IRSCNA: May Day 2011 Statement

international | worker & community struggles and protests | press release Saturday April 30, 2011 22:15 by IRSCNA irscna at irsm dot org

A statement of solidarity for May Day from the IRSCNA.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

1 May 2011
Irish Republican Socialist Committees of North America

May Day 2011 Statement

The Irish Republican Socialist Committees of North America send
solidarity greetings to our fellow workers and comrades in the class
struggle around the world on the working class holiday of May Day,
also known as International Workers' Day. We salute and share in your
fight against oppression, exploitation, and imperialism. The struggle
of any group of workers is the struggle of all workers.

As the North American section of the Irish Republican Socialist
Movement, we extend our greetings to our comrades and fellow members
of the IRSM in the Irish Republican Socialist Party, Irish National
Liberation Army, Republican Socialist Youth Movement, and Teach na
Failte, along with all republican socialist prisoners of war in Irish
and British prisons. Our commitment to the struggle for national and
working class liberation in Ireland, and working class liberation
worldwide, is unbroken.

Capitalism remains in the midst of its deepest crisis in decades.
Millions of workers have lost their jobs, while millions more live in
fear of losing theirs. The bosses use this crisis as an excuse to
roll back wages and benefits, while their lackeys in government use
it as an excuse to make deep cuts to social services and attack
organized labor. These are acts of war against the working class, and
the working class must respond in kind.

Until recently, the only noteworthy instances of mass working class
resistance in the United States emerged amongst layers of the
hyper-exploited immigrant working class, but unionized workers in
Wisconsin and Michigan joined the resistance this year, as their
rights to organize and collectively bargain were assaulted by
reactionary politicians

We urge all American workers to join the struggle, and to refuse to
be divided by the bosses and the promises of the bosses' hired
politicians, no matter what political party they belong to. The
IRSCNA will continue to actively support all working class struggles,
including immigrant and amnesty movements. Indeed, any other position
for Irish-Americans and supporters of Irish republicanism would be
hypocritical. The IRSCNA will always be found on the front lines of
the class struggle, as our members were during the Battle of Seattle
in 1999 or in Wisconsin and Michigan in 2011.

Fellow workers, we must begin organizing, educating, and agitating
for fundamental changes to how our class-based society is organized.
The solution lies in our hands, and our hands alone. We can and must
follow the path of revolution until we achieve a sustainable socialist
economy that meets the needs of our species and the planet we share.

There must be no war but the class war, until the class war has been
won by us and the class system has been abolished. We must reject
both increasingly para-fascist conservatism and liberal reformism in
favor of the freedom, equality, and fraternity that only socialism can
provide.

In Ireland, conditions are growing for a republican socialist
alternative to fill the void in revolutionary politics. It is obvious
that neither the Good Friday Agreement nor any other imperialist
brokered settlement can resolve the fundamental contradictions at the
heart of Irish society. Only a socialist Ireland with full
self-determination can do that, and a socialist Ireland can only
thrive if capitalism is defeated on a wider scale.

On May 5th, voters in the North of Ireland go to the polls for
council elections. For the first time in three decades, five IRSP
candidates in Belfast, Derry, and Strabane are on the ballot offering
a republican socialist alternative. We urge working class voters to
cast their votes for that alternative.

Elsewhere this year, we have seen heroic resistance by the peoples of
Egypt and Tunisia, as imperialist backed dictatorships were faced
down. We take inspiration from these events, and we can envision a
world where one imperialist client state after another falls, and
where imperialism itself falls to the combined efforts of the global
working class. This is a vision that's anathema to imperialists,
conservatives and reformists alike.

On behalf of the Irish Republican Socialist Movement, we also extend
solidarity greetings to our allies and comrades in the following
organizations: All-African People's Revolutionary Party, Communist
Party of Cuba, Freedom Socialist Party, Industrial Workers of the
World, Party for Socialism and Liberation, Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine, Radical Women, Revolutionary Communist
Group, Scottish Republican Socialist Movement, Seattle
Anti-Imperialist Committee, Union del Barrio, United Socialist Party
of Venezuela, and all others who are struggling to liberate the
working class from the shackles of capitalism and imperialism. Our
only allegiance is to the working class.

As the great Irish revolutionary James Connolly said, "The great only
appear great because we are on our knees, let us arise!"

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Irish Republican Socialist Committees of North America
PO Box 5174
Champaign IL 61825
USA
irscna@irsm.org
http://www.irscna.org/
http://www.irsp.ie/irscna.html