-------- Original Message -------- Subject: A16 'Revolutionary Anti-Capitalist Bloc' Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2000 17:54:50 EST From: Mark Laskey <kronstadt at juno.com> Reply-To: aac at lists.tao.ca To: a-infos-en at lists.tao.ca, aac at lists.tao.ca, nefac at lists.tao.ca
REVOLUTIONARY ANTI-CAPITALIST BLOC Washington DC, April 9-16
Due to differences in politics, tactics, and organizing principles with the current direct action networks that are springing up throughout the world, we are calling for an organized bloc of all stripes of anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist, revolutionaries at the upcoming demonstrations against the IMF/World Bank. We are not, however, calling for a strictly anarchist black bloc. We want to open the call to those "outside of anarchism", comrades who struggle for much the same truly revolutionary anti-capitalist goals that we do: the abolition of capitalism, the state, and all forms of hierarchy and oppression. Our intent is not to be divisive of the larger protest but to more effectively support it by organizing autonomously. We feel that it is necessary to organize separately as autonomists, anarchists, anti-state libertarian marxists, wobblies, council communists, etc., for a number of reasons:
The reformist message of ‘fair trade, not free trade’, and all of the talk about ‘pruning’ and ‘fixing’ that was in the streets in Seattle and has subsequently been pushed in the organizing of the A16 demo as well as within the larger anti-globalization movement is unacceptable. While we realize the need to combat the issues that effect our daily lives and those of our comrades the world over, this must be done within a larger anti-capitalist, revolutionary critique that doesn’t stop with single-issue struggles.
National protectionism and calls for national sovereignty, which pit the international working class against itself, cannot be tolerated. One nation-state is just as bad as any other nation-state, and so we have to agitate for the abolition of all of them. We are internationalists and therefore, regardless of political borders, see the need to globalize resistance to all of capitalism.
We cannot accept the active participation of cops and/or peacekeepers in this or any other movement, protest, or demonstration. Those whose job it is to protect the ruling class’ interests cannot be trusted to simultaneously support us. While our main goal is to shut down the IMF/World Bank meeting, it is quite predictable that the cops will aggressively attack those actions, immediately drawing lines between the protesters on one hand, and the cops, ‘police liaisons’, and ‘peacekeepers’ on the other. We do not support collaboration with the enemy at large and they should not be invited nor supported at this demonstration. These and other authoritarian turns that the organizers have taken are extremely dismaying to us and begin to show hastily covered fractures among those of us working to make this demonstration happen.
We can not work with people who dictate what tactics are and are not appropriate. No one should be pretending to own this movement or this demo. Unfortunately, to disallow participation because of opposition to tactics and actions that aren’t solely symbolic betrays a reformist agenda from the get-go. We are not advocating for any particular tactic; we are simply defending the individual’s right to act autonomously however they see fit against our real enemies. If aggressive self-defense or property destruction is unacceptable to some then they shouldn’t engage in it.
This is a call for more active participation of anarchist and other like-minded revolutionaries in the entire anti-globalization movement to counter reformist perspectives and goals with revolutionary, anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian actions and ideas. At A16 we envision an active and creative contingent of revolutionaries marching under black, red & black, and green & black flags, anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian banners, and a hail of revolutionary drumbeats. We are mobilizing marching bands, radical cheerleaders, and planning a whole assortment of highly organized creative mayhem! To all of our comrades who support this call, we encourage you to get in touch, endorse it, and take to the streets with your anti-capitalist imaginations and desires!
Do not let the blows against this capitalist system cease! From the streets of Seattle, to Washington, DC, may our resistance be as transnational as capital!
¡SOLIDARITY AND REVOLUTION!
Signed, Nosotros Group (Baltimore, MD), Group Anarchiste Emile-Henry (Quebec), Active Transformation (Detroit-East Lansing, MI), Global Action (Eugene, OR), Mutual Aid Legal Defense (Seattle, WA), We Dare Be Free (Boston, MA), Sabate (Boston, MA), Lancaster ABC-SG (Lancaster, PA), Flint Jones - Northeast Regional Delegate of the Workers Solidarity Alliance (WSA-IWA), Morgantown Anarchist Group (Morgantown, WV), Prole Revolt (Morgantown, WV), Mid-Atlantic Infoshop (Washington, DC)
For general information about the protest see www.A16.org To get involved with the revolutionary bloc contact:
Nosotros Group PO Box 65341 Baltimore, MD 21209 email: DURRUTI36 at aol.com
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