Views from the hemispheric South, on the struggle of workers and the poor, from around the world, with a very few pieces I wrote myself.
Young people are rising up around the world
[From the Fracción Trotskista, ft-ci.org – unofficial translation]
Supplement of the PTS Youth "Revolución" #3
Young people are rising up around the world
By PTS Argentina
Saturday, June 9, 2012
… Chile, Egypt, Greece, the Spanish state, Mexico and Canada: Young people are rising up around the world
By Patricio Del Corro (Sociales-UBA)
Young people are beginning to rise up; they are going out to the streets, massively occupying departments, getting organized in assemblies, expressing solidarity with the workers, with women, with the oppressed. They are confronting the capitalist crisis, defending education, as in Chile and Canada, rejecting the suffocation of up to 50% unemployment that they are suffering in the the Spanish state and demanding that the employers pay for the crisis!
The movement began with the “Arab Spring” and the “Occupy” movement, and last year, at the forefront of the movement, thousands of young people in Chile went out to the streets in defense of education, confronting the Pinochet regime, that was kept by the Concertación (including Bachelet) and now, led by the right-wing President Piñera, who maintains that “In life, nothing is free.” Obviously, beginning with education. They called these young people “the generation without fear.” Thousands of students in the streets, departments and high schools occupied (some of them even self-managed by teachers and students, like Liceo 90), barricades on dozens of corners, massive mobilizations of up to 1 million young people, confronting the “pigs” (the damned Chilean police). More than 6 months of student struggle, that has rocked the foundations of Chilean society and struck the imagination of students throughout Latin America.
The Chilean youth are challenging elitist and privatized education, threatening different aspects of Pinochet’s legacy, of the regime. On the one hand, the multi-million dollar deals of the capitalists (1.5 billion annually, more than the salmon industry, that is one of the most dynamic), and, on the other, with direct action, barricades, mass mobilizations and confrontations with the police, they are challenging one of the basic coercive pillars of the regime: the repressive apparatus of the state. ¡Manuel Gutiérrez Presente, now and always! was heard in different cities of the continent, when we Latin American young people went out to repudiate his brutal murder by the police.
Unity with the workers was not lacking. But there was no leadership that thought about a real alliance of workers and students to topple, once and for all, the model of elitist and privatizing education. The CUT called a strike, but in an isolated, sporadic, indecisive manner. In the student movement, the CONFECH, led by the Communist Party, refused to fight for Free Education NOW, to eradicate the educational business, not to mention the fact that even now it continues to have a policy of isolating the struggles and pressuring Parliament.
But that great student movement threw overboard decades (and pages) of skepticism. The demand for free education is not just any demand: it directly attacks the regime and a caste of businessmen that is getting rich, with millions blessed by laws from the dictatorship. Those who remain outside this fundamental right are the workers, the working-class families that cannot pay the thousands of dollars annually to gain access to the university; they were the focal point of the attacks of the dictatorship; now they are experiencing its consequences.
From the youth of the PTS, we were excited at the development of this movement from the beginning. We were inspired by the revolt of the “penguins” in 2006, and, during the whole of 2011, we participated in several mobilizations at the Embassy of Chile in Argentina; we conducted talks, and we went, crossing the Andes with our comrades Jesica Calcagno, a leader at the University and Franco Villalba, a leader at Alicorp, who currently heads the Lista Bordó, which is challenging the union bureaucracy in the soapmakers’ union. Santiago Lupe, a leader of Clase contra Clase in the Spanish state and Diana Assunção, a leader of the non-teaching workers’ union at the University of São Paulo (Brazil) and of the LER-QI, both members of the Fracción Trotskista–Cuarta Internacional, which the PTS is part of, went to show their solidarity with the Chilean students.
A few weeks ago, in May, 2012, the Chilean students returned to the streets with mobilizations of more than 100,000 people. During those days, subcontracted miners, inhabitants in defense of the environment, activists for sexual diversity and against fascist crimes, like the murder of Daniel Zamudio, also demonstrated. The student movement is stepping on the streets again and is again putting combative young people, who are confronting the greedy employers, the coup-plotting right wing and its allies from the Concertación, and the related [university] vice-chancellors, on the scene. Little more than a year ago, Carlos Larraín, from Renovación Nacional [the Chilean governing party, of which Larraín is President], said that the danger was that this would turn into a new “French May.” But if that did not happen, it is mainly because of the policy of the official leaderships, since, as our comrades from the PTR-Clase contra Clase suggest, that prospect “was clearly posed.”
The world is no longer the same. There is talk about “springs” again, about “Mays” … about Marx… About workers and students. The fight for worker-student unity is on the agenda. In Argentina, the situation – for now – is different. We are not facing class struggle processes of that magnitude, and the crisis is not yet severe, although it looks like a threat, in the loss of purchasing power with inflation. But we are preparing for the big battles. For that reason, we are now fighting to organize groups of the student movement, that will join with the working class and defend direct democracy, as an exercise, a practice, for the confrontations that are to come.
For us, worker-student unity is not a campaign phrase, nor a souvenir from the seventies. It is part of a strategy that seeks to unite the working class with the student movement, in order to form a powerful alliance capable of confronting and defeating the capitalists, their parties and their state. A few days ago, Cristina Fernández stated that “the world fell on us,” completely a statement of the beginnings of the times that are coming. Faced with this, the PTS Youth are fighting in every department for the independence of the student organizations from all the variants of the bosses, from the Kirchners or from the employers’ opposition, as we did in the Congress of the FUBA, by raising a program of class independence, or in every election where we participate: we are fighting for the setting up of organizations of direct democracy, like assemblies, shop stewards’ committees, assemblies that unite students from high schools through universities. We carry out worker–student unity when there is a struggle and when there isn’t. As we did in 2009, with the conflict at Kraft and recently with the campaign of the Lista Bordó in the food industry, the printing industry, and the soap making industry, as reflected in our supplements and materials, so that class consciousness will advance in the workers’ movement, and with this same perspective, with the rally that we are promoting from the PTS Youth, we not only want to express our solidarity with the struggle of our Chilean brothers and sisters, but to underline the fact that, on both sides of the Andes, there are young people who are gaining experience in today’s fights.
RALLY ALONGSIDE THE CHILEAN STUDENTS IN STRUGGLE
Bárbara Brito and Fabián Puelma from the PTR (the sister organization of the PTS in Chile), who were on the frontline of the struggle against the regime and against the bureaucratic leaderships of the movement, will participate in the rally. Christian Castillo, a national leader of the PTS and former Vice Presidential candidate of the Front of the Left, who participated in the impressive student strike at UNAM in 1999, for which he was arrested in Mexico and then expelled, and who was also elected Director of the Sociology degree course in a big direct election process in the Social Sciences Department of the UBA, will be there. Patricio Del Corro, leader of the PTS Youth, prosecuted for supporting the workers of Kraft Terrabusi in 2009, next to the UBA students, and an authority on the 2010 student struggle, will also speak, as well as Humberto, a young worker from the Bolivian community, a PTS militant, who, day by day, confronts the exploiting employers and fights against precarious employment.
Come, participate in the RALLY!
Friday, June 15, at 7 p.m., in the auditorium of the Social Sciences Department of the UBA, Santiago del Estero 1029, Buenos Aires.
Supplement of the PTS Youth "Revolución" #3
Young people are rising up around the world
By PTS Argentina
Saturday, June 9, 2012
… Chile, Egypt, Greece, the Spanish state, Mexico and Canada: Young people are rising up around the world
By Patricio Del Corro (Sociales-UBA)
Young people are beginning to rise up; they are going out to the streets, massively occupying departments, getting organized in assemblies, expressing solidarity with the workers, with women, with the oppressed. They are confronting the capitalist crisis, defending education, as in Chile and Canada, rejecting the suffocation of up to 50% unemployment that they are suffering in the the Spanish state and demanding that the employers pay for the crisis!
The movement began with the “Arab Spring” and the “Occupy” movement, and last year, at the forefront of the movement, thousands of young people in Chile went out to the streets in defense of education, confronting the Pinochet regime, that was kept by the Concertación (including Bachelet) and now, led by the right-wing President Piñera, who maintains that “In life, nothing is free.” Obviously, beginning with education. They called these young people “the generation without fear.” Thousands of students in the streets, departments and high schools occupied (some of them even self-managed by teachers and students, like Liceo 90), barricades on dozens of corners, massive mobilizations of up to 1 million young people, confronting the “pigs” (the damned Chilean police). More than 6 months of student struggle, that has rocked the foundations of Chilean society and struck the imagination of students throughout Latin America.
The Chilean youth are challenging elitist and privatized education, threatening different aspects of Pinochet’s legacy, of the regime. On the one hand, the multi-million dollar deals of the capitalists (1.5 billion annually, more than the salmon industry, that is one of the most dynamic), and, on the other, with direct action, barricades, mass mobilizations and confrontations with the police, they are challenging one of the basic coercive pillars of the regime: the repressive apparatus of the state. ¡Manuel Gutiérrez Presente, now and always! was heard in different cities of the continent, when we Latin American young people went out to repudiate his brutal murder by the police.
Unity with the workers was not lacking. But there was no leadership that thought about a real alliance of workers and students to topple, once and for all, the model of elitist and privatizing education. The CUT called a strike, but in an isolated, sporadic, indecisive manner. In the student movement, the CONFECH, led by the Communist Party, refused to fight for Free Education NOW, to eradicate the educational business, not to mention the fact that even now it continues to have a policy of isolating the struggles and pressuring Parliament.
But that great student movement threw overboard decades (and pages) of skepticism. The demand for free education is not just any demand: it directly attacks the regime and a caste of businessmen that is getting rich, with millions blessed by laws from the dictatorship. Those who remain outside this fundamental right are the workers, the working-class families that cannot pay the thousands of dollars annually to gain access to the university; they were the focal point of the attacks of the dictatorship; now they are experiencing its consequences.
From the youth of the PTS, we were excited at the development of this movement from the beginning. We were inspired by the revolt of the “penguins” in 2006, and, during the whole of 2011, we participated in several mobilizations at the Embassy of Chile in Argentina; we conducted talks, and we went, crossing the Andes with our comrades Jesica Calcagno, a leader at the University and Franco Villalba, a leader at Alicorp, who currently heads the Lista Bordó, which is challenging the union bureaucracy in the soapmakers’ union. Santiago Lupe, a leader of Clase contra Clase in the Spanish state and Diana Assunção, a leader of the non-teaching workers’ union at the University of São Paulo (Brazil) and of the LER-QI, both members of the Fracción Trotskista–Cuarta Internacional, which the PTS is part of, went to show their solidarity with the Chilean students.
A few weeks ago, in May, 2012, the Chilean students returned to the streets with mobilizations of more than 100,000 people. During those days, subcontracted miners, inhabitants in defense of the environment, activists for sexual diversity and against fascist crimes, like the murder of Daniel Zamudio, also demonstrated. The student movement is stepping on the streets again and is again putting combative young people, who are confronting the greedy employers, the coup-plotting right wing and its allies from the Concertación, and the related [university] vice-chancellors, on the scene. Little more than a year ago, Carlos Larraín, from Renovación Nacional [the Chilean governing party, of which Larraín is President], said that the danger was that this would turn into a new “French May.” But if that did not happen, it is mainly because of the policy of the official leaderships, since, as our comrades from the PTR-Clase contra Clase suggest, that prospect “was clearly posed.”
The world is no longer the same. There is talk about “springs” again, about “Mays” … about Marx… About workers and students. The fight for worker-student unity is on the agenda. In Argentina, the situation – for now – is different. We are not facing class struggle processes of that magnitude, and the crisis is not yet severe, although it looks like a threat, in the loss of purchasing power with inflation. But we are preparing for the big battles. For that reason, we are now fighting to organize groups of the student movement, that will join with the working class and defend direct democracy, as an exercise, a practice, for the confrontations that are to come.
For us, worker-student unity is not a campaign phrase, nor a souvenir from the seventies. It is part of a strategy that seeks to unite the working class with the student movement, in order to form a powerful alliance capable of confronting and defeating the capitalists, their parties and their state. A few days ago, Cristina Fernández stated that “the world fell on us,” completely a statement of the beginnings of the times that are coming. Faced with this, the PTS Youth are fighting in every department for the independence of the student organizations from all the variants of the bosses, from the Kirchners or from the employers’ opposition, as we did in the Congress of the FUBA, by raising a program of class independence, or in every election where we participate: we are fighting for the setting up of organizations of direct democracy, like assemblies, shop stewards’ committees, assemblies that unite students from high schools through universities. We carry out worker–student unity when there is a struggle and when there isn’t. As we did in 2009, with the conflict at Kraft and recently with the campaign of the Lista Bordó in the food industry, the printing industry, and the soap making industry, as reflected in our supplements and materials, so that class consciousness will advance in the workers’ movement, and with this same perspective, with the rally that we are promoting from the PTS Youth, we not only want to express our solidarity with the struggle of our Chilean brothers and sisters, but to underline the fact that, on both sides of the Andes, there are young people who are gaining experience in today’s fights.
RALLY ALONGSIDE THE CHILEAN STUDENTS IN STRUGGLE
Bárbara Brito and Fabián Puelma from the PTR (the sister organization of the PTS in Chile), who were on the frontline of the struggle against the regime and against the bureaucratic leaderships of the movement, will participate in the rally. Christian Castillo, a national leader of the PTS and former Vice Presidential candidate of the Front of the Left, who participated in the impressive student strike at UNAM in 1999, for which he was arrested in Mexico and then expelled, and who was also elected Director of the Sociology degree course in a big direct election process in the Social Sciences Department of the UBA, will be there. Patricio Del Corro, leader of the PTS Youth, prosecuted for supporting the workers of Kraft Terrabusi in 2009, next to the UBA students, and an authority on the 2010 student struggle, will also speak, as well as Humberto, a young worker from the Bolivian community, a PTS militant, who, day by day, confronts the exploiting employers and fights against precarious employment.
Come, participate in the RALLY!
Friday, June 15, at 7 p.m., in the auditorium of the Social Sciences Department of the UBA, Santiago del Estero 1029, Buenos Aires.
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Nice article
Posted 22nd June 2012 at 03:59 by Workers-Control-Over-Prod 
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