Denmark: protests against EU summit
Workers Power Global, Stockholm: 1 December 2002

The Danish chairmanship of the EU will end in December with a summit in Copenhagen. The enlargement of the European Union will be the main issue for the heads of government but the anti-capitalist movement is mobilising for its own agenda. There will be a large number of protests, workshops, seminars and other gathering-points for activists.

The most important events will take place on Friday the 13th and Saturday the 14th.

On Friday, there will be a torch-light procession against racism. It will gather at Enghave Plads (in Vesterbro) and march to the famous City Hall Square (RŒdhuspladsen) where a rally will be held in memory of the victims of Fortress Europe with speakers from Denmark, France, and Britain.

The slogans are directed against Fortress Europe (right to asylum, no to Schengen, equal rights for all) and against the new Danish governmentâs racist laws. The organisers of the protest include: the left-wing Unity List, Socialist Peopleâs Party, Anti-Fascist Action, Kurdish groups, International Socialists, Global Roots, Attac, some Danish unions, and others.

This protest is extremely important for Danish domestic politics as well. A big demo can help to turn the tide in Denmark and send a fighting message to the Danish working class and its organisations: get rid of those leaders who refuse to organise a real fight against growing racism in Denmark and against the governmentâs new laws that have turned immigrants into second-class citizens.

Anyone living in Denmark is now unable to marry someone from another country before both of them reach the age of 24. (People have been forced to move to southern Sweden in order to marry.) This is just one of the outrageous new laws from the bourgeois government that commands a majority in the Folketing (parliament) and is supported by the openly racist, anti-Muslim Danish Peopleâs Party of Pia Kj¾rsgaard.

The groups around Peopleâs Global Action (PGA) and the âdisobedienteâ will act through a local group called Global Roots. They are organising an action day during Friday the 13th which is planned to end in a mass act of disobedience against the EU summit at Bellacenteret.

The Initiative for Another Europe is organising the main demonstration on Saturday the 14th. It is billed as "The International Demonstration" and many protesters are expected from different parts of the world. It will gather outside the old castle of Christiansborg and march to Otto Krabbes Square in Vesterbro.

Speakers there will include: Oscar Olivera (leader of the fight against privatisation of water supplies in Bolivia), Pehr ¯stvol from the Norwegian Transport workers' union, Vandana Shiva (environmentalist fighter from India), Tomasz Terlecki (Bankwatch, Poland), and speakers from Denmark (Unity List, Socialist Peopleâs Party), and the German peace movement. There will also be a speaker from a Swedish union.

The main slogan for the demonstration is "Our world is not for sale ö people before profits". Very importantly, the spirit of this demo is internationalist, its slogans do not fall into the diversionary trap of opposing membership of the EU as a principle. For revolutionary socialists, however, the most important priority for this demo is to raise opposition to the impending war on Iraq.

After the international demonstration there will be a very different event, the "Peopleâs Meeting". This will be a more right-wing, reformist and even bourgeois rally. It has been organised by Stop the Union, which is made up of all those parties and groups that consider the Danish membership of the EU to be one of the most important issues! They have mobilised speakers from the Danish movements against membership of the EU ö the Peopleâs Movement and the June Movement. Other speakers will include Bernard Cassen from the French Attac, the general secretary of the World Nature Fund (Kim Carstensen), and John Cockrof, general secretary of the International Transport Workersâ Union.

While all the different groupings and currents of the anti-capitalist movement will be free to raise their own slogans and demands on the International Demo, this will not be the case on the second demonstration. Only those groups who support the platform of the Peopleâs Meeting will be allowed to organise their own blocs on this.

The LRCI and Arbetarmakt, its Swedish section, will take their place among the protesters and activists on the international demo in Copenhagen. We will fight against the coming war and raise the banner of international revolution and the need for a new, revolutionary international that can take the fight against racism and corporate globalisation to another, more determined level.

Homepage | Feedback