A Picture of Resistance to Neoliberalisn

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The huge mobilizations in June 2013 in 353 cities and towns in Brazil came as much a surprise to the political system as to analysts and social bodies. Nobody expected so many demonstrations, so numerous, in so many cities and for so long. As happens in these cases, media analyses were quick off the mark. Initially they focused on the immediate problems highlighted by the actions: urban transport, rising fare prices and the poor quality of service for commuters. Slowly the analyses and perspectives expanded to include the day-to-day dissatisfaction felt by a large part of the population. While there was widespread acknowledgement that basic family income had risen during the last decade of economic growth, social commentators began to focus on economic inclusion through consumption as the root of the dissatisfaction, alongside the persistence of social inequality.

In this analysis, I would like to address the new forms of protest, organization, and mobilization from a social movement perspective. These new forms emerged within small activist groups composed mainly of young people that began organizing in 2003, the year Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took government. Unlike political parties, trade unions and other traditional organizations formed in the early eighties, the new social movements are key to the June mobilizations because of their ability to organize beyond their local scene, to involve the broadest sectors of society in the struggle, and to employ forms of action and organization that sets them apart from the groups that went before them....

http://upsidedownworld.org/main/brazil-archives-63/4567-the-june-uprisin...

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In this essay I assert -- in tune with James C. Scott -- that the key to what is happening in the public arena is to be found in the daily practices of the popular sectors and particularly in what Scott calls "hidden spaces" where the subordinated develop discourses antagonistic to power: "The acts of daring and haughtiness that so struck the authorities were perhaps improvised on the public stage, but they had been long and amply prepared in the hidden transcript of folk culture and practice.” (Scott, 2000:264) To focus on the continent behind and below the visible coast of the political, says Scott, is a necessary step to understand a new political culture. The new forms of protesting and organizing in Brazil can better be understood if we look closely at the practices of the small activist groups forged over the span of more than a decade.

RSA Animate - Crises of Capitalism

video

In this RSA Animate, celebrated academic David Harvey looks beyond capitalism towards a new social order. Can we find a more responsible, just, and humane economic system?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOP2V_np2c0

The New Abolitionists: migrant space in Barcelona

While the Spanish government pursues apartheid policies in healthcare, a Zapatista-inspired autonomous group in Barcelona pursues solidarity for all.

On 20 April 2012, the Spanish government passed the Law by Royal Decree 16/2012, which took urgent measures to, as President Mariano Rajoy’s administration put it, “guarantee the sustainability of the National Health Service and improve the quality and security of health care benefits.” Yet with a per capita health care cost that ran at about a third of the US’s per capita costs, Spain’s public health care system had long been considered one of the world’s most efficient, and it proved so while guaranteeing truly universal coverage on the basis that every human being has a right to health.

What the new measures did, however, was curtail that universal human right, restricting it to Spanish citizens and immigrants with their documents in order. Due to Spain’s massive unemployment and the fact that the legality of one’s residential status requires an employment contract, the measures effectively exclude roughly 800,000 people from basic medical attention, according to Doctors of the World. In his appearance in front of the Congressional Health Committee, that NGO’s president, Álvaro González, explained that the Spanish government had enacted a policy of “apartheid” against those people, most of whom had seen their documents expire when they were unable to find work after the collapse of the country’s housing bubble and the construction sector. He also cited several studies indicating that the measure could actually serve to raise costs, in addition to putting public health and peoples’ very lives at risk....

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ROAR: So, what exactly is the Espacio del Inmigrante? How and when did it come about?

Manuel (M): The Espacio del Inmigrante is a neighborhood-level citizen initiative started by a group of immigrant professionals here in the Raval, in response to the Law by Royal Decree passed by the Spanish government in 2012. We assessed the situation and, considering that we live in a neighborhood where over 40% of the residents are immigrants, we came to the conclusion that this is likely to have an especially large, degrading effect on our community. We were seeing that a lot of our neighbors were not going to the doctor because they didn’t have enough money, because their public health insurance cards were no longer valid and because they thought that, if they went, there was some sort of link between that institutional setting and the police. Considering that they were undocumented, this kept them from going.

Through face-to-face contact, our neighbors learned that there was a doctor on our street. Whenever she went to buy bread or groceries or go to the pharmacy, the shopkeepers would mention that someone they knew was ill but could not go to the primary care center. She would often end up doing check-ups on the spot. This doctor happened to be in contact with the neighborhood assembly a lot of us were in, and she mentioned this there. We then decided to open up a space where we could carry out free, basic medical attention. So in January of this year, we went to a building block where there was already an assembly established and asked them for a space. They gave us an entire floor, and we fixed it up, making it fit for providing basic medical attention and stocking it with basic medical supplies....

http://roarmag.org/2013/12/espacio-inmigrante-barcelona/

Season 1, Episode 12
“If capitalism doesn’t work, what does?” – highlights from the annual World Peace Forum teach-in in Vancouver

Co-hosts: Daniel Tseghay and Tristan Markle

On this episode of Mainlander Radio we talked to:

Roger Rashi, a founding member of Québec solidaire, about building an anticapitalist political party;

Tom Walker, an instructor in Labour and the Environment at SFU, about de-growth and the commons;

Tamara Herman, an organizer with the Carnegie Community Action Project and a member of the Downtown Eastside Local Area Plan.

http://www.coopradio.org/content/mainlander-radio-4

 

 

Forks and Torches

This time it took me by surprise. While all eyes are on the ‘eurorevolution’ in Ukraine, yesterday Italy was swept by a sudden outburst of civil unrest. The so-called ‘pitchfork’ movement brought people to the streets all over the country. There were heavy clashes with police in Turin.

So what is this movement? Who is behind it? What do they want? It’s hard to tell, because it seems to be very heterogeneous.

The movement was started by Sicilian farmers two years ago, it gained support by truck drivers, and lately by the impoverished middle class. In general, there is a growing feeling of discontent with the government, with austerity measures, with high taxes, the euro, and with unfair competition from chain stores and cheap Chinese products. Yesterday, many small shop owners closed in solidarity with the protest. Others who didn’t adhere were picketed and forced to close....

https://postvirtual.wordpress.com/2013/12/10/forks-and-torches/

..update

UK Students Facing Violence, Intimidation and Arrest for Opposing Privatisation of their Universities

The growing student movement in opposition to the marketisation of Higher Education is being confronted by the full force of the emergent British police state.  Universities are using court injunctions to ban student protest, and when students oppose such measures they are faced with an overwhelming and violent response by the UK’s militarised police force.

Two things have trebled under the Coalition government since 2010: university tuition fees, and long term youth unemployment. In order to pay tuition fees, accommodation, food and other expenses, the average student will leave University with personal debts of £53,300.  Yet our 18-24 year olds are less likely to find employment than at any time in the last twenty years.  Students and young people have every reason to protest.

The students rose up in their tens of thousands in 2010, to defend their right to an education without incurring enormous debts through tuition fees.  They were met with some of the most violent policing seen on UK streets in modern history.  Agent provocateurs were filmed running into the crowds, pushing , pulling and kicking student protesters in order to generate violent conditions.  One student named Alfie Meadows ended up in hospital requiring brain surgery after a police officer beat him with a baton.  Instead of the police officer facing the courts, Alfie was charged with violent disorder.  He was finally acquitted in March 2013, by a jury who agreed he was defending himself and other protesters...

http://www.scriptonitedaily.com/2013/12/09/uk-students-facing-violence-i...

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The root of the dispute is the 3 Cosas campaign, a joint effort with outsourced service staff at London universities that demands three things – sick pay, holiday pay and pensions. These low-waged, largely Latin American workers formed an autonomous union, and students and allies helped crowdsource a strike fund. On strike day, hundreds swelled the picket lines, and the workers have won concessions on two of the demands.