Demonstrate Friday to Defend Argentina!

The One Year Anniversary of the Argentine People’s Rebellion

The Workers and Oppressed of Argentina Took to the Streets and Shook the Government to Its Knees!

U.S. Workers Are Pushed Down
When Our Bosses Oppress Overseas Workers!

U.S. Workers Are Strengthened When Our
Overseas Brothers and Sisters Stand Up to Uncle Sam!

Last year, on December 19 and 20, 2001, an amazing series of events took place in Argentina. Called the Argentinazo, or uprising of the Argentines, the people of Argentina followed the lead of the employed and unemployed workers and stood up against the government’s plan to institute a state of siege. The Argentine government was attempting to halt the widespread protests against the imposition of plans decreed by the US-backed International Monetary Fund in the face of a complete economic collapse of the country. The working people of Argentina successfully derailed the government’s plan to institute martial-law in order to meet the demands of the International Monetary Fund. Literally millions of people took to the streets blocking highways (piqueteros) and banging pots (cacerolazos) and in their unity they forced the government to immediately resign and flee.

The lesson our brothers and sisters of Argentina are learning is that by shaking the system to its foundation, they are unstoppable. Instead of fighting for a little reform here, and a law change there, they have demanded, ¡Que se Vayan Todos -- Out With Them All! Here that would mean, out with Bush, with Trent Lott, with Willie Brown, with Dianne Feinstein, out with Nancy Pelosi, and out with every defender of the miserable status quo and its legacy of war, racism and economic exploitation. Our Argentine brothers and sisters have many struggles before them, which they have yet to fight. And they stand at the crossroads: One road is to fight only for the reform of a deeply flawed system. The other is to work for a new political and social system, one where the majority, the working class, is in power, and not the minority, the bosses, bankers and investors.

The Argentine working class is in a life or death revolutionary struggle. Their actions point a way forward for all workers internationally, even here in the U.S. Though the crisis in Argentina is especially acute, fundamentally workers are in the same boat across the world as we suffer from increased attacks from big business and its politicians, cops, armies, courts and media. Here in the U.S., the economic attacks by the employer class, on the unemployed and employed workers highlight the fact that we are facing cutbacks and givebacks, not to mention the unprecedented pension theft, where illegal manipulations of stocks by Wall Street facilitated the 401-k devaluation and company stock fraud rip-offs. Here are a few examples:

• Congress failed to vote an extension of unemployment benefits
• ILWU: contract negotiations under the gun of the infamous Taft-Hartley Act and threat of military occupation and operation of the docks
• Teachers: privatization of schools, understaffing, non-credential teachers taking jobs, and historically low pay, and now lay-offs
• Transportation workers: from BART, to MUNI all the way to the New York Transit Workers, under attack by employers, United Airlines employees—all are facing job loss, pay loss, or major givebacks
• Public employees: Republican and Democrats agree that union representation can be scuttled for phony national security—they tore up union contract and civil service protection to create a new federal department.
All in all it is a dangerous situation for American workers, just as it is for workers around the world. The struggle of the Argentine working people is our struggle!

Down with the World Bank! Down with the IMF!

Cancel the fraudulent and usurious foreign debt imposed on Argentina, and other countries round the world!

The government of Argentina had followed the advice of the banks, the IMF and the US Treasury, to the "T". This was to be the shining example of globalization, but now even mainstream media can no longer hide what has never been anything other than the economic rape of the country. The government responded to the crisis by closing all banks and then froze every bank account in order to pay the massive foreign debt. A debt that the people of Argentina had never agreed to, a debt for money the capitalist elite alone was demanding. A debt that required the privatization of nationalized industry, which caused hundreds of thousands of jobs to be cut, to be followed by the most severe labor reform that has ever been seen in Latin America. Some areas of the country have reached 60 to 80 percent unemployment, when only a few years before a standard of living--unrivalled in South America--was expected. And now with the FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas), the US plans to step up the economic rape of Central and South America.

We of the Argentina Solidarity Committee salute the Argentinazo, and the year of struggle since then, based on plans of struggle voted in three National Workers Assemblies held this year, with delegates elected by the rank-and-file. All over the world, actions will be taking place in solidarity with the Argentine struggle. The international forces unleashed by the Argentinazo have by no means been defeated. In the last year, there have been some 13,000 demonstrations in a country with a population of 37 million. There are over 200 factories being operated under workers control. Combative, anti-bureaucratic slates are beginning to take back the unions. A tight network of neighborhood assemblies, called asambleas populares, has emerged in every city to with the aim of taking direct action to solve neighborhood problems. A united employed and unemployed workers movement, independent of the decades of the Peronist mafia, has emerged with an independent working class plan of action. A network of community soup kitchens has been created to make sure basic food and essentials are available. In short the Argentine working people, the vast majority, are taking another major step toward taking destiny into their own hands.


Today we, workers in the United States, stand in tribute to the fight of our Argentine Brothers and Sisters and demand from this government:
• Stop Plan Columbia!
• Cancel the foreign debt! Stop the FTAA / ALCA!
• No to Repression! Drop the Charges Against All Argentines Who Have Struggled Against the IMF Plans!
• From the US to Argentina: Empty the Jails of Political Prisoners! Free Mumia Abu Jamal, Black Panther Marshal Eddie Conway (behind bars for 30 years on a frame up), and the hundreds in both US and Argentine prisons for struggling against injustice!

Attend San Francisco homage to the Argentine people's rebellion:

Friday, December 20, 2002

4:30 PM Montgomery Street Bart Station -- 5:30 PM Union Square

Argentina Solidarity Committee, (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Argentina_Solidarity)

Founded by members of the Communist Workers Organization.


Photo: Police on horseback charging, Buenos Aires