We want abolition now !
AssiégéEs (Besieged) is a political project led by people from the "former" European colonies. It was launched by people who were sick and tired of having to choose between struggles against capitalism, against systemic racism and against patriarchy.
We want:
● To affirm the legitimacy of struggles of so-called "minorities" against racism and patriarchy in the anti-capitalist and revolutionary struggle. The struggles within the capitalist system can not be reduced to the confrontation between the proletarian and the bourgeois, even if this remains a central issue. A classless society does not magically guarantee the end of often deadly racist and patriarchal ideologies.
● To affirm the strategic need to build our political autonomy as people with roots in the "former" European colonies, with all the complexity that entails, to ensure a balance of power within the broader social movement, since a large part of it is infused with the racist ideology propilgated by the dominant classes.
● To affirm the importance, despite our desire to organize among all "formerly" colonised who share our vision, to put at the centre of this project cis women1 sexual minorities, trans', working class people and those who are racialised as Muslim, fully aware of the issues and specific interests, which sometimes even appear contradictory, of these political issues.
To this end we propose:
● a magazine: we want to participate in building a Francophone, nonacademic political culture which articulates gender, race, and class because what needs to be changed is a whole system. The magazine is also an opportunity for the most marginalised among us to speak via texts (fiction, political analyses, poetry), illustrations, comics, translations, and photo series.
● gatherings: the IKYK Intersectionality days2 , the Brain Flipping popular university and other types of gatherings will allow us to move from the individual experience to a systemic understanding of oppression and exploitation, and more generally train us in the struggle we want to lead, collectively answering a set of questions both theoretical and practical: what is a social movement? what are the conditions that lead to a popular uprising? What is a revolutionary organization? How to understand neo-liberalism? How to define imperialism today? What is a decolonial political project? How to lead radical struggle against violence against women, particularly in family settings, bypassing the State and prison mechanism? "Racism," "patriarchy", "capitalism" what are their characteristics, can they be analysed the same way? How to conceive anti-capitalism and the struggle against patriarchy from the position of "third world inside" that we occupy in Europe? What position should we have regarding the so-called radical left parties? How to conceive of post capitalism, i.e. a classless society? How to build international solidarity?
● actions: we want the magazine and the gatherings to help develop our political consciousness in order to either launch actions ourselves or participate with others, defined as much by our specific and actual pressing battles and so-called "minority issues" as by the overall reactionary mechanisms in Europe against which we must mobilize. This implies engaging in and / or supporting, among other examples, the struggle for women of all social classes for the right to control their bodies (or against the growing barriers and quasi criminalization of abortion in Europe), union struggles, those that fight for the abolition of prisons, and those who challenge State racism (struggle for the repeal of the increasing number of laws and extraordinary measures targeting Muslims). Our lives are not compartmentalised, we therefore refuse to compartmentalise our struggles: capitalism and the racist and patriarchal social order that accompanies it must disappear.
Join us in building this political project!
info@assiégé-e-s.com
Facebook: AssiégéEs
Twitter: @assiegees
1 cis: term indicating women who were assigned female at birth and not trans women.
2 IKYK: I Know You Know