Seeking An International Meeting Of Movements

From Venezuela: Declaration for an International Assembly of Movements and Organizations of the Peoples

From March 4 to 9, in the context of the homages to Commander Chávez on the fourth anniversary of his passing, the city of Caracas held the International Meeting of Peoples’ Movements, which was attended by more than 30 delegates of people’s organizations from around the world.

The main goal was: for people’s movements and organizations of the world to organize an International Assembly of People’s Movements and Organizations, to be held in November in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

Representatives form South Africa, Tunisia, Bangladesh, Nepal, Ireland and a numerous delegation of organizations of the American continents gave the first step, along with the Bolivarian government, towards outlining a common agenda of international struggles with the peoples of the world.

Asides from homaging the live memory of Commander Hugo Chávez, the movements presented a letter of solidarity with the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in the context of the 14th Summit of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America.

At the end of the meeting, in the Teresa Carreño Theater, in the presence of President Nicolás Maduro, representatives of people’s organizations presented the Declaration for an International Assembly of People’s Organizations and Movements, which we reproduce here-under:

1. We’re going through a historic moment in the world, when there’s a structural crisis of the capitalist system, centered around financial capital. This crisis affects all dimensions of life: an economic crisis, which creates misery for the people, growing unemployment and a drastic reduction in the ability to fulfill basic rights such as food, housing and health.

   The most perverse side of this is that entire populations are forced to migrate to try to attain better life conditions and get leave the status of exclusion they are pushed to by the system. When demanding fulfillment for the stolen rights, the people is disciplined through repression, criminalization and murders.

2. This situation is the product of capitalism’s need to conquer new territories to exploit their natural resources and concentrate more riches, through the destruction of the environment. We’re witnessing an environmental crisis due to the irreversible destruction of our planet. And it aligns with political crisis, because there’s distrust for state institutions, who tend to the necessities of the market, which are dominated by capital instead of answering to social demands.

   Therefore, the crisis acquires a cultural dimension, imposing the consumerism and competence between individuals, which attempts against values like solidarity and collective work.

3. In addition, a few days ago Wikileaks freed 10,000 CIA secret documents, and now we have proof that the CIA has used a great number of cyber-weapons. These weapons turn every cell phone, every computer and every TV set into a spy machine at the service of the US intelligence agencies, which is much worse than science fiction could imagine. No child using any of these artifacts is safe anywhere. This proves, once again, that the US has no respect at all for the privacy of people around the world.
4. To paint the whole picture of the situation we must remark that the Arab region and its peoples are suffering the cruelest forms of imperialist hegemony. Since the creation of the Zionist state of Israel, our peoples are enduring all kinds of colonial plundering, occupations and genocide. A few years back, the capitalist offensive escalated with the intention of fragmenting states and making them sink into chaos by using religious and ethnic divisions, to control them easier. They divert the struggles against Zionism and imperialism, cause the displacement of millions and finance terrorism while they criminalize the legitimate resistance of the peoples.
5. In this context, we know there won’t be social transformation without organization and mobilization of the majority of our peoples. We need to concentrate our strength to generate actions that lift people from the frustration created by this unequal system that promotes violence, and we need to promote in the national and international context the demands for a just, free, and sovereign society, created by self-determined peoples.
6. We also need to strengthen our efforts regarding the political and ideological training of our comrades. This must be a fundamental pillar to understand the complexities of the world in order to transform it. Likewise, we need to strengthen our communication tools. This culture is lonely, denigrating, and construed through subliminal messages that promote selfishness, patriarchal gender roles, xenophobia and violence. Against it, we need to support and communicate our popular culture, which is solidary, committed and based on action and sharing.
7. For decades, we the people’s movements and organizations have been organizing ourselves and coordinating with each other through our struggles and shared history. In Latin America, through resistance to neoliberalism, we were able to build sectoral platforms of coordination that transcended the borders and even created world social forums. Then, under the leadership of commander Chávez, we began to build the coordination of social movements towards the ALBA, which reunites the main people’s movements of the continent.
8. We’ve also built ties with the African continent, and we were able to hold a continental meeting in Zambia, with 21 countries represented. We’re also preparing a regional meeting in the Middle East to bring together organizations of a dozen of countries. There are also meetings scheduled in Asia, Southeast Asia and Europe. In every region of the world we find groups of people that resist and struggle, and who want to join this process.
9. The basis of unity is unity of action, and we intend to join efforts and mobilizations around certain dates that are relevant to the struggles we promote. We will mobilize simultaneously on March 8 (International Women’s Day) on June 5 (World Environment Day), on October 8 (Anniversary of Che Guevara’s death in combat), and on October 16 (Day of Food Sovereignty); and we also propose to establish a day of struggle against US imperialism, to express our rejection against the US government’s policies of interventionism and human rights violations.
10. Finally, Venezuela —the country of Miranda, Simón Rodríguez, Bolívar, Zamora and Hugo Chávez—, in continuation of the internationalist legacy of the Eternal Commander, we call to the International Assembly of People’s Movements and Organizations, which will be held in our country with the presence of 2,000 delegates around November 7 this year—the 100th anniversary of the Russian revolution. The Assembly will bring together people’s movements and organizations from all continents of the world that are anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, anti-colonialist, anti-latifundist, anti-patriarchal, anti-racist and anti-war, to build a political platform and an international plan of action and struggle to allow us to practice internationalism and confront the enemies of the peoples and humanity.

    It will also be a moment to show our commitment and active solidarity with the Bolivarian revolution and the people of Venezuela, who are keeping alive the flame of hope for the world.

Caracas, March 7, 2017