19 April 2006

Really Free Trade Comes To Newtown

On Monday, 1 May 2006 Wellington anarchists will celebrate May Day – International Worker’s Day - with a really really free market in Newtown.

The really really free market is a market where everything is free, nothing is for sale. At this market there will be lots of great FREE stuff, like clothes, household items, books and food as well as information stalls from groups working on radical social, environmental and economic change.

The market will be held on the corner of Riddiford and Constable Streets in Newtown from 3:30-6:30pm. (In the case of wet weather the market will be held in the Newtown Community Centre on the corner of Colombo and Rintoul Streets.)

Wellington anarchists are organising the really free market as a Mayday celebration to show the contrast between “Free Trade” and genuinely free trade.

Said spokesperson Mark Rawnsley, “Free trade means that giant multinational corporations are able to freely move jobs to places where wages are the lowest and where environmental protections and labour laws are non-existent. It is a contradiction to call it 'free trade' because it is only money and goods that can move freely across the globe, while people seeking to better their economic situation cannot escape national boundaries. Free trade works for corporations not people.”

On the topic of genuinely free trade he explained, “Anarchists believe in genuinely free trade. We believe that this can only be accomplished by erasing national boundaries and working towards a global society free of exploitative capitalism. This society would be comprised of communities in free association with each other, producing what we need and caring for our environment. Only then can free trade really be called free.”

“May Day was once a day when workers all over the world displayed their strength, proclaimed their ideals and celebrated their successes. We need independent working class politics: not collaboration with government and bosses, real solidarity with fellow workers in struggle. We still need a further reduction in working hours, without loss of pay, and to value the unemployed,” he said.

“We need revolutionary politics - a real democracy where everyone affected by a decision will have the opportunity to have a say in making that decision - a democracy of efficiently co-ordinated workplace and community councils, and a society where production is to satisfy needs, not to make profits for a privileged few. This is anarchism,” he said.

ENDS

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