The overture of the Laeken Summit is the preparation of a European Constitution, the preamble of which will be the Charter of Human Rights. It was precisely the opposition to this Charter and its lowest-common-denominator-of-social-rights approach, which brought thousands of protesters to Nice, France, in December 2000. The leaders of Europe are standing by their Charter, in complete opposition to the aspirations and needs of the majority of society. This is why we are on the march again, to refuse be stripped of our most elementary rights and to regain some of those which were lost along the way.
All of this resistance, all of the demands that the libertarian movement supports and promotes, through direct action and self-management, are part of a long-term fight to radically change society, to share wealth, establish equality and to build a libertarian self-managed democracy.
Since the beginning of the "building of Europe", the politicians of all countries and tendencies, have lied to us about their real plans and the true consequences of their acts and decisions. Europe plans to reinforce itself on a political level, and that's all. Imperialism, whose victims are the majority of planet Earth's population, is one of the sources of modern day barbarity.
The capitalist plans to increase production are driving us straight into a brick wall. We are clearly reaching the ecological limits of our planet: weather changes, global warming, mad cow disease and so on.... The decision-makers of big business and their political partners have joined hands to increase their production and profits. These are the true criminals against nature, who are making our planet impossible to live in.
More freedom for financial transactions, including the whitewashing of money, for capital, for goods irrationally produced further and further away from their consumers, increasing pollution caused by transport, which causes workers to compete against one another. Less and less freedom for people, social groups and the oppressed. Fewer and fewer rights and democratic possibilities for our organisations to organise ourselves and to carry out a social struggle. Immigrants are the most harshly hit by the freedom-killing measures upon which the EU is designing itself.
All over Europe we are experiencing a flood of undocumented "sans papiers," and expulsions, which, at best, return the rejected immigrants to oppression, misery or death. These measures affect all those who live in Europe. Restrictions on public and individual freedom is the norm. Wars are used as a pretext to continually reinforce emergency policies, in order to truly increase the power of capital and of the State over society.
To this respect we demand:
* An ample development of public liberties and elementary rights. In first place the freedom of movement and of residence for all, without taking nationality into account.
* The abolition of all racist and xenophobe European laws.
* International solidarity from all the countries that receive immigrants from European countries.
Europe has tens of millions of ever more controlled, exploited, dominated and precarious workers. Millions of workers are driven to poverty due to meagre salaries. There are millions of unemployed, homeless or in shantytowns, ill people without medical attention or proper schooling.
Prosperity is protected for a tiny fraction of the population, the industrial or financial capitalists and their nearby political bodyguards, technocrats and other experts, together with stock investors, those who create stock market layoffs, relocate companies and stuff themselves with subsidies and of fiscal grants.
For our part, we adamantly reject the capitalist accumulation of wealth in the hands of a small minority.
* We fight, in line with other fights, to impose a real redistribution of wealth and advance towards achieving the principle of "to each according to his/her needs, from each according to his/her means".
* This redistribution is meant to end up in the self-management of all means of production and exchange.
* Starting now, we will continually fight to establish a counterpower and an alternative capacity against Capital and State mechanisms. We follow the fight to extend and spread the rights of workers and the repressed to expropriate the bosses and shareholders, destroying their control over society.
The different countries of the European Union are in their majority NATO-supporters, the organisation that is behind the biggest number of wars in the world. These countries have actively participated in the wars in Iraq, in ex-Yugoslavia, and now in Afghanistan. Europe sells her weapons to and trains the soldiers and policemen of the world's worst dictatorships.
To this end we demand the immediate:
* Reconversion of military industries to civil and social uses.
* Dismantling of armies.
* Support for deserters throughout the world, to force the authorities to take specific measures to help freedom struggles around the world, especially, at this moment in time, especially those undertaken by revolutionary and democratic women in Afghanistan.
Its security is for speculators, for bosses who sack workers and for corrupt politicians. But Europe is above all ecological and alimentary insecurity: oil-spills, industrial catastrophes, mad cows, hoof and mouth disease, and GMO's (Genetically Modified Organisms)
Europe equals police insecurity. The cops have all the rights, they carry out more and more identity checks and other types of oppression, without depriving themselves to controls "just-because-they-want-to", with the support of racist laws. Europe equals police shooting real bullets and the assassinations of protestors in Gotenbörg and Genoa.
Finally, Europe is social insecurity, institutionalising unemployment and precarious employment as a norm, using misery and fear to break any vague desires for struggle or fight.
To get rid of this daily insecurity, we must:
* Make a radical break from capitalist productivism.
* Impose a right for all producers, users, and consumers to control their products and their social usefulness.
* Build within and for our struggles a fight for an equality that is not just a political catch-phrase, but rather an economical and social reality.
The Europe of bureaucrats finds no objections to the presence of governments including Fascist ministers in Austria and Italy. This Europe does not take into account the referendums held in Denmark, and more recently in Ireland, against building a Europe designed to favour the bosses. This Europe either ignores these referendums or repeats them until the result suits the interests of the technocrats. Europe is undemocratic, in fact it is nothing more than a gang of technocrats dedicated to the exclusive use and abuse of bourgeoisie and multinational companies.
Western societies, in Europe especially, cannot eternally avoid their irresponsibility with respect to the policies adopted by their respective governments that have given rise to capitalist barbarity. Democracy is the government of the people by the people. The so-called democratic governments are elected on the basis of programmes proposed to their voters, without any sort of controlled mandate. Reality shows that voters do not check or control the policies taken by their governments. In this way in Genoa, the people in charge of the G8 ignored the calls of the 200,000 demonstrators, and decided to resort to force, murdering one of our demonstrators. On the other hand, the European commission voluntarily submits itself to the pressures of the multinational lobbies located in a nearby building. Put another way, 200,000 protestors are not "heard," while the politicians and bureaucrats carefully listen to capitalist lobbies. Where is the democracy here?
We reject this concept of a democracy market, which is empty and cut off from the people. We want:
* Direct democracy and self-management.
* An open and sincere debate on all that affects our lives.
* A truly federalist organisation based on direct action, equalitarian in both access to and use of power, anti-hierarchical and anti-bureaucratic.
European policies free the rules of workplace conditions as far as they can. This causes an increase of precariety and misery, the disappearance of social support, and the privatisation of anything profitable: health, education, transport, etc. This privatisation of public enterprises looks at poverty with a new eye. The management of misery opens the door to prison systems. Social apartheid is the crowning point of capitalism's evolution. One of the goals of European policies (a goal that is not exclusively European, but shared by the leading nations) is to control the poor wherever they live. That is the reason behind the will to transform Europe into a true fortress. Likewise, this is the cause of its ever-increasingly-coercive immigration policies. But the goal is not that of expulsing all illegal immigrants from Europe. This is impossible due to three reasons:
* A lack of means: how many aeroplanes or boats are needed to expel the illegal immigrants?
* A political problem: if the State wants to expel all the illegal immigrants, it must organise raids on illegal immigrants on a large scale. The European States cannot risk the enormous protests that this action would cause.
* Problems of the economy: illegal workers are a workforce that can be easily controlled and which, against their will, can put pressure on fellow precarious workers.
The goal is have at hand a workforce that will accept the most precarious working conditions together with the worst salaries and conditions. Major sections of the economy would not be profitable without the exploitation of these people: construction site workers, cooks and waiters, seamstresses, farmers, etc.
The poor are confined to ghettos on city outskirts. The misery in these neighbourhoods is getting worse. At the same time, it is becoming harder and harder for people subjected to poverty to live where they wish. Far too often, when a victim of poverty wants to live in a different region, he or she is told to go back to where they came from.
This management of misery demands an ever-increasing police presence. Governments, both right and left, are aware that it is impossible to use the police to oversee large populations. Instead, they would like to convert every citizen into a plainclothes policeman, who will oversee and denounce any behaviour that is unusual or uncivil. In this way, the speech on zero tolerance meats its fill.
The building of Europe, as seen from a capitalist viewpoint, implies a breaking up of the State with respect its economy and social activities. At the same time, authoritarian and security measures are increased. In this context, the attacks of 11 September are blessed bread for the political decision-makers: using the excuse of an anti-terrorist fight, of a complete legal arsenal that can be used against ghetto inhabitants and the friends and comrades who campaign against globalisation and capitalism.
Social resistance, from Brussels to Seville!
We will go to Brussels to show our rejection of the capitalist Europe that the EU leaders are imposing on us. Brussels will retake the torch from Nice and Göteborg. Our fight for social justice, for a libertarian world based on justice and solidarity will not stop with Brussels. In June 2002 the summit marking the end of the Spanish presidency of the EU will take place in Seville.
A major March of social resistance will, from city to city, spread the fire of our anger, the cry of our needs and desire for another world from Brussels to Seville.
* Marching is advancing, creating a new world with each step. Marching is building an alternative together with others.
* Marching is drawing attention towards our collective fights, on all our paths. This is why our acts and demonstrations will go from Brussels to Seville, in a chain of social fights between these cities.
Al Badil Al Chooui Al Taharouri (Lebanon), Alternative libertaire (France), Apoyo Mutuo (Spain), Confederation General del Trabajo (Spain), Consejo Indigena Popular de Oaxaca "Ricardo Flores Magon" (Mexico), Fédération anarchiste (France and Belgium), Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici (Italy), Funktionshindrades BefrielseFront/Funktionshindrades Motståndsrörelse (Sweden), No Pasaran (France), Organisation socialiste libertaire (Switzerland), RYTER anarchist newsagency (Sweden), Workers Solidarity Movement (Ireland)
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