The World Trade Organisation meets in Cancun, Mexico, in September and the world will be doing more than watching - it will be protesting. Peace and anti-capitalist activists have decided on a global protest against war and globalisation on Saturday, September 13 (see www.focusweb.org for the call to action).
The Socialist Alliance national executive meeting on June 27 voted unanimously to support the day of action. Branches and members are urged to get behind the protests already called, or to initiate broad-based organising meetings if necessary.
In Victoria, members were quick off the mark with Cancun being discussed at the Alliance’s state conference on June 28. Forty people put their names down to get involved and the anti-war working group called an open planning meeting on July 7 at the Friends of the Earth office. Invitations went out to anti-corporate, Medicare and refugee activists, trade unionists, the Greens, ALP members, Friends of the Earth, NUS, the Victorian Peace Network and many more.
The call to action has a double importance: it’s against the WTO’s privatisation agenda (the proposed General Agreement on Trade in Services) and against the spectre of a society of permanent war. We’ve seen how economic and military domination work hand in hand: western corporations are looting Iraq thanks to the US, British and Australian occupation.
A million people came onto the streets of Australia against war in February and they haven’t given up. September 13 is an opportunity to show that the struggle continues.