Philly’s long time organizer and radical journalist will address the WSA’s 40th Anniversary Congress, with reflections on group democracy, journalism and anarcha-feminism! Helping us look to our future!
to attend, write to us at
philly-metro-wsa@proton.me
from O.R.C.A.
Anarcho-Feminist Tech group meeting up at O.R.C.A. Monday 11/18 7-10pm
Data Care is a coworking group that comes together to independently work on deleting files, tightening digital security, troubleshooting & researching. Bring your own project, spitball with other nerds.
A few of us will be working on deleting extraneous internet accounts & burning gmail.
We’ll be using hot spots.
from ORCA
11/07/24 @ 6 P.M.
ORCA (Email below for location)
orca.philly@protonmail.com
More info on Rote Zora (use TOR)
https://anon.to/1rYpa8
Film is 1hr 15 min.
45 min – 1 hr discussion following film.
CW: Mention of SA and Trafficking
“Rote Zora” – Red Zora – was a German militant group of women, clandestinely organized in the 1970s and 80s within radical left circles. Its activities were directed against the everyday violence against women, against biogenetics and reproduction technologies, and worldwide exploitation of women as an expression of patriarchal rule. The group promoted female self-empowerment and a break with the peaceable, conciliating role attributed to women by society.
In reviewing the radical left, the role of women’s groups is often neglected. The documentary “Women for Gangs” not only makes up for that, it also shows that the groups’ main issues are highly topical. The film encourages women to form their own gangs today.
from Twitter
from Unicorn Riot
PHILADELPHIA, PA — On Sunday, November 13, 100+ counter-demonstrators tried to drown out about 30 protesters who were demonstrating against transgender people’s access to medical transitions, recognition of chosen gender and other rights near Independence Hall. The counter-demo side characterized them as “TERFs” or ‘Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists.’ Philadelphia Police and U.S. National Park Service Park Rangers separated the crowds using bicycle police and portable barricades. Inside the barricades, several men, mostly masked up concealing their identities, paced around and eyed the crowd; they were widely suspected to be Proud Boys providing security according to a counter-protester. However, their identities are unknown.
Over almost three hours, Unicorn Riot interviewed nearly a dozen hoarse but spirited attendees. In this 29-minute video, we hear about why they consider noisy counter-demonstrations strategically significant, as well as reactions to how the recent U.S. elections largely — but not entirely — refuted anti-transgender politicians and messages.
Some interviewees believed that John Fetterman, the current lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania, who will soon be seated as a U.S. senator, would protect their rights. Another interviewee said that democracy and electoralism create situations where groups are enabled to spread messages about taking away rights from transgender people.
While there was at least one round of counter-demonstrators splashing the anti-transgender demonstration with water, no arrests transpired during our time observing the event.
The marquee anti-trans speaker was British activist Kellie-Jay Keen Minshull, who has also been known by the name “Posie Parker.” Keen Minshull appeared on a podcast with white nationalist French Canadian Jean-Francois Gariepy. An ardent ‘white ethnostate’ supporter, Gariepy has made videos with key Neo-Nazis including Richard Spencer, David Duke and Mark Collett. Several Philadelphia counter-demonstrators highlighted this shared media connection between Keen Minshull and Duke, although they have not appeared side-by-side.
Connections between “gender-critical feminists” like Keen and far-right white supremacists have been turning up for years, and the far-right has tried to leverage opposition to transgender rights to expand its movement. More about Gariepy’s long history with far-right circles and accusations of abusing a minor has previously been documented.
In 2019 Keen Minshull praised high-profile English racist ‘Tommy Robinson’ of the English Defense League who has been supported by the Philadelphia-based think tank Middle East Forum, The Guardian reported in 2018. Robinson’s real name is Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon; he is banned from entering the United States and has been convicted of fraud, in addition to drug and public disorder offenses.
After the anti-trans protesters left the area, they were forced to leave the nearby Khyber Pass Pub by employees who became aware of their bigoted views. The pub “is a punk and metal institution … they aren’t to be fucked with by bigots and fascist[s],” one observer noted.
from Philly Antifa
British Anti-Trans hate monger Posie Parker, aka Kellie-Jay Keen, is currently on a U.S. “Speakers Corner” tour to spread her bigoted bullshit.
Check out this thread by @B_for_backup about Parker’s record of violent transphobia and racism:
A dance party and noise demo has been called to counter the tour’s stop in Philadelphia, which is scheduled to occur at 1PM on Sunday, 11/13/22 near The Liberty Bell. While we are not organizing this event, we encourage everyone to come out and be loud and proud.
Transphobes Fuck Off,
from Making Worlds Books
Making Worlds Book Launch and Discussion: The Feminist Subversion of the Economy, with Liz Mason-Deese and Maximilian Alvarez
Please register in advance here.
In the face of unending economic crises and climate catastrophe, we must consider, what does a dignified life look like? Feminist intellectual and activist Amaia Pérez Orozco powerfully and provocatively outlines a vision for a web of life sustained collectively with care, mutualism, and in balance with our ecological world. That vision is a call to action to subvert the foundational order of racial capitalism, colonial violence, and a heteropatriarchal economy that threatens every form of life.
The Feminist Subversion of the Economy makes the connection between the systems that promise more devastation and destruction of life in the name of profit—and rallies women, LGBTQ+ communities, and movements worldwide to center gender and social reproduction in a vision for a balanced ecology, a just economy, and a free society.
Newly translated and updated in collaboration with Liz Mason-Deese, who has won a PEN translation award for her work on feminist economics, The Feminist Subversion of the Economy shows the urgent need to radically and democratically discuss what we mean by a dignified life and how we can organize to sustain life collectively.
In addition to a dialogue with Liz Mason-Deese, Maximilian Alvarez will share from his recent collection The Work of Living: Working People Talk About Their Lives and the Year the World Broke
As COVID-19 swept across the globe with merciless force, it was working people who kept the world from falling apart. Deemed “essential” by a system that has shown just how much it needs our labor but has no concern for our lives, workers sacrificed—and many were sacrificed—to keep us fed, to keep our shelves stocked, to keep our hospitals and transit running, to care for our loved ones, and so much more. But when we look back at this particular moment, when we try to write these days into history for ourselves and for future generations, whose voices will go on the record? Whose stories will be remembered?
In late 2020 and early 2021, at what was then the height of the pandemic, Maximillian Alvarez conducted a series of intimate interviews with workers of all stripes, from all around the US—from Kyle, a sheet metal worker in Kentucky; to Mx. Pucks, a burlesque performer and producer in Seattle; to Nick, a gravedigger in New Jersey. As he does in his widely celebrated podcast, Working People, Alvarez spoke with them about their lives, their work, and their experiences living through a year when the world itself seemed to break apart. Those conversations, documented in these pages, are at times meandering, sometimes funny or philosophical, occasionally punctured by pain so deep that it hurts to read them. Filled with stories of struggle and strength, fear and loss, love and rage, The Work of Living is a deeply human history of one of the defining events of the 21st century told by the people who lived it.
from Viscera
Join us on Sunday, September 18th from 1-3 for a discussion of the essay Less Within, More Between by dot matrix.
Feminism provides anarchists with tools to discuss both autonomy and membership. “Feminism,” “racism,” “classism”: the whole lexicon of “identity” is useful to today’s anarchists to the extent that it provides us with ways to talk about, and to meet, both sets of needs.
As usual, we’ll be meeting at Clark Park near the chess tables!
Submission
In the wee hours of July 6th, the office of the Pro-Life Union of Greater Philadelphia (88 Pennsylvania Ave Oreland, PA) had their front window smashed and their wall vandalized with “JANE’S REVENGE”. The Pro-Life Union runs two crisis pregnancy centers (Guiding Star Mother’s Home: 1940 E Chelten Ave, Philadelphia, PA, and The Cenacle: 1509 Church St, Philadelphia, PA) and an anti-abortion pregnancy hotline (610-626-4006). They also organize anti-abortion rallies outside of abortion clinics where clients are harassed and shamed, and have numerous member organizations involved in a variety of anti-abortion programs in the greater Philadelphia area (list can be accessed at prolifeunion.org/member-organizations).
We hope that all queers, anarchists, anti-fascists, and just plain-old pissed-off feminists in the area will use this information wisely. Plan with a group of friends, wear a mask, and take action. Project your rage on your enemies. Dissapear into the night.
Solidarity with all those attack the state, capital, civilization, and patriarchy.
-Janes Revenge (A)
from Philly ABC
Join us as we write to Magda and Karla, feminist political prisoners in so-called Mexico. This past April 15th, a spectacular operation with more than 200 police officers occurred outside of the property of Okupa Cuba Casa de Refugio in Mexico City. At this eviction, the authorities took women that were in Casa as refugees– women who had to leave their homes, run away from the violent femicide that plagues Mexico, and took refuge to save their lives in Okupa Cuba Monumenta Viva.
Okupa Cuba is a self-managed and autonomous space that developed as a form of permanent protest because we had enough, a protest against the impunity, the indolence and the re-victimization by the patriarchal institutions of the Mexican state. Family, victims, and, feminist allies, in an uncounted event in the history of our country, they took over the facilities of Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission building. This was a wake-up call directed toward the authorities.
A series of irregularities and violations of their human rights have been mounting since they were detained– they were assaulted and threatened, at not one moment were they shown an arrest warrant, they were not told about the charges brought against them or told where they would be detained. They have since been charged with fabricated charges of possession simply to incriminate them. The women that are now imprisoned in Santa Martha are feminist activists, militants of the movement of victims of femicide in this country, they have volunteered their time and energy to build a shelter for women, for children, to denounce all forms of violence that we face every day in this country.
If you cannot join us in person and would like to send letters of solidarity to Karla and Magda, they can be emailed to: libreslas3@gmail.com .
We will also be sending birthday cards to political prisoners with birthdays in July: Gage Halupowski (the 1st) and Jessica Reznicek (the 25th).
Submission
“Abort Every Court!” – All Courts Are Bad! – Anonymous in Philly
from Jersey Counter-Info
Plan C stickers were put up in several public restrooms in Camden County, NJ in light of the recent news of the US Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
from Twitter
Submission
We smashed out all of the windows of the “Hope” pregnancy center on Broad st. We are tired of your “family values” and you forcing families, and your values onto our bodies. This fake clinic spread lies and is part of a broader attempt to strip away body autonomy from hundreds of women and people. We are inspired by the actions of comrades in Wisconsin, Colorado, New York, and a growing list of places. If the attack on abortion does not stop our attacks will broaden. This is also intended as a small gesture of complicity with all those imprisoned by the state, in honor of June 11th.
-Anti Hope Brigade
from Viscera
Join us Sunday, June 19th in Clark Park from 1-3 for our next anarchist discussion group. In line with the times, we’ll be reading a few pieces on abortion!
Jane’s Revenge – First Communique
Robin Marty – I am an abortion rights activist. I hope the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade.
Laura Kaplan – The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service (excerpt):
As usual, we’ll be meeting near the chess tables! Yes, we realize this is father’s day, yes, you’re welcome to bring your dad or a father figure.
