Welcome! Newsletter number 32.
Plenty to do at the union, so I had no time for a new review, although I have a couple of interesting books on my desk. I’m toying with the idea of taking a couple of days off in September to perhaps make up for it by offering two reviews next month. We’ll see.
Speaking of the union: analyse & kritik, the German monthly I write for on occasion, interviewed me about being appointed as the SAC‘s general secretary. Sweet.
In early August, a couple of articles appeared in junge Welt – one on Finland’s far-right cabinet members, and a longer report from the anarchist gathering in St. Imier – but they were my last junge Welt articles for the time being. The paper published two texts by Susann Witt-Stahl about anarchists who died during the military defense of the Ukraine, suggesting that they had joined fascist ranks. I missed the first article in mid-June, but caught the follow-up piece in early August. I know little about some of the persons Witt-Stahl is writing about, but with respect to Dmitry Petrov, Cooper “Harris” Andrews, and Finbar Cafferkey, people close to them assure me that these accusations are ludicrous and defamatory. I’m a big United Front fan, and I don’t expect papers I write for to only publish articles I agree with (quite the opposite), but there are boundaries as to where you feel comfortable contributing. Too bad. I’ll miss the sports writing and the articles on Sápmi in particular.
Luckily, you can also talk about sports, as I was allowed to do at a Stockholm event about the antimilitaristic “Peace Run” (Fredsloppet), organized since 1985 by Sweden’s Communist Party. It was a great conversation with representatives of Proletären FF, Collective Effort, and the always enchanting Showan Shattak.
Also in Stockholm, I joined a group of activist-theorists to talk about “Decolonization” at a release event for the latest issue of Clarté, a long-standing left-internationalist journal. The other participants were much more in tune with academic debates than I, but the conversation became more concrete the further it went along.
Frihetens fönster: om kamp i Latinamerika och exil i Sverige, our Swedish book about political refugees from the military dictatorships in Uruguay, Chile, and Argentina, is out! Many thanks to my co-editor Dharana Favilla, who was a wonderful person to work with! Release event September 1, for those who make decisions fast.
A book in English, but also set in Europe’s far north, Liberating Sápmi, was the topic of interviews for two radio shows, one in Bulgaria (due to problems with the Cyrillic alphabet, I can’t find an online link, but the Bulgarian voice-over sounds great!), and one of the longest-running anarchist radio shows in Europe, Manchester’s Under the Pavement. Both interviews were recorded during the Balkan Anarchist Bookfair in Ljubljana.
Finally, I return to the union. In connection with the weeks-long wildcat strike of Eastern European truck drivers on the Gräfenhausen truck stop in Germany, the SAC branch Solidariska byggare founded an international strike fund to compensate for the drivers’ loss of income and support future strikes of a similar nature. Well worth putting some money into if you have any to spare.
Till next month. Stay safe!