International Solidarity

International Solidarity

Student & Worker Revolution in France!

Posted Mon, 03/20/2006 - 2:39am by x344543

Disclaimer - The following article is reposted here because it is an issue with some relevance to the IWW. The views of the author do not necessarily agree with those of the IWW and vice versa.

Reposted from www.libcom.org - March 20, 2006

A fresh wave of protests has hit France as students, school pupils and workers continue the occupations, blockades and rioting against the first employment contract (CPE).

This is just a short summary of the events being updated regularly on http://libcom.org/blog - the most comprehensive and up-to-date English coverage of the struggle against the CPE anywhere on the web.

Scores of high schools and around 70% of universities are occupied today.

In many areas teachers have been joining their pupils in the protests, with several thousands demonstrating in Limoges, Boulougne, Le Havre and many other towns and cities across France.

The Monteil school in Rodez, the largest school in Aveyron with 1,600 pupils, was occupied and shut down with barricades. Fifteen schools in Seine-Saint-Denis, the scene of last years riots by suburban youths, are occupied. Many young people from the banlieus are preparing to join in the demonstration in Paris later today. Around 1,000 high school pupils have blocked a motorway in Nice whilst 200 pupils did the same in Vitry-on-Seine.

This is a strong sign that the struggle is circulating and extending outside the universities to France's disaffected working class youth - the focus of mass civil unrest in November last year. The increasing numbers of lecturers and teachers on strike and supporting the protests, and the railway and motorway blockades, along with support from France's major unions, all point to a struggle which is encompassing an ever wider section of France's society.

To keep up-to-date on the events in France, look at http://libcom.org/blog

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Transportation Workers Resist Global Attack

Posted Sun, 02/05/2006 - 2:54pm by x344543

By John Kalwaic - Anarcho-Syndicalist Review #42-3, Winter 2006

The latest attack on workers' rights around the world is now hitting the people who make public transportation possible in many of the world's metro areas. Tehran and New York City are both in states that are bitterly opposed to one another but share the similarity of not allowing public transportation workers to organize and fight back against the attacks by local transportation companies. In both Tehran and New York City, local or national governments have deliberately tried to hamper the efforts of striking workers who want their unions to defend workers' rights.

Tokyo Rally Against War, Privatization And Union Busting

Posted Mon, 11/14/2005 - 3:21am by x344543
Report by http://www.doro-chiba.org
Published: 13/06/05

November 5-6, 2005
Speech By NAKAMURA Yoshimasa

Vice-President, MINATO-GODO (Metal and Machinery Workers’ Union in Osaka)

Last November, Brother Pak Sang Yun of KCTU suddenly passed away. He made a powerful and moving speech at the last November rally. We express our deep grief.

At the beginning of this rally, we ask all of you to give a silent prayer for Brother Pak San Yun and all the brothers and sisters who are falling down in madness with anger at class struggle. Please stand up!

Please close your eyes and pray for them.

Offer a silent prayer for Brother Pak Sang Yun.

Brothers and sisters from around Japan, and from the United States of America and South Korea! Thank you for your participation in this rally. I greet you on behalf of the three unions that have organized this rally. Today’s rally, called for by the three unions, is the eighth of our annual November National Works’ Rallies.

We are very glad to see that year-by-year the number of participants has been growing and that this rally has been gathering a wide range of people who seek international solidarity.

Labor Struggles with MAERSK

Posted Sun, 11/13/2005 - 11:35pm by x344543

Disclaimer - The following article is reposted here because it is an issue with some relevance to the IWW. The views of the author do not necessarily agree with those of the IWW and vice versa. 

Article  by David Bacon

As evening fell on November 5, Gilberto Soto received a call on his cell phone at his mother’s home in a working-class neighborhood of Usulutan, El Salvador. Unable to understand the caller, Soto stepped out of the door to get better reception. In the street outside three men lay in wait. According to witnesses, they ran up to Soto and shot him in the back and then fled in a car and bicycle as he lay bleeding on the pavement. Soto was taken to a local clinic where he died shortly afterwards. 

Soto’s death was no ordinary assassination. He’d left his home in 1975 and was later a supporter in exile of the FMLN, El Salvador’s left-wing movement that carried out an armed guerrilla war during the 1980s. But this was not the likely reason why three thugs pumped bullets into him as he stood on his mother’s doorstep. It is much more likely that his murder was connected to a new international campaign to organize trucking workers—from the docks of Elizabeth, New Jersey, where Soto had been working, to those of Central America, where he met his end. 

We all are of the rabble

Posted Sun, 11/13/2005 - 11:28pm by x344543

In front of the violence of a State which against the poverty  sends us only a pile cops;

In front of a State  which for three decades has promised a Marshall plan to us, for the zones of poverty conveniently called suburbs;

 In front of the violence of a State obeying only the mere desires of MEDEF [Employer's association], eager to cut down a little more each day, our last social rights;

In front of  a State only responsible for the tensions via its Minister of Interior Department who managed the conflicts of the post offices [Bordeaux July of 2005] and the SNCM [marine transport towards Corsica, Marseilles October of 2005] by its GIGN [ Intervention Group of the National Gendarmerie] which does not stop swiping thousands of illegal immigrants;

The "republican start" of the government is a takeover with military accents and bitterness of war of Algeria, against us, workers, precarious, unemployed and "young people".

The CNT denounces the decree of application of the curfew answering by no means,  once again, at the requests of social justice of the population.

With the exploiteurs, never!

With exploited, always!

CNT, Le Bureau Régional Région Parisienne, 8-XI-2005.