Coming Events To Raise The Political Temperature

A series of coming events should help to raise the political temperature and build the kinds of coalitions we need to see developing in the current period.

This week there is to be action on the London Underground situation - the RMT have arranged a demonstration in London against LU/TfL proposed job cuts

Wednesday 11th February 2009
Demonstrate against the proposed job cuts on LUL / TFL.

Meet outside St James Park tube station at 07:30 am to demonstrate outside 55 Broadway.

At the end of the month, various anti-poverty, environmentalist and campaigning groups have organised a discussion and "teach in" day in London entitled
6 Billion Ways -

As climate, food and financial crises start to look like a GLOBAL MELTDOWN
Come to 6 BILLION WAYS to discuss making another world possible...
Debates, films, music, workshops, art

Saturday 28 February
10am - Midnight @ Rich Mix, 35-47 Bethnal Green Road, London E1 6LA

Including discussions on: the financial crisis and economic alternatives, conflict and liberation in Palestine and Iraq, climate catastrophe and building a green new deal, the future of feminism, the impact of Obama on race politics, when resistance is successful and how to change consumer culture.

Speakers include: Tariq Ramadan, Mark Thomas, Susan George, Karma Nabulsi, Meena Raman, Tariq Ali, Ken Livingstone, Trevor Ngwane

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
10am - 7pm. Workshops, debates and discussions FREE
7pm - 8.30pm. Final plenary with keynote speakers FREE
8.30pm -Midnight. Gig £7/£5 concessions

Organised by City Circle, Friends of the Earth, Jubilee Debt Campaign, People and Planet, Rich Mix, War on Want and the World Development Movement.

Big mobilisations are planned for March and April around the meeting of the G20 - various organisations and publications including New Internationalist have come together to form a coalition known as Put People First which is planning a mass march in London on 28th March - Unions like Unison are amongst the sponsors.

A second series of major demonstrations are planned for 2nd April - these involve the peace movement, the conclusion of a Socialist march for jobs, and potential mobilisations or radical activists from all over Europe that are planned from 28th March onwards.

Then, immediately afterwards the focus shifts to the NATO summit in Strasbourg, Kehl and Baden Baden.

And then we have Mayday, everywhere! A good head of steam of resistance, defiance and protest should have built up by then.

The ruling class must be told in no uncertain terms that we will not pay for their crisis. The demands of the rising social and political movements are non-negotiable - real democracy, real freedom, real equality - an end to militarism, the surveillance state and corporate rule. There must be a real, effective programme for combatting climate change and resource depletion on an international scale and on an egalitarian basis.

Hopefully, our would-be rulers will now see, as the failed leaders of countless regimes saw before them, that the game is up. The bribes, the threats, the "bread and circuses", the lying propaganda machines have all failed them. People have begun to believe that another world really is possible.