Comrades from Austria, Czech Republic, Croatia, Bulgaria, England, France, Greece, Germany, Italy, Macedonia, Serbia, Spain and Slovenia will be attending the Balkan Anarchist Bookfair 2013! We hope that comrades from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary, Poland, Romania and other countries will also find a way to join us.
At the Bookfair there will be open space for international exchange of experiences, ideas and proposals. We will also try to find ways how we can organize campaigns and actions across borders in the future.

More info: 10 years of the Balkan Anarchist Bookfair, May 24th-26th, 2013, Ljubljana – Slovenia

Visit the International of Anarchist Federations website: http://i-f-a.org

Visit the AF's international page: http://www.afed.org.uk/organisation/international-iaf-ifa.html

In case you missed these elsewhere in cyberspace ...

1) See this compiled list of 2013 Mayday actions: Global Reports of May Day Actions 2013

2) Joint statement by USA/Canada groups and links to Anarkismo statements: Mayday. Remembering the past, fighting for tomorrow.

Read a nice summary of Mayday's origins in the USA from the Bristol First of May Group.

For a full history of the Haymarket Affair, the Haymarket Martyrs and the origins of May Day

watch this talk by Bristol Radical History Group from 2012 (YouTube video)

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See also (from Bristol AF, 4th May 2013): Radical Block Marches in Solidarity with Bangladeshi Workers at Bristol May Day

See also (from Cyber Anarchia, Dundee, 7th May 2013):  May Day: Thoughts and considerations

See also (from IFA website, 4th May 2013): May Day Resistance in İstanbul.

See also (First of May Anarchist Alliance, Detroit): Revolutionary Greetings – May Day 2013

MAY 2013 RESISTANCE is out. THE GREEN SHOOTS OF REVOLT (Bedroom Tax), Pro-choice in Ireland, Benefits interviewee campaign, Bristol Bookfair report (and forthcoming Sheffield bookfair), Greece migrant worker attacks, Bangladesh factory solidarity, Jock Palfreeman prisoner support.

The Green Shoots of Revolt

Spring finally came at the end of April. But the same month saw a raft of new attacks on living conditions being pushed out by the State. Especially nasty have been cuts to welfare that many people - in work or unemployed - depend on because of low-pay, lack of work or inability to do paid work.

One of the high profile changes is the so-called ‘Bedroom Tax’ which means many council house and housing association tenants are facing bills or housing benefit cuts for having spare rooms. As well as the bills, people are feeling under pressure to move to smaller places that may not even be available. Many people need spare rooms for a variety of reasons - and why shouldn’t we have space for friends or family anyway?

Quite rightly the Bedroom Tax has caused an anger which has seen people taking to the streets in many towns to say ‘Can’t pay, Won’t pay!’
Often this has involved pressuring local councils not to evict anyone who gets behind. Like in the anti-Poll Tax campaign that brought down Thatcher, local groups of campaigners are starting to get together to oppose the new tax. This is a very positive development, but as with the Poll Tax, it is vital that the campaigning is controlled by the people themselves. Otherwise it will be taken over by politicians and celebrities who will make their parties or themselves look good, but do little to strengthen our collective fight back.

Anarchists are well aware of the need for maximum participation and ‘direct democracy’ in campaigns. When the current economic crisis got started, an anti-cuts movement arose, with inspiring self-organisation by students. They did not trust the self-interested leaders of the National Union of Students who were making deals with the government. Networks involving universities and colleges operated with people treating each other as equals. This was a very good start. But overall, since then, anti-cuts campaigning has suffered in many towns from the agendas of this or that political party.

That is why it is encouraging that a regional Bedroom Tax campaign in Scotland has taken off with self-organising principles. A recent get together in Edinburgh and West Lothian agreed that decision-making power should be in the hands of local groups and that the co-ordination between them should be done through recallable delegates. This kind of ‘anarchy in action’ is vital to keep the struggle in the hands of the people rather than political parties. Anarchist Federation members are involved with this process and are hoping this way of working will extend to the whole of Scotland, and who knows, the whole of Britain.

Resistance is the regular bulletin of the Anarchist Federation: http://www.afed.org.uk

Read more in Resistance bullletin, issue 151, May 2013

The following article is published in the Anarchist Federation's Organise! magazine #80, Summer 2013.

The Fundamental Requirement for Organised Safer Space

This article will be a very basic introduction to the foundations of safer spaces, community accountability and transformational justice that arise from elements present from the very inception of anarchism as a political philosophy. These concepts are responses to verbal, physical and sexual abuse that have always been present within radical communities and continue to present a challenge to this day. As such this article will touch on all forms of abuse from problematic language through to rape and physical violence. An example of one such policy can be seen at http://bit.ly/1207uq8

I am writing this from my perspective as a white trans*, queer, able-bodied individual who was socialised as a straight, cis-gendered male. My role within some of the struggles I will describe is one of support when it is called for. Safer spaces thinking has come about through survivors of abuse determining the form that their struggle must take and the ways in which they wish to receive support. For every person who has been able to speak out there are hundreds of thousands that could not. We should remember that while the voices we hear may seem few, they carry with them a truth that, if ignored, will render any attempts towards social revolution a futile gesture.

Read more: Organise! magazine #80 - The Fundamental Requirement for Organised Safer Space

The Anarchist Federation's Organise! magazine #80 reviews the recent SolFed booklet Fighting for Ourselves, published in October 2012. The review is reproduced here as an AF blog article. The latest Organise! contains several other reviews of contemporary publications from the anarchist movement that we hope readers will find interesting.

Fighting for Ourselves: Anarcho-syndicalism and the class struggle.

Solidarity Federation. 2012. 121pp. Availability & pricing: http://www.selfed.org.uk/read/ffo

Since its publication in October of last year, Fighting for Ourselves has been the subject of much discussion and deserved interest in the broad libertarian left. The book constitutes the first major exposition of the political perspectives of the British section of the International Workers Association since Winning the Class War, their previous attempt at providing such an outline in 1991.

The book attempts to give an historical overview of the workers’ movement, in what it describes as its ‘mainstream’ and ‘radical’ forms, before describing the phenomenon of 20th Century anarcho-syndicalism through the experience of three unions in Germany, Spain and Argentina. Indeed, the bulk of the book is taken up with history; only the last 17 pages focussing on present day anarcho-syndicalism and specifically the Solidarity Federation’s (SolFed) strategy for moving from being a ‘simple political propaganda organisation’ to a ‘revolutionary union’ (p.94). The historical section contains justification for why the SolFed believe that their particular version of anarcho-syndicalism has both universal and particular (or local) application.

Read more: Organise! magazine #80 - review of SolFed's Fighting for Ourselves booklet