We share and translate news from the A las barricadas (04/05/2015), about the Anarchist Federation of Catalonia, one more effort to bring together libertarian interventions in society …

We introduce the public campaign of the Anarchist Federation of Catalonia, launched during these days to complement an earlier effort made under the slogan “Maybe you thought you were an anarchist?”. It is an outreach campaign of libertarian ideas and and the effort to connect with people who are not politicized but who may sympathise with our ideas and methods of struggle. This time it is a matter of presenting a series of struggles that libertarian people are pusuing in different areas.

Last month we presented ourselves with a campaign under the slogan: Maybe you thought you were an anarchist?, having been the first campaign of the federation that we undertook. Now we present the second part of this campaign, where we try to show the principles and social issues on which the Federation works in more concrete ways.

From anarchism, we decide regarding our body

We position ourselves of being able to decide regarding our bodies, because we will not accept that anyone should govern our sexuality and our free choice of motherhood.

We also try to combat social class divisions formed for the privilege of some people against others, we oppose patriarchy, sexism, and heteronormativity. We position ourselves against them and we want to fight them everyday, as structures of social domination contrary to the freedom of individuals, for discriminating against other kinds of sexual orientation, free gender self-identity and the construction of personal, emotional and sexual relationships without authority. Free abortion, freely chosen maternity.

From anarchism, we struggle so that the the land and its creatures are not owned by anyone

The anthropocentrism that guides our lives makes us accept moral discrimination based on the difference between animal species. We believe in the main axis of life, and we do not consider other possibilities such as biocentrism and environmentalism.

The idea of perpetual growth is neither feasible nor desirable. It is necessary to put an end to the dominant consumerism -material and energetic – so that extraction activities, the level of emissions and waste are reduced to the extent that our environment is not affected and cannot be regenerated. Respecting all forms of life on earth, as neither the resources nor living beings are the property of anyone.

From anarchism, we want no one to live from our labour

Increasingly more precarious, increasingly more individualistic. The bosses want to control us and want to avoid any form of organization, separating us and making us compete with each other, to end in our co-workers being seen as enemies.

To break this general view, we must return to cooperate with each other, as we share a common idea: we do not want anyone living from our work.

From anarchism, we struggle for a world without borders

Racism, xenophobia or fascism are structures of domination contrary to freedom and equality, they cannot be part of the new world we are trying to build.

Whether they be individual actitudes or those of State institutions, it is imperative to combat them.

Its imposed borders, its prisons and the economic exploitation of some peoples by others are just some of the consequences of that ideology based on the certainty of classifications by race – being a social construct – or by ethnicity, providing categories, priorities and stereotypes. We realize that it is everyone’s fight, wherever we are, wherever we come from. We fight for a world without borders.

From anarchism, defend ourselves from aggression from the banks

Can you imagine that one day you find yourself without a home? That one day a group of police agents come and decide that you can no longer live in that space where you have shared and lived with your friends or your family? Well it is needless to imagine this, as it is a reality that is increasingly present. You are not saved by paying rent or sharing a mortgage. So we want to defend ourselves and defend ourselves from the agressions of the banks, banks that evict us and squeeze our pockets until they can take no more.

From anarchism, we break with elitist education and build knowledge between all.

We already came from Bologna suffering the ravages of the attacks on a theoretically public university. We already came from the LEC (the catalan education law) seeing how any sign of critical thinking in the classroom vanishes.

We do not want an education in the hands of power, which domesticates us to be perfect machines, to cover vacancies in the labor market, creating the figure of the expert and marginalising the figure of the worker.

We fight against an elitist education and build knowledge between all of us.