20/27 September*– worldwide climate strike! Save the environment from the profit system! Active resistance!

* The day differs depending on country

The international rebellious youth movement Fridays for Future has taken the initiative to make 20 to 27 September days of loud and clear mass protests worldwide. The young people have issued a call for a week of action for the struggle to save the environment, because “it’s humanity’s job. … So we call on all people to join the global climate strike,” as the activists say. The youth is assuming responsibility. Its movement has swelled to more than 1.5 million and is not a passing fad. It has been active for months, out on the streets every Friday in more than 100 countries.

The protests of #FridaysForFuture are justified: heat waves, droughts, floods – already today the climate crisis is destroying life and the foundations of life of millions of people worldwide. It intensifies existing inequalities, violates fundamental human rights, creates root causes of flight, and aggravates the danger of war. If global warming is not immediately, radically stopped, a climate catastrophe threatens which no longer can be stopped.

Recently the Okjökull glacier in Iceland was “buried” – a glacier that had grown for more than 500 years has disappeared in just 50 years. A massive memorial to climate change.
With the clearing of the rainforest, Earth's “green lung” and a great carbon sink are being destroyed for good. The capitalist purpose is maximum profits for agribusiness and trading and retail monopolies. 74,000 fires are eating their way through the Amazon region, reaching beyond Brazil to Bolivia and Peru.

On 20 September (or the days after) not only the young will leave the classrooms and go out into the public squares; everyone is called upon to make the day a tremendous international day of protest: along with young people and children especially the workers in enterprises, the trade unions, women’s organizations, environmental organizations, revolutionary parties and movements…

The ICOR, of course, calls on its 57 member organizations on five continents to make the day a worldwide day of action. A building block in the construction of an international resistance front to save the environment from the profit system, for the alliance of the working-class movement and environmental movement against the divisive playing off of the struggle for jobs and socials issues, on the one hand, against the protection of the natural environment on the other.

Since it was founded, the ICOR has adopted and carried out an annual worldwide environmental day of struggle.

The waste of valuable raw materials undermines the foundations of life of future generations. Demagogically, the protection of the natural environment and our jobs are played off against each other by the monopolies and the governments subject to them. We will not let that continue! The environmental criminals in the headquarters of the corporations are equally responsible for the catastrophic health system in many countries, for housing shortages and mass poverty. The struggle for the protection of the natural environment and for our social demands are inseparable.

This year the UN Climate Conference takes place from 2 to 13 December in Chile. The ICOR will participate in the “alternative summit” and will make the 7th of December the 2019 environmental day of struggle.

However, it is important for the ICOR to go into action internationally already in September and to unfold a debate on the strategic solution of the environmental question, to give the rebellious youth movement clarity, backbone and perspective with the aim of restoring the unity of humanity and nature through a general societal paradigm change. That, however, requires the successful struggle for democracy and freedom and the international socialist revolution.