Tuesday, November 25, 2008

noi la crisi non la paghiamo!

More stuff on contemporary struggles. Italian universities are centre stage of resistance to capital and the states attempts to palm off their crisis on to the working class.

To the faculties in mobilization, to the undergraduate and Ph.D.
students, and to all the precarious researchers

"We won't pay for your crisis", this is the slogan with which a few
weeks ago we started our protest at the university of La Sapienza,
Rome. A simple, yet at the same time immediate, slogan: the global
crisis is the crisis of capitalism itself, of the financial and real
estate speculation, of a system without rules or rights, of
unscrupulous companies and managers. The burden of this crisis can't
fall on the educational system - from the school to the university -
on the health system or generally on taxpayers. Our slogan has become
famous, spreading by word of mouth, from town to town. From the
students to the precarious workers, from the working to the research
worlds, nobody wants to pay for the crisis, nobody wants to
nationalize the losses, whereas for years the wealth has been
distributed among few, very few people.

And it is exactly the contagion that has been produced in these weeks,
the multiplication of the mobilizations in the schools, in the
universities, and in the cities that should have stirred up a lot of
fear. It is well known that a fearful dog bites; similarly, the
reaction of President Berlusconi was immediate: police against who
occupy universities and schools, we will get rid of violence in our
Country. Only yesterday Berlusconi declared that he was willing to
increase the financial support to the banks and that the State and the
public expense would stand surety for the companies' loans: in a few
words, cutbacks to education, less founds for the students, cutbacks
to the health system, but public money for the companies, for the
banks and the private sector. We are wondering where is violence: is
it a violence to occupy universities and schools or instead that of a
government who imposes the Law 133 to cutback the founds for the
education system refusing the parliamentary debate? Is it the dissent
violent or is it violent who intends to put it down by the police? Who
is violent: who mobilizes for the public status of university and
schools or who wants to sell them for a few private profits? Violence
is on Berlusconi government's side, while in the occupied schools and
universities there is the great joy and indignation of who fights for
his own future, or who doesn't accept to be put in the corner or
forced to be silent. We won't want stay in silence in the corner.

They tell us that we are only able to say no, that we don't have any
proposal. There is nothing more false: the occupations and the
meetings of these days are really building up a new university, a
university made of knowledge, as well as of sociality, of learning,
but also of information, and consciousness. Studying is very important
for us: and it is exactly for this reason that we think that the
protests are necessary: we are occupying so that the public university
can endure, to continue to study and do research. There are a lot of
things that have to be changed both in the universities and in the
schools, but one thing is certain: the change can't pass through these
cutbacks. Changing the university means increasing founds, to sustain
the research, to qualify the educational processes and to guarantee
mobility (from study to research, and from research to teaching). The
cutbacks mean just one thing: transforming the public universities in
private foundations, decreeing the end of the public university.

The design and its tools are clear: Law 133 was approved in august,
and against the protests of dozens of thousands of students they claim
the police. This government wants to wreck democracy, through the
fear, through the terror. But today, from La Sapienza in mobilization
and from the occupied faculties, we want to say that we have no fear
and we won?t step back. On the contrary, our intention is to make the
government retreat: we won?t stop struggling before Law 133 and the
Gelmini decree will be withdrawn! This time we will proceed till the
very end, we don't want lose, we don't want submit to this arrogance.
For this reason we ask all faculties of the Country to do the same:
they want to repress the occupations, so that a thousand of faculties
occupy!

Moreover, after the extraordinary success of the general strike on
October 17th, we think that is the right time to give an unitary and
coordinated answer in our cities. We suggest two national dates: a day
of mobilization on Friday November 7th, with demonstrations spread all
over the cities; a huge national demonstration of the educational
world, from university to School, on November 14th in Rome, the day
the unions proclaimed the general strike of the university; a day to
be built from the bottom and in which the central figures have to be
the students, researchers and teachers in mobilization. At the same
time we think that it is useful to cross, with our forms and claims,
the general strike of the school proclaimed by the unions on Thursday
October 30th.

What is happening in these days tells us of a powerful, extraordinary
and rich mobilization. A new wave, an anomalous wave that doesn't want
stop and that rather wants to win. We have to increase this wave and
the will to struggle. They want us idiots and resigned, but we are
cleavers and in movement and our wave will go far!

From the occupied faculties of the La Sapienza, from the University
in mobilization, Rome.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

November 2, 2009 at 10:16 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

noi la crisi non la paGHiamo!

January 26, 2010 at 12:11 PM  

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