Republished from Ideas & Action

The Workers Solidarity Alliance stands in solidarity with all of the people brutalized, kidnapped, and put in cages by the police in Oakland, California—and around the world—as more and more people defy the sanctity of private property and capital and put human life before the profit margins of the people who own and operate our world.

On January 28, 2012, people from Oakland and beyond bravely attempted to take an abandoned building to build a community center for living space, organizing infrastructure, medical facilities, and so on. It is absurd that huge buildings lay empty while families live in the streets and are denied basic access to shelter, food, and the necessities of human life. But such is the logic of capitalism.

From Cairo to Oakland to Detroit: Build popular resistance of the working classes and poor!

Flier produced by: The Committee for a General Strike PO Box 15455, Detroit, MI 48215 –

Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Syria. Across North Africa and the Middle East we are witness to a great rising up of the popular classes: the working classes, poor, marginalized and oppressed! Young and old, women and men!

When Mohamed Al Bouazzizia, a Tunisian street vendor, set himself on fire in an act of anger and frustration in protest of the abuse and extortion by police and agents of the Ben Ali dictatorship, his act became one of martyrdom that set in to motion a worldwide revolutionary movement. These movements are ones of mass radical action whose struggles have confronted, challenged and toppled ruling autocrats.

On the day before the OFL rally in London, community members and allied trade unionists in Toronto, Hamilton, Peterborough and Kingston held a coordinated day of action against CAT retailer Battlefield CAT-Rentals. This action was carried out to show how simple it is for those outside CAW 27 to show solidarity with their working class brothers and sisters, and to hopefully inspire other people to get involved in broadening the battle against Caterpillar to include new fronts.

Below is the text of a broadsheet that was handed out at the rally in London on January 21st. You can download the broadsheet here:

--

On Friday, January 20th cities across Ontario held information pickets in support of the workers in an attempt to mobilize community members to act against a union-busting employer. Secondary pickets—against Battlefield Cat Rental—were held in Toronto, Hamilton, Peterborough, and Kingston.

http://conspiretoresist.wordpress.com/leah-henderson/

As most of you probably know by now, I have decided to plead guilty to the charge of counseling to commit mischief. Originally, I along with 20 others was charged with four counts of conspiracy in what was called the G20 main conspiracy group.

I am writing because the past year and a half of facing these charges and living under bail conditions has meant that I have not been able to talk as openly as I would have liked. My voice has been muzzled by the state, which has served as a powerful reminder of the many voices that are muzzled by the daily colonialism, patriarchy, racism and violence of the world. While the silencing of my voice has an end date, the work to hear the chorus of our grandmothers and the Indigenous Peoples whose land we stand on is ongoing.

By Trial by Fire

Direct Action is a method by which we ordinary people achieve specific political and economic goals, without having to rely on so-called experts – be they politicians, lawyers or businessmen. In this way, together, we confront the powers which oppress us, and take targeted actions against them to win our demands.” – Anonymous

Occupy Wall Street has taken the nation by storm. It has spread to nearly every major metropolitan area in the country, attracting hundreds of thousands to its confrontational, directly democratic structure.

Since its inception earlier this year, protests have steadily become more militant – beginning with the occupations of public parks, and moving on to attempted general strikes and direct attacks on the banks.

From London Free Press: [http://www.lfpress.com/news/london/2011/09/26/18740111.html#/news/london/2011/09/26/pf-18740111.html]

Taunting police and chanting obscenities, a crowd of rowdy youths took to London streets for nearly eight hours Monday, protesting against last week’s caught-on-video police Tasering of a city-high school student.

“F--- the police,” the protestors — most of them students at Beal secondary, near where the incident took place — chanted, dozens of them thrusting their middle fingers up at a handful of police officers who stood outside police headquarters.

Occasionally, the crowd changed its chant to “peace and love,” “shame on you,” or “stop police brutality.”

But the overriding message was against the police.

“It’s taking a bunch of teenage kids to tell the police they are doing a bad job,” shouted one protestor by megaphone.

“We had a 17-year-old shot in the face with a Taser, and we want accountability.”

By Joseph Kay - http://libcom.org/blog/%E2%80%98anarchists-are-tories%E2%80%99-other-fai...

Anarchism has been getting a lot of attention lately, including some oft-peddled but easily refuted myths.