Scottish Anarchoblogs

 Workers Initiative, Poland.

Sent: Tue, 9 March, 2010 11:05:20

Subject:  Poland: City is not a company! - 37 anarchists arrested in Poznan

      City is not a company!” - 37 anarchists arrested in Poznan after clashes with cops. On Monday, 8th March, about 50 people from Rozbrat squat Collective made a demonstration in front of the gate of Poznan International Fair Center, where a congress of local councils from all over Poland was taking place. Shouting slogans “City is not a company. Rozbrat stays!”, the anarchists blockaded the gate. Many cars with the officials were forced to turn back. After a while, the protesters decided to walk inside the premises of the Fair, they were not stopped by anyone. Then, they tried to go inside the building where the congress was taking places. They were attacked by the police. Some of the anarchists were heavily beaten up, 37 were arrested and driven to three different police stations. Most of them are already released with minor charges. From the information we were able to gather, 3 people will be charged with an attack on a functionary, those three are still in jail.

      The demonstration's aim was to show that the city council in Poznan is not interested in developing the social-cultural side of the city but they only care about the profits coming from the wealthy investors. Activists from

Rozbrat have been coming to the meetings of the city council for over a year now and the officials have never been interested in doing anything about our situation. They have been debating over a local development plan for the district of Solacz, where Rozbrat is situated and this debate has been taking them so long only because so many ordinary people have come and have been opposed against it. According to the plan, there will be a villa neighborhood on the premises of Rozbrat. Meanwhile, another culture center, the Inner Spaces gallery, which was renting a bulding from the city, has just been removed and the city decided to rent that space to a restaurant. Two independent and long-running cinemas Malta and Amarant also have to close down because they have been dominated by the big multiplex cinemas and they also haven't received any support from the city council. Still, the authorities are standing for the title of the Cultural Capital for Poznan in 2016. Monday's action was a call for the demonstration on the 20th March. We won't give up without fight!

   

    The media is now full of all those well heeled “experts” calling for deep cuts in government spending. We are bombarded with headlines reading; “Business leaders have demanded that the government start making public spending cuts this year to reduce the UK's £178bn deficit.” Not only are they calling for deep cuts but they want them now, or even yesterday. At least two employers’ groups, the CBI and the Institute of Directors have spouted that faster cuts in government borrowing are needed to restore credibility in public finances.

      It sounds all very scientific and fair, except that there is no science behind these statements, just greed. Savage cuts in government spending means more out-sourcing to the private sector, (the CBI mob) and of course eventually less tax for them to pay as government spending drops. As for the “fair” part, well, not one of those mouthing off about cuts in government spending will be in the least hurt by those cuts. No that honour falls on you and I, we are the ones that will suffer under any government spending cuts, health, education, pensions, social benefits, the young, the elderly, the unemployed, (and that army is set to grow) the low paid, even those who may think they are reasonably comfortable, they also will feel the pain. Yet not one of those who will be harshly treated by these cuts is in any way responsible for the government’s debt. The debt is there because a bunch of greedy sleaze groomed parasites blew billions in their blind quest for pots of cash for nothing, sometimes called fancy accounting. They blew it, they screwed up big time, and it looked like some of them would go out of business. So their minders, the equally sleazy parliamentarians, over burdened with their expenses, came running to the rescue and handed them billions of our money. Our generosity is now to be repaid with a kick in the balls, to which we are supposed to say,”thank you kind sirs, for saving the financial spivs, of course this should be said with a slight curtsey.

     Well why don’t we kick back and refuse to accept any cuts in our living standard, refuse to accept working longer to get our reduced pensions, refuse to see our kids education going done the tubes, refuse to see our national health system decimated and privatised, refuse to accept wage freezes or wage cuts that would return this generation and the next back to the Victorian era. What would function in this world if it was not for the working class, we built this world, it is our world, it’s time to take it back.

    

     8,000 marched through Glasgow on the EIS demonstration on Saturday 6th. On Monday 8th March a two day strike by public service workers. The cuts are coming fast and furious as well as deep and vicious, so let's keep the fight against them coming just as fast and furious. These cuts are across all sections of the working class and demand a class wide response. Working or unemployed, retired or in education, these cuts are aimed at you. It is important that we organise across union borders and into the community. It is being demanded that we pay for the bankers greed and the sleazy politicians incompetence. They will not in any way shape or form suffer from these cuts, they just implement them, while enjoying massive salaries, unbelievable bonuses, expenses and mind blowing pensions. This bunch of spivs and parasites must be faced down, we can't afford to let them send the next generation back to Victorian times.

       Why do we have to appeal to them for a decent standard of living? We make everything, we distribute everything, then we beg them to give us a decent life. I’m sure we could come up with a more just and sustainable system without using too much imagination Why put up with a system that sees a bunch of incompetent greedy parasites cream off a life of unearned opulence while we struggle for a decent life. We have the power, the skills, the resources, and now the opportunity, all we are lacking is the will, the will to transform this wage-slave system into a society built on mutual aid, voluntary co-operation and free association and based on sustainability. A society that sees to the needs of all our people, a society of justice before greed and profit.

A NEEDLESS SEA OF TEARS.

Though we live in a world of callous commerce

and know justice

is an altar where the caring are sacrificed,

see freedom as a river that runs parched

in the fierce desert of poverty,

our thoughts cannot be chained

our dreams will not be caged.

We will think beyond the profit race

dream beyond the market place

in friendship clasp each human hand

with compassion try to understand

our differences, our hopes, our fears,

dragging this world from its needless sea of tears

 

      

       Why should somebody who has worked all their life and paid tax and national insurance, now be told they will have to work longer before getting their pension? Why should parents be told that the education for their kids will be cut? Why should someone on benefit be told that their benefits will be cut? Why should the elderly be told that their care will be reduced? Why should someone working away diligently to earn their bread be told that they are now unemployed? What have these people done wrong? The simple answer is that they paid billions to the bankers. So now they have to suffer. In a situation like this, peasants with pitchforks comes to mind

        I believe that the people of this country should be watching and learning from the Greek resistance, perhaps it might also stimulate and inspire parallel movements in this country and other countries whose people are likewise pissed-off because they have to bear the costs of a crisis they did not cause and a “recovery” that is in fact a recovery for the elite financial parasites and nothing to do with them, except that they are expected to take the full force of all the cuts. Who can criticise the people for trying to safeguard their standard of living. However the Greek resistance would need allies elsewhere to succeed and vice versa. This capitalism global crisis is just one of recurring crisis in a catalogue of various grades of crisis and as usual is a burden for the working classes of the world. However every crisis in the capitalist system should be seen as an opportunity not just to reform but to destroy the system and replace it with a fairer and more just, non-exploitative system that sees to the needs of all our people. To suffer the brutal onslaught of this crisis while missing a chance to grasp the opportunities that it offers would only make this crisis a greater tragedy for the working class.

        Perhaps it is time the peasants remembered where they put their pitchforks.