"The mayor-elect is greatly looking forward to this event and thinks it sends exactly the right message about New York's role as the business capital of the world," said Bloomberg spokesman Ed Skyler. City and World Economic Forum officials also note that one factor working in their favor is the diminished furor, particularly after Sept. 11, of the American anti-globalization movement, which was never as aggressive as its European counterpart."
Website (for this week): http://www.abolishthebank.org/wef2002.html
Official websites (will be active by the end of this week): Another World is Possible Coalition http://www.anotherworldispossible.com/
Anti-Capitalist Covergence-New York City http://www.accnyc.org/
Updated: January 2, 2002
CALL FOR AN ANTI-CAPITALIST CONVERGENCE AGAINST THE WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM IN NEW YORK CITY (JANUARY 31- FEBRUARY 4)
JOIN US AS NEW YORKERS STRIKE BACK AGAINST CORPORATE TERROR
For years now, the CEOs of major corporations, hundreds of top international government officials and just plain rich people - from Bill Gates to Bill Clinton - have been meeting every year in Davos, Switzerland. This is where the real rulers of the world give the politicians their marching orders. This is where the schemes that lead to atrocities like GATT and the WTO are actually hatched. And this year, the dining club for the world ruling class will be held at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Midtown Manhattan.
The WEF is moving here because they were effectively chased out of Switzerland by a concerted campaign of direct action. They think that here in New York we're shell-shocked, punch-drunk, and maybe we are but - whaddya fuckin' kiddin' me?
This is a provocation. While thousands of New Yorkers are still burying their dead, trying to patch together shattered lives, and desperately trying to see how they can continue to pay insanely high New York City rents after being laid off from their jobs, the richest and most powerful men on earth have decided to come and party on the wreckage - to celebrate, no doubt, the billions of dollars of taxpayer money they've just been handed by their respective governments and explore new opportunities to profiteer from permanent global warfare. Do they think we have no pride? No self-respect? That we're just going to sit back and let this happen?
As our heroic firefighters have shown us, the moratorium on direct action in New York is over.
We are calling for for a joyous, creative resistance to the WEF's stifling grey culture of corporate conformity; actions whose diversity of tactics will reflect the rich diversity of our city's communities. We are calling for actions based on principles of non-hierarchy, passionate opposition to patriarchy, white supremacy, and rule-by-elite, and the vision of a world in which no one has to live in fear or daily terror. We are calling for a world in which states and their wars, the economic violence and insecurity promulgated by their corporate overlords, the hideous legacy of 500 years of colonialism and racism, and the violence and intolerance of every kind of crusader and religious fanatic will finally be banished from this earth.
It's not a pipe dream. Nothing is impossible if we refuse to live in fear.
WOULD YOU CARE TO JOIN US IN A SOCIAL REVOLUTION?
RSVP
Waldorf Astoria Hotel
New York City
January 31-February 4
ENDORSERS
Society for Creative Anarchism (Williamsburg, Virginia) Zek Liberation Collective (Washington, District of Columbia) Infoshop.org (Cyberspace) flag.blackened.net (Cyberspace) Arthur J. Miller (Bayou La Rose) Tension Collective (New Orleans, Louisiana) Words Are Not Enough (Washington, District of Columbia) R Stockwell, IWW, IU 610 White Pines Affinity Group (Albany, New York) Instant Antiwar Action Group (Vermont / iaag at mail2usa.com) Aron Pieman Kay - Global Pastry Uprising (Rainbow Affinity Group) CrimethInc. Special Forces NOLA Anarchy (New Orleans, Louisiana) Kevin Keating, Mission Yuppie Eradication Project (San Francisco, California) Tute Nere Collective (Washington, District of Columbia) we do not exist (n'existons pas) Starhawk Northwest Anarchist Prisoner Support Network Free and Critter Legal Defense Committee Cascadia Media Collective le Sous-sol Collective (Eugene, Oregon) Student Peace Action Network (SPAN) Red And Black Flag Collective (Montreal) Black Touta (Toronto, Ontario) Anti-Capitalist Convergence Philippines Chicago Direct Action Network Chicago Anti-Capitalist Convergence Blue Ridge Earth First! Urban Guerrilla Division, Earth Liberation Front Malachy Kilbride Colorado Anarchist Network (CAN-Denver, Ft Collins, Boulder- wide) Redneck Liberation Army (Richmond, Virginia) NYC Direct Action Network Killing King Abacus (Santa Cruz, California) Chumbawamba Paul Krassner (the Realist) Doug Henwood (Left Business Observer) Stanley Aronowitz (CUNY) The transnational corporations observatory (France) Class War Baltimore North American Earth Liberation Prisoners Support Network (Eugene, Oregon) Mark Taylor, Educators for Mumia Abu-Jamal, Professor of Religion and Culture, Princeton Theological Seminary Roots Media collective (NY) Midnight Notes Collective, publishers of Midnight Notes Connecticut Global Action Network (CGAN) People's Law Collective (NYC) Desiderata Collective (New Brunswick, New Jersey) Steve Ongerth la CLAC - Convergence des luttes anti-capitalistes (Montreal, Canada) Wu Ming (Italy) The Thomas Paine Park Group (NYC) CRAFT - Chicago Revolutionary Artists for Fair Trade Daybreak Anarchist Collective (Minneapolis, Minnesota) Food not Bombs (Middletown, Connecticut) Left Turn SF Independent Media Center (San Francisco, California)
To endorse, send the name of your group or your name to: info at abolishthebank.org
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