Recently, some of us at Now or Never! were saddened to learn of the death of an old friend from our animal rights days.  Speaking to comrades from long ago times at her funeral reminded us of just how relevant hunt sabbing still is to challenging blood sports and encourage you to find out more and look into contacting your local hunt sab group

In more uplifting news, we've been dazzled and impressed by Oswald Repents; a local website for local people, focused on issues in the Bawdewsell area. Covering topics truly relevant to local people, like the parish football club, social events, the need for volunteers at the village hall, but with a radical commentary throughout , it's an example of a really excellent grass-root anarchist enterprise. It's not often you see a quote by Buenaventura Durruti next to a report on a Tractor Run to raise money for a village hall! It bought to mind another favourite local website of ours, Bedford Bypass who also mix local issues and anarchist politics in an accessible and engaging manner. If only anarchists in every village, town and city were engaging and participating in local issues in this way. If only we at Now or Never! weren't too busy drinking our own urine , watching zombie porn and making prison hooch to do something worthwhile. If only, if only....

Now or Never!: Briefly, can you explain who you are and your history within Starbucks?

Daniel Gross: I’m a worker and a Wobbly.  I got started in corporate retail at Borders Books and Music. In 2003, I began working as a barista at Starbucks in New York City.  The IWW Starbucks Workers Union [www.StarbucksUnion.org] was founded on May 17, 2004.  In the summer of 2006, Starbucks fired me in retaliation for union activity and I’m currently fighting for my job back along with five other wrongfully discharged IWW baristas.

NoN!: Why did you feel you needed to unionise?

DG: First, there’s bread and butter.  6, 7, or 8 dollars an hour is a poverty wage and disgraceful from a $23 billion company showing record profits quarter after quarter.  Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz, already a billionaire, took in over $102 million in compensation last year while baristas hover at or below the poverty line.  Many Starbucks workers depend on government benefits to survive. 

The most staggering part of the financial picture at Starbucks is the scheduling of work hours.  Every barista, busser and shift supervisor- representing the overwhelming majority of employees at the company - is part-time. You can come to work one week and get 35 work hours; get 23 hours the next; and end up with 12 hours the following week. 

Starbucks calls this scheduling system flexibility.  The appropriate term is precarity - the regime by which human beings are treated like other “inputs” in the production process like fuel or soy beans.  The company buys as much labour as it wants, when it wants.  Just-in-time inventory meets human flesh. 

Second, there’s dignity, which at the end of the day is more important than bread and butter.  Going to sleep having been humiliated and infantilised at your retail job still stings even if the bills are paid, which they usually are not.  Indignities large and small, physical and psychological are rained upon Starbucks workers every day. 

Management refuses to schedule enough workers on the shop floor to meet the extraordinary consumer demand that Starbucks stores face.  At the same time, the company fails to implement the most elemental of ergonomic standards.  The result is damage to the physical integrity of the body via repetitive stress injuries and other muscular-skeletal strain.

The smallest detail of your work life is mapped out by the company and arbitrary discipline is enforced through a variety of sanctions and surveillance. The company expects workers to stay after their shifts are done when it’s busy no matter what after-work commitment you may have.  But heaven forbid if you have to leave work a little early to get to a doctor’s appointment.  If you talk back while you’re getting written up, it’s not uncommon for management to cut your hours the next week. 

On the issue of dignity again, the abuse at Starbucks really runs the gamut.  One Starbucks barista’s grandmother died a few hours before her shift.  This worker was responsible for making the final arrangements for her grandmother’s funeral and burial.  She called the manager in charge to explain that she couldn’t make it to work that day.  First, the manager replied with disbelief that her grandmother had actually died, even though she was obviously extremely distraught.  He then ordered her to call other baristas to get her shift covered on threat of termination.  The barista was so disgusted, she quit.

A barista named Sherry Brown was fired from his Washington D.C. Starbucks for asserting himself to a customer who had threatened his life. 

The prevailing reality behind the socially responsible rhetoric at Starbucks is simply intolerable. We’re calling on the company to immediately respect our right to have a union, reinstate our fired members, pay a living wage, guarantee our work hours, and staff stores appropriately to avoid strain and injuries.

NoN!: Why was the IWW chosen opposed to a more mainstream union?

DG: First and foremost, workers wanted a union that we would control.  If I had to pick one element that really sets apart the IWW from many other unions, I’d have to say it’s the reality of rank and file control.  We were alienated enough by our employer and we didn’t want to duplicate that with our union.

Second, the traditional trade union model has failed to make an impact for retail workers in the United States.  Recent Bureau of Labour Statistics have confirmed this, finding that union membership in U.S. retail has fallen to just 5% of employees in the industry.

We felt that the IWW’s direct action method would allow us to improve our life at work without falling into the various pitfalls which have made unions irrelevant to the overwhelming majority of retail workers. 

Finally, we wanted a union we could afford.  At $6 dollars per month, the price was right.

NoN!: How did Baristas react to the radical politics of the IWW? Was anyone hostile to the strong anti-capitalist stance that the union takes?

DG: Any workplace or community organiser knows there are a lot of challenges in this work. I can tell you though that the IWW’s long-term vision has not been a significant impediment to reaching out to our co-workers.  Stripped of all the fear-mongering instigated by anti-worker forces, the IWW’s long-term vision is simply a world where deep democracy exists in the workplace and the community.

On a day-to-day level the radicalism of the IWW translates into workers controlling their own campaign and taking direct action without letting the government get in the way.  This approach, far from an impediment, is actually a competitive advantage.  It might actually be the only approach working right now for retail employees in the United States. 

Starbucks likes to talk about the worldview of the IWW in its propaganda but astutely avoids our immediate demands for respect and dignity on the job today.  In one memo to “partners”, Starbucks wrote that the, “Industrial Workers of the World is a small, radical anarchist group, far outside of the mainstream of the U.S. labour movement.  According to its website, the IWW calls for the abolition of the wage system and seeks to ‘do away with capitalism’.”

Besides the suggestion that we are an anarchist organisation, Starbucks contention there was accurate.  However, in my experience low-wage workers do not have a particular affection for the economic system in which we find ourselves.  I can only think of a single case where a worker who was supportive of the union turned against us and started talking about communist front group nonsense and the like. I think that worker had other issues and just latched onto the anti-radicalism he heard from management as a pretext. 

Far worse than the red-baiting, the greatest hurdle we must overcome as we continue to grow is the anti-union terminations.  More than a few workers have shied away from joining the campaign because of the multiple retaliatory firings by Starbucks.  That’s why it’s so important for us to impose significant economic, political, and social costs when the company fires someone for union activity.  The only way we can do that is with a movement of people who reject the hegemony of corporate power.

The global justice movement has energised and stood with us and without that movement we would not be where we are today.  We reached out for solidarity and received it.  The CNT-F entered Starbucks stores in Paris en masse with solidarity leaflets protesting the firing of SWU activists.  Wobblies in England and Scotland rose up with Zapatista supporters against the retaliatory firings and to lend support when I was facing politically-motivated criminal charges for a 2004 protest in front of the Starbucks store where I worked.  The protest coalition served free Zapatista-grown Fair Trade coffee outside of Starbucks stores and handed out information against union-busting and exploitative land practices in Mexico. 
Starbucks baristas in New Zealand who are members of the Unite Union strongly condemned my termination in the same spirit of mutual aid that our campaign exhibited when they struck Starbucks in Auckland.  The postal workers’ union in Canada has stood with us, as has the Korean Teachers Union and the National Lawyers Guild, the largest progressive legal organisation in the United States. 

There are many more examples and I wish there was time to mention them all, but those folks know who they are and I hope they know how much their support means to us.

NoN!: How did the management react when the union first started? Has their opinion changed over time?

DG: Starbucks responded with scorched earth union-busting and hasn’t let up since.  Eight anti-union terminations spanning six Starbucks stores, countless threats, multiple bribes, extensive surveillance, misleading propaganda, intense pressure, anti-union manoeuvres from law firm Akin Gump, and more. The type of union picket Starbucks fired me for has been protected, at least on paper, for over seventy years in this country. 

Sometimes we do get a good laugh out of the union-busting.  The company printed out the IWW Constitution on a couple occasions and handed it out to workers in an effort to deter them from the union.  It’s not clear why the company thought this would scare off workers since the IWW constitution outlines an organisation that workers control as opposed to Starbucks’ corporate by-laws which govern an organisation which is tyrannically controlled from the top-down with no input from workers. We joked that we appreciated the company saving the union some printing costs.

With the backing of grassroots actions from Starbucks Workers’ Union activists, we were able to prevail against Starbucks in the legal arena.  In the first labour case brought by Starbucks baristas, the company and the National Labour Relations Board entered a settlement agreement in which the company had to reinstate two discharged IWW baristas and rescind nationwide policies against sharing written union information and wearing union pins.

The company started breaking the law again almost immediately after the settlement.  Far from desisting from illegal activities, they actually went for the jugular.  Six IWW baristas are still out of job right now through anti-union terminations. 

NoN!: Would you consider the union to have been successful?

DG: I think the proof is in the pudding.  Starbucks company-owned cafes in the United States were totally untouched by unions before the advent of the IWW campaign.  Now Starbucks workers have our own voice on the job, in the community, and in the broader public arena.

We’ve been a major factor in pressuring the company into broad-based wage increases, our members have more secure hours, and we’ve remedied many grievances with management in a wide variety of areas from discrimination to safety.

For instance, many NYC baristas at Starbucks have seen wages increase by almost 25%.  While we still have not achieved a living wage and guaranteed hours, more money in our pocket because of pay increases and more regular hours makes life better.

In addition to the systemic gains, the grievances remedied have been important as well.  SWU members in Chicago shamed management into purchasing a stepladder the workers had sought for years by bringing in an IWW ladder to work with a sticker reading, “for a safer healthier workplace.”  Management couldn’t tolerate a useful tool from the IWW that allowed workers to avoid unsafe reaching and climbing on tables so management hurried out and bought a ladder they had consistently refused to provide.

Sarah Bender struck a blow for the right of all baristas to organise when she coordinated her own defence campaign following an anti-union termination by Starbucks. Grassroots coalition-building and countless actions played an instrumental role in Starbucks’ settlement with the Labour Board which reinstated Sarah. In one memorable action, union baristas partnered with the “Billionaires for Bush and Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz” who entered Sarah’s store in full aristocratic regalia to present a framed union-buster of the year award to the district manager that fired her.  The Billionaires argued for the abolition of the labour movement and praised the inequitable distribution of wealth under capitalism.

We love creative provocative tactics.  One favourite we’ve used is to pack a Starbucks with union supporters and have them wait in line to get a drink.  They order a drink and pay for it: penny-by-penny-by-penny.  It doesn’t take long to jam up the company’s operation for an injustice against a worker or our union. 

Most importantly, the initiative, creativity, and strength of workers themselves have achieved these victories.  The model is called solidarity unionism, a term coined by labour activist, author, and working-class lawyer Staughton Lynd.  Folks who aren’t familiar with his work should take a look. Without solidarity unionism, Starbucks workers would still have no voice, caught in the intersection of a flawed labour law regime, fierce employer resistance, and a disinterested trade union bureaucracy. 

NoN!: Has the anarchist movement been supportive of your cause?

DG: Extremely supportive and words can never do justice to how grateful I am.  The long commute early on a winter morning for the opening shift or the late-night commute home after the closing shift can be very dark and lonely.  Alienation and humiliation, personal and financial, run high in the multinational retail workplace.  That so many anarchists have understood this dynamic and supported our struggle with action is very moving and is a beautiful homage to the birth of anarchism in the labour movement.   

Also, like radicalism, the IWW Starbucks Workers Union has embraced cross-border solidarity as a competitive advantage and anarchists have been a critical part of that. 

The global justice movement and the IWW Starbucks Workers Union lost a great friend and anarchist supporter in 2006 with the assassination of Indymedia journalist Brad Will by government forces in Oaxaca, Mexico.  Brad was a fixture at Starbucks Union benefit events; no one felt the radical folk music more deeply than he, fully alive, dancing arm-in-arm with his long-time friend and anarchist comrade, Priya Warcry.  Brad is well remembered for his contribution to many movements - environmental, squatters’, anti-corporate globalisation, and many more.  I hope Brad’s legacy will also include the fact that he was often a wage earner, a stage technician and a true supporter of labouring people.  

NoN!: Have any authoritarian socialist groups helped your struggle?

DG: Groups of this type have also been supportive of the struggle: publicising information about the campaign, turning out people to picket lines, and so forth.

NoN!: What reaction have you received from the general public? 

DG: What you’d expect.  Support generally from working people; opposition from capitalist interests, their political operatives and their media (with a couple exceptions). 

Starbucks has a public relations machine unparalleled in the corporate world.  It has convinced many people that Starbucks is a different kind of corporation and a good place to work.  Health care is its biggest myth.  In reality, the company insures a lower percentage of its workforce than notorious Wal-Mart, just 42%.  So there is an educational process we have to engage in sometimes to move folks past the myths.

NoN!: Politically, what would you describe yourself as? Has your experience with the Starbucks Union changed your views at all?

DG: It’s important to note first that the IWW is a non-partisan union and I speak only for myself here.  We’ve never endorsed a political candidate or contributed funds to a political party. This is how it should be in my opinion.  The IWW should continue to be an independent workers’ organisation that is not beholden to any political party, ideology, or government.  It should, in my view, be welcoming to all members of the working class, regardless of political affiliation, except prison guards, police, and prosecutors.

The IWW pursues a vision of a world where workers control their workplaces and community members control their community.  To get there, we organise as a rank and file union.  That is, unions where workers themselves control their own campaigns, formulate strategy, and carry out tactics.  There’s no professional bureaucracy or “representatives” in the IWW. 

I am an anarchist.  The Starbucks campaign hasn’t changed my views so much as deepened them.  Forming a union at Starbucks has put certain issues in sharp relief, for example: the moral imperative of overcoming the tyranny of the multinational corporations on the job and in the community; the State’s role in protecting class privilege and capitalist hegemony; the marginalisation of labour issues in the corporate media; and the fundamental decency and beauty of the working class.  The class that builds and creates. 

I half-joke with folks who have read about class struggle but aren’t sure if it exists; I tell them, try to organise your workplace and then get back to me.

NoN!: In your opinion, what does the future hold for the Starbucks Workers Union?

DG: Well it’s impossible to say for certain since the direction of the campaign is controlled horizontally by the entirety of the membership but as you suggest I’ll offer my view.

If we continue to develop and deploy strategies that win material gains on the job, cultivate the initiative and skills of members, and increase our power as a campaign and movement, I think we’ll continue to do well.  If we neglect these pillars, we’ll falter.

We should keep innovating and challenging paradigms because being without a voice at work is just not an option and existing traditional models just aren’t doing it for retail workers. We work closely with the worker centre movement in the U.S. which has delivered powerful results with workers who had been left out of many traditional labour unions especially immigrant workers.

To keep building on the gains we have won thus far though, we need to grapple with the anti-union terminations.  I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention how devastating they can be.  Firing someone for union activism not only deprives them of their ability to pay the bills, it sends an unmistakable chill to other co-workers contemplating union membership.  When Starbucks fires a worker for asserting their right to free association in the form a union, it commits a grave and intensely personal wrong. 

There’s no way we can do this alone and that’s why the SWU situates itself as part of the global justice movement.  From supporting baristas in New Zealand to farm workers in Florida or Ethiopia to indigenous Oaxacan rebels, we’re committed to global solidarity. 

We’re very excited about our Justice from Bean to Cup! initiative.  It’s the first time we know of that rank and file retail workers have reached across the supply chain and across borders to build power. Our barista delegation just returned from Ethiopia where we built relationships with impoverished farmers growing coffee for Starbucks and we will be doing a lot of work in this area going forward.

Let there be no mistake that it will take a movement to reclaim our autonomy from the multinational corporations and arrive at the day when Wal-Mart “associates”, Starbucks “partners”, Borders “booksellers”, and the rest, march together under the red and black banner: “Abolition of the Wage System.”

For folks interested in staying connected with the campaign, our website is StarbucksUnion.org. 

NoN!: And what about the future of the IWW in general?

DG: We’re in our 102nd year and things are looking better than they have in quite a while.  A combination of repression and co-optation of course delivered a brutal but not fatal blow against our union in the early part of the 20th Century.  Yet, the Wobbly ethos of Direct Action, rank and file control, and solidarity that rejects racism and xenophobia is as relevant today as it ever was.   

An organising renaissance has emerged in the IWW.  Whether it’s the Starbucks campaign, movie theatre workers in California, bike messengers in Chicago, retail and restaurant workers in Philadelphia, troqueros in Los Angeles, education workers in Michigan or Scotland, immigrant food warehouse workers in Brooklyn or the Baristas United campaign in the British Isles, the IWW is back as a serious organising force.

The heroism of our martyrs and class struggle prisoners, folks like Frank Little - organising in the copper mines, Judi Bari - uniting timber workers, or Ben Fletcher - organising on the docks, and most importantly the Wobblies, first on the picket lines and last to go home whose names we may never know, inspire us and offer us a practical guide to a life in solidarity.

Building an agile and effective grassroots union is a tremendously difficult task no doubt and we need all the help we can get.  I’ll mention the website for folks who want to get involved; it’s iww.org. 


NoN!: What advice would you give to someone who wanted to organise their own workplace?

DG: Do it.  Don’t talk yourself out of it.  You can convince yourself with a million bad reasons why you shouldn’t fight and you’ll keep getting screwed.  By organising you’ll improve your life on and off the job while becoming part of a global justice movement for a more humane society.  Shortly after the Starbucks campaign went public, a progressive woman got in touch to express support.  She told us, “workers are heroes, workers who organise are superheroes.” 

Organisers help co-workers overcome fear all the time.  But organisers too have to overcome our own fear.  The media, schools, politicians, many religious institutions inculcate deference to authority - and the bosses love it.  Confront your fear of sitting down with a co-worker to talk union or looking the boss in the eyes and overcome it.    

IWW martyr Joe Hill, murdered by the state of Utah, said it well when he wrote: “If the workers take a notion… They can tie with mighty chains; Every mine and every mill, Fleets and armies of the nation, Will at their command stand still.”

Your best bet is to contact a union as early as possible to gain the support you’re going to need to win.  My preference is for unions which are member-controlled in theory and in fact, whether it’s the IWW, CNT, or Frente Autentico del Trabajo in Mexico.

If you’re going to go independent (or with an existing union for that matter) build deep coalitions with other groups to carry out your work.

There’s a lot more I’d share, too much to go into here, but in brief I’d say: research your target intensively and identify its strengths and weaknesses; spend ample time learning organising skills like how to have a union conversation with a co-worker and how to map a workplace; think critically about sustainability issues and organising strategies in the face of asymmetric resources; tackle racism and sexism from day one; create mechanisms to share skills with members; develop and articulate compelling campaign narratives; harness the power of the internet and digital video; facilitate workers to tell their own stories; finally, know your labour history, familiarise yourself with contemporary union campaigns and worker struggles, but don’t be afraid to experiment with new approaches.

Finally, develop the determination to prevail because it’s not going to be easy.  But it is rewarding, the prospect of a just world is so sweet, and together we win.

NoN!: What would you say to someone who was considering working at Starbucks?

DG: Get hired and contact the Starbucks Workers Union.  If you’re in the UK contact Baristas United at www.baritasunited.org.uk.  

Also see  starbucksunion.org

We were, as ever, delighted when the latest issue of The Cunningham Amendment hit our doormat. Hand letter pressed on salvaged  antique machinery by the dashing Dr Peter Good, each issue is a thing of beauty - crammed full of little gems to delight and enthrall.  It's restricted circulation means those understood to be "Anarcrisps" do get priority, but if you wish to acquire yourself a copy sending your details with a donation of cash or stamps to TCA, Room 6, Tangleford House, The Street, Bawdeswell, Norfolk, NR20 4RT should get results. Just proves that when anarchists aren't banging on about the Spanish Civil War or drinking our own piss, we're also capable of making the world a little bit more pretty too.

A first hand account of a Serbian illegal immigrant inside Basel, the Swiss deportation prison

First I would like to say that I didn’t experience any kind of torture from the police in Basel. They arrested me in a lawful manner (on the basis of accusations from one of their citizens that I threatened him in order to obtain money). The only abuse of position by the police was when they pressurised me to sign a form (which would allow a court to make a judgment on my case without my attendance in court). I refused to sign it. During 7 lonely days of custody I took the opportunity to rest from the hard travelling conditions I had encountered crossing the border.  The Cell was more than 15 square metres, with a radio and 72 TV channels and a free shaving kit …in Serbia it would be unbelievable, but I’ll write about Serbian custody another time.  I was only disturbed by prison guards calling me to exercise and by another one who brought us food (he tried to keep/steal cake from me during the weekend; idiot). Swiss people have high living standards but they’ll take any opportunity for more money.  They are taught to think so.

There are exceptions to this cliché, for example the people from Hirscheneck café-bar. Although I am not sure, I think they own a little restaurant next to the café-bar where people can get breakfast (and dinner) for free. The meals are of a high quality and vegetarian. The anarcho-punks in Basel are the only people I witnessed displaying this kind of solidarity. People need help; they are not things for use/misuse in personal political fight. Kropotkin wrote about mutual aid even between animals with trying to show that there’s a natural instinct to help each other. It is my opinion that human beings lost such instinct growing up in an egoistical society.

After they transferred/displaced me to a deportation prison, which was an eye opener. First they put people in a cell which holds people for fast track deportation, those who will be leaving within 5 days. These are the worst prison guards I encountered. They attempt to make life uncomfortable for the people imprisoned there. For example people are given cigarettes but no lighter, so they ask them 100 times for a light and are only given one a couple of days later. 5 days later I was moved to a block of cells (“station”) where they put people who will wait longer to be deported or freed. These guard’s behaviour was better. People used to incarceration will find conditions more comfortable here.  If you refuse to adapt to the prison regime there will always be problems with guards and other imprisoned people. For example I refuse to work and other people imprisoned will be angry because “I try to be somebody especial”. I was in the station with Muslims, who were intolerant of anyone different (although people from Serbia are no better than people in Islamic societies). The management in prison also doesn’t like such behaviour because they are afraid that others will be influenced by such behaviour. It could financially damage the prison. How the management succeeds to keep such mentality, unless they have cooperators, I don’t understand. I did notice that those who tried to put pressure on me to go to work were those who were to be freed i.e. they were not going to be deported. I suppose that their freedom was in question so management (police also use this when dealing with foreigners) abuse this position to put pressure on them to cooperate. Many people have spent more than 10,000 dollars in order to reach the EU, so deportation is a big problem for them.  On the other side, management of any prison can’t control the situation if they don’t have cooperators within the prison population. 

I read in a German newspaper an explanation from one ex-prisoner, about unwritten rules in their prisons; I have noticed that the same rules exist in Belgrade. If these rules exist everywhere it is not by accident. It is in the interest of every management to allow someone to become the main boss and then they use these bosses as cooperators. Cooperators secure the wishes of management in order to get, to keep, some privileges. In Belgrade, privilege is to have warm water every evening for a shower.  The motivation of all management is to force “petty” criminals (“petty” are those like me those who haven’t taken up criminality as a lifestyle) to stop to breaking the law as they will have fear ending up in prison again (they know that in prison they’ll be tortured again). So, first, cops beat people who break the law, and later “bigger” criminals torture them in custody and in prison. So, “bigger” cooperators with prison guards and with police work together to make money. Therefore I think that even deportation in Sibir/Siberia was better than in today’s prisons.  In Sibir/Siberia when intellectuals and political rebels were deported they were surrounded like minded people, so they could unite themselves and refuse to attack each other.

Except cooperators, prison guards try to create problems for those unused to the prison system. From stupid things like having to ask for something to clean yourself 100 times inside of two days in order to get it; to more serious things like: “Mr. Sasha, could we go into your office to make conversation?” with his hand  placed on my cell. Personally, I think it is a dirty tactic to try to create an illusion to others that I cooperate with the management or with the police. In a criminal prison such illusions would be very dangerous; I would have to attack the guard in order to prove to the other inmates that I’m not in collusion with the management.  It was not as dangerous as this was a prison for deportation where most people are not criminals.

It is my opinion that the guards didn’t like me because I didn’t adapt to their regime therefore I “created problems”: I never said hello to them, I asked/demanded in writing twice for my rights in prison (to get a cell with one bed because of too little space) - it was refused, twice I wrote wanting to talk with a social worker - they never offered this because they knew that there I’d speak against them)…

My opinion is that the living conditions in criminal prisons in Switzerland are 100 times better than this one for deportation. In criminal prison, after 8 hours of work an inmate earns 600 SFR (400 euro) monthly which is important for poor foreigners, there are sports activities (sports fields, a gym, etc). In deportation prison people can work 2.5 hours for 15 SFr (10 euro) daily, 3 days weekly & activities don’t exist. People are given 2hours exercise in a space 20m x 25m. In this exercise space there are ping-pong tables and table football there is also basketball facilities but ball is made from sponge (!) so nobody uses it. There is TV in every cell, with 23 cable channels compared with 72 channels in criminal prison, but later management took away our remote-controls (nobody understood why). Radio could be rented for 10 SFr monthly (in criminal custody it is free). I was only allowed to order a newspaper once a week, and it had to be from their list of newspapers (only European edition of Serbian “News”), while in criminal prison people can order all newspapers and magazines everyday which exist in their shops (providing they have the money to buy them). Arabs and Russians were unable to get newspapers because they did not have their newspaper on the list created by management.

The only channel from Ex-Yu was a Slovenian one, although people from Slovenia don’t end up in prisons for deportation (besides, Serbo-Croatian is understood by most people from ex-Yu republics/states; Slovenian is generally spoken only by people in Slovenia). The prison list for ordering food was no better. Some cigarettes, cakes, mineral water, and hygiene products were the only things available… whilst in criminal prison people can go into a shop and buy everything; from shoes to food…I had to order cake with crystal sugar but my stomach wouldn’t accept it. Our cultural differences mean we have different dietary requirements. Swiss people eat very little bread, so we got 3 small pieces of bread daily, plus some spaghetti each day and other cheap food, so I was always hungry. Because there was no choice, I had to buy cakes with crystal sugar in order to get energy. They kept me there 5 months out of a maximum 15 months. Their answer, excuse is always: people don’t stay here as long as in criminal prisons so therefore the same regulations are not needed. This applies even to medical help. I was sick from having the same breakfast every day for 5 months: micro-butter (fat) with micro-marmalade (with crystal sugar again). Doctor fulfils the wishes of management rather than those of the imprisoned people i.e. his purpose is to save the state money. Therefore foreigners cannot get adequate medical help, as I said with the excuse that “people don’t stay long time in prison for deportation”.

The cells all have two or four beds, except in every station there is one cell with one bed and another with 8 beds. For the first 5 days I was in the cell with 8 beds and the rest of time I was in a cell with 2 beds. My cell was 9 square metres plus a 2 square metre toilet with shower. EU Convention regarding prison states that cells should have a minimum of 8 square metres per person, but this rule can be manipulated by building high instead of wide cells. Therefore I say my cell is for one person but inside they set up two beds. I read in a German newspaper that 2 people got compensation from court because the judge decided that their cell was too small making the conditions inhuman.  I don’t have the money to pay lawyers to take my case to court, but it would be good because if I won others could follow my example and it would have huge financial implications, perhaps forcing the authorities to consider letting people go free instead of pushing them into prisons which are not built/constructed for so many people. In any case, twice I demanded in writing to get a cell with one bed but I was always refused. This mentality (in Belgrade also) is good for the management of the prison: everybody “must” accept the conditions of life in prison and the way of life in it, like the others do. People shouldn’t rebel and shouldn’t demand anything especially for himself. When you try to encourage others to make demands, you are immediately faced with sceptical answers and a cynical view of the chance of success.

Therefore rebellions in prisons can be created only by leaders within the prison community because everybody follows them. Nobody has the courage to be different in prison; everybody quickly adapts himself to the unwritten rules, which is also the case when in custody in Belgrade (12 people live together in a 30 square metre cell).

So, the bathroom had a shower which only had warm water and a veil instead of a door. It is only one metre from the bed; you can hear everything, providing too much intimacy. Ventilation was fortunately good.  There is no privacy, people are thrown together with those from other cultures: the Chechen was a hygienic person but a patriarchal Muslim (he couldn’t accept that I walked around in the cell without a T-Shirt) and we hardly spoke because he couldn’t speak foreign languages; the man from India was a good person; the man from Bosnia was totally “counter”, always nervous so I lost my temper with him, he was always on the side of management and he was always “smartest”. Most people in prisons for deportation (in custodies also) are nervous because of their unsure situation, they don’t know what will happen to them and they spent a lot of money to come to the EU. As I said, the bathroom only had warm water so unless you buy mineral water you must wait ‘til the cells open before you have the opportunity to have cold water for drinking. We always received our meals in our cells, after they have been closed, although to the House Order people should eat in a common room and cells should only be closed after the dishes have been washed. This means we were locked up half hour earlier than we should be every time, and we could only wash our dishes once the cells were opened (it means the cell stinks of food all night). If somebody wants to visit doctor, social worker, etc, he must fill out a blue form. These weren’t readily available and had to be asked for. Later, they restricted us to asking for one at exactly 11 a.m. if you asked earlier or later it was not possible to get one. Besides, at 11 a.m. they give you lunch in your cells, so it is harder for guards to bring food and forms in at the same time, but management decided this should be so. Books in Serbo-Croatian didn’t exist there, except the Bible. At visiting time, people can receive books, magazines, Discman, and money which go to konnto in prison…

Of course, even this situation is better than Serbian custody or prison, but it is much worst than criminal custody or criminal prison in Switzerland. In criminal prison people can have instruments, PC, etc, and I heard in Denmark DVDs can be rented, special channels on TV can also be rented, if a person doesn’t work he gets 30 euro weekly…so the question is: is it better that people in Switzerland become criminals rather than having illegal status? My opinion is that in Switzerland it is much better to be criminal than illegal. Prisons for deportation are simply worst than criminal ones although people are usually only without a visa or without documents.

In summary, I can add that governing-courts (Verwaltungsgericht), who decide who stays in deportation prisons, fulfil the wishes of police in relation to foreigners. They fabricate, create, any stupidity if they want to keep some person in prison. Parts of the police have right wing views concerning foreigners. The security who lead people from prison to the airport, often use violent methods. In Zurich, they beat one person when they didn’t succeed in deporting him. They tried to deport one man from Algeria 3 times, but he cut his hand before the aeroplane departed, so they failed to deport him and consequently they beat him badly (despite the fact he did not fight the security personnel). I received some info from an organisation that this man finally got his freedom & it is very good news (he was a good person). Although this freedom only means that they let you to go out unmonitored in Switzerland, if they catch you again they put you in prison again (although they should send such people to a communal house for asylum seekers/refugees).

Criminal courts also discriminate against foreigners; resulting in these courts breaking the human rights of foreigners much more than those of its domestic citizens. For example, they made my judgment without my presence, although I was extradited against my will (they said because it is a readmission-deportation of an illegal person, therefore I did not possess any rights allowing me to make a complaint to their federal court, which is an obligation with extradition) with Serbian cops in the aeroplane. So, I was prevented attending court against my will. Besides, the court sent the judgment in German (instead of Serbian) to my Brother’s address, with a time-limit for complaint (10 days). But a letter takes a minimum 7 days to go from Serbia to Switzerland. Even the assault/threat was not proven because it came over as an anonymous returned email from the person who called the cops. But they say that I sent it, so the court took this as proof because I am a foreigner and he is a domestic citizen…

That’s all for this time, soon I’ll send text about situation in Serbian custody in Belgrade, where I finished after arriving in Belgrade.

My mother never said “I never should play with the gypsies down in the wood”, she was quite open-minded like that; unlike some of the other mothers about who'd tell their kids not to do so, in keeping with that quaint, bigotry-enforcing nursery rhyme of old. Mistrust of gypsies and travellers by insular, parochial society stretches back centuries, through Prosper Merimee’s Carmen, turned into a famous opera by Bizet, past the not very politically correct Enid Blyton character Gipsy Jo, through Nazi elimination in concentration camps, to the gypsies, tramps and thieves of popular pop ballads and jokes by lazy middle of the road hacks like Peter Kay and Jimmy Carr. Isn't it about time that we overcame this fear of the not that particularly unknown?
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The TV show My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding goes part way to addressing some of the difficulties that gypsies face, or Irish travellers in fact. It presents a few of the slurs and backwards attitudes that society cast against them, but is also fairly guilty itself of reinforcing some engrained stereotypes. It seems to focus on certain members of the traveller community, predominantly the loud, brash ones, which is something that others in the community claim does not represent them adequately. The show also seems to excessively hone in on some of the more garish, lurid details of gypsy culture, taking what could be considered a condescending view of its quirky excesses. It looks down its nose at some of the subjects' antics, as if to say, "Ooh, look at that tasteless dress," or "Oh, isn't that cake in the shape of a castle so abominable?!" Because nobody in middle class suburbia would ever have anything like that at their weddings, would they? It point blank ignored the fact that tacky, tawdry excess is not the exclusive realm of the gypsies, and only certain ones screened by Channel 4 at that.

Down on Dale Farm, attention was brought to the travelling community there who faced eviction from the local council, who had not given them ample warning or a suitable place to move to after reasonable consultation, which is illegal practise in the UK under international law. For those who don't want to work on Maggie's Farm no more, life as a traveller has a rugged, rural appeal. The government have been curbing and curtailing freedoms of congregation and movement from the mid ’90s, with the Criminal Justice Act and abolition of the Caravan Sites Act that previously obliged local authorities to provide sites for travellers being notable examples.  On top of that, automated number-plate recognition tracking devices and border control systems that track when you leave or enter the country have appeared in recent years. If it wants to be able to track everybody's movements, the gypsies, Roma and travellers are the ones to watch, as they are the most independent and furthest outside of the system.

Regarding the Dale Farm protest, it was reassuring that the voices heard coming from the local town were strangely tolerant and supportive of the Dale Farm travelling community. The nearby townspeople spoke well of them on a radio phone in that I heard, saying that they did not cause trouble or leave a mess, but were a welcome addition, bringing variety and enriching the culture of the area. Some bigots of course were heard to spout their usual perceived nonsense that gypsies caused crime, when statistics (the bane of bigots everywhere) show that the proportion of gypsies in prison is smaller than their proportion of the general population. The same mindless bigots, or perhaps other ones, we don’t want to tar all bigots with the same brush, can also be heard regularly criticising travellers for not working, but then when they do come round looking for work, they snub them for that as well. A pretty self-defeating attitude. In a survey conducted in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, almost two-thirds of respondents said that they were refused work because they were Roma. This trend is worryingly similar across Europe, meaning that the only way that gypsies can get work is by their own means and wherewithal.

It is also repeatedly claimed that gypsies and travellers don't pay their taxes, but they do, like everybody does who buys anything or works in employment or are self-employed and pay council tax, unlike some of the large, tax-dodging companies with offshore accounts, who bigots seem perversely reticent to aim their accusatory fingers at.

Many travellers do not send their children to mainstream schools for fear that they will be picked on in this way, as well as having their traditional values and self-determination stripped away from them. The children of the Dale Farm camp had been able to enrol in the local primary school, as it was the first permanent place of residence they had stayed at, but faced humiliation and isolation when members of the settled community pulled their children out of the school shortly after. Youngsters from Dale Farm who attempted to attend the secondary school were marginalised, bullied and even physically attacked when their backgrounds were known.

That said, the situation in the UK is relatively fair in comparison to that on the continent. In Italy there is outright hostility towards the Roma people. In 2008 they were all forcibly fingerprinted by the government. In another stark incident in July 2008, sunbathers lay casually indifferent next to the covered bodies of two Roma girls who had drowned in the sea. Roma in Hungary were beset by shootings and Molotov cocktail attacks between January 2008 and August 2009, over 40separate incidents in total, resulting in seven deaths. In Slovakia there is segregation in schools to keep Roma children separate from the rest of the population as they are deemed a bad influence, and forced to attend either special ethnically segregated schools, or put into classes for children with “mild mental disabilities”, while in Germany and France, supposedly democratic countries, there have been mass deportations. One EU politician raised objections, recalling the continent's chilling past and previous terrors based on unfounded prejudices, but was shouted down by colleagues, such as Sarkosy, as being a troublemaker.

The  band Gogol Bordello have led something of a rallying call to the creative, musical and artistic contributions of gypsies to Europe and the rest of the world (their travelling in previous times being one of the only ways that culture could spread). Balkan Beat Box, N.O.M.A. and Fanfare Ciocarlia have seen a resurgence of gypsy music bouncing around the dance-floors of Europe once more. As Eugene Hutz, lead singer of Gogol Bordello, puts it in the song Immigrant Punk:

"Of course we immigrants wanna sing all night long / Don't you know the singing salves the troubled soul? / So I'm relaxed, I'm just lurking around / I got a method and you don't / You got a dictionary kicking around? / Look up the immigrant, immigrant, immigrant punk!."

On a final note, the residents at Dale Farm still have to put up with abuse and threats. An anonymous letter was sent to the camp (whoever wrote it must have been very brave), stating they were, “trash”, “dirt”, and “filth”, with a closing remark, “Gypsies out.” The days of Enid Blyton have not passed

Issue 21 of Now or Never! is now available in our shop and features all sorts of rancidity, such  as surviving Poundland; bizarre films; fashion, Nazis and the occult; BOY London; the end of the world (religious AND atheist); how to bury your friends and much more, including regular columns Rick's Rants, History in a Nutshell, Dead in the Scene and Old Whinger's Corner. We've finally entered the modern world and you can now download a digital copy of the latest issue too if that floats your boat.

In other news we're adding audio versions of our most popular articles to the site. So if you're blind/partially sighted and have a fetish for piss drinking you've come to the right place.

We've got lots of changes to the site in the pipeline, and will be focusing more on web-based content in the coming weeks and months, so watch this space....

So this is horribly hypocritical, given that we accept Paypal on this site (although hopefully not for much longer), but this story is worthy of attention. Recently members of the Regretsy website raised money to help give 200 families who are struggling financially a boost this Christmas. However, as Paypal took issue with the button that the site used to raise the money (as Paypal exlained "You can use the donate button to raise money for a sick cat, but not poor people") they responded in the most ridiculous way, freezing the personal account of the site owner  April Winchell , and refunding, in $2 increments a large amount of the donations...whilst keeping the fees for their fat greedy selves. And it's not the first time they've behaved like utter utter cocks when faced with the prospect of someone trying to make the world a slightly nicer place.

Something Awful faced similar bullshit when raising money for the Red Cross following Hurricane Katrina, resulting in Paypal insisting the donations were given to a charity of their choice, The United Way of America , a charity they are affiliated with who have been surrounded by claims of fraud and mismanagement.


The internet is full of stories about how Paypal has fucked people over, it's nothing new- this blog post is practically retro - and given the dubious cartel that Ebay and Paypal have and the general dominance they have over the marketplace, they ain't going anywhere. We use them, it's dirty and seedy and we'll try and look elsewhere but we have a shitty excuse for a magazine to run and at the moment, it's the only option we've got on this site. You probably use them - chances are reading this you might want to close your account, and you should,  but if you want to sell on Ebay anytime soon, you'll have to rethink that one. Ain't no use pretending. BUT - what would be fucking great is if people kick up enough of a stink so that this Christmas, the money that was raised for 200 kids who are facing a shitty time like so many others are right now, went where it was meant to go, fees and all.

Read the original story here and here's a lovely long list of Paypal email adresses and phone numbers courtesy of The Consumerist , should you wish to drop them a line.

UPDATE...
Well, obviously as soon as we get around to posting something topical it becomes old news, and Paypal have issued some sort of feeble apology and promised to make a donation to the cause. Whoopy doo da - it's worth remembering that the outcome has been positive (ish) in this case because they fucked with a media savvy woman with a massive online following... not because the idea of sad poor children at Christmas melted their icy dead hearts. In conclusion, Paypal are still cunts.