Call for Solidarity with the people of the Canary Islands

international | environment | other press Friday November 26, 2004 18:41 by andrés - Assembly for Tenerife

We call for solidarity with this struggle, especially we address ourselves to social groups and collectives, we request that this support may arrive for the demonstration of the 27th. Please send your expressions of support with the mobilized citizens at yaestabien_asambleaportenerife (AT) yahoo.es, specially of social groups (Workers' Committees, Unions, Voluntary Groups, Youth Organizations...) or as a private individual.

Slainte.

Demonstration Sat 27th November

This call for solidarity is being disseminated amongst all sorts of social collectives in the Spanish State and beyond. If you know some such collective or group anywhere in the world, please send them this.

We call for your solidarity with the people of the Canary Islands.

During the last four decades an economic model fundamentally based on the provision of services and specifically on tourism has been imposed on the Canary Islands, which has resulted in the mass abandonment of primary sectors such as agriculture, livestock farming and fishing. People emigrated to the cities, especially to the main island capitals, Santa Cruz of Tenerife and Las Palmas of Gran Canaria. There has been gradual environmental and social deterioration. In spite of the wealth that is generated in the islands, there are hundreds of thousands of people below the poverty line, an important number of people in unemployment or working precariously. PROGRESS FOR SOME IS MISERY FOR US!

In less than a decade a new tax regime has been imposed by means of which capitalists see themselves all but exempted from the need to contribute taxes to the common Revenue... Taxes which would be contributed by one's peers in other parts of the Spanish State are barely contributed here... instead, one is required to pay a small part to the Revenue; the rest goes into the so-called Canary Islands Investment Reserve (RIC). The RIC ascends at the moment to about three trillion pesetas. This influences directly and indirectly an impulse towards economic activities of a speculative variety. In the Canary Islands a great deal of capital is accumulating in the hands a few through diverse routes, especially this. The process of urbanization, especially in coastal areas but also further inland, together with large infrastructure projects, has made a great impression on the territory.

In order to confront this state of affairs a citizens' platform, the Assembly for Tenerife, has arisen that calls for a social mobilization on Saturday, 27 of November, at 12 noon in the Plaza de la Paz (Peace Square) of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. See www.pueblosybarrios.org and others that you will find in its links section. Within Assembly for Tenerife diverse platforms are working, such as the Platform against the Port of Granadilla, the Coordinator of Towns and Districts of the Metropolitan Area...

Two years ago now (23 November) more than 100,000 people took to the streets to stop the local electricity supply company Unelco-ENDESA and the Canary Islands Regional Government and won the battle... a small town on the island of Tenerife of fewer than two thousand inhabitants, Vilaflor, in whose surrounding woodlands they wanted to impose high tension electrical cables BECAME a SYMBOL. It made its mark in the collective conscience of the island of Tenerife. That battle won, now the cable would go parallel to the highway to the South and with underground sections. The central slogan was "the whole island is Vilaflor". It is what has come to be called the spirit of Vilaflor. The political-business conspiracy has set itself the aim of defeating that spirit of Vilaflor (that correlation of grassroots forces).

An ample social alliance of ecologists, neighbourhood groups, union groups, of organizations of the left, intellectuals... has started up again. This Saturday 27 we will again be out in many thousands.

We have suffered a bestial information boycott on the part of the mainstream media. But alternative press has arisen, with the edition of our own newspaper, distribution of flyers. The most interesting force that has arisen is that of the towns and city districts where local people are overflowing the meetings of their Neighbourhood Associations.

Amongst the demands raised we have:

NO TO THE SPECIAL TERRITORIAL PLAN OF METROPOLITAN AREA HIGHWAYS: CORNICE WAY, OUTER HIGHWAY...
NO TO THE GENERAL URBANIZATION PLAN (PGOU) FOR SANTA CRUZ
NO TO THE PLAN FOR VEGA LAGUNERA
NO TO THE PLANNED NEW INDUSTRIAL PORT OF GRANADILLA
YES TO THE VALLESECO BEACH
YES TO PORT OF SANTA CRUZ
YES TO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
YES TO PUBLIC TRANSPORT
YES TO PUBLIC HEALTH SEVICE
YES TO PUBLIC EDUCATION

In a nutshell, WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH of speculation with the Earth, the future, our health, life itself... with public money, with the unique objective of enriching, not only a few, but THE USUAL SUSPECTS.

CONVOCATON:
WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH! ¡YA ESTÁ BIEN! ASSEMBLY FOR TENERIFE
By COORDINATING BODY OF TOWNS AND DISTRICTS OF TENERIFE

We call for solidarity with this struggle, especially we address ourselves to social groups and collectives, we request that this support may arrive for the demonstration of the 27th. Please send your expressions of support with the mobilized citizens at yaestabien_asambleaportenerife (AT) yahoo.es, specially of social groups (Workers' Committees, Unions, Voluntary Groups, Youth Organizations...) or as a private individual.

Slainte.