On this day 14 July 1789, during the French revolution, the people of Paris stormed the Bastille, a notorious prison, and a symbol of power and the old order.As a huge crowd attempted to gain access to the prison, the garrison station within started to fire cannons onto people in the streets, killing and wounding many.This caused outrage. Russian revolutionary, Peter Kropotkin, who wrote a groundbreaking grassroots history of the revolution, recounted what happened next:"As to the people, as soon as the news of the firing spread through the town, they acted without any one’s orders, guided by their revolutionary instinct. They dragged the cannon which they had taken from the Hôtel des Invalides to the Hôtel de Ville... "The firing by this time had been going on for more than three hours. The people, not in the least dismayed by the great number killed and wounded, were maintaining the siege by resorting to various expedients. One of these was the bringing up of two cartloads of straw, to which they set fire, using the smoke as a screen to facilitate their attack on the two entrances, the greater and lesser drawbridges. The buildings of the Government Court were already in flames."The cannon arrived just at the moment they were wanted. They were drawn into the Government Court and planted in front of the drawbridges and gates at a distance of only 90 feet. It is easy to imagine the effect that these cannon in the hands of the people must have produced on the besieged. It was evident that the drawbridges must soon go down, and that the gates would be burst open. The mob became still more threatening and was continually increasing in numbers."The moment soon came when the defenders realised that to resist any longer was to doom themselves to certain destruction."You can get a new edition of Kropotkin's history here: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/products/the-great-french-revolution-1789-1793-peter-kropotkinPic: Painting of the events by Jean-Pierre Houël

Veja mais no Facebook em: http://www.facebook.com/pages/p/294706370714520

Song of the Day 🎤👑: https://youtu.be/gSJeHDlhYls

What do you love to do most—so much so that you'd gladly give away the results, if only you could spend your life doing it?

What if other people, by doing what they love, could enable you to do what you want to do?

That's the dream at the heart of the gift economy. 💝🏴

You can read more about it in our text revisiting the difference between mutual aid and charity:

https://crimethinc.com/RevolutionaryMutualAid

TIL about Dudeism. A modern form of Taoism, stripped of its metaphysical and medical doctrines, that emerged from the cult classic The Big Lebowski. It advocates for “going with the flow”, “being cool headed”, & “taking it easy” in the face of life’s difficulties. [source, comments]

Vor fast vier Jahren stimmten die Menschen Berlins für die Enteignung großer Immobilienkonzerne. Jetzt zieht die schwarz-rote Landesregierung mit ihrem »Rahmengesetz« den Rahmen so eng, dass eine Vergesellschaftung praktisch unmöglich wird.

https://jacobin.de/artikel/berlin-rahmengesetz-vergesellschaft-enteignung-volksentscheid-deutsche-wohnen

In 1991, Soviet cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev launched from Kazakhstan on a routine space mission. While he orbited Earth, the USSR collapsed. Stranded for 311 days because Russia couldn’t afford to bring him back, he returned to a different country earning the nickname “The Last Citizen of the USSR.”
https://redd.it/1lzwo6b
@r_interestingasfuck

Frankreich schafft einen neuen Staat https://www.watson.ch/!122406661

Humorlose Despoten
Noch nie war der Druck auf Satiriker:innen in der Türkei so gross wie jetzt – trotz der langen Tradition, die dieses Genre dort hat. https://www.woz.ch/!TCAVJYF10YBM

Die Phobokratie der Rechten:
Was steckt dahinter? Eine wichtige Frage, die aber gefährlich verkürzte Antworten zeitigen kann, sagt Donatella Di Cesare. Die Philosophin erklärt, wie der Glaube an Komplotte mit politischen Ohnmachtsgefühlen zusammenhängt und warum sie sich im postfaschistisch regierten Italien nicht mehr frei fühlt. https://www.woz.ch/!J72VKR2QFTVB