"A Call to Action Against Slavery"—We're About to See the Largest Prison Strikes in US History

The OP also mentions Rojava in this post

From the perspective of some flavor of left-socialist-anarchist, what are your thoughts on how or whether one should restrict capitalism?

In my own little world I have on multiple occasions tried to make partners out of employees and it's not easy. In a free society, even an anarcho-socialist utopia, I think capitalism will erupt. Supposedly in the Democratic Federalism in Northern Syria about 80% of the economy is composed of some kind of collective/commune/coop, but there is still a capitalist element.

Do you imagine collectivism winning out?

Live and let live in a mixed economy?

Suppressing capitalism? (you can say liberating workers if you want I guess)

Or is my premise confuzzled in some way?

First terminology quibbles.

Here in Los Dos Politardia, by longstanding convention, the unqualified meaning of the a-word is ACism. ACism isn't an ideology, it's just silly gibberish. As for posting here, and for quite a while, I've used the acronym RWA to refer to real world a-word-ism. During my ~8 yrs posting here, for IRL reasons, I've came to personally 86ed the a-word. Both online & IRL. When necessary, I use the synonymous term 'horizontal'. RWAers are always socialist by definition.

It's not my thoughts. RWA has been around a few centuries before me. RWA is by definition anti-capitalist. Originally RWA was a reaction to capitalism. Modern RWA defines itself as opposition to hierarchy. This includes not necessarily capitalistic hierarchy, including what I personally consider the worst thing ever... patriarchy. That said, anti-capitalism is always a given. As we say "Capitalism cannot be reformed".

Absolutely not. Capitalism is a side effect of an unfree society.

I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong, but it doesn't seem obvious to me that capitalism wouldn't emerge at least in spots. Some people, I think, want to rent themselves out and others want to rent them.

There are a lot of kinds of anarchism apparently, even Anarchism without adjectives.

Nobody, or I guess I should say no sane person, wants to "rent themselves out" anymore than they wanna enslave themselves. This becomes obvious when what it means to "rent yourself out" is examined.

No, not really. RWA is opposition to hierarchy. The differences are in tactics, priorities, and areas of concern.

Could be, but have you asked people?

And, again could be, but at least to a neophyte there seems like significant differences even granted opposition to hierarchy as a common element.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarch...ols_of_thought

No. Again, we would need to explore what "renting yourself out" actually means.

Again, not really. Quickly going down the table of contents of the Wikipedia page, these different 'kinds' of RWA are all differences in tactics, areas of emphasis, or are historical/philosophical musings that aren't really relevant today.

I don't know what's real and what's propaganda, but this article from The Nation is very anti-YPG. It doesn't seem like there's any genuine reporting in there though and it's an unchallenged conduit for opposition groups, notably the KNC which is a Kurdish Nationalist organization.

Their insistence that the Federation of Northern Syria (the RWA Kurds) are tools of Assad is very reminiscent of the Spanish Communist's suppression of the Spanish Anarchists/Trotskyists (POUM/CNT-FIA).

Who knows though?

Rolling Stone has a new article on Westerners going to fight in Rojava.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...-state-w466069

Thanks for the linkees !!!1!

I'm not going to pretend I know what's going on in Rojava, Syria, or greater Kurdistan for that matter. It's obviously all very complicated, and cannot be reduced to binary sides. I'm also not conversant on M.Bookchin's ideas on Libertarian Municipalism. Given developments in Rojava, I've added this to my to-do list. Bookchin's day job was a historian, including a historian of RWA. I am familiar with that work (ex: The Spanish Anarchists-The heroic years, 1868-1936, full text here). When it comes to RWA, Bookchin was most definitely legit.

Last year, us San Diego IWWs were asked to host a leg of a speaking tour by some folks from Rojava, but that fell through because they couldn't get visas to come to the US.

Depending on what folks wanna count, which is always a good debate... this is the fourth large scale RWA experiment in history. Following on Ukrainian Free Territory (1917-1921), the Shinmin Autonomous Region in Manchuria (1929-1932), and revolutionary Spain (1936-1939). All four of these societies were war time societies. All formed in a short term power vacuum. The three previously experiments were defeated by external force of arms.

In Spain at least, there was constant tension between 'we need to win the war first to have the revolution' -vs- 'the revolution comes first'. The former ideal for most part won the day. Both The Nation, and the Rolling Stone articles point to this same dynamic, with the 'war first' ideal winning the day in Rojava.

But as you said, it's really hard for us to know here. We really need zombie G.Orwell to report on Rojava, but he'd probably sign up to fight instead. Being undead, that might be his best call anyways.

Yesterday I listened to an interview of Andrej Grubacic on the Letters and Politics show by Mitch Jeserich. It was really good and he talked a fair amount about the IWW. I can't find it online even though you can go to https://kpfa.org/archives/ search the archives and find several episodes with Grubacic.

I imagine you are familiar with Grubacic who wrote, among other things obv., Wobblies & Zapatistas.

This is from 2014 and is about the early days of the organization of the movement in Northern Syria.

One thing I forgot to mention in my last post is the Rolling Stone mentions a Rojava recruitment website, <rojavaplan.com>, several times. Today, the home page has been stubbed out with only the following text: "RojavaPlan is now directly managed by the Rojava Economics Committee". More information coming soon.". However, the rest of the website is still all there. All you need to do to read it is get to most any subpage directly by URL... which is not at all hard to do.

Pretty interesting stuff.

It gives me a little pause that there is a charismatic leader figure for Rojava. He doesn't wield power, but it seems counter to the ideology to even have the big photos everywhere.

Indeed.

http://www.alternativelibertaire.org...ive-La-voie-du

This is a story from a French Anarchist site today

translated

mixed economy

There are 100s of coops, some big ones

Good attitude, see Deming and continuous improvement

A well written and at least somewhat critical (in the sense of being objective or at least not overt propaganda) overview of the background and system of government in Rojava. Unlike most info out there this is focused on civilian life and not the military/war.

http://libcom.org/news/democratic-co...istan-25042016

https://www.aei.org/publication/u-s-...-syrian-kurds/

The neo-cons are supporting Rojava.

I believe I'm starting something along the lines of an anarcho-syndicate. Well, a worker owned, democratic, nearly or fully non-hierarchical organization anyway.

There's an Anarchist book fair tomorrow in Anaheim. I may be there.

This may not be the best link, but this story about an Anarchist in the Taiwanese cabinet was in the LA Times today.

https://www.pressreader.com/usa/los-...81560880708103

I've heard this guy on the radio a few times (Letters and Politics - Mitch Jeserich) and like him a lot. This is a good talk imo.

Is this still going on? Have they made any progress? Not once do I recall ever seeing this mentioned in the establishment media.

Not that mass strike . I made a few posts in another thread that had some linkees to contemporaneous reporting. From the few reports that filtered out, it seems... while it was the largest US prison strike, it wasn't half as large as hoped for. It seems there there was a coordinated effort made by the prisons to prepare for the strike by laying in supplies/beefed up staffing/etc. The highlight was perhaps when a striking prison's own guards pulled a wildcat strike. The IWOC did an after action report, which should be on the interwebs somewhere, with actual facts, and such.

Organizing against slavery continues however... The IWOC sent out an email alert just today for phone-ins at a prison in GA, and at a prison in NC.