Monday, May 01, 2006
Mayday!
s0m3times says that it is "still too European" (although for some reason, my browser can't seem to download the Australian thing that she is comparing it to), but for me, the EuroMayday message still resonates much more than anything that they’re coming up with in the U.S. (Yes, of course, the big immigrants' rights thing here is an important part of the struggle, and it's nice that at least one (huge) group has gotten it together enough to hold an action that has potentially more of an impact than, say, the usual anti-war cattle stroll... But I don't see any message getting out that addresses the big picture beyond a group's "rights," or that can help me to feel personally part of the struggle, i.e., can be a way for me to address my own situation, along with so many others'. So, I confess, I sort of wish I could have gotten out to Europe right now (as I've wished on many Maydays past), to take a nice communist-autonomist protest vacation, just like the lucky Chris Carlsson is doing...if only my work paid better and weren't so precarious...)
Anyway, from the EuroMayday site:
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 sever 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...
And from the great (I think) London-based Precarity site:
This Mayday we invite all self-organised workers, migrant workers, non-unionised workers, agency workers, cash in hand workers, dole claimants, free-lancers, work rejecters and all of those who fall outside of traditional union organisation to join our autonomous bloc on the TUC march. To make Mayday a day where the invisible claim a common voice.
MAYDAY is International workers day, born out of the struggle for an 8 hour day in 1886. Over 100 years later our lives are still taken up by the world of work. Even more so now, as the work imposed by Capitalism has become more casualised (temporary contracts, flex time, part time, no time!) forcing us to adapt to the point where it's hard to tell when, where or even if we are working. This leaves us in a situation where our lives are always on hold, on call and at the mercy of the market. May 1st this year falls on a bank holiday, yet for many it will be just another day at work. Our leisure time too is filled with anxieties. The anxiety of not being able to have enough money to pay the rent, go to the cinema, a nice restaurant, shop for food, clothes, anything! In reality our work never finishes and when we're not at work we still end up making some other person even richer.
Yes, they got that right!
Anyway, from the EuroMayday site:
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 sever 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...
And from the great (I think) London-based Precarity site:
This Mayday we invite all self-organised workers, migrant workers, non-unionised workers, agency workers, cash in hand workers, dole claimants, free-lancers, work rejecters and all of those who fall outside of traditional union organisation to join our autonomous bloc on the TUC march. To make Mayday a day where the invisible claim a common voice.
MAYDAY is International workers day, born out of the struggle for an 8 hour day in 1886. Over 100 years later our lives are still taken up by the world of work. Even more so now, as the work imposed by Capitalism has become more casualised (temporary contracts, flex time, part time, no time!) forcing us to adapt to the point where it's hard to tell when, where or even if we are working. This leaves us in a situation where our lives are always on hold, on call and at the mercy of the market. May 1st this year falls on a bank holiday, yet for many it will be just another day at work. Our leisure time too is filled with anxieties. The anxiety of not being able to have enough money to pay the rent, go to the cinema, a nice restaurant, shop for food, clothes, anything! In reality our work never finishes and when we're not at work we still end up making some other person even richer.
Yes, they got that right!
