Mexico City, 25 September 2018
Dear Friends,
After many years of capital´s world-wide offensive against the public sphere, of accumulation by dispossession, of privatization of all that is social, an unimaginable degree of exploitation of global labor by capital has been reached. In the face of this, militant worker movements all over the world are exploring many different forms of struggle to end the exploitation of labor by capital. These movements not only oppose capital´s encroachment of the social commons, but attempt to transcend the economic and political reign of global capital. From new forms of trade unionism, inlcuding global trade unions, to novel modalities of workers´ control of production, to recuperated enterprises by the workers, to the increasing growth of cooperatives, to the social and solidarity economy that grows in strength, to new forms of rural and urban communes, to the rise of autonomous self-defense organizations, workers globally are once again focusing on recovering the commons against the domination of private interests. The ideology of the commons –communism- is on the rise again. And this is only the beginning.
Since 2007, the international Workers’ Economy Network has held numerous meetings in different parts of the world. This year the North, Central American and Carribean Region’s 3rd Meeting will be held on November 8-10 in Mexico City.
We hope you can join this organizational effort by participating in the meeting and sharing your experience and expertise with other workers, academicians, and militants from the region. We also invite you to suggest panels, group proposals, and round-tables in both English and Spanish. The current panels being organized by members of the tradeunion, cooperative, and academic sectors include:
Extractivism: the current mode of the exploitation of nature and work.
North-Central American workers in today´s NAFTA
Dialogue among tradeunion and cooperative leaders on the internationalization of the Workers´ Economy
Gender in the workers´ economy
Migrant labor in North-Central American region
Alternative urban self-management projects (popular assemblies, organized victims of the earthquakes, energy consumer organizations...)
Young people´s involvement in self-managemet
People´s resistance towards the megaprojects (f.ex. the new Mexico City airport in Texcoco)
Sustainability in the social and alternative economy
The relevance of the global structuring of politics and the economy on the workers´ economy
Papers that are to be presented in academic format should not extend more than 20-25 pages in Arial 12 pts, 1½ spaces.
Hosts to the meeting include trade unions, recuperated enterprises, cooperative organizations, and universities. For more information and registration, see
http://encuentrolaeconomiadelostrabajadores.com/call.html
There are no costs involved for attending the event, and we do not have the resources for scholarships of any sort.
On behalf of the Local Organizing Committee
Celia Pacheco, Marco Gómez, Bob Stone, Betsy Bowman, Vicente Acosta
Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Center for Global Justice, Luz y Fuerza del Centro