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General Strike! Historic Transeurope Solidarity Against Austerity

Posted 12 years ago on Nov. 14, 2012, 4:22 a.m. EST by OccupyWallSt
Tags: solidarity, europe, austerity, general strike

Peoples of Europe Rise Up!

via http://europeanstrike.org [with minor edits -- see below an extensive list of General Strike actions]:

Update

See #14N: millions join largest European strike ever on ROAR magazine for reportback!

European Strike: people of Europe, rise up!

On November the 14th, Portugal, Spain and other peoples will engage global strike to say "NO" to austerity measures. Everywhere in Europe, activist social movements are organising themselves to say "STOP" to austerity, "STOP" to those ultraliberal politics serving finance. Portugal and Spain will be on global strike the 14th November, many countries prepare to join them to maximize rejection to austerity mesures. ETUC, responding to popular pressure, decided to call for strike demonstrations and meeting for November the 14th.

People have to rise up against the austerity politics, organized social fractures that are used to pay back some debt that is not theirs… People have to fight politics that protect, encourage a minority part of the class who gets richer and richer with this increasing austerity and these illegitime debt interests. Yes, this debt is illegitime, contracted by the financial world against people’s real interests: jobs, housing, education, heathcare, and a world that can survive the century. This debt is not our own, we owe nothing to them and we’ll pay nothing.

This day of global strike won’t be a one-time action. It must mark the the start of a rapport de force built by people against politicians, banks, the market and industrial trusts. After this day of struggle, it is an absolute necessity to build together a global unlimited strike. People of Europe, rise, up, struggle together for a Social Europe, full of equality where none will be left aside.

poster
NYC Solidarity Action at the United Nations

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Relief Is Not Enough: Nov 14–20th Climate Solidarity Actions

Posted 12 years ago on Nov. 12, 2012, 11:31 a.m. EST by OccupyWallSt
Tags: occupy sandy, n17, occupy the pipeline, tar sands blockade, environment

tar sands blockade

In the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, New Yorkers are showing the best of humanity, self-organizing to provide mutual aid in spite of the establishment's continued failure to turn the lights back on. Free kitchens were distributing hot meals within hours. Thousands of pounds of food, clothing, and other donations have been distributed across Red Hook, Staten Island, the Rockaways, and Coney Island. Cleanup of flood damage has begun, and volunteers continue to go door-to-door in the neglected buildings that still lack heat and electricity. Of course, this encouraging response does not minimize the true scope of tragedy this storm has left behind. We must continue to provide for each other and, as we do, show the world that another way of relating to one another is not only possible, but necessary in the face of economic and ecological catastrophe.

But we must not forget that the twin catastrophes of climate change and capitalism are deeply interconnected. The market sees only resources to be extracted, not a world to be shared or communities to be protected. The 1% continue to push for (and the banks continue to finance) more coal, oil, and natural gas, and they don't care how many mountains they must destroy or communities they must frack to increase their profits. Wall Street-owned politicians from all political parties are complicit, competing only about who will drill more. The result is a warmed planet and warmed oceans where superstorms like Sandy are increasingly common. And when the storms hit, we aren't all impacted equally. In New York and across the globe, poor and marginalized communities, already suffering from austerity and dismantled social services, are always hit the hardest and the last to receive aid from the established channels.

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In response to the failure of the State and capitalism to provide for our needs, relief work like #OccupySandy is a beautiful, necessary, and logical response for social movements who are committed to replacing economic and social injustice with solidarity and people-powered solutions. But the 1% would be glad to have an army of volunteers to replace the safety net they cut and clean-up the mess they created. If we want to protect ourselves from the next storm or BP-style spill, we have to continue building the structures of mutual aid and support that will deal with crisis equitably. But we must also build a mass movement to address the systemic problems that create climate crises. After Sandy, we are not merely rebuilding the status quo; we are building a new world. This is why Occupy Wall Street stands in solidarity with the on-going Tar Sands Blockade and other direct actions to stop the destruction caused by greed and profit. In Texas, activists have held a tree-sit for 50 days and are calling for solidarity actions across the world. Over 20 cities have already answered the call. Occupy Wall Street and Occupy the Pipeline will join with many others to protest dirty power on November 17.

In New York and New Jersey, many of us are busy supporting those who have been left in the dark by Sandy. But we encourage everyone who is able to take action! See below for more information about the Global Campaign Against Fossil Fuels in New York on November 17th and the Tar Sands Blockade day of action on November 19th. To find out how to help the recovery efforts, check out interoccupy.net/occupysandy.

Occupy Sandy members hand out supplies to Federal Emergency Management Agency workers from the back of a u-haul truck
Occupy Sandy volunteers feed hungry FEMA workers

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We Got This (Occupy Sandy)

Posted 12 years ago on Nov. 9, 2012, 7:25 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt
Tags: nyc, occupy sandy

Thousands in New York City remain without clean water, food, heat, or power. Relief efforts by locals offer continuing direct aid to the neighborhoods most affected by Hurricane Sandy.

Please visit: interoccupy.net/occupysandy

Video by:
Alex Mallis | @analectfilms
Eric Phillips-Horst
Nicodemus Nicoludis

Music by:
Loscil

brooklynfilmmakerscollective.com | @brooklynfilmny
analectfilms.com

55 Comments

Occupy Sandy's Wedding Registry Needs Your Support

Posted 12 years ago on Nov. 8, 2012, 8:18 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt
Tags: nyc, occupy sandy

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Finding creative solutions for seemingly insurmountable problems is one of the things that Occupy does best, and Occupy Sandy has already taken that challenge and given it their own stamp. In the quest to obtain needed supplies for the ongoing storm recovery effort, the Occupy Sandy team has found a cool new use for the Amazon Gift Registry. This practical but verging-on-obnoxious tool for direct gifting isn't just for brides coveting $90 sugar bowls. Those eager to donate to the victims of Hurricane Sandy can login and choose sorely needed items and ship them directly to the Occupy Sandy relief outpost at the Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew in Brooklyn. Once they arrive, volunteers will organize daily deliveries to priority response locations like Staten Island and the Rockaways. The team is in the process of updating the registry with what is needed most for those affected areas. Items range greatly in price from packages of diapers to portable gas-powered generators. Local volunteers with more time than money still can, and should, help any way they can through http://interoccupy.net/occupysandy. But for those of us outside of the storm-ravaged locales, a unique opportunity to help our fellow humans is just a click away. (I've got my eye on the 18-Inch Annihilator Utility and Wrecking Bar.)

Please contribute to the Occupy Sandy's relief effort here:
http://www.amazon.com/registry/wedding/32TAA123PJR42

4 Comments

Election Day Report: The People's Emergency

Posted 12 years ago on Nov. 6, 2012, 10:01 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt
Tags: nyc, occupy sandy, tidal

occupy sandy banner

via Tidal (OccupyTheory.org)

Today, we are told, we should go out and participate in the so-called political process: stand up and be counted, let our voices be heard, pick the man who supposedly best represents our interests. That is fine. We are not for or against it. We are agnostic. In truth, we are living and dying in another universe altogether--we are aliens from the future who recognize the perils and the promises of our latest disaster.

Ten days ago, the climate went on strike against Wall Street -- and we all got flooded. The tide surged and the lights went out. Our friends and families, our neighbors and communities, our networks and allies were under water and in the dark. Our lives are at stake. We could not wait for the State. We had to step in.

We declare a state of emergency. This is our emergency. They have tried to claim it--in their own belated, uneven, incompetent manner. For them, the emergency is a temporary problem to be managed and administered in the name of restoring things to normal. But their normal was already a perpetual emergency for us--an emergency of economic inequality, debt-bondage, racial oppression, union-busting, municipal austerity, ecological destruction, police violence, historical amnesia, and more...

We will not allow a return to normal.

The People's Emergency responds to the crisis; we set up distribution centers and energy-generators; we mobilize volunteers; we raise money and attract media; we help folks on the ground when their lives are in danger from hunger, darkness, and exposure to the elements.

But the People's Emergency is not a humanitarian operation. It is not about charity. We are not an army of salvation or an agency of administration. We wear red squares, not red crosses. We are creating autonomous zones for community and solidarity, not camps for managing the lives of powerless victims.

We are autonomous, but this does not mean that we are indifferent or hostile to the State and the vital services it could or should provide. We are simply stepping into the void to do things for ourselves as the clock ticks and the Winter storms approach.

The National Guard has come to sniff around our autonomous zones. The young working-class New Yorkers in uniform--Black, Latino, Irish, Italian, East Asian, South Asian, Arabic, Jewish, Polish, Slavic--see themselves and their communities in the disaster; they see themselves in the People's Emergency, because they come from the same places we do.

At heart they are good people and they want to help, but they are hamstrung by their commanders and their marching orders. They roll up in their armored vehicles, but they don't know how to plug in. They are disarmed. They ask us what to do and where to go, like newcomers used to do back when we had Zuccotti Park. We tell them to get in line at the back of our trucks and help unload the care packages being sent from communities around the city and the region. They offer their cardboard MREs: cold freeze-dried meals cooked up in a military-humanitarian factory months ago and stored for the latest disaster. We politely nod, but we are more concerned with laying out warm aluminum trays of homemade lasagna, arroz y gandules, collard greens, macaroni and cheese, biryani, chicken noodle soup, halal and kosher meats, vegan lentil salad, apple pie...and magical brownies for those who choose to partake after hard days of shoveling debris, pumping out basements, sorting boxes, lugging generators, shuttling volunteers, directing traffic, taking care of the kids and the elders.

The People's Emergency is a real emergency for the 1% because we intend to sustain our intensive care units beyond the immediate crisis of food and blankets and electricity. We assume the State and the companies will eventually come to restore power, haul out the rubble, put people in trailers, and so on--not because of any deep love of humanity, but because of the shitshow they will have on their hands if they continue to neglect the hardest-hit communities. Among other things, the State will offer emergency loans, backed up by corporate debt-collectors. Real-estate developers and disaster capitalists of all sorts will be swooping in too. We will be prepared.

The People's Emergency is doing something different than the disaster-management of the state and the traditional relief organizations. Even as we respond to the short-term crisis, we are building power from below and establishing networks of intensive care and mutual aid for the long-term. In the coming months, we will see the People's Bailout to abolish predatory debts; we will see the establishment of debt-clinics throughout the city; we will mobilize for an Eviction-Defense of the Earth of November 17th; we will see the Black Friday strike by workers and communities against Wal-Mart; we will see a People's Reconstruction from Red Hook to Staten Island to Rockaways and beyond. In each case, we will practice direct action in the deepest sense of the word: everyday folks taking matters into their own hands, outpacing and outsmarting the corporate and governmental agencies tasked with managing and containing the potentially revolutionary life-energies of the People.

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