global roots writes:

The following letter has been sent to several hundred European social and left-wing movements and organisations:

This fall the Danish government holds the presidency of the European Union. From Friday the 13th of December to Sunday the 15th, the final summit of the presidency will be held in Copenhagen. From Thursday the12th to Sunday the 15th there will be protests and actions against the European Union all over Copenhagen. Global Roots invite you to come and join us in this resistance against the EU: an undemocratic, capitalist project made solely to improve conditions for large cooperations, at the cost of people, democracy and the environment. Our homepage is disobedience and we're running an adbusting campaign at lott

At disobedience there will be information on practical stuff (getting to Copenhagen, crossing the borders, legal info, accommodation etc) as well as the latest updates on activities. We can be contacted by email at: ulydighed. Write us if you want to get on a mailing list with info on our preparations for the summit. You can also write and ask for mobilization material -- posters, leaflets etc.

If you can't make it to Copenhagen in December we call for international civil disobedience actions Friday the 13th against the corporate globalization. Seek out local agents of the corporate globalization and use your imagination in thinking out ways of protesting!

Who are we?

Global Roots is a new organization, so some remarks introducing us are probably in order: Global Roots was formed in the fall of 2001 by a wide range of different people from the radical left in Denmark. A lot of us have experience from the radical protests in Prague, Nice, Gothenburg and Genoa as well as from direct antifascist and antisexist action; one of the reasons we formed Global Roots was that we wanted to expand the appeal, basis and range of the counterglobalization movement without loosing the radicality of the protests.

We are working towards a different world; a world in which people and the environment comes before profit. We thus are a part of the movement fighting the capitalistically motivated and structured globalization from above. We support the hallmarks of Peoples Global Action (www.agp.org) and have together with other radical left organization in the Nordic countries founded a Nordic Network for a different Globalization. One of our most important tasks in 2002 is activities and resistance during the Danish EU-presidency.

If you are interested in having someone from Global Roots coming to your town to talk about the summit and our activities and line of action do tell us! We will happily come and help in your mobilization for the summit (or just inform on what is going on) if the transport expenses can somehow be covered.

Why fight the EU?

The EU is not a popular project growing out of European people's desire for increased solidarity and collective cooperation to solve common problems. Through its entire history from the Coal and Steel Union to the Common Market and the common currency the EU has been an instrument for the coordination of the interests of the large cooperations operating on European soil. With the globalization of capital and its gradual disassociation from the old nation state new institutions and instruments of power becomes necessary. This is the light in which the EU, WTO, World Bank and G8 should be seen. National parliaments are increasingly being reduced to rubber stamps furthering the interests of transnational capital. Social welfare, refugee and asylum policies, police and military matters are becoming uniform and coordinated in this process.

The transnational corporation's lobbyists live side by side with the EU officials and politicians in a closed and hidden system. They lunch together, sleep at the same hotels, ride the business class of the same airplanes, have the same ideas and increasingly have common interests. This creation of a new international capitalist class is happening completely disconnected from democratic processes; the EU institutions being merely the most functional way of furthering capitalist class interests.

Why come to Copenhagen in December?

An important point on the agenda of the summit in Copenhagen will be the entering into the Union of some of the Eastern European countries. Eastern Europe is attractive to the EU companies because of its cheap labour, low taxes and markets. The willingness of the populations in these countries to accept the B-membership they're offered is yet another example of the way the globalized economic system has completely undermined any real freedom of the old nation states. For these countries the results of entering the Union will be further deterioration of welfare, education, public transport, the environment and the social services, but the prospects of staying outside are equally bleak in the global capitalistic system.

Internationally enlargement of the EU will mean that it becomes able to secure its interests even better -- for instance by spreading and strengthening the WTO´s role in the world.

At the same time the construction of Fortress Europe continues in an attempt to please the right wing by the mainstream parties taking over their policies. New life is given to the old alliance between capitalism and nationalism as a way of diverting peoples well founded fears of the capitalist globalization's impact on their lives. To avoid furthering the nationalists and right wing it is becoming increasingly important that the opposition to the capitalistic globalization is itself having a global perspective. We are not against globalization; what we're fighting is capitalistic globalization from above.

We invite you to Copenhagen to express your protest against these processes. While the political elite of Europe secluded by massive police forces from any contact with the people they're claiming to represent is meeting in luxury hotels and conference centres we're taking back the streets!

Global Roots' line of action during the presidency.

Global Roots is only organizing strictly non-violent direct action during the December summit. The following is a brief summary of the reflections that has led us to believe that strategy to be the most expedient. We will work toward a support of our strategy which implies confrontative, but non-violent disobedience actions.

Why avoid violent clashes with the police?

First and foremost we will stress that we find the public debate on violence during summits hypocritical and completely lacking proportion! The European Union and the United States is leading a war in Afghanistan demanding the lives of thousands of civilians, a war against Iraq is in preparation and the economic system the EU is a part of costs thousands of lives every day; but the media chooses to spend miles of columnage on a couple of flying bricks and bottles in European cities instead of discussing these issues.

When we choose to avoid clashes in our actions during the summit, it is neither because we reject violence as a means in political struggle nor because we want to dissociate ourselves from the clashes between police and protesters which we have seen during earlier summits. Many of us were present at the earlier summits and see these clashes as a clear sign of the growing distance between those in power and those without it in the era of neoliberal globalization; as well as a predictable result of police attacks on the rights of protesters.

Our rejection of violence during the presidency is thus grounded in a political analysis: Even though the clashes have been expressions of legitimate political protests, governments and main stream media have succeeded in turning this political conflict into a question of penal policy issues of vicious and violent troublemakers.

Thereby the power holders have succeeded in depoliticizing the globalization critical movement and place the radical critique next to violence and terror. The clashes have also caused a great deal of fractioning in the movement against the corporate globalization. Large parts of the movement have felt their activities overshadowed by the riots. At the same time the depolitization has justified a greater militarizing of society: Enormous police forces with advanced equipment, absurdly harsh punishments, mass arrests and closing of borders. Thus we feel that violence during the EU presidency will not serve our purpose: strengthening of the global social movement against corporate globalization. To avoid furthering the strategy of depoliticizing and marginalizing resistance, militarizing repression and terrifying people away from expressing their dissent we shall try to avoid violent incidents occurring in our activities during the December summit. Also we recognize the need for mutual trust among the different groups involved in the protests. Therefore we will respect general lines of action of the organizers of the different activities.

What is the alternative?

The fear of clashes has caused a number of organisations to go in different directions. Some say there should be no demonstrations at all, some wants to place demonstrations far from the summit and some reject all illegal action.
Global Roots see these alternatives as just as wrong as the violent clashes. Just as we don't want to participate in the militarized schemes of the authorities we stand firm on the thought that the resistance should be clear and break the authorities' false image of social peace and an inherent logic of the economic system making it gradually more humane by itself. We are trying to find forms of action which can give the just indignation and experience of powerlessness ways of being expressed that are harder to use to increase repression further. We want to continue the confrontation without making us easy victims to the demolition and marginalisation of the authorities and without furthering the process of normal people being too scared to express their dissent.

Our strategy is social disobedience. We want to involve as many as possible in illegal direct disobedience actions aimed at the EU summit and other institutions representing the corporate globalisation.

What if the police attacks?

In the Global Roots action zones we will not meet police violence with violence. Meeting violence with violence makes it effectively up to the authorities whether summits should be "drowned in riots" and they seem increasingly willing to divert resistance by making this happen. To counter this Global Roots will react to attacks from the police with sticking together and non-violent self defense techniques.

Respect for other strategies.

We would like to point out that Global Roots respects that other activists have other analyses and therefore other forms of action than us. We will not help the authorities split us up in "good" and "bad" demonstrators. But we expect that this respect is mutual and that groups that do not wish to participate in actions along our non-violence lines separate their own actions from ours in time and space. We recommend that every organisation consider if their actions leaves room for other parts of the movement.

We also recommend to all progressive movements, organisations and to society as a whole that: they reject the disproportioned focus on the issue of violence/non-violence and the following depolitization of the resistance against capitalistic globalization, and instead engage in the struggle against the structural and military violence of the global authorities against peoples and progressive movements all over the world.

That's it for now. We hope to see you in Copenhagen in December for powerful joint action against the EU of capital!

Global Roots