More repression news and upcoming events for mid-April

A few assorted announcements:

This weekend, the Land Justice Network have arranged a walking tour of London’s land and housing crisis, dropping in on a few of the capital’s biggest landlords and property speculators. The 14th is also the date of the monthly Grenfell commemoration walk marking 10 months since the disaster, and is the first to fall on a Saturday, so it should hopefully see a big turnout. That day will also see a big mobilisation against the “Generation Identity” fascist conference.

A few workplace news items are that Deliveroo and Ubereats couriers up in Glasgow have formed a new network for couriers in Scotland, cleaners organising through the IWGB have begun balloting for action over redundancies at financial/legal firm Ernst & Young, while their colleagues at the University of London continue to get ready for their big strike on the 25th and 26th, and cleaning staff at the Royal Opera House continue to fight for the reinstatement of their sacked colleagues, with regular nightly protests set to continue throughout April.

Elsewhere, the occupation of Queen Mary university has come to an end after the university partially backtracked on planned cuts to bursaries, with an extra £260,000 per year for the next two years having been secured as a result of the occupation.

In international news, big struggles are ongoing in France, as a wave of industrial action takes place at the same time as the attempted eviction of the occupied space known as La ZAD. As ever, the Dialectical Delinquents site is an excellent resource for keeping up with the news, especially in France, and it carries some information about internal conflicts within the ZAD that I’ve not seen anywhere else in English.

A few notes on US prison struggles, trials and repression: Elderly prisoner and former Black Panther Herman Bell, having been granted parole but not actually released yet, is now facing a major backlash from the NYPD and their supporters which might derail his chances of release. A few ways to keep up the pressure in support of his release are collected here.

The J20 case against people mass-arrested at Trump’s inauguration continues, with the next trial group set to start soon, and their defence campaign are requesting continued support and pressure on the prosecution to get the charges dropped. In Charlottesville, Corey Long and Donald Blakney are still facing charges and upcoming trial dates for their roles in defending the town from last summer’s nazi march, so there’s a call to get their charges dropped too. In the confusingly-similarly-named North Carolina town of Charlotte, people involved in the 2016 Charlotte Uprising that took place in response to a police killing are also facing prosecution, there’s a long interview on the subject here and you can donate to their defence fund here.

Meanwhile, a mass hunger strike took place at Washington State Penitentiary earlier this month, political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal has a shot at getting released and also an upcoming birthday, and today marks the 25th anniversary of the start of the historic Lucasville Uprising, which is a good opportunity to draw attention to the cases of those who are still facing harsh repression for their alleged role in the events, like Greg Curry, who’s raising funds to overturn his conviction.