For years now, the CEOs of major corporations, hundreds of top international government officials and just plain rich people - from Bill Gates to Bill Clinton - have been meeting every year in Davos, Switzerland. This is where the real rulers of the world give the politicians their marching orders. This is where the schemes that lead to atrocities like GATT and the WTO are actually hatched. And this year, the dining club for the world ruling class will be held at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Midtown Manhattan.
The WEF is moving here because they were effectively chased out of Switzerland by a concerted campaign of direct action. They think that here in New York we're shell-shocked, punch-drunk, and maybe we are but - whaddya fuckin' kiddin' me?
This is a provocation. While thousands of New Yorkers are still burying their dead, trying to patch together shattered lives, and desperately trying to see how they can continue to pay insanely high New York City rents after being laid off from their jobs, the richest and most powerful men on earth have decided to come and party on the wreckage - to celebrate, no doubt, the billions of dollars of taxpayer money they've just been handed by their respective governments and explore new opportunities to profiteer from permanent global warfare. Do they think we have no pride? No self-respect? That we're just going to sit back and let this happen?
As our heroic firefighters have shown us, the moratorium on direct action in New York is over. We are calling for for a joyous, creative resistance to the WEF's stifling grey culture of corporate conformity; actions whose diversity of tactics will reflect the rich diversity of our city's communities. We are calling for actions based on principles of non-hierarchy, passionate opposition to patriarchy, white supremacy, and rule-by-elite, and the vision of a world in which no one has to live in fear or daily terror. We are calling for a world in which states and their wars, the economic violence and insecurity promulgated by their corporate overlords, the hideous legacy of 500 years of colonialism and racism, and the violence and intolerance of every kind of crusader and religious fanatic will finally be banished from this earth.
RSVP Waldorf Astoria Hotel New York City January 31-February 4
On the web: http://www.abolishthebank.org/wef2002.html
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