[Arbetarmakt, Sweden]
George W. Bush will be present in Gothenburg for the EU summit between June 14-16. That alone should ensure a massive turnout. Estimates of 20 000 being there are common on the left.
The protests against EU summit in Gothenburg will be a big event for the Scandanavian left.
There will be organisations, campaigns and groups involved from the whole left in Sweden, and also from the major groups in Denmark and Norway. Preparations and planning meetings have been going on since early autumn last year.
There are three different initiatives, and now a fourth, in which we are involved.
o one dominated by the No-campaign and the left Stalinists, the KPMLr. Its stronghold have always been in Gothenburg. The political platform of this campaign will be "Sweden out of the EU" and possibly "Save the Krona". It will come as no surprise if they will put lots of Swedish flags at the head of the demonstration. They have already started to put up posters with Swedish flags on them.
o The second campaign is dominated by the Syndicalists (SAC). Its platform, already adopted in October, is very limited. Its main thrust is USFI-style talk of a "different Europe". The platform doesn't take sides in relation to the EU, but puts demands on the EU - the reason why the first campaign couldn't come to terms with it. It says no to the EMU, in favor of a "democratized economy".
o The third campaign is rather a non-public one. It's run by the Scandinavian anti-fascist groups and its main focal point is to prepare for and organise action in the streets. They raise the slogan of stopping the meeting, but their main concerns seems to be something else. They aim at action of a sort that only they themselves will approve of. This is the Black Bloc.
o The last campaign and the best is a united action of several groups. In Stockholm a united front campaign called Globalization from Below is up and running. It grew out of the Stop the IMF committee that we formed last spring in order to get people to Prague. After the campaign decided to change its name to a more positive one. Its now been in function for eight months and are - by some people on the left - seen as a more radical alternative to the fast-growing Attac movement. Its strong points are its commitment to internationalism and socialism.
It is the only initiative, aside from the Black Bloc, whose aim is to seriously disturb the summit or stop it. If a breakthrough takes place, there will be some sort of political manifestation against the summit. Its content remains to be decided.
Most of the left are involved in one of the campaigns, for example, the Left Party will support the second campaign. True to their centrist politics, the Socialist Party (USFI) and the CWI are trying to be a part of both the first and second.
The fourth initiative grew out of contacts made by the Finnish Ya Basta! on behalf of Ya Basta! in the rest of Europe. Globalization from Below took a favourable view of the Ya Basta! initiative and came into contact with something in Gothenburg called the Non-Violence Network. It consists of people from Friends of the Earth, Green Youth, the Young Left, Syndicalists, Attac, Animal Rights groups, the Plowbills, Alternative Trade etc.
Many of those involved have no interest in an orientation to the workers movement. But this is the only initiative based on direct mass action against the summit. It will not be on a perfect platform. It will not have as its primary aim to stop the summit, but make a strong protest against the EU tops, not on a national(ist) basis, as much of the others will do, but on an international, radical democratic basis.
There are a number of activities planned. June 14th, one day before the summit starts, the AFA groups will have a "kick-off" street party. Next, Friday the 15th, at 18.00 there will be a demonstration by the first initiative. Earlier the same day, there will be a demonstration organised by Ya Basta!, the Non-Violence Network and Globalization from Below. The 16th, the Saturday, and the day after the summit have opened, the second initiative will have their demonstration.
On Saturday 17 March a meeting called by Globalization from Below will take place and the left of the left in Stockholm have been invited. Positive responses have been received from Social-Ecological Action, a direct action green group. This meeting will be important in deciding the slogans of the united action in Gothenburg.
We favour just a few slogans: Open the borders, Stop neo-liberalism), and if there's a majority in favor of a slogan on the undemocratic character of the EU, we will argue for "Protest against the undemocratic character of the EU" and against everything with class-less democracy or citizens or civil society etc.
The level of support for the protests will be tested next weekend (March 23-24), when there is a summit in Stockholm on the labour market issues. The police say that they will build a two meter steel fence around the area. The Swedish police are also very good at using horses. The demonstration the 24th will be a test, that will enable us to see what sort of support the protests will attract.
SWEDEN: PLATFORM OF "GLOBALISATION FROM BELOW"
Globalisation from below
The Network 'Globalisation from Below' gathers radical groups and individuals, particularly from the extra-parliamentary left. We propose many different alternatives to the to the current economic globalisation and world order. We are organised in a
non-hierarchical manner and use information and actions as a method of shaping public opinion, increase people's awareness, and change society.
Together with a lot of different anticapitalist movements both in North and South, we are a part of the worldwide network 'Peoples' Global Action'. All who sympathise with our political positions are welcome to join, and we even work together with groups and campaigns that have more limited questions and demands.
PLATFORM FOR GLOBALISATION FROM BELOW
1. Globalisation from Below wants to abolish global capitalism, since that is a precondition for achieving a socially just and environmentally sustainable world.
We oppose today's increasingly corporate-driven, state-bureaucratic and imperialist world order. We want people to directly, and on a grassroots-level, determine what their society should look like.
We fight for global socialism, that is, for the world's economic resources and productive operations to be democratically steered and controlled by the whole world's population. We do not believe that this fundamental social change can come about through simply attempting to give capitalism a more 'human face', making a stance for the bourgeois nation-state, and/or attempting to reform institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank or the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
2. Globalisation from Below opposes the nation-state and protectionism as an alternative to global capitalism.
We neither believe in national isolation nor in supra-statal and market-driven dismantling of social services, labour rights and environmental protection.
A global division of labour has to be work according to the demands of poor countries and has to be based on people's needs instead of corporations' greed. We demand an immediate and total write-off of the third world's debt.
We are rigorously internationalist and fight against all forms of immigration-control and racism, like, for example, the Schengen Treaty.
3. Globalisation from below believes that the labour movement, the environmental movement, and other people's movements should globalise themselves and together demand radical social change.
Because capital is global and social movements, workers and unions are not, they lack any bargaining power vis-à-vis multination corporations. It is not globalisation as such that we oppose, just the globalisation of capital. The WTO, the IMF and the EU, amongst others, are institutions that in different ways consolidate exactly that type of globalisation and its economic power-structures. They give us globalisation from above - we fight for globalisation from below.
