It was expected that this (May 6th 2002) would be the largest Dublin Reclaim the Streets to date due to the massive level of publicity for it. The city centre had been covered in posters, stickers and graffiti from three weeks before advertising the event plus. Posters had also been put up in Cork and flyers distributed in Belfast. What was not so expected was that by the end of the day 24 people would have been arrested and over a dozen hospitalised by a police riot on Dame street. Pic:Gardai face crowd at RTS
An interview carried out August 2009 on the legalised squat / collective housing project Kopi with Shane about anarchism and political activity in Berlin.
Interview with anarchist squatter in Berlin – Kopi 2009 by Andrew Flood on Mixcloud
An interview with Andrew Flood about the impressions of the North American anarchist movement he formed during his 2007/2008 44 city tour of the US and Canada. The interviews ends with questions about the comparison of the movement in Ireland with that in Britian and the promotion of anarchism via the internet. This was submitted and published in Black Flag.
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Anarchism & elections
If we do not wish to see society divided into order-givers and order-takers we should not take part in choosing the order-givers. Our goal is efficient grassroots democracy, which will be co-ordinated nationally and internationally. We hold that everyone affected by a decision should be able to have a direct say in making that decision.
Anarchists see the state as a mechanism by which a minority imposes its will on the majority of the population. To maintain its hold of power the state forms whatever armed forces and judicial apparatus are deemed necessary to keep the level of dissent manageable. This is different from how most Marxists define the state, concentrating on the mechanism by which the state stays in power (bodies of armed men) rather then the function of the state. It is the characteristic of minority rule which defines the state for anarchists
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When the middle is the top
In the highly unequal society produced by 30 years of Thatcherism, earning over £50,000 does not make you “middle-class” or a “middle-income” family. It puts you squarely in the top 5% of the population in terms of income. Yes, really, according to the Daily Mail the bottom-end of the top 5% is the middle!
This article from 1995 was written as the internet started to go ‘mainstream’ and looks at the anarchist resources that already existed at that point in time online including the first WSM site online.
An examination of the first attempts to censor anarchists online from 1995. The current structure of the internet makes effectively censoring it a very difficult prospect. And the crude attempts to set activists up for persecution has already met a heated response as thousands have e-mailed protest letters to some of the publications involved. A key factor in keeping the information freely flowing will be how far workers using and maintaining the net go along with or oppose this censorship.
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Anarchism: A history of anti-racism
The contribution Irish anarchists have made to building the anti-racist movements here is part of an international movement and tradition stretching back over 100 years. We recognise no states and hence no border or immigration controls. But we recognise that as long as capitalism exists it will create borders, it will create racism and it will create refugees of both those whom it considers ‘uneconomic’ and those it considers a political threat.
The mid 1990’s status of the European far-right as a primarily racist rather than fascist movement does effect the way we fight it. It is the official racism of the governments and opposition parties that has made the far right acceptable. Before World War Two fascism did not arise to head off an imminent revolution in either Germany or Italy. It arose because the bosses needed to squeeze the working class a lot harder than the democratic capitalist state was capable of. Wage cuts were so savage under fascism that wages in Germany, for instance, did not reach the 1931 level until 1956.