For our annual Mayday events in Dresden we prepared two speeches about Solidarity with people in Ukraine and Internationalism.
Thanks to everybody who joined the events. We had a great demonstration and a rally to come together with speeches, info table and tasty vegan cakes.
Thanks to everybody who helped organizing.
Solidarity with all oppressed and affected by exploitation and war.
In memory of those who died in the fight for liberation and equality!
Solidarity with people in Ukraine – In memory of our comrades!
One year and three month russian state is waging war against ukrainian society. Against simple people that yesterday were teachers, painters, factory workers, students and many others. Simple working people with the dream about something bright on the horizon. With russian invasion any dreams were smashed against the wall of violence. Brutal and blunt violence that tortures and executes people on cameras and than posts videos about that on social network.
When ISIS marched through Syria and Iraq everyone understood and condemned violence of extreme right islamists. However one year and three month since full scale invasion of Ukraine we still have a lot of people who are claiming to support regime of Putin. Regime whose mercenaries are killing people with sledgehammers and cutting heads of captured soldiers. How much violence and blood should be flooding the streets that finally people in the west will understand that russian state is a monster that needs to be destroyed. Not negotiated or agreed with but destroyed with no possibility for recovery. Not the illusionary peace that some both on the right and left call to. Can you imagine anyone calling for peace with ISIS?
There will be no peace it doesn’t matter how much you want it. Yes, there might be a short break between the wars, but if Russia is not stopped today it will continue it’s imperial march through former USSR countries further on. So no, as anarchists we should not agitate for peace agreements or some other bullshit. We should call for arming ukrainian people to the teeth so every window or door shoots thousands bullets against occupiers and their collaborators. If many in the west are not ready to fight for freedom – so it be, but at least helping people who are ready to do it is a duty that lays on the shoulders of everyone in so called first world.
PAUSE
We’d like to tell you a story of a very brave man. Many knew him as Leshiy, some of you got to know him in recent days through the news as Dmitry Petrov, an anarchist from Russia who spend his whole adult life fighting russian state in one way or another. A true revolutionary who believed in people in Russia even when most of us already gave up. He took the weapons from the first days of war and fought against russian army perfectly knowing that he can die. He was not very sporty or had some extraordinary military skills, but despite all of that he decided to fight. Even when some from our own comrades in the West were calling him a supporter of fascist state or telling him that this is not anarchism. Leshiy believed in anarchism till the very day he died. In fact with two other comrades that were with him they were supposed to be a beginning of a new anti-authoritarian unit that most probably will never happen after that. Leshiy died with two other comrades Finbar Cafferkey from Ireland and Andrew Cooper from US, who also joined the fight against Russia deeply believing in the right of people in Ukraine for self defense against imperial aggression.
Next time you talk about the war in Ukraine we’d like you to remember those comrades who gave their lives fighting for better world organizing politically even in the last moments of their lives.
With that in mind let us remind you on this 1st of Mai, that even when the russian empire falls in Ukraine or other place on this planet, our fight will not stop. Our fight for freedom goes beyond the borders, nations and states. It doesn’t matter which language people speak or which color their skin is, we as anarchist will always stand on the side of the oppressed against the oppressors. And if the conditions require the anarchists will take up the arms as the generations did before us and comrades are doing right now in Ukraine, Rojava and other places around the planet.
Till all are free we will never be free!
International solidarity instead of cheap gas!
Many leftists in the recent year or so noticed that economical conditions of average person in Germany are getting worth. Some attempts were made to organize protests against inflation and profiting of the crisis by the major capitalist players. Unfortunately those protests died pretty fast with nothing happening right now in Dresden or in most of major cities in Germany.
However we would like to talk today a little bit about the current discussion in german left about the crisis. It seems like international politics play little to no role to those leftist who are trying to push against capitalism. Some do blame war in Ukraine for current economical problems (and some even blame ukrainians who don’t wanna give up and continue fighting). But in general it seems like the crisis came out of nowhere and the plan is to get back to where we were before with a little bit more of a social support from the state to get through hard times.
Well obviously social democracy took a strong hold of many leftist activists who can not imagine any more anything happening without the state. Of course talking about revolutionary politics or people kicking out political parties responsible for the crisis in this situation is like talking to a wall. Concrete wall. 15m deep concrete wall. And it becomes even more complicated when it becomes very clear that many german leftists don’t see themselves as part of global working class family, rather they see themselves as germans.
In last year or so little to no efforts were made to organize on international level together with other comrades to actually build up a coherent revolutionary perspective to the crisis, or at least agree on the reasons of that crisis. With that of course nobody bothers to understand what the calls for cheap gas or oil would mean for people outside of Germany. There were some humble voices saying that what happens right now in Ukraine and in economics is a result of long lasting love story between so called first world and authoritarian regimes for their resources. Dependency that was build because of Oil, Gas and other raw materials, threatens not only freedoms of people invaded by the empires, but also to the freedoms of the people in the west, that have spend too long in the comfort of their fortress that they are ready to sell anyone for just another day of peace. In doing so, they give up their own freedom to capitalist interests and authoritarian politics.
But if we see ourselves as anarchists who are striving to the free and just future, we have to abandon the cruise ship of first world, step beyond our zone of comfort and actually start fighting. Fighting not together with some allies of “real politics”, but comrades that surround us in Poland, Czech, Ukraine, Myanmar, Hong-Kong, Iran and many other places where the fight for freedom is not about choices in the capitalist world but the struggle for completely different society.
We have to abandon the state and our strive to get back to comfortable lives in favor of true internationalism. The internationalism that indeed doesn’t know the borders and stands not for maintaining the privileges of few, but for freedoms of everyone.