We Won’t Pay for Your Crisis
Photo credit: Turbulence
On March 28, 2009, up to 30,000 people took part in the Berlin demonstration, We Won’t Pay for Your Crisis; with a further 25,000 in Frankfurt am Main. Turbulence, who were among the 100+ groups, organisations, networks and publications to call for the demonstrations, took part in the Berlin events.
The demonstration formed part of the Global Day of Action, called for by both a number of civil society and social movement organisations who signed up to the Paris Declaration as well as participants in the Assembly of Social Movements at the 2009 World Social Forum in Belem, Brazil.
The short, English language call for the demonstrations in Berlin and Frankfurt can be found below. Further calls for the demonstration are online here: 1, 2, 3 and 4.
WE’RE NOT PAYING FOR YOUR CRISIS!
FOR A SOCIETY OF SOLIDARITY!
International Day of Action
March 28, 2009
Country-wide Demonstrations in Berlin and Frankfurt
THE CAPITALIST CRISIS…
…reaches evermore people in everyday life in 2009. It is not just a problem of the poor regulation of banks – the crisis is capitalism and has many faces: poverty, hunger, climate catastrophe, war over access to raw materials, financial market crash and economic crisis.
We demand that the agents and profiteers of the crisis foot the bill. We will not accept that it be paid by employees, the unemployed, retirees, school and university students, and the people of the global South.
On March 28th we are demonstrating for a society of solidarity and fundamental changes of the economy. We want democratic control of the economy and it’s orientation towards people’s needs rather than that of profit. Immediate appropriation and socialization of the banks rather than nationalization of the losses! Social security for all people worldwide, not security for profits!
The compulsion to permanent economic growth, competition and profit accumulation stands counter to an economy geared towards social and ecological aims. We need alternatives beyond capitalism — the way it is, is not how it will remain.
WHO IS CALLING THE DEMO?
A wide societal coalition is mobilizing for the demonstration on March 28th – a plurality of non-govermental networks, social-political initiatives, unions, political parties, immigrant associations, anti-capitalist groups, development and environmental organizations and groups of the unemployed, as well as school and university students. Together, in Frankfurt and Berlin, and as part of an international day of action, we are calling for a society of solidarity, because “We won’t pay for your crisis!”
List of participating groups here.
The following links are to mainstream and alternative media coverage of the events in both cities:
Sueddeutscher Zeitung | taz | Indymedia | Financial Times Deutschland | Antifa.de (with links to photos) | Tagesschau | Spiegel Online | Die Linke | B.Z. | Freitag | Tagesspiegel and here | Junge Welt | Neues Deutschland | Bild Zeitung | We Won’t Pay For Your Crisis demo coalition (press release) | Berliner Kurier | attac | Frankfurter Allegemein Zeitung and here, here and here | NPR (English) | Yahoo!/Associated Press (English) | Flickr (including video of the Interventionist Left’s banner drop on the route of the demonstration in Berlin) | Berlin Mayday Coalition (press release) | Freundeskreis Videoklips | YouTube |
For more information, see: www.28maerz.de or www.kapitalismuskrise.org
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Turbulence is a journal/newspaper that we hope will become an ongoing space in which to think through, debate and articulate the political, social, economic and cultural theories of our movements, as well as the networks of diverse practices and alternatives that surround them. Read more here
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