SI COBAS ITALY: AGAINST WAR AND HIGH COST OF LIVING: LET'S BUILD CLASS OPPOSITION TO THE MELONI GOVERNMENT! FRIDAY 2 DECEMBER: GENERAL STRIKE SATURDAY 3 DECEMBER: EVERYBODY IN THE STREETS OF ROME!

📌 It is a warmongering government, whose granitic Atlanticist positioning is in line with NATO-led imperialist plans and in perfect continuity with the rearmament race preached by the EU and practised by the previous Conte and Draghi governments: a plan that, in a framework of global capitalist crisis, uses the wicked Russian invasion of Ukraine as an alibi to start an economic and military reckoning with Russian imperialism and, in perspective, with China and other emerging capitalist powers. This plan behind the rhetoric about "democratic rights" and the instrumental use of the demands for self-determination on both sides (Western Ukraine and Donbass) has as its sole purpose the contention for the plunder and division of raw materials and "spheres of influence" in the four corners of the earth.

📌 This is a government that is the enemy of the workers: while inflation empties shopping carts and starves millions of working-class families, a new wave of state gifts is being prepared for big and small bosses, with the flat tax and the raising of the cash ceiling, a real incentive to tax evasion. In the meantime, hundreds of factories and companies are closing or relocating, generating thousands of new unemployed; schools and infrastructures are falling apart; healthcare and public transport are collapsing and the slaughter of work-related deaths continues unabated.

📌 This is a government that is the enemy of the unemployed and the poor, aiming to cancel the citizenship income in order to favour the most brutal forms of exploitation, black work and starvation wages.

📌 This is a government that is an enemy of the environment, where climate change denial prevails, which is functional to legitimise policies of environmental devastation in the name of profits.

📌 This is a racist government, which with its policies of rejections fuels hatred towards immigrants and with its restrictions on the issuing of documents creates a pool of blackmailed illegal immigrants available to unscrupulous slave masters and corporations.

📌 This is a government that is an enemy of women and of freedom of sexual orientation, resuming crusades against abortion and a family model founded on patriarchy and homophobia.

📌 This is a repressive government, which, as shown by the recent 'anti-trade union' decree, aims to criminalise social and trade union struggles, further tightening the persecutory measures already in force with the 'security decrees' passed by previous governments and encouraging the climate of a 'police state' against strikes, pickets and housing occupations.

We are facing an offensive that is the offspring of decades of anti-worker policies passed by centre-left, centre-right and 'technical' governments under the dictation of the industrialists’ association Confindustria, the bosses and big finance capital.

In light of this, the opposition and defence of the interests of the exploited masses can in no way be delegated to the 'anti-fascists of convenience' or to the 'alternating current' pacifists who sit in parliament and for as long as they have been in government have attacked wages, made work precarious, dismantled national labour contracts, repressed strikes by police attacks, suing and imprisoning workers, the unemployed and trade union organisers, increased military spending, fuelled the business of sending arms to Ukraine and contributed to the climate of war escalation, nor to the official unions CGIL-Cisl-Uil bureaucrats, who have always been accomplices of bosses and 'friendly' governments. ..

This is why, on Friday, 2 December, the SI Cobas, together with all rank-and-file unionism, called a day of national general strike.

For us, this strike must not be a ritual deadline, but an opportunity to concretely block the vital arteries of the economy and interrupt the flow of goods and services for 24 hours, in and out of workplaces, in schools, universities, and in the degraded and ruined territories of this metropolis.

And that is why, on the following day, Saturday 3 December, we will be in the streets of Rome, to make the voice and anger of workers, the unemployed and the exploited heard loud and clear by the government, giving life within the demonstration to an anti-capitalist and internationalist rally, open to all those who share its contents and watchwords.

Only struggle pays!

United we win!

SI Cobas national

Link to SI Cobas Website and call updated 22 November 2022

http://sicobas.org/2022/11/22/italia-dopo-lo-sciopero-generale-del-2-12-manifestazione-nazionale-a-roma-il-3-12-giu-le-armi-su-i-salari/