Declaration
We, students, precarious workers, unemployed, and activists of Europe and North Africa met in Tunisia for the transnational meeting “Réseau de luttes” from September 29th to October 2nd. We shared our knowledge and collective experiences: starting from our different practices we are creating a common process of struggles. The crisis is global, the struggle has to be global.
We are all involved in mobilizations and movements against all the tyrants and regimes of global financial capitalism, from North Africa to Europe. We are looking to build up a new transnational space, connecting the local struggles, and new forms of organization beyond and against the autocratic regimes and the system of political representation. Nobody represents us.
During these days, we discussed about precariousness, unemployment, self-organization, art and urbanism, university, knowledge and culture, migration, state repression, the debt, networks and autonomous media. The workshops took place in Tunis, Sidi Bou Said, Regueb and Sidi Bouzid, Hammam-Lif and Sousse.
A central website will be initiated to coordinate our efforts and to expand this network: Tunis, Sidi Bou-Said, Regueb and Sidi Bouzid, Hammam-Lif and Sousse.
A central website will be initiated to coordinate our efforts and to expand this network: http://international.r02.org.
One huge common transnational meeting will be held once a year and thematic meetings as often as necessary to improve our networking. We propose to hold the next thematic meeting at the beginning of 2012.
We will participate actively in the global day of action United for Change on October 15 : #15O. With our struggles and taking the squares, we claim :
Stop the banksters !
Drop the debt !
Enough austerity !
Knowledge is a commons !
Freedom of movement for all !
No one but ourselves represent us !
We won’t pay for your crisis!
We talk – We act – We move !
Come what may, we are here to stay !
Erhel ! Dégagez !
Que se vayan todos !
Tunis, 2nd of October 2011
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Original call by KLF in preparation of the meeting:
Liberation Without Borders Tour:
From Rebel Universities to Tunisian
Uprising
Last 11th-13th of February, during the transnational meeting in Paris promoted and participated by hundreds of activists, groups and networks that are struggling against precarization, austerity policies and cuts to education, Tunisian activists proposed a great meeting in Tunisia. The project immediately became a central issue in the construction of the Knowledge Liberation Front, because a new Europe begins from the Maghreb revolution. The 13th of May we will leave the European universities in struggle to transgress European borders and unite our conflicts with the uprisings on the other shore of the Mediterranean Sea, because they are our uprisings.
The activists in Tunis who have been organizing the meeting since mid February are extremely clear about its content: let’s not call this initiative a caravan because we have no need for help or simple solidarity, concepts that often hide traces of colonial charity, and because we are perfectly able to do the revolution without teachers. Moreover, they have added over the last weeks, what we see arriving labeled as “humanitarian” from the other shore of the Mediterranean are bombs and war. Instead, we need your struggles to unite the two shores of the Mediterranean through conflict and social transformation, to oust all tyrants - from Ben Ali to the tyrants of the financial capitalism.
This is the reason why activists, students and precarious workers of the Knowledge Liberation Front will go to Tunisia since the 13th of May: to learn. We will go to Tunisia to understand and to do militant inquiry, because the insurgent composition - highly educated young people and unemployed or precarious workers impoverished by the crisis, a system that produces corruption, women reclaiming and acting out their liberty, people who want to live and move without borders - has common characteristics with the European movements revolting against austerity and the cuts to education and welfare. We will go to Tunisia to bring our experiences and discuss, starting from the transnational common days of action against banks and the financial capitalism of the 24th-25th-26th of March. We will go to Tunisia to build relations and not to follow media events. We will go to Tunisia to organize together against a war run against the women and men who are rebelling in the North Africa: it is not against Gaddafi, who has always been a faithful ally of the Western powers in the war against migrants, but against the revolution. We will go to Tunisia to fight, together, against European borders and for the free circulation of people and knowledge. We will go to Tunisia to make Tunisia our university. Without aesthetics of revolt or the ambiguous veils of humanitarian causes and supposed solidarity, we want to learn what it means today, in Europe, to do as has been done in Tunisia.
So the 13th of May we will do only the first step: we want to build up a process, to carry on a process and concrete projects, and to call with the Tunisian activists for another great initiative in the next months. And for this reason, we will go to Tunisia with a delegation of the network "kein mensch ist illegal" and other anti-racist groups, to claim for a freedom without borders. Because the real "caravan" will be towards Europe, to liberate ourselves from the tyrants with the Tunisian activists teachings and the migrants' practices of liberty.
On these premises, we invite everyone, activists, students, precarious workers, groups and networks, anti-racist collectives, independent media and artists, women and men who refuse the war and the violence of the crisis, to participate and organize meetings to share this initiative: makeouruniversity@googlegroup.org.