"Mad Pride" - Movement That Celebrated Mental Illness

Remembering Mad Pride, The Movement That Celebrated Mental Illness | VICE | United Kingdom
MillyAbraham

A quarter people in the UK say they have suffered from a mental health problem, yet most of them are isolated from one another. Unlike other groups and demographics, there is little in the way of a mental health movement.

Imagine if there was though. A huge festival in a park – a parade, concerts, poetry readings: hundreds of clinically depressed, anxious and schizophrenic people out on the streets or squashed into bars, to protest for sure, but also just to be with one another, and take pride in mental illness.

Well between 1999 and 2012, that existed, it was called "Mad Pride", a movement that tells us a lot about how mental health campaigning came to be what it is today.

Mad Pride was founded by four men with first hand experience of using mental health services; Mark Roberts, Simon Barnett, Robert Dellar, and Pete Shaughnessy. Simon had gone to a gay pride event and thought that there should be something similar for people with mental health issues. He had been involved in an organisation called Survivors Speak Out – a blueprint for what today is called the "user movement", where mental health patients come together to network and defend their rights – but all four men believed that there needed to be a group for mental health patients that resembled something more of a liberation army.

"It seemed like the right time to fight back," explains Robert Dellar over the phone. Robert worked for the charity Mind when he got involved with Mad Pride in 1999, but had also suffered from mental health problems himself, treated on and off for depression and anxiety.

"Back then there was a hell of a lot of stigma against people with mental health issues in the media," he says. "People with schizophrenia, for example, were portrayed as violent and stabbing people all the time. Yes, there were a couple of high profile cases that made the cover of newspapers, but what annoyed us was that if you looked at the statistics, homicides committed by people with mental health issues weren't really any higher than those committed by other people. It seemed unfair."

The other problem at the time, says Rob, was the way that drug companies were interacting with the mental health sector. "The government was encouraged by the media and one or two maverick charities to put forward legislation that increased coercion of people with mental health issues," he says. "There was legislation that compelled them to accept treatment they might not have wanted – like medication – which of course has its advantages but may also have had life-shortening side effects."

Fed up with this legislative attitude to mental health, Mad Pride started recruiting members. "We were quite attention seeking," remembers Rob. "People thought it was lively and wanted to get involved." The type of people they attracted was broad, he says – a lot of punks, anarchists, lefties, and people with all sorts of different clinical diagnoses, as well as professionals who worked in the sector. But their common experience lay in having the same frustrations about how mental health services were run. "Mad Pride never had a strict definition," Rob muses, "it was very free floating."

Today a name like "Mad Pride" would stand out as problematic; "mad" seems like an outdated and derogatory term. I ask if it was at the time, if they were trying to reclaim it. "We were up to a point," he answers, "but it was about more than reclaiming, it was undermining the prejudicial use."

"It was always intended to provoke and I think it still does," adds Mark Roberts. "Some mental health survivors hate it – but we obviously liked it a lot." Mark compares the use of "Mad" in the context to the way black people use the word "n–––" – "it shocks outsiders," he says. "Personally I capitalise Mad to denote it as a political term, just as some Disabled People do likewise."

The group held events on and off for a couple of years, the frequency largely contingent on the organisers' own states of mental health: Rob was struggling with alcoholism and Pete was becoming increasingly "psychotic". Rob says it was fun and creative to work in different ways on a shoe string budget, outside the normal conventions of a protest movement, but that at times running an organisation made up of mental health patients was understandably difficult. Then, on December 15th, 2002, co-founder Pete Shaughnessy committed suicide.

"He'd been very depressed leading up to that, but it knocked us full for six," remembers Rob. "Mad Pride trundled on for a while but Pete's death really took the sting out of it for us. Pete was the media spokesperson, very charismatic, he had the energy and the ideas that kept it going."

Since Pete's death, Mad Pride has put on the odd protest or gig. There was a demo in 2011 against Cameron and Osborne's austerity cuts, which they held in Hyde Park. But that was the last event. "People involved have moved on, or stopped campaigning altogether," says Mark.

Such was Mad Pride's appeal that several spin off organisations started popping up around the world after it was formed; Turin Mad Pride, Toronto Mad Pride, a branch in India, another in New Zealand. Rob says they're not coordinated or related, they just picked up on the name. "It's not something we had no control of, it just built up its own momentum."

Both Mark and Rob agree that Mad Pride was a product of its time; an organisation they can't see existing today. Pharmaceutical companies have been so successful in marketing anti-depressants, anti-psychotics and anti-anxiety drugs, that these days a huge number of people are on them – one in eleven people with mental health problems.

As more people are classed as mentally ill, arguably the stigma fades. And yet, Rob says, the downside of this is that it's contributed to a climate where it seems like mental health issues are sometimes no big deal. "OK, so one in four people might have experienced mental illness of some kind. We need to remember that one in four hundred are suffering really badly and their lives are at risk... but they're getting abandoned," he says.

"In the 90s, when I worked in mental health, so much work was put into trying to get people out of hospital who don't want to be there and now people can't get beds in hospitals in the first place. There's no safety net there for people who are experiencing really severe mental distress and are at terrible risk. I think the biggest change we've seen since Mad Pride is those issues becoming more of a priority than the civil liberties angle, than the stigma side of things."

Perhaps that's why Rob, Mark and other members of Mad Pride are now involved with a pressure group that arose out of the 2011 austerity cuts demo in Hyde park, known as the Mental Health Resistance Network. Rob says it's a very different set up to Mad Pride: "We're more assertively political, from a far left perspective. We do serious things like take the government to court over welfare benefits cuts."

Still, he says, a lot of it wouldn't have happened without Mad Pride catalysing the UK user movement: "I think people feel a lot more confident about campaigning and putting heads about the parapet now, because we did it so prominently back then."

That's been Mad Pride's most vital legacy, he says. "It created a community, a lot of friendships, a kind of alternative society. When mainstream society rejected people who are mentally ill, that was important."

See also:

Toronto Mad Pride – Culture, advocacy, history and fun with Mad, crazy, consumers / survivors and labelled folk

Fed Up With The Corruption: Mexico on Brink of Revolution

Fed Up With The Corruption: Mexico on Brink of Revolution 22.6.2016

Foto at LaHaine.org

(COMMONDREAMS) The Mexican government’s deadly crackdown on a teacher’s union protest has rattled the nation in recent days, as 200,000 doctors on Wednesday joined the ongoing national strike against President Enrique Peña Nieto’s neoliberal reforms.

Anti-government sentiment is mounting after police forces opened fire on a teacher protest in Oaxaca on Sunday, killing at least eight.

Since then, two high level government officials from that state, Oaxaca Minister of Indigenous Affairs Adelfo Regino Montes and Secretary of Labor Daniel Gutierrez, have resigned in protest of the “authoritarian actions that repress and kill Oaxacan people who defend their rights and the government’s negligence to any possibility of dialogue,” as Gutierrez put it.

On Wednesday, members of the medical organization Yo Soy Medico 17 from 32 states joined the ongoing strike, stating their opposition to Peña Nieto’s health reforms, which they say are a “disguised way of privatizing health in Mexico,” according to TeleSUR.

Further, the group —which translates to “I’m a Doctor”—has vocally condemned the killings and what they describe as intimidation and repression by authorities and organized crime. “According to doctors,” TeleSURexplains, “as violence has increased in Mexico they have suffered the consequences of crimes like kidnappings, enforced disappearances and killings that have gone unpunished by authorities.”

The dissident Coordinadora Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación (CNTE) teacher’s union—which largely represents educators in Mexico’s predominantly rural and Indigenous southern states—has been staging dramatic demonstrations and road blockades against new mandated teacher evaluations, which they say ignore the challenges of their region while enabling mass layoffs.

These protests have been met with violent government repression, including the recent arrest of two of the union’s leaders. But members explain that the government’s opposition to the teacher’s union runs far deeper.

A social media post by the Twitter handle @puzzleshifter has been shared widely as a valuable explainer of the forces shaping the current violence.

“Why would [Peña Nieto] want to fire teachers en masse? Because they teach social justice curriculum as guaranteed under gains made in the Revolution,” they write. As the post explains, these teachers, known as “Normalistas,” work at the same “Escuelas Normales” that the 43 disappeared Ayotzinapa students were training to lead.

The post continues:

Normalistas are passionate about their profession and have a strong desire to impact the lives of children in dire rural poverty in Mexico. Many who become teachers, grew up in same communities/conditions as children they seek to teach – about their ability to change conditions.

According to the Mexican Constitution, rural [Indigenous] children have as much right to education as the children of the wealthy.

This is how and why the Escuelas Normales were instituted. However, ever since they were instituted, they have been egregiously underfunded.

This has resulted in teachers who enter the profession, specifically to teach the most left out kids, in Mexico’s society.

For this, over the years, rural teachers have been accused of bringing kids revolutionary ideas. Many say, of course, that’s our job!

So there’s been a constant battle to stay true to the goals of the Revolution to teach rural kids and Central gov to reign them in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=18&v=gdtlEvb8KSc

<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gdtlEvb8KSc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

The government violence has also been criticized by the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) and the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), which issued a joint communique on Monday blasting the “cowardly police attack,” and assuring the teachers, “you are not alone.”

“We condemn the escalation of repression with which the neoliberal capitalist reform, supposedly about ‘education,’ is being imposed across the entire country and principally in the states of Oaxaca, Chiapas, Guerrero, and Michoacán,” the missive states.

“We call on our peoples and on civil society in general to be with the teachers who resist at all times, to recognize ourselves in them,” it continues. “The violence used to dispossess them of their basic work benefits with the goal of privatizing education is a reflection of the violence with which the originary peoples and rural and urban peoples are dispossessed.”

The fight seems to be just beginning as the union is vowing to “stay here until the government is willing to talk.”

As one teacher from Nochixtlán told Democracy Now! on Tuesday: “If tomorrow the government is open to dialogue, then the conflict ends. The governor wants what he calls educational reform. And what we want is a dialogue for the kind of change that the people require, the kind that meets their needs.”

The unnamed educator continued: “If you go to our communities, there are many needs. How are the kids doing? The children can’t go to school to learn. All they think about is eating, because they don’t eat. No one can learn if they don’t sleep well, if they walked many miles to go to school. So the government should go and see what happens firsthand. And until there is a dialogue, we will not end our protest demanding educational reform.”

“And who will revive our dead?” they added. “The dialogue won’t bring our dead back to life. And those who are imprisoned, there aren’t just five or 10, there are thousands.”

As Gustavo Esteva, founder of the Universidad de la Tierra in Oaxaca, further explained, “This is a very complex war. It doesn’t—it did not start in Oaxaca. The teachers’ struggle, it is a global struggle. It started in Colombia, in Brazil, in Chile, in the U.S.—everywhere.”

“[W]e are in a war trying to say a very firm no to this kind of education. It is useless instruction,” he added. “And we are saying no very firmly to all the so-called structural reforms that mean basically a change of only ownership. They are selling our land, our territory. The people are resisting. And then we are resisting with them to oppose this kind of operation.”

---

This article (Fed Up With The Corruption: Mexico on Brink of Revolution) by Lauren McCauley originally appeared on CommonDreams.org and is licensed Creative Commons 3.0. The Anti-Media radio show airs Monday through Friday @ 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. Help us fix our typos: edits@theantimedia.org

Kurdish change towards libertarian Ideas. The Democratic Confederalism

In July 2006, died Murray Bookchin. Between the messages sent in memory of this important theoretical libertarian was one that could surprise those who had only a superficial knowledge of the Kurdish cause and struggle against imperialism.

The PKK expressed at the death of Bookchin its recognition as one of "the greatest social scientists of the twentieth century," the PKK recognized the contribution that his ideas had made to the development of socialist theory and expressed  that "His Theses on the state, power and hierarchy will be implemented and developed through our struggle", and following these ideas the PKK promised to implement the democratic confederalism.

What happened in order that from early writings quoting Stalin, Lenin or Mao now the emphasis is put on the libertarian Murray Bookchin?

Kurdish change towards libertarian Ideas
The Workers' Party of Kurdistan PKK was constituted in 1978 in the turkish kurdistan [kurd is a people divided in four nations: Turkey, Iran, Irak an Siria]. This political organization emerged with very clear ideas: establishing an independent socialist Kurdish State. The PKK in its early documents reflected this ideology. In its manifesto the PKK was defined as "a political organization under the guidance of scientific socialism" and, even critical with considered opportunists and revisionists policies of the USSR at that time, the PKK was in favor of socialist and national liberation struggle under the auspices of the Soviet Union.

The development of both, the fighting that PKK undertake, and changes in international geopolitics, affect deeply the program and structure of the Kurdish party. Unlike other political movements the PKK is able to make a critical reading of reality. The party is able to analyze the events surrounding the Soviet system and the ideas of socialism and national liberation movements.

In this sense the 1995 Party Congress exemplified for the first time in a more obvious way the changes that have taken place. The resolution of this Congress and qualifies the period dominated by Soviet influence as a phase of "primitive and brutal socialism" and calls for a new period in the socialist struggle. Not only this, but the abandonment of the hammer and sickle of the flag, or replacement of the "Central Committee" with "Party Assambly", will evidence this evolution in the conception of Kurdish liberation movement socialism.

The biggest changes come in the late 90s, the process of ideological evolution of the party continues above all from the hand of its leader, Abdullah Öcalan, and his arrest in 1999 marked a turning point in the history of the Kurdish liberation movement.

The new situation of Öcalan will be used by the Kurdish leader as a space for negotiation with the Turkish state and in turn to be a booster for the new ideas that were taking place in the PKK and which Öcalan was working. Documents in defense that PKK leader written was two documents about historical and political analysis that start developing the new paradigms for Kurdish liberation movement.

But still took a few years until the new theoretical framework was fully developed and matured by Abdullah Öcalan. Between 1999 and 2004, in which are consolidated the new ideas and the new structure of the Kurdish liberation movement, there was a fundamental element that will allow precisely the new paradigm of the Kurdish movement develops as we now know it.

In 2002 Öcalan begun study the work of Bookchin, finding in it a great inspiration and recommending reading for militants and Kurdish politicians.

In 2004 Öcalan is clear about his affinity to the ideas developed by Bookchin in his work . Only a year after the new ideology of the Kurdish liberation movement is mature and officially launched in parallel to the organizational restructuring of the movement.

On March 20, 2005 is announced the formation of the Koma Komalen Kurdistan (which was later renamed as Koma Civakên Kurdistan - Kurdistan Communities Union) and democratic confederalism is defined as the ideology of the new organization and the model to liberation of the Kurdish and the Middle East peoples .

The Democratic Confederalism
The Democratic Confederalism is already a complete system that concludes this process of change and impasse in which both, the ideology and the structure of the PKK, appeared to be and begins a new period marked by these new paradigms.

The democratic confederalism does not interpret the right to self-determination and the right to establish a Kurdish nation-state, because considers that it would only "replace old with new chains". In opposition it is presented a model of self-government that is built on "self-management local communities and organized in open councils [...]. The citizens themselves are the actors of a government of this sort, not the state authorities"so express Öcalan.

As an integral vision of liberation society, democratic confederalism has a strong anti-capitalist character. In his objection to the capitalist economy propose an economic system based on "ecological and economic communes", basis for the creation of an economic system that obeys to meet the fundamental needs of society and not for profit, and which is capable of protecting the environment. The importance of creating an ecological society is another pillar of democratic confederalism and is a clear example of imprinting that Bookchin has had on this.

Finally, about those pillars to point we have to speak of the women liberation. Women self-organization within the movement is a fundamental element and the fight against patriarchy is a fundamental part of the Kurdish revolutionaries program. As Öcalan says, "without the free woman can not be a free Kurdistan".

In the four parts of Kurdistan the Kurdish liberation movement is struggling to build a free society. Northern Kurdistan and Rojava are the clearest examples where despite the massive repression and war, democratic confederalism is running.

The Kurdish revolutionary movement along with his brothers peoples are giving a lesson to the world. Democratic modernity against capitalist modernity, against the history of occupation, colonialism and invasion, the Kurds are building a democratic, egalitarian and free society.

Source: http://www.cnt.es/noticias/rojava-una-lucha-con-sustrato-libertario,
tarcoteca spanish

The Asturian Commune of 1934

Source- The Asturian Commune of 1934 via Mark O'Connor

by José Luis Mulas Hernandez

Today as yesterday Red Support will
take care of you families

The Workers’ Alliance sealed on 28th March 1934 was an agreement between the (anarcho-syndicalist) CNT and (socialist trade unionist) UGT, later joined by the PSOE (Socialist Party), the BOC (Worker-Peasant Bloc) and their youth organisations, the Communist Left and later the Communist Party. The Alliance intended to set up local revolutionary workers’ committees, each organisation retaining its independence, in a regional and eventual national alliance. This was to stand firm until a socialist federated society was achieved.

Such an alliance was only possible because of the supposed radicalisation of the socialists. Three years after the victory of the Left and the establishment of the Republic (1931) the Right had won the elections, and the PSOE and UGT began to talk about insurrection. They later admitted their rhetoric was the result of grassroots pressure. In Asturias he socialists were more revolutionary than elsewhere and the leadership closer to the people. This alliance would have been the key to success but in the rest of Spain there was no insurrection but a general strike.

The CNT in the whole of Spain was broadly in favour of an alliance but differed as to the timing. Many in the CNT, and also the FAI (Spanish Anarchist Federation), had doubts about its political implications, mistrusting the Socialists. But in Asturias, where 25-30,000 of the organised 80,000 workers belonged to the CNT (and sympathisers were put at a further 20 thousand) the other organisations combined were larger and (more importantly) not reformist as elsewhere. Even so, there were stormy arguments, not about the UGT but about the dubious role of the PSOE. The FAI would not join the Alliance, nor the La Felguera local Federation of the CNT. However, the FAI and the La FelgueraCNT threw themselves wholeheartedly into the insurrection.

The local Communist Party had a hundred out of only 800 members in the whole of Spain. It discredited the alliance, as it offered no scope for it to assume leadership. At the last moment it applied for membership, doubtless on instructions from the USSR.

Preparations for Red October

The Aliance CNT-UGT will erase fascism!

The anarchists of La Felguera had a resounding victory during the Duro-Felguera strike of 1933, and there were strikes and actions across Asturias. A general strike (8th December 1933) was called by the CNT across Spain, with sabotage, bombs and attacks on the security forces. Accion Popular (the right wing party of Gil Robles) tried to mount a rally from Covadonga (extolled by patriots as the town where the expulsion of the Moors began). The workers’ alliance (under the watchword UHP, Proletarian Brothers United) had called a strike throughout the mining region, leaving the streets, strewn with nails, with no taxis, rail connections cut, sporadic sniping and so on. Such actions led to the October 1934 rising.

On 4th October it was announced that three CEDA (clerical-fascist) members were joining the government and the Socialist Party in Madrid called at last for a general strike.

The events of the Revolution

Early on 5th October the Guardia Civil barracks throughout the villages of Asturias were called upon to surrender, and then attacked. When they had been overcome, revolutionary groups were set up in Sama, La Felguera and Mieres to attack Oviedo, the provincial capital, where there had only been risings in one or two barrios, and where the government forces had seized strategic positions. On the 8th/9th October the Model Prison in Oviedo was stormed and found to contain a huge quantity of rifles and machine guns but no ammunition. However, the government troops were forced to retreat.

On 9th October Gijon was bombarded by the Regular Army and Navy as were other towns. Gijon fell on 11th October. On 12th October the enemy seized back most of Oviedo and a new front was established. Without ammunition, the Provincial Committee was forced to surrender. General Lopez Ochoa, commanding, demanded surrender of the weapons of the captive Guardia Civil and Guardia de Asalto, restoration of all arms, the lives of prisoners taken to be spared, and the committees to give themselves up. No shots were to be fired on the advancing troops. The committees’ conditions for workers to lay down their arms were for the Tercio and Regulares to be kept out of the mining towns and withdrawn from the front on account of their bloody reputation.

Ochoa agreed to these terms, and the Committee surrendered on condition that none of the committee were handed over. The agreement was read out to the population in Sama, who greeted it with cries of “treachery”. They refused to surrender, knowing how vicious the repression would be. They said they would sooner take to the hills. In the end it was accepted as inevitable and when the troops entered the town there came the harshest repression yet known in Asturias.

Ever since March 1934 the people of Gijon had been demanding part of the weaponry seized from the towns but they were denied by the Socialists who had possession. Nor were they given any reinforcements once the revolt got underway. This delayed the insurrection there. In the end the industrial workers and fishermen in the town took to the streets, but the Yague Column (foreign legionnaires and Moorish troops brought in via Ceuta by sea) put men, women and children alike to the sword.

Army Atrocities

General Lopez Ochoa led 25,000 troops against Asturias, but the orders came from generals Franco and Goded in Madrid. Ironically (in view of what Covadonga was supposed to mean) they had brought Moorish soldiers back to Spain to wipe out the people. As the troops advanced they encountered blown-up bridges and roads blocked by trees, even where the revolution had not broken out, showing the depth of support it had. In Grado the armed forces faced resistance from a small group of 400 that forced them back to Aviles.

However when the troops reached Oviedo, the generals had all the wounded in hospital rounded up and shot. They did not even enquire which side they were on. The prisoners were questioned and shot. A hundred held out on Monte Naranco. In flushing them out, a young girl, 16 year old Aida de la Fuente was killed. Her friend was wounded and raped before being murdered.

Revolutionary Conduct

Three fronts of War:  

Battle front, Working front and Cultural front

All the Spanish historians, and even those who belittle the events, agree that in the anarcho-syndicalist areas like La Felguera, Ciano, Valdesoto and Gijon, there was greater respect and consideration shown to prisoners and clergy. During the struggle food was obtained by means of ration cards issued by the Supply Committee, determining allocation by family size. Foodstuffs were taken from warehouses and goods vans. All had access to them.

It is traditional for miners in Asturias to combine their toil with some gardening, so there was no shortage of milk and eggs in the hospitals. There are no large holdings there, only tiny holdings, so some way had to be found of obtaining meat without alienating the farmers. The committees bought in sheep from Extremadura shepherds, while in Pola de Laviana traders were paid for their foodstuffs. In these transactions, money (which had been abolished) was temporarily brought back. The Oviedo branch of the Bank of Spain was cleaned out.

Many fires were blamed on the “savagery of the miners” when in fact they were started by the military. In the case of the torching of the Campoamor Theatre in Oviedo, this was done by the revolutionaries, and had to be done to deprive the enemy of a vantage point. In this way, a nunnery had to be set on fire, though its residents were led to safety.

The committees

The War Committee attended to the distribution of materials and tactics. The Supply Committees allocated food and clothing to the villagers and fighters. There was also a Sanitary Committee, which managed the hospitals. In some cases medical supplies had to be manufactured: “staimant” splints for fractures were manufactured in Duro-Felguera. The Transport Committees in nearly every town had access to fifteen or twenty vehicles, while the Work Committees ensured the mines were kept in good order. Furnaces, which would be needed in a new society, were also kept in order. Telephone communications were restored or, where none had existed, introduced.

Repression

Once the rebels had surrendered, the police crackdown began. The signal was the ransacking of the Workers’ Athenaeum in Sama, with 500 books tossed on the flames.

The rubbish incinerator in Oviedo was burning for eight solid days burning bodies, including Aida and her female friend. By the end of October, 10 thousand people had been arrested, a third of them ending in prisons which had capacity for a couple of hundred.

Reasons For Failure

One might cite strategic oversights, the sectarianism of the Socialist leaders, lack of munitions, the deadly air raids, the failure of the Leon air base to rise in revolt, and of course the fact that in the rest of Spain, the rising held out for one or two days, at best amounting to a general strike and some sporadic shooting. But the fact is it could not have been otherwise.

The CNT and FAI, who enjoyed the sympathy of the Spanish workers, failed to throw themselves into the revolt in the rest of Spain because of the attitude of the PSOE, whose sole objective was to seize power and win back the support it lost among the workers due to its collaboration with the Primo de Rivera dictatorship (in which Socialist leaders like Largo Caballero had served) and its time-serving attitude under the Republic. The same might be said of the UGT.

In Catalonia the Generalitat declared an independent Catalan State. The Anarchists were alert and ready for a rising. But even as the new regional government was defying the national governments, anarchists were rounded up and jailed. The Generalitat’s council of defence declared “Watch out for the FAI”.

Anarcho-syndicalists could see the revolt there was nationalist and not revolutionary. Outside Catalonia the PSOEaimed only at a general strike, not a rising, a rebuke that was later put to it in Asturias. Anti-statist anarcho-syndicalism was not disposed to mount a rising that would simply be in the interests of a party and its trade union appendage. Only In Asturias did the proper conditions exist for the setting aside of past resentments and an insurrection in which all were united.

From: "CNT" (October 1993) Granada, reprinted in "Black Flag" 204, Spring 1994 . Translated by: Paul Sharkey.

Nazi squat Ramiro Ledesma Madrid burned and painted. 30th aug call to antifascist action

Arson to the fascist social centre and wrote "Get out of our neighborhoods" on the facade

Get out of our neighborhoods!

Nazi squat ‘Ramiro Ledesma’ in Madrid burned and painted with slogan-threat. Fire was set at the door of the fascist social centre and a slogan written “Get out of our neighborhoods” on the facade. The industrial building was ‘squatted’ early last week by a group of Nazi-Fascist “Republican Social Movement” (MSR), in the district of Tetuan, Madrid, named ‘Ramiro Ledesma’, and it suffered an assault in the early hours of yesterday.
El Hogar Social Ramiro Ledesma de Tetuán, amanece incendiado y con pintadas
http://madrid.lahaine.org/el-hogar-social-ramiro-ledesma

Popular Call to antifascist action
Anti-fascist demonstration in Tetouan district against the occupation of a building by the neo-Nazi party ideology MSR.

Saturday, 30th August 2014 at 18:00. From the Plaza de las Palomas (officially Plaza del Canal de Isabel II). http://madrid.lahaine.org/manifestacion-antifascista-contra-el-edificio

Fascist out
they stealth our neighborhoods
Tetuan worker and multicultural

To remember that there was another social center occupied by fascist in Barcelana that had to be left due to the pressure of the nieghbourgs in june. Casal Tramuntana fuck you off!