Proposal for an Anarchist People of Color Network
April 25th, 2025 by muntjac
An undated zine which appears to be the the proposal hinted at duirng the first conference in Detroit, in October of 2003.
apoc proposal [read] apoc proposal [print]
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in drag – Communique
April 23rd, 2025 by muntjachttps://x.com/Thinc_Exworkers/status/1915096777654407274
In response to the highest court in United Kingdom claiming the right to define others’ gender for them, let’s revisit the words of a famous French anarchist: To be gendered is to be kept in sight, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, & enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right, nor the wisdom, nor the virtue to do so…
To be gendered is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under the pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonored.”
That is gender; that is its justice; that is its morality.
—Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in drag
Against all states, judges, laws and rights—for freedom and anarchy!
Linton Kwesi Johnson – Biblography
April 22nd, 2025 by muntjac
Saving this as I keep forgetting where to find these classic anthologies.
Inglan is a bitch, 1981.
https://archive.org/details/inglanisbitch00john/mode/2up
Dread, Beat & Blood, 1982.
https://archive.org/details/dreadbeatblood00john/mode/2up
Voices of the living and the dead, 1983.
https://archive.org/details/voicesoflivingde00john/mode/2up
Free Oso Blanco
April 18th, 2025 by muntjac
Malik Speaks! – A selection of writings from malikspeaks.noblogs.org
April 18th, 2025 by muntjac
Athens,(Greece): Under the concrete, something’s boiling – BUILDING SQUAD IN EXARXEIA by Rasprava occupation
April 16th, 2025 by muntjacAfter the end of the event “Revolutionary memory and the struggle perspective “ in Messolonggiou [pedestrian area of Exarcheia], a crowd of comrades descended on the corner of Koletti and Themistokleous streets to defend the liberation of the building in course.
The following is the self-presentation of the occupation:
The silence of the metropolis weighs on our backs like a stone. The streets are full of tired looks, bodies crawling out of habit, fear, submission. People move along prescribed paths without questioning, tempering their dreams. Everything is programmed to work exactly as they want: work, consumption, obedience. But, always, beneath the surface, something is boiling.
History is not written by the obedient. Some choose to bear the burden of disobedience. To crack the concrete of normality. To confront the invisible hand of power that suffocates every aspect of our lives. Refusing to submit is not a mere stance. It is a call to question, overthrow, take back what belongs to us.
We are comrades, anarchists who come from different political and ideological starting points, but we have found ourselves in the same fires of struggle. There, where common struggles and collective experiences united us, we recognized the vital need to create a space for meeting, political fermentation, exchange of views and organizational empowerment. At a time where isolation is imposed and communities of struggle are being dismantled by the repression, the formation of such spaces is not only necessary – it is crucial. The repressive blows of recent years did not come by chance. The authorities are attempting to eliminate every source of resistance, crush every form of self-organization and extinguish the flame of questioning. Great gains have been lost, the movement has been driven into a defensive position, the recession is now visible. But we know that history is written by those who do not retreat, by those who are not afraid to face reality. To remain on the defensive means to accept defeat. And that will not happen. The time has come to turn words into actions, to move from defence to offence. To make it clear that the enemy will not get its way with us so easily. To carve out our own field of struggle, to claim our space and time. To liberate territory from domination, to create a living centre of resistance, a radical hotbed of fermentation and action. We see the occupation as an integral part of the movement and the movement as an organic element of the occupation. The existence of territories of struggle is not just a practical issue, but a deeply political one. Occupations are not just hangouts, they are not just places of hospitality. They are bastions of resistance, laboratories of radical practices, cracks in the normality that they are trying to impose on us. And this reality is non-negotiable.
Each neighbourhood, each street, each square is not neutral ground. It is a living map of contradictions, conflicts and claims. Cities are built on discipline, policing, the sterilization of public space. The squares are filled with cameras, the walls are painted grey, the buildings become inaccessible fortresses for those who do not have the means to pay the cost of existence in a world where everything has a price. Dominion is implementing a strategic plan of universal control of the metropolises, crushing every centre of resistance. With the weapon of black propaganda and ideological war, it attempts to shape consciousnesses, while the deliberate degradation of neighbourhoods through the spread of organized crime and the violent expulsion of the local population is paving the way for complete absorption by capital. State repression acts as an armed guard for investors, real estates devour the land, houses become commodities, rents rocket sky-high, public spaces are transformed into sterile fields of surveillance and consumer uniformity. The scourge of gentrification and Civilization is swallowing up cities, functioning as a mechanism of subjugation and social control. Exarcheia, a neighborhood steeped in the history of struggles, is in the crosshairs of the state and capitalist onslaught. On the one hand, the state unleashes waves of repression: evictions of squats, reinforcement of the police presence, militarization of the space. On the other, capital plunders the collective memory, absorbing symbols of resistance and transforming them into a tourist commodity. Our subcultures are being forged and adapted into “alternative” commercial projects, while the neighborhood is being altered to serve the entertainment and lifestyle industry.
We will not let them turn the place of our struggles into yet another decorative attraction. For all these reasons, we are opening the squat in the historic neighborhood of Exarcheia. Because its streets are not for sale. Because memories are not commodities. Because living resistance will not become tourist attractions, but battlefields.
Squatted places can certainly be islands of resistance in the archipelago of struggle. They are also barricades. Spaces where sovereignty loses control, where the state ceases to be the absolute regulator of life. They are workshops of struggle, meeting points, centres of self-organization and action.
Insurgent and revolutionary culture does not appear by itself. It is cultivated. It develops in basements, squares, hangouts, in gazes that do not bow down, in bodies that do not accept being disciplined by the enemy. The occupation is not an isolated event. It has the ability to walk in the practice of denial, to constantly remind us that we are not numbers in the state’s registers, we are not cogs in the production machine, we are not pawns on the chessboard of power. We are here and are taking what belongs to us, creating the cracks from which new possibilities will spring.
The circumstances therefore leave us unscathed in terms of our anarchist consciousness and practice. We refuse to join the terror resulting from the ”repressively unfavourable times”. Against reformist rhetoric, the manifestation of which are choices of political conformism in the field of action, we are stubbornly for permanent and total rupture. Our anxiety is not the repression that has existed and will exist against us but the continuous wager with ourselves, in terms of avoiding political strategies that are threatening to pass a movement into oblivion through an increasingly deficient militant presence both at the level of events and structures.
We understand that the absence of a militant culture weakens us as a movement, makes us vulnerable and helpless in the face of the onslaught of power. Inaction is tantamount to defeat. We are therefore attempting through this project to build a solid base that will promote the revolutionary/insurgent perspective, intensify the threat against the oppressive mechanisms of the present and cultivate the rebellious consciousnesses of tomorrow. Because rebellion is not a theoretical scheme. It is action, it is fermentation, it is constant conflict.
WHY DO WE CHOOSE and PROMOTE REVOLUTIONARY and INEVITABLE (DIRECT ACTION) as a culture?
i.Because, it is the only means of direct confrontation with the enemy in the here and now. It is the practice that creates “ground zeros”, breaking the chains of normality, giving subjects the power to determine their own fate.
ii.Because, at its core, Anarchy is a constant war for freedom. It is not a slogan, it is not a theory, it is conflict, it is action.
iii. Because comradeship is not an abstract concept, but living and non-negotiable relationships among fighters. These are forged in the fire of battle, side by side in every crisis, every defeat, every difficulty. It is there that we rediscover our lost collective self.
iv.Because it pushes subjects to exceed their limits, to break the chains of fear, to question the impossible.
v.Because the aggression of direct action is not blind violence, but a strategic choice. The spread of revolutionary action, the generalization of violent confrontation with the powers of authority, is necessary for the deconstruction of the state and capitalist edifice and the crushing of the social relations of oppression.
The duty of every struggling person is to enrich their tools daily, both on a practical and theoretical level, which will bring them to the fulfillment of their ideals. Boldness, risk, imagination, organization, faith and consistency are required. Intention is not enough, decision is needed. For these reasons, for us the opening of this occupation is a part of this direction.
FOR ANARCHY
Together we can do anything we can chase away the vision of the end that seems so close.
We can live as proud and free people
We can tear down the wall and see a whole life of joy waiting for us!
Rasprava occupation
Koletti and Themistocleous str.
——–
Translated by Act for freedom now!
Martin Sostre – Armed Struggle: Natural Response to Fascism
April 15th, 2025 by muntjachttps://blackagendareport.com/essay-armed-struggle-natural-response-fascism-martin-sostre-1975
“The question now is: What are we going to do about this murderous fascism?”
One might not guess it from its title, but Martin Sostre ’s essay, “Armed Struggle: Natural Response to Fascism,” is a nuanced, careful, and eloquent consideration of political strategy in the context of repressive, totalitarian rule. Published in 1975 in the magazine Black Flag: Organ of the Anarchist Black Cross , Sostre’s essay is partly a response to leftist critiques of the strategies of the controversial Symbionese Liberation Army, or SLA, whose acts of assassination, kidnapping, and armed-robbery were often deemed vanguardist, tactically-ill thought, and politically disastrous. Yet Sostre reads the theoretical manifesto of the SLA against the real-world political conditions in the United States, where in the 1970s, just as now, a set of “repressive fascist measures” were being implemented—from restoration of the death penalty to a system of total surveillance to “ infiltration, frame-ups, assassinations, brutalisations, de-humanisations, behaviour modification, and genocide.”
In this light, Sostre asks, what should the popular response to fascism look like? If the political rhetoric of fascism is white supremacy and its primal political program is violence, can it only be challenged via appeals to humanity, calls for reform, or prayers for peace, democracy, and non-violence? Sostre is also clear, however, that the fight against fascism demands not a single strategy, but a range of strategies: the anti-fascist response must be “multi-dimensional,” “complex,” and able to meet people where they are.
Born in East Harlem on March 20, 1923, Martin Ramirez Sostre , was an Afro-Puerto Rican revolutionary anarchist. After a short stint in the army and a longer period of hustling, Sostre opened the legendary Afro Asian Book Shop at 1412 Jefferson Avenue in Buffalo, NY. The bookstore became a political and pedagogical refuge for many during the urban strife and whitesupremacist warfare that rocked the city in the late 1960s. In 1967, Sostre and co-worker Geraldine Robinson were arrested on COINTELPRO fabricated drug charges. He was sentenced by an all-white jury to thirty to forty years in prison. Sostre spent the next decade in prison, often in solitary confinement, regularly humiliated and tortured by guards.
While incarcerated , Sostre became a successful “jailhouse lawyer” using legal appeals for his own rights. He also advocated for the religious and political rights of all prisoners and for the end of draconian policies of censorship, solitary confinement, and invasive bodily exams. As the editors of the North Carolina Central Law Review note in their introduction to Sostre’s 1973 essay “The New Prisoner” Sostre was also “the moving force behind the formation of a prisoners’ union in New York State and an advocate of minimum wages for inmate workers.” Sostre also introduced figures like Black anarchist Lorenzo Kom’Boa Ervin to anarchist theory and practice. Sostre was released from prison in 1976 through a combination of his own efforts and of the Free Martin Sostre campaign. He died on August 12, 2015 at the age of 92.
A visionary with a highly attuned sense of both justice and praxis, Martin Sostre had the mind of a political strategist. These qualities are demonstrated in his essay “Armed Struggle: Natural Response to Fascism.” We reprint it below.
Armed Struggle: Natural Response to Fascism
Martin Sostre
Sisters and Brothers:
The escalating repression by this predatory, racist and sexist capitalist system makes glaringly clear to all but the most politically backward that the dire predictions that U.S. capitalism would evolve into fascism have come to pass. Restoration of the death penalty, life sentences for drugs, recent supreme Court rulings upholding the denial of the right to live in communes, the right to privacy and human dignity (by granting police the right to arbitrarily invade peoples’ persons and homes and use as evidence in court anything seized during the illegal search), police electronic eavesdropping, infiltration, frame-ups, assassinations, brutalisations, de-humanisations, behaviour modification, and genocide are some of the repressive fascist measures now being implemented.
The question now is: What are we going to do about this murderous fascism? Shall we continue spouting revolutionary rhetoric without commensurate deeds and passively stand by like sheep while our comrades are framed by the gestapo police kidnapped off the streets and murdered one by one? Must we passively wait our turn to be led to the oppressors’ cages, brutalised or murdered? Or shall we oppose the choking fascist oppression which if allowed to continue encroaching on what is left of our personal freedoms will eventually convert us into de-humanised mindless robots? The answer is obvious. Indeed, to defend ourselves by all means necessary against the destruction of our human rights and personhood not only is the natural right to self-defence but a human duty.
By what means then shall we resist the fascist oppressors? The answer to this is determined by the means employed to press us. Our oppression is multi-dimensional. We are oppressed economically, legally, psychologically, culturally, physically and by all other means deemed necessary by the criminal ruling class to maintain themselves in power. Since oppression is multi-dimensional, does not common sense dictate that resistance to it be multi-dimensional with each level of oppression challenged by a commensurate level of revolutionary resistance?
For example, the fascist lies propagated by the controlled media press must be challenged with revolutionary truth disseminated by the movement press, tapes, films, books, pamphlets, leaflets, posters, etc. Not too many revolutionaries and militants will disagree with this. Only when the same common-sense is applied to opposing fascist violence with revolutionary armed resistance do many of them become horrified. Witness the reaction of most of the movement people to SLA’s [Symbionese Liberation Army] revolutionary response to fascist repression.
The current revolutionary action of the SLA is the correct and inevitable response to the countless kidnappings, frame-ups, brutalisations and murders perpetrated by the ruling class members upon resistors of oppression. At long last the individual members of this exploitative-racist-sexist system are being subjected to revolutionary justice. As Malcolm X said, “It’s a case of the chickens coming home to roost.” I extend my revolutionary love and solidarity to my SLA comrades and wish them every success.
Why then are so-called militants and revolutionaries so horrified when armed fascist repression is resisted by the armed might of the people? Do they expect the people to revert to the turn-the-other-cheek state of the 1950s and respond to fascist murder, sadistic brutalisation, frame-ups and tortures with passive acquiescence, love for our fascist enemies and cooperation in our own oppression?
Or is it that these horrified so-called militants and revolutionaries see the liberation struggle as one dimensional, to be fought solely on the level of consciousness they happen to be on? Surely they cannot be so politically retarded [sic] as to believe that in a liberation struggle the enemy should be fought on only one level – that approved by the enemy.
It is just as absurd to propose that everyone resist fascist oppression through peaceful means as to propose armed resistance for everyone. Just because I’m a revolutionary anarcho-communist who believes in armed struggle does not dogmatize me to propose that everyone arm and go underground. Nor would I denounce those who refuse to do so.
Paradoxically, though these leftists bitterly denounce all violence by US revolutionaries against the US ruling class, they highly praise as “heroic” the armed violence of the revolutionaries in Africa, Asia, Ireland, the Middle-East and Latin America. The rule seems to be that armed violence is an acceptable form of revolutionary struggle except when employed by US revolutionaries against the fascist ruling class of the US. In effect, it’s as if the role of these left groups is to protect the ruling class from violence and confine the liberation struggle to the boundaries of legal activities approved by the ruling class.
However, the irrefutable truth is that a liberation struggle is revolutionary war. Revolutionary war is a complicated process of mass struggle, armed and unarmed, peace and violent, legal and clandestine, economic and political, where all forms of struggle are developed harmoniously around the axle of armed struggle. Anyone who by now has not grasped these basic facts does not know what liberation struggle is – or is trying to palm off reformism for liberation struggle.
A distinction must be made between reformists and revolutionaries. Reformists seek merely to reform through legal means, and not overthrow the existing fascist system. That’s why they panic when the people exercise their right to armed self-defence against the genocidal violence of the fascist ruling class. Revolutionaries seek the complete overthrow of the fascist system by all means necessary including armed struggle. Revolutionaries seek, moreover, to subject to peoples’ justice individual members of the ruling class for their many crimes against humanity.
The spreading of the East and West coasts of the philosophy of subjecting members and agents of the ruling class to people’s justice attests to how widespread this revolutionary concept has become. It can never be erased from the consciousness of the people, the revolutionary clock.
At long last the peoples’ armed force has emerged within the United States to oppose the gestapo of the ruling class. The balance of power has radically shifted. Gone forever are the days when fascists could prepare every conceivable crime with impunity. The price of oppression has been raised and shall soon become prohibitive.
The stolen billions of dollars possessed by members of the criminal ruling class shall soon become a liability. They’ll be forced to convert their mansions into fortresses protected by round the clock armed guards and electronic protective devices. Every venture outside the besieged fortress will require escorts of armed guards. Even this will not guarantee safety. For revolutionary justice shall stalk the fascist criminals at every turn. Already the people’s army has sent shivers of fear through the spine of the criminal ruling class who clearly recognise the signs as meaning: the beginning of the end.
Conversely, the people’s armed self-defence force has created new hope in the hearts of the oppressed – particularly revolutionary comrades held hostage in fascist prisons serving long sentences. Soon the fascist ruling class will be forced to free these prisoners of war in exchange for captured members of their own class.
The denunciation of the SLA by the movement press is indistinguishable from that of the ruling class. Indeed, some movement papers quoted statements from the controlled press to support their claim that the people rejected the kidnapping. The criminal ruling class rubbed their hands in glee and publicised how divided the left was over the SLA. Each left organisation seemed to be competing with the others for legitimacy by denouncing the SLA. It was utterly disgusting, reactionary and opportunistic.
Nor were the denunciations made in a spirit of constructive criticism by fellow comrades. No attempt was made by the movement press to publicise the SLA’s programme, analyse it and point out where it was erroneous. The criticism was deliberately hostile and designed to isolate the SLA by poisoning people’s minds against them.
Conspicuously absent from the denunciations of the SLA in the movement press is any discussion of the role of armed struggle. The impression given is that armed struggle is not an essential part of the revolutionary struggle, that revolutionary violence is something repulsive which should be shunned. The left movement press would have one believe that to overthrow the criminal ruling class we have merely to organise mass movements, demonstrations, protest and repeat revolutionary slogans. Even after Chile (the lates of a series of tragedies where thousands of defenceless comrades were slaughtered because of the criminal refusal of leftist leaders to arm the people against the armed might of the ruling class) the movement in the United States still follows the same ill-fated line of Allende – as evidenced by the bitter denunciations of the armed action of the SLA.
Most movement organisations are so busy following their dogmatic party lines, repeating revolutionary cliches and downing other movement groups that they’re unable to see the self-evident. Were their natural powers of perception and consciousness not stultified by party-lineism they would know that a revolutionary liberation movement must deal with the enemy concurrently on all levels, including armed violence. Otherwise when the inevitable showdown with the ruling class comes, the revolution will be left defenceless and the lives of our beloved comrades needlessly sacrificed.
The SLA is the armed resistance of the people to the exploitative, racist and sexist fascism which is now upon us. All resistors of oppression, on whatever level of conscience they may be, should rejoice at the SLA’s existence, at their successful deeds and the fear they put in the hearts of the criminal ruling class. It’s therefore the duty of us all to support by all means necessary, our SLA comrades. We must close ranks with them and give them the support they need. Let’s not fall for the malicious lies spread by agents of the FBI about the SLA which are designed to isolate the SLA from the people to make it easier to capture and murder them.
I have carefully studied the Declaration of the Revolutionary War and the Symbionese Liberation Army and find it generally sound. It incorporates much of our historical revolutionary experience. I believe that the Symbionese Liberation Army has one of the most advanced revolutionary programmes for liberation in operation within the United States of America.
The SLA represents the greatest challenge to fascist power because it objectifies the nucleus of the people’s army which as history shows is necessary to deliver the death-blow to the military arm of the fascist parasitic class.
Your comrade in struggle,
Martin Sostre
Martin Sostre, “Armed Struggle: Natural Response to Fascism,” Black Flag: Organ of the Anarchist Black Cross 4 no. 3 (August 1975)
