The pandemic we are mired in precarize everyone and highlights serious injustices. The stimulus wished by the leaders is an economic stimulus which is not addressed to us. It is not addressed to the artists and other people who don’t make enough profit to merit the right to exist. It does not concern sex workers, whose existence itself is still criminalized. This stimulus ignores handicapped people, the marginalized, those with mental health issues. The stimulus they talk about, it is for the oil companies, the Bombardier corporations, the party friends like Guzzo, but it is not for us. To let the governments save us from the crisis they created themselves through the constant cuts to healthcare and through their "snowbird" lives, would be to accept death. What we need to stimulate is not the economy, but the struggles for our rights and the end of capitalist exploitation.
In these times of pandemic, capital kills more than ever. Workers are left without equipment in hospitals. Confinement falls upon us because our government did too little, too late. Rich landlords who brought the virus back from their latest trip are angered by a rent strike that their penniless tenants have no other choice but to partake in. The people dying right now are among the most vulnerable, from grocery store clerks, to delivery workers, prisoners, homeless folks, and undocumented migrants. All of this while the most fortunate get to work from home. Nevertheless, social distancing remains an important way to reduce transmission, and this is why WE WILL NOT MEET PHYSICALLY FOR A MAYDAY PROTEST. We will however try to make resistance as visible as possible, given the difficult context.
May 1st was created out of workers' struggles leaded by immigrants. The struggle took place on this continent more than a hundred years ago. Today, globalized imperialist capitalism created conditions which forces millions of people to leave their home in order to find a refuge to survive. These millions of people are place in situations of extreme vulnerability, creating a stateless and exploitable population. According to an article published in the Devoir today, the risk to suffer from workplace accident causing severe wounds or death is twice as high for foreign workers.
The screening will be followed by a panel discussion about work with the following speakers:
Now as before, they are rich because we are poor.
The financial masters of the Western world and seven of their political puppets will meet later this year at la Malbaie. They will fight to continue the exploitation of the global South and the pillaging of natural resources. The G7 will be a magnificient circus, paid for by our own exploitation. Paid by those who break themselves at work, by cut to social services, to education, to healthcare, to human dignity. A circus which will encourage free work given by unpaid internship, which will support the staggering profits of real estate moguls forcing us outside our homes. A circus whose sole goal is to promote an immoral statu quo. Imperialism and colonialism will be celebrated, at the expense of those who produce most of the world's wealth. But it is not too late to fight back.
Punto de encuentro : 1ero Mayo 2017 a las 6hpm al Carré Phillips (métro McGill)
Montreal, 29 de avril 2017 – La Convergencia de las luchas anticapitalistas (CLAC-Montréal), organiza su décima marcha anticapitalista del 1ero de Mayo.
Precarity as a term has come to the front of popular discussions in recent years. The most recent report by the major Canadian bank Toronto Dominion claims that part-time and temporary work is our new reality1. Yet precarity has actually always been the reality of work under capitalism since its beginning. Even in industries that people see as providing permanent or stable work, this stability is only a result of a long history of struggle by workers.
Because, for the first time ever, the World Social Forum takes place in North America. This is an historic opportunity to see another side of modern capitalism: instead of seeing the poverty and exploitation of the Southern states, the attendees will be able to observe the wealth and decadence of the North.
The following excerpts are from an interview with Marcia, an undocumented woman who has been living and working in Montreal for the past 35 years. [The interview was aired on No One Is Illegal Radio (CKUT 90.3 FM in Montreal), on November 5, 2015.]
The following text is taken from an article published by Solidarity Across Borders in the Spring of 2015. The full article can be found online here.
Starting points:
THIS YEAR AGAIN, THIS IS A CALL FOR ECONOMIC DISTURBANCE IN DOWNTOWN MONTREAL, NAMED BY THE BOURGEOIS THEMSELVES AS THE NEW "GOLDEN SQUARE MILE", ESPECIALLY THE PERIMETER FORMED BY THE SHERBROOKE, RENÉ-LÉVESQUE, PEEL AND UNION STREETS.
Appel à un contingent anticapitaliste dans la manifestation unitaire contre l'austérité et pour une meilleure redistribution de la richesse, organisée par la Coalition Main rouge
28 novembre 13h
Rendez-vous du contingent : au coin des rues Villeray et St-Laurent – Parc Jarry