The collective organizing the May Action Week in Prague is calling for an anti-war demonstration to take place on Friday 24 May 2024 at 5pm on Palacký Square.
War is a phenomenon that not only theoretically, but also very concretely intrudes upon everyone’s life. Under the current social order, there is no boundary separating life in war from life in peace. We are all at war. Only the ways in which the reality of war affects us differ. Some are living on the home front in bombed-out cities, others are sent to the front to serve as cannon fodder, and some others are forced to sell their labor force, which turns the wheels of the war economy. We are all also targets of war propaganda designed to induce us to engage in one form of war or another. Finally, we are also all indoctrinated with the so-called duty to sacrifice ourselves in war for the sake of the country, the nation, the people, the economy, democracy, religion…
Whether we live in Kharkov, Prague, Tel Aviv, Madrid, Gaza, Moscow, Budapest, Zagreb, Rome, Berlin or anywhere else in the world, none of us lives outside the context of war. From this position, therefore, we must challenge the war. We must act as an international collective force that suffers under the impact of wars but also has the means to stop them.
But we do not want to meet to make demands to politicians, their parties and institutions. We know very well that they are all part of the problem and that no solution can come from their side.
We don’t want to seek an alliance with the “progressive” or democratic factions of the bourgeoisie, because we know that it’s the capitalists who start wars and they are the ones who benefit from them.
We don’t want to demand for this or that State’s army to be better equipped in the name of supporting the “lesser evil” because history has taught us that de-escalation of wars is brought about by subverting the war machine, not by fueling it.
We do not want to call for peace within capitalism because we know that capitalist peace is only a preparation for more wars, even more destructive than the previous ones.
We want to come together so that the voices of those most affected by the war can be heard. We want the physical face-to-face meeting to serve as a forum and as an organizing tool to strengthen the community facing not only wars, but also their causes: capitalism, its States and ideologies. We want to help organize resistance to them.
Wars are a global phenomenon to which we respond with internationalist mobilization. We do not limit ourselves to one region and language, so the demonstration will feature voices in Czech, English, German, Russian, Ukrainian, and possibly other languages, which we can use to articulate our positions and argue for collective anti-war action.
– Friday 24 May 2024
– Prague – Palackého náměstí (near Karlovo náměstí metro station)
– From 5 p.m.