On Saturday there was the Anarchist Dayschool over in Glasgow, organised by GAP, one of the splinter group of the former Printworks Social Centre.
I was scheduled in for a workshop about “sexism” – unfortunately, I was never *really* asked, but I found my name on the programme aside of the mentioned workshop together with the name of another person. Anyway, it was a Rangers football match over in Glasgow, and we could have had the most practical workshop about sexism in the Underground that day, or on the buses. Lots of drunken male football fans making obscene commentaries and gestures to every woman nearby. It is really disgusting. But saying something? it is intimidating, too, and Rangers fans are known for being violent and even stabbing people who criticise them or even only wear football colours of the most feared competitor, which is Celtic, apparently. There is also something going on with some religious background, and with unionism and separatism, who knows, a bit like in Ireland, but not sure if that’s the Irish conflict swapping over to Scotland or a Scottish conflict as such.
At least nobody vomited over me, such as the last time I was stuck in a football fan crowd.
The Anarchist Dayschool has changed quite a lot over the last years; it used to be once every half year in Glasgow, the other half of the year in Edinburgh, with a potential to also go to Aberdeen or Dundee or wherever a committed group of people were thinking about taking it on, but nowadays, they seem to take place in Glasgow nearly bi-monthly, as we in Edinburgh didn’t really get our act together. Also, it used to be pretty much always the same workshops: gender and identity politics, Chiapas Solidarity, Claimants stuff, Indymedia, IWW, Women’s health, Counter Info, Class War, and so on, mostly around the groups existing in the central belt. Nowadays the programme is much more variable, but the collective organising and involvement of the groups have also diminished, and fewer people come to the event now, as well as the event is more frequent.
On Saturday I pretty much liked the workshop about Augusto Boal and the “Theatre of the Oppressed”, which included lots of theatre games and role play. There was also a workshop about the “Wimmin Vs. G8” and an anti-hierarchical workshop, which looked interesting and well prepared from afar.
On the G8 issue, it’s slowly getting crazy here; the mainstream media has brought piles of pictures of rioting, smashing-up protesters and TV coverage, and at the same time everything seems to get more and more chaotic; police have shown Members of Parliament riot video footage from Genoa and basically frightened them into “this is how it could be like if you don’t spend more money on security”.