A-Infos (en) Europe, euromayday* 2006

On the first of May, i.e. MAYDAY, for more than a century the global holiday of
radical workers, We, the EUROMAYDAY network, are jointly organizing MAYDAY PARADES
of temporary, part-time, contract workers and other precarious youth, along with
militant unions and social collectives in twenty or more major european cities.
On mayday, we will demonstrate and protest against precarity, the most crucial
and burning social issue in Europe today, as the gigantic demonstrations in
France of a whole generation against precarity and the CPE are proving.
Precarity is a widespread work and life condition for millions of europeans.
We demand social equality for all, the end of labor precarization and all forms
of flexploitation, after two decades of labor market deregulation which have
caused diffuse poverty and NOT reduced unemployment. We demand FREEDOM OF
MOVEMENT for migrants and INCOME SECURITY FOR ALL as fundamental steps toward a
truly social europe. We

fight for generalized access to housing and mobility, free download and free
upload for all, freely available and sharable culture and information. We
practice freedom of expression and dissent, we participate in social and labor
conflict, we build media to unmask the corporate or state-sponsored version of
reality.

Last year, Euromayday parades gathered more than 200 000 precarious people of
all sorts and brought protest actions against precarity and other forms of
labor and social domination in the streets of a dozen of EU cities. Why did we
do it?

Because we are précaires, precari, precari@s: we are the unemployed, women and
the young, the casualized, we are intermittent workers, students, stagiaires,
migrants, net/temp/flex workers, we are the contortionists of flexibility and
survivors of precarity springing out of dozens of collectives in our cities and
through a transeuropean network to defend our collective social rights and
claim new ones.

We have no trust or faith in those who, at the helm of governments, unions,
political parties, or cultural institutions, pretend to speak in our name and
take decisions on our lives, while ignoring social demands and repressing
practices of social transformation.

We will parade on mayday to reclaim our lives and fight against workfare or
other authoritarian solutions to mounting inequality and welfare crisis. We
want to give flesh with our conflicts a new welfare system and a more
horizontal, democratic society, where immaterial, service, affective, flexible
work is not subjected to pitiless exploitation, blackmail flexibility, and
existential impossibility. Nobody wants to be sentenced to the same job for
life. But nobody wants to spend her whole day wondering how to pay the next
bill, while juggling three jobs.

We want life-affirming social equality, not subservient, discriminative
employment. European welfare provisions should be made independent from either
employment or citizenship so to benefit native as well as migrant precarious
people. We are determined to severe the link between welfare and employment,
and between welfare and citizenship, as basic pre-conditions to create truly
democratic, libertarian, and egalitarian polities in the age of war-making
globalization.

For this, and obviously a lot more, we invite you at the press conference of
EURO MAYDAY 006, this friday, april 14th. Activists against precarity will come
from all over Europe (including France) to tell their struggles, projects and
cross-alliances, their predicament in securitarian and inegalitarian europe,
and what they're fighting for.

At the end of the press conference: Surprise! Surprise! Easter chicks and
rabbits will be released from their cages to participate in a great Easter-egg
treasure hunt, to free the capital of Europe from the neoliberal therapy
inflicted upon loudly recalcitrant european populations by the Barroso
commission and its corporate-friendly policies.

By the way, how come he's still at his place, he and the ritzy others, after
having lost two referendums?

MAYDAY WANTS:
- full+immediate adoption of EU directive on temporary workers
- european birthright of citizenship (ius soli)
- closure of detention centers for immigrants
- european basic income
- european minimum wage
- free upload, free download
- queer rights for all genders
- protection of THC consumers
========================
* EUROMAYDAY network is An antiauthoritarian anticapitalist
network/initiative
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