All out on M1!
Something special will happen on May 1. For the first time ever in Australia,
thousands of people will take action, simultaneously across the country,
against the stock exchange, the symbolic heart and soul of corporate power
and global capitalism.
You
should be there. The world needs to hear your voice — and your friends',
neighbours’, workmates’ or classmates', the voice of everyone you know
and everyone you meet — raised against the corporations which are twisting
the world into their own image and substituting greed for need, plutocracy
for democracy, the consumer for the community.
Here's a few facts and figures to consider:
-
Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are corporations: General
Motors is bigger than Indonesia, Shell is bigger than Venezuela, AXA is
bigger than Ireland.
-
The combined sales of the largest 200 corporations are 18 times the size
of the combined annual income of the 1.2 billion people (24% of the world's
population) who live in severe poverty.
-
The world's richest three men now own assets equivalent to those owned
by the 600 million people in the world's 48 least developed countries.
-
Each day, US$1.5 trillion flows through the world's currency markets, 90%
of which is speculative: enough to wipe out the entire debt of the 92 Third
World countries which most need it.
And the wealth and size of these giant banks and industrial combines isn't
even the worst of it: it's what they do with that wealth and size which
is most devastating.
Mining companies pollute entire ecosystems with impunity; banks and
hedge funds cause financial meltdowns and collapse currencies; oil and
automobile manufacturers block action to halt climate change; privatised
utilities downgrade services and ratchet up prices; fashion labels pay
sweatshop workers a couple of dollars for a shirt which retails for hundreds;
chemical conglomerates claim rises in cancer incidences have nothing to
do with the toxins they pump into the air; and company after company throw
their money around, buying politicians and governments and clever advertising
campaigns to convince us that nothing's wrong and that there's nothing
we can do about it anyway.
Well, they're wrong: there is something you can do about it, and M1
is your next opportunity.
You can take to the streets, blockade and protest, shout out Peter Finch's
famous cry: “I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore”,
and sing defiantly “This is what democracy looks like”.
By doing so you'll be part of a swelling mass of people, in every corner
of the world, who are casting off the shackles of “There is no alternative”,
who are throwing the corporate elites into a panic and who are getting
together to remake the world into the kind of place they want to live in.
May 1 is May Day, the traditional day of the workers' movement — and
M1 is part of that old and proud tradition, of working people standing
up against injustice, whatever and wherever it may be.
But M1 is also very new — a brave attempt to bring together all the
disparate communities, groups and individuals who are resisting the various
injustices of the capitalist beast, to bring them together and strike out
at the beast itself.
M1, and the global movement it is a part of, deserves success, as the
hopes for the future of millions rest with it — success which you can guarantee
by being part of it, before, during and after the first of May.
