GET UP! STAND UP! SAY NO TO THE G20
By Omar Hamed
Between the 17th and the 19th of November 2006, the finance ministers and reserve bank governors of 19 of the largest economies, representatives from the European Union and the head honchos of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) will gather at the Grand Hyatt hotel in Melbourne, Australia under the guise of G20 or the Group of Twenty.
The theme of this year’s G20 meeting is “Building and Sustaining Prosperity” through, “policies of deregulation, privatisation, and liberalisation of international transactions [which] are important means of strengthening competition [between corporations].”
In opposition to this agenda is the StopG20 Collective that is organising to “challenge the G20’s policies that push corporate-led globalisation, neo-liberalism and capitalism onto the world’s people and ecosystems, and to present alternatives.” The StopG20 Collective includes student groups, Friends of the Earth Australia, anti-capitalist organisations, church groups, the Melbourne Social Forum, Melbourne Indymedia and the Melbourne Stop the War Coalition. On the 14th of November 2006, I will travel to Melbourne to join them and take part in protests to stop the G20.
Why are we protesting?
Borders: open and closed
Recently I participated in a protest outside Mt Eden Remand Prison in Auckland, in support of the release of Iranian refugee Thomas Yadegary, who marked his second year in jail on November the 1st. Around sixty of us gathered to protest Yadegary’s internment in what Global Peace and Justice Auckland call, “Labour’s own Guantanamo Bay, here in the heart of Mt. Eden”. Amnesty International believes that if the government deports Thomas to Iran then they may be breaching their international human rights obligations.
Part of our ‘beef’ with the G20 is that they promote open borders for trans-national corporations, foreign investment and disposable sources of labour, like the Mexican immigrants that the US uses as soldiers in Iraq, while keeping borders closed for refugees like Thomas and Ahmed Zaoui, an Algerian refugee who the NZ government also tried to deport. For example, Indonesia, a G20 member, created a diplomatic row with Australia earlier this year when Australia gave refugee status to 43 people from the Indonesian colony of West Papua who were fleeing the violence Indonesia uses to suppress the Papuan independence movement. This was a surprising move by Australia, a nation that sends all asylum seekers including many children, into a detention centre in Nauru, a remote Pacific island, and keeps them there for as long as three years.
Climate change
Climate change is shaping up as the issue of the century. Over the past weekend (4-5 November 2006) there have been demonstrations across the world calling for urgent action to stop climate change In Auckland a “reclaim the streets” party was held and ice was dumped in the middle of Queen Street, allowing people to sled down the street on makeshift toboggans (that looked suspiciously like placards). In Wellington members of the Save Happy Valley Coalition marched naked to protest the proposed strip mining of Happy Valley, while in Christchurch the coalition held a beach party at the headquarters of Solid Energy, the government-owned mining company that wants to mine Happy Valley for coal.
As the G20 gathers inside the Hyatt, we will gather outside to say as loud and clear as we can that all nations must cut greenhouse gas emissions radically and fast. Australia and the United States haven’t even signed the Kyoto Protocol that requires developed nations to cut emissions to around 5% below their 1990 levels.
The facts about climate change are widely known, and yet still G20 leaders (the US and Australia in particular) are holding the world to ransom by not committing to a global solution to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Globally, we must stand up to tell climate polluters what the results of their actions are. The facts that the makers of the film An Inconvenient Truth present in their awesome documentary, need to be repeated again and again; in 25 years 300,000 people will die from global warming a year; global sea levels could rise by more than 20 feet with the loss of shelf ice in Greenland and Antarctica, devastating coastal areas worldwide; heat waves will be more frequent and more intense; droughts and wildfires will occur more often; the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free in summer by 2050; and more than a million species worldwide could be driven to extinction by 2050.
Get Up! Stand Up!
The movement for global justice, a fair and participatory economy, an inclusive and egalitarian society and ecological sustainability won’t grow itself! More than ever this planet needs millions of people to join the ‘movement of movements’ against corporate power and for a sane world. It is still possible! We still have time and enough resources to eradicate world hunger, cut our carbon emissions by ninety per cent and eliminate homophobia and sexism. But only if we act now!
We must take matters into our own hands and communities to confront capitalist globalisation. Recently, in a carpet factory near Wellington, workers engaged in wildcat strikes to protect their working conditions as ownership of their factory passed from one corporation to another. The Water Pressure Group in the streets of Auckland engages in reconnections of water to homes that had been cut-off by the water company, which was privatised in the 1990s. Its supporters continue to boycott paying their water bills and back up their politics with direct action and civil disobedience
It is time for us all to join the global movement to resist the G20’s attempts to steal our world. We must reclaim our planet and our future, and the only way we can do that is to grow a movement that is unstoppable. It means we must dedicate our time, our money and our skills to a coordinated political challenge to the new world disorder. One last thing! Don’t forget those famous words of Captain Planet, “The Power is YOURS!”
TAKE ACTION:
Support the Save Happy Valley Coalition
Support Oxfam’s Starbuck’s campaign
Join Greenpeace
Join Peace Movement Aotearoa and receive their Action Alerts
Come to a forum on globalisation in Auckland this Thursday (9
November 2006) For more info follow this link.
LEARN MORE:
Read Omar’s other article on the G20: What’s Wrong with the G20’s neo-liberal agenda?
Read more about the stories mentioned in the article on Indymedia
StopG20
Climate Defence
Save Happy Valley
Oxfam
Climate Crisis
Global Exchange
Fifty Years is Enough
ZMag
