Mayday 2003 - call from Italy
transmitter | 03.04.2003 16:30 | May Day 2003
To all the women and men of Europe
Working casual, underpaid jobs
To all the media, union, metro activists
To the biking subversives,
To the flexibility contorsionists,
To the insurgent precariat,
To the millions of migrant workers,
To the millions of demonstrators
Across the Earth
Neoliberalism Is Burning
- yesterday it broke unions & made us all temps
- today it kill$ us 4 its war £ogik
Let's drown it
in the Peaceful Ocean
of Mayday Parade 003
MAYDAY 003: the parade of the euro precariat
Blair, Aznar, Berlusconi: what do they share in common? All the three of them are Bush's allies in his war of aggression against Irak and the people living there. A war to achieve control of the world and to kill at birth any chance of a European social project, built from below by the new
transnational movements for global democracy.
The Atlantic triad goes to war with Bush to defend the authoritarian brand of neoliberalism, greatly aided by the pro-corporate media manipulation spreading lies and covering up all of the massacres that are being committed
in Mesopotamia (Mr B provides coverage in Italy, Rupert Murdoch broadcasts military propaganda over the entire world).
Bush and his neoliberal acolytes who are following him headlong in a mad and misfortunate war of "prevention", are the same bastards who want to subdue into perennial servitude the bodies and lives of working people, starting
with women, minorities, the younger and the weaker. Bush and his three allies are the same who want to abolish any surviving labour laws, union rights and social contraints limiting the abuses of global corporations.
The neoliberal Europe of fools has decided to side with ultraconservative and hypermilitaristic America. This kind of Europe is giving the green light to the permanent destruction perpetrated by the WASP patricians that
rule over the world's arms and oil industries.
It is the America colonized by the zillions of Wal-Marts and McDonald's exploiting the widespread social precariat, the casualized workforce composed by millions of blacks, latinos, poor whites, by the hundreds of ethnic groups pushed by need and subjected by necessity. It is the same precariat haunting contemporary European and Asia metropolises, the new proletariat of temporary and underground workers, easily to blackmail and easy to fire, exploitable down to the last drop of blood and instant of time, constantly humiliated by the ignorant and cruel
arrogance of the new masters of the world and their underlings.
Those who are casualized and marginalized in the North of the planet, are also those who are massacred and famished in the South. And the sinister strategists of the war are now experimenting on civilians the new strategy of military "flexibility", they also seek to dominate "flexible" labor all over the world. The euroamerican global elite is no longer able to distinguish betwee private and public, wealth and privilege, labor and servitude, freedom and death. In the North, the elites controlling finance, technology, consumption, media swallow the worktime of human beings; in the South they swallow their lives whole, selling and raping their bodies.
But Europe and Latin America have created a new continent: the Peaceful Ocean of the millions of networked individuals rallying behind a project that is stronger than any high-tech militarism and christian or muslim fundamentalism. It is the idea of a global democracy that will promote and
defend the social rights of all people on earth, where war is banned for ever from human affairs.
We are talking about the global movement of Seattle and Porto Alegre, Genoa and Florence, the same movement that today opposes the invasion of Irak and that is creating a new political subject. A subject potentially able to
rebuild the crumbling Europe of bankers and technocrats, thanks to its tremendous powers of agitation and networked mass participation.
This new social subject is the precariat and its weapons are labor conflict and media activism. The precariat are the millions of women and men working for meager wages, with a somber future ahead of them. They work on Saturdays, and
Sundays as well, they own neither their lives nor their affections, sequestered by employers and multinational chains. And for what? For no housing, no healthcare, no pensions, no access to education, information, communication, for no clean air or livable environment.
The precariat is to postfordism as the proletariat was to fordism: temps and part-timers, casualized/flexible workers are the new social group required and reproduced by the neoliberal post-industrial transformation of the economy. It is the critical mass emerging out of the costant vortex of
capitalist globalization, as factories and neighborhoods are demolished to be replace by offices and malls. It is the service workers toiling in supermarkets and retail chains; it is the knowledge workers working in the information industry.
Our lives have all become literally precarious, as we
are willy-nilly sucked dry by the corporate imperative of flexibility.
MayDay 003 wants to empower the precariat, this new and crucial social subject. That's why we ask you to join us in the eurowide network linking the sisters and comrades of *esa* (euro social activism), ChainWorkers, Strikers, Critical Mass, Equilibrio Precario, Aarrg!, YoMango, CGT
réstauration rapide, McWorkers Resistance, Bulk and numerous other squatted and self-managed centri sociali of Milano, Roma, Bologna, Bergamo, Brescia, Laveno, Abbiategrasso, Novara, Pavia, as well as CUB and other rank-and-file
labor unions, movements of young communists, of young anarchists, of progressive catholics and diehard democrats. Indymedia Italia supports the organization of MayDay, and will set up an Indymedia Center connecting all of the world's maydays in Piazza Castello, the Parade's final destination this year.
Today in Italy we face a historic task. We must absolutely get rid of Mr B's cryptofascist government. The only TV he should be allowed to operate is the one in his prison cell. The labor question is very problematic for Mr B, as is the peace movement. You have to understand this guy says he's above the law, because he has the majority of Italians behind him. Well, certainly the majority of Italians OPPOSE him on aggressive militarism AND on labor flexibility. It is time to let him know it is time to go.
We are sick and tired of not being able to make ends meet and see ourselves constantly evicted, denied credit, maternity, sick leave, paid vacation or social security, because we are not hired long-term with generous salaries
and fringe benefits. We demand an adequate and steady income, and above all we demand leisure for ourselves and our dear ones: extra time to love and feel, struggle and cooperate, leisure to imagine and participate in a world
where life, freedom, diversity and solidarity are not empty words but lived and shared experiences.
MAYDAY 003: THE PRECARIAT FIGHTS BACK
1° maggio, Milano, Porta Ticinese, 3:00pm
°°°°°°
A/Lex, copywriter
CreW
www.chainworkers.org
Strikers vs. Global War!
Working casual, underpaid jobs
To all the media, union, metro activists
To the biking subversives,
To the flexibility contorsionists,
To the insurgent precariat,
To the millions of migrant workers,
To the millions of demonstrators
Across the Earth
Neoliberalism Is Burning
- yesterday it broke unions & made us all temps
- today it kill$ us 4 its war £ogik
Let's drown it
in the Peaceful Ocean
of Mayday Parade 003
MAYDAY 003: the parade of the euro precariat
Blair, Aznar, Berlusconi: what do they share in common? All the three of them are Bush's allies in his war of aggression against Irak and the people living there. A war to achieve control of the world and to kill at birth any chance of a European social project, built from below by the new
transnational movements for global democracy.
The Atlantic triad goes to war with Bush to defend the authoritarian brand of neoliberalism, greatly aided by the pro-corporate media manipulation spreading lies and covering up all of the massacres that are being committed
in Mesopotamia (Mr B provides coverage in Italy, Rupert Murdoch broadcasts military propaganda over the entire world).
Bush and his neoliberal acolytes who are following him headlong in a mad and misfortunate war of "prevention", are the same bastards who want to subdue into perennial servitude the bodies and lives of working people, starting
with women, minorities, the younger and the weaker. Bush and his three allies are the same who want to abolish any surviving labour laws, union rights and social contraints limiting the abuses of global corporations.
The neoliberal Europe of fools has decided to side with ultraconservative and hypermilitaristic America. This kind of Europe is giving the green light to the permanent destruction perpetrated by the WASP patricians that
rule over the world's arms and oil industries.
It is the America colonized by the zillions of Wal-Marts and McDonald's exploiting the widespread social precariat, the casualized workforce composed by millions of blacks, latinos, poor whites, by the hundreds of ethnic groups pushed by need and subjected by necessity. It is the same precariat haunting contemporary European and Asia metropolises, the new proletariat of temporary and underground workers, easily to blackmail and easy to fire, exploitable down to the last drop of blood and instant of time, constantly humiliated by the ignorant and cruel
arrogance of the new masters of the world and their underlings.
Those who are casualized and marginalized in the North of the planet, are also those who are massacred and famished in the South. And the sinister strategists of the war are now experimenting on civilians the new strategy of military "flexibility", they also seek to dominate "flexible" labor all over the world. The euroamerican global elite is no longer able to distinguish betwee private and public, wealth and privilege, labor and servitude, freedom and death. In the North, the elites controlling finance, technology, consumption, media swallow the worktime of human beings; in the South they swallow their lives whole, selling and raping their bodies.
But Europe and Latin America have created a new continent: the Peaceful Ocean of the millions of networked individuals rallying behind a project that is stronger than any high-tech militarism and christian or muslim fundamentalism. It is the idea of a global democracy that will promote and
defend the social rights of all people on earth, where war is banned for ever from human affairs.
We are talking about the global movement of Seattle and Porto Alegre, Genoa and Florence, the same movement that today opposes the invasion of Irak and that is creating a new political subject. A subject potentially able to
rebuild the crumbling Europe of bankers and technocrats, thanks to its tremendous powers of agitation and networked mass participation.
This new social subject is the precariat and its weapons are labor conflict and media activism. The precariat are the millions of women and men working for meager wages, with a somber future ahead of them. They work on Saturdays, and
Sundays as well, they own neither their lives nor their affections, sequestered by employers and multinational chains. And for what? For no housing, no healthcare, no pensions, no access to education, information, communication, for no clean air or livable environment.
The precariat is to postfordism as the proletariat was to fordism: temps and part-timers, casualized/flexible workers are the new social group required and reproduced by the neoliberal post-industrial transformation of the economy. It is the critical mass emerging out of the costant vortex of
capitalist globalization, as factories and neighborhoods are demolished to be replace by offices and malls. It is the service workers toiling in supermarkets and retail chains; it is the knowledge workers working in the information industry.
Our lives have all become literally precarious, as we
are willy-nilly sucked dry by the corporate imperative of flexibility.
MayDay 003 wants to empower the precariat, this new and crucial social subject. That's why we ask you to join us in the eurowide network linking the sisters and comrades of *esa* (euro social activism), ChainWorkers, Strikers, Critical Mass, Equilibrio Precario, Aarrg!, YoMango, CGT
réstauration rapide, McWorkers Resistance, Bulk and numerous other squatted and self-managed centri sociali of Milano, Roma, Bologna, Bergamo, Brescia, Laveno, Abbiategrasso, Novara, Pavia, as well as CUB and other rank-and-file
labor unions, movements of young communists, of young anarchists, of progressive catholics and diehard democrats. Indymedia Italia supports the organization of MayDay, and will set up an Indymedia Center connecting all of the world's maydays in Piazza Castello, the Parade's final destination this year.
Today in Italy we face a historic task. We must absolutely get rid of Mr B's cryptofascist government. The only TV he should be allowed to operate is the one in his prison cell. The labor question is very problematic for Mr B, as is the peace movement. You have to understand this guy says he's above the law, because he has the majority of Italians behind him. Well, certainly the majority of Italians OPPOSE him on aggressive militarism AND on labor flexibility. It is time to let him know it is time to go.
We are sick and tired of not being able to make ends meet and see ourselves constantly evicted, denied credit, maternity, sick leave, paid vacation or social security, because we are not hired long-term with generous salaries
and fringe benefits. We demand an adequate and steady income, and above all we demand leisure for ourselves and our dear ones: extra time to love and feel, struggle and cooperate, leisure to imagine and participate in a world
where life, freedom, diversity and solidarity are not empty words but lived and shared experiences.
MAYDAY 003: THE PRECARIAT FIGHTS BACK
1° maggio, Milano, Porta Ticinese, 3:00pm
°°°°°°
A/Lex, copywriter
CreW
www.chainworkers.org
Strikers vs. Global War!
transmitter