World Development Movement blog

MEPs defy financial lobbyists after campaigners across Europe take action

At the end of last week, we joined forces with other European campaigners to try and get as many people as possible to ask their MEPs to vote to start tackling food speculation. Thank you to everyone who took the action, in the end the vote went well!

I’ve become a bit of a placard and banner geek when it comes to marches and protests. Some people make exhibitions of them, I’ll just have to make do with sharing my favourite ones. This time it’s the ‘my name is Dave’ placard that was at the public sector workers’ strike on Thursday.

I still don’t see the logic in any of this:

1) Reckless banking brings about a global financial crisis
2) The banks are bailed out with taxpayers’ money
3) The public sector pays - cuts and austerity measures are enforced
4) Bankers carry on as usual

So it’s the big strike on 30 June.  Hundreds of thousands of teachers, workers and public service workers are striking to protest at the governments austerity measures.  Measures driven by a desire to pursue a neo-liberal agenda that will damage public services and open the door the door of privatisation, putting profit before people.

In solidarity with other campaigners in the global south who have been protesting against a similar western-led agenda for years, WDM will be supporting the strike. 

There are several ways to get involved all over the country:

Malaika Aleba from Alberta Canada, who spoke in London at International Stop the Tar Sands day.

Last Saturday morning I woke up with an extra spring in my step and hopped (despite the ungodly hour) onto the Oxford tube to London. Why in the world, you may be asking yourself, would a twenty-something-year-old choose to spend a Saturday morning jumping onto a bus, when she could be partaking in a myriad of other activities, such as, you know, sleeping in?

Patrick Bond, director of the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society

Judging by what transpired at last week's global climate negotiations in the former West German capital, Bonn, it appears certain that in just over five months time, the South African port city of Durban will host a conference of procrastinators, the 'COP 17' (Conference of Parties), dooming the earth to the frying pan. Further inaction on climate change will leave our city's name as infamous for elite incompetence and political betrayal as is Oslo's in the Middle East.