WORTHING Anarchists will be attending a two-day Gathering Against the Prison Society in Brighton on October 31 and November 1.

It is being staged at The Cowley Club at 12 London Road.

The discussions and presentations wille reflect the struggle for liberation, inside and outside of the prison walls and are organised by random anarchists and the Anarchist Black Cross.

As the economic crisis hits deeper and people get organised and angry, the state needs media diversions like the War on Terror, escalating political repression, paramilitary policing, new prisons & immigration detention centres, biometrics, surveillance, relentless imperialist incursions - all to maintain the class divisions that ensure continued economic exploitation. The UK State, leading others, is about to proceed on a major prison building project, whilst more and more our societies already resemble open prisons. It all has to go.

This is a call for debate and exchange, to reflect and agitate...

Provisional Timetable

Sat 31/Oct

9.30 Breakfast

10.30 Introduction of the event and of people.

11.20 Campaign Against Prison Slavery
Forced labour, long a feature of prisons around the globe, has many functions: as punishment, to extract reparations for the cost of imprisonment and even simply as a means of keeping prisoners physically exhausted so they are less likely to rebel. However, it is increasingly being used both as an integral component of prison control and discipline regimes and as a method of generating capital from a section of society that up till now has been held to have no intrinsic labour value.

- - --.--

Talk with the anarchist comrades from Portugal
"It doesn't seem realistic to us to talk about an anti-prison struggle in Portugal. There is an ongoing tension and struggle against this prison-society. We commit to fighting not just one repressive aspect of it. The problems are everywhere and our enemy is this whole system. With this we don't mean that we haven't targeted prisons or fought in solidarity with rebellious prisoners. It is quite clear for us that prisons are a fundamental pillar of the state's repressive system. They are a direct threat for all of us.
And so, we've had experiences of aiming our attack against the penitentiary system.. It is about these experiences and their context in a larger/global struggle that we would like to talk. We're interested in sharing the practice we had and the reflections that came from that practice so far. We want to debate the theory and the methods we choose, so that we determine the way we want this struggle to be. We're also interested in mentioning some specific cases because of their unexpected outcome- both positive and negative."

13.00 Lunch + Break

14.00 Feedback from Greece
Revolutionary solidarity in theory and in practice. An anarchist comrade from Athens speaking about the increasingly repressive aftermath of the December uprising and also about the outcome of the November 2008 prisoners hungerstrike. There will be an overview of the cases of bankrobbing anarchist prisoners Giannis Dimitrakis and Gorgos Voutsis-Vogiatzis, and details of the mass repressive measures taken against immigrants.

15.00 Presentation from anarchist comrades from Berlin, Germany
Some comrades from Berlin are going to give a brief overview about the situation there for what concerns the increasing of acts of attack against state and capital and the reaction to it by the agents of repression: one of the examples are the ongoing trials against several comrades and the widening of social control. Partly-privatization within german prisons and other developments within the prison world are going to be touched, as well as moments of resistance against it, both from the outside as on the inside.

16.00 Discussion

- - --.-- Close

20.30 Benefit Gig "All Cops Are Brothers" w/ Spanner, Crowzone & Jesus Bruiser. Donations entry.

- - --->

Sun 1/Nov

10.30 Breakfast

11.20 Open Session (...)



- - --.-- Lunch + Break

--.-- Open Session (...)

- - --.-- The Shape of Things to Come
Presentation by Tony Bunyan of StateWatch.org, about new European security architecture, biometrics & surveillance technologies and the open prison society.

- - --.-- Combating the open prison : Closing Discussion
Our modern consumer capitalist societies are becoming increasingly like open prisons, watched and spied on, monitored and databased, the average UK citizen is in a prison of monstrous proportions. We need a social and libertarian revolution for a world where we control the direction of our own lives.

Revolt on the streets of Europe

RESISTANCE is ramping up against the corrupt capitalist system all over Europe.

On October 6 and 7 riots broke out in Istanbul as angry protesters took to the streets to oppose the IMF meeting in the Turkish city.

And on Saturday October 10 it all kicked off in Poitiers, central France, at a protest against the transfer of prisons to a new prison built in the area (see photo).

Said a report on German Indymedia: "The demonstration was not the main action of the day and local officials had anticipated that only 80 people would participate in actions. But the authorities were surprised by the arrival of a group of 250 protesters determined to do battle. They not take the control of the demo they were the demo.

"The parade first took the direction of the prison before turning around and attacking police who tried to follow. The procession set off towards the city center, forming a sort of block two banners with reinforced front and rear.

"The militants attacked all banks, insurance agencies and a business run by Bouygues (builder of prisons). A trader who tried to intervene was slightly injured. A policeman was more seriously hurt after being hit by a hammer to the head. "

The report carried in the USA's Washington Post sounded like a return to Cold War rhetoric, with its talk of "ultra-leftists" out to destroy our (capitalist) way of life...

It wrote: "The wanton destruction, which lasted for about 90 minutes early Saturday evening, was a dramatic reminder that France and other European nations, below their surface of stability and wealth, harbor tiny bands of ultra-leftist activists who still want to combat the market economies and parliamentary democracies on which the continent's well-being is founded.

"The violence seemed to have been carefully planned, police said. They discovered caches of masks, hammers, batons and smoke bombs at several points in the city center, apparently hidden in advance for use during the riot. Once it broke out, police said, the protesters used canvas tarps to protect themselves from rubber anti-riot projectiles used by police. "

Tarps, eh? Useful tip.

Although this was a major media event in France, with the usual indignant questions being asked by the right-wing press about who on earth these upstarts were and how they could ever have impinged on their complacent reality, it seems to have been totally ignored by the UK media - even though it is not exactly very far away!

Perhaps that is the problem - France is close enough to us that a wave of insurrection could easily cross the Channel and kick off here as well.

Remember 1789? Well, not literally of course, but you may well have read about the way the French Revolution inspired a generation of English radicals and scared the shit out of the authorities.

Is another storm of revolt on the way to these shores?

Anarchy in the USA

DEFIANT street protests against capitalism are back on the streets of the USA, despite all the liberal hype surrounding President Obama.
That's the picture that's emerged from across the Atlantic, with the spirited anarchist demonstrations against the G20 summit in Pittsburgh this week.
An interesting report featuring photos of the clashes from radical site crimethinc states: "The basic narrative of the day runs thus: The protesters attempt to reach the summit site, but are brutally forced back by police. They eventually turn around and march through Pittsburgh neighborhoods and shopping districts, where the police pursue and attack them. Property destruction intensifies in response to these attacks, and the conflict culminates in a standoff between police and students during which a black bloc destroys a business district. One might interpret all this as legitimate acts of revenge for the police murder in London at last spring’s G20 summit; but it also signifies the survival of militant street resistance in the Obama era."
Of course, at the same time the protests showed that repressive police state tactics are still being used to repress resistance to capitalism on the streets of the USA, despite all the liberal hype surrounding President Obama. A shocking video report showing the intimidatory atmosphere can be seen on the G-Infinity site.

Anarchist Bookfair 2009

WITH the summer fading fast and autumn in the air, Worthing Anarchists' thoughts invariably turn to the Anarchist Bookfair held in London every October - this year it's Saturday the 24th, 10am to 7pm.
This event is a bit more interesting that it might sound. It's not just books that can be found there, but also the latest issues of an enormous number and range of zines, papers, campaign literature and so on, plus DVDs, CDs, t-shirts etc etc.
More than that, it hosts a full day of meetings and talks covering pretty much every subject you might be interested in - if you have already decided that you'd enjoy a big anarchist day out!
The venue for this year's London Anarchist Bookfair, for the 3rd year running, is Queen Mary & Westfield College, Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS.
From Worthing the best way to get there is train to Victoria and then the District line east to Mile End.
From Mile End tube come out of station and turn left. Walk along Mile End Road until you get to Harford Street and entrance to venue is opposite Harford Road. From Stepney Green tube come out of station and turn left. Walk along Mile End Road and venue entrance is on your left opposite Harford Road.

Protest at Armed forces day

Yesterday (Saturday 27th June) 'members' of Worthing Anarchists and Worthing Against War held a protest against the Armed forces Day event in Steyne Gardens, which shamelessly glorifies war and all the suffering, death and destruction that it involves.

Protesters were dressed in blood stanied bandages representing all those who have been killed or injured by wars across the globe. The event got a mixed response from people who supported what we were doing and some who were opposed to it. Around 200 leaflets were handed out to members of the public.

Below is the text of the leaflet handed out:

We are protesting against the staging of an event in Worthing which shamelessly glorifies war and all the suffering, death and destruction that it involves.

Commemorating conflicts in the past, such as the Second World War, when Britain really was at risk from invasion, is one thing.However, today's armed services are plainly not being used to defend this country at all, but to illegally invade and occupy distant countries in the interests of American global strategy and to grab oil and gas supplies for Big Business.

We believe that the so-called "Armed Forces Day" is nothing but a propaganda exercise designed to whip up public support for a thoroughly discredited British foreign policy.Waving the Union Jack to try and get people to march in step behind the Government is no way to run a democratic country in the 21st century - this sort of approach should have died a death with the end of the British Empire or with the last of Hitler's Nuremberg rallies!

Two million citizens protested in Britain against the invasion of Iraq, which is now widely seen as having been based on lie after lie. Many of us think Tony Blair and George W Bush should be facing war crime charges, while Gordon Brown's regime is still trying to hide the truth by holding its whitewash enquiry behind closed doors!At a time when this country is sinking into huge debt, we simply cannot afford to spend £35 billion (MoD figures for 2009/10) on helping the USA to try to control the whole world - meanwhile lining the pockets of well-connected weapons manufacturers! If only we could invest that sort of money in healthcare, education or in developing green technologies to help us build a healthy and sustainable future for these small islands! While young men and women join the armed forces for various reasons, we should not be encouraging them to do so. There are so many more important, and less destructive, jobs to be done in this world.Do we really think "our boys and girls" are doing a good deed by bombing wedding parties in Afghanistan, blowing up little children with cluster bombs or causing defects in babies for generations to come by using highly toxic depleted uranium in our weapons?And if they are killed in action can we really claim that they are "heroes" who have died for something worthwhile, or are they in fact victims - victims of a system that regards them as cannon fodder for its own insatiable greed and megalomania?

No more taxpayers' money wasted on the military! No public subsidy for the arms industry! No more blood for oil!

UKIP billboard subverted!!!!

According to a report on Indymedia this billboard was spotted "somewhere in the mean streets of East Worthing "

News has also reached us that people were so inspired by this action several UKIP billboards and other town center locations has posters put up proclaiming "Vote for Guy Fawkes, the only perosn to enter parliment with honest intentions!"

How to organise an insurrection!

SO WHAT does it mean to be an anarchist? What should you be doing, who should you be doing it with and - most importantly, how exactly do you go about organising an insurrection?!
These are some of the themes of an important interview with Greek anarchists published by the CrimethInc Ex-Workers' Collective.
Here's a taste of their advice: "You have to be friends with people you trust 100% to plan anything dangerous, you have to be aware and informed about anything that is happening in this world to decide what the proper course of action is, you have to be crazy and enthusiastic, to feel that you can do incredible things—you have to be ready to give your life, your time, your years in a struggle that will never end.
"It is healthy not to have expectations, because then you don’t get disappointed. You don’t expect to win. You are used to appearing, fighting, and then disappearing again; you know how to become invisible as a person and visible as collective power; you know that you are not the center of the universe, but that any time you can become the center of your society."
The rest of the website is well worth a look as well!

Happy Mayday!!!!!

Happy Mayday everybody and welcome to the new Worthing Anarchists blog!

Mayday began in the USA in 1884, when the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions passed a resolution stating that eight hours would constitute a legal day's work from and after May 1, 1886. The resolution called for a general strike to achieve the goal, since legislative methods had already failed. With workers being forced to work ten, twelve, and fourteen hours a day, rank-and-file support for the eight-hour movement grew rapidly, despite the indifference and hostility of many union leaders. By April 1886, 250,000 workers were involved in the May Day movement.

The heart of the movement was in Chicago, organized primarily by the anarchist International Working People's Association. Businesses and the state were terrified by the increasingly revolutionary character of the movement and prepared accordingly. The police and militia were increased in size and received new and powerful weapons financed by local business leaders. Chicago's Commercial Club purchased a $2000 machine gun for the Illinois National Guard to be used against strikers. Nevertheless, by May 1st, the movement had already won gains for many Chicago clothing cutters, shoemakers, and packing-house workers. But on May 3, 1886, police fired into a crowd of strikers at the McCormick Reaper Works Factory, killing four and wounding many. Anarchists called for a mass meeting the next day in Haymarket Square to protest the brutality.

The meeting proceeded without incident, and by the time the last speaker was on the platform, the rainy gathering was already breaking up, with only a few hundred people remaining. It was then that 180 cops marched into the square and ordered the meeting to disperse. As the speakers climbed down from the platform, a bomb was thrown at the police, killing one and injuring seventy. Police responded by firing into the crowd, killing one worker and injuring many others.

Although it was never determined who threw the bomb, the incident was used as an excuse to attack the entire Left and labor movement. Police ransacked the homes and offices of suspected radicals, and hundreds were arrested without charge. Anarchists in particular were harassed, and eight of Chicago's most active were charged with conspiracy to murder in connection with the Haymarket bombing. A kangaroo court found all eight guilty, despite a lack of evidence connecting any of them to the bomb-thrower (only one was even present at the meeting, and he was on the speakers' platform), and they were sentenced to die. Albert Parsons, August Spies, Adolf Fischer, and George Engel were hanged on November 11, 1887. Louis Lingg committed suicide in prison, The remaining three were finally pardoned in 1893.

This Mayday just down the road in Brighton there is a mass street party against war, greed and capitalism see http://www.smashedo.org.uk/mayday-09.htm for more info