1 May 2025: Against shifting the burden of the crisis onto miners and their families; resistance to war and fascism!
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- Created: Sunday, 27 April 2025 13:45
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May Day is taking place in a situation of great change and challenges: With the fascist Trump taking office in the United States, the existing world order is being turned upside down. He wants to establish a fascist dictatorship in the USA with all his might and realise his claim to sole rule of US imperialism. The international competition between the old and new imperialist forces is intensifying. With economic and trade wars and massive preparations for a third world war, they want to secure access to global sources of raw materials.
The global competition and the burden of the global economic and financial crisis, which has been ongoing and intensifying since 2018, are being passed on to miners and their families, leading to increasingly ruthless mining methods. Underground mining is being phased out in favour of environmentally damaging and more profitable methods such as open-cast mining. Exploitation and oppression are intensifying, and in many countries miners are fighting for their jobs, for safety at work, for higher wages and for the preservation of natural resources. The global environmental catastrophe is worsening and threatening the existence of entire regions and of humanity as a whole.
The imperialists want to assert their claims to power using fascist methods, as in Palestine, for example: the barbarity of Israel's war in Gaza aims to exterminate the Palestinians and drive them out of their land through hunger and merciless, inhuman massacres. More than 51,000 people have been killed and more than 100,000 injured.
The miners of the world and their families do not want to perish in this capitalist barbarism – we take responsibility for each other and for social progress for ourselves and our children, for the workers of all countries and for all of humanity! Selfish nationalism only weakens our solidarity. While Trump, Putin and Zelensky negotiate the future plundering of Ukraine's natural resources, many miners there have not been paid for a long time and are being forced to shoot at Russian workers. Fascist agitation against the supposedly ‘criminal’ miners led to a horrific massacre of miners in Stilfontein, South Africa; in Turkey, privatisation is intended to increase the exploitation of coal miners, while inflation is destroying the livelihoods of families. In Chiatura, Georgia, miners, their families and the entire population are waging a determined struggle against the dismissal of approximately 3,600 underground manganese miners. They are doing their own calculations and demanding that the riches they have extracted be made available to them and their communities. Women are also courageously taking part in the struggle. The International Miners' Movement and the preparatory group for the establishment of European coordination of miners are supporting the struggle with donations, visits and advice and stand side by side with the miners.
Let's make 1 May a real international day of struggle in workplaces, mines and on the streets:
* Against fascism, war economy and war preparations; against environmental destruction! Workers do not shoot at workers!
* Forward with the worldwide coordination and cooperation of struggles!
* For a rich, dignified and healthy life for all people, in harmony with nature
– without exploitation and oppression!