Workers Solidarity Movement

Unions, organizations and groups that sign this call want to let all the working and popular classes know our stance on the different events that have taken place during the last days on the streets in our cities and towns.

For some years we have witnessed how the rise in tension in a – already historical – conflict has been taken advantage of to cut back the fundamental rights of the people. We come from a strong political and syndical tradition that has historically stood up for the rights and the freedom of the oppressed class and has also taken the streets whenever it has been necessary in order to grab from those in power everything we need to become protagonists in our present and future.

As libertarians and an active part of the popular, associative and labor union movements in Catalunya, we will always defend the right to self-determination of the nations and the peoples – ours, to begin with. We see it as a basic principle of confederalism, and a needed condition to live together in equality. We perfectly know that any full emancipation will be impossible without previously removing the economic structure that supports it: capitalism. As long as this does not happen, the living conditions of the working class will still be crushed by the Spanish and Catalan oligarchies, who always go hand in hand to impose labour reforms and social rights cutbacks.

Additionally, we would like to report the militarization and repression we are enduring on the Spanish government’s part who, by showing their toughest and most authoritarian face, want to push their will down to the last consequences. We have always been against those who have militarized Catalunya – and any other territory – in order to fight large popular protests or any desire for social emancipation.

We are against the state’s repression because we have constantly and systematically suffered it ourselves in the streets and in companies. That’s why we also want to report the repressive nature of the Generalitat de Catalunya (catalan government), which during the last years has chased, beaten up, arrested and jailed all those who didn’t want to look away each time the civil and human rights of the people were stepped on. Let’s not forget how mossos d’esquadra (catalan police) evicted us from Plaça Catalunya, how they jailed and reported union members, how they persecuted us for being part of the demonstration that took place around the Parlament on the days our social rights were being cut back, or how by macro police raids they arrested and jailed us in operations such as Operació Pandora, or how there have been even deaths and mutilations, among others. Consequently, we will not allow anyone to take what is ours, whatever the flag they may carry.

For us, the self-determination and emancipation of our villages, towns and cities can’t only fall on the decision of a specific territorial framework. Collective freedom will not be possible without the resolute actions of the people and the workers facing a state and political elites that keep antisocial, heteropatriarchal and opressive structures that are also represented by some of the figures from the so-called Catalan Sovereignty. Self-determination and emancipation will only be possible via the rebellious action of the oppressed people who can see the possibility of defending and improving their material living conditions in it. The nationalization of means of production and wealth and the abolition of all forms of oppression, such as heteropatriarchy and its different power structures – implicit or explicit–, the broadest freedom of choice and participation by direct action and the self-management are the elements that will make us truly free.

Therefore, we think that it is when the people constitutes itself as a political and class subject that any major social changes can happen and, for this reason, we celerate the extension of popular grassroot organizations to use desobedience and face the current authoritarian context. We wish this disobedient attitude against authority will go beyond the present situation and will be used against any injustice we may face in any aspect of our lives.

For all these reasons, we make a call to all the workers in Catalunya to take part in the demonstrations, mobilizations and protests to defend our rights and freedoms and, specially, to massively take part in the general strike of October, 3rd. Because the spirit of rebellion that historically runs in this part of the world won’t vanish so easily, because we are the working class and we want to decide everything, we must take the streets, it’s our turn to fight!

Signatories:
• CGT Catalunya
• Negres Tempestes
• Embat, libertarian organization of Catalunya
• Heura Negra, libertarian assembly of Vallcarca
• CNT Catalunya i Balears
• Oca Negra, libertarian assenbly of Clot-Camp de l’Arp
• Solidaritat Obrera
 

WSM arranged translation of statement of anarchist groups who organise in Catalonia pre translation text on CGT Calaunya page http://www.cgtcatalunya.cat/spip.php?article12624