Workers are always the first victims of crises. Indonesia’s workers have seen this time and again, and in 2023, with inflation and the rising cost of living, their working conditions have worsened. There is little access to health care and social security, salaries are already too low to pay rent and take care of children or parents, and women are often fired when pregnant. These working conditions are in sharp contrast with the Indonesian state officials salaries, that allow for a luxurious lifestyle.

Indonesia has a big work intensive industrial sector, manufacturing mostly textile and clothing, footwear, furniture and child toys, all for export to Europe and the US. Due to decreasing demand because of the global economic crisis, the Indonesian government issued a regulation that allows companies in these sectors to cut their workers’ salaries with 25%.

Simultaneously the government passed a bill to increase international investment in the  Indonesian economy, even though the past years have shown that more investment does not in any way mean more jobs or better working conditions.

“Workers Say No to Salary Cut! Cut State Officials Salary!”

To protest these new regulations and call for a redistribution of wealth, Organisasi Kaum Muda Sosialis/ OKMS mobilised throughout the whole country for a mass action on the 1th of May 2023. OKMS is a socialist youth organization that organises activities to spread socialist ideas, strengthen the ideological understandings of socialism of their members, organised young people and values solidarity building for the working class and the oppressed. Once a month, they come together for activities such as discussions about contemporary or theoretical issues, or spreading pamphlets on campuses and factories.

On the 1th of May 2023, they teamed up with unions, students and various adovocacy groups, and organised protests in Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Semarang and Makassar, accompanied by discussions and speeches. Together with the Gerakan Buruh Bersama Rakyat (GEBRAK – Labour and Peoples Movement), and other socialist organisations, the OKMS spread a pamphlet stating their demands and calling for continuing protests to take down the political and economic elites.

Other than on-the-ground actions, a national online discussions was held, inviting historians specialized in Indonesia’s history and several activists from various organizations to discuss the state of Indonesian politics and the best way to go forward.

Het Actiefonds is proud to support the 1th of May protests in Indonesia and worldwide, and will continue to support all action for workers rights and against capitalist exploitation !

Read and learn more about the Indonesian Socialist Youth Organisation and the economic situation in Indonesia on the Facebook page of OMKS, their Tiktok, and Instagram. Watch footage of the protest here, here and here.

With the fall of Rutte IV, a new opportunity dawns for the Netherlands to steer a leftward course. But as we know all too well, we cannot depend on The Hague to change things. Political change comes from the bottom up.

That is why de*beweging launches its campaign today, ahead of the next election. This broad coalition of groups fighting for social change wants to put as much pressure as possible on the left-wing parties by already giving a suggestion for their party programs. The coalition is committed to a fair and democratic society, a livable earth, an end to discrimination and to international solidarity. Het Actiefonds is proud to support this coalition and has supported many of these groups and themes in recent years.

On Wednesday, de*beweging will announce more concrete positions, which are the result of months of discussions between the various members of the coalition. Can’t wait? Read the manifesto!

When in early 2023 a Roma girl was run over and killed by a truck belonging to the public utility company of Belgrade in a Roma settlement in the Serbian capital, the mayor Aleksandar Šapić, a member of the main board of the Serbian Progressive Party, made an openly racist and discriminatory statement, rooted in fascist ideology, as reaction to her death. He said that the Roma’s “don’t want to be helped” and it’s their own fault if they live and die in poverty. He went on to say that Roma should be pressured into assimilation and ‘civilization’ because they are “a danger to themselves and their neighbours,” completely ignoring the decades of discriminatory policies and widespread prejudices towards Roma in Serbian society.

Roma are the most marginalized, disenfranchised and poorest national community. Most of the NGO’s addressing the Roma’s position in Serbian society are thought to be part of a mafia organisation that has been looting donations received from abroad, with almost no money going to actual projects.

Roma communities in the whole of Serbia are fearing for evictions and unpunished violence towards them, now that Serbian nationalist discourses are getting widespread support and anti-gypsyism is encouraged and justified by the highest levels of government. Especially in the countryside, Roma communities are afraid of the threat of local Nazi groups.

In combination with the widespread misogyny, the Roma Women of Vojvodina, an organisation for Roma women and LGBTQ+ rights, recognize that Roma children and women are the first to be in danger. This is why they, as women and mothers, organize and raise their voices. With actions on social media and in the streets, they want to raise their voices and oppose the current racist discourses, policies and NGO abuses.

ACTION

On World Roma Day, 8^th of April 2023, the Roma Women of Vojvodina held a protest in to warn all Serbians and the Serbian government that Roma women will not remain silent in the face of violence, and won’t suffer racism and anti-gypsysism. They will fight with all democratic means for their women’s and human rights. The protest took place in two Roma settlements in Zrenjanin, a city in Northern Serbia. About 40 women attended the protest, and during the gathering, a network of intercity local communication among Roma women was established, enabling organised support in the fight against anti-gypsyism. This network will provide support for Roma, and especially Roma women, who are threatened by citizens of by the local or national authorities.

Het Actiefonds is proud to have supported this action and will continue to support Roma communities that protect each other and stand up against discrimination and fascism! Follow the Roma Women of Vojvodina on Twitter and Facebook!

According to the Dutch Climate Act, CO2 emissions must be 49 percent lower than in 1999 by 2030. A near impossible feat if we look at the current time frame. In 2021, according to the national statistical office CBS, the Netherlands emitted only 13 percent less CO2 compared to 1999. In 30 years, the Netherlands has only dropped 13 percent of its emissions. In the next seven years, we need to reduce emissions with another 36 percent.

Time to act. But if there is anything we can be sure of, it is that the Dutch government will continue to delay and procrastinate. Currently, Rutte IV hopes to reduce national emissions by building two new nuclear power plants in Borssele. The government is investing as much as 5 billion (!) euros in this, hoping that by 2035 these nuclear power plants will provide 9 to 13 percent of the Netherlands’ energy needs. On the surface these plants may seem like a sustainable measure, but they amount to another 5 billion euros and a 10-year delay.

Stroom naar de Toekomst

Those who live in Zeeland, unfortunately, have little to say about the plans of the government in their province. The Hague will decide next year whether the new power plants will be build; the province of Zeeland has no say in it. The citizens’ initiative Stroom naar de Toekomst refused to sit idly by while politicians decide over the future of their province. In the run-up to the provincial elections in March, Stroom naar de Toekomst distributed tens of thousands of posters and organized four discussion evenings to discuss the future of nuclear energy in the Netherlands.

The initiative was a great success. The collective was featured in national and regional media, and discussion evenings allowed citizens to share their concerns with local politicians. In Zeeland, PVDA/GL, the only party against building more nuclear power plants, became the second largest party with six seats.

But Stroom naar de Toekomst has a long-term perspective. By focusing on movement building, it hopes to make the construction of additional nuclear power plants a political issue leading up to 2024, when the government will definitively decide on construction.

Nuclear Power isn’t sustainable

Het Actiefonds supports Stroom naar de Toekomst. Nuclear power is expensive, time-consuming, dangerous and a repetition of extractivist moves. A true green transition requires renewable resources. On top of this, the government and many citizens vastly underestimate the danger of nuclear power plants. The recent fear of a nuclear disaster in Ukraine shows war can quickly lead to an ecological catastrophe.

But a meltdown is also in a small corner. Former director of the reactor center in Petten Frans Saris writes in the Dutch review of Books how in 2001 a nuclear disaster in North Holland was narrowly avoided as a result of staff clumsiness. “Nuclear power plants are a factor of fifty more unsafe because of human error,” he concludes. The promises of minute risks are a paper reality that do not take into account the the unpredictability of human actions. Building more power plants is therefore a dangerous policy for the long and near-term future of the Netherlands and the planet.

From March 27 to March 29, 2023, the European Gas Conference (EGC) took place in Vienna. An alliance of grassroots groups fighting for climate and social justice came together at the counter-summit: the Power to the People Conference. Hundreds of people from different movements across the globe joined this counterevent to learn, share knowledge and experiences, and discuss alternatives to transform the world. Amongst those invited to contribute to the program were the activists from Don’t Gas Africa, who shared their struggles and wins against gas development and colonialism, and various experts explaining why gas is not a durable solution. The summit was all about the ways in which a green and just transition could be a way to end capitalism, all the while connecting activist collectives from around the globe.

The counter-summit was followed by days of actions in which grassroots activists took a stance and blocked the industry. Five actions took place within three days! The activists blocked the private jet airport of Vienna, the European Gas Conference itself and train rails owned and used by OMV, an big Austrian gas and oil industrial company. They also organized a huge demonstration with hundreds of people marching the streets of Vienna. A number of activists also managed to infiltrate EGC’s gala dinner and directly confront them with their crimes.

While police violence against activists reached new heights in Austria during this action week and many activists were arrested, the joint effort of several hundreds of people coming together made the project a big success overall.

European Gas Conference

The European Gas Conference, a lobby event of the European gas industry, financial institutions, and policy makers, takes place annually in Vienna. They present themselves as the only platform “connecting the eastern and western gas industries,” but are all the while connecting and deepening global crises, from climate change to neo-colonialism and resource-driven wars. While many people in Europe are increasingly worried about how they will manage their daily expenses and energy costs due to the current inflation, and countries like Pakistan are facing severe floods, daily blackouts and economic breakdowns, the actors co-hosting this meeting have been making record profits. Our dependence on climate-wrecking and neocolonial energy sources is being further cemented and institutionalized by those attending the conference.

The lobbyists and companies present at this conference take decisions that concern us all – and by taking them behind closed doors, they are also undermining democracy.

System Change not Climate Change 

The counter-summit and action week were logistically made possible by the Austrian action group System Change not Climate Change. This group was founded in 2015 in the wake of a big climate justice movement that arose around the famous Paris COP. Since then, they have been addressing the issue of climate justice focusing on the economic and social dimensions as well as the capitalist roots of the climate crisis. They raise awareness about the climate crisis with an anti-capitalist and direct action-oriented approach. They want to make both anti-capitalism and civil disobedience mainstream in Austrian society and disrupt business as usual, enabling paths and possibilities to overcome capitalism as the leading economic system.

ASEED Europe

Food System & Agricultural change-ASEED Europe is an Amsterdam-based collective that supports and empowers groups and individuals (especially youth) who are striving for fair and sustainable food systems. They promote grassroots organisation, mobilize people to take action, and support the informal exchange of skills and knowledge around social issues, climate change, farming, food, resilience and resistance. During the counter-summit, ASEED provided workshops on the involvement of the gas industry in the agricultural sector.

Het Actiefonds is proud to have supported these two collectives and stands in solidarity with all action groups present at the counter-summit and action week, as well as with all activists that experienced police violence. Because we will not let the actual criminals decide about our future behind closed doors!

Workers all over the world have been fighting for their rights since the rise of industrial capitalism. The economic and cultural value of work has changed with work being separated from the home and being moved into industrial factories where many people worked under dangerous and precarious conditions while being extremely underpaid.

Today, things havent changed much, the working conditions for many people are still unbearable with temporary working contracts, low pay and bad conditions. Particularly vulnerable for exploitation are migrants, the undocumented, black, indigenous and people of colour, women, trans and non-binary people.

This is not a coincidence as racism and sexism are often being used to justify the exploitation of the working poor and to break solidarity between the working classes, e.g., white against black workers. Moreover, sectors like sex work and domestic and care work also need special attention as these sectors are culturally undervalued and especially susceptible to exploitation since this work is often being done by the aforementioned groups.

This is why people organized a demonstration in Utrecht for Labor Day. The arc of capitalism naturally bends towards exploitation. It is up to the people to fight for a livable wage and for a life of dignity and without alienation.

Colombia is a country that in recent decades has been condemned to systematic violence due to inequality, poverty, drug trafficking, corruption and armed groups. However, we have also witnessed waves of social expressions and outbursts that have brought about change for the country.

Since the signing of the 2016 peace agreement between the government and the FARC, leaders thought their biggest problem was under control. But the student mobilizations of 2018, the popular mobilizations of 2019 and 2021 showed that the country still has much to change to reflect a need for a change in the country that cannot be postponed. This was also evident in the 2022 elections, from which came a resounding shift to the left. For the first time, a progressive leftist government led by Gustavo Petro became president.

State institutions and the judiciary, steeped in mob rule throughout history, do not easily allow themselves to be reformed and resist any change that affects the interests of the landed gentry and the political elite. This hinders the progress of political, economic and social reforms.

This is why La Revuelta takes to the streets on May 1 to fight for progress and social and economic equality in Colombia. They will hold artistic interventions in Bogotà’s main square, where the parliament building is located. They are demanding better working conditions, more opportunities for youth and better care for the elderly.

Six months after the death of Jina Mahsa Amini, Iranian protests have been firmly suppressed by extreme state violence. That is not to say they are over: currently, hundreds of Iranians continue to protest at the risk of their lives. Baluchistan, a marginalized province in the country’s southeast, is currently at the forefront of the protests.

Iranian protesters called for global solidarity actions. The Groningen Feminist Network responded. With support from Het Actiefonds they created a banner for their solidarity march last October, during which three Iranian women and queers spoke about their experiences of oppression in the Islamic Republic.

But patriarchy is by no means limited to Iran. The University of Groningen also continues to struggle with institutional exclusion of women and queers. The university fired Associate Professor Susanne Täuber on International Women’s Day for repeatedly speaking out critically about gender discrimination at the university. Under the hashtag #AmINext, RUG students and staff expressed their concerns about a university that fires people as soon as they denounce power inequality.

Sepideh Yousefzadeh Faal Daghati is associate professor of intersectional wellbeing and decoloniality at Campus Fryslân. She explicitly made the connection between Iran and the RUG in a recent open letter: “What happened to Susanne reminded me of the fear and threats faced by academics in Iran. Susanne Täuber named the structural challenges and struggles with gender and hierarchy at our university. This should not happen to her.”

Het Actiefonds also supported the March 8 Feminist Strike in which Täuber announced her resignation to protesters. The patriarchy must be torn down! From Tehran to Groningen!

AFA Fryslan is a small but dedicated group of anti-fascists who fight the presence of Forum for Democracy, PVV, and other far-right parties in Friesland. Specifically, they did so by pasting posters during campaign time, and by demonstrating against FvD rallies.

On March 7, Forum would speak at theater de Lawei in Drachten, which pretends to be committed to a diverse and inclusive work environment. Yet the theater provides a stage for our country’s most outspoken fascists, even after AFA repeatedly urged the theater’s director to cancel the event.

AFA therefore organized a demonstration in front of the theater to make it clear to the fascists that they are not welcome in Friesland. The result is reason for celebration. There were still hundreds who wanted to participate in the event, but the turnout was clearly more modest than during the last campaign period in 2019. Not even half the turnout of then came to the rally now. Unlike the anti-fascists. They protested with 10 times as many people as four years before, according to AFA. FvD ended up getting only 3.6 percent of the vote in the province, compared to 13.4 percent four years ago.

Het Actiefonds is proud to support AFA Fryslan. They are an important dissenting voice in our society that is becoming more and more right-wing. Say no to fascism!

“In 2021, suicide attempts by children and adolescents increased nearly 150% compared to 2020. This troubling record is a testament to how dire the state of mental health care in our country is.”

That is the conclusion of GrowSpace Poland, an action group dedicated to suicide prevention among LGBTQIA+ youth. They requested data from Polish police stations to map suicide rates among young people (children and teens under 18) in Poland. The data showed that there were about 2,000 suicide attempts in 2021, 150 of which ended in death. GrowSpace emphasizes that the causes of suicide are complex and diverse. Yet we should not hide the fact that two-thirds of suicide attempts are carried out by LGBTQIA+ youth, most of whom are trans.

The action group held a candlelight wake in front of the Ministry of Health to address teen suicide. In addition, GrowSpance collected signatures for a petition urging the government to come up with quick and concrete plans for suicide prevention. After all, currently 70 percent of LGBT+ teens suffer from suicidal thoughts. Schools must have a plan to deal with this.

70 percent of LGBT+ teens suffer from suicidal thoughts.

More than 10 thousand people signed the petition and 40 organizations united in a coalition to promote suicide prevention. The research and wake have been covered in at least 80 media publications. The signatories demand specialized training for teachers and parents, as well as extra attention to bullying among students.

Initially, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education did not want to respond to the action group, but after the media coverage, they stated that they believe current suicide prevention programs are already effective. The coalition did not leave it at that and announced further research into the success of the current policy.

Het Actiefonds supported the group by purchasing candles, posters and other materials for the memorial ceremony. No suicide prevention program can be effective when suicide attempt rates skyrocket!