Abahlali baseMjondolo have elected a delegate to participate in the following international conference in Istanbul. Delegates from Abahlali have also recently been elected to accept invitations to the movement to build solidarity with struggles in Nairobi and in London. Bahlali bayanda.
APPEAL FOR THE PEOPLE’S RIGHTS FORUM IN ISTANBUL
Today, our country is passing through a very critical process which will have strong infuences for our near future. Such developments as the presidential elections, general and local elections, the war in the Middle East and the developments in the Kurdish question will have impacts from the social life to the restructuring of the political regime in Turkey. The power conflict between the present AKP (Justice and Development Party) government and the traditional institutions of the Turkish state gains strength in the eve of the presentential elections and the general elections through their mutual attempts. These conflicting fractions of the Turkish ruling classes try to divide the society according to their own political interests and try to present these divisions as the real agenda of the society. Yet, the real agenda of the people is alltogether different.
The internal political conflicts of the ruling classes, on the one hand, result in the formation of a political sphere where the poor people do not have any channells of political participation. On the other hand, every kind of political reactionism, principally racist-nationalism and political Islam is being widely organised from above among the ranks of the society.
The imperialist war ongoing in the Middle East and the new threads of war and widespread politics of collobarationism with imperialism bring destruction to the all Middle Eastern peoples. Together with the neoliberal policies, the sovereignity rights of peoples are totaly violated and the basis of new dependency relations on the military, economic and political spheres are enforced. With the rapid commercialization of the basic public services because of neoliberal policies the people experience a real destruction in the daily life. A country is created where ongoing commertialization and privitization policies from the sphere of education to health, social security, municipal services, agriculture, mining, housing and transportation violates the basic and crucial needs of the people and the people are deprived from living in humanly conditions. Neoliberal programs in the field of labour relations make precarious working conditions the basic form of employement. Neoliberal programs, imperialist war policies and the dependency relations together with the dead-end policies in the Kurdish question lock Turkey’s future and in this atmosphere all demands and needs of the people are made invisible. Turkish people is marginalized from politics; from the right to determine its own life and the future of the country in a degree unforseen until today. This atmosphere prevaling in the country prevents the people to use its most basic democratic rights and freedoms and destroys the channels of political participation.
As the People’s Houses, together with the Social Policy Research and Practice Center of Ankara University Political Sciences Faculty, we launch a process in order to give visibility to the real agenda of the people; in order to produce solutions to the problems of locked Turkey and in order to conscientize the “Rights of the People”. This process will be concretized in the People’s Rights Forum together with the social rights struggles of the various sections of the population in Turkey.
People’s Rights Forum
The basic aim of this process and forum is as the following:
– We will bring together the principal victims of the problems from the sphere of education, health, housing to transportation, political freedoms, war and racism-nationalism policies and the main academic and political circles;
– And we will try to lay a common struggle ground around “People’s Rights” by grasping the common experiences in terms of opinions and/or practices. We hope to contribute to the formation of a common struggle program and increase the common struggle opportunities of the various opposition dynamics around this common struggle program.
People’s Rights Forum will be organised together with many fellow associations, professional’s organisations and trade unions which already have their own studies over the content of the forum. On the other hand, recently appearing local resistance centers against the above mentioned neoliberal transformations (for example, unsecured-contracted teachers, students and parents of the students opposing to the commercialization of education; labourers struggling against the commercialization of health; local neighbourhood initiatives around housing right in various big cities against the so-called urban transformation projects; farmers organisations formed in the rural areas against the neoliberal destruction of agriculture; new resistance groupings appearing in various sectors of the economy) will participate in the forum process as very significant values of struggle.
Scientist and activists participating in the new social-political opposition movements by their ideas and struggles from the Middle East and from various countries which live similar processes and social tensions are also invited to the Forum: Profesors James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer from US; Ahmad Dirki from Lebanese Communist Party; Rocio Luna Acevedo (teacher) from the APPO-Popular Assembly of Peoples of Oaxaca, a delegate from the South Africa-Durban Abahlali BaseMjondolo (Durban Shantdwellers Movement) and a representative from Venezuela will participate in various sessions and workshops of the forum.
Sessions of the “People’s Rights Forum” will be on 8-9-10 June 2007. 8th June 2007/ Saturday, the first day of the forum will be organised by the women members of the People’s Houses together with the participation of various women organisations and groups in order to discuss the items of the forum from the perspective of women. Women’s Forum will be done in Ankara Haci Bekta? Veli Culture Center.
People’s Rights Principal Forum on 9-10 2007/ Saturday-Sunday will be organised in the conference rooms and classrooms of Ankara University Political Sciences Faculty and will be hosted by the Social Policy Research and Practice Center of the Faculty. During these two days there will be four main sessions and thirteen parallel workshops.
Before the forum on 8-9-10th June 2007, there will be preliminary meetings and workshops in various cities and the whole results of the process wil be declared to the public opinion with a “People’s Rights Decleration” within the framework of the discussions and presentations.
Below is the draft program of the forum and the possisle participants.
With the hope of walking together with you in this process…With our best regards
Study Group of People’s Rights Forum
Çi?dem Çidaml? (forum coordinator)
e-mail address: cigdem@sendika.org
Tell: 00 90 537 572 14 44 (cell)
PEOPLE’S RIGHTS FORUM
PROGRAM
8 JUNE 2007/FRIDAY WOMEN’S FORUM
10.30-11.00 OPENING SPEECH: Ilknur BIROL (Vice President of People’s Houses)
11.00-14.00 NEO-LIBERALISM AND PATRIARCHY
PUBLIC RIGHTS OF WOMEN AND OUR DEMANDS
– Women’s testimonies about private and public life under neo-liberalism
How women experience social rights violations in the fields of education, health, housing, child care, employment and organization, how they struggle and what they demand?
Friends of the market in the homes and streets: Patriarchy; domestic violence, honor murders, sex trade, sexual violence and rape.
Social and political rights for democratic participation of women in politics: What kind of a social life and democracy we demand?
14.00-15.00 LUNCH BREAK
15.00-16.00 BEING SISTERS IN ANATOLIA:
Session on Turkish and Kurdish women on sisterhood and Kurdish question in Turkey (discussions and testimonies)
16.00-18.00 WAR and WOMEN IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Documentary presentation: War crimes against women in the Middle East
Testimonies of two Lebanese women journalists: Cilia MROUEH and Katerin DAHER
(all decisions taken in the women’s forum will be declared in a special manifesto in the final session of the forum on 10Th June Sunday and will be transferred to the workshops)
9 JUNE 2007/SATURDAY PEOPLE’S RIGHTS MAIN FORUM
09.30 Opening Speech: People’s Houses President Abdullah AYDIN
Solidarity Speech: Yadira GONZALES (Secretary of Cuban Science and Technology Ministry) and Gisela ALONSO (Secretary of Cuban Environment Agency)
10.00 – 13.00 Ist SESS?ON:
“NEO-LIBERALISM, TRANSFORMATION OF THE STATE AND THE SOCIETY AND THE STRUGGLE FOR SOCIAL RIGHTS”
Moderator: Metin ÖZU?URLU
Participants:
Korkut BORATAV (Precarity and it’s evolution during the last decades)
Henry VELTMEYER (World Bank social policies and ngo’isation of the social opposition
Yasemin ÖZDEK (The political meaning of today’s social rights struggles)
Rocio LUNA ACEVEDO (Mexico-Oaxaca representative from Teachers Union)
Fuat ERCAN (Peoples and Rights under Capitalism))
13.00 – 14.00 Lunch break
14.00 – 18.30 SOCIAL RIGHTS WORKSHOPS (SAME HOURS)
1- Right to Education workshop (With participation of Luna Acevedo)
2- Right to Health workshop (With participation of Zikode)
3- Right to Housing workshop (With participation of Zikode)
4- Right to Energy workshop
5- Right to Transportation workshop
6- Right to Environment workshop
7- Rihgt to Water workshop
8- Right to Food Sovereignty and Agriculture workshop
9- Right to Employment workshop
10- Political rights and freedoms
11- Right to Culture and arts
12- Right to Media and communication With participation of Luna Acevedo, Cilia Mroueh and Katerin Daher)
13- Rights of the Retarded people
(decisions taken in the workshops will be declared in the final session of the forum)
16.30-19.30 IInd SESS?ON:
“IMPERIALIST POLICIES AND RIGHT TO PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND CAUCUS”
Moderator: Umar KARATEPE
Participants:
James PETRAS (US policies in the Middle East)
Ahmad Dirki (Lebanon)
Cilia MROUEH (Lebanon)
10 JUNE 2007/SUNDAY
09.30-13.00 IIIrd SESSION:
KURDISH QUESTION AND CREATING THE COUNTRY OF BROTHERHOOD
Moderator: Metin BAKKALCI
Participants:
Orhan DOGAN (Democratic Labour Party ex deputy)
Yavuz ONEN (General President of Turkish Foundation of Human Rights)
Sezgin TANRIKULU (President of Diyarbakir Bar)
Ferda KOC (sendika.org writer)
S’BU ZIKODE (Neo-liberal apartheid in South Africa)
13.00 – 14.00 Lunch break
14.00 – 17.30 IVth SESSION :
“POLITICAL POLARIZATION IN THE PROCESS OF ELECTIONS AND LEFT POLITICS
Moderator: Arzu CERKEZOGLU
Participants:
Fikret BASKAYA
KAYA GÜVENC
ALPER TAS
ILKNUR BIROL
17.30 – 18.30 Vth SESSION
Moderator: Çigdem ÇIDAMLI
“People’s Democracy in Defending the Rights of People and Suggestions of the People’s Forum”
Declarations of Women’s Forum, Social Rights Workshops and Sessions
Declaration of People’s Rights Manifesto
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THE SHACKS FIGHT BACK!
THE SHACK DWELLERS’ MOVEMENT IN SOUTH AFRICA
3 talks on Abahlali baseMjondolo. http://www.abahlali.org/
Abahlali have fought for the right of Durban’s shack dwellers to basic amenities -housing, water, land. This democratic grassroots movement has confronted the lies and evasions of local government and aid agencies to show that real participatory democracy is possible: when it is organised by and for the dispossessed.
Community activists from the East End and South London will be in attendance. We hope that the parallels between Abahlali’s struggle and that of Londoners fighting the decay and privatisation of their services will provide inspiration and a chance to think.
Please come and join in the discussion!
WHEN AND WHERE:
7pm, Tuesday 5th June, The Soho Theatre
21 Dean Street London W1D.
Entry: £5/£3
Tube: Tottenham Court Road. Bus 7, 8, 10, 25, 55, 73, 98, 176; 38,19,14; 3, 6, 12, 13, 15, 23, 53, 88; 14, 29, 176.
7pm, Thursday 7th June, Centerprise
136 – 138 Kingsland High Street, Dalston, London E8.
Entry: FREE
Bus: 67, 76, 149, 243 (direct); 242, 30, 38, 56, 277 (Dalston Junction)
Tube: Highbury & Islington, 1 mile
Train: Dalston Kingsland (Silverlink Metroline)
2pm Sunday 10th June, Camberwell Squatted Social Centre
192 Warham St, off Camberwell New Rd, Camberwell SE5
Entry: FREE
Bus: 36, 436 tube: oval
www.56a.org.uk/warham.html
Organised by Mute magazine
http://metamute.org
Message from S’bu Zikode to AbM Solidarity Meetings in London
The time has come for poor people all over the world to define themselves before someone else defines them, thinks for them and acts for them. Do not allow others to define you.
We are pleading to University intellectuals and NGOs to give us a chance to have a platform for our own creativity, our own politics. Our politics is not a politics that originates from institutions of higher learning. It originates from our lives and experiences. We are asking the academic intellectuals and NGOs for a work space to think and discuss – not for them to think and speak for us.
We are not prepared to hear from anyone on a point of order. Not government, not NGOs. No one.