As tens of millions of people within the United States mobilize to strike and to march from Earth Day through May Day, over the days of April 22nd, through May 1st, we offer them our solidarity. They are the mobilized voices of democracy in the professed land of liberty.
Both Earth Day and International Workers Day originated in the struggles of popular movements in the United States. Today, those struggles continue in the face of Donald Trump, a man who lost the popular vote, who is opposed by nearly two thirds of the population in the United States, and who reminds the world on a daily basis that the U.S. is not a functioning republic.
Yet the current struggle for democracy within the United States began before Trump and will continue after he is gone. We offer recognition and solidarity to this struggle in all its forms:
- From the demands for voting rights and democratic elections that filled the streets of Florida in 2000, Ohio in 2004, and the entirety of the U.S.A. in 2016, to the massive uprisings against austerity and corporate capitalism in Seattle in 1999 and in Wisconsin and New York City in 2011;
- From the millions who walked off the job for the first Day Without An Immigrant marches of May Day in 2006 and the Dreamers immigrant rights resistance movements that followed them, to the mass mobilizations and courageous resistance in Los Angeles in 1992 and Ferguson in 2014 and so many other communities resisting the racist police state;
- From the tens of thousands who put themselves on the line for popular and tribal sovereignty over energy and climate policy at the Standing Rock and Tar Sands blockades, to the tens of millions who marched for climate action in 2014 and against the U.S.-led wars of empire in Iraq and Afghanistan;
- From the great expansion of economic and community democracy currently taking place across the U.S. in the form of new cooperatives, public banks, and other forms of community ownership, to the historic mobilizations against generational, gender, and other forms of oppression at the Million Student March, the Women’s March, and in the daily work of winning LGBTQI liberation;
- And from the millions who will turn out in the Science Marches of Earth Day, April 22nd and Climate March of April 29th this year, to the millions more who will join the recently unprecedented call by major unions and popular organizations for work stoppages and mass civil disobedience on May 1st, May Day.
The totality of the U.S. struggles today amount to a fight for democratic self-government against a white supremacist, patriarchal, corporate capitalism that many in America call fascism. We know that for another world to be possible, another U.S. is necessary. Therefore, we offer our solidarity in word and deed to the democratic forces within the United States. This solidarity will take the form of:
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Ongoing and growing coordinated global action with U.S.-based movements against fascism and for democracy;
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Boycotts of particular corporations and entities, when called by legitimate social movement forces within the U.S.;
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Material aid in the form of voluntary labor and financial assistance, particularly to those whose voices are both vital and often marginal;
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Education in our own networks and communities about struggles in the U.S., as well as making lessons from our own immediate struggles available to broader populations within the U.S..
This year, we stand shoulder to shoulder with the millions in the United States and throughout the world who fight for genuine democracy. Our loyalties are to the future.
Join us: www.SolidarityWith.US
Initial signators:
- Agneta Norberg, (Sweden), Chair, Swedish Peace Council
- Andy Worthington, (England/UK), Journalist, co-founder, CloseGuantanamo.org
- Aziz Fall, (Canada), Centre Internationaliste Ryerson Fondation Aubin (CIRFA)
- Barry Eidlin, (Canada), Assistant Professor of Sociology, McGill University
- Begoña San Jose, (Spain), co-founder, Fórum de Política Feminista
- Brian Raftopoulos, (South Africa), Director of Research and Advocacy, Solidarity Peace Trust.
- Christina Papadopoulou, (Greece), activist, Festival for Solidarity & Cooperative Economy
- Dale McKinley (South Africa), activist, writer/researcher, co-founder of the Right2Know Campaign
- Daniel Chavez, (The Netherlands), New Politics Fellow, Transnational Institute (TNI)
- David McKnight, (Wales/UK), UNISON NW International Committee
- David Muñoz-Rodríguez, (Spain), Professor of Sociology, Universitat Jaume I de Castelló
- Demba Moussa Dembele, (Senegal), Economist, Dakar
- Desmond Mathew D’Sa, (South Africa), Coordinator, South Durban Community Environmental Alliance
- Domingo Lovera, (Chile), Assistant Professor of Law, Universidad Diego Portales
- Femi Aborisade, (Nigeria), Attorney at Law, Coordinator, Centre for Labour Studies (CLS)
- Frederic Vandenberghe, (Brazil), Professor of Sociology, Institute of Social and Political Studies, State University of Rio de Janeiro
- Gábor Scheiring, (Hungary), Chair, Progressive Hungary Foundation
- Jackie Dugard, (South Africa), Associate Professor, School of Law, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
- Jacklyn Cock, (South Africa), Professor of Sociology, Wits University
- Laurence Cox, (Ireland), Co-Editor, Interface
- Lindsey German, (England/UK), convenor, Stop the War Coalition UK
- Marc Spooner, (Canada), Associate Professor, University of Regina
- Maria Arvaniti Sotiropoulou, MD, (Greece), author, president, Greek Medical Association for the Protection of the Environment and Against Nuclear and Biochemical Threat (IPPNW-Greece)
- Maung Zarni, (England/UK), Burmese activist and genocide scholar
- Michael Löwy, (France), Emeritus Research Director in Social Sciences, CNRS, Paris
- Michel Bauwens, (Thailand), P2P Foundation
- Mo Schmidt, (Germany), initiator of the International Student Movement (ISM) platform, Social Worker, coordinator for a Transcontinental May Day 2017
- Neil Haran, (Canada), Blockchain Technologist, FairCoop
- Patrick Bond (South Africa), Professor of political economy, University of the Witwatersrand
- Patrick Boylan (Italy), Emeritus Professor of English for Intercultural Communication, Roma Tre University, Rome, and co-founder of U.S. Citizens for Peace & Justice – Rome
- Paula Aguilar, (Argentina), Social Science Researcher, University of Buenos Aires
- Per Monnerup, (Denmark), Teacher, Executive Committee member of Red-Green Alliance
- Ronnie Kasrils (South Africa), Former Minister for Intelligence Services, South Africa
- Salim Vally, (South Africa), Associate Professor, Director, Centre for Education Rights and Transformation, University of Johannesburg
- Sean Purdy, (Brazil), Professor of History, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil
- Shaila Toledo, (México), Actress
* all organizations are for identification purposes only
