Letter to all those going on the TJM Lobby of Parliament
people are dying | 18.06.2002 11:58
Okay so you know that 34,000 under-5s die every day from poverty. You know that for every £1 in aid which arrives in the so-called “developing world”, £13 flow out in debt repayments. You know that 800 million people are starving and 1.2 billion don’t have access to clean water. And if you’re here, it means you want to do something about it.
But has lobbying Parliament ever changed anything? Quite simply: no.
But has lobbying Parliament ever changed anything? Quite simply: no.
If you look at every movement in history which has achieved radical social change, it wasn’t by signing petitions, talking to politicians, begging our rulers to “be nice”, it was by the mass action people taking power of their own lives into their own hands. Good examples are the Suffragettes who rioted, blockaded, smashed and burned their way to getting votes for women; blacks in South Africa who forced the abolition of apartheid by threatening to destroy the State itself; blacks in the US who stopped segregation by shutting down shops, attacking white supremacists and organising self-defence against racist police.
But what about here, now?
Government represents the interests of the rich and powerful. This is why it deploys its violent forces against people who challenge them, such as the miners in the 80s or the Liverpool dockers in the 90s and against anti-G8, -WTO and -EU demonstrators today. It is very happy to sit back and ignore a few thousand people waving placards and marching from A to B. But it will notice those thousands of people reclaiming democracy in the name of the oppressed and blockading ports, shutting down summits, going on strike: disrupting the capitalist profit-machine. In short, by taking Direct Action.
A direct action is the most empowering event imaginable, a rite of passage that fills the participant with pride. There is the special satisfaction of a David defying Goliath, doing the right thing, acting out what Bill Devall calls the "will of the planet." We learn to work in concert with others with life-affirming values. Demonstrations "demonstrate" to the culprits, and to the world, that when all our letters are ignored, our arguments mitigated, and our legal appeals denied, we still refuse to accept the accelerating destruction. We put our bodies and our time where our mouths are: on the front lines! We demonstrate our fear, our hurt, our suffering and our rage against the despoilers.
So please don’t leave Parliament Square feeling powerless: we do have power. We can win and we will win, but we must do it for ourselves, not expecting those in power to do it for us.
But what about here, now?
Government represents the interests of the rich and powerful. This is why it deploys its violent forces against people who challenge them, such as the miners in the 80s or the Liverpool dockers in the 90s and against anti-G8, -WTO and -EU demonstrators today. It is very happy to sit back and ignore a few thousand people waving placards and marching from A to B. But it will notice those thousands of people reclaiming democracy in the name of the oppressed and blockading ports, shutting down summits, going on strike: disrupting the capitalist profit-machine. In short, by taking Direct Action.
A direct action is the most empowering event imaginable, a rite of passage that fills the participant with pride. There is the special satisfaction of a David defying Goliath, doing the right thing, acting out what Bill Devall calls the "will of the planet." We learn to work in concert with others with life-affirming values. Demonstrations "demonstrate" to the culprits, and to the world, that when all our letters are ignored, our arguments mitigated, and our legal appeals denied, we still refuse to accept the accelerating destruction. We put our bodies and our time where our mouths are: on the front lines! We demonstrate our fear, our hurt, our suffering and our rage against the despoilers.
So please don’t leave Parliament Square feeling powerless: we do have power. We can win and we will win, but we must do it for ourselves, not expecting those in power to do it for us.
people are dying
e-mail:
info@anarchistyouth.net
Homepage:
http://www.anarchistyouth.net
Comments
Hide the following 9 comments
yeh
18.06.2002 13:29
BTW, congrats to all anti-big brother activists on the Blunkett back-down..
fati
action vs lobby - er don't we need both?
19.06.2002 10:30
did this change anything - YES.
maybe they should have got in touch with the anarchist youth and other groups and done direct action on the streets
...but that's useless unless you have people also telling the politicians the score
you mentioned the suffragetes - sure they were full on at times, but this was backed up by people telling the politicians how they should change things.
unless you're gonna replace the whole government system like next week, then you need people to do both kinds of tactics.
and that's why I'm off out in a bit to support people on the streets outside parliament today.
hope to see you there!
all together now
lobbying for direct action?
19.06.2002 14:09
And while it's true that lobbying for reforms has often been given 'muscle' by parallel direct action, it's clear that the reverse is seldom the case. An understanding of direct action as self-organisation and unmediated social change is hardly advanced by 'asking our leaders' to 'take action'on our behalf.
Some good can come from some reformist lobbying of course but for a 'movement' that has had some success in putting an anti-systemic - that is pointing to the market/state itself as the problem not just it's malfunctioning - theory and practise forward, a 'trade justice' coalition is part of the problem and can only really be useful for the elites to perpetuate the illusion of a good capitalism and to marginalise a truly anti-capitalist approach...
anon
re: Blunkett backdown
19.06.2002 16:13
s
That commnet is correct
19.06.2002 17:35
steelgate
Re drop the debt
19.06.2002 23:04
Answer: Yes
(Even if you don't believe that system itself is valid)
It's a no brainer. Simple.
The issue is now accepted by the majority of people in this country.
The uk gov has tried hard with its pr depts to show that it takes debt relief / cancellation seriously.
And still nothing gets done by 'our political leaders' because they are all so tightly entwined with the economic system.
Even the UN 2 days ago came out and said that globalisation and our current systems just make the poor poorer and the rich richer.
Please don't dismiss 12,000 people who can make the effort to travel from all over the country over these issues. At least they're up for protesting and trying to do something they think will change the world for the better of all people.
The way it looks the international political and environmental situation is getting worse, and if anything people should be working together more.
So today there were 12,000 NGO supporters and church groups on the streets getting their message across, actualy quite a small amount of their total supporters in this country. Now add the presence of trade unions, peace campaigners, activists and other campiagners and there's the potential do something amazing in this country.
Smash G8
Diss the Debt
20.06.2002 16:14
I believe the point of the initial open letter was to say that this potential is being WASTED because of the timid tactics adopted by the Trade Justicers, because of their desire to keep the status quo. For example, we have a UK public opinion that supports debt repudiation (which is what the Jubille South organisations want); but Ann Pettifor (ex-leader of J200) supports Gordie Brown's line that we must impose conditions on any cancellation -- i.e. continue with structural adjusment a la IMF.
Epsilon
Fair Trade Vs CAP
22.06.2002 15:58
Those arguing for Fair trade argue that poor countries do nat have equal access to the rich markets of the developed North unless subsidies are cut and the CAP is abolished.
This arguement obviously goes a long way in the UK which has 0.5% of people involved in agricultural production and where agriculture belongs to agri-business. But the main thrust of the argument is to destroy European agriculture for the purpose of destroying all the small and minor holdings for the benefit of the large transnational corporations who are at this present minute buying up whole swathes of Africa in order to then re-import the produce into a future deregulated Europe.
The deregulation of CAP goes hand in hand with the re-regulation for and on behalf of Agri-Business. For Fair Trade to exist community ownership of agriculture has to be pursued based on need not profit.
The arrival of Poland into the EU, a land of 10 million small landholdings, implies that agriculture in Europe has to be closed down and re-located into low cost areas such as Poland or parts of Africa. Hence the demand 'allow more imports' 'abolish CAP' in this present juncture serves only Agri-Business.
In many parts of the third world agri-business has been involved in the dumping of produce to destroy the small local producer, drastically lower the price of land so the transnationals can purchase the land at rock bottom prices.
Christian Aid and Oxfam aren't concerned about the poor farmers of the world but the transnationals and their interests. Its an irony not lost on the situation that the Blair government agreed with the purpose of the demo and a whole host of MP's came out of their million pound offices to get a feel for "Fair Trade"...
vngelis
vngelis
Response to comment about Trade Justice Rally
28.06.2002 18:40
No! they wanted a change in the LAW (which is made by MP's in Parliament) so that women could VOTE!
Get Real. Society cannot function by direct action alone. It is a useful and necessary tool to be used
carefully and sensitively to achieve specific ends.
Taking responsibility and controle of your own life - living fairly independently from "the state" is different from
targeted actions in the streets.
All over the world people are coming together to demand the end to "free" trade and "neoliberal" ideas.
We want a change in direction - new ideas about where the world is or should be going. (what is progress, what is poverty,what is wealth, what is development, what relationship do we have with the natural world, what are our ultimate goals individually and as a society) These changes cannot be made by politicians alone of course - but they do play a significant role in the downfall of the current system.
What is wrong with shouting directly at the people with the most power - not the police or the media but the politicians themselves. That is what 12,000 people were doing at the Trade Justice Lobby on Tuesday!
me