Instead of pleading and waiting, let's fight!

Speech by Sóleig Anna Jónsdóttir at the Hunger March in Austurvöllur:

Dear people, in the news of Stöð 2 last night there was an interview with Zsófía, an Efling member and shop steward at one of the city's hotels where she works cleaning, a job that obviously must be done if the hotel is to be able to receive guests, if the hotel owners are to be able to profit from the operation. But despite performing a job that is obviously a fundamental one, her disposable income per month is 220-240 thousand krónur. In an industry where the managers have made a fortune, this is nevertheless the fact of the matter: The people who do the work that the managers profit from receive wages that are far below what is needed to make ends meet. And this is, of course, not an isolated case; two decades of service at a Reykjavíkurborg kindergarten, the most enjoyable luxury shack and palm tree city in the world, results in a disposable income of 280,000 krónur.

What kind of system is it really where it matters more what the cost is for everyone to be well, for everyone to be able to flourish on their own terms, for everyone to be able to enjoy the one life we are allotted, than what the cost is to crush people, to keep people down, to do what no human being should do to another; to oppress and exploit. And why are we at a point where the "reputational risk" for Iceland is that it is reported from here that people are going on strike, and not that it is reported from here that fully employed people cannot make ends meet, that fully employed people cannot ensure their economic security, that fully employed people are struggling in the rental market, that fully employed people cannot dream of owning their own home but have to see a large part of their disposable income go into the pockets of landlords?

To view ensuring a good and decent livelihood for everyone as some terrible sacrifice, some horrible tragedy of dissolution and disaster, is simply the craziest thing I can imagine. It is not a tragedy to do everything possible to live in a peaceful society, a society of social stability. Ensuring a good and decent livelihood for everyone is, on the contrary, a gift, the gift we give to each other and ourselves because we want to live and work side by side with other people in harmony and concord, because we want all children to have a good and carefree existence, because we know that nothing undermines people's health and well-being as much as struggle, poverty, and worries, because human existence is difficult, because illness, trauma, and sorrow are part of human existence, because you never know what tomorrow holds, and for that simple and universal reason it is absurd, no much more than absurd, disgusting, that the system we are made to live in should exaggerate and amplify and produce difficulties, illnesses, surrender, and distress.

Dear people. Let's stop pleading with those who hold power in Icelandic society. Let's stop waiting for those who hold power, political and economic, to see us and listen to us. Let's stop waiting for them to deign to give us some trifle, some tiny bit, while they themselves give themselves everything they please, never backing down from their exorbitant demands for much, more, most! Instead of pleading and waiting, let's fight! Let's stand together and fight so that no one here has to suffer want, let's stand together and fight, side by side, workers and disabled people, people born here and people who have moved here. We are many, we are important, and if we show solidarity, if we stand together, we can gain what we need to stop waiting and pleading, we can gain political influence and power to simply start changing what we want to change, start creating here the society we ourselves want to live in!

Let's stand together and fight because we have seen through the deceptions and the nonsense, we have seen through the deceptions and the nonsense because we have experienced firsthand, in our own lives, that the economic system we have been made to live in is disgusting, it creates and maintains class division, inequality, poverty, and distress. The system we live in pays the hotel maid 220,000, the kindergarten worker 280,000, the system we live in allows the person who cannot work, the person who is not so "lucky" as to be able to sell their labor on the clearance market of a coordinated low-wage policy, to receive a mere 248,000 before tax to survive, in some vile and sadistic social experiment. Even though a small group of rich men scream at us day after day that the system is a law of nature, we know perfectly well that it is not true. It is man-made, and therefore it is truly within our power to change it. And that is exactly what we intend to do.

–Photo: Spessi