Simon Bolivar 'Be the first....'

Simon Bolivar 'All the armies of the world armed themselves for kings, for powerful men.  Be the first to arm yourselves for laws, for principles, for the weak, for the just'

I remember the tear gas and the water cannons in Santiago.

Guest post from my good amigo Roberto Navarrete

While watching the images of the student demonstrations currently taking place in Chile I felt a sense of déjà vu. Santiago, Chile’s capital, is encircled by the Andes mountains, and in winter, when the cold atmosphere causes pollutants to settle at ground level, it is one of the most polluted cities in the world. As a young student growing up in Chile I remember the asphyxiating atmosphere created by the pollution compounded by high levels of tear gas and the cold water cannons with which the police always responded to peaceful student demonstrations.


The same toxic atmosphere is now being inflicted on the current generation of students who are out in the streets demanding structural reforms to the country’s largely privatised education system. This time, however, it looks like police repression will not be enough to stem the discontent that has been simmering for several years and that is now exploding on the streets. The wide array of social movements that have become mobilised, coupled with the wide appeal of the movement’s leadership suggest that a real political transformation may be a serious possibility in Chile.

The immediate trigger for the current uprising has been the students’ demands for a free and state financed education with the movement comprising both school and university students. Since May, some 700 schools have been occupied by secondary school students and almost daily street protests have been taking place ever since. In mid-August around half a million students and their families took part in a demonstration in a park in central Santiago. The students have also managed to connect their struggles with other sectors of Chilean society. A week after the park demonstration, the students joined a national strike declared by Chile’s trade union confederation (CUT), mobilising again half a million people onto the streets of Santiago.

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'Why should I be condemned by society and left unprotected just because I wish to work with my genitals rather than my hands or my brain?'

The Morning Star have been debating prostitution, much as I love the Star I agree with this letter to the paper that challenges them for not actually asking sex workers for their views.

As a sex worker, GMB trade unionist and paid-up member of the People's Press Printing Society I found your article What path to a better life? on sex work deeply offensive.   Apart from the English Collective of Prostitutes none of the writers are sex workers nor are they legitimate to speak on our behalf. 

 

So here is a contribution to the debate from a friend who is a former sex worker, I think it is extremely interesting, let me know what you think.  Very pleased to blog, less pleased that the Star did not run it or similar articles, with editorial decisions sometimes a piece doesn't work for a paper but its essential that voices are heard.

Dear Sirs,

Thank you for raising the debate on sex work. This is an important and oft neglected issue. As an ex sex-worker I would like, however to respond to your commentators. It is sad to see that equality appears to be important for everyone, except for sex-workers in the minds of some current activists.

Unfortunately, Fiona Mc Taggart’s piece is opinion dressed up as fact. McTaggart is incorrect when she quotes the ‘Swedish Model’ as having been a success on any indices you care to measure. She also states that in countries where prostitution is legal or tolerated, that there is still a high rate of violence, death and exploitation of prostitutes, but fails to back up this assertion with any evidence or comparable data showing the violence, death and exploitation of non-prostitute women. It is clear that McTaggart views prostitution, which is merely sex in exchange for money, in and of itself, an issue. She states the need to recognise that prostitution as it is practiced involves violence. This is an unsupported piece of propaganda which seeks to encourage patronisation and infantalisation of the many sex-workers who voluntarily choose to earn their living through sex work.

Anna van Heeswijk states that prostitution is not a job like any other, but why should it not be? Why should I be condemned by society and left unprotected just because I wish to work with my genitals rather than my hands or my brain? They are my genitals and I should be free to choose to do whatever I wish with them. There is a serious problem in society of negative attitudes towards sexual women, whether they charge for sex or not. Women as chattels may not be written in the legislature any longer, but we are still not free to own our own sexuality. The recent slut walks were a reminder that women are still judged as somehow deserving of attack if they fail to conform to the sugar-and-spice-and-all-things-nice straight jacket imposed by some men and so-called feminists alike.

Heather Harvey’s patronising claim that campaigning for decriminalisation is somehow campaigning for legitimacy for pimps and exploiters is offensive to all sex-workers who campaign for recognition and improvement in their working lives. Expanding her argument would mean that no-one should argue for stronger unions because it just legitimises corporate bosses. This is absurd in relation to all workers. We deserve as much respect as any other worker and we deserve the same protections. What right do middle-class, asexual, affluent women have to tell the rest of womankind how they should earn their money and what they should or shouldn’t do with their bodies?

Sex is a natural drive. People have sex for myriad reasons. The inclusion of money into that process does not make the process suddenly evil, anti-feminist or wrong. Every sentient adult has a right to do what they wish with their own bodies and consenting adults should not be interfered with by the state or moral crusaders such as the misogynistic feminists in your piece.

The problems that surround prostitution have nothing to do with the actual act of having sex for money. They have everything to do with moralistic law makers interfering with the actions of consenting adults.

Violence and exploitation from clients/customers/patients/bosses etc is an occupational hazard in many spheres of life e.g. corner shops, domestic work, cockle picking, bomb disposal, social work, emergency care, police work, the army etc but no-one thinks that these areas of work should be banned or suppressed because of the increased risk of violence or exploitation. Instead measures are put in place to minimise the risk of violence or exploitation to the people working in those areas and attacks upon such workers are fully supported by the judicial system. Violence towards sex-workers does not receive the same level of support, in fact the contrary is often the case, especially where women are working together, as they can be charged with brothel keeping and sent to prison if they approach the police for help.

Another issue relevant to the problems faced by sex-workers who suffer violence, is the anti-trafficking legislation which has been used as an excuse to raid brothels where foreign national women are working and remove them from the UK. This legislation is not being used primarily to ‘save’ women from trafficking, it is being used as a way to garner support for extensive crackdowns on brothels. It also means that many foreign national sex-workers cannot report violent attacks, abuse or coercion as they are not granted amnesty against removal unless they can provide evidence of forcible trafficking and testify in court against a named trafficker. This is not the case in most instances, so after the raids many of the sex-workers are removed from the UK.

Despite having raided thousands of brothels across the UK, the number of sex-workers who have been forced into prostitution was non-existent in 2009 but continued to be pushed as a major problem. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/20/government-trafficking-enquiry-fails

This legislation actually encourages non-reporting of violence and coercion as the sex-workers who are victims are often sacred of being removed if they report attacks upon them to the police.

McTaggart also advocates criminalisation of clients. The ‘Swedish model’ of controlling prostitution which has been in operation since 1999 contrary to claims, is not unique or radical and cannot be considered to be a success on any measurable indices.

Clients interviewed in research projects by the Prostitution Knowledge Center in Malmö and RFSL, the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights, express a similar sentiment: the ban does not affect their behavior. And people who sell sex express the same conclusion:

the ban does not deter their clients. Even the official evaluation, that on one hand claims that the law deters clients, refers to “many police” who believe that the punishment clients risks is not particularly discouraging.

Further, the United States of America has been criminalising clients for decades and shows hugely negative results for the safety of sex-workers. If a client is likely to be arrested, initial meetings with sex-workers will be hasty and give little time for the sex-workers to assess danger. If a client is likely to be criminalised and there is an argument with the sex-worker, the client is more likely to become violent than risk being arrested. This is already the case in America. We do not want this in the UK.

If people such as McTaggart et al, genuinely wish to prevent sex-workers from suffering violence at work, they would support ending the laws which criminalise clients or make it illegal for women to work together and end the use of anti-trafficking legislation as a cover to do massive sweeps of brothels without prior evidence of coercion. They need to put away their push for moralistic legislation, stop telling us what is good for us and listen to the sex-workers for a change.

A P

[1] The Swedish Sex Purchase Act: Claimed Success and Documented Effects, By Susanne Dodillet and Petra Östergren, Conference paper presented at the International Workshop: Decriminalizing Prostitution and Beyond: Practical Experiences and Challenges. The Hague, March 3 and 4, 2011

'I never knew death...'

Spotted this on the superb Teifidancer blog


A Poem for Gaza 

I never knew death
until I saw the bombing
of a refugee camp
craters
filled with
dismembered       legs
and splattered torsos
but no sign of a face
the only impression
a fading scream

I never understood pain
until a seven-year-old girl
clutched my hand
stared up at me
with soft brown eyes
waiting for answers

in her other hand
she held a key
to her grandmother's house
but I couldn't unlock the cell
that caged her older brothers
they said
we slingshot dreams
so the other side 
will feel our father's presence!

a craftsman
built homes in areas
where no one was building

when he fell
silence

a .50 caliber bullet
tore through his neck
shredding his vocal cords 
too close to the wall
his hammer
must have been a weapon
he must have been a weapon
encroaching on settlement hills
and demographies

so his daughter
studies mathematics

seven explosions
times
eight bodies
equals
four congressional resolutions

seven Apache helicopters
times
eight Palestinian villages
equals
silence and a second Nakba

our birthrate
minus their birthrate
equals
one sea and 400 villages re-erected

one state minus
their birthrate
equals
0ne sea and 400 villages re-erected

one state
plus
two peoples
...and she can't stop crying

never knew revolution
or the proper equation
tears at the paper
with her fingertips
searching for answers
but only has teachers
look up to the sky
to see Stars of David
demolishing squalor
with Hellfire missiles

she thinks back
words and memories
of his last hug
before he turned and fell
now she pumps
dirty water from wells
while settlements
divide and conquer
and her father's killer
sits beacchfront
with European vernacular

this is our land! she said
she's seven years old
this is our land!
she doesn't need history books
or a scoolroom teacher
she has these walls
this sky
her refugee camp

she doesn't know the proper equation
but she sees my dry pens
no longer waiting for my answers
just holding her grandmother's key
for ink

Derek Wall 'We must dream differently'

"The thickness of your skin shall be seven spans - which is to say that you shall be proof against anger, offensive actions and criticism. Neither anger nor fury shall find lodgement in your mind and all your words and actions shall be marked with calm deliberation. Look and listen for the welfare of the whole people and have always in view not only the present but also the coming generations, even those whose faces are yet beneath the surface of the ground - the unborn of the future Nation."

quote from indigenous political constitution....in my article on how to heal divisions with political organisations and build some unity for change.

Violent disagreements within political organisations can derive from many sources - the myopia of leaders scared by immediate circumstances, ill-advised officials or the need to disrupt for the sheer chaotic joy of it are just some that come to mind.

Time after time the internal battle so aggressively fought one minute is easily forgotten the next.

Because change is difficult to achieve we can indulge in compensatory activity. Winning the ultimately minor internal battle can make us feel better about our inability to engage in more profound change externally.

Perhaps the most significant and worst motive for sectarianism is boundary maintenance. It is endemic on the left but of course also found in all kinds of organisations from Protestant churches to bowling clubs, yoga classes to origami networks.

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'a fantastic introduction to Green politics'

Review: The No Nonsense Guide to Green Politics

The No-Nonsense Guide to Green Politics is a short introduction to Green Politics. Written by Derek Wall, a former Principal Speaker of the Green Party of England and Wales, it is published by New Internationalist, a co-operative which publishes the No Nonsense Guide series of pocket guides to issues from a leftie/green perspective.

At 40,000 words, the No-Nonsense guides often have to cram a lot into a small space, and this book is no exception. It gives a potted history of Green politics from its genesis the 1970s to date. This section alone is worth the cover price, as it gives a real feel for where Green politics and the wider Environmental movement have come from, as well as its global scope. Wall covers Green parties in every area of the globe in a relatively short chapter.

The book then goes on to talk about the most obvious distinctive of Green politics – the politics of keeping our planet in good condition. He talks not only about the impact of climate change, but a range of other environmental problems, addresses the way that the economic system is at the root of a lot of these problems, and even offers up a real working example of how we could remodel our societies to be genuinely sustainable.

From there, he moves on to the philosophy of Green politics. He examines the range of political beliefs that could legitimately lay claim to the Green label, covering everything from ecosocialism (which is quite common) to ecofascism (which is decidedly not). This chapter is the one that I feel suffers the most from the size limit. I would have loved to have seen more detail on the different nuances within the mainstream of Green politics – an analysis of what distinguishes green localists from ecosocialists, to pick one example, would have enhanced the book significantly.

The next chapter deals with Green approaches to economics, detailing the variety of approaches that are taken to the key issue of how we can restructure local, national, and global economies to be both fairer and more sustainable. Although some of the ideas he covers are outside of conventional economics, Wall nevertheless points to work by professional economists (including a couple of Nobel Prize winners) that backs up the positions outlined.

Following this, the book gives a whistle-stop tour through Green policies on a range of other issues, taking examples from across the world, and demonstrates some of the principles other than care of the environment that are at the heart of Green political thinking.

Finally, the book rounds off with a look at the current state of Green politics, the various strategies that politically Green groups take to try to effect change, and thoughts on how the Green cause can best advance itself in years to come.

Overall, the book is a fantastic introduction to Green politics. If you’re not familiar with Green political thinking, this is the perfect book to give you a basic familiarity with it. If you’ve been in Green circles for a while, but have never systematically investigated the politics, then this book will help fill in the gaps in your knowledge. Even if you’re an old hand in a Green Party somewhere in the world, this book will probably leave you better informed.

The one downside to this book is its length. Because it tries to cram so much into so little space, you’re often left wishing that things were fleshed out more thoroughly or that a chapter would go into some other aspect of Green politics that there simply wasn’t the space for.

FROM

Love it, steal Derek's book on Earth First!

love it, steal Derek's book!

'One to get on the buy none, get one free offer at all major bookshops I reckon!', seriously get from library before the Lib Dems close dem all and photocopy, steal is not kind to long suffering book shops!

Earth First! and the Anti-Roads Movement: Radical environmentalism and comparative social movements

by Derek Wall

Routledge, London, 1999 / ISBN 0-415-19064-9

Yes, it's another expensive academic book about ecological direct action, but the difference is that this one's actually quite good. For one thing the author, having been involved in some of the events he describes, knows what he's talking about. Also, by largely basing his book on interviews with people with a long term involvement, it's (sometimes depressingly) accurate - although albeit in a dry academic way that fails to get across any of the passion, excitement or anger behind events.

Wall begins by taking a look at what he considers the history of similar struggles in the past; from Victorian conservation societies, through the early 1970s upsurge in green concerns that led to the formation of Friends of the Earth (FoE) and The Ecology (later Green) Party, to the 1980s peace and animal rights movements and the massive increase in 'green' concerns around 1989. Whilst acknowledging that many people in Earth First! (EF!) feel more of an affinity with the broader history of "popular protest, revelry and riot" (p.18), Wall argues that this obscures "the distinctive nature of modern activism" (p.19). In many ways this is true, EF! is - at least in some respects - the bastard offspring of middle class single issue campaigns like the peace and green movements. However much we'd like it to be it's not the latest upsurge of class struggle from the line that includes the Luddites and so on. Thankfully EF! has cast off a lot of the problems inherited from its 'parents' and has tried to consciously place itself in this tradition of struggle, but it's as well to be aware of these issues as they're bound to have an influence for years to come.

The book provides a detailed history of EF! in Britain (and a briefer account of similar movements in other countries) from the early rainforest actions funded from donations by eccentric billionaire Sir James Goldsmith to increasing involvement in anti-road campaigns. Also of interest is the early conflicts between 'militants' and 'moderates' within EF! - largely around the issue of sabotage. "It is only a minor simplification to suggest that those activists drawn from the peace movement saw EF! (UK) as a means of promoting mass NVDA [non-violent direct action] of a largely symbolic form, while those from an animal liberation background regarded EF! as a vehicle for more militant tactics" (p.55). Moving through the various anti-roads campaigns, Wall gives a detailed account of all the major conflicts - Twyford, Solsbury Hill, M11, Pollock, M65 etc., quoting heavily from various interviews to give a good impression of what was going on.

Relations with other groups are also discussed, including largely uncritical alliances with rich country landowners and Militant at different times, but largely focussing on EF!'s bumpy relationship with FoE and Greenpeace. From an initial position of hostility, these mainstream green groups increasingly began to accept direct action tactics (although Greenpeace had long practised a very controlled, media centered corruption of direct action) - perhaps looking for credibility in the youth market. Despite this, public arguments still broke out over various acts of sabotage such as the Newbury Reunion Rampage. In one interesting section Charles Secrett (FoE director) actually comes out in favour of sabotage; "certain types of damage to property...[like] pouring sugar into a bulldozer [which is] going through a SSSI - I [don't] have a problem with that." (p.86) Obviously he still can't stomach militant mass action though, condemning the arson at Newbury, and being especially disturbed by people targeting the media for acting as stand in police evidence gathering teams, "You can't come into an event like that...hitting a BBC cameraman just because he was filming what was going on". (p.86)

One particularly interesting section of the book is on 'activist involvement' and looks at how and why people became involved in EF! and similar groups. Through comparing interviews, peoples' gradual involvement and strengthening ties to the network are seen. Many of the interviewees were previously members of green groups (FoE, Greenpeace, The Green Party) or other political organisations (e.g.: Marxist groups) but became frustrated with them and felt more attracted to EF!s less formal organisation and emphasis on direct action. 'Biographical availability' is also seen as an important factor - people who get involved usually have plenty of spare time and few commitments (mostly with no kids and on the dole or students). This exclusiveness is reinforced with the culture of the movement, a double edged sword that creates "a greater capacity for collective action, greater tenacity...greater satisfaction from movement participation" (p.165), but also "higher degrees of membership coercion, narrowing the number and range of people who will participate". (p.165) Obviously the challenge now is to build and sustain a culture of resistance (as opposed to a subculture of lifestyle) that still manages to be as inclusive as possible.

Related to this are Wall's ideas about how the movement as a whole grows (or doesn't). He argues that external factors, like how open or closed to influence the ruling political system is, strongly affects the forms that any resistance takes. Britain is seen as a fairly 'closed' system - parties in power often have large majorities and freedom to act, while minority parties which could gain some power under a proportional representation system are blocked. This makes confrontational action outside of the parliamentary system easier to start. Also 'costs' in terms of the level of state repression are fairly low, although increasing constantly (and of course they're only low as a result of the relative impotence of the resistance here). In contrast many other European countries try harder to keep grievences within the system, but crack down harder on whatever refuses to be contained. He argues that the wave of green concern in around 1989 seemed like an 'opening' that green groups felt they could use - they were better received by the powers that be, which encouraged them to become more 'mainstream' i.e: moderate and professional. However they still failed to get any access to real power, which disillusioned many of their members and left the field open for more militant ideas to grow, "the turmoil within the Green Party is simply one symptom of a wider crisis. Other signs include...the haemorrage from FoE of local members who are frustrated by the restrictions placed on them by the leadership and are attracted by the more confrontational direct approach of anarchist influenced groups." (p.120) He argues that this is a gap EF! formed and grew to fill. Another important element he identifies is finding 'mobilisation targets' where real, but so far vaguely expressed, concerns and desires people have can 'condense' into action - roads was one such issue and resulted in a wave of ecological direct action.

Overall this book has a lot of interesting points to make about EF! and the wider movement, despite taking an odd view of this wider movement. By trying to fit it into a 'green' pigeonhole Wall sidelines the fact that we often have more ideas in common with radical unionists than Greenpeace. If it's often dry and dispassionate, that can also help in taking an 'objective' look at who we are and where we're at. In many ways it makes a good companion to Kate Evan's Copse, which gives the 'subjective' side of events and a real sense of what it all felt like at the time. One major gripe is the price - sixteen quid for a paperback is ridiculous. One to get on the buy none, get one free offer at all major bookshops I reckon!

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