Declaration of Social Movements Assembly, Porto Alegre

[Jean Enriquez]

Declaration of Social Movements Assembly
Porto Alegre (RS), Brazil

We, people of all continents, gathered in the Assembly of the Social
Movements during the Thematic Social Forum Capitalist Crisis and
Social and Environmental Justice, fight against the causes of a
systemic crisis expressed as the economic, financial, political, food,
and environmental crisis, that puts at risk the survival of humankind.
Decolonizing oppressed peoples and confronting imperialism is the main
challenge of the social movements of all over the world.

In this space, we gather, from our diverse backgrounds, to build
together common agendas and actions against capitalism, patriarchy,
racism, and every type of discrimination and exploitation. We
therefore reaffirm our common struggles adopted in the assembly of
Dakar, in 2011:
Fight against transnational corporations
Fight for climate justice and food sovereignty
Fight against violence against women
Fight for peace and against war, colonialism, occupations and
militarization of our territories

People all over the world are suffering the effects of the aggravation
of a profound crisis of capitalism, in which its agents (banks,
transnational corporations, media conglomerates, international
institutions, and submissive governments) aim at increasing their
profits applying interventionist and neocolonial policies. War,
military occupations, free-trade neoliberal treaties and “austerity
measures”, expressed as economic packages that privatize state
companies, cut wages and rights, increase unemployment, and ravage
natural resources. Such policies strike the richer countries of the
North harder and are increasing migration, forced displacement,
evictions, debt, and social inequalities.

The exclusionist rationale of that model only makes a small elite
wealthier at the expense of the large majority of the population, both
in the North and South. Defending people’s sovereignty and
self-determination and social, economic, environmental, and gender
justice is key to overcoming the crisis, strengthening the leading
role of a State free from corporations and at the service of the
people.

Global warming is the result of the capitalist system of production,
distribution, and consumption. Transnational corporations, financial
institutions, governments and international bodies at the service of
the system do not want to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases.
Now, they are trying to impose the “green economy” as the solution for
the environmental and food crisis, which, in addition of aggravating
the problem, causes the commodification, privatization, and
financialization of life. We reject all the false “solutions” for
these crises, including biofuels, GMOs, geo-engineering and carbon
markets, which are merely new disguises of the system.

Rio +20, to be held in June, in Rio de Janeiro, 20 years after ECO 92,
reinforces the importance of the fight for environmental justice as
opposed to the model of capitalist development. The attempt to
greenwash capitalism by imposing new instruments of “green economy” is
a warning for us, the social movements, to strengthen our resistance
and to take the leading role in building true alternatives to the
crisis.

We denounce the violence against women, regularly used as a tool to
control their lives and bodies, and the increase in the
overexploitation of their work, used to buffer the impacts of the
crisis and to maintain constant profit margins for the companies. We
fight against the traffic of women and children and racism. We defend
sexual diversity, the right to gender self-determination, and we fight
against homophobia and sexist violence.

Imperialist powers use foreign military bases to instigate conflicts,
to control and ransack natural resources, and to foster dictatorships
in several countries. We denounce the false discourse of human rights
defense that often justify these military occupations. We are against
the consistent violation of human and democratic rights in Honduras,
particularly in Bajo Aguan, the assassination of union leaders and
social activists in Colombia and the criminal blockage of Cuba, which
now in its 50th year. We fight for the release of the five Cubans that
are illegally imprisoned in the US, against the illegal occupation of
Malvinas Islands by the UK, the tortures and the military occupation
of Libya and Afghanistan by the US and NATO forces. We denounce the
neo-colonization and militarization process experienced by the African
continent and the presence of Africom. Our fight is also for the
elimination of all nuclear weapons and against NATO.

We express our solidarity with the people of the world struggling
against the predatory and neocolonial rationale of the extractive
industry and mining transnational corporations, particularly with the
people of Famatina, Argentina, and we denounce the criminalization of
the social movements.

Capitalism destroys people’s lives. However, every day, many struggles
for social justice emerge to eliminate the effects of colonialism and
to allow a decent quality of life for all. Each of these struggles
implies a battle of ideas that demands actions for the democratization
of the media, which is currently controlled by large conglomerates,
and against the private control of intellectual property. At the same
time, it requires the development of independent communication that
strategically follows up our processes.

Committed to our historical struggles, we defend decent work and
agrarian reform as the only way to encourage family, peasant and
indigenous agriculture and an essential step to reach food sovereignty
and environmental justice. We reaffirm our commitment with the
struggle for urban reform as a fundamental tool to build fair cities,
with participative and democratic spaces. We defend building a
different integration, based on solidarity and strengthening of
processes such as UNASUR and ALBA.

The fight for strengthening public education, science and technology
at the service of the people, as well as for the defense of
traditional knowledge, cannot be postponed, as they are increasingly
commodified and privatized. We therefore declare our solidarity and
support for the students of Chile, Colombia, Puerto Rico and worldwide
that continue to march in defense of these common goods.

We assert that people must not continue to pay for this systemic
crisis and that there is no solution inside the capitalist system!

The agenda carries important challenges that demand us to interlink
our struggles and our massive mobilization.

Inspired by the history of our struggles and the inspiring strength of
movements like the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall St., “indignados” and the
struggle of Chilean students, the Social Movements Assembly call upon
popular forces and activists of all countries to mobilize actions -
coordinated at world level - to contribute to people’s emancipation
and self-determination, reinforcing the fight against capitalism.

We call for support of the International Human Rights Meeting in
Solidarity with Honduras and for building a Free Palestine Social
Forum, strengthening the global movement of boycott, disinvestments,
and sanctions against the State of Israel and their apartheid policies
against the Palestine people.

We call upon activists around the world to take to the streets from
June 5th to join in the global action against capitalism and to
support the People’s Summit for Social and Environmental Justice,
against the commodification of life and in defense of the common
goods, to be held in the framework of Rio+20.

If today we fight, the future is ours!

Porto Alegre, January 28, 2012
Social Movements Assembly

--
Jean Enriquez
Executive Director, CATW-AP
Telefax: +632-4342149
Mobile: +639178235326
'el amor y la fe, en las obras se han de ver'
- refranero del peregrino