EuroMayDay 2008 press release

from email, 7 April 2008:

What's EuroMayDay?

A transnational demonstration of precarious and migrant people held the First of May in more than a dozen European cities. The first MayDay Parade was held in Milan in 2001 (it now gathers 100,000 people), and since 2004 the process has spread all over Europe (see the Middlesex Declaration).

In 2006, the EuroMayDay was launched with pink actions in the EU Quarter of Brussels, and in 2007 a EuroMayDay superhero block joined the fray against the G8 in Rostock-Heiligendamm.

EuroMayday is a process by which actions and demands are put forward to fight the widespread precarization of youth and the discrimination of migrants in Europe and beyond: no borders, no workfare, no precarity!

Who organizes EuroMayDay and what for?

The EuroMayDay network, a web of media activists, labor organizers, migrant collectives convening each year in a different European city. Last mayday assembly was in Berlin, where it was agreed that these would be the demands surrounding the protests for EuroMayDay 008:

• full legalization for all persecuted migrants
• self-organizing and unionizing rights freed from state repression
• unconditional basic income
• a european living wage
• free access to culture, knowledge, and skills
• the right to cheap housing

Where will EuroMayDay 008 occur?

In Aachen - Berlin - Copenhagen - Hanau - Hamburg - Helsinki - Lisboa - Madrid - Malaga - Maribor - Milano - Napoli - Palermo - Terrassa - Thessaloniki - Tokyo - Wien.

This year, there is a focal point for the whole network in Aachen/Aix-la-Chapelle (http://euromayday.karlspreis.info), where Nicolas Sarkozy will present Angela Merkel with the EU Oscar, the Prix Charlemagne. Irony of the calendar, in 2008 syndicalist MayDay coincides with catholic Ascension Day, when the Karlspreis is handed out.

This year for MayDay in Aachen, two worlds will clash together:

Utopian Society vs Capitalist Market; the radical europe of multitudes vs the conservative Europe of elites, grassroots networks and squatted social centers vs the EU diarchy (http://www.radicaleurope.org/visuals/euromayday_aachen_008.jpg).

What kind of people participate in EuroMayDay Parades?

Activists, artists, hackers, unionists, migrant associations, precarious2precarious networks, queer collectives, critical cyclists, leftist radicals of all stripes: red, black, green, pink, purple, silver. They are coming to Aachen and other EuroMayDay Parades to join the fight against a EU dominated by police security and financial privilege, by Barroso's neoliberalism, Trichet's monetarism, Solana's militarism…

MAYDAY! MAYDAY! no borders, no precarity, let's defeat the new inequality!

INFO LINX

http://www.euromayday.org
http://euromayday.karlspreis.info
http://www.euromayday.be
http://liege.indymedia.org
http://www.wombles.org.uk/article2008021538.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euromayday
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precarity

VIDEO LINX

http://www.euromayday.be/maydaytv.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caKYW8qHJyU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM9ysjJ-9iw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPd29fr0rEs

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