By Philip Augar, Apri 13, 2009

Less politically and more economically, optimists pin their philocapitalist hopes on China’s keynesian demand boost (which is working but is not enough to reverse the negative macroeconomic trends worldwide) and on the fact that prices of raw materials are rising again (this could spell doom for hundreds of millions, as food prices are set to rise).  We anticapitalists turning postcapitalists look at unemployment and housing data and conclude that the opposite is still true: they are just trying to provide self-fulfilling prophecies of financial optimism on friendly media, so that reform of capitalism doesn’t have to go too deep.  But the Atlantic regime of financial speculation is dead for good and can’t be resurrected, not even at huge cost for government finances. Economic redistribution and geopolitical rebalancing are the two major things that can solve the crisis. Put people first: sack the bankers, milk the capitalists, invest in society and the environment.

By Seumas Milne
When mass protests exploded on the streets of Seattle in 1999 against the kind of globalisation embodied in the World Trade Organisation, their anti-capitalist message was widely portrayed as utopian. A decade on, as anti-capitalist demonstrators vented their fury yesterday on the social and ecological vandals of the City and prepared to do battle today outside the G20 meeting in the heart of what was once London’s docks, it looks more like common sense.

The wreckage of the neoliberal order – which reached its zenith in the wake of Seattle and has generated the greatest global economic crisis since the 1930s – is now all around us. World trade is in free fall and, by some measures, collapsing faster than at the time of the Great Depression. While G20 leaders talk of saving or creating 20 million jobs, 25 million are expected to be lost in the wealthy OECD states alone, whose main area of competition now seems to be their relative rates of economic decline. And what in the richest economies means mass unemployment and rising poverty translates into destitution and rising death rates in the developing world.

So it can hardly be a surprise that some people end up trashing the homes or offices of bailed-out bankers – or that French workers have taken to “bossnapping” executives handing out mass redundancies, as has been the experience of astonished Caterpillar and Sony executives in recent weeks. As unrest over the impact of the crisis has grown across Europe, workers are increasingly resorting to direct action against closures and following the example of the successful occupation of the Republic Windows and Doors factory in Chicago, backed by Barack Obama last December.

The night before last, workers occupied Belfast’s Visteon car components plant after 565 out of its 610-strong UK workforce were sacked on Tuesday, and by yesterday morning the action had spread to its factories in Enfield and Basildon. There is likely to be plenty more of this kind of thing to come, as conflict over who carries the costs of the crisis becomes more overt – and so there will have to be if we are to avoid the return to business as usual that politicians and corporate powerbrokers evidently still envisage across the western world.

Of course, all the talk at the ExCel centre is of regulation, a green New Deal and “partnerships of purpose”. Champions of the failed free market are thin on the ground anywhere these days – even Nigel Lawson and Cecil Parkinson, the Thatcherite architects of the 1980s Big Bang City deregulation, this week turned their backs on the financial mayhem they unleashed. But the fact that many of those presiding at the G20 are the same people who brought us to the present catastrophic pass scarcely inspires confidence in their ability to overcome the crisis.

No doubt some modest progress will be made on bringing hedge funds and tax havens under control, though the US and Britain are holding out against tougher regulation. The transatlantic battle over regulation versus co-ordinated expansion is in any case largely a phoney one. Obama is right that the US can’t be the sole engine of global recovery, but then Germany’s own fiscal stimulus is a good deal larger than its politically hybrid government likes to let on. And if demand is boosted simply to refloat the existing failed economic model – which in the US and Britain includes a crippled, corrupted financial system – it won’t work anyway.

The same goes for G20 plans to inject extra cash into the International Monetary Fund, which claims to have changed the nefarious neoliberal ways that made it a target for the protesters of the 1990s, but is in fact still imposing the kind of structural adjustment conditions which are the opposite of what is needed to pull countries out of the slump. As for today’s expected declarations on action against global warming, they barely count as political window-dressing.

All the signs are that most of the politicians playing to the gallery in London today have yet to face up to the full scale of the crisis, or what will need to be done to overcome it. Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and President Lula are right to single out the Anglo-Saxon model and “white men with blue eyes” for the meltdown – even if that underplays its systemic nature. But this isn’t only a crisis of capitalism or of a particular form of capitalism after all, it’s one of US economic and global power as well.

That’s because it’s the product not just of financialisation and deregulated markets, but also of chronically low American savings and unsustainable levels of consumption – including the massive military expenditure that has underpinned US wars and global overstretch in the years since the end of the cold war. The deficits they’ve generated have increasingly been financed by China and the fact that today’s meeting is of the G20 rather than the G7 – and that its most important meetings are between Obama and President Hu Jintao – is a symbol of the decline of American economic power exposed by the crisis.

The rebalancing of the US relationship with China, which is so far riding the economic storm somewhat more successfully than its western counterparts, can play a part in overcoming the crisis. But right now recovery is being held back by the failure of the US, and even more precariously Britain, to intervene decisively in the financial sector to drive up lending – rather than pour cash into the black hole of bankers’ gambling debts. In both countries, the combination of halfhearted quantitative easing and a refusal to take control of the banks is stifling the impact of tax cuts and extra public spending. In Britain in particular, the limits of crude Keynesianism – rather than direct intervention and nationalisation – are clearly being reached.

Meanwhile, market enthusiasts have once again been complaining, as they did at the time of Seattle, that the G20 protesters have no alternative. It was never true in the 1990s, but now such claims are simply ridiculous. The policies and programmes now pouring out of the international trade union movement, NGOs, political parties and thinktanks – on climate change, jobs, green investment, public services, trade, finance, international institutions and global justice – are voluminous and serious. The problem is not a shortage of alternatives, but a lack of political muscle so far to make them stick.

By DEAN CARSON

LONDON (AP) — Tens of thousands of people marched across central London Saturday to demand jobs, economic justice and environmental accountability, kicking off six days of protest and action planned in the run-up to the G20 summit next week.

More than 150 groups threw their backing behind the “Put People First” march. Police said around 35,000 attended the demonstration, but there were large gaps in the line of protesters snaking its way across the city toward Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park.

The marchers are pushing for a more transparent and democratic economic recovery plan.

“The whole economic meltdown … There’s a really good opportunity for governments to get together and invest in a sustainable future,” said unemployed Steve Burson, 49, marching with the protesters.

The biggest groups backing the demonstration include the Stop The War Coalition, whose supporters marched under the slogan “Jobs Not Bombs,” Friends of the Earth, and the Trades Union Congress, an umbrella group of British trade unions, which is calling for Britain’s crisis-hit manufacturing base to share in country’s banking bailout.

“They should be solving (the crisis) in the interest of working people,” said Andy Bain, the president of Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association. “All the money is going to the rich.”

Protesters whistled and booed British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s 10 Downing Street office — with one shouting: “Enjoy the overtime!” as they filed past.

Security was tight around a small group of people waving anarchist flags Saturday. Anarchists and others have promised violence before the G20 meeting Thursday, and the British capital is bracing for a massive police operation as representatives of the world’s 20 leading economies fly in for a summit on the financial crisis. More protests are planned Wednesday and Thursday, while left-leaning teach-ins, lectures, and other demonstrations are scheduled throughout the week.

Other demonstrations aimed at the G20 summit took place in Europe on Saturday.

Berlin police estimated that around 10,000 people gathered in front of the capital’s city hall and more than 1,000 in Frankfurt, Germany’s banking capital, for similar demonstrations under the slogan: “We won’t pay for your crisis.”

Some demonstrators in Berlin sported headbands reading “pay for it yourselves” and carried placards demanding: “make capitalism history.”

Katharine Ainger, Thursday 26 March 2009

Ten years ago, the anticapitalist movement predicted this recession. Now it must envisage an alternative global future

It was 1999 and the summer of corporate love. Many pundits – now talking of “bad apples” and applauding bailouts – were predicting the stockmarket would go up forever. Not coincidentally, it was also a decade ago that the anticapitalist movement emerged with a rambunctious “carnival against capital” in London’s Square Mile; the contagion spread to the streets of Seattle where the World Trade Organisation meeting was shut down by protesters later that year.

The movement, which was essentially demanding democratic control over the global economy, wreathed summit after summit of the G8, the WTO and the World Bank with protest and teargas. It was wild, infuriating, diverse and sometimes incoherent, as only a network that encompasses indigenous peoples, radical environmentalists, workers and kids in hoodies could be. The movement was like the child in the crowd as the emperor of global neoliberalism wheeled by, pointing out that his cloaks were woven from financial fictions and economic voodoo.

They must now be credited for their prescience. Today, everybody can see the emperor has no clothes; but as the G20 meets in London next week to ensure financial “stability” for a return to business as usual, it appears rather as though the emperor has rushed back to the very same discredited tailors to bail them out and commission several new outfits.

And what of the movement that predicted the crash? Post 9/11 it lost momentum as it was forced to rechannel energy into fighting rearguard actions against state repression and the war on terror. Yet the less visible but vital processes of developing workable alternatives, building grassroots movements, and popular education continued. The movement also effected a palpable cultural shift of alternative economic ideas and environmental concerns towards the mainstream; in Latin America social movements helped elect governments that were prepared to challenge neoliberal doctrine. Movement demands also foreshadowed a rebalancing of power towards the global south, and helped to delegitimise the institutions of the global economy.

These ideas have never been more relevant or necessary. Clearly we need a vision, and it doesn’t look as if the G20, still so in thrall to financial capital, will deliver one. So could this be the hour for a movement that was beaten, teargassed and imprisoned for pointing out the now blindingly obvious?

NGOs, churches and trade unions are mobilising thousands to turn out on 28 March with the demand to “Put people first”; 1 April is “Financial Fools Day”, when direct action activists and environmentalists will be setting up a climate camp outside the European Climate Exchange in London – because the same financial system now in crisis is being entrusted to cut emissions through the artificial creation of a market in carbon credits. Meanwhile another group called G20 Meltdown is promising a carnival at the Bank of England. The climate camp has an open process and has worked hard to establish its social base of legitimacy; the carnival is more of a hotchpotch, and it’s unclear who will turn up. Perhaps some windows will be broken – and frankly, it would be astonishing if no one was angry enough to do so.

Whatever they decide, the G20 and other leaders are going to be faced with increasing unrest from those paying with their jobs, their social security and their taxes for a crisis not of their making and a bailout not of their choosing. From Haiti to India, people are rioting over food. We are entering a singular moment of climate chaos and food shortages, a social and energy crisis as well as financial meltdown. The solutions the “alter-global” networks have developed offer a way out that is based on whole systems thinking. Fundamental to this vision is an economy that meets the needs of everyone on a planet of finite resources.

Which is why the climate camp in the city, with its slogan “Because nature doesn’t do bailouts”, is one of the most interesting of all the movements coalescing in London next week. It’s a potent mix of seasoned anti-globalisation activists who are skilled in creative direct action and a new generation that is energised and refreshingly undogmatic. The camp has taken a key component of the globalisation movement – the temporary autonomous zones of street parties and convergence centres liberated in cities during summit protests – to a new level, creating a transformational space which prefigures the world they want, featuring everything from wind turbines and composted waste to decentralised decision-making and creative play.

At the end of this year, almost exactly 10 years to the day since Seattle, this new incarnation of the movement will be on the streets during the Copenhagen climate summit demanding real climate justice that does not rely on the current “business as usual” proposals. Perhaps anticapitalism had the right idea at the wrong moment in history. Perhaps its moment has come.

• Katharine Ainger is co-author of We Are Everywhere, a book documenting global social movements.

As many as three million people took to the streets across France on Thursday to protest against President Nicolas Sarkozy’s handling of the economic crisis and demand more help for struggling workers.

The protests, which polls show are backed by three quarters of the French public, reflect growing disillusion with Sarkozy’s pledges of reform as the crisis has thrown tens of thousands out of work and left millions more worried about their jobs. Bright spring sunshine helped the turnout and the total reported by union organisers surpassed the 2.5 million seen on an earlier day of protest on Jan 29.

Streets in central Paris were packed with protesters waving anti-Sarkozy placards and chanting slogans, with badges reading “Get lost you little jerk!”, the now infamous comment made by Sarkozy to a protestor at an agriculture show, much in evidence.

“There are more and more workers who feel they are not responsible for this crisis but that they are the main victims of it,” said Bernard Thibault, head of the CGT, one of the eight trade unions organising the strikes. More than 2 million people are out of work in France and despite an easing in inflation, even many with a job struggle with the high cost of living. A large public sector payroll and a relatively generous welfare state has kept French people better protected than many in other countries but there has been deep public anger at plant closures and stories of corporate excess.

Sarkozy, elected in 2007 on a pledge to shake up the French economy, has seen his approval ratings plunge as he has poured billions into bailing out banks and carmakers but rejected union demands for higher pay and tax hikes for the rich.

“People are in the streets and they are suffering, there are more and more people out of work and something has to be done,” said Sylvie Daenenck, marching in Paris. “We shouldn’t just be giving money to the bosses.”

Sarkozy’s room for manoeuvre has been limited by the dire state of French public finances, which have been drastically strained by the need to prop up the fragile financial sector. But a series of disputes, ranging from strikes by university staff to unruly protests by workers at a tyre plant in northern France, have underlined a worsening climate of discontent that the government fears could escalate.

Workers at the Continental tyre factory pelted managers with eggs at the protest this week and the government and business leaders have been acutely aware of the danger of unrest spilling over into the kind of violence seen in the urban riots of 2005.

Transport, energy and some government offices were all affected and unions said there was also strong participation by workers from the private sector, although there was no general shutdown of the economy. Most businesses and public services functioned at close to normal levels.

The unions have presented a long list of demands, including a boost for the lower salaried, more measures to protect employment, a tax hike for high earners and a halt to job cuts planned in the public sector. The government has introduced a 26 billion euro ($36 billion) stimulus plan aimed at business investment, and after the Jan. 29 strike Sarkozy offered 2.65 billion euros of additional aid to help vulnerable households weather the storm.

But there is little prospect of an improvement in the situation, with many analysts predicting the economy will contract by 2 percent this year and unemployment will jump 25 percent to almost 10 percent.

***
Police warn of G20 protest scale in London

Known activists are planning in an “unprecedented” way ahead of next month’s G20 summit in London, the Metropolitan Police have warned.

Cdr Bob Broadhurst, in charge of the policing operation, said anarchists and environmentalists were plotting a series of demonstrations. Groups active in the late 1990s were re-emerging and forming new alliances to protest at the meeting, he said.

The operation will involve thousands of officers and cost an estimated £7.2m. World leaders, including US President Barack Obama, will begin to arrive in the UK on 31 March. The next day campaigners are expected to target the City of London in a series of anti-globalisation and climate change demonstrations.

As the G20 summit begins on 2 April, protests are also planned at the Excel conference centre in Docklands. The G20 countries are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the US and the EU.

Cdr Broadhurst said officers from six forces would be involved in a massive security operation before and during the summit. However, it was difficult to estimate how many protesters would actually turn up on the main day of activity on 1 April.

“Clearly there are some very innovative and clever people and they know our tactics,” Cdr Broadhurst said. “They want to stop the City on the Wednesday – that is their avowed intention.”

He said it was his aim to “facilitate lawful protest” and he revealed plans for a special demonstration pen near the Excel Centre to accommodate a few hundred protesters. But while police had worked closely with some campaigners, the plans of other groups were harder to ascertain. “Anarchists by definition won’t come and see us,” he said.

He said there was no intelligence to suggest there was a terrorist attack planned, but there was evidence that groups not seen since the 1990s, such as direct action exponents Reclaim the Streets and the Wombles, were re-forming and planning activity. Students were also involved in larger numbers than before, he said, and there was some evidence that foreign activists were heading to the UK to take part in the protests. Police are expecting activists to block streets and hold demonstrations heading in several directions at once.

Met Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson admitted policing the summit and protecting the 20 world leaders and 40 delegations was a “huge challenge”.

A history of violent protest at world summits

Violent protests at the World Trade Organisation meeting in Seattle in 1999 caught everyone by surprise. Tens of thousands of anti-globalisation protesters descended on the city, overwhelming an unprepared police force.

The National Guard was brought in to restore order and the mayor imposed a curfew. The summit ended with hundreds under arrest and numerous symbols of American corporate power — McDonald’s restaurants, Starbucks coffee shops and Gap stores — in ruins.

Activists opposed to unfettered free-trade “neoliberalism” besieged all manner of economic summits over the next few years. Meetings of the World Economic Forum in Davos, the IMF and World Bank in Prague and the Summit of the Americas were all targeted.

In 2001, about 400 were arrested during the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City that April. At an EU summit in Gothenburg in June, three activists were shot and injured as hundreds of protesters rampaged through the streets.
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Then, in July 2001, an anti-globalisation activist was shot dead during the G8 summit in Genoa after days of battles between protesters and police. Hundreds were arrested, dozens were treated in hospital and allegations of police brutality flew.

From then on the trend was towards remote, isolated summit venues that protesters would struggle to reach, and where anarchists would find few things to smash. In 2002, the G8 met in Kananaskis, a remote Canadian ski resort. Checkpoints were in place to hold back any undesirables long before they got anywhere near the meeting. It passed off smoothly.

After renewed clashes in Evian in 2003, the security effort was stepped up again in 2004. That year, the G8 summit was held on an island 80 miles off the coast of the US state of Georgia. Even then, the American authorities took no chances. Sea Island was sealed off by land and sea. Surface-to-air missiles were in place along the coast to enforce a no-fly zone. Catering staff allowed on to the island had to undergo rigorous background checks. Coastal towns nearby were swept by secret service agents with metal detectors and sniffer dogs. Locals said the area had turned into an “armed camp”. There was no trouble.

Although some of the violent fervour seemed to have gone out of the anti-globalisation movement in recent years, the authorities could not relax. In Gleneagles in 2005 — again the G8 was held far from major population centres — 91 people were arrested and weapons seized as protesters tried to reach the venue. Two years ago in Heiligendamm, Germany, almost 1,000 people were injured, including 146 police, during street fighting.

http://www.g-20meltdown.org

Come to London’s biggest ever street party!

On Financial Fools Day, The City of London will form the backdrop for the biggest mobilisation of the people since more than a million marched against the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. Thousands and tens of thousands
are expected to take to the streets to coincide with the G20 summit of world leaders who are flying into London. The same bastards who got us into this mess are trying to pull the biggest April Fools trick in history – to pretend that the global economic meltdown can be fixed and they are the ones best qualified to do the fixing. To get away with this effrontery, these bankers will do all they can to mask themselves with the charisma of Barack Obama, due to arrive here that morning. We’re not fooled.

We have global economic and environmental meltdown. We have home repossessions and unemployment spiraling out of control. We have unjust wars. And for what? Presidents and premiers are plotting to shore up the tottering capitalist system to ensure business as usual and wealth creation for the few, at the expense of the many. That’s why a lot of angry people, hardworking taxpayers, activists, pensioners, the unemployed, people who’ve lost their homes and savings, small business and shop workers, and all manner of victims of the economic collapse are joining forces in new and powerful coalitions to express their rage. On Financial Fool’s Day, we will take our protest to the belly of the beast: the Bank of England in London’s financial square mile.

April Fools Day is hereby declared a public holiday!

On 1st April at 11 a.m. parades will join up at four railway stations around the edge of the square mile – Liverpool St, London Bridge, Cannon St and Moorgate – and snake their way though the City to converge at the Bank of England for 12 noon.

Each procession will be headed by one of the Four Horsefolk of the Apocalypse, commanding their forces against:
1) Climate chaos (Green horse, Liverpool St); 2) War (Red horse, Moorgate); 3) Job/savings/pensions losses (Silver horse, London Bridge); and 4) Home repossessions (Black horse, Cannon Street).

G20 Meltdown calls for as many people as possible to join us for Banquet at the Bank, bring food, fun and games to share – a very rare delicacy will be served, bankers brains! If you want to Eat the Bankers join the Silver horse in a zombie block!

The Trial of Capitalism, for crimes against the planet – send’em to the gallows, politicians, war criminals and bankers hanging from every lamppost! If you want to press the charges for war crimes join the Red horse!

The Rainforest arrives in the City, Giant anacondas up the pillars, macaws shitting on the statues, polar bears on melting icebergs. Join the Green horse in animal mask or bring greenery for gorilla invasion of the urban jungle!

The World Turns Full Circle, The 360th anniversary of the Diggers, English Revolutionaries for the Earth, a ‘Common Treasury for All’. Join the Black horse with diggers’ spades to celebrate!

Can we overthrow this corrupt and despised government? Yes, we can! Can we live sustainably and avert climate chaos? Yes, we can! Can we defy the database police state and restore our ancient freedoms? Yes, we can! Can we
make capitalism history? Yes, we can!

http://graveyard.at

by Geraint Jones
Sunday March 1, 2009

Top secret contingency plans have been drawn up to counter the threat posed by a “summer of discontent” in Britain. The “double-whammy” of the worst economic crisis in living memory and a motley crew of political extremists determined to stir up civil disorder has led to the ­extraordinary step of the Army being put on ­standby. MI5 and Special Branch are targeting activists they fear could inflame anger over job losses and payouts to failed bankers.

One of the most notorious anarchist websites, Class War, asks: “How to keep warm ­during the credit crunch? Burn a banker.” Such remarks have rung alarm bells in Scotland Yard and the Ministry of Defence.

Intelligence sources said the police, backed by MI5, are determined to stay on top of a situation that could spiral out of control as the recession bites deep. The chilling prospect of soldiers being drafted on to the streets has not been discounted, although it is regarded as a last resort.

What worries emergency planners most is that the middle classes, now struggling to cope with unemployment and repossessions, may take to the streets with the disenfranchised. The source said “this potent cocktail is reminiscent of the poll tax riots which fatally wounded Margaret Thatcher’s government in 1990”.

Last night Scotland Yard vowed it was ready to face any threat. A source said: “We do have a policing plan in place and we have riot police officers trained for such measures.” But other senior police leaders fear the force will be unable to cope. Were that to be the case, the ­Government has a contingency plan to deploy troops on the streets of Britain’s major cities. A senior source said: “This is a very real, and very serious, problem. “I can tell you there have been crisis talks in Whitehall about this.  “Half the senior officers in Britain have been warning the Home Secretary about the dangerous effects that reducing police manpower may have this summer, especially in the industrial heartlands. “We are not just talking about the problems of immigration and British jobs for British worker. We are also talking about mass unemployment.

“In many of our industrial cities, this will not be measured in the hundreds, but in the thousands. With unemployment, comes the risk of increased crime. Some forces, such as South Wales, have publicly ­stated they would be swamped. “Others are keeping it quiet, but you can be sure they are trying to make the Home Secretary listen, ­before it’s too late.”

The “protest season” is due to ­begin on April 1 with the G20 Summit in London next month, followed by the 60th anniversary of Nato in Strasbourg a few days later. May Day is also ­potentially a flashpoint.

Ministers cannot afford to allow ­latent public anger at Government policy to get out of hand if they are to maintain credibility through what promises to be ­Gordon Brown’s most testing period as Prime Minister.

The Stop the War coalition, orchestrating the G20 protest, said: “The first week of April could be a week of world leaders will never forget.”

The British authorities want to avoid a repeat of the rioting that scarred British cities in the 1980s Then, as now, the country was in recession with rising unemployment and deep public hostility to perceived social divisions.

Today that anger is focused on the banks, with their bonus culture surviving despite billions being paid in taxpayer bail-outs. This has fomented in the outrage over news that senior executives will be rewarded for their failure. Sir Fred Goodwin, former boss of RBS, has refused to hand back his £693,000-a-year-pension even as the ailing bank announced a £24billion loss last year, the single largest loss in British corporate history.

Early warnings of trouble ahead came from the furore over last months “British jobs for British workers” protest and wildcat strikes across the country. This week Britain’s most senior police officer warned that the summer could bring a wave of protests orchestrated by extremists in which ordinary people, fired by their own anger and fear at the economic downturn – became “foot soldiers”.

Superintendent David Hartshorn, who heads the Met’s public order branch, identified the G20 as the possible start of a “summer of rage”.

Murray Benham, head of campaigns at the UK-based World Development Movement, accused Supt Hartshorn of “scaremongering”. “Scaremongering from the police will not stop us because the price for failing is too high. “People are understandably angry about the impact of the economic crisis on their jobs, savings and plans for the future.”

Additional reporting by James Fielding

More than 150 representatives of trade unions, farmers’ movements, global justice groups, environmental groups, development groups, migrants’ groups, faith-based groups, women’s groups, the have-not movements, student and youth groups, and anti-poverty groups from all over Europe gathered on the 10th and 11th of January 2009 in Paris to analyse collectively the current crises, to develop joint strategies and to discuss joint demands and alternatives in response to these crises. As the financial and the economic crises intensify, millions of women and men are losing their jobs, houses and livelihoods. Tens of millions more are forecast to join the 1.4 billion people already living in extreme poverty. The crises worsen the social, ecological, cultural and political situation of the majority of people on our planet. Despite the evident and foreseeable failure of the current economic model, world leaders are responding by trying to preserve the system that is responsible for the crises.

Governments have been quick to bail out bankers, corporate shareholders and their financial backers with hundreds of billions in public money. To solve the problem, they put into place bankers and heads of corporations: the same actors that created the crises. The workers, the jobless, the poor ? all those affected have received no help in their daily struggle to make ends meet, and to cap it all, they are now supposed to pay the bill.

Governments’ proposals to deal with the unfolding economic crisis do not address the other dimensions of the crisis we face today — global justice, food, climate and energy — and with it the need to transform the economic system towards one that allows us to satisfy the basic needs of all people, to implement all human rights and to restore and preserve the ecological basis of life on our planet.

It is time for change!

We can build a system that works for people and the environment, a system to serve the needs of the many, a system based on the principles of public benefit, global equity, justice, environmental sustainability and democratic control. As a first step, immediate measures must be implemented to address the social impacts on people, whilst supporting the ecological conversion of the economy.

We call upon all social movements in Europe to engage in a process of change. To start with, we call upon movements ;

- to engage in the mass mobilisation for the central demonstration in London on the 28th of March 2009 ahead of the G20 meeting, or to take to the streets in their own countries that same day to make their voices heard. 20 governments cannot decide on the future of the global financial system and economy.

- to undertake a day of action in the week of the G20 meeting, preferably on the 1st of April (FinancialFools’ Day) all across the world, exposing unaccountable financial power and promoting democratic control of finance.

This meeting is a further step in a long?term process of building spaces for European networks to meet. Recognising and drawing on previous and future mobilisations of social movements and civil society organizations in Europe and all over the world, it builds on ongoing efforts developed at the European Social Forum and elsewhere, aimed at realising a democratic and socially and environmentally sustainable
Europe. We commit to intensify cooperation and communication among our networks and organisations with the aim of building capacity for sustained mobilisation and the development of joint alternatives. We are committed to supporting and encouraging all people to have their voices heard in reshaping their societies.

We will meet again on the 18th and 19th of April 2009 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, in order to develop the next steps of mobilisation and strategies towards change. We call upon all social movements and social organisations to join this process.