Miner Threat
Around 8,000 Spanish miners took to the streets, and blocked them, in chaotic style this week. The actions are in protest against government plans to cut subsidies to the coal industry by 60%. While SchNEWS doesn't normally endorse fossil fuel subsidies, this is more about militant anti-austerity action than it is about the climate – the measures will completely devastate the sector in a country with an unemployment rate already hitting 25% overall, and 50% of young people.
In the latest chapter of Spanish civil unrest, the official indefinite strike involving 40 mines began on 23rd May, with ten miners staging an underground protest. By Monday (4th), coinciding with road transport strikes, rioting spread across the capital of Madrid and the region of Asturias.
Sixteen major roads and motorways were blockaded with one burning tire block causing a five-mile jam for over two hours. On another A-road, a truckload of wood was overturned on the asphalt.
Clashes with the riot police resulted in the chucking of rocks and homemade rockets, while elsewhere there were sit-in protests at mines and outside the government offices. Other 'unidentified people' pulled the wiring out of the CCTV at a tunnel on Huerna highway. After the inevitable running battles with the cops, just six people were arrested for public disorder offences.
The Civil Guard reported the seizure of large amounts of 'highly dangerous' materials including handmade rocket launchers, improvised slingshots, 15kg of rusty tips, ball bearings of various sizes and cans of gasoline. Government forces promised to come down with the full force of the law on protesters – but didn't succeed in putting them off.
True to their roots – miners are traditionally one of the most militant workers groups in Spain – the strikers show no signs of tiring. As the week progressed so did the roadblocks and closures. On one A-road, when road users began using an alternative route protesters hastily felled a tree across it. On Wednesday (6th), 500 miners cut off the main access point to the port of Gijon before marching to protest at the Albono thermal power plant. 60 roads were blocked with the guerilla-style tactics which prompted the Alsturias government office to begin organizing emergency supply convoys into the area.
Unions have called for a strike in all activity of the coalfields of Castile, Leon, Asturias and Aragon commencing on the 18th June.
But seriously, we have to treat saving the planet as an all out WAR. Tactics are everything and you can't be a purist if you wanna win. (war is dirty) Alliances MUST be made (and broken) and ANYTHING goes (and any means are OK) if it give my kids and grand kids a chance to have a liveable planet.
In this particular case the government's aims are to open up markets and reduce spending while the unions are attempting to protect jobs in a country with mass unemployment. While we wouldn't disregard climate change activism, it isn't the only struggle in town.
It's wildcat vs Kitkat as Brighton's binmen take on the Green council.
Thatcher-haters party into the night.
'Non-citizens' take to the streets of Berlin in the latest instalment of the Refugee Strike shaking things up in Germany.
In solidarity with 235 Sussex University workers whose jobs are threatened with privatisation, protesters from around the country converge on Sussex University's campus (alread site of an ongoing occupation), invade management HQ and make a bonfire out of corporate files.
Civil liberties activists in Germany and elsewhere are taking a novel, and militant, approach to CCTV culture.
SchNEWS interview's one of the ZAD crew
For 25 years Golden Dawn were a marginal group that for the most attacked small left-wing and anarchist groups and sometimes would also go for immigrants. Until a few years ago they never measured more than 200 members. Up until recently they had one office. Now? They have forty-eight.
One group of Spanish workers has come together to stick a spanner in the works of austerity misery. Or more specifically, in the locks.
