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«Десятилетний план» для левых

От редакции: Джоди Дин – известный американский политический философ, профессор, активистка движения «Оккупай Уолл-Стрит» и редактор журнала «Theory and Event», автор и редактор книг «Теория блогов: обратная связь и захват желания», «Демократия и другие неолиберальные фантазии», «Политика Жижека», «Секрет публичности», «Коммунистический горизонт». В интервью LIVA.com.ua она рассказывает о необходимости организации антикапиталистического движения, о его перспективах и о своем понимании концепции «общего».

English version here: http://liva.com.ua/dean-interview.html#

via liva.com.ua

BBC News - Analysis: The hopes that blaze in Istanbul

To any student of social history the sight of an urban middle class using its fingers to dig up cobblestones, form a human chain and pile them 3ft (1m) high to make a barricade screams the words "Paris Commune".

That is what I saw in the streets around Besiktas stadium last night and the comparisons are ominous.

This was the third big night of fighting in Istanbul.

The protesters methodically erected barricades to seal off Taksim Square, which is on a hill. By now some of these barricades are six or seven feet high and movable only by bulldozer.

In the park, earlier, there were three or four meetings going on, with the left-wing nationalist Youth Union of Turkey the biggest, and a more impromptu samba-band thing for the more anti-globalist protesters.

It was good-natured, and the two main social types were educated young women, dressed I would say 90% in Western style, and young men with football scarves and shirts.

They made a massive thing out of the fact that they were standing shoulder to shoulder, on a big plinth, the rival teams of Istanbul who hate each other's guts.

via www.bbc.co.uk

Berlin-Follies: Istanbul - Observations From Within

indeed, the number of turkish flags at the gezi park this evening was disgustingly high. this is a curious coalition. the kemalist-nationalist freaks of yesterday are now occupying the same park as the kurds, the left, the anarchists and the lgbtt groups. i'm not too sure of this, but i think football fans were instrumental in the victory over gezi park today. we have 3 istanbul teams, the supporters of which were out fighting the police like lions. when they're in their stadium, i call them hooligans, but i have to admit that they know how to fight and aren't afraid. how all this will combine into a meaningful statement against the government is still uncertain.

so things are all very ambiguous and in any case, the fighting hasn't ceased elsewhere than in taksim. this is not a protest to save trees, the government has gone too far. gezi park was the last straw, but we had to bear several other things in the past few months: arrests of kurds and activists on absurd charges, changes in school curricula imposing religion courses on kids, attempts to ban abortion, the bombing of kurdish civilians crossing the turco-iraqi border (mistaking them for the guerrilla), the tug-of-war with syria, the mysterious bomb that killed 50 at reyhanli on the syrian border, attempts to limit the consumption of alcohol, giant projects to change the whole face of istanbul, naming the third bosphoros bridge after an ottoman sultan who nearly annihilated the alevite population (the non-sunni branch of islam in turkey), and lastly the gezi park project...

meanwhile, the kurds gathered 500 turkish intellectuals, journalists, civil society leaders in ankara last weekend to draw up an alternative peace plan. i attended this and was so impressed by how people began to take control of their lives, started awoving their crimes vis-a-vis each other (the kurds participated in the armenian genocide, for instance and lgbtt groups are reviled by the marxist left), and drew concrete demands to impose their will on the government's reductionist view of peace.

in short: i feel that this is the beginning of the end of an era! we need to bring down this government, but what will come in its place is the most important question today.

via berlin-follies.blogspot.de

Occupy Gezi: :the whole city has been under the attack of capital"

An email from my friend, Demet, in Istabul. 

There was a great crowd on the street from very diffent groups; socialists, commies are definitely out there on the front yet hard to say that one party or view dominates. It's mainly been a spontaneous, disorganized union mainly against that "AKP is selling everything in the city!" People try to appropriate the common and it is actually the experience of protesting that unites. Especially for the last couple of months, the police have been so violent; pepper and tear gas is like a routine in our daily lives. One noticeable thing of the last months is that the ones who used to scorn protestors for disturbing " peace" and believed them to be a "group of marginals " came to realize this was not the case and that anybody against government policies could easily turn into a "marginal".  Now people are almost ashamed to say that they did not get involved in the struggle and that they did not "have the taste of the police gas" !

The whole city has been under the attack of capital, we have no say over it. Although it all started with Gezi Park, it grew out to be a protest in different cities against the authoritarian neoliberal policies and the AKP hegemony that has rendered people invisible and voiceless. (The recent alcohol sale restriction, the Syria policy, the increasingly conservative and religious statements, number of people prisoned as terrorists etc) And the national media is like a joke! On Friday night there was a penguin documentary on CNN Turkey, a beauty contest in another, a food show etc. There was practically a war on the streets in many cities yet on tv no sign of it. No surprise! (A month ago, there was a bombing in the town of Reyhanli - a town near the Syrian border- and according to offiicial reports 50 were killed. And the government banned broadcasting about this for two days) People watch BBC or CNN (ironic!!) to see how this was broadcasted. On Friday afternoon the Supreme Court announced its decision that the execution of the construction in the park was suspended and I just listened to the prime minister's statement over it saying that he cannot understand this decision and finds it somewhat dubious!!! So we'll see how this goes.

keep in touch and in solidarity
Demet

(shared with permission)

Europe's Record Youth Unemployment: The Scariest Graph in the World Just Got Scarier - Derek Thompson - The Atlantic

Europe's job market is a historic disaster.

The EU unemployment rate set a new all-time high of 12.2 percent, according to today's estimates. But it's the youth unemployment crisis that's truly terrifying. In Spain, unemployment surged past 56 percent, and Greece now leads the rich world with an astonishing 62.5 percent of its youth workforce out of a job (graph via James Plunket).

My God, look at Greece's trajectory. That thing isn't slowing down. Since April 2012, Greek youth unemployment has grown by about one percentage point a month. At that rate, it would pass 70 percent in early 2014.

It is suddenly not insane to imagine a youth unemployment rate of 70 percent in the developed world. And that is insane.

via www.theatlantic.com

Occupy Gezi: the affect of revolt

 "The protest aligns them. The affect of being together in this revolt unites them. The will to end authoritarianism and police brutality motivates them to revolt. The desire to preserve common public spaces and to resist their appropriation by local/global capital empowers them."

Istanbul, Turkey

Occupy Gezi: Police Against Protesters in Istanbul : The New Yorker

I got in touch with members of Çarsi, the leftist fan club of Istanbul’s Besiktas soccer team; I’d written about them for the magazine in 2011. They had come up with a new slogan: “Give us 100 gas masks, we’ll take the park.” I asked Ayhan Gÿner, one of Çarsi’s senior members, what he had to say to New Yorker readers. “Çarsi is the last barricade. Çarsi keeps alive the hopes of the people in the resistance of Gezi Park,” he told me. “This resistance has inspired the leaders of Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe”—rival Istanbul soccer clubs—“to come together. Damn American imperialism to hell.” Fifteen minutes later, I got another text: “Pepper gas is the Besiktas fan’s perfume. Nobody can intimidate us”; and, shortly after that, “We are the soldiers not of the imam, but of Mustafa Kemal” (referring to Ataturk, the founder of the secular Turkish Republic).

via www.newyorker.com

Occupy Gezi: Becoming the People

A placard in Istanbul reads as follows:

Day 1 we were the terrorists
Day 2 we were the provocateurs
Day 3 we were the protestors
Day 4 we became the people

Photograph by Baris Safran

The Right to the City Movement and the Turkish Summer

The protests began with approximately seventy Right to the City protesters in Gezi Park on 27 May when demolition of the park was set to begin. These activists successfully stopped demolition and a little more than a dozen activists spent that night in the park. They erected two large tents, brought guitars, and made their opinions known to passersby. These activists were comprised of members of Taksim Solidarity and the Taksim Gezi Park Protection and Beautification Association as well as some unaffiliated but concerned individuals.  

On 28 May, a coalition of Right to the City associations presented a petition to Istanbul's Council to Protect Culture Heritage calling on it protect the park. At 1:30 in the afternoon on 28 May, bulldozers returned a second time. The protesters resisted and police used tear gas to clear the park. One activist climbed a tree and was unable to be dislodged, further stalling demolition. Demolition resumed and continued until pro-Kurdish rights Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) and secularist opposition Republican People's Party Members of Parliament Sırrı Süreyya Önder and Gülseren Onanç blockaded bulldozers. This yet again stopped demolition and a protest was called for 7pm that night. Protesters slept in the park again.

The day of 29 May was more low-key as a few hundred people came out for protests in the park and created a festival-like atmosphere with films and concerts. Throughout the day, activists planted seedlings in the park as a token of resistance. Numbers swelled and 150 people slept in the park that night as the state regrouped.

On 30 May Turkish police, unwilling to allow a major tourist hub to be blighted in this fashion, gave the occupiers a five in the morning wake-up call in the form of tear gas. In case the message was not clear enough, they also set fire to occupiers' tents. With the park cleared and the state clear that it meant business, demolition resumed until at 7:50 in the morning, Önder yet again blockaded the bulldozers with his own body. After news broke on social media of the early-morning raid and concomitant police violence, people accumulated throughout the day and slept over in the park en masse. 

The police tried the same tactics on the morning of 31 May, this time with several hundred people sleeping over in the park. The raid was more vicious than the day before and media was banned from the park. After this, Taksim Square officially became contested territory as police violence escalated and protesters clashed with police throughout the day. 

via www.jadaliyya.com

Turkey: Prosperity for a Few, Hardship for Many | EurasiaNet.org

In 2012, the Ministry of Family and Social Rights revealed that nearly 40 percent of Turkey’s population of over 75.6 million lives at or below the monthly minimum wage of 773 liras, or about $415.19. A further 6.4 percent live below the designated hunger line of 430 liras ($237.95).

At the same time, 63 percent of the country’s bank deposits belong to a mere one-half of a percent of all account holders, according to Turkey’s financial watchdog, the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency.

Such disparity is causing concern even among government supporters. “There is [a] big social gap between rich and poor. Poverty is getting deep[er] everyday,” warned Akif Emre, an influential columnist for the pro-government newspaper Yeni Safak.

Many members of the country’s labor unions say they are reaping the consequences. “Prices are going up every day, the cost of living is becoming very expensive and workers are in no position to demand extra pay,” claimed the United Metal Workers Union’s international relations head, Eyüp Özer.

“So, what they have to do is work longer and longer hours,” Özer said. “It is not even considered overtime anymore.”

The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development’s Better Life Index, an annual evaluation of 34 countries’ well-being, reported that 46 percent of Turkish employees work “very long hours”  (an undefined timeframe), compared to the OECD average of 9 percent.

Turkey scored a zero for the balance between time devoted to work and other activities. It also ranked at the bottom in categories such as income and employment.

Set against annual inflation of 7 percent, monthly incomes in Turkey average the lira-equivalent of $1,100, according to official data. With economic growth now on the slide – the OECD predicts 3.1 percent for 2013 – the average could decline.

Those wishing to improve working conditions have few options. While the economy has boomed, organized labor has suffered. Since the AKP came to power in 2002, labor union membership has fallen from 9.5 percent of the country’s workforce of 28.9 million to 5.9 percent.

The unions never recovered from Turkey’s 1980 military coup, which, along with jailing of thousands of labor activists, saw draconian laws introduced to curtail their influence.

Under pressure from the European Union, which Turkey is ostensibly still seeking to join, the government reformed its union laws in 2004. A ban on state workers joining a union was lifted, and a requirement was dropped that prospective union members have a state notary certify their intention.
But many restrictions on union activity remain firmly in place. Most worryingly for organizers, anti-terror laws continue to be used against their union members. “Last year, the number of labor unionists in prison was about 67,” said Emma Sinclair Webb, the Turkey researcher for the New-York-based Human Rights Watch.
“In all of these kind of operations, when you go after labor unionists as terrorists, although you have no evidence of them committing violent activities or inciting violence, it essentially has a chilling effect for the workforce more widely,” Sinclair Webb said.

via www.eurasianet.org