NO PASARAN!

national | miscellaneous | news report

Wednesday March 27, 2002 18:59

by Joe Carolan - Globalise Resistance

globalise_resistance at yahoo dot com

the Other World which is possible

087 9032281

GR Bullet IN for March 28

It's been an exciting week for Anti Capitalists internationally, with two huge mobilisations in Rome and Barcelona. We are now entering a new phase of activity, and GR are preparing for both Mayday here and Seville abroad. The movement is back with a vengeance post s11, and we will also be organising a delegation to the foundation of the European Social Forum this November. Well done everyone on the Sellafield Nuclear Meltdown evacuation drill- there's excellent coverage available at http://www.indymedia.ie that we recommend everyone checks out!

GLOBALISE RESISTANCE WEEKLY BULLETIN
March 28th 2002
edited by Joe Carolan
(send in your submissions, notices and events)

This week's topics-
1. Anti Capitalist BUSH Monster to be built for Mayday
2. GR Activist Paddy B cleared of charges for Car Free Day protest
3. STOP ESSO DAY
4. THANKS GR (FROM SOCIALIST YOUTH)
5. CONVERGENCE FESTIVAL
6. AMERICAN ANTI CAPITALIST AUTHOR TO SPEAK IN DUBLIN
7. INTERNATIONAL- RED ROME AND BARCELONA

Anti Capitalist BUSH Monster to be built for Mayday

NEXT SESSION This Sunday 31st March from 1pm to 5pm at
SPACECRAFT Warehouse
at the end of Stranville Street, North Strand, Dublin 1. (Third turn right once you
cross the bridge at the Larkin Flats coming from Connolly Station).

Globalise Resistance heads will be building a huge Bush Monster for
three upcoming events- the national Anti War demo on April 27th, the
Trade Union march on May 1st and the Reclaim the Streets Party on the
May 6th Bank Holiday. The Bush Monster will have two claws- the
invisible hand of the market pulled by sweatshop slaves and workers
in chains, and the iron fist of the military pulled by orange boiler
suited, sensory deprived prisoners, Palestinians and the war dead.
These packhorses will be supervised by the military wing of the
United Corporations of America, who will carry the flag of the
multinationals either side.

The aim is to link the war and imperialism with exploitation and
capitalism. We're trying to make a big puppet or float, with two huge
arms, hands or claws - IRON FIST AND INVISIBLE HAND. We'll need loads
of help to get them built!

We'll also need chains, the iron ones preferably, as well as costumes
for the military, the Camp X Ray prisoners, the (corporate) branded
sweatshop slaves etc etc etc.

If you're intersted in helping out, give us a phone at 087 9032281-
we'll be kicking off this weekend, starting work on the flags of the
United Corporations of America. Standard stars and stripes, with the
white stars replaced by corporate logos. If yer artistic or in the
mood to help out, please come down. We'll also make a start on the Al
Queda costumes, recycling the old Ministry of Disaster jumpsuits. So
anyone with loads of orange paint feel free!

What do the rest of ye GR heads reckon? Anyone any other ideas? How
big can we make the Monster? Do we need wheels?!!

Medb G writes-
Those who wish to get involved making a creative visual parade for May
Day please come along to our weekly gatherings and get your hands
dirty! We are hoping to make a George Bush monster and costumes, props and
banners. This is strictly fun, lets use humour to demystify and
challenge public perceptions of power.

Anyone who can help at all please come along, it doesnt matter what
group you do or do not belong to. Either help with your time, energy and
ideas: or with funding or materials. Here is a provisional wish list. We
are starting with nothing except our ideas, so any contribution, no
matter how small will be appreciated.

Wish List:

Foam
Polystyrene
Chicken wire
Paint
Photos of George Bush
Long broom handles/poles
Chains, Chainmail, Handcuffs, whips !
Tape
Corporate Loge stickers:
top 10 hated corporations-send them to us!
Fibre Glass
Clay
Material
Nedles and thread
Glue
Paste
COSTUMES:
Old Combat gear
Old suits, ties
Boiler suits
Uniforms of all descriptions - work ( eg, nurses )
Helmets

GR Activist Paddy B cleared of charges for Car Free Day protest

GR and Car free day activist Paddy Baxter was cleared of all charges in Richmond court in Dublin
on Wednesday 28th of March after being arrested on car free day last September for peaceful
protest. His defence centred around the arresting officer as written on the charge sheet not being
the actual arresting officer on the day. The judge said this mistake by the Gardaí was
understandable due to the confusion and the amount of people arrested. However, the defence still
had to prove this to be true.
More facts at
http://indymedia.ie/cgi-bin/newswire.cgi?id=1304

STOP ESSO DAY

Dear Globalise Resistance people throughout the UK and Ireland

This message is to let you know about the next StopEsso Day on
Saturday 18 May - and ask for your support on the Day.

Last year on 1 December we managed to get more than 3000
people peacefully protesting outside at least 300 Esso stations,
getting our message across to thousands of Esso's customers
across the UK. We had no arrests at all -- much to the
annoyance of Esso which was desperate for a chance to condemn
the protests.

This year on 18 May, with the help of Globalise Resistance and
many other organisations, we're aiming to make it even bigger.
We're also aiming for an international element.

Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and People & Planet groups
around the country are already planning for the Day. If you want to
get involved, and have contacts with these groups, it would be
great if you could work together at a local level, to divide up the
local Esso stations so as to get as many as possible covered.

If you could mention it on your websites and diaries that would also
be greatly appreciated. To link to the StopEsso site go to
http://www.stopesso.com/linktous.php

How to get involved?
get on the website at www.stopesso.com and find your local
station. Let us know at [email protected] which one
you want to target, or call 0870 010 9510. We can send materials
and leaflets for the Day.

Any questions? just ask.
thanks for your help
cindy baxter

------------------------------------------
May 18 is StopEsso Day II.

Cindy Baxter, UK coordinator
++44 (0) 20 7354 5708 ph
++44 (0) 7930 326 663 mobile
++44 (0) 20 7865 8203 fax

THANKS GR (FROM SOCIALIST YOUTH)
Just a quick note to thank GR for attending saturdays rage against racism anti racist protest.

It was great to see the movement there!

Yours Comradely
Shane Kenna
socialist youth

CONVERGENCE FESTIVAL
Dear activists.

Here are some highlights of the forthcoming Convergence festival that should
be of interest to you. Give me a call if you want more information or a full
programme e-mailed to you, hope to see there.

Cheers,
Davie Philip

Convergence Festival - Exploring Culture for a Better World
Project - 39 East Essex Street, Temple Bar - Dublin
April 6th - 14th 2002

Project, the arts centre in Dublin’s Temple Bar, becomes the hub of the
Convergence Festival. Now in its third year, this annual event brings
together the diversity of exciting ideas that define a healthy, just and
ecologically sustainable culture. Over 60 events including theatre,
conferences, workshops, panel discussions, exhibits, video screenings and
lectures will all take place throughout the week.

Booking Line: Project, +353 (0)1 8819613, +353 (0)1 8819614
Festival Information: Sustainable Ireland, +353 (0)1 4912327

For further details www.sustainable.ie

AMERICAN ANTI CAPITALIST AUTHOR TO SPEAK IN DUBLIN

American anti-capitalist author and urban theorist is speaking at a Marxist Forum organised by the
SWP at the Central Hotel, Exchequer Street in Dublin this Saturday, 30 March at 5pm. Mike has
written some amazing books including his latest “Late Victorian Holocausts”, and will be talking
about Bush, s11, and the development of the Anti Capitalist movement in the heart of the beast.
Here’s some info on Mike-
Unlike most writers on Southern California, Mike Davis is a native son. He was born in Fontana in
1946 and grew up in Bostonia, a now 'lost' hamlet east of San Diego. A former meatcutter and long
distance truckdriver, he now teaches Urban Theory at the Southern California Institute of
Architecture.
He is a co-editor of The Year Left: An American Socialist Yearbook and author of Prisoners of the
American Dream (Verso 1986) and the brilliant City of Quartz, Excavating the Future in Los Angeles
(Verso 1990), in which he recounts the story of Los Angeles with passion, wit and an acute eye for
the absurd, the unjust and the dangerous. Davis' City of Quartz points to a future in which the
sublime and the dreadful are inextricable; a future which does not belong to Southern California
alone, but terrifyingly seems to belong to all of us.
His essay Beyond Blade Runner: Urban Control, the Ecology of Fear was first published in 1992 .
A 49-year-old native Californian and unrepentant Marxist, Davis drills through the sedimented
myths of what the architectural critic Michael Sorkin has called "the most mediated town in
America," returning us to the cold, hard bedrock of historical fact with a jarring thump-
Delving into the past, he unearths the market forces and social engineering that have made Los
Angeles what it is: a megalopolitan sprawl straight out of Gibson's Virtual Light--- economically
and ecologically moribund, ravaged by social polarization and racial tensions that have provided
fertile ground for the criminalizing of non-whites, urban youth, and the homeless; the
militarizing of a notoriously brutal police force; the privatizing of public space; and the
proliferation of fortified suburban enclaves whose lawns bristle with warnings of "Armed
Response."
related link: www.levity.com/markdery/ESCAPE/VELOCITY/author/davis.html

INTERNATIONAL- RED ROME AND BARCELONA

We are preparing transport for Seville and the mass protest against the EU this June. If the
500,000 people in Barcelona and the 3,000,000 in Italy are anything to go by, it’s gonna be
massive. So if you want to be part of the mobilization and want to travel with GR, get in touch
with us as soon as possible. Phone Joe at 087 9032281 for more details.

Here’s some info on both Barcelona and Rome.
Now THIS is what democracy looks like!

Barcelona

The protests at the European Union Summit in Barcelona on 14-16 March this year were incredibly
significant. The anti-capitalist march was uncountable. This despite the 220 coaches blocked at
the French/Spanish border and the closure of the Italian/French border to coaches and trains of
protesters.
Like all previous large scale anti-capitalist protests, Barcelona was made up of a very local
crowd. It seemed like the whole of Catalonia was there. For the first time on such protests in
Europe, the anti-capitalist demo was bigger than the Trade Union one, by four or five times.
Continued report at
http://www.resist.org.uk/reports/archive/misc/barca.html

TIDE OF REVOLT SWEEPS ROME
THREE MILLION Italian trade unionists, students, immigrant workers, unemployed people and
pensioners defied the Italian government last Saturday. Six huge feeder protests marched to the
centre of Rome to demonstrate against Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's plans to "reform"
laws protecting workers. Some 9,200 coaches, 61 special trains, five aeroplanes and four boats
brought people to Rome from across Italy.
The press portrayed the protest as against terrorism after the killing of government adviser Marco
Biagi last week. Of course people were against that killing, but on Saturday they were mainly
marching against Berlusconi's right wing government. Berlusconi, a billionaire media tycoon, heads
a coalition government which includes the anti-immigrant Northern League and the fascist National
Alliance. The government wants to scrap a law which gives workers facing the sack at least some
protection.
Saturday's demonstration was the biggest in Italy for over 50 years. It was called by the official
trade unions. But the spirit of anti-capitalist demonstrations, such as that seen a week earlier
at the European Union summit in Barcelona, Spain, was reflected on the Rome march.
"Berlusconi's government is capitalist-it governs for the interests of industry. It is taking
democracy from the people. This is for the young people-it's their future," said an electrical worker
from Rome, Andrea. "This protest is for our rights and the rights of future
generations," said Stefania, a public sector worker from Florence. "Berlusconi only wants to give
power to the higher classes."
"Today we're just useful to the laws of the market. Berlusconi wants to make sure the bosses make
more profit out of us. "When we're not needed we're thrown out without hope for dignity of life,"
said Andrea, a mobile phone worker from Milan.
"More than anything else this is for the future generations," said Roberto, a chemical industry
worker from Bergamo. Tens of thousands of people from the social forums that came out of the great
anti-capitalist protests in Genoa last summer joined with workers on Saturday's march.
Everywhere you looked you saw people with Palestinian scarves or flags, trade unionists as well as
young people, in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for justice. "We are not on our own any
longer," said Vittorio Agneletto of the Italian Social Forum. "We want life, rights and
democracy." Many of those who marched also made it clear they were against war. One of the most
popular stickers read "The only general we like is called strike".

'A part of Carlo has come back'
"I'M PROUD to be here. There are a lot of honest and free people here today. They haven't let the
lies and the atrocity of terrorism influence them. The beautiful part of the country is here
today. In 1994, here again, I participated with my son and my wife. I feel part of Carlo has come
back onto the streets today."
GIULIANO GIULIANI, whose son Carlo was killed by police at the Genoa G8 protests in July last
year

Where next to beat Berlusconi
THE demonstration was a sea of red CGIL flags, the most left wing of Italy's three trade union
federations and the organisation which called the protest. The march was so popular that the
Democratic Left and the Margherita parties were forced to attend.
The "centre-left" coalition government involving these parties pushed through pro-market policies
which led to mass disillusionment and the election of Berlusconi last year. Even after Saturday's
massive show of strength Berlusconi's government is refusing to back down.
The momentum for a general strike on Friday of next week against the government's plans is
building up. This will involve the other two union federations, the UIL and the CISL, who did not
support Saturday's march.
Pressure from rank and file workers forced the CGIL leaders to call last Saturday's protest and
the planned general strike. A general strike and a protest of over one million people caused the
collapse of the last Berlusconi government in 1994.
The different elements of Berlusconi's coalition are more united now than then. But Saturday's
protest and the coming general strike show where the power to beat him lies.
"This is the biggest demonstration in the history of the Italian republic," said Giorgio
Cremaschi, the general secretary of the FIOM metal workers' union. "The only thing that can be
done now is to go towards general strikes. As we fill the streets we must also empty the
workplaces."

Terror, 'tension' and the movement
THE MURDER of Marco Biagi in Bologna last week was a reminder of Italy's past. Biagi was a
government adviser working on the reform of Article 18, the labour law which Berlusconi is
attacking. Two men who claimed to be members of the Red Brigades terror group shot him on Tuesday
of last week. Many people have their suspicions that other, right wing, forces could just as
easily have been involved.
The Red Brigades carried out attacks on the forces of the Italian state during the late 1970s and
early 1980s. They kidnapped and murdered Aldo Moro, Italy's most influential politician, in 1978.
The Red Brigades came out of the demoralisation workers felt after the defeat of their movement in
the late 1970s.
The violence of the Red Brigades was disastrous, and allowed the state to crack down on the
workers' movement in response. That is why many people on last Saturday's protest were opposed to
terrorism as well as supporting the fight for workers' rights. "Workers think that when these
things happen they pay the price," said chemicals worker Roberto from Bergamo.
Many people were suspicious about the killing of Biagi. They remember that the right and the state
carried out attacks and murders in Italy in the 1970s, and sought to portray them as the work of
the left. Fascist terror groups and government secret services blew up crowded areas throughout
the 1970s, killing innocent civilians. The left would then be blamed and the right would win
support.
Some of the people involved infiltrated left wing groups and encouraged them to carry out violent
attacks. This plot was called the "strategy of tension". "Who has an interest in Biagi's murder?"
asked Roberto on last Saturday's march. "Biagi's killing was a political killing," said Donatella
from Rome. "It was an institutional death. The right wants to divide people. They want to say the
left did it. Why was he killed just before this protest?"
Berlusconi's government removed Biagi's bodyguards even though it knew his life had been
threatened. Berlusconi sought to use the murder to undermine Saturday's march. He even phoned
Biagi's widow to try and get her to agree to a state funeral for her husband on the same day as
the protest. She refused.
Whoever killed Biagi, the alternative to terrorism and the force for change in society was seen in
the mass movement last Saturday. Olga D'Antona, the widow of Massimo D'Antona, the last man the
Red Brigades claimed to have killed, attended the protest. "All these people comfort me," she
said. "This is a day with a double value-the defence of workers' rights and a democratic response
against terrorism."