is the power of the people

السلام والحرية والتضامن

Peace, freedom and solidarity

Let us not abandon the anarchists of Sudan! Solidarity and mutual support make us stronger!

What Are The Deer Reading In 2025?

Posted on 01/01/2025 - 01/01/2025 by muntjac

Shola Von Reinhold – LOTE
A masterclass in execution of anarchist literature in form and politic. About the archive, doing crimes, & the extraction of Black radical thought from Black trans women

Michael Rolph Troulil – Stirring the Pot of Haitian History
A history of the Haitian revolution and counterrevolution

Hashi Kenneth Tafira – Black Nationalist Thought In South Africa
How Black nationalist thought came to be and transformed thru tha times

Diana Block – Clandestine Occupations: An Imaginary History
Fiction about a woman who goes underground in america during the 70s – about those guerilla groups that popped up at this time

Darcus Howe – From Bobby to Babylon: Blacks & the British Police
Produced in the aftermath of the uprisings that shook Britain in 1981 and how they arose out of systematic racism, poverty, unemployment and rage against the police.

Mohammed El-Kurd – Perfect Victims: and the Politics of Appeal

Hybachi LeMar – The Ghetto Bred Anarchist

Felwine Sarr – Afroutopia

Orisanmi Burton – Tip Of The Spear