The revolution will be streamed
The random occassional musings of Donnacha DeLong – anarchist, NUJ activist, freelance journalist, social media expert and online communications consultant
Just over a quarter of all British workers are in a trade union. Up to three-quarters of a million of them will be out on strike this coming Thursday, 30 June (J30).
That leaves millions of workers not coming out, many of whom might be wondering why public sector workers are striking over the kind of pensions that no longer exist in the private sector.
Continue reading “Not in a union? Here’s how you can support J30”
I finished my Masters course last month and am now working on my dissertation – “An anarchist analysis of power” based primarily on the work of Emma Goldman and Rudolf Rocker. More on that later in the year when I have the thing written!
The now annual fight between the X-Factor winner and people with taste for the Christmas No.1 spot in the UK charts was something of a damp squib last year. Following the first failed mobilisation in 2008 (the battle of the Hallelujahs) and the glorious RATM victory in 2009, the uncoordinated multiple attempts last year failed badly.
I spent quite a few hours on Saturday, 26 March, walking the streets of London fairly slowly with approximately half a million other people. Some of the time I carried a flag, for a short while I help carry the national banner of my union, the National Union of Journalists. When I finally got to Hyde Park, some friends and I walked down towards Victoria Station to find a pub for a much needed drink, then my partner and I went and got some food and finally home, exhausted.
That was probably like the experience of most of the rest of the 500,000 marchers at the TUC’s long-awaited March for the Alternative. Amongst those who walked themselves to exhaustion and then went hope were probably quite a number of other anarchists like me.
Dear Biblical Scholars,
We, the proud supporters of Israel, are deeply concerned about an aspect of the history of Judaism, as reflected in the various texts based thereon. The passage is contained in the Books of Samuel and is famously known as David vs. Goliath.
As a sub-editor for more than a decade, I’ve lots of experience reworking copy into a readable form. Sometimes it takes a bit more than fixing the typos and adding proper punctuation, sometimes journalists get things wrong and you have to fix them.
I had no intention of writing about this issue – in fact, I’ve got a number of other things to write and had planned to do at least one of those tonight. However, I saw the debate between Naomi Wolf and Tory MP Louise Bagshawe on Newsnight. Then I started taking notice of the stuff on Twitter about it and found the link to Wolf’s Guardian piece and read some of the comments.
Continue reading “Naomi Wolf, rape and where society is now”
The super-fast radicalisation of the student demonstrations caught everyone by surprise. Direct action is on the agenda again and it’s coming from a group people discounted as being “the children of Thatcher” and dismissed as being fundamentally consumerist and non-radical.
Continue reading “Student demos: This is just the beginning – what comes next?”
Just before Christmas, bombs went off in two embassies in Rome, injuring staff in both. I immediately tweeted “#Anarchism has nothing to do with injuring innocent mailroom staff #Rome” and I absolutely stand by that point.
Right now, across Europe and perhaps across the world, thousands of people are being introduced to anarchist ideas. Governments and politicians of all kinds have failed their people and are stealing from their populations to keep bankers and financial traders happy. Police have shown their true role as defenders of privilege with increasing levels of violence against protesters.
The revolution will be streamed 