Edinburgh Anarchists

Book launch and commemoration of the end of the Miners Strike

7.30pm-9pm, Friday 23rd April

Dave Douglass of the National Union of Mineworkers talks about his first hand, front-line experience of the miners strikes, and launches his new book, Ghost Dancers.

Ghost Dancers the final book in Dave Douglass’s trilogy, will be launched to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the miners’ strike. A first person view of this last generation of the miners and their union, written by a participant at the sharp end of that struggle, the book explodes the prevailing myths around the strike. It also uniquely covers the post strike period. Inspired by the last stand of the native
Americans, Ghost Dancers records the last stand of the last generation of pitmen and their communities.

Dave Douglass, a coalminer for 40 years, in the Durham and Doncaster
coalfields, was an NUM official for 25 years and is still a full member
of the NUM, and the Industrial Workers of the World.

Free/donation, All Welcome!

7.30pm-9pm, Friday 23rd April

Augustine Church, George 4th Bridge, Edinburgh

Hosted by the Industrial Workers of the World: Edinburgh Branch
www.iww.org.uk/edinburgh

Members of Edinburgh Chiapas Solidarity Group recently returned from the Zapatista-controled areas of Mexico, where there’s a Health Centre built using money raised by the group. Their grassroots, all-volunteer effort has raised more than £24,000 for some of the most marginalised people on the planet. That’s some fine aftertaste for your coffee.

This meeting features a speaker from Chiapas on the ever-precarious situation there.

AUTONOMY, REPRESSION AND RESISTANCE

EDUCATION, HEALTH, LAND,

JUSTICE, SELF-GOVERNMENT…

WALKING NEW PATHS

Speaker from Chiapas at Augustine Church, George IV Bridge, 7:30pm, Weds 21st. Admission Free.

Click to download a poster

Apartheid has ended but the struggle for economic justice continues.

Our speaker, visiting from South Africa, will talk about the current situation: the xenophobic pogroms of 2008; the recent election of Jacob Zuma as president and what his administration means for the popular classes; effects of the global economic crisis on SA; the recent wave of strikes and community revolts.

Meeting at the Autonomous Centre of Edinburgh, 17 West Montgomery Place (directions)

Food available from 6pm, with talk & discussion following from 7pm.

Cover of Chris Carlsson's new book "Nowtopia"

Chris Carlsson, the author of Critical Mass: Bicycling’s Defiant Celebration is in Edinburgh to talk about his new book, Nowtopia and related topics. He’s going to be at Word Power (Nicholson Street) on Wednesday 15th April from 6pm, and so should you be.

After the book talk, there’s a social at the Forest from 9pm, featuring music from Orkestra Nowtopia.

Here’s what “they” say about his latest book:

Outlaw bicycling, urban permaculture, biofuels, free software, and even the Burning Man festival are windows into a scarcely visible social transformation that is redefining politics as we know it. As capitalism continues to corral every square inch of the globe into its logic of money and markets, new practices are emerging through which people are taking back their time and technological know-how. In small, under-the-radar ways, they are making life better right now, simultaneously building the foundation – technically and socially – for a genuine movement of liberation from market life.
Nowtopia uncovers the resistance of a slowly recomposing working class in America. Rarely defining themselves by what they do for a living, people from all walks of life are doing incredible amounts of labor in their “non-work” time, creating immediate practical improvements in daily life. The social networks they create, and the practical experience of cooperating outside of economic regulation, become a breeding ground for new strategies to confront the commodification to which capitalism reduces us all.
The practices outlined in Nowtopia embody a deep challenge to the basic underpinnings of modern life, as a new ecologically-driven politics emerges from below, reshaping our assumptions about science, technology, and human potential.
With historical grounding, a toolbox drawing from multiple schools of anti-capitalist thought and theory, and a refreshingly pragmatic approach, Carlsson opens our eyes to the revolutions of everyday life.
Chris Carlsson, executive director of the multimedia history project “Shaping San Francisco,” is a writer, publisher, editor, and community organizer. He has edited four collections of political and historical essays. He helped launch the monthly bike-ins known as Critical Mass, and was long-time editor of Processed World magazine.

What I say is: it’s damned good and inspiring stuff in its stories of what regular folks are co-operating in day-to-day, whether that’s guerrilla gardening or bike repair co-ops. I’m not convinced that this necessarily leads to a “breeding ground for new strategies to confront the commodification,” as these kind of projects regularly get assimiliated into a status quo, but that just makes a jumping-off point for interesting debate. Exactly what book tours are for!