[Shadow_Group] Jan 20 One-Day Protest Strike and Demonstrations on Inauguration Day

[shadowgroup-l at lists.resist.ca]

CALL TO ACTION: ONE-DAY PROTEST STRIKE AND
DEMONSTRATIONS ON INAUGURATION DAY, JANUARY 20

The "election" that has sentenced the world to four more years of
the most right-wing government in US history is merely the most
glaring recent expression of a global crisis of democracy. We
simply miss the point if we focus our outrage on the narrow
question of whether the election was stolen, lost through
incompetence or conceded too early. A process so dominated
by money and corporate interests is by definition
non-democratic. The fact that the choice in this election was
effectively limited to Kerry or Bush, excluding any real alternative
from the start, is only one symptom. As a whole, the US
electoral system is a screen spectacle, a  mirage of democracy
that compels a minimum of pseudo-participation simply by its
monopoly over what passes for politics and public debate.
Capturing popular energy and channeling it into the dead-end of
hierarchical parties, it enforces an impoverishment of social
imagination and wages a war of attrition on the desire for real
change. Never has a power produced in this way been
legitimate. G.W. Bush's claims of a "popular mandate" are
mere propaganda in the crudest sense.

Every opportunity must be taken to contest the forms and
functioning of US-style "democracy." January 20, Inauguration
Day, is a moment of unavoidable vulnerability for the Bush
regime and is thus the first major opportunity to make it feel the
shakiness of its "mandate." We cannot of course expect other
governments to contest seriously the official results of a US
election. The power to do this belongs only to the global
multitude, to those who  have the courage to create new forms of
egalitarian politics.

A real, transparent democratic voice from below can actively
demonstrate that lies and naked power do not constitute
legitimacy. Indeed, as has always been the case, only such a
voice - persistent, uncompromising and for-all - can stop the
destructive violence wreaked by antidemocratic states. And
today only such a voice can stop the Bush regime. Real
democracy is not the result of spectacular elections and
obscene expenditures. Instead, it emerges from direct collective
actions that dismantle the conditions for war-mongering,
economic and social violence, servitude and abasement. It
emerges wherever people work together to render impossible
endless militarization, state and non-state terrorism, and a
global regime of nations and borders that gives free passage to
capital while denying it to real people.

United for Peace and Justice, Not In Our Name,  DC Anti-War
Network, Turn Your Back on Bush and other groups have called
for massive protests in Washington DC on "j20." We support
these calls, but are also convinced of the need for people to
organize protests right where they are. Blocked democracy is a
global problem, as this election in particular shows. Not only US
citizens but people everywhere are threatened by aggressive
US policies.

We therefore call for a one-day protest strike and
demonstrations across the United States and for marches on
US embassies in as many other countries as possible. We
know that for most people January 20 is a workday, and that
work conditions can vary drastically. We suggest people reach
out to others in their workplaces, campuses and neighborhoods
and either call in sick or walk out at noon on January 20.
College and university students can easily take a day off from
classes. Whether you then choose to join an organized protest
action or form a local affinity group of friends to organize an
action of your own, join us and others in the streets to reclaim
our power. We don't consent, and we won't obey! In the streets
for real democracy! Act together for real alternatives!

-- An internationalist collective based in Berlin 



++++++++++++++++++++++++++STOP THE WALL++++++++++++++++++++++++++

www.stopthewall.org www.nad-plo.org www.hrw.org www.pal-arc.org www.endtheoccupation.org www.sustaincampaign.org






		
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