Text fwd: [nousbases] 50000 in Rome against G14

Text fwd from Piero Bernocch and Agatha Haun on April 1

A wide social alliance against crisis

toward the general strike of April 23rd

While in London and in many other european cities people were in the streets against G20, in Rome 50000 people were participating to a combative demonstration against G14 Labour and Welfare Summit.

G14 gathered in Rome in order to repropose their cathastophc remedies, that provoked the most serious postwar capitalist crisis: salaries and pensions cuts, reduction of social services and common goods, more casualizations, support to banks and financial and industrial powers.

COBAS was promoting the initiative together with other two organizations participating to the so called "Patto di Base", CUB and Sdl, on the basis of an Anti-Crisis Decalogue, a social programme claiming stop lay off, work time reduction for equal pay; wage and pensions rise, guaranteed minimum wage for unemployed; link wages and pensions to the cost of living; redundancy payment at almost the 80% of wages for all workers and casual workers; create new occupation by a special Plan for the developement of renewable and eco-compatible energy, massive investments for safety in the workplaces and schools; open ended hiring for casual workers; a Plan of public investments for the retrieval of one million council houses through unoccupied houses requisition and real estate recovery; defence of the right to strike and demonstrate. In Italy a wide social alliance is supporting this platform. This social alliance gathered in the national demonstration in Rome employees and casual workers, squatters and migrants, social organizations and students, young people from Social Centers and environmentalists opposing destruction and pollution of territories. A relevant role in the demo was played by the "people from public schools": school workers and students refusing the destruction, didactic and social, that Ministers Gelmini and Tremonti want to impose to our school through cathastrophic "reforms". These "reforms" will cut 57000 work places from next September. Now the Anti-crisis social alliance shown in Rome is going to deepen and extend during the preparation of the next step of national mobilization promoted by Patto di Base (COBAS, CUB, SdL): a general strike on April 23rd, with regional demonstrations.