EUROMAYDAY 008 – PRESS RELEASE

Europe from below

Focus on the political and social issues of the European integration process with a special view from below. This blog will follow , step by step, the European people movements acting for a different, more democratic and federal Europe. You will find news and updates concerning European wide campaigns, actions, rallies, demonstrations, strikes, forum and assemblies aiming to build a political and social "Europe from below". Making Europe depends on you, too!

By Europe on Wednesday, April 9 2008, 00:46 - Euractions - Permalink

euromayday

EUROMAYDAY PRESS CONFERENCE: Monday, April 14, in Brussels/Bruxelles/Brussel

contacts: info@blablaexpress.org

EUROMAYDAY 008 – PRESS RELEASE

What's EuroMayDay?

A transnational demonstration of precarious and migrant people held the First of May in more than a dozen European cities. The first MayDay Parade was held in Milan in 2001 (it now gathers 100,000 people), and since 2004 the process has spread all over Europe (see the Middlesex Declaration). In 2006, the EuroMayDay was launched with pink actions in the EU Quarter of Brussels, and in 2007 a EuroMayDay superhero block joined the fray against the G8 in Rostock-Heiligendamm. EuroMayday is a process by which actions and demands are put forward to fight the widespread precarization of youth and the discrimination of migrants in Europe and beyond: no borders, no workfare, no precarity!

Who organizes EuroMayDay and what for?

The EuroMayDay network, a web of media activists, labor organizers, migrant collectives convening each year in a different European city. Last mayday assembly was in Berlin, where it was agreed that these would be the demands surrounding the protests for EuroMayDay 008:

• full legalization for all persecuted migrants • self-organizing and unionizing rights freed from state repression • unconditional basic income • a european living wage • free access to culture, knowledge, and skills • the right to cheap housing Where will EuroMayDay 008 occur?

In Aachen - Berlin - Copenhagen - Hanau - Hamburg - Helsinki - Lisboa - Madrid - Malaga - Maribor - Milano - Napoli - Palermo - Terrassa - Thessaloniki - Tokyo - Wien.

This year, there is a focal point for the whole network in Aachen/Aix-la-Chapelle (http://euromayday.karlspreis.info), where Nicolas Sarkozy will present Angela Merkel with the EU Oscar, the Prix Charlemagne. Irony of the calendar, in 2008 syndicalist MayDay coincides with catholic Ascension Day, when the Karlspreis is handed out. This year for MayDay in Aachen, two worlds will clash together:

Utopian Society vs Capitalist Market; the radical europe of multitudes vs the conservative Europe of elites, grassroots networks and squatted social centers vs the EU diarchy (www.radicaleurope.org/visuals/euromayday_aachen_008.jpg).

What kind of people participate in EuroMayDay Parades?

Activists, artists, hackers, unionists, migrant associations, precarious2precarious networks, queer collectives, critical cyclists, leftist radicals of all stripes: red, black, green, pink, purple, silver. They are coming to Aachen and other EuroMayDay Parades to join the fight against a EU dominated by police security and financial privilege, by Barroso's neoliberalism, Trichet's monetarism, Solana's militarism…

MAYDAY! MAYDAY! no borders, no precarity, let's defeat the new inequality!

INFO LINX http://www.euromayday.org

http://euromayday.karlspreis.info

http://www.euromayday.be

http://liege.indymedia.org

http://www.wombles.org.uk/article2008021538.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euromayday

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precarity

VIDEO LINX

http://www.euromayday.be/maydaytv.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caKYW8qHJyU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM9ysjJ-9iw