BLOCUPY EUROPE BEGINS HERE

Better late then never.  


However, I will make this short and sweet.  


In Europe, they are taking a step beyond sitting in a park, building tents, or marching around in circles.  They are planning blockades fin one of the centers global capital to show the widespread disgust with austerity capitalism and the Empire.  It ain't a revolution, to be sure, but if you get enough folks involved, blockades can be bothersome to the powers that be.  It will be interesting to see how it goes, and then move on to the rest of Europe.  I will follow the post below from Precarious Workers Brigade with the call to action from May Action Against TheTroika.

Solidarity with Blockupy Frankfurt

                                      

“In the periphery of the EU we are experiencing the extreme effects of politics pushed for by the governments of Germany and France and enacted by institutions representative of global capitalism: the ECB, IMF, EU, and their imposed technocratic governments. Millions of us have been impoverished and driven to misery by austerity and structural adjustment programs, the denial of labor rights and the slashing and privatization of public services, such as education, healthcare and welfare. We are experiencing the looting of human and natural resources by supposedly democratic institutions! (…)

A broad coalition of organizations, initiatives and networks are mobilizing to diverse days of action in Frankfurt from May 16^th to 18^th . The central element of the protest choreography is mass blockades on May 18, taking place after the take the squares action on May 17 and before the mass demonstration on May 19. The goal of our action on this day is to effectively disrupt the normal business activities of European Central Bank and other central actors in the financial center in Frankfurt. The parties responsible for the global politics of crisis and impoverishment are to be confronted directly in front of the doors of their decision-making headquarters with imaginative blockades and creative forms of civil disobedience.”

#BLOCKUPY FOR GLOBAL CHANGE!

* Transnational call to action in Frankfurt, May 16-19 * International solidarity in our common struggle *

We are calling for massive protests in Frankfurt this May against the crisis regime of the European Union. We are activists representing a multitude of movements and struggles from different European countries and elsewhere, who have risen up in the past months and years to protest the assaults on our freedoms, jobs and livelihoods that have become fiercely intensified in the global crisis. We have joined together and shared our struggles and experiences, and we have realized that in a multitude of local forms, we are fighting the same fight. Like never before, our movements are starting to strengthen each other: a truly transnational opposition is beginning to emerge.

Directly following the global action days on 12M and 15M, where we will protest in our own cities and regions, our transnational struggles will join together in Frankfurt, the European hub of global capitalism and the place of origin of the distress and misery that dictatorship of the markets has caused for millions of people.

We are protesting the widespread impoverishment and denial of democratic rights occurring in the Eurozone as part of a global systemic crisis.

In the periphery of the EU we are experiencing the extreme effects of politics pushed for by the governments of Germany and France and enacted by institutions representative of global capitalism: the ECB, IMF, EU, and their imposed technocratic governments. Millions of us have been impoverished and driven to misery by austerity and structural adjustment programs, the denial of labor rights and the slashing and privatization of public services, such as education, healthcare and welfare. We are experiencing the looting of human and natural resources by supposedly democratic institutions!

These processes are only the most evident sign of the precarization of working and living conditions experienced in all of Europe and beyond. Our social uprisings, traversing the internal borders of the EU, are the expression of indignation acting outside every form of political representation. As representative democracy fails, we leave it behind, creating our own democratic practices in everyday struggles against exploitation.

We are experiencing global migration as another clear sign of the refusal of this transnational system of exploitation, its border regimes and violent wars. It is devastating our earth and basic livelihood. The situation is urgent: we are facing a human-made climate disaster!

Yet in Europe and beyond, we are also experiencing the emergence of political movements that are challenging the everyday exploitation of people and the earth, the social fragmentation, precarization and racism that pretend to divide and then weaken us. By creating connections among these movements and making ourselves visible and powerful, we are attempting to practice a real democracy right now.

In Frankfurt, we have the opportunity to make these connections real, and to empower local struggles on a transnational level. We will blockade a crucial center of global capitalism, learning from what we watched in Oakland and the Occupy movement in the United States, who in turn learned from the revolutions across North Africa, the Middle East and the Indignados of Southern Europe. Let us bring our movements together in solidarity to continue the fight! Let us not miss this opportunity to set the agenda to reinvent our common future!

On May 17 we will occupy parks and main squares in the city center with our tents to create spaces for discussion and exchange. On May 18 we will advance from different points toward the financial district: our vision is a full blockade of the ECB and all the other important financial institutions in Frankfurt to stop their running business. On May 19 we will show our magnitude in a mass demonstration and make it known that we will not allow our societies to be destroyed by financial institutions.

FOR A TRANSNATIONAL MOVEMENT TO END PRECARITY AND IMPOVERISHMENT!

FOR INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY, FREEDOM and REAL DEMOCRACY NOW!

#BLOCKUPY FRANKFURT!
May 16 – arrival and actions at the ECB board meeting
May 17 – OCCUPY the financial district, asambleas, cultural program
May 18 – BLOCKADE the ECB and major banks
May 19 – MASS international demonstration

http://blockupy-frankfurt.org / http://17to19m.blogsport.eu

+ create local and regional planning groups + spread infos and stay tuned + come in masses