Social Solidarity Network : Time To Get Organised

ireland / britain | the left | press release Tuesday November 10, 2009 18:28 by SSN - Social Solidarity Network socialsolidaritynetwork at gmail dot com

Text of SSN leaflet for ICTU Nov 6th 2009 demonstration

The Social Solidarity Network "is a grouping of people who have come together to provide a forum for workers and communities to unite to resist the attacks and to build links across the many struggles which will break out over the coming months" that Workers Solidarity Movement members are involved in. Some 7000 copies of this SSN text were distributed on the Nov 6th ICTU demonstration against cuts in Dublin.

: Time To Get Organised

The government is trying to make ordinary people pay for the financial crisis. NAMA will bail out the property developers and wealthy bankers who caused this crisis to the tune of up to €90billion. This will be done by savaging public services, slashing the wages of ordinary workers, throwing lots more workers on to the dole and cutting social welfare.

It doesn’t have to be like this. There are plenty of other ways in which the money could be raised. But these would involve challenging the status quo and demanding that those who benefited from the Celtic Tiger be made to pay the price now.

Where has all the money gone which changed hands during the property boom? Even if the value of overpriced land has dropped in the last few months, the property owners who sold the land at inflated prices still have the money somewhere. Even if they’ve lost a portion of it on the stock exchange there are still vast sums of money out there, the problem is it’s in the hands of a small number of people.

In fact the richest 5% of the Irish population owns 40% of the wealth. This amounts to property and assets worth €400billion. Indeed the richest 1% of the population made about €75billion during the Celtic Tiger years.

One day of marching will not be enough to bring about meaningful change. Ordinary workers whether working in the public, private or community sectors, the unemployed, homemakers and all who care about building a decent society need to get organised and fight back to defend our public services and our wages and working conditions.

The Social Solidarity Network is a grouping of people who have come together to provide a forum for workers and communities to unite to resist the attacks and to build links across the many struggles which will break out over the coming months. We hope this Network will become a means of actively continuing to resist cutbacks in all spheres of life.

We want to expand the Network as widely as possible. Please join in an open discussion after today’s march to take part in building those links and developing a unified campaign to make the ones who created the crisis pay for it.

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For more information please contact us at socialsolidaritynetwork@gmail.com