AFN conference report back

The AFN conference this year took place on 1st December in Oxford. It was very impressivley organised and well attended. The amount of footwork that had been put into the event was clear and really paid off to make it a hugely successful event. There was a really good range of both informative and practically useful sessions on offer, from antifascist history to legal info for demos and from an introduction to the AFN and militant antifascism to a talk on how to get info on our far right enemies. Another session made clear the links and shared politics between transphobia and fascism. A very accessible and motivational self defence session got a lot of uptake and the community centre was filled with the sounds of hitting pads.

A network can’t march on theory and practice alone so an impressive dinner was served up by a hard working local community kitchen crew who were really pleased to support the conference by doing what they do best. Likewise, raised fists to the awesome folk duo who played and sang some very powerful old antifascist and rebel songs in the pub afterwards as conference participants relaxed and socialised together.

Everyone has something to offer to the antifascist struggle. The day was a powerful reflection of what we have and what we can achieve as a network when we put our knowledge, experience, skills and efforts together. Full respect to the organisers from Oxford Antifascists and to everyone involved who helped create such an impressive space to discuss, learn, inform, practice and socialise together. Events like this strengthen antifascist solidarity and keep us and our movement energised and motivated to carry on the fight.

Fundraiser and pamphlet launch

We are very pleased to announce a BAF fundraiser DJ night and a pamphlet launch of the Bristol Radical History Group’s “Facing the Fascists”, a history of the Anti Nazi League in Bristol.

Pamphlet launch and intro to Bristol Antifascists from 8pm and first DJ from 8.30pm.

DJs playing a liberated mix of punk, ska, 80s/90s classics and jungle!

14th December at the Plough, 223 Easton Road, Easton, BS5 0EG.

https://www.facebook.com/events/635238467233633/

Anti Fascist Network conference 01.12.19

How did so many ordinary people back a regime based on racist violence, even as it ramped up violence against minorities and anyone on the left? “Would I have been seduced by the apocalyptic rhetoric? Would I have been able to hold onto my morals while barbarity became normality? And if the politicians and the powerful acquiesced to the interests of business fueled by racism and division, what could I have done as just one person?” As of 2019, the time to wonder “what would I have done?” is done. Let’s talk about what we can do!

This is a public day of practical and theoretical workshops and discussions about how to resist racism and fascism in the present day, based on the active role of the working class and others targeted by fascism. There will also be stalls, socialising, food and a chance to meet others in the struggle.

All voices, all perspectives, all backgrounds welcome, in a spirit of collective strength and support.

Afterwards: music and socialising at the Library, Cowley Road.

Travel and accessibility:
From Oxford railway station, get the number 5 bus and get off at
Princess St, Cowley Road. Other buses from central Oxford: 1, 10, U5. Coach from London (Oxford Tube or X90): get off at St Clements – venue is 5 minute walk. Bike racks available at venue.
Cafes and supermarkets nearby.
Venue is wheelchair accessible. Please let us know if you have other accessibility needs.
Please let us know if you require childcare, ideally by 24 November.
Attendance is free for all, but donations are welcome to cover costs and help the work of OXAF and the AFN.

https://www.facebook.com/events/408381386730354

Benefit Tshirts!

Wow! Those amazing people at Antifa International have only gone and done us a benefit Tshirt! We are really grateful to this awesome, hard working and committed crew for helping us out with raising much needed funds for court and travel costs. They understand the meaning of solidarity and are doing great work supporting active antifascists around the world facing repression and attacks for resisting fascism. Check out Antifa International: https://twitter.com/antifaintl

You can order your Tshirt here: https://teespring.com/bristolantifa?pid=373&cid=100035

Support local antifascists

From crowdfunder page sent to us:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-antifascists-from-bristol

“Please support antifascists from Bristol who have been repeatedly targeted by the police for being active antifascists. A particularly heavy fine of £1500 was imposed on one antifascist, a person of colour, who has also been experiencing significant intimidation and harassment from local officers.

Three antifascists are currently facing bogus charges from a “total policing”, Draconian operation to prevent opposition to a far-right demonstration in Dewsbury on 12th October.

This repression is intended to wear us down and intimidate us. It is also designed to waste our time and effort with fundraising to pay for numerous journeys to court and to pay the fines imposed.

We need to show the authorities that it will not work. Please show your solidarity and support by making a donation towards our target of £1000. “

Solidarity with the Rojava revolution

In the face of the fascist Turkish state’s genocidal war on the people of Northern Syria and the unashamed complicity of western states, worldwide solidarity with Rojava has been impressive. Countless demonstrations, pickets, blockades and actions have exposed and targetted governments and corporations actively supporting and arming the atrocities being perpetrated by Erdogan’s military and his IS / Jihadist allies. Antifascists and revolutionaries everywhere recognise the need to stand together with the Rojava revolution. Biji Berxwedana Rojava!

The revolution in Northeast Syria will prevail, fascism will be smashed!

At 4pm on October 9th, the Turkish occupation army and its Islamist allies began their long-prepared war of aggression against the liberated areas of northern Syria.

At four o’clock sharp in the afternoon, bombs rained down on people in towns and villages on the border. Jihadist militias began their advance under the leadership of the Turkish army and tried to penetrate into the border area. Turkey is talking about a “military operation” aimed at “securing the border” and establishing a so-called “peace corridor”, but the fact is that the Turkish army and the Islamist mercenaries under its command are concerned with nothing less than the occupation of the mostly Kurdish populated entire area along the Turkish-Syrian border. The regime in Ankara speaks of the “fight against terrorism” and emphasizes that their war of aggression is not about the war on the civilian population, but indiscriminate bombing of civilian settlements, looting and mass deportations of hundreds of thousands of people, arbitrary executions and the brutal abduction of hundreds of civilians speak a different language. The further the war against northern Syria progresses, the more it becomes clear, what Erdogan is really about, namely ethnic cleansing through the violent expulsion of millions of people and the long-term demographic change of the entire region.

In the north of Syria, in the shadow of the Syrian civil war, a revolutionary and democratic social project has thrived in the past seven years that has been a thorn in the side of the region’s powers and imperialist states from the very beginning. The societies of Northeastern Syria established their own self-government and created an oasis of peace, based on the equal coexistence of all groups of the local population, the liberation of women, an ecological economy and radical democracy. The Democratic Federation of Northeast Syria has become a living example of a peaceful and democratic future for the Middle East, beyond local despotism and foreign rule. Finally, the defense forces of the peoples of northeastern Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces, succeeded in smashing the last remnants of the Turkish-based IS caliphate.

Today, Islamist militias, most of them fighters of the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, are advancing again with the Turkish occupation offensive in northern Syria and spreading fear and terror. The states of the International Coalition, above all the United States of America, have paved the way for the Turkish war of aggression with their coordinated withdrawal of troops. They gave away their former allies to destruction and sacrificed the peoples of northeastern Syria to their filthy interests. The states of the world have agreed to close their eyes while the Turkish occupation army and its jihadists are committing a genocide with NATO weapons.

But we will not stand by and witness in silence the massacres that take place in the eyes of the world today. Only a broad and resistant anti-war movement will stop this war. Just as people were pouring worldwide into the streets against the Vietnam War or the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the conscience of humankind must rise in revolt today in the face of the Turkish barbarism in northern Syria.

On November 1st, 2014, millions of people around the entire world took to the streets for a day to express their solidarity with the heroic resistance of Kobanê. We call for this year’s November 2nd to be a day of global resistance against the Turkish War of Aggression, to break the normal situation and to paralyze life. Participate in creative and diverse actions of civil disobedience, demonstrations, and many more, and take over the streets and public spaces.

As long as the killing continues, the resistance must not stop.

Riseup4Rojava

Women defend Rojava

Internationalist Commune of Rojava

Bristol Kurdish Solidarity Network

CALL TO ACTION AGAINST FASCISM & ANTI-SEMITISM: 25 OCTOBER – 9 NOVEMBER

In the year since our first call to action, we have lost over one hundred lives to white terror. But we have also found each other. And we are many more than we first thought.

But people are still dying — people like us and people not like us – and others held captive in camps and cages. And to the anti-Semitic violence sweeping the West, the ruling class has no answer. Each and every attack on our people has been used to justify new police powers, and to pit us one against the other.

In the fighting spirit of last year’s International Days of Action, and of centuries of Jewish popular struggle, we are calling for people everywhere to join us in a second global wave of action:  two weeks of resistance and revolt against the far right, two weeks of total non-cooperation with the institutions, the political parties, and the private enterprises that collaborate with them.

Beginning the weekend of 25 October, around the one-year anniversary of the Tree of Life pogrom in the USA, the actions will continue through the weekend of 9 November, marking one month since the attempted pogrom in Halle as well as 81 years since Kristallnacht.

We see today, as we have seen before, organized violence – sanctioned by the state, blessed by the church, funded and defended by the ruling class – directed against ethnoracial, religious, sexual, and gender minorities. But today we are fighting back, as we always have. And together we say that an attack on any of us is an attack on all of us.

This call is therefore also a call to solidarity with peoples everywhere struggling for life and for freedom:  from Brazil to Burma, Catalunya to Chile, China to Ecuador to Egypt, Germany to Greece to Iraq, Kashmir to Kurdistan, Lebanon to Palestine, Poland to Russia, Sudan to United States and beyond.

As our comrades from Pittsburgh, USA remind us:

“Even in the most challenging moments, we can learn from the choices and traditions of our ancestors to imagine what resistance and healing can look like today. We as Jews can claim our unique history of anti-fascist resistance and use it to inspire our current struggle against anti-semitism, white nationalism, and fascism. We hope this time of commemoration offers us all space for both healing and fighting back.”

Action Items

  1. Mark your calendars for 25 October – 9 November. Call your own people to action on these dates in solidarity with the Outlive Them International. The Weeks of Action will begin with an anti-fascist Shabbat (called by some of our people in Pittsburgh), and continue through to the International Day of Action on 9 Nov.
  2. Share word of this weekend of action widely. Craft your own call: use or edit our words, images, and resources as you see fit. Translate this call into your language(s) and share it with us, if you are able. Come up with the strategies, targets, and tactics best suited to your own community.
  3. In unity is our strength. Reach out to other groups already resisting the murderous far right in your area or start your own. Organize an action together. Forge connections with other oppressed communities that will endure beyond the International Weeks of Action.
  4. Document your actions and those of the oppressors. Share images, stories, and reports with your social networks using the hashtag #OutliveThem. Then share them with us at wewilloutlivethem@protonmail.com. Please include only as much identifying information as participants consent to give.
  5. Be safe, be smart, and be dangerous. Consider people’s needs, capabilities, and vulnerabilities. Plan lower-risk actions that different people can participate in. People may or may not choose to plan higher-risk actions. We ask that all who answer this call be prepared to support each other in case of arrest, detention, or repression.

WHEREVER WE STAND, WE STAND AGAINST FASCISM
DONDEQUIERA QUE ESTEMOS, DE PIE EN CONTRA DEL FASCISMO
OÙ QUE NOUS SOYONS, DEBOUT CONTRE LE FASCISME
Где бы мы ни стояли, мы против фашизма.
איפה שאנחנו עומדים, אנחנו עומדים נגד פאשיזם
حيثما نقف فنقف ضد الفاشية
GDZIEKOLWIEK JESTEŚMY, JESTEŚMY PRZECIW FASZYZMOWI
AŤ UŽ JSME KDEKOLI, STOJÍME PROTI FAŠISMU
Όπου κι αν είμαστε, είμαστε ενάντια στον φασισμό
ON SIGUEM, DRETS CONTRA EL FEIXISME
ONDE QUER QUE ESTEJAMOS, ESTAMOS CONTRA O FASCISMO

https://twitter.com/outlivethem

Stop the Turkish invason! Rise up for Rojava!

On Sunday night Donald Trump gave Turkish president Erdogan the green light to invade north-east Syria. Run by a Kurdish-led administration on the principles of direct democracy, equality for all peoples, ecological justice, a cooperative economy and women’s liberation, it is the most peaceful and stable part of Syria. The movement leading the administration is the same movement that defeated ISIS with the assistance of the US-led international coalition. They now guard over 70,000 ISIS fighters, families and supporters, but with the minimal resources available conditions are desperate and the situation is fast becoming unsustainable. If the Turkish invasion happens it will be impossible.

Following the removal of Kurdish mayors from Turkey’s Kurdish regions, and expanded invasion of areas under the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq, the Turkish state is looking to expand its racist anti-Kurdish war deeper into northern Syria. This follows the invasion, occupation and ethnic cleansing of Afrin in north-western Syria in January 2018, and puts at risk not only the peace established by the administration’s democratic system, but also the territorial defeat of the ISIS “caliphate”. The Turkish state is known to have bought oil and provided logistical support for ISIS, as well as incorporated ISIS militants in the mercenary forces used to occupy Afrin. The Turkish state cannot be trusted to properly guard or resolve this issue, and an occupation would put at risk not only Kurds but all the people of North-East Syria, including Arabs, Armenians, Chechens, Turkmen, Syriac, Assyrian and Khaldean Christians and Yezidi.

So Trump’s green light will lead to a resurgence of ISIS, genocidal ethnic cleansing and a new refugee crisis. In the process it will destroy Syria’s last hope for a democratic solution beneficial to all its people, as well as one of the most important examples of how to build a truly democratic, ecological and feminist society.

11,000 people gave their lives in the struggle to defeat ISIS, including 10 British citizens, such as Anna Campbell, killed by a Turkish airstrike in Afrin in March last year. We will not ignore their sacrifice, we will #RiseUp4Rojava and stop the war on North-East Syria!

Join us to demonstrate in solidarity with Kurds and all the people of North-East Syria!

https://www.facebook.com/events/934412936917804/
https://www.facebook.com/events/2607334165980151/
https://riseup4rojava.org/
https://www.facebook.com/CommuneInt/