Journalists at the YP, YEP and Leeds Weekly News are balloting for strike action

about people who make a living churning out nasty, small-minded right wing propaganda and whose papers have actively opposed every significant trade union struggle of the past thirty years. You sold your souls, so live with it.

"maintain the quality of our campaigning papers"

That is a really sick claim. They're crap, advertising-funded instruments of social control. The most interesting thing about them is they burn quite nicely.

OK listen up fuckwits, a a crash course in class politics:

If workers go on strike then you should support them, end of story. It doesn't require you to agree with the products of the companies they work for.

As for the journalists not supporting other's in strike, thats shit but no reason not to support them. If they can win and especially if thats helped by the mutual aid and solidarity of other workers then they're going to be in a better position to dictate terms in the workplace and perhaps affect the editorial attitude towards workers' struggles in the future.

as a mate of mine once said: "We have to stand together, cos there's fuck all else"

i) sit on Indymedia and write comments about workers so they fuck off and continue to ignore you
or
ii) get out and demostrate your solidarity with workers in struggle.

I know which one I'd be doing .

Re. option 2 above:

Last time the workers at YP/YEP called a half-day strike, they sent out calls for solidarity on several email lists for Leeds-based left/radical groups. Me and a few others went down to show our support at the advertised picket. There was no picket, it turned out that they'd canceled it and forgotten to tell anyone. Good communication, workers! Ask for solidarity when you want it, then leave your comrades standing in the rain because you can't be bothered to send out another email.

So, option 3: get over your 19th century notions of class, stop fetishising industrial production, stop consuming shite, develop and implement a critique of social relations based on community self-reliance and rejection of the enclosure of knowledge as practiced in the corporate media.

I know which I'll be doing.

Some of these arguments seem reminiscent of other class struggles some "anarchists" have been reluctant to support because of the product the workers produce or lifestyle they lead. For example the Wapping strike where some refused to support the workers against Murdoch and the miners strike where some elements of the anarchist scene complained that the miners ate meat etc.

See PostScript: Anarcho-punk, the ALF and the miners’ strike - a cautionary tale from the 1980s:
 http://www.geocities.com/antagonism1/beasts/beast4.html

Also see:
 http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/awg/awg_thatcher1.html

Happy Snapper, it may be annoying to turn up at a picket only to find that it’s been called off, but it’s not something unique to the YP dispute is it? I’ve lost count of the amount of times i’ve turned up at anarcho events only to find its been cancelled, no one was around to open up the social centre or whatever.

And Who is ‘fetishising industrial production, stop consuming shite’???

While certain journalists at the YEP continue to churn out racist rubbish re. the Roma community etc. there are a small number of really decent reporters on the paper who have supported and helped out campaign groups in Leeds for years, Peter Lazenby springs to mind as a journalist who has his integrity intact. I think the basic demands for decent wages etc. are perfectly reasonable. Where is all that anger coming from Happy Snapper, anon etc? You need a bit of perspective, It's a YEP strike against job loses not a BNP rally through the streets of Leeds!