United socialist contingent for May Day

May Day 2013 - Join the Fight Back contingent

The international capitalist economic crisis has seen a wave of cut-backs across Europe and the US that is driving millions into shocking poverty. The cuts to welfare, public, health and education; as well as the attacks on jobs and wages; are tearing communities apart, disproportionately hurting women and the already disadvantaged. Millions of young people see no future.

At the same time capitalism, through its inability to even slow the rate of increase in carbon emissions, let alone reduce them; threatens the very basis for the existence of life on earth.

While Western Australia has been relatively immune from the severity of the economic crisis – in part because of the major mining projects – many households are now more deeply in debt than before. For people on low fixed incomes the so-called mining boom has been a disaster, worsening the housing affordability crisis.

The insecurity and fear that’s generated from increased casualisation, job insecurity and the extraordinarily high cost of housing is being cynically manipulated by governments to persuade working people that they have something to fear from asylum seekers and minorities. Racism is being used to divide the working class.

While we’ve seen some inspiring radical responses emerge across Europe, we’ve also seen a rise in the far right. This danger also exists in Australia. This has opened up a much needed discussion of anti-capitalist alternatives, and it has also sharpened the need for unity of the left against the racist anti-migrant policies of both mainstream politics and the far-right.

The complete capitulation of the federal ALP government to big business has strengthened the hand of the conservatives. An Abbott-led government will bring an even more vicious assault on workers' rights, public health, education, welfare, refugees, Indigenous communities and migrant workers.

It requires a strong union response and a more united left. We desperately need this to build up strength for a fight back and to win more of the working class and other oppressed sectors to the struggle to end the dictatorship of big business.

Only a radical redistribution of wealth which puts strategic sectors of the economy under the democratic control of working people and our communities, a socialist society, will be able to put an end once and for all to the social inequality and environmental degradation which are an inevitable product of capitalism.

May Day is a traditional working class holiday created to commemorate and celebrate the eight hour day movement. It has long been a day of celebration and protest for workers and socialists around the world.

This year, as a result of the unity discussions between Socialist Alternative and the Socialist Alliance, we are organising a combined contingent in the May Day Parade in Fremantle on Sunday 5th May.

Join our united Fight Back Contingent at May Day. Support these demands:

• Make refugees welcome, racism won't create jobs
• Support the right to strike, abolish all anti-union laws
• Stop and reverse privatisation, stop Barnett's cuts to our services
• Restore the single parents pension, a living wage for all
• Full citizenship & industrial rights for migrant workers
• Renewables not gas, stop handouts to the fossil fuel industry
• No uranium mining, not in WA - not anywhere
• Money for health and education, not racism and war

For more information Sam 0412 751 508 or Lian 0402 305 521

Attend Fightback Contingent on Facebook: www.facebook.com/events/367245060063664

Attend photo-shoot on Facebook: www.facebook.com/events/450328041726123/450328045059456

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Long live May Day! Workers of the world unite!

May Day message from the Socialist Alliance

As workers around the world take to the streets to celebrate May Day, we are sharply aware that the capitalist system has reached a point of development where it threatens the habitability of the planet on which we all live.

Last month, for the first time in three million years, the carbon concentrations in the Earth's atmosphere reached 399.7 parts per million (ppm) at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. In several other parts of the world that day, the reading exceeded 400 ppm.

When CO2 concentrations were last above 400 ppm it was the Pliocene era, when temperatures were 3-4 degrees and sea levels were 5-40 metres higher than they are today. Capitalism is throwing our planet into dangerous climate change.

Sadly this is no surprise. Capitalism has already devastated the lives of billions of people through exploitation, war and poverty.

All for what? So that 1,426 billionaires in the world can amass a combined fortune of US$5.4 trillion, and use this to enslave the majority of the world's people.

But by so enslaving that majority, the super-rich elite have created a majority class that has a deepening interest in ending that very system of enslavement, capitalism, and building a new system based on shared wealth, cooperation, justice and ecological sustainability. These billions who now have nothing but their labour to sell under capitalism will be the fighters, builders and architects of socialism in the 21st century.

On this May Day, we in the Socialist Alliance declare our full solidarity with the oppressed and exploited all around the world. We reject the stepped up attempts of our local ruling class (and all other imperialist elites) to use divide and rule through racism, xenophobia, sexism, homophobia and religious sectarianism.

Australia will be going to a federal election later this year and the Socialist Alliance is taking this message to the Australian working class and all other oppressed people: In the name of justice, and for our common future, we need to take the resources and wealth out of the hands of the billionaires, beginning with the nationalisation of the mining, banking and energy sector.

We know that many Australian workers have yet to reject a future held hostage to the corporate rich. Conservative Labor and Liberal governments alike have sought to persuade them that there is no alternative to letting the capitalists run society. But we are finding that our bold call for the nationalisation of the mining, banking and energy sectors and placing these sectors into the ownership and control of the people, is striking a powerful chord.

Here in Australia, the left is emboldened by a new hope for the greater unity of the socialist organisations, in particular between the two largest left groups: the Socialist Alliance and Socialist Alternative. We urge other groups to join in the new unity process that has begun.

In the spirit of unity, the Socialist Alliance initiated united Fightback Contingents in the May Day marches in several cities around Australia this year. We express our deepest appreciation to all the groups that have joined these contingents.

Finally, we want to send our heartfelt message of solidarity and sympathy to the families and communities of the hundreds of garment workers in Bangladesh who were recently killed in the collapse of their factory. We hold the big branded capitalists who benefited from the blood, sweat and tears of workers like these in the poorest countries responsible for their deaths.

Long live May Day! Workers of the world unite!

Susan Price & Peter Boyle
National Co-convenors
Socialist Alliance(Australia)