On 1 March all over the world migrants stand up and organise against social exclusion, discrimination and racism. The movement started with a migrants’ strike and boycott day in the USA in 2006. Since then protestsspread transnationally to different parts of the world. This year as well, employees working in the world’s richest countries will walk-out on work, take direct industrial action or practice other forms of protest. In Austria, we want to create the foundation for a broad movement to initiate a radical change in policy towards migrants.

We have come as workers, as students and professors, as refugees, relatives, physicians and sex workers, as undocumented migrants, as au pairs, professionals and care workers. We have been living here for years and sometimes for generations. We are here, in kindergartens, in schools, hospitals, and nursing homes, on construction and production sites, at universities, in private homes, in brothels, super markets and offices. We have all genders and sexual orientations, we believe in different religions and ideologies, we belong to different age groups and social strata. We have diverse backgrounds, sometimes we stick to our ethnic origin, sometimes we renounce these forms of belonging. We are living here and there. We are not longing for an old or for a new homeland. Frontiers are too narrow for us. We do not fit into them, they don’t fit our lives.

We are fighting against everyday racism and harrassment, against poor pay, against wiped out opportunities and dead end careers for ourselves and our children. We are standing up against a discriminatory education and welfare system, the incompetence of political parties and police brutality. We are fighting against being deprived of citizens’ and social rights - a strategy to make us available and exploitable as cheap labour.

We are fed up with racist responses. We are here to stay. Instead of waiting we are now taking our destinies into our own hands. We have fought many battles, we know what it means to be exluded. We are living solidarity and we want radical change.Wherever we are living and working, we all are entitled to equal rights, and to good and just living conditions!

1 March will be a day of mobilisation, irritation, raising voices and strike. We invite everybody regardless and transgressing identities and ethnicities to join this protest and to strike against racism. Let’s use this day to join our differences to find a new common new language. We putan end to the division between We and You. We all are the future!

Together with us – Against racism, discrimination and exclusion!

Together with us – For equal rights and same privileges for All!