MAY 2020 INTERNATIONAL RALLY Three Hours for the Workers’ International
Taking into account the confinement measures,
this rally has been posted “online”
To attend the rally in English and live:
Log on, from a computer or a smartphone, to this IWC website, coi-iwc.org , on Friday, May 1st.
• At 9:00 a.m. in Mumbai and all over India, and 9:30 a.m. in Dhaka • A 8:00 a.m. in Kabul, 8:30 a.m. in Islamabad, 11:30 a.m. in Beijing, Manila and Irkutsk • At 12:30 p.m. in Seoul and Tokyo, 1:30 p.m. in Sydney.
To attend the rally in English, French and Spanish:
To attend, in one of these three languages, log on to the IWC website, coi-iwc.org, on Friday May 1st.
• At 9:00 a.m. on Friday, May 1st, on the West Coast of the United States • At 11:00 a.m. in Mexico City, Lima • At noon in Port-au-Prince, New York, Montreal, Santiago de Chile • At 1 p.m. in Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo • At 4 p.m. in Rabat, Dakar, Ouagadougou • At 5 p.m. in London, Dublin, Lisbon, Algiers, Tunis and Cotonou • At 6 p.m. in Paris, Berlin, Brussels, Rome, Geneva and Budapest. • At 7 p.m. in Bucharest, Athens, Istanbul, Moscow, Ramallah.
1 May, Workers’ international day of struggle
It is workers, youth, mankind that must be saved!
Not the banks and capitalists!
1 May 2020
International Rally
Three hours for the Workers’ International
Mankind is neck-deep in an unprecedented crisis.
It is not Covid-19 that causes death, it is political agendas! Each and every capitalist government worldwide is responsible for the political agenda that has privatised and destroyed healthcare systems, scientific research and social protection systems! Those governments have to answer for the 100 000 plus deaths and counting, and for the impending catastrophe threatening mankind.
They are responsible for the tragic conditions in which they have organised the confinement of people as well as their denying the same confinement to those whom they force to work without any protection so capitalist profits can be assured while “confined” workers and their families, especially those of the “informal sector”, are today facing the threat of starvation as well as of the virus.
The ravages caused by the epidemic combines with the consequences of the crisis of the capitalist system: tens of million jobs have been destroyed within a few weeks and many others are slated for the coming days, which will throw workers and their families into precariousness and extreme poverty.
But all the capitalist governments could not care less! For them, there is one single emergency: to “save the economy”, meaning banks and big capitalist business. The “bail-out” plans which have been announced break every record set by those of 2008. It is fact that many of those plans have been adopted with the blessing of parties claiming they speak on behalf of the working class.
During the crisis, while hospitals are working on a shoe-string and while millions of “confined” people are going without food, the military business is still flourishing and the US administration is using the situation to tighten its stranglehold on Iran, Venezuela and Palestine.
And that is not the end: each and every capitalist government is making use of the crisis to worsen its attacks on workers’ gains and democratic liberties.
All the workers’ gains are targeted by governments!
In India, the Modi government – which for months has been trying through its discriminatory laws to sow division in the population on religious basis – has announced that it plans to institute the 12-hour working-day, which destroys the 1948 Factory Act setting it at 8 hours.
In France, the Macron government – whose retirement pension reform caused the most powerful worker strike in 25 years – recently instituted the possibility to extend the work-week to 60 hours in some given sectors, through a presidential decree.
Similar attacks are recorded in every country. They want to bring us 100 years back in history!
But workers do not accept because they want to live and survive. To the demand that they work at their own vital risks, workers have responded by waves of strikes from the United States to Italy and Bangladesh.
For workers, there is no option than to refuse all the appeals to “national unity” between exploited and exploiters!
1 May, stands as the fight for the 8-hour work-day and workers’ rights!
The International Workers’ Committee Against War and Exploitation, for the Workers’ International, launches and appeal to workers, youth, activists of every tendency of the working-class movement.
1 May, is the international day of workers’ struggle!
1 May, is the fight against war and exploitation, for the workers’ International!
1 May was, at its origin, the fight to impose the 8-hour work-day that now, governments and bosses want to take back from us.
On this 1st of May 2020, the International Workers’ Committee Against War and Exploitation, for the Workers’ International is organising an
International rally
Three hours for the Workers’ International
“It is workers, youth, mankind that must be saved!
Not the banks and capitalists!”
On that day, from New York to Mumbai, from Gaza, to Paris, From Johannesburg to Beijing, From Moscow to Santiago of Chile, despite the epidemics and the blows that are showered on workers, despite confinement measures, we will regroup under the same banner, for the same cause:
- Requisition of the billions of the banks and capitalists to save the sick and the hospitals!
- Requisition of the billions of war to give each and every one food and shelter.
- Requisition of all the “bank bail-out plans” for workers and their families!
- Unity of workers against the anti-worker measures of governments which use of the crisis for their own objectives!
- The eight-hour working-day and every working-class and democratic gain must be preserved!
Daniel Gluckstein, Nambiath Vasudevan,
Coordinators of the IWC