I'm not going to yet another ritualised May Day march this year. But neither is anyone else in Sydney!
Instead we are all heading down to the Darling Harbour convention centre to let the NSW Labor conference know what we think of the IPremier Morris emma Labor government's plan to privatise the state's electricity industry. The May Day action is on May 3 and starts at 9.30am. Join us if you can.
This Labor conference will epitomise the big problem confronting all of us who may agree that the world urgently needs to change. A rich and powerful elite run the show and they have so much money they have even been able to buy off potentially powerful organisations of popular power and social change, like the labour movement and some of environment peak bodies. Millions and millions of dollars of corporate donations (declared and undeclared) keep the major parties safely in the hands of the rich.
Unless the labour movement can be prised away from the clutches of the corporate rich, there is no hope of changing the world. Sorry if it sounds old fashioned to some, but there isn't a social force other than the working class that is powerful enough to take on and defeat the rule of Big Bucks Inc.
However, in a country like Australia, the working class comprises nearly 90% of the population. Its potential power is bigger than ever before.
Us "wage slaves" are now the overwhelming majority. You cannot walk down a street without bumping into them. A bump won't win them to the movement for change but perhaps a subscription to 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly might.
All this May we will be conducting a drive to reach out well beyond the politically "converted" and we ask each reader to consider helping us out with this campaign by selling or giving a GLW subscription to as many workmates, friends and relatives as possible. A seven-issue introductory subscription only costs $10 — so it's easy.
The motivation is simple. The need for change is urgent. Global warming threatens human survival, but how is the corporate elite responding? Their system is starving millions of poor people, through agrofuel production, "to feed the cars of the rich with food", explains Cuba's vice-president, Carlos Lage. "This
is the irrational world we live in today."
Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's socialist president, described this twisted corporate response to the crisis as a "massacre" of the world's poorest.
"The problem is not the production of food … it is the economic, social and political model of the world. The capitalist model is in crisis."
We are offering prizes ($50 book vouchers for any Resistance Books publications) for the first two people who sell or give away 10 or more subscriptions to 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly in May. As soon as you can, send us the list of the 10 or more new subscribers you've introduced to 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly to:
address below.
You can also help us in our struggle for change making a donation to our Fighting Fund at: Greenleft, Commonwealth Bank, BSB 062-006, Account No. 901992. Alternatively, ring in your donation by credit card on the toll-free line at 1800 634 206 (within Australia only), send us a cheque
or money order to PO Box 515, Broadway NSW 2007, or donate online through Secure Pay at http://www.greenleft.org.au/fogl.htm.
Since the last issue, our supporters raised $2806 bringing the total raised for the Fighting Fund this year to $70,503 which is 28% of our target.