[Campaignforrealdemocracy] Fwd: From AFED + This Sat

[Mark Barrett]

We have to turn despair and isolation into power and collective
action, to create a mass movement of resistance together.
We should be:
o Forming General Assemblies on the basis of neighbourhoods,
communities, universities, industries and so on. The point is that
they cut across divisions like worker/non-worker,
student/administrative staff/lecturer. They need to elect instantly
recallable delegates to co-ordinate with other assemblies, so that
vested interests can’t take hold and power can’t corrupt, and no one
can get lazy or sell out. This is the best way to co-ordinate between
university and factory occupations, town hall invasions, community-run
support groups and so on.
o Using such assemblies to organise for a General Social Strike. The
TUC isn’t even able to organise a symbolic one-day general workers’
strike, and with weak ineffectual unions and poor job security,
workers can’t risk going it alone. So let’s have massive civil
disorder on the part of people who can take action: walk-outs of
schools and colleges and massive occupations of our city centres;
creative use of facilities like libraries, parks, leisure centres to
show workers there that we are behind them; economic blockades e.g. of
fuel depos where the workers can’t get away with picketing, and so on.
o Building alternatives to reliance on the state for everything.
Again, general assemblies can provide a structure for this. But we
can’t replace the state as though it will simply collapse through
under-use. We can’t by-pass it by creating islands of autonomy: it
will fight back. We can’t pretend that we can manage just fine without
it economically either. This is not Cameron’s ‘Big Society’: it is the
working class fighting for its life. These alternatives must have
revolutionary ideas at their heart and must organise against the state
as well as outside it.
What do you think? Talk to us and talk to your anti-cuts comrades and
let’s start piling the pressure on. ..  If it isn’t time for radical
change now, when will it be time?
www.afed.org.uk

Come along this Saturday to Passing Clouds East London, and help build the
Assembly Network
http://www.peoplesassemblies.org/2011/05/pan-meeting-may-7-dalston/
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