Words of a Rebel

Peter Kropotkin

Chapter 5: Political Rights

Each day, in a whole range of tones, the bourgeois press praises the value and the importance of our political liberties, of the "political rights of the citizen": universal suffrage, free elections, freedom of the press and of meeting, etc.

"Since you have these freedoms," they say to us, "what is the point of rebelling? Don't the liberties you already possess assure the possibilities of all the reforms that may be necessary, without your needing to resort to the gun?" So, let us analyze, from our point of view, what these famous "political liberties" are worth to the class that owns nothing, rules nobody, and has in fact very few rights and plenty of duties.

We are not asserting, as has sometimes been said, that political rights have no value to us. We know very well that since the days of serfdom and even since the last century, we have made a certain amount of progress; the man of the people is no longer the being deprived of all rights that he was in the past. The French peasant can no longer be flogged at the roadside, as he still is in Russia. In public places, outside his factory or workshop, the worker considers himself the equal of anyone, especially in the great cities. The French worker is no longer that being lacking in all human rights who in the past was treated by the aristocracy as a beast of burden. Thanks to the revolutions, thanks to the blood which the people shed, he has acquired certain personal rights whose value we have no desire to minimize.

But we know how to draw distinctions, and we assert that there are rights and rights. There are those that have a real value and those that do not, and whoever tries to confound them is only deceiving the people. Certain rights like, for example, the equality of the peasant and the squire in their personal relations, or the corporal inviolability of the person, have been won through great struggles, and are so dear to the people that they will rise up rather than allowing them to be violated. But there are others, like universal suffrage, freedom of the press, etc., towards which the people have always remained lukewarm, because the know perfectly well that these rights, which have served so well to defend the ruling bourgeoisie against the encroachments of royal power and of the aristocracy, are no more than an instrument in the hands of the dominant classes to maintain their power over the people. These rights are not even real political rights, since they provide no safeguard for the mass of the people; and if we still decorate them with that pompous title it is because our political language is no more than a jargon elaborated by the ruling classes for their own use and in their own interest.

What, in fact, is a political right if it is not an instrument to safeguard the independence, the dignity and the freedom of those who do not yet have the power to impose on others a respect for that right? What is its use, if it is not and instrument of liberation for those who need to be freed? The Gambetas, the Bismarcks, the Gladstones need neither the freedom of the press nor the freedom of meeting, because they can write what they want, can meet whomsoever they wish, and profess whatever ideas they please; they are already liberated. They are free. If there is any need together, it is surely to those who are not powerful enough to impose their will. Such in fact is the origin of all political rights.

But, looked at from this viewpoint, have the political rights we are talking of been created with an eye to those who alone need safeguards? Obviously not. Universal suffrage can sometimes and to a certain extent protect, without the need for a constant recourse to force in self-defense. It can serve to re-establish the equilibrium between two forces which struggle for power, without the rivals being forces to draw their swords on each other as they did in the past. But it can be no help if it is a matter of overthrowing or even limiting power, or of abolishing domination. Since it is such an excellent instrument for resolving in a peaceful manner any quarrels among the rulers, what use can it possibly be to the ruled?

Does not the history of universal suffrage tell us this? Whenever the bourgeoisie has feared that universal suffrage might become a weapon in the hands of the people that could be turned against the privileged, it has fought it stubbornly. But the day it was proved, in 1848, that universal suffrage held nothing to fear, and that one could rule the people with an iron rod by the use of universal suffrage, it was immediately accepted. Now the bourgeoisie itself has become its defender, because it understands that here is a weapon adapted to sustain its domination, but absolutely harmless as a threat to its privileges.

It is the same with freedom of the press. What, in the eyes of the bourgeoisie, has been the most conclusive argument in favor of freedom of the press? Its powerlessness. Yes, its powerlessness. M. de Girardin¹⁰ has written a whole book on this theme: the powerlessness of the press. "Formerly -- he says -- we burned witches because people had the stupidity to believe they were all-powerful; now people commit the same stupidity regarding the press, because they believe that it also is all-powerful. But it is nothing of the kind; it is as powerless as the witches of the middle ages. Hence, more persecutions of the press!" This is the contention that M. de Girardin offered in the past. And when the bourgeoisie discuss the freedom of the press among themselves, what arguments to they advance in its favour?

"Look at England, Switzerland and the United States," they say. "In all of them the press is free and yet capitalist exploitation is better established in them than in any other country; its reign is more secure among them than anywhere else." And they add, "What does it matter if dangerous doctrines are produced. Don't we have all the means of stifliling the voices of the journals that protect them without even a recourse to violence? And even if one day, at a time of agitation, the revolutionary press becomes a dangerous weapon, so what? On that day it will be time enough to destroy it with a single blow on the most convenient pretext."

As for the freedom of meeting, the same kind of reasoning holds. "Give complete freedom of meeting." Say the bourgeoisie. "It will do no harm to our privileges. What we have to fear are the secret societies, and public meetings are the best way of paralyzing them. But if, in a moment of excitement, public meeting should get out of hand, we would always have the means of suppressing them, since we hold the powers of government."

"The inviolability of the dwelling? Of Course! Write it into all the codes! Cry it from rooftops!" say the knowing ones among the bourgeoisie. "We don't want policemen coming to surprise us in our little nests." But we will institute a secret service to keep an eye on suspects; we will people the country with police spies, make lists of dangerous people, and watch them closely. And if we smell out one day that anything is afoot, then we must set to vigorously, make a jest of inviolability, arrest people in their beds, search and ransack their homes! But above all we must do this boldly and if anyone protests too loudly, we must lock them up as well, and say to the rest, 'What would you have us do, gentlemen? We must deal firmly with the situation!' And we shall be applauded."

"The privacy of correspondence? Say it everywhere, write and cry it out, that correspondence is inviolable. If the head of some village post office opens a letter out of curiosity, sack him at once and proclaim loudly that he is a monstrous criminal. Take good care that the little secrets we exchange with each other in our letters shall not be divulged. But if we get wind of some plot being hatched against our privileges, then let us not stand on ceremony; let us open everyone's letters, allocate a thousand clerks to the task if necessary, and if someone takes it on himself to protest, let us say frankly, as an English minister did recently to the applause of parliament. 'Yes, gentlemen, it is with a heavy heart and the deepest of distaste that we order letters to be opened, but it is entirely because the country (i.e. the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie) is in danger."

This is what these so-called liberties can be reduced to. Freedom of press and of meeting, inviolability of home and all the rest, are only respected if the people do not make use of them against the privileged classes. But the day the people begin to take advantage of them to undermine those privileges, the so-called liberties will be cast overboard.

This is quite natural. Humanity retains only the rights it has won by hard struggle and is ready to defend at every moment, with arms in hand.

If men and women are not whipped in the streets of Paris, as they are in Odessa, it is because on the day a government dared to attempt this people would tear its agents to pieces. If an aristocrat can no longer make way for himself through the streets with the help of blows delivered right and left by the staves of his servants, it is because any of the servants who got such ideas into their heads would immediately be overpowered. If a degree of equality exists between the worker and his employer, at least in the streets and in public establishments, it is not because the worker's rights are written into the law but because, thanks to revolutions in the past, he has a feeling of personal dignity that will not let him endure an offense from anyone.

Yet it is evident that in present-day society, divided as it is between masters and serfs, true liberty cannot exist; it will not exist so long as there are exploiters and slaves, governments and governed. At the same time it does not follow that, as we await the day when the anarchist revolution will sweep away all social distinctions, we wish to see the press muzzled, as in Germany, the right of meeting annulled as in Russia, or the inviolability of the person reduced as it is in Turkey. Slaves of capital that we all are, we want to be able to write and publish whatever seems right to us, we want to be able to meet and organize as we please, precisely so that we can shake off the yoke of capital.

But it is high time we understood that we must not demand these rights through constitutional laws. We cannot go in search of our natural rights by way of a law, a scrap of paper that could be torn up at the least whim of the rulers. For it is only by transforming ourselves into a force, capable of imposing our will, that we shall succeed in making our rights respected.

Do you want to have freedom to speak and write whatever seems right to you? Do you want to have the liberty to meet and organize? It is not from a parliament that we seekers of freedom should ask permission, nor must we beg a law from the Senate. We must become an organized force, capable of showing our teeth every time anyone sets about restraining our rights of speech and meeting; we must be strong, and then we may be sure that nobody will dare dispute our right to speak, to write, to print what we write, and meet together. The day we have been able to establish enough agreement among the exploited for them to come out in their millions in the streets and take up the defense of our rights, nobody will dare to dispute those rights, nor any others that we choose to demand. Then, and only then, shall we have truly gained such rights, for which we might plead to parliament for decades in vain. Then those rights will be guaranteed to us in a far more certain way than if they were merely written down on a bit of paper.

Freedoms are not given, they are taken.

¹⁰ Emile de Girardin (1806-1881), an active journalist in Paris from the 1848 Revolution down to the Third Republic; he almost single-handedly invented the cheap popular press in France with his La Presse, as early as 1836; he was a clever feuilletonist, and the Vicar of Bray of French journalism, supporting all the timely adventurers at the right time.

Kropotkin Words of Rebel, Chapter 5

Former Bolivian leader Evo Morales seeks a political comeback from his stronghold in the tropics

Former President Evo Morales chews coca in the Lauca N, Chapare region of Bolivia, Nov. 3, 2024, amid an ongoing political conflict with the government of President Luis Arce. (AP Photo/Juan Karita, File)

By Isabel Debre and Juan Karita - Associated Press - Sunday, December 29, 2024

LAUCA, Bolivia — Bolivia’s leftist former leader Evo Morales has a campaign pitch for 2025 that has worked elsewhere: Other politicians of recent years have brought you nothing but misery. It’s time for a return to the past.

His supporters are looking to the charismatic but polarizing Mr. Morales for a rescue from the five tumultuous years since his 2019 resignation. The country’s first Indigenous president, he is credited with spreading the wealth of a commodities boom and ushering in a rare stretch of social and economic stability during his nearly 14 years in office.

His detractors say Mr. Morales —- who built an economy uncomfortably dependent on natural gas reserves and sought to stay in power longer than Bolivia’s constitution allows — bears responsibility for much of the turmoil that followed his tenure.

A bitter political battle is looming between Mr. Morales, still only 65, and his former economy minister and once-protege, President Luis Arce, over who will lead their long-dominant leftist Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, into the August 2025 election.

Mr. Arce has urged on allies in the judiciary against Mr. Morales, with the Constitutional Court disqualifying Mr. Morales’ candidacy and ousting him from the leadership of MAS, the party he helped found in the 1990s.

Prosecutors in mid-December charged Mr. Morales with statutory rape for fathering a child with a 15-year-old girl when he was 56 and president. Mr. Morales didn’t deny the relationship but accused Mr. Arce of deploying a “dirty, odious” campaign to undermine him.

PHOTOS:  Bolivia's former leader Evo Morales seeks a political comeback from his stronghold in the tropics

Since talk of his arrest warrant surfaced in September, Mr. Morales has been holed up in Bolivia’s coca-growing region of Chapare, ringed by loyal supporters. Here, the former coca farmer and fiery union leader — long considered one of the last of the so-called “pink wave” of leftist leaders who once dominated Latin American politics — is planning his comeback.

Few outsiders are allowed inside his stronghold in Bolivia’s steamy lowlands, but The Associated Press was invited last month for a look from behind the barricades.


“They don’t want me to be the candidate because they know I’ll win,” Mr. Morales said in an interview. “We’re in a state of total siege, morally, legally and politically.”

The four-hour drive to Chapare from Bolivia’s third-biggest city of Cochabamba is steep and slick with mist. The loyalty of the locals to their political champion is quickly evident.

Federal security forces, chased out by Mr. Morales’ followers, rarely venture here. Door-knocking census workers — even emergency rescuers responding to a deadly landslide last month — said they were harassed and kicked out by Mr. Morales’ coca union activists.

Earlier this month and after 40 days of negotiations, police began trickling back.

Coca farmers drying their leaves proudly recount how Mr. Morales evicted U.S. anti-drug agents almost in the same breath as they extol the benefits of the coca plant, cherished by Indigenous communities and maligned by the West as the raw material for cocaine.
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“Brother Evo was in these fields with us,” said Jose Luis Calicho, 39, nodding toward Mr. Morales’ own plot of land. “He knows we’re not criminals, we’re not narco-traffickers.”

Since October, when gunmen opened fire at his convoy, Mr. Morales, who was unharmed, has slept inside the fortress-like compound of his coca-growing union. He says the shooting was an assassination attempt and blames Mr. Arce’s government, which denies involvement.

Those who believe Mr. Morales’ comeback can close the door on years of political and economic paralysis are less clear about the kind of future he could bring.

“When I came to power in 2005, the nation was suffering, and I transformed it,” Mr. Morales said. “Now our crisis is even worse. We don’t have fuel, we don’t have dollars.”
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Most Bolivians, stinging from surging inflation and waiting in long lines to fill their tanks, agree on that.

But attitudes toward Morales are starkly different in his remote redoubt in Chapare and the rest of the country of 12 million, especially when it comes to the 2016 statutory rape case that indelibly tarnished his reputation.

In the upscale districts of La Paz, the capital, residents say they’re repulsed by his actions. Freshly painted graffiti asks: “Would you vote for a pedophile?”

“The political damage to Evo’s good image is devastating,” said Romer Alejo, a criminal lawyer in La Paz.
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His critics condemn Mr. Morales’ constitution-bending efforts to hold onto power longer than any leader in Bolivia’s modern history.

“We’re at a breaking point,” said Martín Sivak, the author of a biography on the former president. “There’s a verdict from Bolivians on this idea of staying in power for too long.”

But even if Mr. Morales himself has become too divisive, without him, many fear the long unstable Andean nation could veer back toward chaos.

Mr. Morales’ 2019 ouster elevated a right-wing interim president, Jeanine Anez, who cracked down on her political opponents and sought to purge Mr. Morales’ legacy.
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On a hot, sticky morning last month, Mr. Morales emerged from his hideout with heavy security, to check on his fields. As he hunched over to cut weeds, his aides pulled out their smartphones to film him — a throwback to the early 2000s, when videos of the son of llama farmers in his humble alpaca sweater were a magnet for foreign media.

But Mr. Morales didn’t seem to notice. When everyone had gone, he kept on working. He said he wasn’t close to finishing.

From Pickets to Power: Lessons from the Amazon Walk-Outs


The five-day strike called by Teamsters at Amazon ended on Christmas. The workers’ actions across multiple warehouses were limited, but it marked another important step in the fight against the corporate giant.


Luigi Morris December 29, 2024

Photo: Luigi Morris

On December 18, incoming President Donald Trump hosted Elon Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos for dinner at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida. After years of tension, Bezos was eager to build a closer relationship with Trump. He had just donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, praised him for his “energy around reducing regulation,” and also kept the Washington Post from endorsing a presidential candidate, which showed his willingness to deal with Trump on good terms. But as they enjoyed their luxurious dinner, Amazon workers were finalizing plans for the largest worker action across the country in the company’s history, set to begin the following day.

This image encapsulates what Trump’s second presidential term could look like: on one side, billionaires strategizing how to maximize their profits and erode workers’ rights; on the other, a precarious and multi-ethnic working class organizing for higher wages, better conditions, and a voice in the workplace.

As an Amazon worker said in an interview with Left Voice: “With Elon Musk, Donald Trump and Jeff Bezos together… problems.”

Far from the comfort of Trump’s estate, under adverse weather conditions, Amazon workers risked everything. In NYC, employees at warehouses in Queens and Staten Island braved the snow and cold, as well as the fear of putting their job at risk during the busy lead-up to Christmas, to walk out and protest. They would soon be joined by baristas at hundreds of Starbucks locations across the country — also fighting for their first contract — in their “strike before Christmas.”

In New York, hundreds of community members joined workers in the snow at the picket line — even at the isolated JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island. Workers, students, local activists, and tenant organizers, many wearing keffiyehs, stood in solidarity with Amazon workers in their struggle against the multi-trillion dollar corporate giant.

A JFK8 Amazon worker with four years at the warehouse shared, “It’s not easy to be here… When I heard about the strike, I was anxious. But seeing all of you united for one common cause, I have to say: it’s worth the risk.”

A new layer of rank-and-file workers took the lead in sustaining these walkouts. Despite a massive police presence and harassment from the company, many stood up to managers and police, found creative ways to endure the long hours on picket lines, and built community by sharing their frustrations and aspirations for change.

These walkouts were part of a national action by drivers and warehouse workers at multiple Amazon warehouses, including DGT8 in Atlanta, DFX4, DAX5, and DAX8 in Southern California, DCK6 in San Francisco, and DIL7 in Skokie, Illinois.

Additionally, on December 23, workers at Amazon’s Garner, North Carolina facility, a massive warehouse employing over 5,000 people, filed for a union election under the Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity & Empowerment (CAUSE), independent of Teamsters.

The action came amid growing public support for Amazon workers. In a national poll from 2022 after the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) victory at JFK8, 75 percent agreed that Amazon workers “need union representation in order to have job security, better pay, and safer working conditions.” Even the Warehouse Worker Injury Reduction Act, signed into law by New York Governor Hochul during the strike, reflects this growing support. The grueling conditions and high injury rates at the company can no longer be ignored.

You might also be interested in: Essential Workers at Amazon Are Rising Up for the Whole Working Class

Despite the strike’s limits, the action built important momentum toward future struggles against Amazon. Workers got a glimpse of the impact of their fight on the working class as a whole. As one worker noted, “This is just the first wave, the first push for the contract we rightfully deserve.”

Sean O’Brien and the Teamsters Bureaucracy

Before delving into the specifics, it’s essential to understand the context surrounding these walkouts. Amazon is the second-largest private employer in the U.S., where only 6 percent of private-sector workers are unionized. The company stands out with its union-busting tactics and high turnover, replacing 3 percent of its workforce weekly. However, Amazon’s impunity is increasingly being challenged.

Since the historic unionization at JFK8 Fulfillment Center in Staten Island over two years ago, Amazon has been stalling on union recognition and contract negotiations. But, despite some setbacks, organizing continues to grow. The ALU’s affiliation with Teamsters and recent unionization attempts among drivers have bolstered these efforts, though not without contradictions.

According to the Teamsters, 10,000 of Amazon’s 800,000 employees are unionized. While still a minority, Amazon cannot return to the “pre-ALU era” without a massive crackdown on union organizing. Yet, this is not enough to force Amazon to negotiate a contract.

Breaking the “factory dictatorship” at Amazon remains a herculean task. Large-scale actions have not yet materialized. A JFK8 worker noted, “They said unionizing was impossible. Look where we are now. That day [of a full strike and a contract] will come.”



The recent actions did not significantly disrupt business but delayed some deliveries. For Teamsters President Sean O’Brien and the union leadership, one of the main goals was media attention as part of building public pressure on Amazon. Stories of grueling conditions reached millions, and Christmas package delays became a national topic.

For the Teamsters leadership, this action primarily revolved around gaining union recognition and shaping the future of organizing efforts at Amazon. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) also represents hundreds of thousands of UPS delivery workers. Confronted with competition from Amazon’s delivery operations, the union aims to recruit new members from Amazon to expand its dues base and strengthen its influence over both competing corporations. In essence, the Teamsters are wagering that this strike could serve as a foundation for a larger, more protracted effort to organize Amazon across the United States, ultimately as a strategy for self-preservation.

Last year, O’Brien diverted a potential strike at UPS that could have significantly impacted working-class organizing. While celebrated by many, the contract agreement did not eliminate the huge gap in compensation and working conditions between drivers and warehouse workers. This year’s actions at Amazon allowed O’Brien to position his leadership as “more combative.”

In the run-up to the presidential elections, O’Brien spoke at the Republican National Convention and is already playing an advisor role to the Trump administration. In efforts to align the working class with the Republican Party, The Teamsters president wrote in an article that he expects the GOP to become “the working-class party.” In an obvious demonstration of the class character of the new administration, Bezos is also seeking to expand his influence in the coming years. This positioning by O’Brien has little to do with empowering workers. While O’Brien tries to rail the working class into a far-right program led by Trump, it’s crucial to have a perspective of class independence, independent from both political parties.

You might also be interested in: Trump’s Success, the Democrats’ Failure, and the Fight for a Working-Class Alternative

For the local leaderships — Amazon Labor Union, Amazonians United, and CAUSE, for example — the goals and realities differ significantly. The organizations within the warehouses aim to expand their organizing efforts, engage more rank-and-file members, and strengthen the sectors capable of halting production.

As we wrote in a previous article:


the current strike at Amazon is about a lot more than just the Teamsters, union recognition, or winning a first contract. Indeed, beyond the interests of the IBT leadership, this strike is fundamentally an expression of the frustration of the hundreds of thousands of Amazon warehouse workers and drivers, who, like millions of other precarious workers across the country, were forced to risk their lives working through the pandemic but received nothing in return except runaway inflation.
The Need for Rank-and-File Organizing

At JFK8, while only a minority of workers walked out, deeper support for the action was evident. The backing of 700 workers who pledged to strike and the dozens of workers who took on roles during the walkout and picket lines, signals a growing base of rank-and-file organization.

Over decades of neoliberalism, unions have been weakened and the working class has become increasingly fragmented, which Amazon’s high turnover and union-busting tactics exemplify. Yet change is underway. As JFK8 worker Eulalia said before the strike, “[the union] is like family, I definitely have the support I need. You don’t get that in Amazon, definitely. Amazon treat us like slaves.”

On the picket line, workers coordinated food, picketing shifts, and solidarity. At a worker’s gathering on Sunday, many shared personal stories. One worker said, “It gets cold at night, but we stay together, keep each other warm, and laugh. They don’t care about us, but we will make them care.”

Amid widespread anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies, picket lines featured chants in multiple languages, and flyers were distributed in English, Spanish, Arabic, and Creole. Workers united beyond national origin as one fist against Amazon.

In another display of solidarity, Staten Island JFK8 workers supported the Queens DBK4 picket lines, and DBK4 drivers joined the JFK8 walkout in the midst of a snow storm at midnight. On December 24, DBK4 drivers also joined Starbucks workers on a picket line in SoHo.

Amazon workers also found out quickly that their struggle was not only against the boss, but that they would also be confronting the police, who had come, at the request of Amazon, to suppress the pickets. At JKF8, dozens of NYPD officers station themselves outside the warehouse to guarantee the free flow of vehicles in and out of the facility. In the case of DBK4, the police even set barricades to avoid trucks being blocked. Police arrested Jorgeasyn Cardenas, a driver from the facility, for simply showing solidarity with the picketers, and Anthony Rosario, a UPS driver who had turned out to show support for the strikes. As if this was not enough, at the DKB4 facility, Amazon flooded the food and warming station with freezing cold water in order to disrupt the pickets.

One of the highlights of these strikes was the community support. At JFK8, which is isolated from residential areas, over one hundred people organized by the ALU Community Support committee joined the picket line at critical moments. Many community and left organizations were also a key component of holding the picket line. CUNY students and faculty, many of whom work at Amazon, consistently supported the strike.

The unity among workers and students is a powerful example that needs to be expanded in future strikes. As CUNY students organized with Left Voice said: “Many students are workers and so their interests are deeply tied to the fate of the whole working class. The alliance between workers and students helps both and our fates are linked in the battle for a better world.”

You might also be interested in: CUNY Stands With Amazon and Starbucks Workers on Strike

Organizing and mobilizing the rank and file remains the major challenge. Breaking the culture of fear imposed by the company and fostering self-organization are key. Together, drivers and warehouse workers need to develop their own spaces to strategize, discuss, and decide each major step in their union struggle as a united force. This requires organizing from below; It’s the workers’ jobs and livelihoods that are on the line, so they deserve to be the protagonists of their struggle.

Local organizing efforts must avoid normalizing top-down Teamsters tactics and instead focus on empowering workers through direct action and broad participation. Mike, a JFK8 worker who has over four years at Amazon and has multiple injuries, said, “This won’t stop until we get everything we deserve. Talk to coworkers, family, and supporters. Make this grow because, at the end of the day, we will win.”

The strike is over, but the fight must continue. Continuing to expand rank and file strength will be essential to force Amazon to negotiate a first contract. If there is any retaliation against workers, it must be met with a wide, democratic campaign defending their rights to organize.

A victory for Amazon workers will be a victory for the whole working class.




Luigi Morris is a member of Left Voice, freelance photographer and socialist journalist.

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What is this place? Stories from radical social centres in the UK and Ireland




Radical movements have always needed bases and spaces to meet, eat, grow and gather. Recently in the UK and Ireland there has been a conscious effort to link these social centres, info shops and resource centres whether squatted rented or bought, into a loose network that can share ideas and support each other.

 December 29, 2024

In January 2007 a Social Centres Network gathering was held at the 1 in 12 Club in Bradford that was attended by people from all over the UK. There was an idea to try and make the wider project of autonomous spaces more visible and clear to the people who used social centres and the idea of this booklet was born. A call-out for essays, cartoons, reflections, and rants was put out and here are the resulting 27 pieces. Most of them are descriptive of particular places, others discuss more general questions about the idea of social centres. A few of us helped to proof and layout the booklet but the
pieces have not been edited.

As these pieces show, there is a huge diversity of projects being built from food co-ops and volunteer run vegan cafes to migrant solidarity and mental health self-help groups. At the same time we are often tackling similar issues as we experiment with self-management, working without leaders and treading the fine line between being a radical, autonomous space and also reaching out into our local communities, providing services and dealing with authorities.

We hope that this booklet will promote debate and action on the need for autonomous spaces in our cities and neighbourhoods. So now we pass over to those involved, to let the stories speak for themselves.

There are copies available FREE in all the social centres we can find and also by emailing us at socialcentrestories [at] riseup [dot] net

Copyleft- feel free to use, copy and distribute.

From https://socialcentrestories.wordpress.com/.

Attachments
whats-this-place_lo-res.pdf (9.67 MB)


social centres
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The Post Office: an emblem of the UK’s relationship with the state, sliding into dystopia

Somewhere along the line we acquired the idea that publicly funded, well-run services are a relic of the past. 

Alamy/Brinkstock

THE CONVERSATION
Published: December 30, 2024 

The Horizon scandal, which led to the wrongful prosecution of hundreds of subpostmasters, has severely dented the public’s perception of the Post Office as an institution. Against this backdrop, branch closures are planned across the Post Office network.

These further cuts to a system already struggling can only do further harm to the sense that well-resourced public services could and should play a central role in everyday life.

In my PhD research, I spoke to people about their thoughts on the Post Office and their ideas about the future of society more generally. One interviewee relished their trips to Manchester’s now-closed crown post office at Spring Gardens and described it, with only a little irony, as “the cathedral of post”.

They loved the way it revealed something of the workings of a larger, complex and world-spanning system of communication. They also liked to daydream about how it would be to live in a society oriented towards a more community-focused, village-like way of life.

My work looks at these speculative dimensions of social life – the way hopes, dreams and desires for other ways of living are expressed by people now. These speculative dimensions have a political significance – they tell us something about the forms of social organisation people yearn for, and what frustrates them about our current way of living. Understanding how public infrastructures influence these frustrations and desires is a key focus of my research.

Further branch closures are coming. Shutterstock/Jun Huang

The infrastructures which facilitate social life also send signals to us about how society is organised, what’s valued and powerful within it, and what seems likely to be valued in the future. They help structure our ideas about what society is and what it could be like.

In the case of the Post Office, the Horizon scandal demonstrates how the consequences can be severe and dystopian when something malfunctions within a key institution of this kind.

Historically, the Post Office played a key role in developing infrastructures of modern life that came to be cherished. Key among these, as historian Patrick Joyce has noted, is routine engagement with paid officials of the state, through Post Office staff and postal delivery workers, or “posties”.

Speaking to Post Office workers and posties has long been among the most positively regarded interactions that an ordinary person routinely has with state infrastructures. Local post offices and posties have represented valued senses of local knowledge, community overwatch and benevolent officialdom.

Crown post offices (the larger branches in the network), often inhabiting a significant spot in a town or city centre, have done their bit too, contributing a sense of civic importance to a place, alongside libraries and town halls. They have provided access to a professional, knowledgeable human interface between a complex system of multiple state services, and those who rely on them.

But our positive engagements with this state system have been placed under decades of increasing strain. Privatisation has flowed from a creeping rejection of the idea that publicly owned public services could ever function beautifully. This, in turn, has left the services we need on a daily basis under-resourced.

The condition of crown post offices has reflected this. Their interiors often emanate a stark sense of minimal upkeep and only grudging repair. Already, many crown post offices have been closed. Where their services have not fully disappeared, they have been precariously relegated to space in retailers such as WH Smiths.

Meanwhile, the way we communicate, shop and socialise has been altering dramatically. Digital communication technology is impressing itself ever further into our social lives. Technology has deeply embedded associations with the future, but with this also comes a sense of unavoidability. The way AI is spoken about, as something set to bring inevitable and consequential transformations of our lives – whether we like it or not – is a case in point.

Both of these things – the neglect of physical places where we interact with state services and the increasing technologisation of social life – contribute to a growing sense of anachronism about places like the post office. The idea that a public service might attend to the public good in a well-appointed, pleasant, urban public setting feels, for no good reason, like a relic of the past.

All this affects the ways we imagine social futures. It brings a false air of inevitability to the loss of things people still need and care deeply about.

Posties: the reason your door has a number on it. Shutterstock/Henk Vrieselaar

When talking with users of post offices for my research, there was a simultaneous sense among them that posties and post offices contributed vital resources to everyday life, and that technology meant these things were not likely to survive much further into the future. This was often regarded as something to be accepted, even as it was acknowledged that what was going to be lost was something important and irreplaceable.

But such losses are not inevitable. They are a political choice built on two key failures – failure to challenge the idea that well-funded, publicly owned and run public services are unaffordable, and failure to envisage ways of organising public services in the digital age, such that they retain the vital material contributions they make to places.

Author

Martin Greenwood
Research Assistant, School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester

XMAS CHEER

UK

More drug drivers than drink drivers - Surrey police

Jessica Ure
BBC
BBC
Surrey Police arrested 32 people for drug driving in the first half of December

More drivers have been arrested for drug driving offences than drink driving in December, according to Surrey Police.

The findings come as part of Operation Limit, a month-long campaign which sees the force randomly stopping cars at designated stop sites to breathalyse or drug swab where necessary.

In the first half of December, 1127 vehicle stops were made, 465 breath tests and 117 drug wipes used, and 53 arrests made, 32 of which were for drug driving.

"We do get quite a lot of reports from people which is good for us because we can't be everywhere all the time," said Sgt Dan Ayrton from Surrey's Roads Policing Unit.


On a ride-along with Surrey Police, the first drink driving call came at 09:15 GMT

"It's good for us to have members of the public who are willing to call and let us know."

On a BBC London ride-along with Surrey Police, Sgt Ayrton's first drink driving call of the day came at 09:15 GMT.

"It's a report that's come in for a female that's left a pub, allegedly been drinking all night and has left in her vehicle," he said.

"We're just trying to make it across the county to try to intercept her.

"We're utilising some of the technology that's available to us to try and track where she might be going".


Operation Limit involves officers randomly stopping cars at designated stop sites to breathalyse or drug swab drivers where necessary


Sgt Ayrton caught up with the driver and a breathalyser was used, but the woman in question was not over the limit.

The legal alcohol limit for driving in England is 35 micrograms of alcohol per 100 millilitres of breath.

Factors such as weight, age, metabolism, and the amount of food you've eaten determine how much you can drink and stay under the limit.

This means each person's limit differs and police advise that the only safe option is to not drink any alcohol if driving.

"Whilst we're looking to educate about drink and drug driving there are a lot of other offences that we pick up whilst doing these check sites," said Sgt Ayrton.

"We've taken two drivers off the road today who are uninsured."

In 2023 the force's road's team made 205 arrests throughout December, 72 for drink driving, 118 for drug driving and the rest for a combination.

"I personally don't want to have to send any officers, or knock on anybody's door over the Christmas period, to say that their loved one has been killed by a drink driver," said Sgt Ayrton.

"We do everything we can to try to minimise that."

Two-thirds of higher education staff experience some form of sexual harassment: report

The survey comes at a time when violence against women has been on the rise in Northern Ireland

Stop sexual harassment and violence against women,

Mark Bain

Today 

BELFAST TELEGRAPH

Almost two-thirds of staff at higher education institutions have experienced some form of sexual harassment in the last five years, a report has revealed.

The COSHARE North-South survey outlined the key findings from the first all-island study of staff members’ experiences of consent, sexual violence and harassment in higher education across Ireland.

A total of 364 staff, including 236 participants from Northern Ireland, took part in the survey, opting to answer questions on their experiences of sexual violence and harassment.

Dr Susan Langdon, Senior Lecturer in Psychology (Mental Health) at Ulster University, said the findings show a “deeply concerning pattern”.

“Sexual violence and harassment is pervasive in all walks of our lives but it should not be,” she said.

“These findings demonstrate concerning patterns of sexual violence and harassment experienced by staff in higher education in both their personal and professional lives.”

The survey comes at a time when violence against women has been on the rise in Northern Ireland.


Members of the COSHARE research team from Ulster University & University of Galway launch the COSHARE North-South survey report.

Last September saw the launch of Stormont’s long-awaited strategic framework for Ending Violence Against Women and Girls (EVAWG),

First Minister Michelle O’Neill said the strategy — which charts the way forward until 2031 — marked the first step in dealing with a problem she described as an “epidemic”.

Of those surveyed, 43% said they had experienced some form of this behaviour in their work or personal lives in the last year, while 66% said they had experienced it in the last five years.

Almost two-thirds of participants (64%) said they had experienced sexual harassment in the past five years. This included 57% who had experienced sexist hostility in the last five years (27% in the last year), 23% with an experience of electronic or visual sexual harassment in the last five years (11% in the last year).

One quarter (26%) experienced some form of sexual violence in the past five years.

Almost a quarter said they had been touched in a way that made them feel uncomfortable, 16% indicated unwanted attempts of stroking or kissing; and 10% had been made to touch, stroke or kiss someone when they did not want to.

Over 30% said they experienced sexualised comments in the last five years (19% in the last year) while 31% had experienced unwanted sexual attention in the last five years (13% in the last year).

“While this behaviour should never be tolerated, we are grateful to our own higher education Institutions, Ulster University and the University of Galway, for their support and encouragement to progress with this important work,” Ms Langdon continued.

“We’re pleased that our institutions already proactively work with us on a range of initiatives that look to end violence and harassment in the workplace.


“We are also grateful to our wider higher education colleagues who supported and facilitated dissemination and awareness raising of this research, ensuring that those who wished to contribute, had their say.”

The cross-border research said there must be “greater collaboration between NI and Republic of Ireland Higher Education sectors to enhance protections for staff and support for change.”

Less than half (46%) of the participants agreed their higher education Institution proactively addressed issues of sexual violence and harassment, while only one-third (36%) saw their senior management as visible on this issue.

When asked about campus culture, 14% said agreed that sexual harassment and violence among staff was a problem at their institution.

Around 40% of staff said that they had received particular forms of information from their HEI relevant to consent, sexual violence and harassment.

There were other encouraging signs that staff want to contribute through being involved in training, with 80% displaying a willingness to support initiatives and 65% saying they would take an active role in delivery.

NOT AMERIKAN EVANGELICALS

Society will fail future generations unless it acts on poverty, church leaders warn in New Year message


Dr John Alderdice, Archbishops Eamon Martin and John McDowell, Rev Sarah Groves, and Dr Richard Murray.

Adrian Rutherford

BELFAST TELEGRAPH

Today 

Church leaders have urged politicians to be mindful of those less well-off in their New Year message.

They warned society will have failed future generations if it does not work strenuously to address issues such as rising child poverty.

The clerics also reflected on political developments in 2024, as well as the “pain and sorrow” caused by war and conflict as 2025 dawns.

The joint message comes from Catholic Archbishop Eamon Martin; Church of Ireland Archbishop John McDowell; Presbyterian Moderator Dr Richard Murray; Methodist President Dr John Alderdice and Rev Sarah Groves, President of the Irish Council of Churches.

The message reflects on the 25 years that have passed since the new millennium.

“The dawn of a new year gives us cause to reflect on the past 12 months and to look forward, with a little trepidation and excitement, to what lies ahead,” they said.

“It is hard to believe that in 2025 we will mark a quarter of a century since the new millennium began. At that time there was much fear that on the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve 1999 all computer technology, and indeed the world, would grind to a halt and everything as we knew it, would end.

“Those fears were thankfully unfounded yet the world we had hoped to see emerging in this new era, with people living at peace with their neighbours, and with more kindness and respect, has sadly not been realised.

“Instead, we are now living on a planet that is shrouded in the darkness, pain and sorrow of war and violence in so many different places. Calls for peace, reconciliation and love for our neighbours have been ignored or unheard.”

There is also a political theme to the church leaders’ message, as they reflected on developments in Irish and British politics.

However, there is also a stark warning to politicians around the need to tackle poverty in modern Ireland.

“In Northern Ireland, we are grateful to have witnessed the restoration of devolved government in the last year, with the Executive and the Assembly sitting once more at Stormont,” they said.

“In coming weeks, it is hoped that a new Irish Government will be formed, following the November Irish General Election.

“The new UK Government is also slowly bedding in and nearing the completion of its first six months in power.

“To govern means making decisions and often difficult choices. We continue to pray for all who hold positions of responsibility in this land and throughout the world, that they may be acutely aware of the needs of all people and especially of the poor, neglected and underprivileged, mindful particularly of the high rates of child poverty.

“We will have failed our children and grandchildren if we do not work strenuously to help and support the needs of the next generation, which may mean being prepared to have less for ourselves so that they may have something.

“May we all, in our call to serve one another, provide a voice for the voiceless and work tirelessly for healing and peace locally and internationally, offering help, hope and encouragement to those who will come after us.”

The church leaders also called for the language of hurt and division “to be confined to the past so that the words we use, and the actions we undertake, may be focused on love rather than hate, peace rather than war, light rather than darkness.”

Pollution could cause unborn babies to develop intellectual disabilities

Emily Whitehouse

December 30th 2024

New research from the University of Utah shows exposure to ozone pollution during pregnancy could be linked to unborn children developing an intellectual disability. 

The research used the Utah Population Database, a significant resource of in-depth information on Utah family histories, in which family members are linked to demographic and medical information. 

One of only a handful of such databases in the world, it supports research on genetics, epidemiology, demography, and public health.

Using the database, alongside ozone data from the U.S. EPA, researchers examined exposure data linked to children with intellectual disabilities born between 2003 and 2014, as well as their siblings and a control population.

The researchers were able to calculate ozone exposure of each child, based on when they were born, length of gestation, and where the mother lived at the time of birth.

Co-author Amanda Bakian, a research associate professor of psychiatry with the University’s Huntsman Mental Health Institute said: ‘The study is unique in its use of both population controls and the sibling design, which is a really nice complimentary design to use. Because this is an epidemiological study, it uses observational data, secondary data.

‘Sibling designs allow us to control for some of these population factors that just would be really challenging to do. It just gives another layer of robustness of rigor to this study, and that would have very challenging on a population level to do without the Utah Population Database and their access to genealogical data.’

Ground-level ozone in Utah frequently exceeds the federal health standard for ambient ozone concentrations (70 ppb), particularly in the summer months. A warming climate will see such exceedances occur more regularly in the future. 

The team found that the second trimester of pregnancy to be the most significant period for ozone exposure, with a 10-ppb increase in average ozone levels associated with a 55.3% higher likelihood of intellectual disability compared to siblings, and a 22.8% increase compared to population controls. 

However, exposure throughout all stages of  pregnancy stages was associated with in increased risk of intellectual disabilities.

Research leader Sara Grineski, a professor of sociology said: ‘The body of evidence suggests that it is important that we never take our foot off the gas in terms of working to reduce the levels of air pollution that Utahns are breathing. We don’t want to neglect these issues related to ozone and cognitive health moving forward. Our findings here for Utah suggest a troubling association. This is just one study in a sea of papers documenting the harmful effects of air pollution on health.

‘Salt Lake City ranks 10th for the most polluted cities in the U.S. in terms of ozone, and 2023 ozone levels were higher than 2022 levels.’

Ending Israel’s Genocide in Palestine

A Call for an Inclusive State


A mural near Emeryville Shellmound, the burial site of the native Ohlone people in California |

 Peg Hunter/Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)

The One Democratic State Initiative proposes a democratic, inclusive Palestinian state in all of Palestine, granting equal rights to all regardless of ethnicity or religion. It opposes any exclusive state, Israel’s violence in Palestine and urges adherence to the Genocide Convention.

Rohini Hensman
December 29, 2024


On 5 December 2024, Amnesty International released a report which concluded that the Israeli state is committing genocide in Gaza in the strict legal sense of the term. On 19 December 2024, Human Rights Watch reported on how the Israeli state has intentionally prevented the population of Gaza from accessing water, a necessity of life, and concluded that this amounted to an act of genocide. These reports reinforce the opinions of dozens of Holocaust and genocide scholars, the South African government’s testimony before the International Court of Justice, the court’s own rulings, and “overwhelming evidence—photos, videos, and eyewitness accounts—documenting the destruction of essential conditions for life”.

What we are seeing in Gaza today is the inevitable consequence of the model of European colonialism chosen by the original Zionists. This is not just occupying a colony and dominating it, or even an apartheid form of settler-colonialism that needs the indigenous people’s labour, but a model of settler-colonialism that wants the land without the people, as in the Americas and Australia. The Zionist plan to create an ethno-religious Jewish state in a land where only 8% of the population was Jewish in 1914 required that 92% of Palestinians be removed from their land. 1

'Raphael Lemkin, who lost 49 members of his family in the Nazi Holocaust and who coined the term ‘genocide,’ had studied the phenomenon historically, and found that settler-colonialism which engaged in what was then called forced displacement and is now called ethnic cleansing, inevitably entailed genocide. Because how do you clear the land of the people living in it? As he knew from experience, by massacres and the threat of massacres, by taking away people’s homes and livelihoods and herding them into ghettos, by subjecting them to conditions that make life impossible, and finally by killing all those who remain. This is exactly what has been happening in Palestine since 1948.


The two-state solution was laid to rest by Israel’s Knesset voting on 18 July 2024 overwhelmingly to reject Palestinian statehood, making it clear that so long as the Israeli state exists, there will be no Palestinian state.

Despite references to the so-called “two-state solution”, it was evident from the beginning that the Israeli state had no intention of allowing a Palestinian state to be established on even a fraction of Palestinian territory. The intention of establishing an Israeli state over the entirety of Palestine has been expressed openly in recent years, with Benjamin Netanyahu displaying a map of the region in the United Nations (UN) in September 2023 with no vestige of Palestine.

The two-state solution was finally laid to rest by Israel’s Knesset voting overwhelmingly to reject Palestinian statehood on 18 July 2024, making it clear that so long as the Israeli state exists, there will be no Palestinian state. Indeed, according to Finance Minister Belazel Smotrich, the Israeli state should encompass not just Palestine but also extend into Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.

Given that around 95% of the land controlled by Israel has been acquired through the forcible expulsion of the original Palestinian population, it is not surprising that it rejects both international law and UN principles, which would rule out such a course of action. The participation and complicity of Western nations in these violations ensured the descent of ethnic cleansing into genocide. While the Israeli bombardment of Gaza after the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023 was targeting civilians and slaughtering thousands of children, Western leaders and the mainstream media of their countries justified it by citing “Israel’s right to defend itself”, or by trying to provide credibility to a flagrant lie.

To suggest that a thief has any kind of “right” to defend stolen property is ludicrous. That right belongs to the person fighting for its return, or the Palestinians who have been doing so every day since 1948. “Beyond the 5% to 6% of land the Zionist land purchasing agencies bought before 1948, the Israelis are living on, and in, stolen property. They will defend it but they have no “right” to defend what by any legal, moral, historical, or cultural measure belongs to someone else.”

So long as the Israeli state exists, its genocide in Palestine will continue, and so will its bombing and occupation of neighbouring states such as Lebanon and Syria. The war with Hamas will also continue, because resistance to genocide is inevitable, and if non-violent resistance is crushed, it will be violent. Israel has murdered peaceful demonstrators in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, and Zionists in powerful positions in other countries have tried to shut down the non-violent Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.


Israel has never been a democracy; no ethno-religious or ethnic state ... can be a democracy, because those who do not belong to the dominant group will not have equal rights.

They have arrested and beaten peaceful pro-Palestine demonstrators, including Jews, and punished people expressing support for Palestine by taking away their jobs or university places. In their zeal to crush non-violent support for Palestine, Zionists have teamed up with neo-Nazis like the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Germany, putting Jews in greater danger of antisemitic violence.

Israel has never been a democracy; no ethno-religious or ethnic state—whether Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, or any other—can be a democracy, because those who do not belong to the dominant group will not have equal rights. At best, it will be an apartheid state; at worst, a genocidal one. In the past, however, Jewish citizens of Israel enjoyed a fair range of democratic rights, but these have been drastically eroded as the country has descended from apartheid to genocide.

Ofer Cassif, the only Jewish member of the Knesset from the left-wing Hadash Party, says, “Alongside genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, atrocities, occupation, and persecution of Palestinians in their territories, there’s also fascism growing stronger in Israel by legislation and by the persecution of citizens, arresting people, beating people, etc. Israel is on the verge of a full-fledged fascist regime.” The Israeli state has become a menace even to its own Jewish citizens.

The solution proposed by the One Democratic State Initiative (ODSI) is a democratic, inclusive Palestinian state in the whole of Palestine, “from the river to the sea”, in which all citizens will have equal rights regardless of ethnic or religious identity. 2 They answer the question of why it should be called “Palestine” by saying, “For the same reason why Theodor Herzl, Arthur Balfour, the World Zionist Organization, the British Mandate, and the League of Nations called it Palestine, why the ‘Jewish Agency for Israel’ was originally called the ‘Jewish Agency for Palestine’, why they considered naming the Jewish state ‘Palestine’ (and only dropped it in anticipation of partition), and why Shimon Perez and Golda Meir held Palestinian citizenship—because ‘Palestine’ has been the land’s name for over 2,500 years. Unlike the Hebrew word ‘Israel’, which is exclusive to Judaism and therefore exclusive of non-Jews, ‘Palestine’ refers not to an Arabic or Islamic identity, but to the geographical area where a democratic state can treat all its citizens equally, regardless of how they choose to identify.”

Wouldn’t this mean the ethnic cleansing or genocide of Israeli Jews? Not at all.


Israeli Jews who were born in Palestine, or have parents who were born in Palestine, would have the right to be citizens of the new democratic state on the basis of equal rights.

“Although there is no universal consensus on the conditions that define one’s belonging to a society, the principles of jus soli (‘right of soil’, the right of an individual born in a territory to be a citizen of its state) and jus sanguinis (‘right of blood’, the right of an individual to hold their parents’ citizenship) are commonly applied. … In accordance with the above, … Palestinian citizenship will be extended to all native Palestinians, including all who were expelled over the past century and their descendants. Citizenship will also be extended to all who were born in Palestine and who wish to become citizens of the new democratic Palestinian state. … At no point shall religious, ethnic, cultural or other identity be a criterion for granting or denying citizenship or residency.”

In other words, Israeli Jews who were born in Palestine, or have parents who were born in Palestine, would have the right to be citizens of the new democratic state on the basis of equal rights.

Doesn’t the state of Israel have the right to exist?

“The Zionist project has disregarded the basic democratic rights of the (Jewish and non-Jewish) population of Palestine by effecting, with essential British colonial help, the mass immigration of non-Palestinians to Palestine prior to 1948 and by establishing a ‘state exclusive to Jews’ in Palestine in 1948 with no democratic mandate to do so. The continued existence of a state exclusive to Jews rather than a democratic state of all its citizens means that the trampling of these democratic human rights is ongoing and is therefore not ‘right’. A transition to a democratic state of all its citizens would right this century-old wrong and would be a historic step in achieving just and lasting peace in Palestine and the Middle East.”

Is the establishment of a democratic state in place of Israel antisemitic?

“Claiming that a democratic solution is antisemitic implies that Judaism is antidemocratic, and that is antisemitic. … Zionism has used Judaism to justify its settler colonial project … and has effectively conflated Judaism and Jewishness with colonialism in the eyes of Jews and non-Jews alike. It is noteworthy that although Zionism is the only ideology to have succeeded at establishing a state for one identity over others in Palestine, the One Democratic State solution does not single it out as the sole ideology to aim at doing so, and is also opposed to the creation of a state exclusive to Arabs, Muslims, or any other identity.”


…[S]upporters of Palestine should carry on doing what they have been doing—taking part in demonstrations, educating themselves and others about what has been happening in Palestine… participating in the BDS movement…

Indeed, none of what has been suggested above is antisemitic according to the definition proposed by hundreds of Jewish scholars in the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, provided “the same norms of debate that apply to other states and to other conflicts over national self-determination apply in the case of Israel and Palestine”. Thus, for example, one would have to apply the same norms of debate that apply to Ukraine’s struggle against Russia for self-determination to Palestine’s struggle against Israel for self-determination.

The One Democratic State Initiative suggests that supporters of Palestine carry on doing what they have been doing—taking part in demonstrations, educating themselves and others about what has been happening in Palestine for over a century, participating in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, and so on. But, in addition, they emphasise that One Democratic State is the goal, and Palestine’s backers must coordinate their efforts with others who share that goal.

Ending Israel’s genocide in Palestine is a priority right now. The Genocide Convention has been ratified by 153 countries, but it is considered to be binding even on states that have not done so. Political leaders in all of them are under an obligation to prevent Israel from committing genocide by cutting off all relations with it and imposing full sanctions on it, and punish all those involved in it, from the Israeli political leadership down to every soldier. Failing this, they would be guilty of complicity with genocide, which is also a crime under the Genocide Convention.

We, the peoples of these countries, who have been watching in anguish the carnage which Holocaust survivor Gabor Maté compared to Auschwitz, are under an obligation to put maximum pressure on our political leaders to abide by the Genocide Convention. The Indian National Congress government of newly independent India made the correct decision when it voted against partitioning Palestine and establishing Israel in November 1947. India should reclaim that moral high ground.

Rohini Hensman is a writer, independent scholar and activist who has worked on labour movements, feminism, minority rights, globalisation, and democracy movements, and has been published extensively on these issues.