Monday 9 April 2012

May 1st 2012: Reclaim the world for the 99%!

Occupy the streets! All power to the 99%!

The international workers’ day this year is going to be more global, more radical and more promising than ever. No wonder! In 2011 the world witnessed immense, historic revolutions and movements. In most parts of the world the 99% movement came forward and changed the direction of the 21st century. In the Middle East and North Africa dictators were ousted one after the other. In the West war was declared on the rule of the 1% and the Wall Street. The dark age of the New World Order, of the rampant sway of the free market, of the New Right and of the war of terrorists was declared null and void. The world after 2011 is a very different world. May 1st 2012 will also be different.

The first call for a global May Day was issued a few months ago by the 99% movement in the USA; the birthplace of the international workers’ day. Global Strike! This is the call of this May Day, which means: Citizens of the world! Stop work on May Day! Come out onto the streets! Raise all your demands: from a living wage and equality for women, to justice for immigrants; from the right to education, housing and health care, to the abolition of the state of the 1% and direct rule by people’s general assemblies! Indeed it is the call of the Paris Commune in 1871 and the workers’ “storming heaven” which is now reverberating on the streets of New York, Oakland and Long Beach. The same call that was shouted by the likes of Neda in the revolutionary rising of 2009 in Iran, by Bouazizi in Tunisia, and, with even greater clarity, by the immense gatherings of the people in Al-Tahrir Square in Egypt.

We the Worker-communist Party of Iran join this global May Day call of the 99%. This is another step in the struggle of the workers in Iran over the past 30 years. From the half-million May Day march in 1979 in the capital Tehran until now, a bitter fight has been raging between the Islamic Republic, on the one side, and the camp of May Day and human liberation, on the other. The 1979 Revolution was drowned in blood by the Islamists; nevertheless it threw Iran’s 1% into total disarray. The bourgeoisie in Iran put its fate in the hands of a bunch of reactionary Islamist zombies, criminals and charlatans - some of who now pass off as “reformers” - so they could decapitate humanity and its freedom and May Day with the sword of Islam. Now the world has risen up against what the revolutionary worker rose up against in Iran. It is enough to compare the May Day resolutions of the workers in Iran in recent years with the May Day call of the 99% today, from LA to New York, to see how this call resonates with the working class and its party in Iran. The working class in Iran carried out numerous strikes and protests against poverty and austerity over the last year, and now under the present critical situation in Iran it has to come forward as a leading political force in the struggle of the people to overthrow the Islamic Republic.

The Worker-communist Party of Iran calls on all workers, teachers, nurses, all women and men throughout Iran and Iranians living abroad to support the call for a global general strike on May 1st 2012. On this day, everybody in Iran should come out against the rule of the 1%, against the billionaire Ayatollahs and their entire Islamic system. On this day, we must unite our ranks under the liberating banner of May Day and get ready for the taking of political power by the 99%; for putting an end to poverty, the threat of war and the insecurity that are wrecking the lives of the people; and for installing freedom, equality and socialism.

Worker-communist Party of Iran (WPI)
22 March 2012