Update August 3: As of today, I’m pausing my contributions to the German daily “junge Welt”. The reason are the contents of an article by Susann Witt-Stahl on anarchist volunteers fighting the Russian invasion in Ukraine. It follows a June 17 article of the same nature I hadn’t been aware of. I don’t expect everyone who writes in publications that I write for to hold the same opinion as me (quite the opposite), but there are certain boundaries as to where it feels justifiable to share the same outlet.
Welcome! Newsletter number 31.
This month, I managed to write a new review, looking at a recent release on Black anarchism, namely, Black Anarchism and the Black Radical Tradition: Moving Beyond Racial Capitalism, authored by Atticus Bagby-Williams and Nsambu Za Suekama. A topic always of interest.
Most of July, I was traveling. It was nice, but I feel I’ve reached the end of the post-Covid travel frenzy. Too much time away from the family, and now there’s also the job with the SAC (responsibilities!). Not that I won’t leave Stockholm at all within the coming months, but much less frequently than during the recent year.
I went to two anarchist events in July, the Balkan Anarchist Bookfair in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and the Anarchy 2023 gathering in St. Imier, Switzerland. Socially, both events were very nice; politically, I’m not sure. I talked about Liberating Sápmi at both events, and I enjoyed both talks and the discussions thereafter. In St. Imier, I presented together with one of the makers of the book No Mine in Gállok: Ecocide and Colonialism in Swedish-occupied Sápmi, a great effort!
After the bookfair in Slovenia, I went to visit the Barabrith vegan retreat in Croatia, run by a good friend who cut his teeth in Active Distribution. Well worth a visit!
With respect to St. Imier, I was very saddened to hear about my friend Cris from the Etniko Bandido collective in the Philippines being denied a visa to attend. I wrote a little something about this for the PM Press blog.
In St. Imier, I also found a text from the insurrectionary camp, in which a review of mine was referenced positively. Who would have thought? Well, I suppose it’s all in the spirit of pushing back against Andreas Malm’s eco-Leninism. Fair enough.
Meanwhile, in Sweden, the release of a book I’ve been working on together with my friend Dharana Favilla has been announced by the publisher: Frihetens fönster – Om kamp i Latinamerika och exil i Sverige will come out in late August, just in time for the 50th anniversary of the military coup in Chile 1973. The book documents the impact that the numerous political refugees who came to Sweden in the 1970s from the military dictatorships in Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina have had on the country. Dharana herself arrived in Sweden as a child to Tupamaros parents. The book was a great project to work on. I learned a lot, and it was a pleasure to collaborate with Dharana.
There’s been some writing in junge Welt, although, due to all the moving about, I only clocked in two articles this month: one on the New York Times dissolving its sports department, and one on the fiasco that the Swedish application for NATO membership has turned into. (Mind you, if it leads to them never joining, it would have at least been worth it.)
Speaking of NATO: the makers of the morning show on Sweden’s P1 radio station wanted an SAC comment on consensus decision-making and remained persistent even when I told them that there was no consensus decision-making in the SAC. We were featured on the July 16 show.
Two recommendations, somewhat related: There’s a new website, Unequal Exchange, dedicated to the work of Arghiri Emmanuel, a major influence on Torkil Lauesen, whose book Det globale perspektiv I have translated into English and German. And there’s an interesting interview that some people involved with the website conducted with Immanuel Ness about his latest book Migration as Economic Imperialism.
That was that, as I’m heading back to Stockholm and the SAC office. Stay safe!