Sunday, November 27, 2011
Companies that serve us wood for food. FDA approved.
By Miriam Reimer
TheStreet.com
The recent class-action lawsuit brought against Taco Bell raised questions about the quality of food many Americans eat each day.
Chief among those concerns is the use of cellulose (wood pulp), an extender whose use in a roster of food products, from crackers and ice creams to puddings and baked goods, is now being exposed. What you’re actually paying for – and consuming – may be surprising.
Cellulose is virgin wood pulp that has been processed and manufactured to different lengths for functionality, though use of it and its variant forms (cellulose gum, powdered cellulose, microcrystalline cellulose, etc.) is deemed safe for human consumption, according to the FDA, which regulates most food industry products. The government agency sets no limit on the amount of cellulose that can be used in food products meant for human consumption.
[Note: Humans are unable to digest cellulose since we lack the appropriate enzymes to break it down. This is a food adulterant and another example of the wholly corrupt nature of the federal agency responsible for food safety but continues to prove itself more concerned with corporate profit. ~Ed]
The USDA, which regulates meats, has set a limit of 3.5% on the use of cellulose, since fiber in meat products cannot be recognized nutritionally.
“As commodity prices continue to rally and the cost of imported materials impacts earnings, we expect to see increasing use of surrogate products within food items. Cellulose is certainly in higher demand and we expect this to continue,” Michael A. Yoshikami, chief investment strategist at YCMNet Advisors, told TheStreet.
Manufacturers use cellulose in food as an extender, providing structure and reducing breakage, said Dan Inman, director of research and development at J. Rettenmaier USA, a company that supplies “organic” cellulose fibers for use in a variety of processed foods and meats meant for human and pet consumption, as well as for plastics, cleaning detergents, welding electrodes, pet litter, automotive brake pads, glue and reinforcing compounds, construction materials, roof coating, asphalt and even emulsion paints, among many other products.
Cellulose adds fiber to the food, which is good for people who do not get the recommended daily intake of fiber in their diets, Inman said lied. It also extends the shelf life of processed foods. Plus, cellulose’s water-absorbing properties can mimic fat, he said, allowing consumers to reduce their fat intake.
Perhaps most important to food processors is that cellulose is cheaper, he added, because “the fiber and water combination is less expensive than most other ingredients in the [food] product.”
Indeed, food producers save as much as 30% in ingredient costs by opting for cellulose as a filler or binder in processed foods, according to a source close to the processed food industry who spoke with TheStreet on the condition of anonymity.
Inman said that in his 30 years in the food science business, he’s seen “an amazing leap in terms of the applications of cellulose fiber and what you can do with it.” He said powdered cellulose has a bad reputation but that more of his customers are converting from things like oat or sugar cane fibers to cellulose because it is “snow white in color, bland and easy to work with.”
Most surprising, said Inman, is that he’s been able to remove as much as 50% of the fat from some cookies, biscuits, cakes and brownies by replacing it with powdered cellulose – but still end up with a very similar product in terms of taste and appearance.
“We’re only limited by our own imagination,” Inman told TheStreet. “I would never have dreamed I could successfully put 18% fiber in a loaf of bread two years ago.”
He said cellulose is common in processed foods, often labeled as reduced-fat or high-fiber – products like breads, pancakes, crackers, pizza crusts, muffins, scrambled eggs, mashed potato mixes, and even cheesecake. Inman himself keeps a box of Wheat Thins Fiber Selects crackers, manufactured by Kraft Foods Nabisco brand, at his desk, and snacks on them daily, clearly unmoved by the use of wood pulp in its ingredients.
“Most consumers would be shocked to find these types of filler products are used as substitutes for items that they believe are more pure,” Yoshikami said. “We would expect increased disclosure to follow increased use of cellulose and other filler products as the practice increases in frequency.”
To that end, TheStreet rounded up a list of popular foods that use cellulose. It’s by no means an exhaustive list, and we suggest consumers read food labels carefully.
Dole Food
Peaches & Crème Parfait
Apples & Crème Parfait
General Mills
Fiber One Ready-To-Eat Muffins – Used in:
Grilled Chicken Salad, Chicken Club Salad with Crispy Chicken, Meaty Breakfast Burrito, Hearty Breakfast Bowl
Cheese, Pepper Jack, Shredded – Used in:
Chicken Fajita Pita, Southwest Chicken Salad with Grilled Chicken, Meaty Breakfast Burrito
Honey Mustard Dipping Sauce
Ice Cream Shake Mix
Log Cabin Syrup
Mini Funnel Cake
Mozzarella Cheese Sticks (also in Sampler Trio)
Smoothie Base: (Mango, Strawberry, Strawberry Banana)
Tortilla, Flour – Used in:
Chorizo Sausage Burrito, Steak & Egg Burrito, Meaty Breakfast Burrito
White Cheese Sauce – Used in Breakfast Bowl
Kellogg
MorningStar Farms Chik’n Nuggets
MorningStar Farms Chik Patties Original
MorningStar Farms Buffalo Wings Veggie Wings
Eggo Nutri-Grain Blueberry waffles
Eggo Strawberry Waffles
Eggo Blueberry Waffles
Cinnabon Pancakes Original
Cinnabon Pancakes Caramel
Cinnabon Snack Bars Original
Cinnabon Snack Bars Baked Cinnamon Apple
KFC (Yum! Brands)
KFC Cornbread Muffin
Apple Turnover
Honey Mustard BBQ Sauce
Lil’ Bucket Strawberry Short Cake Parfait
Lil’ Bucket Lemon Crème Parfait
Lil’ Bucket Chocolate Crème Parfait
Oreo Cookies and Crème Pie Slice
Reese’s Peanut Butter Pie Slice
Popcorn Chicken
Strawberry Cream Cheese Pie Slice
Kraft Foods
Wheat Thins Fiber Selects
Frozen Bagel-Fuls
Macaroni & Cheese Thick ‘n Creamy
Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Three Cheese W/mini-shell Pasta
McDonald’s
Fish Filet Patty
McRib
Premium Caesar Salad
Chipotle BBQ Snack Wrap
Premium Southwest Salad with Grilled Chicken
Southern Style Chicken Biscuit
Strawberry Sundae
Natural Swiss Cheese – Used in:
McRib, Quarter Pounder with Cheese, Angus Mushroom & Swiss, Premium Grilled Chicken Club Sandwich, Premium Crispy Chicken Club Sandwich, Angus Mushroom & Swiss Snack Wrap
Shredded Cheddar/Jack Cheese – Used in:
Ranch Snack Wrap (Crispy and Grilled), Honey Mustard Snack Wrap (Crispy and Grilled), Chipotle BBQ Snack Wrap (Crispy and Grilled), Premium Southwest Salad with Grilled Chicken, Premium Southwest Salad with/without Crispy/Grilled Chicken, Premium Bacon Ranch Salad with/without Crispy/Grilled Chicken, McSkillet Burrito with Sausage
Barbeque Sauce
Sweet ‘N Sour Sauce
Shredded Parmesan Cheese – Used in:
Premium Caesar Salad with/without Crispy/Grilled Chicken
Biscuit – Used to make:
Bacon, Egg & Cheese Biscuit, Sausage Biscuit with Egg, Sausage Biscuit, Southern Style Chicken Biscuit, Big Breakfast with/without Hotcakes
Vanilla Reduced Fat Ice Cream – Used in:
Strawberry Sundae, Hot Caramel Sundae, Hot Fudge Sundae, McFlurry with M&M’S Candies, McFlurry with OREO Cookies, Chocolate Triple Thick Shake, Strawberry Triple Thick Shake, Vanilla Triple Thick Shake
Sugar Free Vanilla Syrup, used in: Premium Roast Coffee, Espresso
Nestle
Hot Cocoa Mixes: Mini Marshmallows, Rich Milk Chocolate, Chocolate Mint, Chocolate Caramel
Pepsi
Aunt Jemima Frozen Blueberry Pancakes
Aunt Jemima Original Syrup
Aunt Jemima Lite Syrup
Pizza Hut (Yum! Brands)
Parmesan Romano Cheese
Taco Bean Sauce
Shredded Cheddar (for Taco Pizza)
Breadstick Seasoning – Used to make Cheese Breadsticks)
WingStreet Bone-In (in the batter)
Meatballs (for pasta products, sandwiches)
White Pasta Sauce – Used for:
PastaBakes Marinara, PastaBakes Meatball Marinara, PastaBakes Primavera, PastaBakes Chicken Primavera
Alfredo Sauce – Used for:
PastaBakes Marinara, PastaBakes Meatball Marinara, PastaBakes Primavera, PastaBakes Chicken Primavera
Fat Free Ranch Dressing
Sara Lee
Jimmy Dean Frozen Breakfast Bowl (Sausage & Gravy)
Jimmy Dean D-lights Turkey Sausage Breakfast Bowl
Jimmy Dean D-lights Turkey Sausage Croissant
Jimmy Dean Breakfast Entrée – Used in:
(Scrambled Eggs with Bacon/Sausage and Cheese Diced Apples & Seasoned Hash)
Sonic
Ice Cream
Sonic Blast
Banana Split
Ice Cream Cone
Taco Bell (Yum! Brands)
Southwest Chicken
Caramel Apple Empanada
Corn Tortilla
Enchilada Rice
Nacho Chips
Red Strips
Strawberry Topping
Zesty Dressing
Weight Watchers International
Vanilla Ice Cream Sandwich
English Toffee Crunch Ice Cream Bar
Giant Cookies & Cream Ice Cream Bar
Wendy’s Arby’s
Asiago Cheese – Used in:
Spicy Chicken Caesar Salad, Asiago Ranch Chicken Club, Caesar Side Salad
Fat Free French Dressing – Used for:
Apple Pecan Chicken Salad, Baja Salad, Spicy Chicken Caesar Salad, BLT Cobb Salad
Blue Cheese Crumbles – Used in: Apple Pecan Chicken Salad, BLT Cobb Salad
Cheddar Pepper Jack Cheese Blend, Shredded
Chocolate Sauce
Coffee Toffee Twisted Frosty (Chocolate, Vanilla)
Frosty (Chocolate and Vanilla)
Frosty Shake (Frosty-cino, Chocolate Fudge, Strawberry, Vanilla Bean)
Milk, 1% Low Fat Chocolate Milk
Home Occupied in Riverbank Against Illegal Lockout
A series of lock-outs began in October of this year, with Kelly locking James out and James re-entering his home six times. Over the course of these lock-outs, James has been denied access to shelter, his bathroom and his medicine. During the most recent lock-out, Kelly took all of James' things: furniture, electronics, personal items, food, bedding, toiletries, medicine, etc. Local sheriffs who arrived on the scene after James had re-entered the home told Kelly that, in fact, they could not remove James because Kelly had evicted him illegally.
 |
| James outside his home. |
On Friday, November 25th, members of Modesto Solidarity Network gathered at James' home, bringing supplies, making repairs, and sharing food. A banner was raised above his door that reads "Stop Illegal Lockouts, Brian Kelly is a Slumlord." Flyers were also distributed in the neighborhood, detailing the situation and asking for solidarity.
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| Flyer |
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Remembering our Comrade.
Today [Wednesday 16 2011], two years have passed since our comrade Ivan ‘Vanya’ Khutorskoy was murdered in Moscow. On occasion, we publish an article which was written for Avtonom journal in Russian, and translated for ‘Abolishing the Borders from Below’ in English.
-
“You are made of some different fabric. You are way more prepared than me for this kind of shit. I figured it out, when you told me by telephone, that Vanya is not anymore” – a young comrade put it like this once, in the frame of one discussion. We were standing on the platform of a metro, wagons of steel were scurrying on metallic rails. Their metallic clamps were squeezing my insides. Yes, my young friend, I am definitely ready for this shit.
Upon the death of Vanya, in spirit I was already in my 4th decade, although my physical age will correspond to that much later. My twenties I had spent in a skinhead-casual frenzy, spiced with an anarcho-communist baggage of ideas. For me, all those years passed side by side with two guys. One of them left all of that behind a long time ago, now he is more into stuff like wifes/mistresses/kids/cars. Another one was Vanya. If I will be alive, healthy, and out of jail, my fourth decade will not be boring either, but it will not be the same.
*****
We met around the year 2004. I was looking for new comrades, to get busy with some good old ultra-violence. It was already about a year after the collapse of the crew around FC “Mosenergo”, and nothing much was going on. Practically, there were none of the right people around me. Back then, it was considered that you needed a mob of ten, 20 or 30 to give the enemy a decent beating.
And who was around? Mostly stupid kinds from the forum of antifa.ru website, even some total morons from the youth organisation of liberal “Yabloko”party. The only person from antifa.ru, who made any sense was Dzhey, for whom the first album of “Proverochnaya Lineyka” was later dedicated. But there are no obstacles, over which you may not run with some persistence . Morons vanished, normal people kept coming around. And step by step, we gathered a crew, of maybe twenty, which was capable of some action. Some people, who later became widely known, were around: DJ Stalingrad, Fedyay, Vanya. Later on, Shkobar came around (I already knew him from the times of the Mosenergo, but for a while he dropped out of Antifa, attempting to make a career as a Spartak hooligan). Later on, Tigran, whose house was bombed, came around, as well as Ilya Dzhaparidze. And of course, a number of other other impressive personalities were around as well. But Loshak is right “it’s better to only write about the deceased antifa, and those who are already famous, and not to uncover those who are not yet famous.”
Before Vanya met us, he was fighting boneheads at punk concerts. Just as Dzhey was fighting Nazis with his hip-hop friends; unaffiliated with the infamous White Smoke Clan gang, famous due to its street war with boneheads in the late 1990′s and early 2000′s. Back then, in the middle of the 2000′s, Antifa in Moscow was a clear minority. There were no any obvious ways to meet them anywhere. But if you began to trash boneheads, there would always be some common acquaintances, who connected you with colleagues. And this is how Vanya joined.
His first action with us was a total disaster. Some foolish kids invited around 15 of us to the military town of Zarya in Moscow region. There, converged a mixed crowd of local boneheads, football hooligans and just rednecks defending “the reputation of their town” against Muscovites, a crowd several times bigger than ours. I was lucky and did not end up going to that one. Taking into account that our side came with iron bars, it is still a mystery that nobody ended up in the morgue. Nobody got anything worse than a concussion, but this adventure did not break Vanya’s spirits, and he began to come around.
We made two or three attacks each month. In the middle of the 2000′s there were plenty of places in Moscow (known park benches, metro entrances), where you could drop in and find Nazis. There were also plenty of more or less right-wing gigs. Some of them were easy, you could target whoever came out from the hall, with other ones you had to be more careful, as right-wingers were only 20-30% of the crowd. Back then, there were almost no “travmats” (rubber-bullet guns) and the habit of carrying knives was just emerging; fights took place mostly without weapons, sometimes pepper gas was used, sometimes beer bottles and iron bars.
This relative harmlessness resulted in a carefree life; there were way more fights than nowadays, often they took place in public places, even under CCTV cameras. For example, nowadays I would not be very much into attacking a Nazi in a running metro wagon. If he pulls a knife, it is highly likely that he must be killed, your face will be taped, and even if you are not arrested at the next station you are in big shit. But back in the days it was the most common thing to give a Nazi a boot in a a running train: the length of travel between two stations in the Moscow metro is pretty much one boxing round, and in the next station you disappeared from the spot, with a light sweat under your shirt.
Some Nazis got seriously wounded after coming across us. Although a couple of times cops nicked one or several of us at the spot of such fights, there was never a single felony case. Mostly we were just lucky, every time when someone got nicked, no Nazi had been seriously hurt. On the other hand, the word “Antifa” was familiar to FSB (x-KGB) only, and to a small minority of younger and more clever cops. Back then cops did not have any quota of extremists they were required to catch, and thus they were thinking like average lads: maybe these guys had reasons not to like each other, and if nobody got permanently injured or killed, it was apparently not worth it to dig into the reasons behind it.
We were not creating a spin around these fights, but they gained us notoriety amongst Nazis and youth subcultures in general. Nazis tried to find us, without a success, jumping random alternative kids. A few years later, I met a RASH-skinhead who told me a story of how he became an anarchist skinhead. One day, he was walking down the street, with a Yegor Letov-shirt on; Nazis beat him up, arguing that he was a redskin. He got interested in what that was about, he read about it from the internet and came to the conclusion that redskins are cool. A very typical story.
A couple of words about “United Brigade 46″ (OB46), a fake antifa project of Nazis. They succeeded in trapping and beating up, now deceased, Vanya and Fedyay, as well as Shkobar and a fourth person, and to make a video out of it. This footage is still often shown on TV, usually in the wrong context, as part of programs about Nazis and antifa in the mainstream media. OB46 began to make itself name for about half a year before this famous day came for them. They made a website, and wrote rather stupid things, but in the antifa-style. People started an exchange with them, during which their stupidity became even more obvious.
I did not suspect them of being Nazis, but cops from Petrovka 38, and I tried to persuade people not to have anything to do with them. The fourth person from the video decided that they were normal lads, who just write stupid things due to their lack of enlightenment. Once, he almost exposed us, which would could have had horrible consequences. It was during the time of the Nazi-pagan music festival “Koloyar”. After several such festivals, someone got hurt. It became clear to organisers that someone is after their visitors and they decided to take measures to defend themselves.
Before yet another edition of the festival, which was organised not far from the “Oktyabrskoye pole” metro station, they made a deal with local cops, who promised to dispatch extra patrols in the region. We decided that this was not worth it, and we also changed tactics. Temnozor was about to perform, and we found an excellent quote from their lyrics “I see the hour is coming, when crosses are burning, when there will be no mercy for priests in churches, when once again the gods of Russia are praised, and people are splitting to the deceitful eyes of the crucified kike”. We started to spread it all over the internet that such a group was going to perform. Our efforts gave results and even some deputies wanted to interfere.
The only thing we had to do was to call them, but then Shkobar figured out that with such a big PR campaign the festival could be called off altogether and in that case there would be no chance to kick some Nazi ass. We agreed, and did not get deputies involved. Besides cops, around 100 Nazis from their leading crews came around, eager to find us. We were about twenty, but we managed to deceive them and to smash a group of people going to the concert, thus making our point. However, without asking anyone’s opinion, aforementioned the “fourth hero of the video” met the representatives of the OB46 around one hour before our action, and told them “well we are going to jump them now, bring your crew and join us.” However, Nazi reconnaissance was too cowardly and therefore, never learned our convergence point. Thus, in the end the “OB46″ project was way less successful than it could have been.
We organised gigs as well. Now most of the hip-hop, punk, ska and hardcore are more or less anti-fascist, but back then, antifa-scene was totally underground, secret and marginal. Concerts were usually organised by DJ Stalingrad. We rented small clubs in the suburbs(the main income of which was trashy discos on the weekends), on the weekdays and Sundays. Sound systems were horrible, our gathering spots a tightly guarded secret. The first such concert was legendary, above any praise. No Heads and Klowns were to play. Around 60 people stuffed themselves in a small rehearsal basement. The owner of the place figured out what was going on, and came asking “what is this shit, I am not a fool, ‘Korroziya Metalla’ is practicing here and you are organising a concert without asking me anything”. This did not put DJ Stalingrad off, he made few phone calls and we all moved to the metro station “Vodny Stadion” where, after one and a half hour the gig started, with a sound system straight from the USSR in a ballet rehearsal space in some obscure building.
************
I’ve been involved in plenty of anarchist projects in which we put in a lot of time and effort, and tried to be creative about, but nevertheless without any result whatsoever. When it comes to Antifa, what is different from a number of Western countries is that, in Russia the phenomena appeared around a somewhat narrow issue of self-organisation of subcultural youth to counteract bonehead outrage in concerts. Not that much effort was put in Antifa, but at some point it began to grow like an avalanche.
At one moment we figured out that our human resource was no longer 20 fighters, but around one hundred. We had to decide what to do in these new circumstances. It was my opinion, that we should split into crews of 10-20 people and become more and more professional, terrorize Nazis in such a way which that it would not annoy police. Shkobar, Fedyay, DJ Stalingrad, on the contrary, considered that it was cool to organise high-profile fights. We had conflicts, tensions, and dislike came into the picture; for several years I did not even shake hands with Fedyay; the first time after a long break was around half a year before he was murdered.
Vanya was hesitating, uncertain of which of the two approaches would be the best one, but he was tending more towards picking mine. Then he was jumped at his doorway, his head was hit with a baseball bat, face and neck were pierced all over with a sharpened screwdriver. He had to spend five months in a hospital, and obviously, it took much more time to be fit for fighting again.
And so, the show-off strategy prevailed. Mobs were from 30 up to 110, the highest number being reached in the action against a right-wing concert in the “Tochka”-club. With bottles, iron bars and flares, various nationalist concerts and events were attacked. This went on for a year or year and a half, maybe ten or 15 such attacks. Recognition came from the mainstream media and even more on internet forums. I was an opponent of such actions, the risk was too big and not worth it, and my relations with the organisers of those actions were somewhat cold.
I do not want to set the record straight in public, I just want to say that around the group of people, which organised all these things, the further it went, the more all the kinds of pointless shit came down. People started to came up, who wanted to trash Nazis but not with the “main group”. In general, there more and more people all the time with no chances whatsoever to organise them all into one mob. There was also the story with the inquiry of Duma deputy Alksnis, about the criminal case he insisted be opened against “a group organising riots”. This limited the activities of “main group” a lot, although I still have not figured out why they did not jail all of them back then. Either the cops were too lazy, or from the point of view of the state propaganda it was not considered beneficial to have a court process against antifascists in “the country which defeated fascism.” Especially, as back then, the official opinion of the police force was that there are no fascists whatsoever in Russia, just the occasional hooliganism by restless youth.
**********
Finally, Vanya was back in shape and a group got organised around him. Later, either Nazis, or investigators from Petrovka called it “the Kostolom gang”. The “main group” was not happy with this new initiative, during the first half a year their relations with us were rather cold. We could mobilize from 15 to 30 fighters of varying quality, from 16 to 25 years old. From time to time we acted together with other groups. We had a detachment of scouts, frail 16-19 years old girls. Almost all of them found boyfriends among those for whom they did reconnaissance work. A couple of these girls, however, found guys from the opposite camp, which of course was an epic fail; obviously they were excluded from everything, but they already knew way too much.
Vanya organised trainings. In the beginning, it was an all-out trashy gym at the very edge of Moscow: With rusty irons, boxing pearls, and no shower. It was straight from Romper Stomper or Russia 88. Then we lost it, and for some time we had a way better gym, without irons but with a shower and mats, Vanya was teaching us Sambo. We also went to forest to beat each other with gloves, we called it “Boycovski klub”, “Fight Club”, which was later shortened to Beka. Since then, Beka has become a word widely adopted into the jargon of Russian Antifa.
There were plenty of fights. I liked most the one when we were riding in the metro around yet another “Russian march.” Some kids entered the wagon, all around full of Russian imperial (black-golden-white) flags. One of them was especially distinguished by his black “shitcrushers” (combat boots), black ski-mask and an imperial flag armband. The new passengers looked around the wagon, and one of them said “Let us make a ‘White wagon’”(a Nazi slang term for a pogrom in the metro). “It is our people here!” We were laughing so much we were about to drop. “What if they are Antifa?” – another young patriot was wondering. He had barely uttered the words, when the doors closed, and from then on imperial flags were just flying all over the wagon. We were almost caught by the cops, but retreated successfully. I think we actually saved those morons, if they had just jumped on someone with such an outlook, most likely they would have been sent to Kolyma straight from the underground. But with us they just lost few teeth and got few concussions, but could roam free.
************
The violence was constantly escalating. The murder of Timur Kacharava was political news at a national level, as well as the murder of Aleksandr Ryukhin. Even the attack by Nazis against musicians returning from a concert in the Moscow region (the bassist of the group “Shlyuz” was seriously wounded) was generally considered a senseless outrage. But actually, there is nothing surprising in such an escalation. Nobody has extra ribs and kidneys to be wasted. A knife in your pocket is some minimal guarantee that you will save them. And, if you know that a person you are about to jump has a knife in his pocket, most likely you would like to have one as well.
Once, we caught some Nazis around an event of the NSO, “National-Socialist Society” (later its members were sentenced in a series of court cases for some heavy racial serial killing). We were around fifteen in the center of Moscow, we walked down the street with the distance growing between each other. I saw two big boneheads, around fifteen meters from me, jumped by those of us who were closest to them. One of us gases them, another one aims to the head and shoots with rubber bullets. Then a shout – “he has a knife!”. I move towards them and unconsciously open my knife. One Nazi is lying on the ground, another scoundrel, also gassed, runs away fast, although the road is jammed with cars. He gets away. We figured out that two of us had been stabbed. Rubber bullets had made it through an open door of a bank, security was running out with machine guns, dressed in bulletproof vests. They started to help the wounded, and advised us to get the fuck out before police showed up. We gave the lying Nazi some goodbyes and vanished.
Due to the escalation of violence, many people left Antifa for good. I think this was because they understood the conflict in the frame of the subculture, and obviously not so many people are ready to risk their lives for some nice music. I do not consider myself as an especially brave person, but to me the conflict with fascism was always an ideological one. If you look at the “fa/antifa” issue in a political, instead of subcultural context, you might be more prepared for such situations.
It became clear that back then the mob was not prepared for the toughness of it all. We invited maybe half a hundred persons to each fight, once we had a meeting with maybe the 15 most active people. We checked the list of people who we invited, and figured out that none of the persons present knew more than five of them. And this was under the threat of police provocations, fascist infiltration, danger from the persons we simply never double-checked, and from side of blowhards as well…
Besides that, amongst us and amongst the skinheads around our crew, there were not only friends of the bottle, but also people who when boozing were into beating up someone, whoever came around. Once, such a case ended up in a shootout with local rednecks in one of the cities of the Moscow region. Fortunately, the rednecks decided not to pursue the conflict any further, whereas it was 50 of our people waiting in the bushes for 3 hours with iron bars. And in case there had been a fight, someone could have gotten killed. All because someone got drunk and had his nose broken…
*****
Due to all of this, our group got reorganised. How, you will learn if I reach my fifth decade.
I kept contact with Vanya, we had various projects. Last time I saw him alive was in our mixed martial arts tournament “No surrender!”. Then I called him a couple of times, wanted to have a talk… around the time he got shot. I wanted to have a talk about his role as a public person, in a situation where everyone understood that he was a key person. I was afraid that after any bullshit, if cops got annoyed, Vanya would be the first person they would send to jail. They had just trumped up a case against Shkobar and he did one year in prison, there were some fresh stories for which they could nail Vanya on… I wanted to explain that to Vanya, to sit down and to think what to do with his image. But a Nazi bullet to the back of the head cancelled all that.
Vanya was one of those people, in the way of whom even trams don’t want to get. He was an anarchist, dropped in at editorial meetings of the Avtonom-journal, even wrote something for us. But for him, the first priority was always the war between Nazis and RASH. I would not say that he was one of my best friends, but he was often around at my birthday, I visited his, a couple of times we celebrated the new year together. It is hard to day, but I think that during the last years of his life, he did not have much more involvement in it than recreational activities and resistance with us, the co-conspirators.
zjudez
Originally written for Avtononom #32
Rank and File Slate Takes Over Giant California Camp
Marie Choi
Labor Notes
After months of member-to-member organizing, a group of AFSCME Local 3299 rank and filers swept October elections in the 20,000-member union on University of California campuses.
The Members First slate won five of six executive officer seats and installed UC Berkeley gardener Kathryn Lybarger as president, with 66 percent of the vote.
The slate built support among co-workers, mostly custodians, gardeners, patient care technicians, and food service workers, by calling for a member-led union that would prioritize building workers’ power on the job and commit to democratic decision-making.
Fed up with concessions made under President Lakesha Harrison and Vice President Julian Posadas, many workers joined the Members First effort.
“When the leadership feels so comfortable in the place that they are put by the members, and they lose touch with the members, that’s when we all lose. We cannot afford to keep losing with UC,” said Maricruz Manzanares, a custodian at UC Berkeley.
Harrison and Posadas initially refused to accept the election results and attempted to lock the new officers out of union offices. After a five-hour standoff with building security and members mobilizing calls to Harrison and Posadas, calling on them to quit, the new officers were finally handed the keys.
The former leaders continue to challenge the results. They filed charges alleging the winners used union resources to campaign, tampered with votes, and racially discriminated in a staff purge.
The winners said the “trumped-up” charges were aimed at engineering an international trusteeship to restore Harrison—and ensure the huge local can’t participate in the international election next year, which will replace retiring President Gerry McEntee. Harrison is a longtime ally of the incumbent secretary-treasurer, who is running to replace McEntee.
MEMBERS IN MOTION
The leadership change builds on years of organizing at the grassroots. Through the local’s Member Action Teams, groups of eight to 20 workers that coordinate activity in the workplace and the union, many workers learned nuts-and-bolts organizing and developed their leadership skills.
In pitched battles against the university for increases that would lift them above poverty wages, workers organized a one-day strike in 2005 and a five-day strike in 2008.
In 2009, the local finally won a contract with a 3 percent wage increase secured through dedicated state funds. It was workers’ first raise in seven years.
Later that year, the fight against budget cuts took a new turn. Students were facing 32 percent fee hikes and workers were looking at more layoffs and service cuts. When students occupied a building at UC Berkeley and formed lines to keep police away, AFSCME workers stood shoulder to shoulder with them and other workers to block building entrances.
As the university’s attacks on workers escalated, workers found creative ways to fight back. AFSCME members rallied last year behind 13 bus drivers who lost their jobs when the university contracted out its bus service.
They mobilized 200 workers, students, and allies to surround one of the privatized buses and mounted a campaign to reinstate the drivers and stop further outsourcing of UC work to contractors.
Student activists rode buses to educate passengers about the effects of privatization, and workers documented safety issues that were arising from hiring cheap contractors, including collisions. Within a month, the union scored a victory when UC Berkeley agreed not to outsource campus shuttle services, and today, those 13 bus drivers are back on the job.
Later that year, AFSCME members joined students in a hunger strike to demand that the university denounce Arizona’s racist immigration law, rehire laid-off workers, and drop charges against student protesters disciplined for fighting huge fee hikes.
“Now when UC students and workers talk about fighting for public education, the challenges we face—whether tuition hikes or pension cuts—are almost always discussed hand in hand,” said Laurel Lucia, member of a sister union at Berkeley.
LOSING THEIR WAY
Harrison was elected president in 2001 as part of a reform effort and campaigned on promises to revitalize the local. She says her administration created the Member Action Teams, or MAT.
“When I started, there was nothing,” says Harrison. “There was no MAT, no building takeovers, nothing. I fought for and helped build the MAT, so it hurts to be reduced to someone who makes over $100,000.”
Yet over the past year, some of the local’s victories have been rolled back. Under Harrison and Posadas’ leadership, the union gave up half of workers’ hard-won wage increase in the form of increased pension contributions.
With the backing of the AFSCME international, the two also mounted a campaign to change the local’s constitution to concentrate power in their hands.
According to UC Berkeley custodian Arnold Meza, “Lakesha really lost her way.”
That’s when workers who had been part of the Member Action Teams began to openly organize against the union’s program and in defense of their right to a voice.
“This was a total power grab,” Manzanares said. “They were not educating the members. That’s failed leadership.”
Harrison and Posadas needed 66 percent support to change the constitution; they enlisted money and staff from the international to help move their program.
In response, members organized weekend carpools to reach co-workers around the state. They built their own lists, held worksite meetings, and sent delegations to union-wide meetings to call for transparency, accountability, and democracy. Their efforts paid off: 40 percent voted no.
WHICH WAY ON CAMPUS?
Local 3299 is the second major University of California union to elect a rank-and-file slate this year. In May Academic Workers for a Democratic Union took over the 12,000-member graduate students union, UAW Local 2865.
The tumult on California campuses has given new leaders in both unions a solid foundation of practicing solidarity. Officers say they’re building organizations where rank and filers are building relationships with students, not just top leaders and staff.
The new leaders face challenges: UC is again threatening to outsource jobs, including the bus drivers’. More budget cuts are anticipated, as are tuition hikes of up to 81 percent. Both unions have much work to do to spread strength south of their Berkeley strongholds.
With the Occupy movement breathing fresh life into campus organizing, California-wide actions are in the works, including system-wide actions November 15. The UC Regents cancelled a scheduled mid-November meeting, citing “rogue elements intent on violence.”
Lybarger says putting “real resources into making our members able to advocate for themselves” will help the union work “on the bigger issues” as well. “We want to be on the front lines with a lot of the struggles that are rising up right now,” she said.
http://labornotes.org/2011/11/rank-and-file-slate-takes-over-giant-california-campus-local