By Srecko Horvat
Our letter
Dear friends and comrades, dear brothers and sisters,
In times of our current planetary catastrophe, we have read your DECLARATION… FOR LIFE with great inspiration, worry and joy, determined to do whatever is needed to support this urgent call. For what is at stake is not just the life of humans, but all other species and the biosphere itself.
During the last five years, we have established DiEM25 — Democracy in Europe Movement — in all corners of Europe and beyond, counting around 130,000 members united in the fight against capitalism’s neverending Expansion, Extraction and Exploitation. More than a decade before DiEM25 was founded, many of our members were already inspired by the Zapatista Movement and your courageous fight that has already transpassed oceans and generations.
Many of us, from all walks of life, as difficult as it can be especially for those who are daily colonized by capitalist time, have been following closely the Zapatista hourglass, we have seen the time that is coming when those who have been stubbornly, against the grain, will unite. Not in order to impose or reform, but in order to construct a common future beyond capitalism that would consider both air and water, nature and love, as planetary commons.
At this crucial moment, when the ongoing pandemic and vaccine geopolitics is even further dividing societies and communities, we need to reinvent the space and time of imagination, we need to reinvent models of mutual aid and friendship based on convictions and love that would go beyond borders, that would even go beyond generations and time, as tiny sands that could become a mountain in the hourglass.
We are excited about your arrival to Europe and we want to join, contribute, support and learn.
Please let us know how we can help, we would like to mobilize our entire membership.
On behalf of DiEM25’s Coordinating Collective,
Srećko Horvat
28 January 2021
TO THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD:
TO PEOPLE FIGHTING IN EUROPE:
BROTHERS, SISTERS AND COMPAÑER@S:
During these previous months, we have established contact between us by various means. We are women, lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender, transvestites, transsexuals, intersex, queer and more, men, groups, collectives, associations, organizations, social movements, indigenous peoples, neighbourhood associations, communities and a long etcetera that gives us identity.
We are differentiated and separated by lands, skies, mountains, valleys, steppes, jungles, deserts, oceans, lakes, rivers, streams, lagoons, races, cultures, languages, histories, ages, geographies, sexual and non-sexual identities, roots, borders, forms of organization, social classes, purchasing power, social prestige, fame, popularity, followers, likes, coins, educational level, ways of being, tasks, virtues, defects, pros, cons, buts, howevers, rivalries, enmities, conceptions, arguments, counterarguments, debates, disputes, complaints, accusations, contempts, phobias, philias, praises, repudiations, boos, applauses, divinities, demons, dogmas, heresies, likes, dislikes, ways, and a long etcetera that makes us different and, not infrequently, opposites.
Only very few things unite us:
That we make the pains of the earth our own: violence against women; persecution and contempt of those who are different in their affective, emotional, and sexual identity; annihilation of childhood; genocide against the native peoples; racism; militarism; exploitation; dispossession; the destruction of nature.
The understanding that a system is responsible for these pains. The executioner is an exploitative, patriarchal, pyramidal, racist, thievish and criminal system: capitalism.
The knowledge that it is not possible to reform this system, to educate it, to attenuate it, to soften it, to domesticate it, to humanize it.
The commitment to fight, everywhere and at all times – each and everyone on their own terrain – against this system until we destroy it completely. The survival of humanity depends on the destruction of capitalism. We do not surrender, we do not sell out, and we do not give up.
The certainty that the fight for humanity is global. Just as the ongoing destruction does not recognize borders, nationalities, flags, languages, cultures, races; so the fight for humanity is everywhere, all the time.
The conviction that there are many worlds that live and fight within the world. And that any pretence of homogeneity and hegemony threatens the essence of the human being: freedom. The equality of humanity lies in the respect for difference. In its diversity resides its likeness.
The understanding that what allows us to move forward is not the intention to impose our gaze, our steps, companies, paths and destinations. What allows us to move forward is the listening to and the observation of the Other that, distinct and different, has the same vocation of freedom and justice.
Due to these commonalities, and without abandoning our convictions or ceasing to be who we are, we have agreed:
First.- To carry out meetings, dialogues, exchanges of ideas, experiences, analyses and evaluations among those of us who are committed, from different conceptions and from different areas, to the struggle for life. Afterwards, each one will go their own way, or not. Looking and listening to the Other may or may not help us in our steps. But knowing what is different is also part of our struggle and our endeavour, of our humanity.
Second.- That these meetings and activities take place on the five continents. That, regarding the European continent, they take place in the months of July, August, September and October of the year 2021, with the direct participation of a Mexican delegation integrated by the CNI-CIG, the Frente de Pueblos en Defensa del Agua y de la Tierra de Morelos, Puebla y Tlaxcala, and the EZLN. And, at later dates to be specified, we will support according to our possibilities the encounters to be carried out in Asia, Africa, Oceania and America.
Third.- To invite those who share the same concerns and similar struggles, all honest people and all those belows that rebel and resist in the many corners of the world, to join, contribute, support and participate in these meetings and activities; and to sign and make this statement FOR LIFE their own.
From the bridge of dignity that connects the Europe from Below and on the Left with the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.
We.
Planet Earth.
1 January 2021
You can find the signatures to this declaration here.
