This COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the brutal disregard our economic and political systems have for our well-being. Frontline workers are told to go without proper safety equipment, others have been forced out of work and left to fend for themselves, giant corporations have been gifted enormous transfers of wealth and now our communities are bracing for brutal cutbacks to public goods and services at the moment we need them most.
COVID-19 presents only a fraction of what's to come as the climate emergency escalates. Our hyper-capitalist plutocracy, led by the two parties of War and Wall Street, has flunked this test. Miserably.
To defend ourselves against "Shock Doctrine"-style exploitation of this immediate crisis and to win the Eco-Socialist Green New Deal to avert the crises ahead, we must join together now in strategic, networked collective action to shut this system down. We are fighting for our lives.
Sign this call to action and get connected to organizer training, peer-to-peer support and the latest updates on this necessary movement.
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Shared Demands (From PeoplesStrike.org)
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Protect All Frontline Workers
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No return to work or end to Physical Distancing until health experts determine it is safe.
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Protect Vulnerable Communities
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Institute Universal Health Care Now
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Institute Universal Social Services Now
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Institute the Human Right to Housing
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Bailout the People, Not the Corporations and Wall Street
- Institute Universal Basic Income Now
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Release prisoners and Detainees. Abolish the system of mass incarceration.
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Close the Detention Centers
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Freeze Payments - including rent and utilities; Cancel debt including student loans.
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Decarbonize the Economy, End Fossil Fuel and Extractive Industries Now
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Institute Food Sovereignty Policies and Practices Now
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Democratize the Means of Production
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Close all of the Overseas Military Bases
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End the Sanctions That Are Crippling Other Countries' Response to COVID-19
On The First of Every Month, I Pledge:
- No Work, Walk out, sick out, sit down, slow down, work to rule (follow all the rules to the letter; safe work or no work), wildcats occupations. Hold a meeting of your co-workers. Hold a moment of silence. Stop work however we can. Wear RED to show solidarity.
- Strike in Place, Encourage the hundreds of millions of people who are working from home or are unemployed, in prison or in a detention center to engage in “No Working, No Shopping, No Compliance” actions. Encourage those who can communicate their support for the day of action on social media or in their local media to do so by sharing their photos, their stories (video or audio), and what demands they support, utilizing the common hashtags we will collectively designate.
- No Shopping, Don’t shop, in person or online on May Day and throughout the weekend for maximum impact. Prepare and share with your neighbors and loved ones, observing the most sound hygenic practices and physical distancing.
- Targeted Demonstrations, We have witnessed very creative demonstrations the last several weeks, that demonstrate that folks take collective action and engage in proper social distancing at the same time. These include i) picking designated times to give accolades to frontline workers, ii) protests, roadblocks, and sideshows in vehicles and iii) old fashioned demonstrations and blockades of offices and various targets like landlords.
I Will Also Organize In Support Of:
Rent and Mortgage Strikes
Encourage folks to collectively not pay rent to their landlords and target major renter companies, mortgage institutions and banks with phone blitz’s, communications jams etc. to demand a moratorium on rents and mortgages, no back payments and no evictions.
Occupation Defense, No Evictions
Many cities have utilized the vacant capacity of hotels to house the homeless and the sick. And homeless individuals and families have taken to occupying vacant homes in places like LA and Oakland in the midst of this crisis. Given the situation millions are now facing, due to unemployment and eviction, we have to protect those who are in these homes and facilities and all those who are being threatened by eviction because they are not able to pay rent.
Target Jams
Taking collective action to flood the telephone lines of the various politicians, CEO’s, shareholders, and corporations we are targeting to meet certain demands, to make our demands known and apply as much pressure as possible.
No Silence
We are not alone. Distance doesn’t mean we can’t fight together. We can’t stay quiet—in the words of fighters of the HIV pandemic, silence=death. We’ve decided to live, loud. In some cities we sing with our neighbors, in others we chant, clap and bang pots and pans–connect online #generalstrike2020 #strikeseflie #redfored #mutualaid #5.1.2020 #rentstrike #wedecide #stopshopping #schoolsout #noborders #releasetheprisoners #ourhouse #prepareandshare #noshopping #nowork #norent #noprisons #nosilence #noborders #noschool #landback #closethecamps #solidarityindistance
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