18th or March, International Call

Here is the International call for the 18th of March, the European Day of Action against racism, fascism and austerity that the City Plaza Refugee Accommodation Squat in Athens/Greece announced in Nov 2016; http://solidarity2refugees.gr/. The call was discussed between various organizations and persons; a coordination group was installed, which calls on the European movements as well as the local antiracist and solidarian groups and organizations in Greece to adopt the 18M campaign.

Within the next days we will set up a website and a facebook page. As soon as the site and page are working we will inform you and ask you to send us info about your planned actions, in order to publish it on the site/page.

Although we don't have the sites yet but on the other hand there is not very much time left for the preparation of actions, we send this Int. call around in order for groups, organizations and persons in the different European countries to start planning for this action day along the ideas in the call. (It is self-understood that every group, organization and person can and preferably should decide for a call of their own.)

We still haven't got a logo and a good title for the action day. The working title "Stop this crime! Solidarity beyond borders is our answer!" might not be understood by everybody. We discussed the issue here but did not come to a final conclusion. Anyway, the title should contain something with "18M", probably also the logo.

So if anybody has a good idea for the logo and/or the title of the campaign he/she is welcomed to send it to us (for the time being to the mail addresses "ro-achim@otenet.gr" or "gmaniatis00@yahoo.gr").

We didn't mention in the call the mobilization to the G20 counter summit and protests in Hamburg/Germany since we wanted to include in the 18M campaign the broadest possible spectrum. Every group, organization or person drawing up its own call can add the G20 campaign.

We hope anyway that the M18 campaign could be a landmark or point of reference also for those who are involved in the G20 campaign.

Please spread the call and disseminate it to all groups and organizations, which could be interested to participate.

Best

City Plaza Refugee Accommodation Squat, Athens/Greece

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Stop this crime! Solidarity beyond borders is our answer!

International Call for the 18th of March - European Day of Action

against racism, fascism and austerity

On the 18th of March, 2016 the EU signed as its dirty deal with Turkey in an attempt to externalize the Euro­pean borders, to use the turkish regime as a watchdog to stop refugees from fleeing into EU countries. With active participation from the Greek government, the Greek-Turkish border region has been turned into a militarized buffer zone for the deterrence, detention and deportation of refugees. This Deal is one piece of a puzzle in the authoritarian and racist policies which are being implemented in all European countries.

On the 18th of March, 2015, the day the new European Central Bank building in Frankfurt was opened, a huge European movement protested against the austerity policies that the EU imposes on Europe and especially on the European periphery. Tens of thousands took to the streets to claim another Europe, a Europe of solidarity and struggle from below against exclusion, poverty and deprivation of social rights for locals and migrants.

Europe wages wars and at the same time strengthens its fortress against the refugees. The austerity regime in the EU and the repressive European border regime are sides of the same common goal of the European rulers: to stabilise their imperialist powers and the regime of exploitation. They tell us that this is the only way out of the crisis, which after all is their crisis, the capitalist crisis. This is where they meet with the nationalist and fascist ideologies of every kind: sacrifice yourself and most of all sacrifice all others – for the sake of a national unity, which in reality never existed. The austerity regime creates uncertainties for many of societies' less privileged who become afraid about their and their children's future, and lead in turn to them to believe in ugly propa­ganda, which uses the refugees as scapegoats to cover the ruling classes' social and political crimes. Thus we face a rising fascist threat all over Europe.

The attempt to seal the European borders is futile because refugees must always find ways to escape from wars and unbearable poverty. But the EU efforts lead inevitably to even more deaths at sea, will increase the price of illegal border crossing and the abuse of the refugees' rights. At the same time the policies of closed borders and restriction of rights of migrants is promoting far right ideologies. But the deprivation of rights of migrants in no way improves the life of the locals, in fact quite the opposite: it restricts the rights of all.

Solidarity is our weapon against the attacks of the European leaders on our lives. Against their plans to con­vert Europe to a huge social hotspot of austerity and a metropolis of fascist practices, designed for human beings only as working masses but not as living people. We stand with our ideas and our projects of collective solida­rity. "We live together, we work together, we struggle together!"

We stand against the EU plans to reactivate the Dublin agreement regarding Greece from the 15th March onwards and to send back refugees to the horrible living situations in Greek refugee camps, without shelter from storm and snow, without edible and sufficient food and without health care, left alone in limbo either to suffer these terrible situations or to be deported to war-torn countries like Afghanistan.

We call on all European social movements to raise their voices on March 18th

·        against the crime of the EU-Turkey deal and similar future deals

·        against racism and the fascist threat

·        against deportations and for the right to stay for all economical and political refugees,

·        against the EU border regime and for the freedom of movement,

·        against the austerity measures and for political and social rights for all,

·        for the closure of all refugee camps and detention centres and for dignified living conditions for all, locals and immigrants

·        for common struggles of migrants and locals

·        for solidarity and equal rights for all