Vancouver
Slam the Gate on the G8
Protest in Vancouver against the G8/G20 Summits
12:00pm
Saturday June 26 2010
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SLAM THE GATE ON THE G8!
Saturday, June 26, 2010 at noon
Grandview Park (on Commercial Drive, between William and Charles St.)
Come join us as we march in solidarity with the Toronto Community
Mobilization Network in protest against the G8/G20 Summits where so-called
‘leaders’ and bankers of the twenty richest countries are meeting in
Huntsville and Toronto June 25-27 2010. At the Summits they will be
discussing the themes of the global economy, development and climate
change in a closed door, unaccountable meeting. Let’s send a loud message
to the G8 Elite that we reject their deplorable agenda to further economic
and social agendas that promote exploitation, profit, environmental
degradation and colonization of the worlds resources!
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What are the G8 and G20 Summits?
The G8 and G20 Summits are meetings of the heads of states, financial
ministers and bankers of the richest countries in the world. The IMF and
World Bank and other institutions are also present. A gathering of the
world's richest industrialized countries, the extensively secured meetings
are an attempt to further the ongoing exploitation of global communities
and resources through the same policies, multilateral agreements, and wars
that have resulted in the current financial crisis and ecological
destruction of our planet. The G8 and G20 summits consistently push an
agenda of neo-liberalism and structural adjustment programs commonly
including: decreased trade barriers, the removal of labour and
environmental protections, cut backs on social services, and the
privatization of both resources and public sector services. They are
meeting to make decisions that will result in more exploitation of people
and the environment while ensuring that the systems
that increase colonization, wars and displacement are maintained.
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Why Oppose the G8 and G20 Summits?
As diverse communities from in and around the un-ceded Coast Salish
Territories known as Vancouver, we reject both the institution of the
G8/G20 and the ideology of neo-liberalism on which it is based. Neoliberal
policies lead to increased corporate control, and to increased levels of
inequality between the rich and the poor - both locally and
internationally. The so-called "world leaders" who led the world into one
of the worst economic disasters of the last century have no right to make
economic policy for the rest of us. Globally, economic inequality is
greater today than it has ever been in the history of the world. We oppose
the agenda of free trade, privatization and market deregulation that the
G8/G20 stands for, seeing it as a tool to reinforce the colonial pattern
of domination of the global south by the north and the vast discrepancies
between the wealthiest and poorest people in the world.
The site for the Vancouver local of The Media Co-op has been archived and will no longer be updated. Please visit the main Media Co-op website to learn more about the organization.
Comments
The G8/G20 Sham Slam
This is the moment Marx envisioned, and the timing is right. Post Olympics. The exponentially increasing middle-class-to-poor-to homeless contingent now joins the ranks of the proletariat. Dispossessed, disenfranchised lumpen proletariat lead the way, ardently opposing state-targeted soul obliteration: class alienation, anger, criminalization, and hunger characterize this outstanding display of outright defiance
against the domination of the wickedly exploitive ruling class. Twenty people: the top .0000786098 % of the world's population, make decisions that affect seven (7) billion. Is that the social democracy our professors and friends envisioned ? Of course not, but participation in demonstrations simultaneously opposing the G20/G8 agenda in Toronto sends a loud and undeniably lucid message to the elite. Get out of Dodge, and give us back our free will, our political voice, which is the sole arbiter of this economic mess we're now in, this "recession". More like a depression ! I'm typing as I watch the inevitable confrontation between the cops and protesters, 10, 000 vs 10,000 or more pigs. Pigs who protect and preserve status quo capitalism and the
conservative-liberal zeitgeist represented perfectly by Harper and Obama. Yet the history of ruling class domination must, has to and will end ! Peace is our goal, and it will be achieved despite our suffering.
Stephen Blumstein
D.E.C Social Sciences
B.A (criminology/interdisciplinary studies)
Currently working on my M.A. (crim)
Repression Disaster Captalism Shocking us into Compliance
All of the above cannot continue in the age of the labyrinth: watching our backs, never knowing if
our neighbours will turn us in for smoking in the wrong place, writing something surreptitiously on the
proverbial wall in Mount Unpleasant ,smoking pot in the alley or behind a bush, or in our cars,
scrounging for the crumbs the middle class lay out for us as we slowly starve to death, rendering us
POLITICALLY VOICELESS once again, never listening to Major, Co-opted by mass conventional
media because we can`t afford computers, or lawyers when the rentalsman comes looking. Forgettiing
our past since it only lingers in the abyss of some elusive contradictory dream that seems to paint an
image of hopelessness deep within our tortured souls.
Rendered helpless once again as the fat cat politicians wwho claim they can save once say:
Sorry,there`s no money to hire you. or gee, why don`t you just disappear from the face of the earth
because you are really an ineffectual soul, a nobody without a face, a speck of atoms in a an ethereal
vacuum precluded by by the unknown duplicates of our genes. The ones who history will undoubtedly
mark as the lost souls, the child who screams at night while her mommy cries from the repeated
blows to face she receives in the jungle that is Hastings street, by a john whose only goal is to come.
One shock after another to render us the helpless compliant slaves who should really be asking:
Why do I get up in the morning ? Just because the world is calling ?
Question your masters,
and love again.