The IWA would like to show its solidarity with the social protests occuring in France which are yet another example of resistance to the overbearing exploitation that working people around the world are facing.
Below we would like to publish parts of a text sent by the CNT-AIT and an appeal for solidarity.
Call for solidarity with the popular movement in France of the "Yellow Vests".
For more than 2 months, a social movement of a new type has been shaking France.
Hundreds of thousands of people, mostly working classes (poor or middle-class workers, unemployed, temporary workers, pensioners, ...), have been gathering to spontaneously occupy public spaces (and especially the "roundabouts " ones may find at the entrance of any city or village in France), to express their anger and to seek how to overcome the current political system. These thousands of people have been using the method of struggle which are familiar to anarchosyndicalists: decisions in assemblies, refusal to have leaders or representatives, direct action (that is, action taken directly by the people in struggle, and therefore without political parties, without unions or any other organizations outside of the assembly which would be intermediate between the assembly and the Power / State / Government / Boss). An autonomous movement with diversity of tactics and mobility. (“Auto” means self and “nomous” means norm, so an autonomous movement that defines its own rules for action, outside the regulatory and legal framework.) To identify themselves, people in struggle have adopted the "yellow vest", a universal symbol that makes everyone equal, and gives visibility to those whom those in Power do not want to see: the poor, those excluded from the economic system by capitalism and globalization. The Bosses and Capitalists are worried about the impact of this movement on the economy. The cost for the French economy is already estimated to be in the billions of euros. In the 2 months of this autonomous agitation, the “Yellow vest” movement has already obtained more social progress than all trade-union representatives and political elections in the last 20 past years.
