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*Protest the spring IMF/World Bank Meetings!* As the economic crisis deepens and US foreclosure and unemployment rates climb, wealthy bankers and finance ministers from around the world scramble to resuscitate the financial institutions which created the crisis in the first place. This April the global elite, global financial institutions, and wealthy governments will meet to plan out billions of dollars worth of new economic bailouts for themselves while the nation's poor, the poor of the world, and working people are left with only crumbs. Billions of dollars have already been handed over to CEOs and portfolio managers, while workers' benefits and wages get slashed simultaneously. This trend will continue so long as capitalist expansion is prioritized over democratic principles, as long as profit is more important than people. A better world is possible, a world in which our means of providing for ourselves is not controlled by a wealthy elite. A global order is possible in which the dignity of human life is placed above greed, and the living earth is shared and respected, rather than commodified and sold. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank are two institutions which enforce the hyper-capitalist status quo. Since 1980, these institutions have been forcing countries to adopt neoliberal structural adjustment policies of privatization, liberalization and budget cuts. These policies are directly to blame for much of the suffering in the current financial crisis and in its predecessors in Argentina, East Asia, Russia and elsewhere. Though the IMF itself is beginning to admit its mistakes ? it recently recommended that countries abandon market fundamentalist policies to directly intervene in their economies ? it?s understood that that advice only applies to the United States and European countries. Free markets for the poor and socialism for the rich is their mantra. Neoliberal economics widens the sphere of imperialist capitalism, props up schemes of privatization, market liberalization and deregulation, and is ultimately to blame for this crisis. The World Bank and IMF are preeminent supranational institutions working to preserve the global financial order that puts profits, private gain, militarism, and gentrification over the needs of the people. Through their Structural Adjustment Programs - what they now refer to as ?Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers? ? these institutions have been destroying economies, local and global, for far too long. They must be stopped. The World Bank and IMF will be holding their annual joint spring meetings April 24-26 in Washington DC. As they try to save themselves from global financial meltdown (or maybe just give themselves a few extra billion dollars) we all know better than to let them have all the fun without us. Join Global Justice Action to oppose these institutions, resist the dominant global order, and show that a better world is possible, free from neoliberalism, capitalism, and imperialism. Global Justice Action embraces a diversity of tactics and will therefore be organizing a wide array of actions and events including coordinated direct actions and blockades, a mass permitted march, a people's forum, and a few other surprises! GJA will host community education events, arts workshops, trainings, and direct action meetings in the months leading up to April for the purposes of putting together a well coordinated, effective, inclusive weekend of actions that will hamper the plans of the ten thousand plus delegates. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- *Call For Unpermitted Marches From the SDAC* Some have been saying it all along... Some have just begun to see it in crisis... A world in constant crisis, chained to desks and assembly lines, clear cuts and wastelands left in its wake... and they called it progress...and it collapsed. The suffering and disempowerment felt around the world everyday has become generalized in capitalist globalization. The age of globalization is the age of quiet total war. They exploited us, traded us away, and left us to pick up the devastation. This world is a death machine, producing death and saying that this is what it means to have it work. Around the world thousands die everyday of preventable causes linked to poverty as we live lives of shallow material opulence obtained by selling our entire lives away in the channels opened up in some market, a market which guarantees poverty to most and complete objectification to the rest. And they say that it works... And it collapsed... Work or starvation and for many work and starvation. They fenced off the world into property, fenced off the Earth itself and make us buy back the things which are already ours if we just decide to take them back. They made us dependent on markets for the basics of life... and it collapsed... For all our subservience we got a world of poverty, wars, cultural meaninglessness, and wastelands. We are killing ourselves while we devastate the very planet which sustains us in a frantic race to the bottom. Capitalism is a race to see who can exploit more, extract more, cut more, and drill more, the fastest and make the most money doing it... and as a result the planet is a sinking ship. For every oil spill, every clear cut, every by-product dumped into a lake, every mountain blown up to mine coal, every war started, every sweatshop opened, every housing foreclosure, every lay-off, every eco-system leveled to build an upscale resort, every prisoner locked away, every culture destroyed, profit is made, and the drive for profit is destroying the planet while relegating us to lives slaved away in the offices, factories, and prisons of this world. And it collapsed... We are left to pay Wall Street for the money THEY lost and the lives THEY destroyed. We are left jobless, homeless, lifeless, and suffering the effects of THEIR failure, unless we refuse this fate. We have a choice to make, stay on the sinking ship or turn and fight. The people that structure this destruction have faces and meetings. We intend to take the fight to them, and this is a fight for our world, a fight for our lives. April 24-26 in Washington DC the International Monetary Fund and World Bank will be holding their annual Spring meetings, and we will be in the streets waiting... We are calling for a series of marches to shut down the meetings and strike a blow against the death machine, please "dress appropriately". Details at www.selfdescribed.org. Kick it till it breaks! A communique from the Self-Described Anarchist Collective ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hey! Accompanying this note is the Self-Described Anarchist Collective's (SDAC) newspaper. SDAC is an anarchist organizing body whose current projects are making a stand against the war in Iraq on the 6th anniversary (March 19-21) and disrupting the April 25 meeting of the IMF, both taking place in Washington, DC. In our newspaper, you will find articles on the horrors of neoliberalism and capitalism in general as well as calls to action around the IMF meeting. Should you want more materials, please feel free to contact us at selfdescribedanarchist@riseup.net. Love and Rage, SDAC SDAC: http://selfdescribed.org/ Global Justice Action: http://www.globaljusticeaction.org/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- *The Plan* *Friday, April 24* 6:00- Consulta Location TBA 8:30- "Walking Tour of IMF and World Bank Delegate Hotels" Called by the SDAC Meet at Farragut Square *Saturday April 25* 5:30 am- Blockades and March to Shut Down the World Bank and IMF Meetings!!! Details at www.globaljusticeaction.org and www.selfdescribed.org Saturday Afternoon- People's Forum Called by Global Justice Action Details TBA Saturday 3:00-5:00 West End Neighborhood Library (1101 24th St NW) Nap time, yoga, and vegan milk and cookies provided by the SDAC. This gives us time to rest up and re-energize after a long day on the barricades. Saturday Night is going to be fun, get rest, you'll need it! 10pm- IMF Soccer Riot and "Game" Night! Called for by the SDAC Meetup at Washington Circle *Sunday, April 26* In the interest of providing a space for groups that are not comfortable with participating in direct action, Sunday has been declared open for permitted actions. This does not mean that no one can do any direct action, but please avoid downtown DC. Details TBA ------------------------------------- *The Strategy for Saturday Morning:* Within the framework of this strategy the SDAC is encouraging affinity groups and clusters to carry out actions that are as fluid as possible. Remember: we don't have to control the streets, we just have to prevent them from controlling the streets. If they feel that they cannot guarantee control over the streets, they won't move delegates. This is a strategy of mobility, fluidity, and small-scale actions used to respond to police movements and move in open spaces. Not everyone needs to get into downtown in one large group or all at once. Move in smaller more responsive groups and be strategic about what time to launch actions. Be careful, strategic, and plan for success! *Tier 1: Blockade the Hotels * International Monetary Fund and World Bank delegates leave their hotels at 6:30 am in an attempt to get around demonstrations. They plan the agendas of their meetings because they are running scared. There are 22 hotels, with many concentrated north and northeast of the IMF/World Bank. These are our choke points. If we can prevent the delegates from leaving the hotels, we will prevent the meetings from happening. The strategy calls for blockades, barricades, and unpermitted marches (announced or unannounced) to occur in the time leading up to the delegate transportation departing from the hotels. Be creative and tactical in how we do this. They will start boarding the buses and limos at 6:30am, let's be out there waiting. Along with the first tier of the proposed strategy we are calling for direct action marches to reinforce the blockades and strike a major blow against capital and spectacle. *Tier 2: Street Blockades * If we can prevent the delegates from moving from the hotels the second tier calls for taking the streets and preparing to keep them. Once the delegate transportation is immobilized the strategy calls for people to start blockading the streets, using a variety of tactics, to further lock the area down. The goal is to set up an area of control which will take hours, or maybe days to clear. The blockades at the hotels, and the police response may create space for us to start to build more permanent blockades. Be aware, fluid, and ready to lock it down! Along with the blockades, the unpermitted marches will continue to serve to reinforce and distract. *Tier 3: Strategic Reclamation of Space * They stole our world out from under us and called it property, it is goddamn time we took it back! If we can immobilize delegate transportation and lock the streets down we can move into actually seizing space in order to build projects that will persist beyond these actions. These actions can be part of the plan of action for any group and may be engaged in at any time, regardless of the status of actions downtown. Contact community organizations and local collectives for help in building a long term project that starts that weekend, take over that building that you always wanted to take over, open up a house, our resistance needs to be constant and consistent. Demonstrations will not solve the problem in themselves but can open up spaces for our desires to manifest, use this space to build spaces and a movement that can win! *People's Forum and March* We are organizing a mass permitted march as well as a forum. The March is on Sunday and the Forum is in the evening on Saturday. The People's Forum will meet concurrently with the IMF/World Bank's meeting and aim to: 1) promote understanding of neoliberal economics 2) to present alternative visions to capitalism 3) tie this understanding to local issues and to learn from already successful resistance movements. ---------------------------------------------------------- *Convergence Space, Transportation, Housing, Medics, Legal Updates* Convergence Space: We currently have a convergence space secured at St Stephens Church, which has historically been supportive of various social justice groups and mobilizations in DC. The convergence space will be open Thursday April 23-Saturday April 26th. Trainings and spokescouncils will take place at the convergence space on Thursday and Friday and the exact times and schedule of events are still being determined. Further updates will be coming. Housing: Mass housing will be available, we're just waiting on a final confirmation, so stay tuned! A housing board is now up on the website, www.globaljusticeaction.org. Transportation: A ride board is now set up on the website, so you can start posting and looking on there to coordinate rides from your city. Medic: Medics from Boston have agreed to bottomline organizing medics on the ground weekend of! We have a large amount of supplies already in DC, as well as medic-specific housing available. As with any action, we definitely need trained medics to come down from different cities to ensure we have enough medics to cover the weekend's actions. If you are a medic or have medics coming from your city, please email medic@globaljusticeaction.org so we can best evaluate our capacity. Legal: There are many folks, including National Lawyers Guild members, who have agreed to coordinate trainings leading up to actions (Know Your Rights, Legal Observer trainings, etc) as well as set up a legal hotline for the weekend. For legal-specific questions, email: logistics@globaljusticeaction.org ----------------------------------------- *March 22 April Uprising Consulta* *If you're in town or can get to town, meet with folks to plug in and discuss the weekend of actions surrounding the World Bank/IMF meetings* March 22, 12pm-3pm Butler Boardroom, 6th floor Mary Graydon Center, American University 4400 Massachusetts Ave., NW Washington, DC *if you have trouble finding the room, look for someone at the main entrance of Mary Graydon Center to direct you. *Metro: Tenleytown/American University stop - take the shuttle from the metro and get off at the main campus stop. *Parking: free parking on the weekend in the lot off of Nebraska Ave by the main campus main campus map: http://www.american.edu/maps/campus.htm google map: http://tinyurl.com/amwywh