From ldxar1 at tesco.net  Sun Dec  3 13:12:47 2006
From: ldxar1 at tesco.net (Andy)
Date: Sun, 3 Dec 2006 21:12:47 -0000
Subject: [Onthebarricades] Fw: [AUT] Oaxaca's Dirty War
Message-ID: <002901c7171f$c95feb00$0202a8c0@andy1>


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Donald Vernon Kingsbury" <dkingsbu at ucsc.edu>
To: <aut-op-sy at lists.resist.ca>
Sent: Sunday, December 03, 2006 5:05 PM
Subject: [AUT] Oaxaca's Dirty War


> please forward and repost all emails and articles!
>
> The Dirty War of Oaxaca
> http://elenemigocomun.net/622
>
> Acclaimed Muralist Among Oaxaca?s Disappeared
> http://elenemigocomun.net/621
>
> Rights activist held in Oaxaca prison
> http://elenemigocomun.net/618
>
> --------------
>
> The Dirty War of Oaxaca
> http://elenemigocomun.net/622
>
> Amongst flames of resistance came death, torture, and a movement forced
> into clandestinity
>
> December 2nd, 2006 - Barucha Calamity Peller writes: Latin Americas?
> ?dirty war? of the 70s and 80s has reemerged in its most blatant form in
> the case of Oaxaca, Mexico in the final days of November.
>
> The APPO, the Popular Assembly of The People of Oaxaca, whose struggle
> to oust the PRI party governor Ulises Ruiz and to replace power with
> that of popular assemblies began on June 14th with an attempt to
> violently evict a sit-in of striking teachers. Six months later they find
> themselves living clandestinely with federal warrants on their names and 
> on
> the run from the police.
>
> In this past week, the government of Mexico has adopted a ?gloves off ?
> policy and has clearly stated in the press its plans to do away with
> the popular movement in Oaxaca before Friday, the 1st of December, when
> PAN party Felipe Calderon was to take presidential office despite
> protests by millions of voters around the country amidst the fraudulent
> summer elections that stole the vote from PRD (Democratic Revolution 
> Party)
> candidate Lopez Obrador.
>
> Thousands of Preventive Federal Police, PFP, forces who entered the
> city of Oaxaca on the 28th of October, prompted by the death of Indymedia
> journalist Brad Will, are now in control of the local, state, and
> investigative police branches, and have expanded their operations to 
> outside
> of the capital, Oaxaca City. A special operations department of the PFP
> joined the existing force there, and armed patrols circle the city.
>
> The past week has resulted in over 171 detained, a number that rises
> everyday. 142 of those detained during weekend clashes were transported
> to a high security prison in Nayarit, a state over a hundred miles north
> of Oaxaca. The majority of these prisoners are out of communication
> with the outside and are assumed to be suffering torture. Human Rights
> organizations in Oaxaca and Nayarit say that they are aware of at least 36
> cases of torture, and the few families who have been able to speak with
> their detained relatives say that they are badly beaten and that women
> are being threatened with rape. There is at least one report of a
> prisoner being tortured in order to sign a false confession of having
> participated in the damages to the capital under the pretext that the APPO
> paid him. Amongst those detained there are many accounts of arbitrary
> detentions, and prisoners who have nothing to do with the APPO. Human
> Rights organizations in Oaxaca say that the combined number of women raped
> by police or disappeared is over 60.
>
> Participants in the Oaxacan social movement only expect the conditions
> of repression to worsen, especially with the entrance of Felipe
> Calderon of the PAN (National Action Party) into presidency today 
> [December 1,
> 2006]. A week and a half ago Calderon stated that upon entering into
> office he would do away with all social movements, no matter how many
> dead would have to fall.
>
> During the Saturday night roundup, which resulted in at least 3 people
> killed and another 25 disappeared in the same twenty four hours, a
> hotel worker said that he came across a group of PFP officers who boasted
> to him that they had already killed 13 people, and that the press would
> never know because the bodies had been disappeared.
>
> A Week of Hunting
>
> The form in which the government is carrying out the operation to do
> away with the movement makes it apparent that it is not only an
> operation, but a spectacle of repression meant to cause psychological 
> trauma and
> a widespread fear to prevent further uprising.
>
> The government has banned marches in Oaxaca, and promised severe
> repression if mobilizations of any kind are carried out, making it 
> impossible
> to rally for the 200 political prisoners arrested over the weekend, or
> to demand that the upwards of 25 people disappeared on Saturday and
> Sunday be returned alive. Despite this, a small number of family members
> of the detained and disappeared carried out a march in Oaxaca City today
> [December 1, 2006].
>
> Moreover, the last APPO radio, Radio Universidad, was handed over to
> Benito Juarez Autonomous University officials on Wednesday. The APPO
> sympathizers said that the reason for their withdrawal was because of the
> lack of people wiling to protect the radio under the threat of arrest or
> disappearance, and because of the rumor that the Federal Preventive
> Police would enter before five that night. Indeed, different police forces
> operating in the city had been patrolling near the Cinco Se?ores
> barricade at the entrance to the university for days, and on Monday 
> arrested
> three people leaving the radio, including a French woman, Mille Sarah
> Ilitch Welch, who faces deportation on Friday. Apparently there were
> many warrants out on the radio hosts as well.
>
> The radio was the artery of communication and coordination for the
> movement in Oaxaca. Without the radio, disappearances and arrests can go
> unnoticed, and Oaxacans are left without a forum in which to organize and
> distribute information. For the past month in Oaxaca, the only other
> radio operating was Radio Ciudana, a PRI (Industrial Revolution Party)
> supported radio whose hosts and callers often threaten APPO sympathizers.
> In the days leading up to the ?Mega Marcha? on the 25th of November,
> the radio was calling for PRIistas to throw hot water and hydrochloric
> acid on marchers. The radio often calls for movement offices to be burned
> and blatantly threatens violence against many of the participants.
>
> And while PRD and PAN parliamentary representatives exchanged punches
> inside the Congress to gain a space for governance in the days leading
> up to the inauguration of Calderon, police forces in Oaxaca continued to
> carry out ?cateos?, or house raids in Oaxaca, a regular practice that
> has gained speed in the past days.
>
> On Thursday November 30 there were house raids throughout the city and
> in surrounding towns, and 8 anarchists from the Ocupa Oaxaca collective
> were arrested in Colonia Reforma.
>
> Police claim that they have a list and photos of 100 foreigners that
> they are searching to arrest for their participation in the movement.
> Immigration officials arrested an Argentinean. Beatriz Ana Livinter, and a
> Spaniard, Alfonso Gutierrez Ferrando, yesterday.
>
> The PFP also entered Zaalchia on Thursday, a town 11 kilometers outside
> the capital where the people ran the mayor and the local police out of
> the town months ago, in protest of neoliberal policies threatening
> their land and water. The invading PFP were ran out of Zaalchia, but not
> before arresting 4 teachers.
>
> In Ocatlan, the PFP entered schools and suspended classes, leaving the
> school children terrified.
>
> On Monday Frederick Carmona Splinkter and a student were forcibly taken
> at gunpoint and tied up in a neon red car outside the Faculty of
> Medicine and shots were fired at the building of the faculty. The two
> kidnapped later turned up in a detention center in Oaxaca.
>
> People have seldom left their houses this week in Oaxaca, and those
> involved in the movement have only left to buy food, others have attempted
> to leave the state to find refuge in other parts of the country.
> However, police have set up roadblocks on highways leading to Mexico City,
> and there are reports of people being taken off of buses, to be searched
> and arrested.
>
> The disappearances, arrests, and rapes seem to be part of a government
> plan to force the popular movement into a state of fear by causing the
> movement?s thousands of participants into geographical dispersion and
> into a state of living clandestinely. Under these conditions, it is
> difficult for people to organize, mobilize, or even communicate.
>
> Night Terror
>
> The heavy repression came after a mega march on Saturday, November
> 25th. The APPO had called for a peaceful march from a town outside of
> Oaxaca city to the Zocalo, the center square occupied by the federal 
> police
> since their entrance into the city a month ago. The vision of the march
> was to surround the police by creating a chain of marchers in the
> streets around the Zocalo, essentially to reoccupy the city by closing in 
> on
> the occupying federal forces. The marchers planned to camp in the
> streets for forty eight hours, to demand the exit of Ulises Ruiz from 
> power
> and the PFP from Oaxaca City.
>
> Only an hour after the march had arrived and surrounded the Zocalo,
> protesters built barricades in the streets, handed out food, and yelled
> insults at the police a block down. Not soon after, the first rounds of
> tear gas could be heard on Acala Street, near the APPO sit-in of Santo
> Domingo Plaza. This set off a six hour battle between protesters and
> police, in which both sides retreated and advanced on the downtown streets
> of Oaxaca City. The APPO stole city buses and cars and drove them into
> police lines or burned them to create barricades to defend Santo
> Domingo. Police shot continuous rounds of gas at the heads and bodies of
> protesters.
>
> During the course of the confrontation, 36 buildings were burned, Among
> the targets were; the Benito Juarez Theatre, the Secretary of External
> Relations, the Superior Tribunal of Justice, a number of banks and
> upscale hotels and dozens of cars and busses to use as burning barricades.
>
> Around eight o?clock that evening protesters finally retreated from
> Santo Domingo, after PFP water tanks began to advance from parallel
> streets and it seemed that it was no longer possible to defend the space 
> that
> APPO had occupied for a month.
>
> During the retreat, hundreds of protesters ran up a narrow street in
> the direction of Benito Juarez Boulevard. At least three gunshots rang
> out, and a young man was shot in the leg, presumably by paramilitaries on
> the roof. Upon reaching the boulevard, a few hundred protesters
> attempted to regroup, while blocking the street with 18 wheelers and 
> buses. In
> other parts of the city, groups of protesters sought refuge in houses
> or attempted to fend off police and paramilitaries circling the city.
>
> In the course of the night, police beat and arbitrarily arrested almost
> anyone they found on the street, including people who were in
> neighborhoods far away from the conflict in the center of Oaxaca City.
>
> Unmarked cars could be seen passing through the same streets over and
> over again, presumably containing PRI party supporters and government
> paramilitaries who were carrying out disappearances.
>
> At approximately 11 o?clock at night, automatic weapon gunshots were
> heard for ten minutes straight. The shots were fired towards the Faculty
> of Medicine, just north of the Center, where protesters ran to seek
> refuge. According to a witness, when teachers and other protesters
> attempted to leave the faculty, a group of porros (government backed
> paramilitaries) ordered them to stop at gunpoint.
>
> The group refused and the porros opened fire, killing three people.
>
> Some of the teachers began to fire back in defense as they were
> retreating.
>
> And at 7 am on Sunday morning, as APPO sympathizers hid out in houses
> around the city and the police and PRI paramilitary groups disappeared
> people off the streets, PRI party outlet Radio Ciudana was naming out
> neighborhoods and houses where protesters could be found.
>
> ?We know of one house where there are six Americans who have been
> helping the APPO?, the host said, creating a fear for anyone who had an
> American in their house that paramilitaries would arrive to massacre
> everyone inside.
>
> How to Continue?
>
> Many people wonder what the past week?s repression will mean for the
> movement in Oaxaca and what its effect will be on a national scale.
>
> Comparisons have been made to the siege of Atenco in the first days of
> May this year, where 3,500 PFP police entered the town to quell an
> anti-neoliberal movement. The Atenco siege resulted in two deaths, 40
> unconfirmed disappearances, and 218 political prisoners, 35 of which were
> women who suffered rapes at the hands of the police.
>
> Indeed Oaxaca has prompted many contextual questions on part of both
> the movement and the government. On Monday, as the PFP in Oaxaca
> patrolled Santo Domingo plaza, the APPO encampment lost during the 
> Saturday
> battle, popularly ousted Governor Ulises Ruiz appeared at the scene to
> assess the damage to the burned buildings downtown. He said that the
> detentions carried out in the previous nights meant a step towards
> stability. For months the federal government has been calling the
> ?ungovernability? of Oaxaca a local problem that has no significance to 
> Mexican
> society as a whole, even so, paradoxically Ruiz blamed outsiders from 
> other
> states for the damages in Oaxaca.
>
> Activists in Mexico have had the task of assessing the situation in
> Oaxaca in comparison to the rest of the country, and there remain many
> questions of how different movements can relate to that of the APPO in
> terms of coordination and solidarity. While those suffering repression in
> Oaxaca remain isolated by the mainstream Mexican media, who have hardly
> reported on deaths, disappearances and torture, there is also a danger
> coming from some of those on ?the left? in Mexico who isolate the
> Oaxacan movement as a protest against the governor Ulises, and not a 
> broader
> struggle against neoliberalism and capitalist exploitation whose
> context is surely national. Despite this, at the moment there are still
> organizations and collectives around the country who are strategizing 
> their
> modes of solidarity for Oaxaca, particularly concentrating on the grave
> human rights situation for those incarcerated and those remaining
> inside the city.
>
> Calderon took presidency today [December 1, 2006] in a veritable coup
> d?etat, accompanied into the parliament by military and PAN party
> supporters. Meanwhile, social movements around Mexico brace themselves for
> the ?mano duro?, or hard-hand, of repression that is sure to come.
>
> Yet an APPO member from the Section 22 teachers union, the same union
> that set off the Oaxaca uprising when the government violently attempted
> to evict their sit-in in June, said on Thursday night outside of a
> human rights coordination meeting, ?What they don?t realize is that it
> doesn?t matter who they arrest, who they disappear in Oaxaca. There will
> always be more that come from behind and rise up, after all, they can?t
> detain the whole state.?
>
> sources: http://counterpunch.org/peller12022006.html
> http://indybay.org/newsitems/2006/12/02/18334698.php
>
> --------------
>
> Oaxaca solidarity:
>
> El Enemigo Com?n (film and news)
> http://elenemigocomun.net
>
> email 'announcement' list
> http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/oaxaca
>
> events and actions
> http://elenemigocomun.net/category/solidarity
>
> Donate for medical supplies and media equipment
> http://elenemigocomun.net/donate
> _______________________________________________
> aut-op-sy mailing list
> aut-op-sy at lists.resist.ca
> https://lists.resist.ca/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/aut-op-sy
> aut-op-sy
> 




From ldxar1 at tesco.net  Sat Dec 16 16:21:36 2006
From: ldxar1 at tesco.net (Andy)
Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2006 00:21:36 -0000
Subject: [Onthebarricades] Fw: [anarchist.academics] Fear not God,
	Fear the X-tians who take away the young people's	house.
Message-ID: <00ce01c72171$51cf9c50$0202a8c0@andy1>


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "jmp" <m.pedersen at lancaster.ac.uk>
To: <anarchist.academics at lists.mutualaid.org>
Cc: <activistscholarship at lists.riseup.net>; <knowledgelab at lists.aktivix.org>
Sent: Thursday, December 14, 2006 2:42 AM
Subject: [anarchist.academics] Fear not God,Fear the X-tians who take away 
the young people's house.


> <sry for x posting>
>
> Mobilisation video:  http://video.indymedia.org/en/2006/12/633.shtml
>
> Help save the house which for more than a hundred years has been
> instrumental in political organising on the left. From the Youth House
> to the Father's House - need we say more?
>
> From: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/12/358297.html
>
>
> The climate is rapidly changing for social centres and other community
> projects in Copenhagen.
>
> Led by a X-tian sect, the Danish authorities and thought police (in riot
> gear), are evicting a house that been host to organising on the left for
> more than a hundred years.
>
> The battle is by many considered pivotal in the struggling Danish
> resistance to a government that systematically has been eradicating
> anyting that does not conform to their right-right wing perception of
> market mechanisms and an ultra-conservative (well, racist) attitude to
> migration.
>
> With Christiania on its way to destruction, the once liberal Copenhagen
> is now finally becoming the little duck pond, where those who are
> different are feared and demonised, that H.C. Andersen so famously wrote
> about in the Ugly Duckling.
>
> The occupants and users of the social centre Ungdomshuset is calling for
> solidarity action anywhere and everywhere - so make your way to the
> nearest Danish Embassy and take the power back! Let the world know what
> is happening, because the final battle for Ungdomshuset is coming up.
>
> The relations between police and activists is tense. Mainstream media is
> full of stories of catastrophees, guides and films are circulating on
> the Internet, encouraging people to defend Ungdomshuset by any means
> necessary.
>
> The church "Faderhuset" (the Father's House) have turned down the last
> offer for Jagtvej 69, and so have turned down the last offer for a
> peaceful solution to the conflict. Is Ungdomshuset going to be
>
> preserved? That is the question on everyone's lips.
>
> All we want for Christmas.
> Since the weekend in September, which resulted in over 200 arrests, the
> situation has been very tense. The house is barricaded. Politicians,
> police, people living in N?rrebro [the part of Copenhagen
> where Ungdomshuset is located], artists and thousands of users have all
> expressed their hopes that the church would agree to sell the house, but
> to no avail.
>
> As a symbolic gesture the house is now covered in giftwrapping.
> Unfortunately, now only a swift change in attitude by the politicans can
> stop the police from going in and deploying aggressive force against the
> activists of Ungdomshuset.
>
> The role of the church Faderhuset.
> The sectarian church, that bought the house in the beginning of 2000,
> has had a rough time in the mainstream media. The Danish tabloid
> Ekstrabladet (like the Daily Mail, a filthy rag) have published numerous
> articles about the sect and its methods. The leader of the sect, Ruth
> Evensen, has changed her views a lot in just three years. Once Ruth
> Evensen was very much against homosexuals, Muslims and abortion. Just a
> few years back she denounced those people as supporters of the
> anti-christ. That was in collaboration with the ex-pedophile and known
> right-winger, outspoken zionist, anti-muslim activist "Moses" (Mogens)
> Hansen. Together they, wanted to cleanse N?rrebro of what they
> considered weed. But apparently she has now changed her mind. On
> national television she recently wished for a N?rrebro where everyone
> can speak to one another, where everyone is tolerant. However, she
> didn?t mention how that fits in with trying to
> eradicate a cultural oasis used by thousands.
>
> The church Faderhuset has been the ?victims? of multiple protests since
> September that have resulted in some of the best documented cases of
> police brutality in recent history.
>
> Ungdomshuset: The politicians are to blame!
> The users and activists of Ungdomshuset have no doubt about whom to
> blame. It was in the City Council of Copenhagen that the former Mayor
> Jens Kramer Mikkelsen in 1999 decided to sell the house to the limited
> company Human A/S that quickly sold on the house to "Faderhuset".
>
> The arguments used back then were that the house was only used by 25
> people, that it was a wreck and that it fostered crime on N?rrebro. The
> only argument remotely consistent with reality was the physical state of
> the building. That was, however, fixed by the occupying activists
> themselves. The house wasn?t always this popular, but there has always
> been a lot more than 25 people sharing the workload. When it comes to
> crime, not even the Danish police considers the house any more liable to
> generate criminal behaviour than the Copenhagen nightlife in general.
>
> After the mainstream media picked up on the case, the City Council has
> suddenly become in favour of preserving Ungdomshuset and they have
> lobbied extensively to bring Faderhuset to sell the house to an
> independent fund, whose aim it is to preserve Ungdomshuset in its
> current form. The fund reflects the broad alliance that is supporting
> the social centre, including cultural celebrities, artists and
> organisation, as well as labour unions.
>
> However, the politicians aren't going to take any real steps to prohibit
> Faderhuset from destroying Ungdomshuset. The building on Jagtvej 69,
> today housing Ungdomshuset, was the first meeting hall for the workers
> of Copenhagen at the end of the 19th century, and it was in that
> building that the foundation for what later became the celebrations of
> March the 8th was laid. So the building has historical value as a
> vibrant centre for organising on the left for more than a hundred years.
>
> If the politicians want to stop a war on N?rrebro from breaking out,
> they need to act fast, we all saw what happened in September and if
> Ungdomshuset is evicted, it will most certainly happen again.
>
> The fight is imminent.
> On Thursday the 14th of December Ungdomshuset will start a weekend of
> activities. The 14th of December is also the day of the last meeting in
> the City Council this year. Groups supporting Ungdomshuset have planned
> demonstrations. There are also international days of solidarity actions
> Wednesday evening, Dec. 13 and right through to Sunday, Dec. 17.
>
> In Ungdomshuset there are going to be concerts, workshops, parties and
> yet another demonstration is planned for the coming Saturday. A lot of
> foreign activists are expected this weekend and the media has have of
> course reacted to this in a scare-mongering fashion, primarily scaring
> readers and viewers of German activists, who are suspected and accused
> of helping their Danish friends to create as much chaos as possible.
>
> Everyone's seemingly ready for a battle. Only time can tell what will
> happen!
>
> Links for more information:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ungdomshuset
> http://www.indymedia.ie/article/78161
> http://www.indymedia.ie/article/79884
> http://www.ungeren.dk/english.php
> http://www.squat.net/en/news/kopenhagen_august_2006310806.html
> http://ungdomshuset.info/spip.php?article48
> http://blog.tv2.dk/matthias81/entry21949.html
> http://a-manila.org/newswire/display/466/index.php
> http://www.digg.com/videos_educational/The_fight_for_Ungdomshuset
> http://ie.indymedia.org/article/78102
>
> http://www.anarchistyouth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=2241&sid=d7e534c7e97e5b424d233dc636d0b383
>
> Ungeren
> - e-mail: fuckthedanishstate at anychancegiven.now
> - Homepage: http://www.ungeren.dk
>
> -- 
> http://knowledgelab.org.uk
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> anarchist.academics mailing list
> anarchist.academics at lists.mutualaid.org
> http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/anarchist.academics
> free hosting provided by http://www.mutualaid.org/
> 




From ldxar1 at tesco.net  Sun Dec 17 13:35:42 2006
From: ldxar1 at tesco.net (Andy)
Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2006 21:35:42 -0000
Subject: [Onthebarricades] Fw: [1worldcommunication] Egyptian Workers'
	Revolt Pays Off - By Emad Mekay
Message-ID: <011f01c72223$4eb65380$0202a8c0@andy1>



Workers' Revolt Pays Off
Emad Mekay
Inter Press Service
December 14, 2006

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=35861


MAHALA EL-KOBRA, Egypt, Dec 14 (IPS) - More than 20,000 Egyptian textile workers have scored a rare win over plans to privatise their publicly-owned company, with a massive strike that forced the company's management and the pro-free market government to back down. 

Union leaders say the triumph has breathed life into the country's ailing labour movement, weakened by repeated hits from the government of President Hosni Mubarak. The last strike in this city was in 1988. 

Workers at the al-Mahala Textile Company (Ghazl al-Mahala) in the country's northwest demonstrated for five days starting last weekend and occupied several factories to protest a decision by the company's chairman Mahmoud el-Gebaly to withhold bonus payments, as promised earlier by the government. Nearly a quarter of the strikers were women. 

Management had said the decision was a way to lower expenses, even though the original promise was to give workers a meagre bonus of 200 Egyptian pounds per year -- about 35 dollars. 

In response, the workers launched a massive impromptu protest in this city, some 130 kms northwest of the capital Cairo, citing corruption and plans to make the company more attractive for potential buyers under Egypt's World Bank-sponsored privatisation programme. They also stopped work for two and half days. 

During the rallies, thousands of workers carried mock coffins with the chairman's name written on them. They called for his resignation and an investigation of his performance and that of his staff. They also demanded full payment of their promised bonuses. 

The usually brutal Egyptian police were stunned by the massive numbers and the government was also taken aback. Police did not intervene for five days, preferring to send thousands of troops to encircle the workers and occupied factories. 

The protests, among the biggest in this country in recent years, made front page headlines even in the state-run newspapers and mesmerised the public for days. 

"The Labour Revolution" read a headline in the opposition daily al-Wafd. Al-Masri al-Youm, an independent daily, ran pictures of the workers chanting anti-government slogans and carrying the mock coffins. Others ran two-page coverage of the events almost on a daily basis for the past week. 

The demonstration was an occasion for Egypt's labour rights activists to voice many of their complaints. 

Just out of union elections, the workers carried banners calling some members "election riggers" after many of them joined with the management. 

The elections were held last month amidst widespread allegations of fraud and manipulation by the government and police seeking to elbow out candidates of the Muslim Brotherhood, the country's largest political organisation. 

The workers have also voiced a host of other problems. 

Saeed Abdallah, a 31-year-old father of three, told IPS: "The vapour and the haze from wool has clogged our lungs. I am getting asthma. And after all this they wanted to deprive us of our rights. Patience has a limit. What more can they take from us?" "Only God saved us and this company from complete destruction because of the level of anger they pushed us to," added Ayman Taha, 28, who works in the sales department of Ghazl al-Mahala. 

"When it comes to the food we put on our children's table, we cannot control ourselves," Taha said. "They accuse us of doing the strike because we were infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood. They always say that and do not look at their own actions. We have no Muslim Brotherhood members left amongst us. They have arrested all of them before the (labour unions) elections... This was not organised. [But] it was better than exploding in violence." 

Other workers expressed anger at the firing of colleagues who had fallen ill on the job, such as Abdelaziz Abdelmawla, a textile worker who was sacked after being hospitalised for kidney failure. The workers say the company should have supported him or put him on a pension. 

Many said that labour abuses, low wages and the huge disparity between their incomes and those of the top management were among the reasons why the "labour revolt" was long-simmering. 

Mohamed al-Kahlawi, dubbed the "Grand Sheik of Professionals" for his labour rights work, said workers were sometimes were forced to work on Fridays, the weekend here. 

They are no longer served meals, or are charged high prices for food. Food compensation was also cut down from by two-thirds to only 33 pounds (six dollars) a month. 

Al-Kahlawi complained in statements to the press that these measures may be a prelude to full privatisation under Egypt's deal with the World Bank and international donors. 

The company was the first to be built in Egypt and has since been the centre of the textile industry, which capitalises on the country's world-famous cotton. It has a sprawling premises that spans hundreds of acres of prime land. 

"We carried the strike-in because we couldn't take it any longer. We produce a lot but get back very little. Our salaries have become so low we cannot even buy the clothes we manufacture," Sameh Hassan, a textile worker, told IPS. 

A tour of the company's compound reveals stark differences in the living standards of the management and those of the workers. 

While the land allocated for management is littered with villas, fancy mansions and green areas, workers are housed in Soviet-style apartment blocks with soot covering the outside walls. The balconies are worn out, sewage is leaking and trash has piled up in little smelly hills. 

The most common complaint cited by workers is corruption. They say managers have sold company properties and land for millions of dollars but the profits never trickled down to the workers. 

They also say that top managers have appointed relatives and friends to senior positions without going through formal hiring procedures. 

While the five days of striking and rallies did not win concessions on this issue, the workers did reap other rewards. The government backed down and agreed to pay the workers their bonuses and promised to address the rest of their grievances in order. 

"After the whole chaos was gone, the treatment workers got was really different," said a senior employee of the company who wished to remain unidentified. 

"Today, the cashiers were sitting to greet the workers with their dues the minute they walked into work. I didn't take part in the strike. But I got my rights because of it. I wish I was part of it from the start," he said.



Forwarded by:
_________________________________
Ravi Khanna, Director
voices from the global village
1world communication
P. O. Box 2476
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phone: 413-253-1960
cell: 413-687-8150
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From ldxar1 at tesco.net  Sun Dec 17 15:53:35 2006
From: ldxar1 at tesco.net (Andy)
Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2006 23:53:35 -0000
Subject: [Onthebarricades] Fw: [EF!] Re: Adbusters Newsletter #34: BUY
	NOTHING XMAS!!/ VA grocery store action
Message-ID: <015801c72236$928f1f20$0202a8c0@andy1>




from www.dc.indymedia.org:

AUDIO PIECE ON N. VA Grocery store action against Smithfield Hams

http://dc.indymedia.org/usermedia/audio/11/smithfield_harris_teeter_d1
6.mp3

Smithfield protest at Harris-Teeter exposes management hypocrisy

WSQT Guerrilla Radio 

Mid afternoon on December 16, protestors handed out fliers and asked 
shoppers at Harris-teeter on Glebe Road in Ballston, VA not to buy 
their house brand hams as they are supplied by Smithfield,where 
workers are losing limbs to safety violations at the Tar Heel plant 
in North Carolina, a notorious anti-union state. 

The previous week,a few activists visited the same Harris-Teeter 
grocery and spoke to a manager, who stated that Smithfield's union-
busting and horrific injury rate "doesn't sound like United States in 
2006."

Unfortunately, union-busting, siccing ICE on immigrant workers to 
remove "troublemakers" and "agitators," work speedups in violation of 
safety standards, and beatings and even sexual assaults of pro-union 
workers are very USA 2006.

So is sending the police to drive away or arrest protestors. This 
time, the manager responded to a protest consisting mostly of signs 
and handing out fliers(with a couple short chants) by calling the 
Arlington cops and declaring he had an "emergency" in the store!

Several carloads of cops responded, and ordered all protestors to 
approach and wait for the manager to order them to leave "private 
property" and take any protest to the sidewalk on the opposite side 
of the street where flierign would be impossible. 

Protestors stood firm and were able to get the cops to concede that 
everyone could stay on the same-side sidewalk, after one cop citing 
an obscure law called "curtilage" threatened arrest if we stayed on 
the same side of the street. He bailed out on that line of attack 
after being asked him who was responsable if someone slipped in the 
snow and fell there two weeks later and he refused to give a square 
answer.

The manager who read out the order to leave the sacred Private 
Property of the Temple of Shopping turend out to be the same guy who 
claimed to be so concerned about Smithfield's abuses just last week! 
Hey Virginia, whatever happened to "this doesn't sound like United 
States in 2006?" What a two-faced piece of work...

After everyone retreated to the sidewalk, three or four cars worth of 
cops stayed at the Harris-Teeter door for quite a while, keeping them 
off the street and stopping them from writing traffic tickets for 
such "offenses" as driving while Black. 

This was while we continued to give out fliers to people in cars 
entering or leaving the lot, risking more of that "no soliciting" 
bullshit that seems to plague political handbillign in Virginia these 
days.

The police harassment was but a tiny sample of what union organizers 
in the United States in 2006 in places like North Carolina are 
getting. Those 22 amputations in the past two years at the Tar Heel 
plant are the real emergency at Harris-Teeter so long as they sell 
Smithfield products.

How are workers losing limbs? In the Tar Hell slaughterhouse, the 
work speedups have led to a rise in the deep cuts that get infected 
when workers are ordered not to go to the doctor but to return to 
work instead, so the injuries get infected and gangrene sets in.

In other words, every piece of Smithfield ham comes with a free side 
order of gangrene, and is made with the blood, tears, and limbs of 
immigrant and nonwhite workers. Blood is truly on the table with 
Smithfield or Harris-teeter hams. 





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From ldxar1 at tesco.net  Mon Dec 25 02:39:11 2006
From: ldxar1 at tesco.net (Andy)
Date: Mon, 25 Dec 2006 10:39:11 -0000
Subject: [Onthebarricades] Morocco: protests against water prices,
	living costs
Message-ID: <001001c72810$ea206d90$0202a8c0@andy1>

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/theworld/2006/December/theworld_December646.xml&section=theworld&col=

Moroccans march to protest rising cost of living
(Reuters)

24 December 2006 



RABAT - Thousands of Moroccans took to the streets of the capital Rabat on Sunday for a demonstration organised by left-wing and consumer-advocacy groups to complain about rising living costs. 


The march was the latest sign of growing anger over rising prices of transport, basic foodstuffs, water and electricity in the country of 30 million, where an estimated 14 percent of people live in poverty.

The demonstrators chanted slogans such as 'Don't touch my bread' and 'No to privatisation' and waved banners reading: 'Don't touch citizens' buying power'.

'We understand the rise in fuel prices as Morocco doesn't produce its own oil, but if we are a farming country why do we pay so much for vegetables?' said Hassan, a taxi driver.

The organisers -- a group formed this year called the Alliance Against Price Increases -- said 12,000 people turned out for the demonstration, but police said the number was no higher than 6,000.

Sporadic protests have erupted in recent months in Morocco's largest cities over increases in household bills.

Protests against utilities company Lyonnaise des Eaux de Casablanca (Lydec) won a concession from the firm to trim prices for low-income consumers.

Lydec is controlled by French utility company Suez and since 1997 has managed the water and electricity supplies for Casablanca, Morocco's business hub and its most populous city with over three million inhabitants.

The government, which subsidises fuel and many essential foodstuffs to make them more affordable for the population, has said it may reverse some price increases.  
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From ldxar1 at tesco.net  Mon Dec 25 09:41:18 2006
From: ldxar1 at tesco.net (Andy)
Date: Mon, 25 Dec 2006 17:41:18 -0000
Subject: [Onthebarricades] Morocco protest pics
Message-ID: <00ec01c7284b$e2987910$0202a8c0@andy1>

Thanks to Camilla Santos for these links, with pictures of anti-austerity protests in Morocco.

http://initiativecontrelahaussedesprix.blogspot.com/

http://coord-rabat.blogspot.com/

http://coord-agadir.blogspot.com/
http://coord-taourirt.blogspot.com/

http://coord-casa.blogspot.com/

http://coordtetouan.blogspot.com/





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From ldxar1 at tesco.net  Fri Dec  1 09:15:20 2006
From: ldxar1 at tesco.net (Andy)
Date: Fri, 01 Dec 2006 17:15:20 -0000
Subject: [Onthebarricades] Oaxaca- chronicle of APPO
Message-ID: <007901c7156c$4b4bab50$0202a8c0@andy1>


----- Original Message ----- 
From: dorindamoreno 
To: One World ; Pedro Gellert SolidaridConCuba ; radical politics people of color ; South Bay ; Taking Back America ; TruthSeekersElection2004 ; women4immigrantrights at lists.riseup.net ; Worldwide ; Indigenous ; 10demarzo at googlegroups.com ; Comite Cerezo Puebla ; National Alliance For Human Rights 
Sent: Wednesday, November 29, 2006 9:18 PM
Subject: [1worldcommunication] Re: Oax- chronicle of APPO




blancanegro wrote:


  The Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca, APPO:

  A Chronicle of Radical Democracy

  by

  Gustavo Esteva




    
              For almost two years, the people of Oaxaca have been in increasing turmoil.  The immediate cause has been the corrupt and authoritarian administration of the state's Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) governor, Ulises Ruiz, who took office after a fraudulent election in December 2004.  But as the Oaxaque?os have resisted Ruiz, especially these last five months, deeper struggles have come to the surface and begun to find expression.  It is a process of awakening, organization, and radicalization that merits review.  On May 22nd the teachers union, with 70,000 members throughout the state, began a sit-in in the main plaza of Oaxaca City to dramatize their economic plight.  Most urban Oaxacans reacted with a mixture of indifference and annoyance to the sit-in and the blockade of some streets.  Such demonstrations regularly accompany teachers' strikes and always produce some additional perks for the leaders of the union and for the teachers, but at the price of disrupting the life in the city for weeks or months.  People were also more than a little annoyed because the teachers had abandoned their schools and many families did not know what to do with their children.  

              But then on June 14 the governor ordered a violent repression of the sit-in, including bombing the teachers with tear gas cannisters thrown from a helicopter, many of which also fell on private houses and offices.  This episode changed the nature of the movement, unifying large numbers of Oaxacans with their own reasons for opposing Ruiz's misrule. Overnight ?Fuera Ulises! (Out with Ulises!) became the popular slogan in Oaxaca's neighborhoods and streets. The teachers' union, seeing this response, attempted to draw these social forces together in support for their movement, convening what they called a Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca or APPO).  Hundreds of social and grassroots organizations joined immediately, and radical groups within the teachers' union quickly inverted the relationship between the union and APPO, essentially subordinating the leadership of the union to the popular assembly.  Since June 20, the complex and heterogeneous body APPO has been leading the uprising and organizing meetings and marches, one of which drew a million people, almost a third of the population of the state.

              The process of coalescing this movement and making collective decisions has been complex, with many impressive episodes. Despite the intervention of the federal police (just before this issue of Latin American Perspectives went to press) the struggle continues, more energized than ever.  Rather than a summary or overall analysis of the movement, the following pages, which consist of running observations and reflections from late August through early November, attempt catch the movement on the fly, still developing and learning its strength.  



  August 1: The Revolution Will Be Televised

              Confronted with the government's use of the media against the movement, several thousand women from APPO peacefully occupied the studios of the state radio and television network. Through its outlets in Oaxaca, the network had continually been used by governor Ruiz for propaganda against the movement.  Now instead the occupiers disseminated the ideas, proposals, and initiatives of APPO as well as opened both radio and television for members of the public to express their own opinions 24 hours a day. Despite every imaginable technical difficulty (the women occupying the network had no previous training for this), thousands who called the stations made it onto the air.  Eventually, a group of undercover police and mercenaries invaded the facilities, shooting up and destroying the equipment and injuring some of the APPO "broadcasters."  In reaction, a few hours later APPO occupied ALL private radio and TV outlets in the city. Instead of one, APPO suddenly had 12 options to disseminate information about the movement.and to give voice to the people. A few days later they gave the stations back to their owners, keeping only one powerful enough to cover the whole state.  Although it must be said that the station was not under the control of APPO per se, but of some of its radical components, it continued to broadcast information about the movement 24 hours a day until it was jammed at the end of October.  Since then, Radio Universidad (also under attack by paramilitaries) and other community radios have successfully continued to disseminate information about the movement.



  August 22: Civil Defense

              After several initial skirmishes, state and city police apparently refused to obey the governor's demand to repress their fellow citizens, forcing Ruiz to keep the police in its barracks.  As a result, from June until the end of October, no police, not even traffic police, were seen in the city.  Instead, APPO, which had first organized to defend itself against the state, has continued sit-ins around the clock in front of all of Oaxaca city's public buildings, as well as in all the private radio and television stations and the public station in its hands. (The governor and all his officials, meanwhile, have been reduced to meeting secretly in hotels and private homes; none dare come to work). One night, a convoy of 35 SUVs, with undercover agents and mercenaries, drove by the sit-ins and began shooting. They were not aiming at the people, but trying to intimidate them.  APPO reported the situation instantaneously on its radio stations, and within minutes people started organizing barricades to impede the convoy. In one place, they were able to close the street with a truck and actually trap one of the SUVs and all its occupants, who escaped.  The vehicle, with its official insignia on the doors, was parked as an exhibit in Oaxaca's central plaza.  Unfortunately, in another street a bystander was killed when the attackers started shooting.  As a result, every night at 11 pm more than a thousand barricades close the streets around the sit-ins and at critical crossroads, to be opened again at 6 am to facilitate circulation.

              In spite of the guerrilla attacks of the police, a human rights organization reported that in the last months there was less violence in Oaxaca (dead, injured) than in any other similar period in the last 10 years.



  August 29: A Foretaste and a Threat

              For Oaxacans, and for Mexicans generally, Oaxaca has come to represent both a foretaste and a threat.  The source of this ambivalence, in part, is the present polarization of social classes and sectors nationally.  But there is something deeper and even more general going on.  What is being built in Oaxaca, many feel, anticipates our future and carries a great burden of hope.  But for the very same reasons, certain sectors of the current power structure feel threatened by a movement they are unable to stop, and are willing to use violence against those leading the transformation. 

              The present movement is the product of a slow accumulation of forces and many lessons gathered during previous struggles.  In particular, three different democratic struggles have converged in the single one being waged by APPO.  The first joins together those who wish to strengthen formal democracy whose weaknesses are well-known in Oaxaca.  People are tired of fraud and manipulation, and those who wish to rely on the electoral system want it to be clean and efficient.  The second consists of those who want a more participatory democracy.  Besides transparency and honesty they want more civil involvement in the workings of government through the use of popular initiatives, referendums, plebiscites, the right to recall elected leaders, participative budgeting, and other such tools.  The third includes a surprisingly large number of individuals and groups that desire to extend and deepen autonomous or radical democracy in accordance with political conceptions that have their own unique sources. Four of five municipalities in Oaxaca have their own particular, autonomous forms of government, following a tradition that dates to the colonial period and before.  Although this autonomy has been legally recognized by Oaxaca's state law since 1995, it continues to be the subject of pressure and harassment.  What the advocates of autonomous and radical democracy hope to do under the present circumstances is invert this struggle: to pressure and harass the state and federal governments, to subject them to civilian surveillance and control.  The ultimate goal is to swing from community and municipal autonomy to an autonomous coordination of groups of municipalities, from there to regions, and eventually to an autonomous form of government for the entire state.  While this is an appeal to both the sociological and political imaginations, it is also firmly based on historical experience with autonomous self-government, both legally and in practice.  Nor are the people of Oaxaca waiting for the inevitable departure of Ulises Ruiz to put these ideas into action; there are already many APPOs operating around the state on community, neighborhood, municipal, and regional levels.

              Although the Mexican senate continues to disregard the fact, Oaxaca has already abolished its old, badly constituted government.  Properly speaking, however, given APPO's surprising organizational capacities, there has been no "crisis of governability" in the state.  A few days ago, a violent brawl erupted during a private party in the Alem?n neighborhood of Oaxaca.  A half-drunk couple stumbled out onto the street. "We should call the police," he said. "Don't be an ass," she said, "there is no police." "True," he answered, scratching his head; "let's call APPO."



  September 11: When Power Fades

              Political power is a relationship, not a thing. This relationship presupposes trust and credibility and concerns the whole body of government.  C. P. Snow once asked Mao what conditions governing required.  "A popular army, enough food, and people's trust in the government," Mao replied.  "And if you only had one of those three things, which one would you choose?" Snow asked.  "I can do without an army.  People can manage hunger for a time.  But without their trust there's no government."

              In Mexico, political power is fading because an abusive and ultimately self-destructive political class has so misused people's trust that they have withdrawn it.  It is a political class that over the last 25 years has systematically dissolved the state apparatus and its corresponding functions, either openly, as in the case of CONASUPO (Compa??a Nacional de Subsistencias Populares, the state agency in charge of regulating the market of basic staples), or surreptitiously, as in the case of PEMEX (Petr?leos Mexicanos, the national oil company).  When told he couldn't sell PEMEX, President Fox instead sought to bankrupt it.  Although he failed in that as well, he did manage to get further than anyone could have expected.  This year PEMEX attained a double record: the highest income ever, and the lowest percentage of investment.  In a time of record high oil prices, the company is being crushed by debt.

              The decisions of the Supreme Federal Electoral Court's (Tribunal Federal Electoral, TRIFE), first regarding the gubernatorial election in Oaxaca, and then the 2006 presidential election, also deserve a place in the museum of mis-government.  In both cases it documented a high degree of irregularities.  In the first, it refused to intervene in the process that illegitimately crowned Ulises Ruiz as Oaxaca's governor.  In the second, it had to put itself through contortions to get around the contradiction between recognizing multiple irregularities that should have nullified the results, and then confirming those same results. 

              The fading of political power always kindles the threat of repression.  There are always amateur politicians who believe their power and position can be saved or restored through violence.  In response, APPO has wisely refrained from attempting to seize power and has kept as close as possible to the political traditions of Oaxaca's indigenous communities.  Rather than climbing into the empty chairs of those who abused power, it seeks to establish new types of relationships between the people and those presently coordinating their collective endeavors, to strengthen the social networks of Oaxacans and reinforce their dignity and autonomy.  In place of the failed model of seizing power, the proclamations of good government decrees of APPO represent an appeal to free men and women who, with extraordinary courage, a healthy dose of common sense -the sense you get in a community-, and surprising ingenuity are attempting to rebuild society from the bottom up and create a new set of social relations.  As the Zapatistas put it, to change the world is very difficult, if not impossible.  A more pragmatic attitude demands the construction of a new world.  Today, that's what Oaxacans are trying to do.



  September 21

              Seeking a peaceful resolution to the impasse between APPO and Ulises Ruiz, 5000 Oaxacans set out on foot for Mexico City to present Oaxaca's claims to the incoming federal senate, which has the power to resolve the impasse by declaring the state "without a government" and appointing an interim governor.  Unfortunately, the PRI and PAN members who constituted the majority of the previous senate, who had just left office on September 1st, had rejected all previous petitions through the spring and summer to avoid interfering with their parties' campaigns for the July 2nd presidential elections.  After the elections, this inaction continued: given the uncertainty about how a governing coalition would be assembled in the fall, both the PRI and the Partido de Acci?n Nacional (PAN) expressed their full support of the governor and refused to oust him.  Oaxaca was thus reduced to just another piece in the complex negotiation between PRI and PAN.  Among the difficulties of such negotiation is that after its humiliating defeat in the presidential elections, the PRI was, and remains, in full disarray: there is no person or group able to organize a serious negotiation.  

              Meanwhile, in the last week of September the teachers' union organized a massive consultation with its members. There was universal consensus to continue the movement until Ulises was removed, with a solid majority also agreeing not to return to classes. (Although many teachers also thought it would be good to continue the strike but open the schools because many parents and communities that support the movement have no other way to care for their children).



  September 25: The Moment of Change

              One of the most important lessons the people of Oaxaca have learned during their struggle concerns the media.  The brave women who took over the state's communications system grew tired of watching the contradictions between their real-life experiences and the stories being reported by the media.  The latter's credibility was completely shattered.

              We Mexicans have an ambivalent relationship with the bureaucratic institutions that embody the government and express our leaders' political power.  We don't regard them as sacrosanct, and accept them only as the formal basis of our coexistence with each other.  Paradoxically, however, the corrupt leaders who control these institutions have now almost succeeded in dismantling them.  Some were driven by market fundamentalism, others by financial greed and their desire for political power.  While their acts often shock us, enrage us, and even lead some of us to a kind of paralysis, sometimes they serve to awaken autonomous action among the people.

              As Marx wrote in a letter to Ruge, "what we have to do is undertake a critique of everything that is established, and to criticize without mercy, fearing neither the conclusions we reach nor our clash with the existing powers."  This is all the more pertinent when those powers opt for violence in an attempt to solve conflicts they are incapable of resolving pacifically and democratically, as in the current impasse in Oaxaca.  In an astounding act of cynicism, leaders of both president Fox's PAN and PRI, as well as members of Congress, demanded the use of public force "to restore order" in Oaxaca.  Although it is in the nature of these leaders to rely on violence when they have lost the people's trust and can no longer conduct affairs in a civil manner, and although under present circumstances the use of force will undoubtedly cause great harm, it won't restore their power.  They will have bloodied their hands in vain, for the people of Oaxaca will not back down under this threat.  Indeed, if it ever comes to official violence, they will face it with the same peaceful disposition they have shown so far.  And between the politicians and the people of Oaxaca, other Mexicans will undoubtedly side with the Oaxacans.  In our struggle, they see a sort of mirror in which they can glimpse the future of their own battles to rescue Mexico.  



  September 21-October 8

              The march that started on September 21 gathered massive support in the states it crossed before reaching Mexico City on October 8.  With thousands of citizens and many organizations supporting them, the exhausted marchers established a sit-in near the Senate.  

              While this was happening, on October 4 the Minister of the Interior convened a meeting in Mexico City of one hundred prominent Oaxacans, most of them from the political class but also including a few well-known personalities like the painter Francisco Toledo.  The minister's goal was to get everyone to sign a social pact agreeing an end to confrontation.  Of those convoked, three renowned indigenous leaders, two famous intellectuals, and Toledo abandoned the meeting as soon as it started, declaring to the press that the people of Oaxaca themselves were not represented - there being, for example, no real representation of the two-thirds of the state who are indigenous.  Many of those remaining in the meeting, close allies of Ulises Ruiz, explicitly demanded the repression of APPO.  Unable to fulfill its function of diffusing the federal government's responsibility, the meeting broke up.  No pact was signed, and a second meeting programmed for October 11 was cancelled.

              Meanwhile, for weeks the sit-ins and the barricades back in Oaxaca were attacked during the night by paramilitaries.



  October 9: Ways Out of the Cul-de-Sac

              The temptation to impose the federal government's will in Oaxaca by force persists, and violence remains a constant threat.  After the Ministry of the Interior's failed meeting on October 4, those political and financial groups who favor repression continue to demand a restitution of power and respect for those institutions they themselves have been undermining. They were neither able nor wanted to understand what was happening. 

              Unfortunately for them, to use force in Oaxaca would announce to the world how low they are willing to go to protect themselves - or in this case, one of themselves, the governor of Oaxaca - from the people, no matter how great his corruption, or how many his abuses.  "Protego ergo obligo" has becomes the "cogito ergo sum" of the modern state.  Since Hobbes, political theory has been based upon the notion that the state must teach its citizens that there is a contract by which the state provides them with institutional protection in exchange for civil obedience.  Under present circumstances, trying to teach this lesson to the people of Oaxaca would be worse than a crime, it would be a serious mistake.  Not only would it set the state on fire, but it could lead to years of violent backlash.  Instead of resulting in submission and compliance, it would turn the insurrection into a full-blown rebellion.

              There is, however, hope.  Oaxaca's reserves of political wisdom have yet to be exhausted and, despite pressure from violent groups, a catastrophe can still be avoided.  A sensible dialogue of Oaxacans talking to each other in Oaxaca is just beginning, the actors attempting to weave a consensus that can serve both as a protective shield against institutional violence and a democratic tool for a much needed transformation.



  October 10-19

              On October 10th the senate finally decided "to study" the case of Oaxaca. On the 19th, the senators produced an oxymoron as their conclusion:  given the condition of the state - the fact that its government was no longer functioning - they explicitly recognized that a "desaparici?n de poderes" ["disappearance of government," the formal phrase for abolishing a state government] should be declared and the governor ousted.  But they refused to take that final step in the name of obscure judicial formalities.  After this shameful document (no one dared to defend the psychopathic governor), on October 29 the senate joined the chamber of representatives in a "petition" to the governor to please resign - to which the governor immediately responded with an appeal to the Supreme Court and accused the Congress of abusing its power!  He would, he declared, never resign.

              Back in Oaxaca, the group that had walked out of the meeting with the Minister of the Interior joined with organizations representing all sectors of Oaxacan society to convene a Dialogue for Oaxaca.  The first meeting, on October 12, was opened with great success by an indigenous ritual.  Despite the threats of violence from outside, the people of Oaxaca had come together to create an open, democratic space in which to articulate the hopes of civil society and organize a political transition.

              Through all of this, investors and businessmen, particularly at the national level, steadily increased their pressure on President Fox and the federal government to "solve" the problem - meaning to send federal forces to Oaxaca.

              Meanwhile, with no end to the crisis in sight, outside the senate building in Mexico City, on October 15, 25 of the marchers started a hunger strike.  Assuming that political fasting is an appeal to the morality of the adversary, and considering that the governor, the federal government, and the senate were showing no morality at all, APPO and many members of the civil society asked them to stop the strike, which they did after 21 days.  



  October 23: Standing Vigil

              "They're trying to force us to govern, but it's a provocation we're not going to fall for."  ["Nos quieren obligar a gobernar. No caeremos en esa provocaci?n."]  This subtle bit of graffiti on a wall in Oaxaca reveals the nature of the present movement.  It doesn't seek to take over the current power structure but to reorganize the whole of society from deep inside and establish new foundations for our social life together.

              On October 12, during an open dialogue inaugurating a new kind of collective reflection to generate consensual decisions, a businessman addressed his colleagues in wonderfully lucid terms: "We have been asked to endorse the use of public force, ostensibly to reestablish rule of law.  Yet we know that, on many an occasion, rule of law has been disrupted in much more serious ways by the government itself.  It's as if all excesses are sanctioned in Oaxaca - except for speaking against negligence and injustice!"  Pro-Oax, a prestigious NGO, immediately validated this argument by pointing out that Oaxaca has never had "rule of law," that it has always been undermined by the very authorities who were supposed to maintain it.  

              Unfortunately, the businessman's hope that PRI step back from "the fascinating process of destroying itself to defend one of its worst political cadres" was not fulfilled.  Instead, PRI tainted PAN with its senselessness. 

              In spite of continual offenses, and in spite of the "disgovernment" of the constituted  authorities, Oaxacans have continued to appeal to the national institutions, which in turn shut their doors, fail to fulfill their moral and political obligations, and destroy their own authority.  How are the people expected to react?

              Everyone knows what's coming.  As the situation grows tenser, Oaxaca fills up with policemen and soldiers in civilian clothes.  They're here to "rescue" Oaxaca-that is, to snatch it from its people if so ordered.  Government officials daily reiterate that they consider this a real option.

              This kind of irresponsible arrogance, in turn, has nurtured resentment among the impatient youth, stoking their political passion with heroic rancor.  As the weeks wore on, one young man wrote on a banner "Fucking government! They won't even deliver their war!"  Let this serve as a premonition of the bloodbath that would ensue if the government tried, as our irresponsible president announced, to impose a "peaceful occupation" of Oaxaca.

              For Gandhi, non-violence was the greatest virtue and cowardice the worst vice.  Non-violence, he added, was for the strong, while the weak had no choice but to use violence in order to avoid cowardice.  Unfortunately, it is hard to explain to the young of Oaxaca that they are the strong ones, that the weak are those in the political class whose use of violence only hastens their self-destruction.  We must not allow ourselves to be provoked by them, to answer violence with violence, since this will only feed the fire.  

              Last Wednesday the local PRI leader announced that his party was putting together "grupos de choque," hit-squads of vigilantes.

              Meanwhile, the dialogue among Oaxaca's men and women continues.  Given the complexity of the challenges and the huge diversity of our cultures, this has never been easy.  Perhaps this explains why one of the documents being circulated includes a quote by Bertolt Brecht: "Above all, we should learn to agree.  There are many who say 'yes' but deep down are not in agreement.  Others are never asked for their opinion, and many are in agreement when there is no need for them to be.  That is the reason why learning to agree is important."



  October 24-29

              During the third week of October, there were great advances both in the dialogue among the people of Oaxaca and in the negotiations with the federal government. The teachers' union finally agreed to return to classes (the government's main demand) in return for the government's satisfaction of their original economic claims and the liberation of their members in jail.  To all appearances, political space for a new kind of arrangement was beginning to grow.



  Then on October 27, paramilitaries and municipal policemen loyal to the governor attacked barricades throughout the center of Oaxaca.  In one of these, they shot and killed Brad Will, an American journalist for Indymedia with a deep sense of sympathy for the peoples of Oaxaca.  Violent confrontations broke out around the city, and that evening President Fox used the murder as an excuse for his decision to send the federal police.

              The Polic?a Federal Preventiva, the PFP, arrived on October 28.  APPO explicitly decided to resist non-violently, avoiding confrontation.  And in the face of the PFP, with its tanks and all the paraphernalia of power, the people of Oaxaca exhibited enormous restraint. In many cases, unarmed citizens stopped the tanks by laying their own bodies on the pavement.  Adults held back young people trying to express their anger, although there were cases of stone-throwing and even a few molotovs.  When the police reached the main plaza, APPO fell back and abandoned it.  APPO regrouped on the campus of the university, protecting their radio station, which had been transmitting the decision to remain non-violent and to avoid confrontation and provocation.  Outside of the university, meanwhile, the police began selectively capturing APPO members at the barricades or in their homes.  By the end of the day, there were three dead, many injured, and many more disappeared.  Those picked up by the police were sequestered in military barracks.  Human rights organizations, including the government's own Comisi?n Nacional de Derechos Humanos, were unable to visit or even identify those who had been picked up because the police moved them secretly from one place to another.  Over succeeding days, there were also many reports of people coming from surrounding villages to support the movement who were pulled out of trucks, beaten, and arrested.

              Despite the wave of repression, on October 29 APPO organized three marches.  The police with all their equipment had fully occupied the main plaza and a few other key places in the city by this point.  But within a short time they were surrounded by the people, who proceeded to establish new barricades.  As soon as the police would dismantle one of these and move on, the people would return and rebuild it.  

              Many are afraid that we will not be able to stop the blood bath the governor and federal government seem determined to provoke.  In spite of APPO's continual appeal to non-violence, the people of Oaxaca feel deeply offended and angry.  And they don't want to be cowards. They know that they are not alone, that people throughout Mexico and around the world are with them.  But what to do before this barbaric, irrational violence of the state against its own people?



  November 2

              Today's clash, when the massed people of Oaxaca resisted an attack on the university by the federal police PFP, was the largest and most violent clash between civilians and police in Mexico's recent history, and perhaps the only one that resulted in an unquestionable popular triumph. The fight was certainly unequal enough: although the police were outnumbered five or six to one if we count children, they had shields and other weapons, not to mention tanks and helicopters, while the people had only sticks, stones, a few slingshots, and some uninvited molotov cocktails.   

              Shortly before the battle, president Fox announced that peace and tranquility had returned to Oaxaca. The Interior Ministry also reported that everything was in order, and the governor declared that out of Oaxaca's 570 municipalities, the entire rebellion was limited to one street in the capital and a handful of foreigners.  Anyway, he insisted, it was almost over; whereupon the national television networks called their camera crews back to Mexico City, their task of minimizing the strike complete.

              For months, the government and the upper classes in both Oaxaca and Mexico City have condemned APPO in the name of law, order, public security, human rights, and stable institutions.  All these elements were employed to justify the use of police force.  But without realizing it, the authorities have been giving us a lesson in revolutionary civics.  The Federal Police became the vehicle for an offensive and massive violation of human rights: searches and arrests were carried out without warrants while the number of dead, wounded and disappeared increased.  Only PRI's hit squads and the government's own hired guns were allowed to travel freely.  Meanwhile, the army and police obstructed those trying to reach the city of Oaxaca, especially if they came to support APPO.  And finally, the Federal Highway Patrol cruised the city and transported troops amid a climate of chaos and insecurity.

              Despite the violence and severe provocation, the ability of the people's movement to exercise restraint has been simply remarkable: "human rugs" were formed, people laying their bodies on the pavement in front of light tanks, as in Tiananmen; flowers were handed to the police; people retreated in an orderly manner in the face of advancing troops, while men and women tried to control young people bursting with anger.  This self-control, in the end, prevented a major bloodbath, and the rebels are now preparing to give orderly course to their movement in a "constitutive" assembly that will take place from November 10 to 12.  The idea is to stop it from derailing, exploding in violence or scattering away. There are some ideological manias involved and some internal pressure to implement particular agendas. If the movement begins to take an erroneous shape, such as that of a political party, the original movement will overflow it, just as it will overflow all legal and institutional channels if the political class continues to block access to them.

              Following the popular victory November 2, the largest march in the history of Oaxaca took place on November 5.   Among the participants were scores of indigenous authorities from communities throughout the state who came to the capital carrying their staffs of office to publicly declare their allegiance to the movement.  



  November 6

              So how should we summarize the first six months of the Oaxaca insurrection and the creation of a democratic, popular assembly to govern it?  Perhaps the first thing to say is that the movement received more than one push from Mexico's irresponsible political class, which forced it to consolidate itself much faster than anyone expected.  At first, officials, bureaucrats, political parties, and analysts treated it as little more than a local disturbance.  And of course, when we Oaxacans first took to the streets, that's what we thought it was too, solidly in the tradition of the popular outbursts that occur when a local tyrant becomes unbearable, or when some new official imposition drives people over the edge.  

              The insurrection was next seen as a rebellion, a bigger kind of violent reaction, because its participants refused all attempts to subdue them, and filled with a sense of their own dignity, stepped up their protests.  By thousands, by tens of thousands, they came out onto the streets of Oaxaca city from throughout the state to cry "Enough!" to the governor and his arbitrary rule.  

              But if the insurrection became more than a simple disturbance, it soon became more than just a rebellion as well.  Rebellions are like volcanoes, mowing down everything before them.  But they're also ephemeral; they may leave lasting marks, like lava beds, but they die down as quickly as they catch fire.  They go out.  And this one hasn't.  In this case, the spirit of defiance has become too strong. Although Ulises Ruiz, Oaxaca's PRI governor, was the original focus of popular discontent and possessed some of the worst traits of an oppressive system, ultimately he was just the detonator that touched off an explosion where there was already a profound, widespread feeling of discontent. Finally, his legacy will be that his political misjudgments became the take-off point for a lasting movement of transformation to a peaceful, democratic society.



  [On November 6, in a "Forum to Ease the Tension" organized by Oaxaca's civil society, the Red Oaxaque?a de Derechos Humanos (Oaxacan Human Rights Network) presented an interim report on the violence from October 28 through the first days of November.  They identified 17 dead, 138 injured, 57 in jail, and many disappeared.  On November 13, as this is written, APPO survived all kinds of internal contradictions. The last session of the exhausting Constitutive Congress ended at 5 am on Monday.  Some 1,500 state delegates attended this peculiar assembly.  A Council of 260 delegates was created, in order to coordinate the collective effort.  They represent everyone.  Indigenous peoples, of course, but also every sector of the society.  Some barricades also sent delegates to the Congress and now have a representation in the Council.  The Congress approved a charter for APPO, an action plan, and a code of conduct.  Most of the agreements were reached through consensus.  Some of them were very difficult.  It was not easy to agree on gender equity, for example.  One of the easiest agreements was the decision to give the struggle a clear anticapitalist orientation.  Yes, the city is occupied by the police.  Eight more people disappeared last night.  But they cannot occupy our soul.  We have more freedom than ever.








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