To: All ILPS Member Organizations
From: ICC Chairperson
Subject: G20 Summit on September 24-25, 2009
Date: August 7, 2009
The International Coordinating Committee calls on all ILPS member organizations around the world to plan and carry out campaigns of information and mass actions to protest the G20 Summit to be held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the United States on September 24-25. For the purpose of info dissemination, the campaign plans are to be submitted to the General Secretariat through its staff before August 24.
The last G20 Summit in London last April maintained the neoliberal economic policy and the international institutions that had brought about the current grave financial and economic crisis, the worst since the Great Depression. The forthcoming September Summit in Pittsburgh follows the same path of serving the interests of monopoly capital and further causing untold suffering and misery for the vast majority of the people of the world.
Both the US working class and middle class, ravaged by the exploitative workings and crisis of monopoly capitalism, plan to organize and mobilize mass protests against the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh. It is necessary and appropriate that the US workers wage resistance at the epicenter of the crisis of the global capitalist crisis. All ILPS member organizations based in the United States are enjoined to participate in the mass protests.
The largest mobilization will be led by the Bail-Out the People Movement (BOPM), a US-based alliance of grassroots organizations including the International Action Center (IAC) and BAYAN USA. Both the IAC and BAYAN USA are members of the ILPS in the United States.
The BOPM will be sponsoring “A Global Week of Solidarity with the Unemployed” from September 20-25, during which the G20 Summit will be taking place.
On Sunday, September 20th, BOPM will sponsor a rally and march to open its “Tent City”. The site of the tent city will be the Monumental Baptist Church in a historic section of the African-American community of Pittsburgh called “The Hill”. This location is just a short walk or march from the convention center where the G20 summit will be held, and from the rest of downtown Pittsburgh.
Unemployed people and their supporters will inhabit the tent city from Sept 20 through Sept. 25. Additional locations for other encampments in Pittsburgh are being considered as well.
Inside the encampment, there will be a booth secured for ILPS organizations to table and outreach. It is highly encouraged that ILPS member organizations take advantage of this opportunity to promote their work during this important people’s resistance activity in the belly of the beast, US imperialism.
For more information, please contact Ruth de Leon of the staff of the ILPS General Secretariat by email: ilp515@runbox.com