Welcome! Newsletter number 41.
No new review on the blog, I simply didn’t have the time. But two reviews of mine in German were published last month, one about Ronny Blaschke’s Spielfeld der Herrenmenschen. Kolonialismus und Rassismus im Fußball in ak, and one about Jakob Schäfer’s Mellopolis ‘48 in Contraste.
Quite a few things happened within the union (SAC). We had a national meeting in late May, starting to prepare for next year’s congress. We only have a congress every fourth year and all of the major decisions are taken there, so they stake out the road for the future. Important to be well-prepared.
Some of my ideas about the union’s future are contained in an interview with Arbetaren. I also got to write about the Tesla strike in English again. It wasn’t the only international attention the SAC got last month. Jacobin published articles in English and German, and Jungle World authors liked our May Day rally in Stockholm. Right now, we have a strike at the medical supply company MediCarrier.
In mid-May, I went to Copenhagen to meet with union activists there. Very insightful. I went to Oslo for the same purpose in March and will travel to Helsinki in the fall. I gave a talk about the SAC at the Copenhagen offices of Enhedslisten, and I talked about the booklet Antiindividualistic Individuality: Anarchism’s Legacy at Bogcafé Halmtorvet. The latter prompted Autonom Infoservice to review another booklet of mine, Revolution is More Than a Word: 23 Theses on Anarchism, which also exists in Danish. Some of the union meetings were held at Internationalt Forum.
The venerable lefty journal Flamman has published my Swedish account of helping with the last stages of the KPÖ local election drive in Innsbruck (see newsletter no. 40).
No one can ignore the tragic situation in Gaza. Old friends in the region are organizing a campaign, Faz3a, that is well worth looking into. Another old friend, this one in the US, has been stopped from teaching at her university because she allegedly broke rules of conduct by supporting pro-Palestinian protests.
Meanwhile, in Indonesia, the publisher of the Indonesian edition of Soccer vs. the State, sent me a fascinating Instagram reel.
Indigener Widerstand in Zeiten des Klimawandels, my German book(let) about Sápmi, is now available.
More next month. Stay safe!