Welcome! Newsletter number 62.
Joyful news: As of today, February 1, I am no longer general secretary of the SAC. I don’t regret that I sought the position, it was an interesting experience, I learned a lot, and I hope I was able to contribute with a good thing or two. But the bureaucracy and being locked into organizational duties with people I would not work with under any other circumstances was, at times, brutal. Looking forward to returning to full-time freelance writing and translating as well as voluntary political and union work.
Luckily, I could finish my general secretary duties with something I actually enjoy doing. I got to speak during the “practice” day of the Unequal Exchange conference in Amsterdam. The conference was organized by the Arghiri Emmanuel Association, which includes many friends, not least Torkil Lauesen, who I’ve collaborated with on the book Turning Money Into Rebellion and many other projects over the last fifteen years. I talked about two examples of SAC organizing (the Fair Wine Trade campaign and the migrant workers’ branches in Stockholm) that can count as micro examples of working-class activism in the Global North strengthening internationalist and antiimperialist perspectives. Most importantly, I got to challenge other participants at foosball and won all my games.
Last month’s sports articles in junge Welt addressed ice stock sport, the Four Hills Tournament and Two Nights Tour (that’s ski jumping), an interview with handball goalie Marius Noack, a thought experiment about an anti-US sports boycott, injuries in Alpine skiing, the ski-flying world championships, and the “Nightrace” (evening slalom) in Schladming, Austria.
I wrote a little piece, “Trump and Infantino: FIFA Sinking to New Lows,” in connection with the release of the Italian edition of Soccer vs the State; the piece is available in both Italian and English.
More on soccer: PM Press has released the book Argentina, a Tale of Two Utopias: Anarchism, Soccer, Neoliberalism, which I wrote a preface for. (Very honored! Tomas Rothaus is a fabulous writer.)
Another PM Press book that I have contributed to (as the editor) has cleared its USD 4,000 fundraising goal: Nillas Somby’s In the Hour of the Wolf: Tales of a Sámi Warrior. The book is fantastic!
For analyse & kritik, I wrote a piece about the welfare state and the radical left for their welfare state issue.
Rounding out with a bit of info:
- With Erik Helgeson, vice-chairman of the Swedish Dock Workers’ Union, having been sacked by the Gothenburg Port authorities in connection with the union’s refusal to load ships carrying war material to Israel, the union is doing a fundraiser to help cover legal costs.
- The author Ilija Trojanow is adding another piece to his wide-ranging oeuvre: Wo Europa endet und beginnt is a book about the Balkans with photographs by Christian Muhrbeck.
- Walking Bakunin encyclopedia Wolfgang Eckhardt has added two new volumes to his collected works series of the man’s writings in German. With each volume standing at more than 1,000 pages, there is no lack of comprehensiveness.
More next month. Stay safe!