Date: Fri, 08 Aug 1997 23:59:15 +0200
From: Hobo <hobo-AT-ecn.org>
Subject: AUT: EUROPEAN MEETING IN VENICE


ONE WORLD . . .  MANY WORLDS
EUROPEAN MEETING IN VENICE, 12-13-14 SEPTEMBER 1997
http://www.ecn.org/pad/euro/

This coming 14 September, the "Lega Nord" party has organised celebrations
in Venice intended to sanction the birth in Northern Italy of a new
national State -- Padania.  This is simply the latest episode in a drama
that has seen the build up over the past few months -- within Northern
Italy as a whole, and the North-East in particular -- of a widespread
culture and practice of secessionism. The contents of this political
project, which is able to count upon a mass consensus, clearly include
intolerance and racism. Its objective is the birth of a new
micro-nationalism, based upon "Padanian ethnic identity", upon savage
neo-liberal economic policies, upon the entrenchment of social exclusion
along racial lines. They want a new racist and authoritarian State in
Europe: as if there weren't enough of them already, as if the tragedy of
the peoples of former Yugoslavia had taught us nothing!

"Padanian micro-nationalism" is one of the poisoned fruits thrown up by the
large-scale social and productive changes of the last 25 years, which have
seen the formation of a single world market governed by neo-liberal
policies, as well as the new relation between the "global" and the "local"
attendant upon it. The merciless struggle against that drift into barbarism
and disintegration to which such a situation alludes is a litmus test for
all those subjects committed to seeking out and constructing new paths of
liberation, to a freer and more just world worthy of the women and men who
live in it.

12-13-14 September are the occasion for organising a clearcut challenge, in
open and mass conflict, to every secessionist and racist hypothesis. These
days also offer the occasion to open a space in which a genuine, unstilted
encounter can occur amongst all those social and political experiences in
conflict with the new contradictions of the epoch, amongst all those who
seek to experiment with new paths of political activity, new horizons of
social change.

We invite everyone to join in a broad-ranging discussion aimed at
rethinking antagonistic political action for a new bill of rights, within
the new relationship between "global" and "local".

 For the first time in history the World is really one: events and
situations from the most far off places, and from all sorts of lands,
appear as part of one single big scenario, the world market.
''Globalization'' is advancing with a disruptive and raging power: it
breaks old ties and roots, it overthrows and upsets both lifestyles and
models of production, reproduction and consumption; it reshapes
territories, creates new frontiers and discriminations. It builds new
hierarchies, privileges, and injustices in every corner of the globe:
nothing can escape from this powerful machine, which is as forceful as
original accumulation. Globalization takes place under the banner of
capitalism, the market and ''the violence of money'': any alternative seems
to have disappeared from the scenario of history. Together, ''the unique
thought'' of the global market, this new totalitarian monster, and man's
exploitation of man, seem an inescapable destiny, almost a natural law.
''History is over...!'', chorus some sad apologists of the New World Order.
No, on the contrary, we don't believe that history is over.

There is always a possibility, an alternative, an utopia, a hope: one must
be able to keep up with one's own time! Today it is right, possible, and
necessary to rebel against the neo-liberal order, against the globalization
of exploitation and oppression -- starting from our own territory, from the
places where we live and struggle. From our neighbourhoods, towns, and
countries... in the indissoluble tie between ''local'' and ''global'', as
we have learned in the language of liberation spoken from the Chiapas
experience of the Zapatistas.

Neo-liberalism, despotism and absolutism: let's fight them once again, for
freedom. Within the profound and irreversible crisis of the nation State
and welfare State, neo-liberal globalization and the capitalist market
domination can be attacked only at this level of the contradiction. We need
to create new forms of political action beyond the borders of
''nationality'', in order to break definitively with the political and
organisational forms which have crystallised at a national level; to fuse
immediately local, territorially-grounded political action with the global
dimension; to overcome entirely the party-form and every centralised
approach. We need to create relations, projects, and initiatives of
struggle and co-operation between different subjects and  places; to
prefigure, wherever possible and starting at the local level, forms of
self-government and radical democracy which appropriate administrative
functions from below. We need to pressure local administrations through
conflict and relations of force, so that we can conquer rights, spaces, and
a better quality of life; so that we can create and spread -- beyond any
border or frontier -- networks of counterpower and a new solidarity; so
that we can gain  -- piece by piece, territory by territory, town by town
-- concrete (even if partial) consquests: new citizenship rights, decent
living conditions for all against racism, xenophobia, and exclusion.

A new (hi)story is beginning: it speaks the simple and primal language of
justice and freedom for the exploited, for the oppressed and for the
weakest; it speaks of real democracy and a new public space, the creation
of communities of mutual aid and cooperation.

Against the modern forms of absolutism and despotism, for a new bill of
human and citizenship rights. FOR THE RIGHT TO ONE'S EXISTENCE as a supreme
and primary value, against the work myths of efficiency and productivity,
of market and money! Against neo-liberalism! But if we choose this path, we
must also abandon all ideological, dogmatic, fundamentalist and millenarian
traditions. There is no redemption, nor final solution, no D-Day nor
objective science of the future. What matters -- the only thing that
matters -- is what the real movement is able to conquer day by day, place
by place, within the materiality of conflict. ''... The first
presupposition of any human life and hence for history is that, in order to
make history, men must be able to live...'' (K.Marx, The German Ideology).

AGAINST THE EUROPE OF MAASTRICHT, AGAINST CENTRALISED AND STATIST
NATIONALISM, AGAINST EVERY NATIONALISM ... FOR A NETWORK OF COMMUNITIES OF
MUTUAL AID IN A EUROPE OF SOCIAL RIGHTS!!

Neo-liberalism and capitalist globalization, therefore, fuse and function
together by means of precise and well-defined mechanisms: from the IMF to
international agreements and concrete policies such as GATT, NAFTA etc. As
far as our own experience of "globalization'' is concerned, the horizon
today is the Europe of Maastricht forged by the powerful and their allies.
Free circulation of goods, money and capital ... this is what the old
freemarketeers say!

At the same time, new frontiers and barriers are set for thousands of men
and women escaping from their lands, new and more profound hierarchies,
inequalities and discriminations are created; welfare is being dismantled,
and rights or guarantees are being cancelled in the name of EU-wide
economic and market "standards".

Everywhere new ethno-nationalisms spring up: each ''homogeneous territorial
community'' fights against the others for a place in the sun of the new
Europe's political and economic market. In the process they push outside
the poor and the weak, building new racist and xenophobic frontiers in the
name of property and possessive egoism. Yesterday in Yugoslavia, today in
Northern Italy -- and tomorrow?

This Europe is the new political space within which social struggles and
movements must locate themselves; this is the scenario within which we need
to try to create new political subjects. Subjects which generate conflict
yet are neither parties nor movements in the classical sense; subjects
which are locally grounded within the horizon of globalization,
transversal, open and articulated on a range of levels:

* able to defend old rights conquered through the struggles of whole
generations of workers;

* able to resist the dismantling of welfare, of health-care, education, and
public services, whilst at the same time able to conquer new rights emergin
within the current contradictions between income, work, and citizenship.

Subjects which prefigure a new world, opening numerous possibilities and
alternatives to the current reality:

* for the reappropriation from below of public and collective assets, of
social utilities;

* for the right to income and to a life with dignity, which implies the
radical transformation of the very concept of work;

* for the creation of a new public space, against the nation State and
every nationalism new or old;

* opposition to any kind of secession or separation based on egoism or
exclusion, on ethnic, racist and fascist fundamentalism;

* for the abolition of all frontiers, and the creation everywhere of a
network of communities engaged mutual solidarity.

But it's not enough merely to enunciate these themes. It is not our
intention that the European Meeting be a place for dialectical gymnastics,
let alone a catwalk upon which a range of subjects and political groups can
parade. We will be directly encountering the Zapatista experience, with the
intention of mapping out practical measures of struggle and conflict
(starting with the problem of frontiers). Indeed, one purpose of the
proceedings will be to organise, to coincide with the signing of the
Schengen treaty in early October, a day of actions designed to cross a
range of borders throughout Europe.

UPON THESE BASES, WE INVITE YOU TO VENICE FOR THREE DAYS OF MUSIC,
DISCUSSION, INITIATIVES OF STRUGGLES THIS COMING 12-13-14 SEPTEMBER -- a
meeting to which the Venice Council has officially invited a delegation
from the EZLN Command.

Alternativa verde e solidale
Associazione "Ya Basta!"
Associazione "Senza confine"
Centri sociali del Nord-est
Giovani comunisti
il manifesto
Federazione dei Verdi
Lega obiettori di coscienza
Liberazione
Partito della Rifondazione Comunista
Rete antirazzista
Sin-Cobas
Verdi ambiente e societ=E0


-------------------------
collettivo infodiret(t)e
ECN - Padova
e-mail: hobo-AT-ecn.org
http://www.ecn.org/pad/



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