Groups from different countries involved in By2020 We Rise Up are issuing a call out to get back to the streets in June:
The public health crisis provoked by the COVID-19 pandemic, which interrupted the usual circulation of people and goods, is unfolding into a severe economic crisis and into a social crisis of unemployment, precarity and poverty, along with the violation of basic rights. The severity of this crisis is reinforced by the current system being designed for profit and based on superfluous consumption, while being characterized by a frailty of the chains of production, exploitation and ultra-financialization.Until now, indicators show that palliative measures such as injecting money into markets, direct support to private companies or monetary support to consumers won’t be enough to get the world’s economy back to where it was before. In the next months, state entities and the public sector will find themselves as the main economic actors in a context of mass unemployment and market collapse.
On the other hand, the reasons used by institutions to justify inaction on the climate crisis, inequalities and social injustices have been proven false with this pandemic. These few months of public health crisis have shown all the options that governments truly have at their disposal.
There is now a real possibility for a radical socio-economic change. Social movements,including the climate justice movement, have now the historical duty to progressively abandon the reactive realm of denunciation for a proactive strategy that challenges all neoliberal assumptions and builds, through social and political struggle, a new society.
Call out
We call on all social and climate movements to come back to the streets in June, observing the necessary precautions to protect others and themselves.
We must take to the streets because millions of people have never been able to stop going out, with enormous personal and family risk, and we will not let these people be put back behind a curtain of disdain and depreciation.
We must take to the streets because the lack of real planning and support for millions of people, in particular for the most fragile, is an even greater threat than the current pandemic, with an increase LGBTQphobia, xenophobia and sexism.
We must take to the streets because we are experiencing many crises, such as the environmental and climate crises, which will trigger other economic, social and health crises, all of which not only have not disappeared, but are worsening.
We must take to the streets because politics and democracy still matter. We have to go back to the streets to defend our role in them, and to contest the absurd directions that are being imposed on us without space for consulting, questioning or debating, as if we had lost the right to intervene in our collective government.
We will not stand by and watch History, we will create our History.
Types of action and support resources
The context, restrictions and timing might be different from region to region. You might have to organize mobilizations/actions in a short time. Hopefully the following resources as well as the narrative guidelines can support your group.
Here is a useful toolkit done by the 3rd wave tactics working group. In it you can find offline tactics designed to be applied by few people or taking into consideration social distance measures, so that any group can easily adapt them to their context.
There is a webinar about safety on offline actions (“Covid proof your actions”) being done by the European Changemakers project on May 28th from 7pm to 8:30pm CEST.
Mobilization guidelines from current mobilization initiatives will be sent soon. You can also join the European calls (see below) to share ideas and calls for support.
Coordinating
This call out is a direct response to the present context and is based on and supported by mobilization initiatives for June coming from Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. It is also an organic result of the strategic discussions on the By2020 European Corona Calls and the strategic meetings of 2020 Rebelión por el clima (the regional sister of the By2020 platform in the Iberian Peninsula).
If your group is already planning offline actions for the end of May or June, let us know and join this call out!
To receive more information, join the conversation on the European calls of By2020WeRiseup, every second week. To get the info for these calls, please send a mail to by2020we@riseup.net, and you’ll be signed up to the info list.
Public information on regional plans:
Portugal: www.resgatarofuturo.pt
Spain: https://2020rebelionporelclima.net/por-que-volver-a-las-calles-cuanto-antes