2009-09-06

September 24: Mass March on the G-20 Summit

This September 24-25 the G-20 will be meeting in Pittsburgh. Finance ministers, central bank governors, presidents and lobbyists from the world’s largest economies will come together to discuss and plan out the international financial system.

Historically, the G-20 and similar institutions have been instruments of economic destruction, helping to promote and construct a world system built on “free” trade agreements such as NAFTA, financial consolidation and corporate control, privatization and deregulation, and the idea that profit and growth are more important than people and ecological sustainability.

On Thursday, September 24, Pittsburghers opposed to the G-20 will hold a mass march in recognition that the summit is much more than a simple meeting.. The summit is a big deal because governments, global financial institutions and corporations are putting out vast sums of money, prestige and media to make it important. This huge media-driven spectacle is intended to lull the public into believing that everything is fine, that the world should continue on the same basic path it’s been on, and that it’s perfectly reasonable for a few people and companies to hold vastly disproportionate power and decision-making rights over everyone else.

This Mass March on the G-20 Summit is intended to be a creation of space in which diverse forms of resistance can occur. This means it is an opportunity to show the synergy and diversity of our struggles, not an attempt to impose one message or theme on everyone. Anyone dissatisfied with the state of our society has a reason to resist the G-20. Far from a liability we see that as a strength of this global movement for justice.

In such an interconnected world, the many problems people have result from the pro-corporate, pro-profit worldview imposed on us by institutions such as the G-20. Rising student tuition and unequal access to education are connected to union-busting and privatization at home, and to the expansion of sweatshops in the global south. The decline in real wages and loss of manufacturing here are tied to "free" trade agreements that force farmers off their land, workers into low paying jobs and students out of school. Police brutality in Pittsburgh and occupation in Iraq are part of the larger militarization of our world.. Environmental justice concerns in rural Pennsylvania and West Virginia, just as with health care reform, can’t be addressed without tackling the problem of corporate influence and the power of money in our political system. It’s clear that the only real change we can believe in requires systemic solutions.

At this march there will be student feeder marches and worker contingents, numerous musical groups, and, of course, efforts to disrupt the summit. The march is unpermitted and intended to allow people the space and freedom to oppose the G-20 how they see fit. The rest is up to you!

At this time in history, with the very architects of the global financial collapse gathering in our city we need events that start from the premise that it is people who matter, not permits. Our decision to not ask for permission from the system we protest has much to do with our belief that our future lies in community-based solutions, in power from below, in putting justice before the law, and in a rejection of the G-20 as a legitimate body for global decision-making. We build, not beg.

On September 24 we invite you to take to the streets with all of your love and your anger, your determination and your defiance, your rejection and your vision.

In solidarity,

Pittsburgh G20 Resistance Project
www.resistg20.org

Pittsburgh Organizing Group
pog@mutualaid.org
www.organizepittsburgh.org

Source: http://www.organizepittsburgh.org/node/409