Sólveig Anna Jónsdóttir talked at the protest on Austurvöllur last saturday.Dear comrades!Do you perpetrate exploitation of people in a distant country? Do you perpetrate home-delivered exploitation? Have you delivered exploitation over the oceans to the homes of people who had not even used the exploitation app to order Icelandic exploitation chains? Do you dream of colonial domination? Have you sailed the same way as the inspired land-grabbers of previous centuries, to take from people their rightful property? Do you favor imperialism? Do you harbor dreams of stealing from the poor to give to the rich?People!The prime minister says that it will never be possible to prevent one man from knowing another in Iceland, a man calls a man on the phone to ask how he’s doing, dear friend, it cannot be prevented, but of course she should have said: It is impossible to prevent one master from knowing another master, she should have said: It isn’t possible to prevent the members of the ruling class from knowing each other. She should have said: Come on, of course the fishing industry capitalists know the minister of fisheries of the Independence party. The minister of fisheries of the Independence party is picked for the job precisely because he is the guy who knows the guy. It’s not as if this is complicated.Dear comrades!Here’s a question: Did the minister call you when you were bummed? Here’s a question: Did the minister call the woman who was discarded a few weeks ago, the pregnant woman who was tormented and shamed, driven away, about to give birth, did the minister call her to ask how she was doing after her encounter with the Hierarchy of Iceland?Dear comrades! Dear people! Dear human beings!We are in a fight, this is a fight. A fight for the basic structure of society. A fight over who gets to calculate and which formulas are used, a fight over for whom the rulers work, a fight over the distribution of the wealth: For the few or for the many, a fight over what should be sacrificed; the quality of life of the many for the greed of the few or the greed of the few for the quality of life of the many,a fight over class divisions; a fight over whether we mean to continue accepting the fact that the woman who cares for our children receives, after three decades of work, 280.000 kronas of disposable income while one man appropriates for himself more than five billion in one year?It’s not easy, this fight. We are faced with those who have won it for years and decades. We are faced with those who never fight fair. We are faced with those who have gotten away with having everything fitted to their bloated and inflated desires, their fantasies of dominance, their capitalistic economic laws. We are faced with those who have set the rules by sending a document to the minister with track-changes included so that the correct rules may be set correctly. We are faced with Iceland’s most arrogant and amoral men, men who know no other reality but to have all the rules of the game written by themselves.But we have also showed up and we do not intend to accept rules which we took no part in making.The fight is on. It is the negotiation itself, it is a fight and we intend to win it!Democracy, not capitalistic oligarchy. We do not accept that the outcome of the macro-economic calculation is for more and more of the wealth of society to be appropriated by a handful of men and their descendants. Democracy, not capitalistic oligarchy; we do not content ourselves with tens of billions being stolen from society each year and sent to tax-havens so that people with deficient moral sensibilities can keep feeding their money-fetish. Democracy, not capitalistic oligarchy; we do not accept the continuing domination of our existence and that of our children by the capitalist class!People!We are in the middle of the misleading-moment: nation, shame, Icelander, responsibility, reputation, stability; will they mislead us, will they persuade us to go around once again, will they manage to corral us back to square one, will they tire us, or will we manage to stick together and say together; no, not Nation, shame, Icelander, responsibility, reputation, stability but People, joy, solidarity, daring, resurrection, justice!Do we intend to be objects in a story written by amoral people, a tall tale written by the alchemists of capitalistic oligarchy, those who spend days and nights devising ways to defend the status quo only for the rich to become richer at the expense of us all? Or do we intend to be the protagonists in our own story, where we work for ourselves and for each other, no longer subjected to the laws which we despise, free to set our own rules?Ultimately, it’s this simple:We reject the capitalistic oligarchy! We reject the arrogance!We want a society where we live and work side by side, no matter where we come from, what we know, how we talk, where we are responsible for each other, where we are truly comrades-in-arms, united in the task of ensuring a decent living for everyone, where we contribute according to our ability and gain according to our need. A society where, as we lay down to sleep, we know that we tend to our own in peace and harmony with other people, where we go through the day without oppressing, without exploiting, and free from oppression, free from exploitation.Dear comrades, 1534 members of Efling, workers, need to do a year’s worth of work, fully employed, to be paid as much as one man, Þorsteinn Már, in one year;one man is valued more than all those working hands, all those toiling hands of the labor force which creates the dividends but must then always content themselves with only receiving the breadcrumbs which fall from the buffet, must content themselves with showing up every few years to humbly beg for a few thousand more kronas in negotiations with entirely vicious people; if you please, see how we bow and scrape, please, might I have a little more?Democracy, not capitalistic oligarchy:I reject these rules, I reject that this is the conclusion of our societal discourse, I reject all this misanthropic and ludicrous hogwash, all year round!I am happy to see you today, happy to be here with you to loudly reject with you the hegemony of capital over our existence, over our society and I look forward to meeting you again soon!
