A31 Day of Action

national | miscellaneous | news report Tuesday August 13, 2002 14:55 by A SEED Europe uncorp at aseed dot antenna dot nl

Protest during the UN Summit

A call to join the protests on 31st August to highlight the corporate dominated agenda at the UN Earth Summit.

In August the World Summit on Sustainable Development takes place in Johannesburg, South Africa. Ten years have passed since the last big conference in Rio de Janeiro and not much has been achieved. Our climate is changing, our natural environment is dying and poverty has increased. Meanwhile, corporations have become bigger and more powerful, the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank have tightened their grip on society, and environmental and social conventions have proved useless in tackling what they set out to do. Our governments pander to the whims of corporate lobby groups whose neo-liberal agenda is slowly privatising everything on our planet to the detriment of the many and to the benefit of the few. Moreover, corporations and industrial lobby groups have set out to portray themselves as 'part of the solution and not the problem' by greenwashing themselves through powerful public relation campaigns. The World Summit on Sustainable Development is becoming the biggest greenwash event of them all and the UN is leading the way.

August the 31st is the Global Day of Action against the corporate influence on our lives. On this day people all over the world will take action to raise awareness about the neo-liberal take over of social and environmental issues. 60.000 people are expected to attend the summit in Johannesburg but this is also an opportunity to spread our messages locally and globally.

The social movement in South Africa will also on this day hold a mass action to denounce the new neo-liberal program which confronts all of Africa. The Anti-Privatisation Forum, Jubilee South Africa, Environmental Justice Networking Forum, Palestinian Solidarity Committee, Rural Development Services Network, the Landless movements and the Indigenous People have agreed on a common platform to hold the biggest independent political gathering since apartheid ended in 1994.

Join us and organise an action locally or see if there are actions already organised in your area. Go out and protest against the neo-liberal paradigm, the privatisation of our lives and our future.

See http://www.aseed.net/un-corporated for more info or contact [email protected]