A poster by Mutt.
Harehills 2001
Author: muntjac
Free Sidiq!
Free Sidiq!
Sidiq is an anarchist, illegalist and an individualist. On the 12th of July 2024, state authorities had arrested him for cannabis use and possession. He contributes to anarchist publishing and street libraries, involvement in soccer hooligan club, clashes in protests and a passion for writing poetry. Sidiq is looking at a possible 10 year prison term.
His support group are taking donations via paypal at; einzine16@gmail.com
You can write to Sidiq;
Muhammad Ilyas Sidiq
Lapas (prison) Kebonwaru, Kec.
Batununggal, Kota Bandung, Jawa Barat
40272
Indonesia
Sidiq is part of two publishing collectives; Contemplative Editions and Talas Press who publish anarchist books.
Contemplative Editions
https://www.instagram.com/___contemplative?igsh=NHdxaXR3cXd6NDJp
Talas Press
https://www.instagram.com/talaspress?igsh=NnRkdmEyd3Ixc3Jh
Palang Hitam Anarkis
https://www.instagram.com/palang__hitam/
He also writes poetry, one is included below;
PENGAR/Hangover
As long as power stands tall
and threatens the freedom of life.
I will not stop presenting
Rebellion like a robber making chaos
Incarnate pirates along the sea.
Until the rotten colonialists of civilization
will find no more loopholes
Until all is razed to the ground!
Muntjac Magazine Prisoner Solidarity Collective
poet of da soil – we turn estate blocks into gardens of eden.
Uploaded with the permision of our comrade and friend, this text is also avalible as a zine via seditionist
Taken from: https://substack.com/home/post/p-146070200
yooooo
eye know that first posts on substacks and blogs and stuff are normally introductory small bites but imma just get straight into it. quick intro name’s poet of da soil. i’m a poet who explores the written word, sound and performance ritual in an attempt 2 load the gun (as ismatu gwendolyn writes about). using substack for my rambles, poems and lamentations about life.
so, autonomy?
in my own personal journey, i’ve come 2 a place where i’ve realised there is no separation between the political and the personal. that every way eye relate 2 others, every way others relate 2 me is built on the systems of domination that the world is also built on. anti-blackness, ableism, classism, (trans)misogynoir among others directly influence and dictate how we interact with one another, which is why eye now believe that autonomy – which the dictionary defines as “the right or condition of self-government,” or as my friend Elizabeth puts it “a refusal to be governed,” is the best way forward to lives that don’t feel like death.
what happens when we refuse to be governed, by a labour or tory party every 5 years, by the state itself, by an international system of capitalism built on the backs of black people for over 400 years(?)
now this can be hard 2 imagine, we’ve been taught that we need the state, with its monopoly over force and violence 2 rule over us or there will be anarchy. chaos.
but what’s chaos if not 1 in 5 people living in absolute poverty in this country, what’s chaos if not 2 million people using food banks in 2023 compared to 60,000 in 2010. what’s chaos if not the constant violence inflicted on black and brown peoples, be it from the police or immigration. the state relegates us (niggas) to economically neglected yet over-policed neighbourhoods, menial jobs and a constant state of barely treading water day by day, pay check to pay check. the time 4 change is now, the time 2 imagine more, of rejecting what they give us and creating our own ways of living.
Subcomandante Marcos, credit: Rage Against The Machine YouTube channel.
tha zapatistas(!)
now a whole lot of this seems lofty and abstract but there are countless examples of societies and communities that live and have lived outside the idea of the nation-state, that instead govern themselves and figure out how to exist collectively.
from pre-colonial societies of the Igbo 2 the autonomous region in Syria known as Rojava, people again and again have learned and struggled against oppression 2 live in non-state frameworks.
one of the most successful communities is that of the Zapatistas. indigenous peoples in Chiapas, Mexico rose up in 1994 in what is known as the Zapatistas revolution against the neoliberal policies of the Mexican government that sought to further marginalise indigenous communities and their ownership of the land they lived on.
30 years later, the Zapatistas have collectively organised 27 autonomous municipalities, collectively own and look after the land, built their own healthcare systems, primary and secondary schools and education programmes firmly rooted in their commitment to a struggle for a world where many worlds exist. the Zapatistas are a living, breathing example of autonomy, which they describe as creating new life.
nu life in babylon(?)
so now, what is there 2 be done(?) we are living in a world where multiple genocides are being perpetrated while we live in the belly of the beast that plays a pivotal part in orchestrating em (the West/imperial core).
black and brown communities here in Babylon are bearing the brunt of the violence that the ruling classes of Babylon inflict on its inhabitants, forming internal colonies that are super-exploited by the state.
this can be seen in the disparities faced by these internal colonies in terms of maternal mortality rates, police brutality, underemployment, displacement via gentrification among other things. life aint been good, and it aint gonna get better, unless we say enough is enough and struggle for something more than this. unless we struggle for autonomy.
if autonomy means 2 create nu life, what does that look like(?)
what does it mean 2 create nu life in a world predicated on death? how do we look despair, neglect and violence in tha face and constantly war against that(?)
by pooling our resources togetha, moving togetha, trusting each other and creating programmes and spaces where life can flow in ways tha world doesn’t want. we look 2 tha past and learn how 2 create –
- housing co-ops that protect tha most marginalised among us, we reclaim spaces and zones that have been captured and simply left 2 rot by tha exploitative housing system.
we turn estate blocks into gardens of eden, with community gardens and food co-ops
- liberation schools where neglected black kids come and learn english, maths, history, afrikan languages, and whatever they desire all rooted in the knowledge that we all learn from each other , in non-hierarchical modes of educating.
- we engage in political education – turn back and remember our ancestors and their lessons, commune with those who fought for nu life be it in South Carolina or Azania (known as the settler state of South Africa)
- we don’t forget our ppl stuck inside the prisons, instead we fight for them because 2 fight for them is 2 fight for us – we remember that the line between citizen and criminal is a blurred one when we all seen as nigg(a)er
- we provide self-defence classes centred in knowing we live in societies that disable us daily and learn to move with our bodies not against them
- we provide food and clothes and care and affection for and by everyone.
- we take over wherever we want and we dance and dance and dance, we hold ourselves and our bodies in poetry and music and plays and art that reminds us black flesh is only as dead as we allow it 2 be.
if autonomy is 2 create nu life it is not resurrection, we don’t hope and long for better days where tha NHS works and tony blair is giving us new pathways while sending us 2 pen and warring 4 oil, we understand that voting doesn’t offer salvation only validation for a system that kills us
if autonomy is 2 create nu life it is not praying 4 rapture and looking 2 paradise or space for an escape out of the dunya
it is not wishing for blackface 2 be our butcher be it prime minister, president or king
it is not seeking internship or degree 2 be free because black excellence isn’t black liberation
it is dapping up a loved one and asking “how far”
not letting go when their head drops a lil as they sigh and say we’re trying
and telling them togetha life can be more than what we are given.
and with that, eye leave you with a poem. peace and one love.
we turn estate blocks into gardens of eden
there are gods who don’t want us 2 bite into fruit and discover our own divinity
yet we can’t rely on marathon prayers 2 fill our bellies
we sign ballot papers as liability waivers
so MPs get off scot free and drink free wine in their parliament bars
is this what we call democracy (?)
tell ourselves rainbow lies
like green and yellow might be better than red or blue
like tha colour wheel ain’t mouldy
how long will we wait in supermarket-hospital-jobcentre-immigration office-food bank-hostel-chicken shop queues
must be why so many black yutes look 2 internship for priority passes
they ain’t know rollercoaster runs on tha blood of their cousins
but its time 2 get off tha ride - don’t u hear em scream(?)
tha smog coats our lungs
netflix covers our eyes
and the latest diss track built on black womyn bruise blocks our ears
time 2 get off tha ride
rub your eyes
breathe in
breathe out
there is no time but now
cut apathy off and find a friend in your anger and despair
introduce yourself 2 hope
yeah the ends is being gentrified
but if our ancestors resisted colonial hands so can we
grab your ppldem, bun a zoot and read some fanon
grab a mask, some gloves and a shovel
babylon ain’t got no claim 2 tha land they mistreat
we are living dead so we rebel w nu life
we turn estate blocks into gardens of eden
further reading:
https://illwill.com/zapatista-autonomy
A piece of writing on the Zapatistas and autonomy.
Subcomandante Marcos (a leader and spokesman of the Zapatista army for national liberation) speaking on the Zaptistas
Ashanti Alston, a black anarchist and former member of the Black Panther Party speaking on the BPP and the Zapatistas.
BARSNYC – What Does Black Anarchism Mean?
BARSNYC – What Does Black Anarchism Mean?
This is lifted from an Instagram post by BARSNYC, we corrected a few typos and added links to the original texts.
[https://www.instagram.com/p/DCzWA0XvtrQ/?img_index=9]
Introduction
Black people throughout the African diaspora have been resisting, rebelling, revolting, and rioting against the systemic anti-black oppression since the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Black anarchism represents a subset of this broader tradition of resistance that continues to carry on the fight for total liberation and honors the struggle of our ancestors.
Zoe Samudzi
“The Funbamentalist”
“Black anarchy is chaos, because black life is chaos. Black life is surveilled, and its policed, and it’s destroyed prematurely. And yet, black anarchism is this praxis of understanding what it means to sustain that chaos. And it means mutual aid. and it means, trying to figure out what it means to make a word that is safe for black trans women. For black children. It means trying to figure out how we can think about justice outside of the carceral system, it means transformative justice, even when it doesn’t seem like an answer is ever achievable, and there is no answer.”
William C. Anderson
“State Reform Isn’t Enough”
“Black anarchism rejects coercive authority and oppressive top-down hierarchies as they exist across the entire political spectrum. It doesn’t pretend that anyone who claims (or has claimed) to be a liberator, speaking on behalf of the masses, cannot commit atrocities. And it recognizes that acknowledging this, rather than denying it, is how stronger movements will grow. Black anarchism means moving away from and transcending all leftists inundated with oversimplified other/or sectarian binaries. We are struggling for something much greater.”
Marquis Bey
“Anarcho-Blackness” [https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/marquis-bey-anarcho-blackness]
“Black feminist anarchism cannot be contained by inclusion into any organization. It has to be a modality, a manner of walking that threatens to undo the city, steal back the body, and break all the windows because that is where anarchy happens. Anarchism that is not Black feminist is not doing anarchic work.”
Charlie
@charliebanga [https://linktr.ee/CharlieBang]
“Black anarchism means I don’t have to bow down or bend the knee to kings, queens, presidents, politicians, police officers, gods, or deities. I’m not intrested in being subservient, dominated, or controlled by so called masters, rulers, and authority figures. As a black anarchist, I’m more concerned with becoming a permanent inconvenience to those that pose the greatest threat to humanity, the earth, and all that inhabits it. My true goal and desire is to be autonomous, ungovernable, and unwavering in my pursuit to overthrow the state and all unjust hierarchies by any means necessary.”
Emiko
@freecongonola [https://www.instagram.com/freecongonola]
“Black anarchism to me means taking matters into my own hands. Not only am I an anarchist, but I’m also an educator, and we all know that the US education system is bullshit. My grandfather worked with the panthers to help run the freedom schools in the Bay Area, and that’s what black anarchy looks like to me.”
Semiyah
@bsg.bookclub [https://www.threads.net/@bsg.bookclub?xmt=AQGzLm-RROc-k3n4QM9qLu7fFroQmRQ5hoK3gtirjvk75AA]
“Black anarchism is a practice that compels me to apply autonomy everywhere in my life. As an artist, it challenges me to create music that is not bound by rules or a formula. As a writer, it requires me to constantly ask the other question, even if its’s uncomfortable. As a member of a collective, it implores me to use my gifts and skills in a way that not only can liberate me, but others as well. Black anarchism gives me no choice but to think beyond the confines of the colonizer’s boxes and define for myself not only who I am, but who I will be and who I must become in order to get free. Black anarchism has shown me that my resistance is a thing of beauty that refuses to be crushed by those that seek comfortability in conforming.”
Marcela Onyango
@feelthenews [https://www.instagram.com/feelthenews/?hl=en]
“Black anarchism to me means trying to live as freely as possible in a world that was not intended for me to be free while fighting for collective liberation. It means roasting the pigs while using my comedy to constantly tell people we are not free. It means reminding everyone I know that we live in a racial hierarchy that is built on the oppression and exploitation of Black people. This also means that I’m not invited to a lot of parties because nobody wants someone yelling, ‘schools are prisons’ at their parties. But that’s okay. I don’t want to be at a party that pretends that we don’t live in hell, much like I don’t like to live in hell. I want to live in a world free of oppression. A world where we take care of each other and get high together (if we want). Black anarchism means creating fragments of that world today while actively fighting against a white supremacist state that is preventing the birth of that world.”
Lucy E. Parsons
Lucy Parsons, The Principles of Anarchism (1929) [https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/lucy-e-parsons-the-principles-of-anarchism]
“Anarchists know that a long period of education must precede any great fundamental change in society, hence they do not believe in vote-begging, nor political campaigns, but rather in the development of self-thinking individuals.”
Race Today – Affray: A Police Weapon
Race Today, April 1976
[https://archive.org/details/ldpd_15976636_008/page/78/mode/2up] P78
A £25,000 advertising campaign directed at recruiting young blacks into the Metropolitan police force yielded no new recruits. This information formed part of the evidence presented by community relations chief, Commander Marshall, to the Parliamentary Select Committee on Race Relations. It is not simply that young blacks are refusing to join the police force. Commander Marshall states that they are otherwise active::
“Recently, there has been a growth in the tendency for members of London’s West Indian communities to combine against police by interferring with police officers who are effecting the arrest of a black person. . . In the last 12 months, 40 such incidents have been recorded. Each carries a potential for large scale disorder.”’
Nowhere in the Commander’s evidence are we informed of the State’s policy in dealing with these conflicts. He simply describes them as doing nothing “‘to ease the mounting pressures with which operational officers are being burdened.”
The reality is different. Police officers, while through one side of their mouths preach ‘good community relations’, demand, through the other, their pound of flesh.
It was in the summer of 1970 that they introduced the charge of affray as a weapon of retribution and repression. The charge was first used against blacks in the notorious Mangrove 9 case. This is how they proceed. An incident takes place — a clash between police and young blacks — and several young blacks are arrested. Ordinary charges follow, for example, assault, threatening behaviour etc. Meanwhile, another process is set in motion. A senior police officer is placed in charge of the investigation.
He collects statements from police officers and from sympathetic civilian whites found in a door to door search near the scene of the incident. He knows what he is looking for and these statements are peppered with the right terminology. The case papers are then forwarded to the Director of Public Prosecutions and lands on the desk of a legally qualified civil servant working in that department. Reading through the evidence, the civil servant spots the right terminology and returns indictments of affray. This usually takes a period of five to six weeks after the original incident.
The defendants appear in court on the original charges and one fine morning are confronted with the charges of affray. Briefly, this charge is defined as ‘fighting to the terror of the Queen’s Subjects’, the latter being the terrified civilians who witnessed the incident behind their window curtains. Affray charges carry limitless terms of imprisonment. Side by side with the introduction of affray as a political charge, the black community evolved a counter strategy — militant and aggressive crossexamination of police officers in the courts, propaganda and mobilisation of the black community outside of the courts. In order to execute the former, the black community had to find or create lawyers.
White lawyers are notorious for defusing the reality of confrontation that pervades these trials. To carry on propaganda and mobilisation campaigns outside the courts we have had to surface our own publications, established journals being either notoriously pro-police or in the pursuit of ‘fairness to both sides’, whatever that means, they fail to grasp the reality of the black experience altogether. In recent cases of affray, as in the Cricklewood and Hornsey trials, a battery of black lawyers were in attendance. Today, both these lawyers and the publications which seek to represent black interests are under attack.
Listen to Commander Marshall in evidence to the Select Committee: “Nevertheless, continual editorial vilification of police and other social agencies, distorted accounts of court proceedings, and repetition and exaggeration of unsubstantiated and one sided complaints of police ‘brutality’, which forms the sterile basis of a number of ethnic newspapers and periodicals, have a cumulative effect on the state of police/black relationships. .
Not charges of affray, mind you.
Black lawyers have not escaped either. In the Hornsey Trial, eight young blacks were charged with affray following clashes with police in North London. The defence briefed 16 barristers, a lead barrister and a junior for each client. The trial judge, Judge Clarke QC, proceeded, before hearing evidence, to interrogate the black lawyers. Only two, he suggested, were qualified to act as leading counsel. Nowhere in the regulations is it stipulated that a barrister must be this or that before he is qualified to lead. Next, Clarke got out the Law List and questioned the barristers about their dates of call and the addresses of their chambers. It seems he was questioning whether they were barristers at all. This became clearer when he cross questioned barrister-at-law, Gary Webb, as to why his name was not on the list. No one could remember, in the history of the law courts, such a humiliating attack on counsel.
It would appear that the struggle for ‘good black/ police relations’ has become so crucial for the police that they and sections of the judiciary are prepared to attack all progressive black institutions to secure it.
DC APOC – Febuary 2009 Graffiti for Black Liberation
https://web.archive.org/web/20100903233846/http://illvox.org/tag/ojore-lutalo/
“Anonymous Communiqué: These actions were carried out in Feburary for the call to action of a Black Liberation “month.” We wanted to commemorate an often forgotten warrior Ojore Lutalo for the actions he carried out in support of the Black Liberation Army. There were several banner drops and other actions around the D.C. Metro area to support Ojore Lutalo, Assata Shakur and the Black Liberation Army. To all radicals and revolutionaries of color the time for action is long overdue. There is no excuse. Take action now. It’s freedom or death. We’ve chosen freedom. What will you choose? – APOC”
Mutt. – Traces of anarchism In Zambia & Uganda
AWSM Zambia, 1998
Historically, it’s been hard to find any information of anarchism in central Africa, there was the short lived Anarchist & Workers’ Solidarity Movement (AWSM) in Zambia led by Willstar Choongo, Zambia in the mid nineties had a very small “left” and Willstar came up through organising his fellow workers at the University of Zambia (UNZA), his group would later be kicked out of the University for advocating decentralisation and organising meetings outside of political parties [1]. They planned to federate with the WSM (South Africa) who would later become the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Federation however his early death led to the collapse of the organisation. [2]
In the early 2000s there was a infamous debate on various anarchist blogs regarding emails from one Sub-delegate Joram claiming a attack on a police station to a group called the Uganda Anarchist Democratic Forces (UADF) one of the emails read;
“Anarchist rebels with balaclavas attacked a military police station and burnt it to the ground. Anarchist Democratic Forces (ADF) of uganda have been fighting Yoweri Museveni’s military junta from the mountains of the moon in western uganda for 3 years now.
OVER 30 suspected Anarchist Democratic Forces (ADF) rebels attacked Nkooko Police Post in Kibaale killing two policemen and abducting another over the weekend. They also grabbed 20 guns and police uniform. The heavily armed attackers traveling aboard a Tata lorry also set fire to the police post and burnt documents at Nkooko sub-county headquarters. Army spokesman Major Phinehas Katirima told The New Vision(regimes official paper) that the incident took place Saturday morning.” [3]
However, Chekov Feeny, an Irish anarchist who travelled Uganda at the time, wrote;
“For starters, there does appear to be a rebel group called the ADF active in Western Uganda. Again, as reported, they do appear to be based in the Ruwenzori mountains (aka mountains of the moon). The report also seems accurate in quoting Kiboga as a target of ADF attacks, the government owned New Vision paper of 28/8 carried an article entitled “Kiboga district registers visitors to stall ADF threat” which quotes col. Wasser, first divisional commander of UPDF (Ugandan army) as saying: “some of the captured ADF rebels have confessed that the group now operating in Kibaale, Mubende and Hoima districts had been dispatched to establish a camp in Kiboga district. Also, from my brief visit there, it would seem that the ADF are currently by far the most active rebel group in the country, the papers regularly include stories of their attacks.
[…]
Firstly, and crucially, the ADF is universally held to stand for “Allied Democratic Forces”, not “Anarchist Democratic Forces”. When the ADF spokesperson says: “Reactionary forces have used an allied democratic forces (adf) to contra UADF from the masses” does he mean that there are two groups both called ADF?
[…]
Thirdly there is the question of methods. Even if the ADF say they are anarchists, their practice is fairly important. The Ugandan media (both government owned and independant), reported that the ADF abducted 25 people from Nyakeseke village, near Hoima, on August 11th. According to the reports of an escapee, 10 of the captives were beheaded, and indeed 3 of the bodies were recovered on August 20th in Kyangwali forest, without heads. It is possible that this story was concocted to disparage the rebels, although this seems unlikely since the two journalists who first reported the story were promptly arrested for publishing lies – Uganda does not like to publicise terrorist atrocities especially after the Interahamwe killed 8 tourists in Bwindi forest last year and decimated the tourist industry. Also, I think it is worth mentioning that when we travelled to Fort Portal at the foothills of the Ruwenzori mountains, where the ADF are based, we found that youth in the area were afraid to travel the roads after dark, for fear of being abducted and pressed into the ADF. However, if there really are two ADF’s then these atrocities could be carried out by the ‘bad’ ADF. The 3 headless bodies recovered in Kyangwali forest were found about 1 kilometre from a UPDF army base.” [4]
The emails linked back to a website, www.ugandans.com which unfortunately hasn’t been archived. Since the early 2000s, a blog has been active since the early 2000s with articles by one Joram Jojo, with a mix of local news, history and an interesting series of anti-copyright events at a university. [5] They’re still active today, posting about current events in Uganda and occasionally about anarchist politics. [6]
Mutt.
[1] [https://www.ainfos.ca/02/mar/ainfos00088.html]
[2] [https://drinkingwithghosts.blogspot.com/2015/]
[5] https://web.archive.org/web/20050214115112/http://uganda.blogspirit.com/anti-copright_cinema/
[6] https://web.archive.org/web/20220816134017/http://uganda.blogspirit.com/
Jalan Journal of Asian Liberation – Stop Dividing the Korean Nation: A Vision of Unity from Below [2008]
Jalan was published by a sadly short-lived collective of South, South East and East Asian radicals, in diaspora in the “US” and their comrades elsewhere in the world, interestingly in their politics they share several tendencies with the New Beginning Movement [1] of the Caribbean in their rejection of state “socialism” in favour of workers self-control and community direct democracy.
“We are Filipino, Korean, Pakistani, Iraqi, Afghani, Indonesian, Chinese, Palestinians and countless other faces. We are gender-bending men and women, queer and straight. We are fierce and loving. We are what the racists fear.
[…]
In the past, pan-Asian solidarity has been pursued through state power from above: Bandungism and Maoism. Both sacrificed everyday Asian lives to the strategic interests of statesmen, giving the idea of Asian unity a bad name. Today, a new vision is our only option, nourished by everyday struggles for freedom and democracy that Asian peoples wage in the family, at work, in their neighborhoods, and schools. From the relentless Intifadas of Palestinians pushing up against apartheid, to the jam-packed streets of the 2005 Hong Kong WTO protests exploding with fierce South Korean farmers, Filipino activists and Japanese anarchists, we are in action. The new society is breaking out. Try to keep up!” [2]
In another article on their website, they critique white “anti-racist” strategy;
“liberal strategies of “anti-racism” will not liberate us. Liberals encourage white people to question their stereotypes as part of confronting their “privilege.” They do not attempt to abolish the institutions like military bases that produce and reproduce these stereotypes to keep us subordinated.” [3] Later in the article they also address commonplace stereotypes of Asian people(s) such as the Model Minority myth, the Docile Worker Myth, the Perpetual Foreigner Myth and the Myth of the Yellow Peril.
It’s been hard to find anyone talking about them besides the South African Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Federation mentioning them in their magazine where they correctly describe Jalan as a part of the long history of anti-authoritarian social movements of Asian people(s) however (as usual) they label Jalan as an anarchist project, which the editors never call themselves, despite hosting an article about anarchism in the Asian diaspora(s) in “America” & a review of a book about anarchism in China.
Mutt, Muntjac Magazine.
[1] New Beginning Movement, Matthew Quest https://www.jstor.org/stable/26752156 (The Jalan website also has a link to a New Beginnings Journal with similar politics, tho I don’t believe the two are related) https://web.archive.org/web/20110823015001/http://nbjournal.org/our-vision/
[2] Who Are We, Jalan Journal https://web.archive.org/web/20100303101713/http://jalanjournal.org/mission/
[3] Asians Against White Supremacy, Jalan Journal https://web.archive.org/web/20110818200031/http://jalanjournal.org/2008/09/asians-against-white-supremacy/
Stop Dividing the Korean Nation: A Vision of Unity from Below
Over the past decade, Korea has been at the forefront of conflicts over U.S. presence in Asia, the independence and integrity of Asian nations, and what types of economic systems can lead to modernization and prosperity. Many everyday Koreans are asking themselves, why is the US army still present in Korea half a century after the end of the Korean War?
Despite North Korea’s nuclear charades, many are not convinced that the North poses a serious threat to the South Korean people. In fact, the expulsion of Pyeongtaek farmers to build a new U.S. military base, the killing of young South Korean women by U.S soldiers, and the kidnapping of South Koreans in retaliation for their participation in the U.S.’s coalition of the willing in Iraq often seem like more potent problems than Kim Jong Il’s firecrackers. Calls for US withdrawal and demilitarization have raised discussions of different visions of national reunification and the possibility of a final end to the Korean War.
This has led one wing of the South Korean ruling class to consider more friendly relations with the North in a plan called the Sunshine Policy. Among other overtures, they have financed and built the Kaesong Industrial Complex, an export processing zone along the border of North and South Korea. This project is aimed at opening up the North to the recipe of the South Korean miracle economy ofcheap, oppressed female labor and strong state intervention. Liberals like Roh Moo Hyun, former South Korean president, call it a step toward reunification. The conservatives, like recently elected president Lee Myung Bak more honestly tout it for the investment opportunities it offers, while affirming that reunification is not on the horizon at any time soon.
The notion that capitalism could ever bring unity to Korea overlooks the fact that historically it has been rival versions of capitalism, backed by rival cold-war empires that have torn apart Korea and subjugated its people. Kaesong is the last thing that workers need in either North or South Korea. It breathes new life into the decadent, oppressive regime in the North, and undercuts decades of labor struggle in the South by shifting production from militant South Korean factories into a new industrial zone that can more easily be managed. In reality, South Korean workers have called for solidarity with their brothers and sisters in the North, giving birth to a more encompassing vision of reunification on the basis of democracy and workers self management. It is this vision which offers the best hopes for the national liberation of the Korean people.
Good Asian, Bad Asian
As Asian Americans we search through the news to find out what is going on in Korea and find many racist ideas that have been applied to us as well. South Korean elites imagine they are bringing progress to the backward North Korea. This resurrects the old drama of the Good Asian trying to convert the Bad Asian to respect international standards of US Empire. This is a reflection of the racial dimension which attempts to give legitimacy to U.S. foreign policy.
North Korea plays the part of the “Bad Asianâ€. Kim Jong Il is the Fu Manchu figure, a carrier of the Yellow Peril. Quiet but subversive, he cooks up unauthorized nuclear technologies that can potentially destroy the world if they don’t flop and crash into the sea. Although ample evidence of his motives and methods of rule are easily available, the US State Department and its media lackeys keep insisting Kim is an enigma. All they can do is speculate about his mistresses, his madness, and his Dear Leader fantasies. Although he has made clear that he wants to move toward some kind of revamped Chinese style Communism, more open to working with U.S. capitalism, the media keeps insisting that North Korea is part of the Axis of Evil, and that every single North Korean hates every American with a passion. There are other examples of this Bad Asian figure more close to home, for example the Chinese scientists suspected of passing US military secrets to the People’s Republic. The Bad Asian is a perpetual foreigner to the US, linked forever to the nation of his/her ancestors. Even when his/her brains can serve to improve US technology, the Bad Asian is constantly a potential threat to US National Security and cannot be trusted with sophisticated weapons technology.
For every Bad Asian, there is a Good Asian complement. South Korea is the Charlie Chan figure, imbued with positive stereotypes of being intelligent, witty and diligent, much like the model minority Asians in the US. South Korea’s “Asian Tiger” status, its ability to rise up from Third World to First World economic standing in a matter of a few decades is testament to its success. However, its achievement shines a brighter light elsewhere, reiterating the supposed necessity and effectiveness of US imperialism in Asia. The US government emphasizes time and again, that South Korea’s success would never have been possible without the presence of the protective US military bases, the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), and US economic advisors.
This Good Asian-Bad Asian game obscures the fact that people on both sides of the DMZ are Koreans; they speak the same language, eat the same food, celebrate the same holidays, and have the same long and proud tradition of national unity and resistance to foreign invasions. It was the U.S. and Russian imperialists that arbitrarily decided they would be two separate countries.
Beyond the cold war: two competing forms of state capitalism
Seen from the perspective of the prisons and assembly lines on both sides of the DMZ, there are great similarities between the North and the South. Both Korean states came to power by defeating a unified and radically democratic government that the Korean people had tried to institute at the end of WW2. Before the US and Russian armies could occupy and rip up the Korean peninsula, the Korean people started to dismantle the Japanese colonial state and its system of industrial slavery, replacing it with democratic workers councils and town assemblies. They tried and punished corrupt Korean collaborators and Japanese colonizers. However, when the US Army got to the peninsula, they destroyed this burgeoning democratic government with the help of right-wing fascist gangs. They propped up the remnants of the Japanese colonial state, filling its official positions with Korean collaborators and American advisers. In the North, the emerging democracy was not crushed but rather co-opted. Its leaders were controlled by the Korean Communist party and when some of them revolted, the Russian army helped Kim Il Sung put them down. In any case, both regimes were founded at the expense of democracy and national independence in Korea.
South Korea under the rule of the chaebols
The US Cold Warriors claimed that their presence in South Korea would help create a future for Asia free from Communist tyranny. But from the end of World War II till 1987, this rhetoric masked a South Korean right wing dictatorship complete with a US-trained security apparatus unapologetically called the Korean CIA. Run by huge domestic conglomerates protected by the state, the South Korean economy was a far cry from an idealistic free market that in reality exists nowhere, not even in the US. Much like its North Korean counterpart, the South Korean state has imposed an economic plan of ruthless modernization from above based on the assumption that development and progress are only possible with a huge state disciplining its workers to produce at a breakneck speed. The system on both sides of the DMZ can thus be called state capitalist.
The South Korean state historically controlled the movement of capital and goods across its borders in order to protect and rapidly expand its domestic industries. The largest investors in the South Korean economy were either state-owned enterprises or heavily state-subsidized monopoly corporations called chaebols run by an oligarchy of several families. Hyundai, Samsung and Daewoo were all built up by the government’s economic planners. Apparently, the South Korean elites and the US Cold Warriors, despite their free market rhetoric, were not afraid of a state-controlled economy as long as it was their state-controlled economy, as long as economic planning was kept in the hands of elites allied to US imperialism, and out of the hands of everyday Koreans.
Despite the severe repression of the South Korean police state, workers and students conducted heroic campaigns from the 1970s onward for democracy and workers’ self-management. First led by women who had recently migrated from their farms to work in the Wonpoong and Dongil garment sweatshops in Seoul, this movement showed the world that migrant women workers in light industries are not just passive victims and do in fact shape history. In the 80s, this movement developed into general strikes across industry and gender lines. It was supported by liberation theology Minjung churches and worker-priests like Rev. Choo Wha-soon. Student activists dropped out of the universities to lead clandestine political study and support groups in Korea’s industrial zones. This political fermentation came to a boiling point with the Kwangju uprising of 1980, a mass rebellion which was brutally suppressed by the South Korean military.
With the general strike of 1987, the dictatorship finally fell and was replaced with a form of multi-party representative democracy. However, like all representative democracies, the South Korean state continues to suppress the self-governing capacities of its population. The less radical leaders of the labor movement have been co-opted into the new government, where they repress other labor activists who have continued to push for greater workers control and safeguards against casualization and the bosses divide and conquer tactics. The recent imprisonment of Korean workers struggling in solidarity with non-Korean immigrant workers is a case in point.
During the 1997 Asian economic crisis, the IMF, World Bank, and the US treasury tried to rearrange South Korea’s state-controlled economy and turn it over to neo-liberalism, making it easier for American capitalists to invest in Korea. A wing of the South Korean middle classes today wishes to go in this direction, and South Korea has signed the Free Trade Agreement with the U.S. against the wishes of hundreds of thousands of Korean demonstrators. Korean workers and farmers have taken to the streets not only in Korea but everywhere in the world at anti-globalization demonstrations from Seattle 1999 to Hong Kong 2005. This summer they held massive demonstrations, facing down police repression in order to oppose Lee Myung Bakâ’s decision to allow the import of U.S. beef that is potentially tainted with mad cow disease. When the cops tried to isolate the supposed radical elements leading this movement they failed because the demonstrations were largely self-organized through grassroots networks of citizens. This should make it clear that the Korean people are not conservative just because a conservative president was elected and there is a massive groundswell against him, just like there is massive discontent against Bush here in the U.S.
North Korea, Inc.
If state-capitalism thrived under the South Korean chaebol, it thrived in North Korea under a one-party dictatorship. The Korean Communist Party under Kim Il Sung also pursued rapid economic development, prioritizing heavy industry in this case with Soviet and Chinese rather than American investment capital. Despite all of its rhetoric about workers power, the North Korean government believes that its workers are not and never will capable of economic planning. Rather than private bosses, their labor is exploited and managed by Party bureaucrats and state planners who command them when to work, how to work, and how much to produce. In this sense, the North Korean state functions like one giant capitalist corporation, exploiting resources and people to make a profit that it uses to bolster the rule of the Party through the development of military hardware. Rather than South Korea’s oligarchy of several corporate families, you have the Kim family monarchy-monopoly. For a long time, this worked well in capitalist terms, and North Korea in the 1970s was better off economically than the South, but after the USSR fell and Soviet capital became unavailable, the Northern economy in the 90s spiraled toward famine.
It is likely that the Northern leaders will go the route China has gone, opening up to international capitalism while at the same time maintaining the iron grip of Party control of all aspects of life inside the country itself. This would not be a shift from Communism to Capitalism but simply a shift from one form of state- capitalism to another.
During the Cold War, Korea was ripped apart by different visions of global capitalism, led by the USSR and the US. Now the Cold War is over and the question is whether China’s rising state capitalism or the U.S. ‘s neoliberalism will be dominant on the peninsula. North Korea desperately needs foreign investments to survive, and which international block of capital they will orient towards is still unclear. They are moving to allow limited foreign direct investment from China and South Korea, and have even indicated that they desire a more friendly relationship with the U.S. They are playing China and the U.S. off each other to make sure that they get the best deal possible from their future imperial patron.
U.S. leaders are setting up roadblocks to reunification not only because they want an excuse to keep their troops in the South but also because they fear a reunited Korea at this time may lean towards the Chinese orbit. While they have their hands tied in Iraq, the US imperialists have tried to keep up the nuclear scare to delay questions of reunification until such a time when they can ensure the new Korean ruling class will sway toward them using force if necessary.
Alternatives from below
Many everyday Koreans are getting impatient and have their own ideas. Hardly the passive duped Asians the American media paints them as, many have decided that they don’t want to live under the very modern despotisms that have developed on both sides of the DMZ.
In North Korea, many dissidents risk their lives to defect from the current government, escaping the desolation of North Korea to join their families in the South. Some escape to China, where they are subsequently caught by a harsh police force and sent back to North Korea to face labor camps and prison for supposedly betraying the nation. Defections do not necessarily indicate pro-capitalist leanings, but simply that life under the North Korean regime is so intolerable that leaving home is preferable to staying and fighting for something new. Given our limited access to North Korean society as Americans it is difficult to see what is happening on the ground today. But it is hard for us to believe that the North Koreans are all as passive and brainwashed as the US media would like to paint them.
We have more information about the South, though the depth, power, and sophistication of their developing social movements are frequently understated here in the U.S. Today there is a continuation of the democratic labor struggles discussed earlier. In the late 90s, the government tried to sneak through a program of mass layoffs to satisfy IMF austerity measures imposed by American capitalists. In response, workers, students, and churches organized a nationwide general strike despite the winter weather.
This has been followed by recurring smaller strikes and battles against layoffs and unemployment. In one case, Kim Wu-chung, founder of the Daewoo conglomerate embezzled billions of won and fled the country while one third of the Daewoo workforce was being laid off. In response, Daewoo workers and angry citizens formed the ‘Rob the Rich to Feed the Poor’ brigade to get their money back. They chased Kim to Europe and threatened to track him down, forcing the reluctant Korean government to intervene against its protege. These labor struggles represent a serious and ongoing crisis for the South Korean regime.
At the same time, struggles against the presence of the U.S. military in South Korea have been escalated by the expansion of a U.S. military base in the Pyeongtaek region. It is built with the intention of creating an up-to-date US military hub in East Asia, ready for global deployment. This expansion, endorsed and led primarily by the Korean government has brought about forced displacements of many farmers in the Daechuri and Doduri villages.
The backlash against US troops overflows into anti-war sentiments among everyday Koreans. In the wake of the U.S. backed Israeli war on Lebanon in the summer of 2006, South Korean anti-war activists declared they did not want to be the Israel Of Asia, a client state of the U.S. used to bolster its imperialism in the region. The South Korean government provided support for the U.S. war effort in Iraq, where Koreans were kidnapped by the Iraqi resistance. This has prompted many to resist a relationship of dependence that requires Koreans to help kill other people of color and die for U.S. imperial misadventures in the Middle East.
Under these circumstances, North Korea serves as an important ideological tool for the US to justify its continual presence in South Korea. To counter these demands for US withdrawal from Korea, the US State Department and the Pentagon play up the threat posed by North Korea. Basically, they claim they need to save Koreans from other Koreans. For a while, this was facilitated by Kim Jong Il’s policy of nuclear blackmail, where he developed nuclear weapons against the will of the US and its allies. But Kim has engaged in the Six Party Talks, deescalating this conflict. North Korea has taken steps to begin dismantling its weapons program although questions still remain about its compliance. In the last months of his presidency, Roh visited Kim Jung Il in North Korea and now Kaesong is up and running. All of these developments indicate a lessening of tensions between the two governments. This begins to raise the question of why are U.S. troops still there? Why does the U.S. want military tension in Korea when most Koreans do not want it?
The need for an alternative to the Sunshine Policy
A liberal faction of the South Korean ruling class has responded to these questions by calling for the Sunshine Policy, a gradual process of reunification based on the leadership of the South Korean capitalists; Kaesong is a key piece of this. It would provide key benefits for the South Korean elites. They could bolster their nationalist credentials in the face of popular opposition to their collaboration with an increasingly discredited U.S. Empire. Once more, Korea would be a strong, united nation, but its projected liberal leadership would at best have a thin façade of independence and would still be subordinated to U.S. interests in the region (perhaps with parallel patronage from China).
South Korean businessmen could also begin to shift production into the North, allowing them to fire and replace militant workers concentrated in the industrial parks of the South. This would allow the bosses to regain the upper hand that they have lost due to the militancy and organization of the South Korean labor movement. They have already turned toward exploiting migrant workers from other Asian countries, forcefully preventing them from unionizing so as to undercut union wages in South Korea. They would most certainly welcome a highly regulated stream of destitute, displaced North Korean farmers who could come south to staff new sweatshops.
For all of these reasons, the liberal capitalist vision of the Sunshine Policy represents a potential defeat for South Korean working folks and a co-optation rather than a victory of the struggle for national liberation. By contrast, it is the decades-long struggles of Korean workers, students, and radical churches that offer the best hope for potential national unification on a democratic and anti-imperialist basis. Certainly, there are contradictions within these movements, as with any mass movement, and some tendencies within them are tied to the liberal wing of the state bureaucracy and support the Sunshine policy. Nevertheless, these movements have shaken up South Korea’s authoritarian state capitalism, bringing down the dictatorship and keeping the remaining oligarchy on its toes.
With increased contact between the North and the South, our hope is that these movements will spread across the peninsula, challenging the Northern regime as well by linking up with dissident voices there. This could potentially lay the groundwork for reunification from below, offering workers in the North solidarity and mutual aid rather than cheap wages and subordination to Southern profits. What can international Asians and other people in solidarity do to support these developments? We can begin by organizing in our own workplaces, schools, neighborhoods, and places of worship, making links with Korean workers, students, radical Christians, etc.
American workers today are facing the fact that the jobs they used to work have been shipped overseas to Asia. The conservative trade union bureaucrats and labor aristocracy reinforce the racist notion that workers in Asian factories are all passive and obedient scabs who have undercut a stronger tradition of American labor struggle by stealing US jobs. This overlooks the fact that the auto strikes and urban uprisings of Detroit in the 60s were closely followed by strikes and uprisings in Korea in the 70s and 80s when production shifted there. Far from being passive, Korean workers, and Asian workers in general, are at the forefront of labor militancy worldwide. When we think of the working classes’ today, we shouldn’t think only of middle aged white guys in Michigan with beer bellies but also young women militants in Seoul. They should be seen as allies and models for a reinvigorated American labor movement, and international links desperately need to be made if workers on both sides of the Pacific are going to successfully confront the assaults that neoliberal elites are making on our livelihoods.
American students also need to reach out to our Korean counterparts. Recently American students have raised demands for student control over university investment policies, for example with calls for divestment from Israel and from US military contractors. We should extend these calls by demanding that our universities suspend any research funded by the US armed forces, in solidarity with Korean student’s demands for US troop withdrawal from the peninsula. At the same time, we should try to make links with student activists in Korea and learn from their struggles. Through the 1980s, South Korean university students refused to see themselves as separate from the working class struggle that everyday Koreans were engaged in. They bridged the conventional divide between mental and manual labor by working alongside other Koreans in factories, applying their education in radical ways in political study groups and discussions. American students today have much to learn from the perseverance of these South Korean student militants.
As Asian Americans, we are often held up as the model minority, as obedient, upwardly mobile students living the American dream, loyal to U.S. Empire and white supremacy. South Korea is held up as the model minority internationally, as a sign of the kind of prosperity that you can get if you submit to US banks controlling your economy and 35,000 U.S. troops stationed in your country. It is time that we say as loudly as possible that malls and nightclubs in Seoul are little compensation for the fact that those troops have been stationed there to divide a proud Asian country and reinforce a client regime against the democratic aspirations of its own people. Korean workers and students have shown that they do not want to be passive, money grubbing lackeys of white supremacy; they want their country back and want to control their own lives. Inspired by their example, we should cast off the model minority myth and take control over our own lives too. We can begin this by demanding that our own workplaces, schools, and places of worship stand with rather than against the Korean struggle for democracy and national unity.
Luhuna Carvalho – A Peaceful Afternoon In The Zambujal Neighborhood
https://www.revistapunkto.com/2024/10/uma-tarde-tranquila-no-bairro-do.html
This is a eyewitness account of protests in Lisbon after the police murder of Odair Moniz, Translated by Ill Will
Introduction by Mutt.
This piece is one person’s perspective on some of the demonstrations he witnessed following the murder of Odair Moniz, a Black man murdered by the Portuguese state. The usual ‘he was no angel’ rhetoric was spun by the right of course and the usual equally as dehumanising retort spun by liberals and leftists pointing out how he was a “innocent” “father of three” and “ran a restaurant” which in itself silently permits the state to murder Black people who aren’t functioning members of society.
Odair was gunned down following a police chase, the police then claimed he had a weapon which they never actually presented. The response from Odair’s community came that same night. A group of 40 with their faces covered set fire to dumpsters and stoned the police as they approached, injuring two of them.
The following day, a demonstration in Zambujal (Which Luhuna is describing below) began in the afternoon. At 20:00 Odair’s home was raided by police. Later that night, a bus was stolen, the passengers were forced out and it was set on fire with molotov cocktails.
The insurrection spread, in Oeiras a car was set on fire, firecrackers and stones were set off and rioters tried to set a petrol station on fire. Another bus was stolen, set on fire and crashed into a house. Tires were burnt as roadblocks. Gunshots were reported.
Rocks were thrown at the Casal de Cambra police station, Sintra. Elsewhere even more dumpsters were set alight, the police announced an increased police presence within “sensitive urban areas”
October 23rd, the social peace is broken further, ‘incidents’ are reported at over sixty police stations. Dumpsters burnt and vehicles being set on fire, two police officers are hospitalised after being pelted with stones.
October 24th, two buses are set alight along with 8 other vehicles. The police report 45 fires involving “street furniture” The police announce their ‘victory’ with the arrests of 13 and the identification of 18 other suspects.
October 26th, A anti-racist organisation organises a march in downtown lisbon, which is countered by a smaller “pro-police” demonstration. The march route was adjusted to avoid “conflict”.
A Peaceful Afternoon In The Zambujal Neighborhood
I arrived in the Zambujal neighborhood with some friends, in time to watch the march that passed in front of the house of Odair Moniz and his family. It was a moment of immense sadness. Someone important to all those people, to that entire community, would not return. Not because he wanted it, not because he was at fault, not because of illness, not because of an accident, simply because he had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that wrong place was the target of the gun of a PSP agent who was too frightened of the world to be able to consciously exercise the deadly power that had been entrusted to him. Part of every funeral, every vigil, every mourning, is the encounter with those with whom we share the loss. This one was no different. Some people were crying while some children were playing. No contrast or dichotomy, just part of that way of being together in which celebrating the lives of those who have left fills the breadth of the lives of those who remain. The march was moving through the neighborhood.
Many women of various ages, some men, and a handful of activists from other places. A megaphone was circulated on a pedestrian avenue. People spoke about justice, racism, and a police force that was brought from far away to inflict violence on the neighborhood. They demanded an end to the “tight feeling in the stomach that all mothers feel when their black or gypsy children leave home” because they don’t know if that’s the day a 20-year-old police officer who has never left his hometown decides that he is the Cowboy on duty in Amadora. Anger, a lot of anger, but a contained anger, because it wasn’t the first time and it won’t be the last. In the distance, there are a lot of police. In the opposite direction, at the end of the block, on the corner of the café, several young people, some of them already with their faces covered, are letting time pass. From time to time, they go and get a bin, or tear down a traffic sign, or set off a firecracker. They wait until nightfall, gathering elements for a barricade. Many are still children. They jump and jump, shouting “vingança, vingança!” (“revenge, revenge!”). A now older boy, with his face covered, pushes a container where the police can see him and shouts “suck my dick, fucking pigs” while grabbing his balls. Shortly after, a lady comes to the window and calls him by name to go home. Little does he know that he has committed the crime of insulting the authorities and endangering public order.
The people at the rally and the young people seem to be worlds apart. They don’t talk much. The young people are going to cause a huge mess and no one will be able to stop them. But at the same time, there is a certain familiarity present. There is something tragic about the situation, which doesn’t end there. They will all have to continue to deal with the violence and brutality of the way Odair died, when none of this appears in the news anymore. The afternoon goes on. Taxis, buses, people returning from work and school, parents with children pass by. On a street corner, some South Asian men are doing construction work at the entrance to their grocery store, seemingly indifferent to the situation that is approaching. It would seem like a normal day in a quiet neighborhood, were it not for the police presence at one end of the street and a riot brewing at the other. But even that doesn’t seem to disturb the people. No one runs, no one runs away, even though everyone knows what is going to happen.
The calm is almost seductive, and as we get to know the people who come up to us and ask us who we are and what we are doing there, we almost forget what happened there, what we are doing there. It could just be a good afternoon spent getting to know people. We are, in a way, alone in the neighborhood. We don’t know anyone, we have no contact. And yet there is no hostility. Everyone is quick to speak to us in a friendly way. They explain to us that they do not believe the police version, which they dismantle in a thousand ways: “Where was the knife then? If there was a knife they would have already shown it”; “These are police officers from the North who come here to kill us”; “He was drunk and had had an accident, how was that a threat?”; “it is most likely that they had already shot him before the car hit the wall”; “So why did the PSP officer say there was no need for it?” The opinions are the same. A gypsy man who owns a stall in Benfica tells us about an uncle of his who died in a shootout with the police, but he was a real criminal, and those who live by the sword die by the sword.
Everyone agrees that yes, if he were a real criminal, friend or not, he would be playing a game where these things happen, but that Odair was a calm, peaceful, innocent guy. Nothing justifies the two shots he received. Another man, holding a pitbull, asks if we are from CMTV. We explain that we are not and we continue talking, he tells us about his informal social assistance programmes, ending the conversation by saying that here in Amadora they are the Palestinians. People join in and leave the conversation as the afternoon goes on. The sun disappears behind the buildings. Everyone knows what is going to happen. “The kids have no sense,” everyone agrees, “but they are right, it couldn’t be like this.” We hear several versions of this throughout the day, as if people were talking to themselves. On the one hand, they are aware that the upcoming riots will be dangerous and destructive, but on the other, they also feel an outrage that no politician or commentator will ever know how to respond to.
They know that the next day they will be crucified on television by a dozen talking heads who will project onto those blocks the American and Brazilian films they watched on Netflix, talking about drug dealers and gangs that rule over the neighborhood with an iron fist, but they also know that this is precisely why so many of those young people will spend the next few hours burning everything they can get their hands on. The whole of Portugal has a say in their lives without ever having spent five seconds near them. Night falls. As we ponder whether to stay or go, we see a parked bus at the end of the block. Its windows are being broken with stones from the pavement. Then Molotov cocktails rain down and the vehicle begins to burn. In the distance, several people watch the fire in astonishment and disbelief, spellbound by the flames, as if time had stopped, until someone shouts “police!” and the streets immediately empty. We only stop running at the end of the street, close to the tunnel that leads to Buraca.
A giant tower of smoke cuts through the dark blue sky. People arriving in the neighborhood from the train wait there for the situation to calm down. It is a strange image, which echoes those that everyone has seen a thousand times on television, but in distant places around the world. A young black woman, dressed as if she had just come from a corporate job in the city center, repeats what we have heard so far: “Damn, now we don’t have a bus stop? But look, they did the right thing, we are outraged.” This is the contradiction at play: everyone there aspires to have a normal life, but that normal life will always be denied to them with the same violence with which they will be punished for not having it.
FRONT INTERNATIONAL DE DECOLONISATION – Il n’est point de hasard, apres la kanaky, la Martinique se revolte [FR/EN]
Il n’est point de hasard, après la Kanaky, la Martinique se révolte.
Aux demandes légitimes de ces deux pays, la France, à la dérive démocratique chronique, ne répond que par la répression et la force.
Ces deux territoires sont exsangues économiquement et les seuls profits générés par les activités commerciales sont captés par les colons, caldoches dans le Pacifique et békés dans les Caraïbes, lorsqu’ils ne sont pas détournés pour alimenter les caisses de l’Etat français à travers la TVA.
La cherté de la vie et le mépris des populations locales sont les deux leviers de la colère sociale qui secoue la Martinique. Cette vie chère est la conséquence de l’extrême dépendance alimentaire, du mal développement, des bas revenus et d’une misère coloniale persistante. Elle s’inscrit par ailleurs dans un contexte de spoliation des terres martiniquaises, de justice à deux vitesses, de départ massif des jeunes et de politique de colonisation de peuplement.
C’est l’expression insupportable du système coloniale en Martinique.
Aux premières mobilisations pacifiques, l’État français a, une nouvelle fois, répondu par une violence sans nom, désormais pratique courante des forces de répression.
Le Front International de décolonisation s’insurge contre ces pratiques d’un autre âge qui montrent la déliquescence démocratique d’un état colonial.
Il considère que la solution se trouve dans la mise en œuvre d’une véritable stratégie décoloniale permettant la construction d’un système économique véritablement au service du peuple martiniquais et capable de lui assurer un futur digne.
Nous exigeons le départ de la CRS8 qui n’a rien de républicaine et qui n’assure la sécurité qu’aux tenants du pouvoir et à leurs relais locaux.
Le Front exige une solution démocratique aux problèmes institutionnels de Kanaky et aux problèmes économiques, sociaux et politiques des deux territoires concernés. Cette solution doit être une véritable étape vers l’autodétermination et l’indépendance.
Trans. English via google translate;
“It is no chance, after the Kanaky, Martinique revolts.
To the legitimate demands of these two countries, France, which is chronically democratic drift, responds only with repression and force.
These two territories are economically exaggerated and the only profits generated by commercial activities are captured by settlers, Caldoches in the Pacific and Bekés in the Caribbean, when they are not diverted to supply the French State’s coffers through VAT.
The dearness of life and the contempt of the local populations are the two levers of the social anger that shook Martinique. This expensive life is the result of extreme food dependency, poor development, low incomes and persistent colonial misery. It also takes place against a backdrop of dispossession of Martinican lands, two-speed justice, mass departure of young people and a policy of settlement.
This is the unbearable expression of the colonial system in Martinique.
To the first peaceful mobilizations, the French State once again responded with unnamed violence, which is now common practice of the repressive forces.
The International Decolonization Front is protesting against these old-fashing practices that show the democratic collapse of a colonial state.
He believed that the solution was to be seen in the implementation of a genuine decolonial strategy for the construction of an economic system that was truly at the service of the Martinican people and capable of ensuring a dignified future.
We demand the departure of CRS8 which is by no means a republican and which provides security only to those in power and to their local relays.
The Front requires a democratic solution to the institutional problems of Kanaky and to the economic, social and political problems of the two Territories concerned. This solution must be a real step towards self-determination and independence. ”