Since we are willing to fight, let’s fight together

The organisations and individuals that plan on signing the libertarian declaration “Anarchism in the 21^st Century,” are ready and willing to put the words of our commune libertarian ideas into practice.

In a few decades, the economic globalisation has caused, and will cause even more if we do not stop it, a notable increase in poverty and social injustice. The syndicalist workers movements of the past, strong and capable of revolutionising the society which surrounded them less than one century ago, are now weakened and incapable of changing their immediate social reality much less confronting a strong and powerful global enemy.

That is why we, who have spent years active the syndical struggles in our local and national companies and in a few sporadic but correct international actions, think we should join hands and dreams together with friends and comrades in other countries who practise a different type of struggle. The struggle of building a free, solidarious, fair and libertarian world through revolutionary and libertarian actions in their immediate surroundings, their neighbourhood, village or town.

Since we are still too few to counterattack globalisation in all its fronts, we propose that the international solidarity of the libertarians be focussed on a biannual support towards a series of specific local actions. Actions which are already working with a libertarian basis, but which could function better with a good international campaign of solidarity and mutual aid.

We would like to take advantage of the presence of Brazilian and Uruguayan comrades from FAG and FAU to ask them to come to the Madrid International Meeting of 31^st March to 1^st April ready to explain in detail some of their actions which could most benefit from international solidarity and mutual aid. We ask that they come with specific ideas as to how we can contribute to these actions from our respective countries and organisations. And we ask that they previously inform us briefly of these actions so that the other organisations and we can also come prepared.

At the same time, these comrades will be those who receive our mandate to coordinate, through the new technologies and the indelible libertarian ideology, those actions of solidarity and mutual aid that we adopt during the Madrid meeting. After this six-month-period, we will evaluate our actions, what we did right or wrong, and prepare the next biannual international solidarity campaign.

Undoubtedly these campaigns are complementary to, and not substitutes of, the different international support campaigns that each organisation has been running internally (e.g., the CGT support to the Saharians). In fact, these campaigns could end up being the object a biannual international campaign.

Nor of course are we suggesting that we should abandon syndical activities, but rather that the libertarian roots of the workers struggle can and should be mutually impregnated with struggles on other fronts apart from factories, workshops, fields or offices.

The north must cede, the future is in the south

The moment is drastic and we cannot waste more time. Very soon we shall see cities of twenty, thirty and up to forty million poor people in city slums and with no future except for anarchy, in either the sense that the powers that be give it, or in the sense that we give it.

These atrocities of poverty, victims of the continuous pillage of their raw materials, the senseless sanitary policies and the ferocious need for a bargain price workforce, will be the breeding grounds for a future libertarian springtime or, if we do not move, victim of terrible uncontrolled epidemics, violence and oppression. All of this contrasted with the apathy of the rich of Europe and North America.

We, libertarian men and women, will never be free if there is a single person who dies of hunger or who lives without dignity and freedom.

A powerful monster, but we are more

Everything is commercialised, words, our jobs and our bodies, culture, everything, even our genes, have become part of the great marketplace of the third millennium.

Modern-day power hoards wealth and destroys the working class and society at large by fostering individualism and precariety. It tries to sell us the tune that democracy works and is prosperous and that liberty is triumphing, but the reality is distinct. Yesterday’s poor are the overexploited, excluded and marginalised of today, representing a larger and larger slice of the world population. Its private benefits are the result of plundering the common wealth of humanity and nature. Financial crime is a fact: bankers recycle money without looking to see if it is clean or dirty.

Globalisation has become a cruel and undestroyable monster. We have followed its footsteps, but are becoming further and further away from reaching and destroying it. The praiseworthy but limited international events (counter summits, marches against unemployment, support for Chiapas, etc.) have shown us that we must not only put more effort into international events, but that we must open our doors and accept, as friends and comrades, as co-revolutionaries, all those people and organisations which are fighting for the libertarian ideas. Together, we can be the engine, without any attempt at being an elite or the leadership, but rather midwives at the birth of future social uprisings.

It is time that we fight together. Anarchists, anarcho-socialists, anarcho-communists, anarchosyndicalists, syndicalists, revolutionary syndicalists, and diverse libertarian men and women, and, above all, millions of angry people who reject the current economical and political system, and who are willing to fight for freedom, using direct action and federalism, together with mutual aid and international solidarity.

We propose that we put aside our differences, at least as regards the development of the biannual actions, letting those who are directly involved at a local level apply with their local wisdom to the libertarian nuance that they feel and practise.

This is not a new International, it is an international struggle

We would like to make it clear that we are not suggesting a new International Workers Association (IWA/AIT), with its statutes and agreements and organic structures. What we are proposing is a biannual co-ordination through a network of libertarian organisations with a real presence and action, which will join up to fight together in real projects in different parts of the planet, in reply to globalisation.

The biannual co-ordination of this network will rotate, going into the hands of the organisation which is carrying out the local project.

Ideological debate does not enter this agenda, there are other forums for that debate. Here our communications will be solely based on the logistics of the project undertaken.

The meeting will be held in the locality of the project, thus promoting the participation of the libertarian movement in the neighbouring regions and countries.

This biannual co-ordination will be for us, libertarians throughout the world, a school in which we can learn to work better against globalisation and in which, we hope, more and better forms of international organisation will arise.

It’s a question of dignity

These questions of fostering international solidarity and mutual aid against globalisation are taken with illusion and happiness. We have to put our whole heart in this struggle, together with the dispossessed and excluded of the world, with the same dedication that, for example, the men and women of Africa put their lives at risk in search of a life with dignity, crossing the Straight of Gibraltar, only to find exploitation and beggary amongst the wealth of Europe.

It is time we joined forces, raise a clamour, plant seeds of freedom and to cut down the rotten tree which are keeping us in the dark.

We must fight together to defend the dignity and freedom of all.