When ever there is a grassroots movement, protest or open people's struggle in another country it is always difficult to get at the truth of what is really happening. The main reason of course being that babbling brook of bullshit our mainstream media, where some people look for information and receive nothing but distortion and establishment propaganda. They will certainly not paint nice colours around any protests that threaten the power of Western governments.
So it is always welcome when you get a report from somebody who is there.
A statement from the Yellow Vests shows the political sophistication we
must develop as similar social struggles emerge in the declining United
States.
An excellent friend in Paris forwards this:
Pour transmettre aux anglophones qui seraient intéressés…
Call from the Yellow Vests of Commercy to set up popular assemblies
“We will not be ruled. We will not be divided and bought off.”
NO TO RIP OFF! LONG LIVE DIRECT DEMOCRACY!
NO NEED FOR REGIONAL ‘REPRESENTATIVES’!
For nearly two weeks the movement of yellow vests has brought hundreds
of thousands of people in the streets all over France, often for the
first time. The price of fuel was the drop of diesel that set the plain
on fire. The suffering, the enough-is-enough, and the injustice have
never been so widespread. Now, all across the country, hundreds of local
groups are organizing themselves in their own different ways.
Here in Commercy, in the Meuse, we have been operating from the
beginning with daily popular assemblies, where each person participates
equally. We organized to block entrances to the city and service
stations, and filtering road blocks. In the process, we built a cabin in
the central square. We meet there every day to organize ourselves,
decide next actions, interact with people, and welcome those who join
the movement. We also organize “solidarity soups” to live beautiful
moments together and get to know each other. In equality.
But
now the government, and some parts of the movement, propose to appoint
representatives for each region! That is to say a few people who would
become the only “interlocutors” to public authorities and summarize our
diversity. But we do not want “representatives” who would end up talking
for us!
What’s the point? At Commercy a punctual delegation
met the sub-prefect, in big cities others met directly with the Prefect:
they ALREADY have conveyed our anger and our demands. They ALREADY know
that we are determined to finish off with this hated president, this
detestable government, and the rotten system they embody!
And
that’s what scares the government! Because he knows that if they begin
to give in on taxes and fuels, they will also have to back down on
pensions, the unemployed, the status of civil servants, and all the
rest! They also knows VERY WELL that they risk intensifying a
GENERALIZED MOVEMENT AGAINST THE SYSTEM!
It is not to better
understand our anger and our demands that the government wants
representatives”: it is to supervise and bury us! As with the union
leadership, they look for intermediaries, people with whom they could
negotiate. On whom they can put pressure to appease the eruption. People
that they can then buy off and press to divide the movement to bury it.
But that’s without counting on the strength and intelligence
of our movement. It’s without counting that we are thinking, organizing,
developing our actions that scare them so much and amplifying the
movement!
And above all, there is a very important thing:
everywhere the movement of the yellow vests demand in various forms,
something that is well beyond the purchasing power! This thing is power
to the people, by the people, for the people. It is a newsystem where
“those who are nothing” as they say with contempt, regain power over all
those who stuff themselves, over those who rule, and over the money
powers. It’s equality. It’s justice. It’s freedom. That’s what we want!
And it starts from the grassroots!
If we appoint
“representatives” and “spokespersons”, it will eventually make us
passive. Worse: we will quickly reproduce the system and act from top
down like the scoundrels who rule us. These so-called “representatives
of the people” who are filling their pockets, who make laws that rot our
lives and serve the interests of the ultra-rich!
Let’s not
put our finger in the gear of representation and hijacking. This is not
the time to hand over our voice to a handful of people, even if they
seem honest. They must listen to all of us or to no one!
From Commercy, we therefore call for the creation throughout France of
popular committees, which function in regular general assemblies. Places
where speech is liberated, where one dares to express oneself, to train
oneself, to help one another. If there must be delegates, it is at the
level of each local yellow vests people’s committee, closer to the voice
of the people. With imperative, revocable, and rotating mandates. With
transparency. With trust.
We also call for the hundreds of
groups of yellow vests to have a cabin as in Commercy, or a “people’s
house” as in Saint-Nazaire, in short, a place of rallying and
organization! And that they coordinate themselves, at the local and
departmental level, in equality!
This is how we will win,
because that, up there, they are not used to manage it! And it scares
them a lot. We will not let ourselves be ruled. We will not let
ourselves be divided and bought off.
No to self-proclaimed
representatives and spokespersons! Let’s take back the power over our
lives! Long live the yellow vests in their diversity!
LONG LIVE PEOPLE POWER, BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE!
Visit ann arky's home at
radicalglasgow.me.uk