The unit mobilization April 12 against the government's policy and the extreme right was a
success. We must continue to mobilize and radicalize to put Valls and his clique knees.
---- We can be proud of the demonstration on 12 April that brought together in the street,
a large number of associations, trade unions and political forces opposed to both the
government's austerity policy and the creeping threat the extreme right. Given the gloom,
50,000 people who walk together to demand equality and sharing of wealth, this is not
nothing. But if the objective is to make the government back down and regain control face
austerity, it will not be enough. To stop the capitalists in their tracks and put an end
to the dreams of MEDEF, several challenges need to be addressed.
Fight together against austerity
The first challenge we face is that of unity: the resistance is still too small to be able
to afford to move in so disorganized, hope to win, keep a unitary national framework
against austerity and push that unions and associations fighting take their place in the
battle to fight. For this, it is necessary that the coarse maneuvers instrumentalization
of the Left Front stop: no organization of the labor movement or associations will not
accept sustainably serve as a stepping to the Communist Party or the Left Party. The best
way to silence these hegemonic pretensions still attend unit meetings banging his fist on
the table to hear demands for autonomy of the social movement and respect for pluralism.
More diversity of organizations by non-satellis?es the Left Front will be represented, it
will be less free rein to use unions and associations as transmission belts. The
anti-fascist forces, libertarians, self-management would be well advised to take part in
the mobilization and not a policy of the empty chair.
For its part, will continue to challenge Alternative libertarian anti-capitalist order
that together we hear a different story than the Left Front, defending a real alternative
? illusions republican reformists and nationalists.
Provide the means to resist
The second challenge is that the enlargement of mobilization: the national demonstration
on April 12, essentially activist, has symbolically mark the formation of a front against
austerity that will now have to develop and build locally. And if our determination to
fight the government and curb the alarming rise of the extreme right is not a posture, we
will have to find something else that a new national event in six months or a "voting
citizen "in the fall, otherwise we will be overtaken by a Prime Minister who multiplies
the gifts to the bosses and briskly leads a violent antisocial policy. The new austerity
measures announced by Manuel Valls can at least make us understand that the government
does not stop in so good way and if he meets with no resistance, it will continue planing
social benefits to bleed public services and depress the population in poverty.
In this context, it is clear that petitions, referendums and other citizens' initiatives
are not up to par and that is another level of confrontation with the power that we need
to prepare. To do this, in order to maintain the momentum of April 12, it is necessary to
quickly propose another date mobilization in June, after the European elections which
unfortunately may capture a portion of activist energies during the month of May. Announce
a date now allow local community, which had hitherto mainly used to organize the national
rise of 12 April, actually taking the service: meetings, public meetings, regular
broadcasts leaflets will be required to maintain a climate of agitation against austerity.
Indeed, if we want to convince a large part of the population to resist austerity, it will
first have to lead the ideological battle responding point by point to the government's
argument: while we are rehashing that must reduce the "cost of labor", we must
relentlessly expose the cost of capital.
This is the meaning of union campaigns respectively by the CGT and Solidarity (see
previous page). But it will also have to propose concrete as stopping evictions and water
cuts or electricity, lower rents, the regularization of undocumented requisition of empty
homes, etc. measures. That is why now we have to think the proposals that we can put on
the table, whether in ? national unit meetings or local public.
These emergency measures will necessarily be linked with other forms of struggle
occupations symbolic places (local PS or MEDEF), maximum pressure on MPs who vote
antisocial measures we fight (by disrupting their movements or blocking their hotlines to
hold them accountable), requisitions housing related associations fighting, etc.., are all
ways to be heard and to broaden engagement beyond media activists "traditional".
Outside the box hope to win
As such, the mass mobilizations that took place in Spain, Portugal and Greece are our
examples and tell us what to do. Because the issue is not to show that it is possible to
organize to fight against austerity in developing practical concrete solidarity.
There is no miracle to stop the government but we must now put all the chances on our side
to turn the tide. For that, wherever we operate, we must convince that only large-scale
initiatives, supported by a social movement in battle, and backed strikes, will be able to
put a stop to policies of austerity aimed solely at preserving the capitalist system
unfortunately for the greatest number.
Benjamin Bakin (AL Paris West)
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» (en) France, Alternative Libertaire AL #239 - After April 12: Resume hand against austerity (fr, pt)