The Fédération Anarchiste condemns the repression on Thursday, 14 May 2009, against the 74 gas workers struggling against all of the social regression they have faced since the professional energy sector was opened to competition. On top of the iniquitous detention of Julien Coupat, the adoption of the “anti-mask” decree, the recent police violence in Strasbourg, and the near-daily use of police force to protect the (stolen) private property that makes up the means of production, this action reinforces anarchists in our belief that the State is not going to relieve us of our worries: it is going to ever-increasingly play the role of guard dog of capital, and it is going to do so ever more brutally.

The only violence occurring in France and in the world today is not coming from workers; it is the violence of barbarian capitalism, of pitting workers against each other in competition under the regime of the lowest bid. It consists of instrumentalising unions into becoming the bosses’ docile servants. It puts young people in increasingly precarious jobs and makes the jobless feel guilty. It destroys public services like the hospitals and schools to turn them into sources of mega-profits. It was this violence that the 74 arrestees had the courage to fight against: a bit of material damage is nothing compared to this!

The Fédération Anarchiste demands that the workers not be pursued for their actions and that all cases currently against activists involved in struggle be dropped, from the sans-papiers to students to workers. The Fédération Anarchiste reaffirms that only the organisation of a social movement by itself and for itself will lead to the creation of a balance of power that will finally tip in favour of those who have only ever known a long series of crises over their entire lifetime.

Fédération Anarchiste (FA) Francophone