Dear friends, dear comrades,
I would like to start by wishing you all the best for 2023. All the best to you, your family, your children, your colleagues and your friends. This is the most important thing. Times are hard. And we're all doing the best we can.
"At work, at the school gates, at the bakery... everywhere, people say that we just go from one crisis to another," observes Raoul Hedebouw, president of the PTB-PVDA. While a small group of billionaires are getting rich, a whole generation of politicians are telling the population "just insulate your house and turn down the thermostat". In other words, "sort it out yourself". It is time to get rid of these old liberal recipes and make the switch." In a book that is out today in bookstores, Raoul Hedebouw calls on people to make the switch.
This is the message launched by the collective of the same name, which mobilised more than 1000 people on Sunday 4th December in the streets of Brussels for its first action.
From Antwerp to Liège, from Charleroi to Ghent, from Mons to Genk... the working class is sending out a clear message at their general strike this Wednesday, November 9, demanding a freeze on energy prices and the freedom to negotiate wage increases.
The PTB-PVDA launches "the revolt of the angry caps", a call to lower energy prices and make Engie pay. The left-wing party is organizing the Fridays of Rage, a weekly appointment with local actions in different cities and towns of the country, to push the government to act.
In the cities of Kortrijk and La Louvière, several hundred people sent a clear message: prices must go down, Engie must pay. Against the high bills. Against this government's complicity with the energy multinationals, we will not stand idly by.
"It's about expressing our anger, but also about recreating hope." PTB president Raoul Hedebouw, in his speech at ManiFiesta 2022, called on everyone to take action against high energy bills and against the government siding with the multinationals. From 30 September, the PTB will organise a weekly day with the "Fridays of Anger".
Raoul Hedebouw,
Ostende, 17 September 2022
