Gilets jaunes’ National Call // Sunday May 26th: In the street during the elections!

Following the invitation of the Assembly of Assemblies of Saint-Nazaire for action and mobilisation during the European elections, we call for regional convergence in order to take to the streets during the electoral masquerade on Sunday 26 May in all the major cities: where most of the polling stations are concentrated.
For all those who cannot go to the international demonstration in Brussels, we call for reaching the nearest major cities, for processions, and for taking to the streets.
All elections are dead ends, as the movement has known from the beginning: we have avoided all the pitfalls that have been set for us (co-optation by the government, appointment of representatives, manipulation by parties or unions, division between good and bad “Gilets jaunes”, etc.). We will never fall again into the election trap that [...] only serves to establish the power of those who have a party apparatus, an enormous social and financial capital, relays in the media, etc. and certainly not to serve the interests of “those who are nothing”.
Because the State serves the economy, not the other way round! It is the armed wing that protects the interests of those who make their fortune by trading our means of subsistence (food, shelter, clothing, transportation, health care, education). It is in the pay of multinational companies that do not care about life and what people think about it. Their only goal is to enrich themselves by exploiting us through wage labour, by making us sick through hard work that makes no sense and by polluting and destroying the planet. No political decision can therefore overthrow the economy, because the economy is the political project of any modern State: that aiming at behavioural discipline to make every moment, every fact and every action productive, profitable and controllable. And no elected official, no parliament, can really oppose it. Let us remember Greece and the humiliation it suffered when it dared to believe that an elected government could fight the European Central Bank and the IMF! The Greek people were bled and the elected government, despite all its good will, was humiliated and fell in line (austerity measures, etc.)
We therefore take note that the real politics, the one we have been pursuing for the past six months, begins with the blockade and direct attack on the economy.
On May 26th, we are therefore taking action: the electoral masquerade is over. We will no longer participate in it. And beyond that, we will no longer allow these moments of massive propaganda, which are aimed only at justifying the established order and providing it with a legitimacy that is nothing more than a lie, to take place quietly.
We do not want elections or representatives. We no longer want to be governed. We no longer want to be “represented”. We do not want to take power, we do not want “more” power, we want to remove power. And instead we will embody politics directly, without intermediaries or polling stations. Popular wisdom, workers’ and militants’ organizations, roundabout occupations, have developed other political forms (assemblies, imperative and revocable mandates, rotation of tasks, workers’ councils, etc.). Through blockades, occupations, yellow demonstrations, etc., we will continue to fight against the economy that is chaining us and to occupy the “public” space in order to continue to take back control of our lives. The elections are cancelled.

Material and Political Autonomy!

Gilets jaunes from Toulouse



Source in French

Another text: https://paris-luttes.info/gilets-jaunes-rungis-ile-de-france-12205?lang=fr