MEET US IN THE STREETS! SOLIDARITY WITH STUDENTS IN QUEBEC!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_78
Learn more about the state’s response to attempt dismantling the student movement in Quebec.
We are so excited for the Queer Anti-Authoritarian Meeting! CASTRATE THE STATE, fuckers. Here are the details.
This is the first open assembly calling all anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist queers. While anti-authoritarian and anarchist spaces can feel entirely white, straight, and cis, they aren’t: many queer people exist in these circles— We are sick of being silenced and tokenized.
Let’s make a space of our own, get to know each other, and build affinity. The agenda will be fairly open, but this meeting does not exist to weigh the merits of a diversity of tactics.
PLEASE NOTE: This event is for self-identified trans, queer, lesbian, gay, bi, intersex, and any other non-conforming gender/sexual orientation. Straight allies are not welcome.
Possible topics of discussion:
- Challenging heteropatriarchy within the Ⓐ milieu
- Fighting gay assimilationism
- Racism in queer spaces / POC caucus
- What is “queer” and in what ways can it be inclusive/exclusive?
- Pride Festival NYC
THIS IS A SAFE SPACE: Absolutely no sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, classism, or cissexism will be tolerated. Many of us have experienced violent and oppressive behavior of this nature. If you have been held accountable through a process or other wishes of the survivor, please attend. lf you have not, you will be physically removed. We respect survivor autonomy above all- this is not up for dispute. If you are being oppressive or making someone feel unsafe, you will be asked to leave or we will remove you.
Please email us if you have questions about attending, or about any of these terms, or the safer space policy, we want to talk to you! hexxbrooklyn{at}gmail{dot}com
We were sent a very important text about hate crimes organized by neo-fascist nationalist groups in Armenia. Please read and distribute widely.
“DIY, a popular bar in Yerevan was set on fire today when arson suspects threw a bomb in its entrance, burning down the front half of the establishment in the attack. DIY bar sustained heavy damage to its front half, where the bar was located. An air conditioner was completely melted, with the only thing that ironically stayed in tacked being a bottle of Kilikia beer, sources said. Though the fire was put out, police took around 12 hours to arrive at the scene, a move that is being criticized by supporters. Located in downtown on Parpetsi street was opened in 2011 and quickly earned a reputation as a bar for alternative thinkers. The attack on the bar hasn’t been the first. It escalated from verbal abuse to breaking glass, before today’s attack.”
“Two Iranian-Armenian men were detained in relation to the attack and allegedly confessed to their crime. Though it has not been confirmed, sources say the men are tied to a larger fascist organization in the country.” IANYAN, May 15, 2012
Everything links to one another. Nothing is capable of being examined separated from the environment that creates it. Nationalism comes out of rationalization of revolutions that didn’t fulfill the sentiment of the people and prevented the liberation of all from the general capital.
The French Revolution created the idea of the nation and established a concept of State as the only way to enact Democracy. Representative Democracy was and still is a political trap manufactured by intellectual bureaucrats to preserve capital and to pressure the people to choose between life and profit. We know that people were forced to choose profit. Nationalism and capitalism further developed into the Stalinism that is still depicted in Putin’s Russia. In 1920, when Stalin ordered the creation of soviets based on their ethnographic orientation it choreographed the inevitable collapse of the Soviet; and the possibility of a political and economic organization coming from the bottom had been eliminated.
The growth and support for nationalist rhetoric and ultra-right groups’ attacks on activists, queer and critical thinkers in Armenia is not spontaneous, but results from well executed plans that are bridged directly to actions that have happened in the past. In 1998 seven people were executed, including the last Prime Minister of formerly Soviet Armenia and the sitting Minister of Defense, inside of parliament while in session. There has been no resolution of who ordered the act. However, it is not by chance that today ultra right groups have been trained by the ruling party, the Armenian Republican Party, as well as supported by the Dashnak Party. The young people of the ultra-right groups are used for political ambitions to execute orders and to provide cover for their instructors’ filthy bodies. The youth -exactly as in any other fascist regime- becomes a blockage, covering up the dirty jobs inherent in all forms of governance.
It seems that in Armenia everything turns into nationalism, as in America where everything turns into neo-liberalism. Obviously both serve to benefit capitalism by promoting stability and to encourage the expansion of the global financial economy. Unfortunately, Armenia is not the only country that this phenomenon of ultra-right extremism takes place. The growth of global economic elitism supports repression and polarization amongst the people through the production of falsified myths, fear, manufactured threats and the promotion of nationalistic delirium. Particularly, in Armenia, this worldwide historical turning point has met chronic unresolved political mistakes rooted in a past of territorial wars and lasting conflicts based on land. This symptom has brought the Armenian Genocide and is the continuing outcome of present horrific actions. All sides of the creation of these conflicts are implicated in the rise of nationalist rhetoric and innocent populations turn into scapegoats.
Who paid on May 15th, 2012, for two members of a neo-nazi group to get out of prison? It was the MP Artsvik Minasyan, who remarked about their actions that “they acted in the accordance with the national ideology.” Minasyan has targeted oppositional voices to fascists, saying they “are destroying Armenian society.” This statement comes out of a member of The Dashnak Party, a Party that supported violence in the past based on nationalist rhetoric. There are people who make decisions and, in making these decisions, they create history. History provides evidences of people’s actions. Although history is censored and manipulated by regimes and authority, by analyzing events and actions we can still make clear who is behind violations against peoples’ thoughts, beliefs and lives.
We realize that we cannot continue promoting an analysis of the Armenian sentiment through the prism of the ‘un-stable’ territory. We cannot continue consuming extreme propagandas and their consequences. It is an urgent objective to break the concept of the nation now and for all. It is important to emphasize that the territory is not the land, but the sentiment and the social imagination of peoples’ living and acting together.
In this crucial historical and political moment, the so called, self claimed intellectuals, musicians and artists provide comfort to the ruling party and allow the spreading of fear and totalitarian thinking in every layer of society. Their apathy and passive behaviorism is just another proof of the seriousness of the situation.
If we don’t break the myth of the nation we can’t allow ourselves to think of a society outside of capitalism. If we can’t think of our lives outside of capitalism it is impossible to realize our desires without the mediation of the State. Any attempted oppression on behalf of ideological preferences is another excuse for the preservation of capitalism. Social discriminations based on sexual preference is one more face of the attack by political and economic élites against those whose lives are a threat to national identity and the global financial economy.
We, coming from every part of the world, condemn any attack based on race, belief, gender, sexual expression, thought and activity. The attacks that marked the past week in Armenia make us contemplate and bring us together to gather our resources and set our bodies forth.
We are ready to fight back.
The Bottom Line: Screw us and we multiply.
The Anarchist International, May 16, 2012
