The Workers' Papers (sunday may 1 edition) Mayday Mayday

international | worker & community struggles and protests | opinion/analysis

Sunday May 01, 2005 12:36

by my name, my number, my tax record, my CV, my exams, my certs - my papers, my life is not yours to have, buy or sell.

IT HAS LONG BEEN OBSERVED!

It has long been observed that on their non-banking days, those with considerably more capital, credit and resources than average allow those whose labour and effort maintain's that status quo "a day off" to watch TV, water their plants, spend money and read shite.

Today is our day. Not because we have cancer of the prostrate or breast, or are women or literate, or are remembering the end of a war and some victory, or the liberation of a camp or some famine-

This is Our Day because we are still in struggle.

it has long been observed

This is our day, to revindicate, reclaim, re-assert, demand our rights as workers regardless of socio-economic, national, ethnic, class or gender origin.

This is our day to say,
we and we alone tend the vineyard and garden.
We live shorter lives,
we receive poorer education,
we struggle under the yoke of mediocrity which the emergent ruling classes of the last generations have set upon us.

We don't need explanations or lies today.
We don't need leaders in sealed train carriages sent our way, we just need to go to the street and look @ each other.

We know that the value given to work in most areas of essential human endevour is a fraction of that awarded to work in manipulation and lies.

We know that we are created equally, born equally, yet everywhere are subject to exploitation, divided amongst ourselves by those who seek to perpetuate a system which is evil, and has brought no lasting true benefit to the human species of those other species with which we share the garden.

We build your pyramids.
We clean your homes.
We are the barristas that serve your table.
We are prisoners in your cells.
We are the consumers of your psychopharmacia
We are your brothers and sisters that you endlessly treat to offer "solution" upon "solution".
We are your scapegoats.
We are your children.
We are your nemesis.

Reclaim MayDay!

Maybe, others will join me someday, as I join them in the rejection of a global system based on the exploitation of others, of their labour, of their ideas, of their creativity, of their worth, to no further use than the creation of wealth for a tiny minority.

Maybe, some day, we are going to realise, that we are neither "working" or "middle" class, neither "native" or "migrant" but brothers & sisters in humanity.

Maybe some day, we are going to realise, that we need neither Leaders nor Clerics to spell out the most basic ethical and moral statement.

We are not numbers.
We are not digital.

.:.* We were not placed in this life to consume endlessly, we were not placed in this life to produce for faceless corporations, raw materials, R&D, advertising, lie and after lie.
.:.* We were not given this garden to sign the faustian pax, that besmirches every peace with blood.
.:.* We were not given the earth, or water, or air to trade them.
.:.* We were not given human genius to make comfortable and longer the fantastical lives of a tiny minority.

& this is our day.
& so too is tomorrow.
& the next.
This is our century.
And they, the ruling classes of the corporations and their supine puppets in national states will find in their control, no means of identifying the next dishwasher, or labourer, or slave who will bring them down, for we are in every corner of thier system, our soldiers fight their wars, our mathematicians write their code, our artists provide their advertising, our writers their speeches, our union members their services.

We demand:-
* an end to the control of the global economies by the multi-national-corporations.
.:. an end to the wholescale rape of the planet's resources by the multi-national-corporations.
* an end to the wanton perversion of the talent of youth in the richer parts of this planet by an educational system that places them in updated feudal-vassaldom to those very same multi-national-corporations thus ensuring a life of implicit wrong.
.:. a global social wage.
* a global provision of basic medical care and vaccines.
.:. a global right to work and representation of workers.
* an end to the corporations of slavery, that in the name of "human resources" and the "labour market" have undermined the need to write a CV.
.:. an end to the system of economic inequality that keeps billions of living people outside the fortresses of the EU and NAFTA yet takes their resources.
* an end to the system of social organisation that from the first moments, conditions us to compliance with the logos on the street of the corporations, to salute their values of competition and ownership.
.:. an end to the system of patents on ideas, and life which are the sorry legacy of Edison and Ford.

sin é. No ethical preachering this sunday, no Pope, no psalms, just an old song with new music. And ye all have the songsheet.