Cobas

[INTERNATIONALISM] September 23, 2018: Anti-Racist, Internationalist Meeting

Agosto 31, 20180

September 23, 2018

Bologna, Italy

 
Anti-Racist, Internationalist Meeting

(for the Italian version click here)

The immigration issue has become a central political issue in Europe and in Italy, a pretext to divide and subjugate workers, also ideologically and politically, and to nurture nationalism and drag the masses, the ones against the others, behind the imperialist policies of their respective governments.

Similar foul winds anticipated the massacres of both world wars.

While the arrival of new immigrants is at historic lows for the last decades, and Europe’s bourgeoisie needs immigrant labor to make up for demographic decline and an aging population, racist barking is getting ever more shrill, from the Italian and German ministers of the Interior down, stirring up hatred and violence towards immigrants.

By pushing the racist drug they want to blackmail immigrants, keep their wages low, and keep native workers tied; they want the precarious, ill-treated and poorly paid native workers feel as being part of the same nation as their exploiters, and make them believe that their condition would improve if only the “foreigners” (who “steal jobs, welfare, housing, lower wages and commit crimes”) were sent back to their countries.

Society is dividing into two fronts on immigration, with anti-immigrant racists on the offensive.

In our view this is not just a humanitarian question of solidarity with other human beings, it is a matter of class: immigrants are mostly proletarians, wage earners or unemployed: they are an integral part of the working class of each country, they have the same interests as native workers, and only by fighting together can they improve their conditions, as the struggles in the logistic sector in Italy have shown and are showing.

It is not the immigrants, but the bosses backed by the governments’ policies, who make jobs precarious, impose flexibility, make arbitrary and terroristic use of dismissals, lower wages.

The bosses try to divide natives from immigrants also to put them in competition with each other, keep immigrants subdued, so that they can tell the native worker: if you do not accept these conditions, there is an immigrant ready to work in your place.

Full equality of rights for immigrants, and no blackmailing with the residence permit is in the interest of all workers, whether native or foreign born.

Racism aims at preventing this unity and struggle, at dividing natives from foreign-born in order to exploit them more intensely.

We are against racism and xenophobia because we are for the unity of the working class, which is international, against capital, which is also international; because we are against the poison of nationalism, which mobilizes proletarians against other proletarians, also in the form of “sovereignism”.

We are for the establishment of an international anti-racist front, in particular in Europe, to combat racism: on the trade-union and social terrain by promoting unity in struggle of native and foreign workers; on the ideological terrain by demolishing racist lies; on the political terrain by fighting discriminatory measures and fascist attacks against immigrants.

This is a decisive moment for Italy and Europe, in which we need to stand up beyond organization distinctions, for the unity of the working class, on a national and international scale, against racism and nationalism.

We invite all organizations, associations and people who share the urge to face racism and attacks against immigrants – including those who have not attended the previous meeting on 8 July – to participate in the anti-racist and internationalist meeting to be held in Bologna (Italy), via Aurelio Saffi 30 (SI Cobas office), on Sunday, September 23, 2018 at 10 am.

Let’s promote an initiative for a network of movements, unions and political organisations at the European level!