STRIKE! For Our Lives and Our Future
Ecosocialist Horizons is honored to answer this historic call from Cooperation Jackson.
People’s Strike: Fighting for Our Lives, Forging Our Future
Take Action Friday May 1st, 2020 – May Day
Contact Us
Email: mayday2020generalstrike@gmail.com
Facebook: @PeoplesStrike
Twitter: @PeoplesStrike
The COVID-19 pandemic has starkly revealed the inequalities and injustices that daily plague the world.
The triple crisis of viral plague, systemic economic breakdown, and the failure and/or unwillingness of Governments to provide necessary protections, especially for the poor and people subjected to white supremacy, ethnocentrism, xenophobia, and mysogyny has thrown us into a fight for our lives.
The “Free Markets” that right-wing political figures like Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Jair Bolsonaro and others are seeking to protect and rely upon to address the COVID-10 pandemic will continue to produce chaos and needless suffering for millions of people. The economic nationalism and imperial rivalry we see on full display in the midst of this pandemic magnify the threat of war.
In the U.S. we are fed a steady stream of lies and authoritarian posturing. From Palestine to South Africa to Brazil to the U.S. and beyond, ooppressive regimes are actively sacrificing vulnerable peoples and communities and treating frontline workers as uttlerly disposable.
We say ENOUGH! It is time to stand up! It’s Time To Strike Back – For Our Lives and Our Futures!
In March and April we witnessed people throughout the U.S. and the World taking direct action in defense of their lives. We saw wildcat strikes, work stoppages, sick outs, protests, plant conversions, occupations, and worker takeovers at workplaces. We saw prisoner strikes and immigrant strikes. We saw rent strikes and housing occupations. We saw caravan demonstrations and physical distancing protests. Everywhere people are in motion, fighting back against the forces of reaction and irrationality that are trying to sustain a system that puts profits over people.
In order to avoid the needless deaths of millions of people and keep corporations and authoritarian governments from stealing our collective future working and oppressed peoples need to stand together in solidarity, mutual aid, cooperation and joint action. Together we can build a new world, a better world, a world that puts people and the planet over profits.
Collective Action is the Key. Determined mass, non-violent direct action conducted in a coordinated campaign can transform the institutions of governance and upend the power of the banks and the multi-national corporations to address the immediate needs of workers and peoples throughout the world.
Join us in initiating this mass action on Friday, May 1st, 2020. We are encouraging everyone through the U.S. and the world to join us in engaging #NoWork #NoShopping #NoRent #NoMortgage #NoEviction #NoDebt #NoSchool #NoPrison #NoDetention actions. Let’s send Trump and Wall Street a clear message: #WeWontDieForWallSt #PeopleAndPlanetOverProfits
Our Demands
Protect All Frontline Workers in the Hospitals, the Supply Chains, and the Farms and Fields to ensure that they have all of the equipment and disinfectant materials that they need to keep themselves and the general public healthy
No return to work or end to Physical Distancing until health experts determine it is safe.
Protect Vulnerable Communities, particularly Indigenous, Black, Latino, and Asian communities, the homeless, migrants, refugees, and battered women and spouses from discrimination, repression, and physical abuse.
Institute Universal Health Care Now, starting with free COVID-19 testing and treatment for all, and extending to full coverage for all (including abortion), including non-citizens, as a fundamental human right.
Institute Universal Social Services Now, make all fundamental social services, such as access to water, electricity, transportation, and the internet free and universal, as well as childcare, elderly care, and disability access based Economic, Social and Cultural Rights guidelines.
Institute the Human Right to Housing, starting with making all the vacant and uninhabited housing stock available to those who need it now, and preceeding to make land once again a public good rather than a commodity and instituting the democratic and social distribution of housing based on need and ecological limitations.
Bailout the People, Not the Corporations and Wall Street, democratize the Finance, Credit and Insurance Industries and turn them into Public Utilities.
Institute Universal Basic Income Now, starting with the distribution of basic income as a fundamental Human Right to everyone, to address social needs not provided by through the distribution of public goods and services or the provision of earned income.
Release prisoners and Detainees — All people imprisoned for non-violent offenses, political prisoners and refugees / asylum seekers. Abolish the system of mass incarceration.
Close the Detention Centers, Reunite the Families, Stop the Raids and Deportations
Freeze Payments – including rent and utilities; Cancel debt including student loans.
Decarbonize the Economy, End Fossil Fuel and Extractive Industries Now — Institute a Green New Deal based on a program of repairing damanged frontline and fenceline lands and communities, the restoration of Indigenous sovereignty, and the protection and transitioning of workers in petrochemical, nuclear, and extractive industries.
Institute Food Sovereignty Policies and Practices Now, end the industrial food and animal warehousing conditions that stimulate the germination of viruses like COVID-19, contaminate our water supplies, depleat our soils, and institute local food growing policies based on agroecology or permaculture techniques that perserve and expand biodiversity and soil preservation.
Democratize the Means of Production, Convert the Corporations and Workplaces into Cooperatives to institute democracy in our workplaces, eliminate growing income inequality, insure greater equity in society and job security for workers, and enable the production of what we need and distribute equitably according to need.
Close all of the Overseas Military Bases, Cut the Military (Defense) and Spy (Surveillance) Budgets and Redirect these funds to Health Care, Social Services, Universal Basic Income and Greening Public Infrastructure and the Economy.
End the Sanctions, the sanctions imposed on Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela and several nations have crippled their efforts to combat COVID-19 and resulted in the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands of people.
Take Action
Get all of the organizations and groups that we belong to – where we live, work, study, play, and pray – to take action on May Day. We are not limited in what we can do, and what impact we can have. There are a range of things that we can do based on present conditions and actions many have taken thus far in response to how the capitalists, corporations, and politicians have treated and exploited the COVID-19 pandemic.
No Work. Walk out, sick out, sit down. slow down, work to rule (follow all the rules to the letter; safe work or no work), wildcats, occupations. Hold a meeting of your coworkers, hold a moment of silence. Stop work however we can. Wear RED to show solidarity.
Strike in Place. Encourage the hundreds of millions of people who are working from home or are unemployed, in prison, or in a detention center to engage in “No Working, No Shopping, No Compliance” actions. Encourage those who can communicate their support for the day of action on social media or in their local media to do so by sharing their photos, their stories (video or audio), and what demands they support utilizing the common hashtags we will collectively designate.
No Shopping. Don’t shop, in person or online on May Day and throughout the weekend for maximum impact. Prepare and share with your neighbors and loved ones observing the most sound hygenic practices and physical distancing.
Targeted Demonstrations. We have witnessed very creative demonstrations the last several weeks, that demonstrate that folks take collective action and engage in proper social distancing at the same time. These include i) picking designated times to give accolades to frontline workers, ii) protests, roadblocks, and sideshows in vehicles, and iii) old fashioned demonstrations and blockades of offices and various targets like landlords. These are some that recommend that folks organize on May Day to highlight your concerns.
Rent and Mortgage Strikes. Encourage folks to collectively not pay rent to their landlords and target major renter companies, mortgage institutions and banks with phone blitz’s, communications jams, etc. to demand a moratorium on rents and mortgages, no back payments, and no evictions.
Occupation Defense, No Evictions. Many cities have utilized the vacant capacity of hotels to house the homeless and the sick. And homeless individuals and families have taken to occupying vacant homes in places like LA and Oakland in the midst of this crisis. Given the situation millions are now facing due to unemployment and eviction, we have to protect those who are in these homes and facilities and all those who are being threatened from eviction from being unable to make rent.
Target Jams. Taking collective action to flood the lines of the various politicians, CEO’s, shareholders, and corporations we are targeting to meet certain demands, to make our demands known and apply as much pressure as possible.
No Silence. We are not alone. Distance doesn’t mean we can’t fight together. We can’t stay quiet—in the words of fighters of the HIV pandemic, silence=death. We’ve decided to live, loud. In some cities we sing with our neighbors, in others we chant clap and bang pots and pans–connect online #generalstrike2020 #strikeseflie #redfored #mutualaid #5.1.2020 #rentstrike #wedecide #stopshopping #schoolsout #noborders #releasetheprisoners #ourhouse #prepareandshare #noshopping #nowork #norent #noprisons #nosilence #noborders #noschool #landback #closethecamps #solidarityindistance
Our Principles
Unity Without Uniformity: The demands we listed are not complete, nor were they intended to be detailed or totally comprehensive at this point. We tried to represent the broad interests of the multinational, multiracial working class, but the small forces that initiated this call can’t do that. We are encouraging organizations and individuals to support the demands that they can, add what you think needs to be added to suit your positionality and context, and act with as much unity leading up to, on, and beyond May Day.
Mutual Aid: We are asking everyone to provide as much direct material and political support as possible to frontline workers, frontline communities, and those at severe risk in the prisons, detention centers, homeless shelters and at large in our communities.
Protect the Workers, Protect Our Families, Protect Our Communities, Protect Each Other: We are asking organizations and individuals to amplify each other’s needs and actions in this time of crisis and transition to the greatest extent possible with all of the means at our disposal. This calls for supporting the various actions and initiatives being called by all the forces in motion leading up to May 1st in a non-sectarian way, and ask everyone to agitate and build towards May Day as day where we all stand and act in unity to defend themselves, advance a prompt response to the crisis, and create the new institutions and social norms needed to create a society that can adequately address the pandemic at hand, the economic crisis that will follow, and the other crisis that are clearly emerging on our horizon.
