An Unpredictable Ring of the Chain

25.Apr.08 - When the process of the Transnational Chain of migration related action started, it was difficult, when not impossible to anticipate the conditions and dynamics of conflicts on a more longterm view, in the different contexts and conditions connected by the Chain. But now, something unpredictable is going to take place. In Italy, a process of communication between migrants' and precarious' movements opened the possibility of a May Day centered on the paradigmatic character of migrant labor in the whole process of precarization. The Turin station of the Chain was a step in this direction.

It was opened a new opportunity: since years we stressed the necessity to improve a struggle against precariety starting from the specific condition of migrant workers. Migrants experience every day a particular condition of exploitation and blackmail, but this condition has a general meaning, for it is a lever for differentiating and dividing workers, weakening their capabilities of fight against transnational capital. The struggle against the monster of the border regime, therefore, is a struggle addressed against precariety that can be shared and has to be shared by all workers without denying the specificity of migrants' condition, their double precariety.

A new, unpredictable ring will be then added to the Transnational Chain of Action: a mass demonstration of migrant and precarious workers under the slogan "no-borders, no precariety"! The Milan EuroMayDay will share the transnational character of our struggle: on the one side, a concrete and direct connection with the U.S. demonstrations of migrants is expected during the demo, starting from the common demand for a permanent, unconditioned legalization. On the other side, the transnational growing-banner of the chain will open the demo, before being sent to Warsaw at 6th of June for the protest against Frontex. This is an opportunity that cannot be lost and we hope that it will contribute to a new process of communication among migrants' and precarious' movements on a European level, for the improvement of the struggle on a transnational scale!

More info: italy.euromayday.org

EuroMayDay008 - Milan: the precarious 1st of May overturns the borders of the future!

We address all, precarious men and women, migrants and natives, those who work into call centers, airports, entertainment and fashion, information and formation, research, social cooperatives, distribution. We address workers in factories and services, students, associations, social centers, the manifold forms of resistance and self-organization that re-generate the territories and metropolis tortured by the neoliberist vampirism. Precariety beats hardly, in our work and life. It is not rotten luck. It is not transitory. It is not a social problem among others, nor the headline of a newspaper. It is not simply the perverse proliferation of atypical job-contracts, nor an excise duty that younger generations have to pay in order to enter the labor market. Precariety is the contemporary mode of producing wealth, of exploiting labor, of subjecting all our life to the profit of enterprises. Precarization is the crisis of political and unionist representation of labor, it marks a point in the time-line: it is not possible to go back to the past anymore. Starting from this point, we have to imagine and try out new forms and strategies of struggle against exploitation, hierarchies, poverty.

A struggle which speaks clearly and loudly, because it is rich of what precarization pretends to reduce to silence. In the last years, EuroMayDay has open, in Italy and Europe, a shared political and social space, where precarious women and men have been protagonists, without mediations or mediators, trying out new forms of visibility, communication and conflict.

MayDay is a social process, evolving every year, during all the year, and this year, in Milan, it rises again, starting from migrants' protagonism. Migrant labour discloses the secrets of precarization. Borders control produces hierarchies - often racist - among legal and illegal, goods and bads, criminalizing migrants through war and security rhetoric, whose aim is to keep the silence about those who dye working, without any security.

The specificity of migrants is to live a double precariety. Inside and outside working places, the link between labour contract and residence permit is a blackmail, detention centers are a continuous threaten. Yet, migrants' condition involve labor as a whole, for it is a fundamental lever of precarization, a way to multiply fragmentation, reducing the spaces of liberty and the opportunity to struggle. However, in the last years migrants have been protagonist of meaningful experiences of autonomous struggle in the name of the freedom of movement.

On the coming 1st of May, in Milan, we want to share migrants' strenght, to amplify it, uniting it with that of other precarious workers. To share experiences which are transnational and give the measure of a May Day that crosses Europe, from Aachen to Berlin, from Copenhagen, Hanau, Hamburg, Helsinki, Lisbon, Madrid, Malaga, Maribor, Naples, Palermo, Terrassa, Vien to Tokyo, being even connected with the migrants' demonstrations in the United States.

We want to build up a long/larga/lunga MayDay, to open a continuous debate among the manifold working, social and unionists realities that fight everyday and everywhere against precariety, sharing the topics that always characterized the precarious 1st of May: the demand of a social income, the question of welfare, the aim to transform precarious' and migrants' protagonism in a diffused and radical conflict. Precarization beats hardly, and it marks a deep discontinuity with the past. It is a balance between blackmail and consent, it influences the social relationship in many ways, dividing and confounding us. Our lives are atomized, our territories and metropolis plundered. Milan has been chosen for Expo 2015. We tremble with thinking to the consequences: the bipartisan orgy of national proud and speculations will prepare a stage for the exploitation of precarious and migrant labor, hidden by a cement casting.

There is no doubt: we are not compatible with this show. If Milan will be an exposition window, let's make of it a window for our conflicts and for a different valorization of our lives. We will discuss about it during the Precarious Fairs preceding, crossing and following our parade, where auto-production, cooperation and sharing experiences will be discussed.

Let's MayDay, Milano, 1st of May, Meeting - Porta Ticinese, h. 3 pm