Fire and Flames

(For German language Infos: Press Releases, Photos, Background, and infos can be found at on the ALI page, and on Monsters of Göttingen there is an article with the spectacular title, „Demo jagt Polizei durch die Stadt.“ )

Approximately 300 people took part in an „unauthorized“ spontaneous demonstration in Göttingen on Friday evening, called for in response to „Martin R.“ having to give his DNA sample to the police earlier the same day.

In the course of the dynamic and powerful demonstration police were attacked on several occasions, and indeed successfully chased from the University campus. Hopefully this will serve as a clear notice, for the cops as well as for the newly elected left-wing university parliament, that cops will no longer be tolerated on the university!

During the course of their retreat, police officers „lost“ several items of clothing/protection, aand a police cameraman took a rather unexpected outdoor winter bath. In and around the university, several attacks against police officers and vehicles took place, causing damage to one vehicle and causing a police transporter to undertake a somewhat panicked escape when suddenly approached by masked demonstrators with stones.

The entire course of the demonstration was marked by the building of small „barricades“ and use of fireworks. After almost two hours, the demonstration ended once again the center of Göttingen, with no arrests.

After being wanted and searched for on a national level for several weeks, and in the face of having no realistic prospects of actually stopping the DNA measure, „Martin R.“ decided to at the very least set the time and conditions himself. After participating in the large solidarity demonstration on Saturday, he went accompanied by elected representatives of Die Grünen, SPD, and Die Linke to the police station this morning. Before entering, he read a short statement in which he thanked all of those who had expressed such a broad, and also practical, solidarity with him over the previous weeks.

The demonstration and events of Friday evening, together with the broad and continous solidarity and mobilization, can only be considered a resounding victory for extra-parliamentary and autonomous politics in Göttingen. The message to friends and allies is that effective resistance to state repression and violence are not only possible, they are closer in reach than many believe. The message for the state and the cops should be equally clear: Hands Off of our friends, houses, and structures!

(All Pictures from Antifaschistische Linke International)

What better way to say goodbye to the departing year and greet the new one than by greetings the friends and comrades in prison, and generally taking the opportunity to denounce the prison system as a whole. In many cities, this is a welcome tradition. Here is a video of anarchist comrades outside Korydallos prison last year…

And the poster for this year…

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In Germanland…

Hamburg I: 22:30 Uhr | Demo zum Knast, U-Feldstraße
Hamburg II: 23:30 Uhr | Kundgebung vor dem UG Holstenglacis
Köln: 18 Uhr | Knast-Demo, Haltestelle Rektor-Klein-Straße, Linie 5, Ossendorf

They are in There for Us, Were Out Here for Them!

For the final note of 2010, as customary, a poem from the terribly underappreciated anarchist poet and writer Voltairine de Cleyre (a book of her writings can be found here), titled Ave et Vale

Comrades, what matter the watch-night tells
That a New Year comes or goes?
What to us are the crashing bells
That clang out the Century’s close?

What to us is the gala dress?
The whirl of the dancing feet?
The glitter and blare in the laughing press,
And din of the merry street?

Do we not know that our brothers die
In the cold and the dark tonight?
Shelterless faces turned toward the sky
Will not see the New Year’s light?

Wandering children, lonely, lost,
Drift away on the human sea,
While the price of their lives in a glass is tossed
And drunk in a revelry!

Ah, know we not in their feasting halls
Where the loud laugh echoes again,
That brick and stone in the mortared walls
Are bones of murdered men?

Slowly murdered! By day and day,
The beauty and strength are reft,
Till the Man is sapped and sucked away,
And a Human Rind is left!

A Human Rind, with old, thin hair,
And old thin voice to pray
For alms in the bitter winter air,—
A knife at his heart always.

And the pure in heart are impure in flesh
For the cost of a little food:
Lo, when the Gleaner of Time shall thresh,
Let these be accounted good.

For these are they who in bitter blame
Eat the bread whose salt is sin;
Whose bosoms are burned with the scarlet shame,
Till their hearts are seared within.

The cowardly jests of a hundred years
Will be thrown where they pass tonight,
Too callous for hate, and too dry for tears,
The saddest of human blight.

Do we forget them, these broken ones,
That our watch tonight is set?
Nay, we smile in the face of the year that comes
Because we do not forget.

We do not forget the tramp on the track,
Thrust out in the wind-swept waste,
The curses of Man upon his back,
And the curse of God in his face.

The stare in the eyes of the buried man
Face down in the fallen mine;
The despair of the child whose bare feet ran
To tread out the rich man’s wine;

The solemn light in the dying gaze
Of the babe at the empty breast,
The wax accusation, the somber glaze
Of its frozen and rigid rest;

They are all in the smile that we turn to the east
To welcome the Century’s dawn;
They are all in our greeting to Night’s high priest,
As we bid the Old Year begone.

Begone and have done, and go down and be dead
Deep drowned in your sea of tears!
We smile as you die, for we wait the red
Morn-gleam of a hundred-years

That shall see the end of the age-old wrong,—
The reapers that have not sown,—
The reapers of men with their sickles strong
Who gather, but have not strown.

For the earth shall be his and the fruits thereof
And to him the corn and wine,
Who labors the hills with an even love
And knows not „thine and mine.

And the silk shall be to the hand that weaves.
The pearl to him who dives,
The home to the builder; and all life’s sheaves
To the builder of human lives.

And none go blind that another see.
Or die that another live;
And none insult with a charity
That is not theirs to give.

For each of his plenty shall freely share
And take at another’s hand:
Equals breathing the Common Air
And toiling the Common Land.

A dream? A vision? Aye, what you will;
Let it be to you as it seems:
Of this Nightmare Real we have our fill;
Tonight is for „pleasant dreams.“

Dreams that shall waken the hope that sleeps
And knock at each torpid Heart
Till it beat drum taps, and the blood that creeps
With a lion’s spring upstart!

For who are we to be bound and drowned
In this river of human blood?
Who are we to lie in a swound,
Half sunk in the river mud?

Are we not they who delve and blast
And hammer and build and burn/
Without us not a nail made fast!
Not a wheel in the world should turn!

Must we, the Giant, await the grace
That is dealt by the puny hand
Of him who sits in the feasting place,
While we, his Blind Jest, stand

Between the pillars? Nay, not so:
Aye, if such things were true,
Better were Gaza again, to show
What the giant’s rage may do!

Bet yet not this: it were wiser far
To enter the feasting hall
And say to the Masters, „These things are
Not for you alone, but all.“

And this shall be in the Century
that opes on our eyes to-night;
So here’s to the struggle, if it must be,
And to him who fights the fight.

And here’s to the dauntless, jubilant throat
That loud to its Comrade sings,
Till over the earth shrills the mustering note,
And the World Strike’s signal rings.

— Philadelphia, 1st January 1901

Athens: Police Repression Against Workers
Paris: Cops Try to Kill 16 Year Old Student
Buenos Aires: Cops Attack Students, Forced to Retreat

Just when you think you cant hate cops much more, they go on a worldwide scandal spree! Nothing of this should come as much of a shock, as they are merely playing their role as armed guards of the state and the existing order. It is however in times, such as these, of increased conflict when the state is more often forced to remove the mask of peaceful democratic governability and clearly shows that its violence is not reserved only for the marginals and „extremists“ from which the good citizen is to be protected. Democratic government is indeed simply a more effective form of rule, but in the end, when the social fabric begins to show its ruptures, it is violence and violence alone on which this order rests. First, it was the „good people“ of Stuttgart who were confronted with this reality, in the form of hundreds of injuries, several broken bones, and one person possibly blinded for life, then…

Several hundred high schools were on strike and blockaded yesterday across France (and to differing degrees throughout the week). School blockades and demonstrations were met in many cities with police repression, resulting in clashes between students and cops in Yvelines, Paris, Lyon, Chartres, Chambery, Lens, and Nimes. Cops had already produced one scandal in Caen on Tuesday, shooting a demonstrator directly in the head with a tear gas canister. Yesterday, in Montreuil (Parisian suburb) they took it one step further, as one police officer carried out what can only be classified as attempted murder of a minor, by shooting him directly in the head with a „flash ball“ (basically a freaky looking, round shaped, rubber bullet). The police lies of course talked of students bombarding them with stones as they began shooting, but the video below clearly shows that, while barricades were being (half-heartedly) built nobody was throwing anything. The person who gets shot is the young man in the black/white adidas jacket. He is currently in critical condition, with several broken bones in his face, and faces the possibility of losing an eye.

Incident avec la police au lycée Jean-Jaurès à Montreuil
Hochgeladen von rue89. – Neueste Nachrichten Videos.

(Last minute France update: Cops were sent in this morning to forcefully break the blockades of several oil refineries. Fortunately, others have been blockaded today thanks to the joint actions of students and workers).

In Athens, only a few days after attacking a migrants solidarity rally, the dogs of the state were again in action, this time excercising a heavy repression against employees of the Ministry of Culture who were demanding two years of back pay as well as permanent contracts through a blockade of the Acropolis.

And finally to Argentina, so that we may end on a relatively positive note. The so called „popular and progressive“ government of Cristina Kirchner yesterday unleashed the full force of the state on university demonstrators who had occupied the Ministry of Education, unfortunately for them Argentine students know how to defend not only their political interests, but also their physical integrity. As the video below shows, towards the end, the cops are attacked from both sides and forced to retreat. The occupation was carried out by social science students after the Minister of Education denied them a meeting to discuss their 14 year old request for a new, and adequate, building in which to study. Despite the inital police repression, which left three cops injured and 11 arrested students, the building was held for over 10 hours, finally cleared after the Ministry committed to several million in funds. Despite this fact, the Ministry of Education is now pressing criminal charges against the students.

Similar, though much more massive and inspiring scenes took place in late 2008, when the University of Buenos Aires decided, again, that student participation wasnt all that important to them when choosing new management…


Nobody is interested in a movement of victims. The moral high ground is for priests and other preachers. Organization, self-defense, and mass militance are the answers to state repression and police violence, so that fear may finally change sides.