2007-04-18
- Call for Action!
- Gleneagle students compete to speak to G8
- Final declaration of the action conference Rostock III from April 13-15, 2007
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Call for Action!
In early June of 2007 (06-08.06 to be precise), the leaders of the G8 nations will meet in Heiligendamm, Germany. Behind an 12 kilometer long fence and protected by thousands upon thousands of soldiers and police officers, they will intend to provide an image of transparency and accountability to the current social, political, and economic world model.
The farce inside the summit will prompt an equally sad farce on the outside. A veritable sea of NGOs, trade unions, parties, personalities, and reformist organizations will gather outside and decry the lack of transparency. They will talk about debt relief for the third world, about building a European social alternative to the "bad" neo-liberal vision of capitalism. But above all, they will demand a "seat at the table," in order to better manage misery and exploitation. In short, to build "capitalism with a smiling face."
Yet we, anti-statists and revolutionaries of all stripes, will be converging in Northern Germany for a different reason...
We are not interested in a place at the table of capitalism, or in providing a human face for what we know to be an inherently flawed system. We know that there can be no "better life" in a nightmarish reality. Our vision is different. It is one of a society based on mutual aid and solidarity, where people are not robbed of the fruits of their labor, and where decisions that affect the whole of society are made by the whole of society, rather than by a select few. We are interested in nothing less than the destruction of the "table of capitalism".
Global events such as the G8 summit, while purely symbolic in their nature, are our chance to show that we will not sit idly by as capitalism wages a constant war on all of us. The insurrectional moments that marked the mobilizations in Amsterdam, Prague, Seattle, Napoli, Quebec City, Genoa, or Thessaloniki are only icons of the constant clashes that constitute the global social and class war. When the suburbs of the French metropoles burn, when around the world entire neighborhoods become ungovernable, is when the contradictions of this system expose themselves in the form of social ruptures. It is the role of leftists and anti-authoritarians to intervene in these scenarios, attempting to give them a progressive and revolutionary character. Day in and day out, this struggle is given concrete shape, be it in the form of demonstrations, militant actions, or other forms of expression.
In North America with the burnt properties of those who seek to destroy the earth for their own benefit; in workers and students uprisings in Santiago, Buenos Aires, and La Paz; or in Northern Europe where youths revolt in the streets of Copenhagen to preserve their right to envision a different existence.
It is the same war waged inside and outside of the prisons, against the extermination programs for political prisoners (the white cells of Turkey, the FIES regime in the Spanish State) and for the liberation of RAF and Action Directe prisoners; of hunger striking imprisoned anarchists comrades in Greece; of Indigenous and Black liberation prisoners in the USA; of all imprisoned anarchists and revolutionaries...It is the war that rages in the modern metropoles from Paris to Athens, between those excluded and those incorporated, between youth and police. It is not always fought as we envisioned it, but it is nonetheless the sign of the coming social rupture. The job of the revolutionary left is to always expose and widen the rupture!
The G8 summit is indeed only a symbol, a personified image for the abstract social and economic model. In short, it is a theatrical message. Yet a message is precisely what we plan to give them! We come from different political and social backgrounds, with different experiences and perspectives as well as tactical outlooks. Yet this summit is a chance to band together with comrades from far away, build contacts and networks, and in the process, make good use of another opportunity to show the G8 leaders and the world the force of class anger. We are truly the ungovernable force, and no fence can stop us!
No Other World is Possible with Capitalism!
Make Capitalism History!
Block the G8 Summit, By Any Means Necessary!
[http://fight-g8.de.vu]
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Gleneagle students compete to speak to G8
Eight students at Coquitlam's Gleneagle secondary school are competing for a chance to represent Canada and tell world leaders their ideas for dealing with important global issues.
They are vying for a chance to attend the Junior 8 (J8) Summit, a youth version of the G8 Summit, an annual event in which the leaders of eight industrialized countries meet to discuss major international issues.
If they are chosen for J8, Gleneagle's team will have its ideas heard and will be able to discuss them directly with all the G8 leaders in Germany.
"Youth have a lot more resources these days. People are willing to listen to someone young," said Junior 8 team member Anjali Appadurai. "The path is clear for us to do whatever we want with these issues."
To enter the competition, the team had to submit a proposal with their ideas for solutions to four major global issues: climate change, HIV/AIDS, economic development in Africa, and corporate social responsibility and intellectual property rights.
They also had to answer five other questions about themselves, including their interests and other events and fundraisers they have organized.
Arsalan Hassan, a Junior 8 team member, said he is aware of the importance of the experience.
"We're youth, we have to take advantage of this," he said. "It's our responsibility to raise awareness."
"We feel responsible to spread awareness so people know about it and can do something about it if they choose to," Appadurai said.
"With the knowledge comes the passion."
The winners will be announced at the end of April and Jean Fraser, a Gleneagle vice-principal, said she is optimistic.
"I'm very hopeful they'll be chosen to represent Canada and I think we have a very good chance because the kids are so passionate," Fraser said. "The youth voice is incredibly important and this would be an amazing opportunity for them to share their perspectives."
Team member Chad Harris said it's rewarding to help the community and inform people about the issues.
"It's important to raise awareness in youth in general, because youth are the future of our world," Harris said.
Gleneagle's Junior 8 team is made up of Grade 12 students Chad Harris, Arsalan Hassan, Melody Tabatabaian, Sarah St. John and Robin Nuber, and Grade 11 students Victoria Chen, Anjali Appadurai and Kyra Jones.
newsroom@tricitynews.com Another 50 days to the summit - we stand by it: The G8 are not welcome, not at Heiligendamm and nowhere else!
[http://www.tricitynews.com/portals-code/list.cgi?paper=74&cat=43&id=963386&more=]
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Final declaration of the action conference Rostock III from April 13-15, 2007
In just 50 days, the political leaders of the 7 most powerful states of the world and Russia will meet in the Baltic sea resort of Heiligendamm. As has been the custom since Seattle, they will have to carry out their business behind kilometre- long secluding fences and protected by thousands of so-called security agents. The 400 participants of the 3rd action conference of the social movements reassert that we deny any legitimacy to the G8. The trench marked by barbed-wide between us and them can no longer be crossed.
The G8 know that fewer and fewer people believe them: Therefore, they aptly seize on what they can no longer deny anyway: the threatening climate catastrophe, the impoverishment of Africa, world-wide wars, the violent devastation of the social sector.
We know by now the empty phrases by which the G8 will present themselves as saviours of the world. The draft of the concluding document has transpired. The draft summit declaration of Heiligendamm 2007 "Growth and responsibility in the world economy" is full of meaningless summit rhetoric, general phrases and ignorance face to the problems and their roots that have occupied us this week-end.
We don't ask the G8 for anything. We come together in order to agree on the other world for which we shall demonstrate at Heiligendamm. For which we stand in with our civil disobedience.
This other world, that much we know already, will be a world without G8, will be the world after the G8. While we by our presence, not to be overlooked and not to be overheard, at the other side of the fence demonstrate that their time is running out, we shall open our dialogue, our dialogues. Dialogues between the various forces of global civil society and the social movements in this country and countless other countries. We shall not reach unity on all questions, it is not even necessary that we do so. Because while their time is running out, ours is just beginning. Our dialogues serve to agree on the next steps, our next steps, the upcoming steps of a future democracy. A democracy to which we offer a first opportunity to emerge at Heiligendamm. And while the G8 seclude from the world, even shut themselves off from it, we open ourselves to it. Therefore, this declaration is a good-bye and an invitation. Bye-bye to the G8: "Go away! You are not welcome!" An invitation to all who say: "Ya basta! It's enough! Another world is possible!" A world of social and ecological justice, of equal rights for all, of peace. Heiligendamm will be a beginning. Our beginning.