A number of groups in the San Francisco Bay Area will hold a vigil and protest in front of the Chilean Consulate in San Francisco on September 9 at 4 p.m.. This flier explains our purpose in organizing this action. We are awaiting further endorsements from anti-authoritarians in the Bay Area.
A POLICE KILLING IN CHILE…
While much of the world’s attention this year has been turned toward events in the Northern hemisphere—the Arab Spring, the Spanish and Greek street assemblies, the riots in the UK, the violence in Libya—an equally interesting and potentially more radical movement has been taking place in Chile. Chilean students and the poor who have been excluded from “the Chilean miracle” of American-trained free marketeers have waged fierce battles with the cops. One teenager has been killed in the streets, shot by police in Macul, a borough of Santiago. Initial reports described the victim as a protester; later ones say he may have been an onlooker. His family places the blame squarely on the police. Whatever the final determination, he was a casualty in a conflict that has pitted Chilean youth against a social order that is old, decrepit, and brutal.
The Chilean movement has emerged in the throes of winter in the Southern hemisphere, with young people going out into the icy streets, braving the elements, of course, and, more importantly, directly challenging the Chilean state and its gendarmes, showing determination and resolve in the face of the military police. These cops are the carabineros of sinister memory under Pinochet. Their vehicles include armored personnel carriers, and they shoot water cannons at demonstrators. They more resemble an occupying army than a riot squad.
We want to remember Manuel Guttíerrez Reinoso, the teenager killed on the night of August 24, but we want to do more than that: we want to actively support the broader rebellion in Chile. We see something in the protest movement there that we identify with: it is a struggle that is ours as well. The Chilean protests began as a student movement demanding the right to public education, and at no cost to students, even at the university level. The protests began on a whimsical note, with mass “kiss ins” and other creative gestures. What made Chile different from California was that Chilean workers and the poor saw the students’ fight as one they should support as well. As the movement spread, it encountered stiff resistance from the state and its armed wing, the police. What started with a kind of poetry turned into social war.
Chilean anarchists with banner reading, “Since the system won’t surrender,
let us build popular power. Long live those who struggle!”
A BATTLEFIELD THAT IS EVERYWHERE!
Occupation of Education Ministry by the “Rebel Education Ministry”
Top: Police at the scene of the occupation
Below: Radicals hang banner reading, “From the Classroom to the Class Struggle”
Pitched battles have taken place on the streets of neighborhoods in Santiago and elsewhere in the past two weeks. At its most radical level, the Chilean struggle is a fight against capitalism and the state, a fight against the misery spread by a system whose financial house of cards is shaking. In fact, the movement’s radical wing has already opposed the efforts of student union bureaucrats (including the media darling, Camila Vallejo) to cut a deal with the Chilean government and achieve merely a reform of the education system. The radicals have promoted self-organization and autonomy in neighborhoods and regions, recalling the anti-authoritarian aspects of the Chilean Revolution of the 1970s, the cordones industriales and comandos comunales, forms of direct democracy created by workers and the poor.
It is on the basis of this radicalism that we make common cause with the Chilean rebellion, and not out of an empty notion of “solidarity,” but rather from a deep conviction that we need to open a front in the social war here where we live. We do not want to be trapped underneath the rubble as capitalism’s house of cards collapses. We want to deal out new cards, new ideas, and make a new and different world. We invite you to join us. Bring your own banners, signs, and ideas. It will be an open ended protest, whose features will be determined by those who participate in it. Those endorsing this action may not necessarily agree on an entire program or philosophy, but we do agree on this: it is important to stand up for those who have already accomplished so much, and at great risk to themselves, in Chile.
Text by CR: 9/3/2011
VIGIL & PROTEST
Friday September 9, 2011: 4 p.m.
Consulate General of Chile: 870 Market Street, San Francisco
Collective Reinventions, MAIZ (Movimiento de Accíon Inspirando Servicio, San Jose) and Voz de Lucha
Attachments
Flier_version6.doc
(144.5 KB)
Comments
I sent an attachment with the
I sent an attachment with the full version of the flier. I hope that libcom
can post it. Thanks.
David
[email protected]
[email protected]
The flyer was attached, but
The flyer was attached, but the "list" box to display publicly was not checked, which I have now done. Thanks.
Thanks very much. Have a good
Thanks very much.
Have a good weekend.
Cheers,
David
self-deleted
self-deleted
Good luck! The Chilean state
Good luck! The Chilean state already fired 5 cops for the death last week...a demonstration of just how much more they fear their working class as compared to their British counterparts.
Lots of photographs of the
Lots of photographs of the protests in Chile here:
http://cryptome.org/info/chile-protest/chile-protest.htm
http://cryptome.org/info/chile-protest2/chile-protest2.htm
http://cryptome.org/info/chile-protest4/chile-protest4.htm
And some commentary on the national strike:
Chile: National Strike Forces Government to Negotiating Table
Thanks, Wojtek. We
Thanks, Wojtek. We (Collective Reinventions) are working on a longer,
pamphlet length text on the movement in Chile.
Any suggestions or ideas on this subject are most welcome, as are
interesting photos or texts relating to the movement.
Please write to:
[email protected]
Folks may find this
Folks may find this useful:
http://auschileeducation.wordpress.com/
albeit kinda only focuses on the statements of the CONFECh, etc
Good is 'Libertarians and the Bases for a Social Agreement for the Chilean Education System'
at anarkismo
There is also some stuff in the comments on this thread:
http://libcom.org/news/chilean-miners-strike-join-wave-protest-against-government-04082011
i'll reprint what i said there, as are links to some translations i did:
riot_dude
also, folks here in Melbourne, Australia, are doing stuff on Sat 10th and Sun 11th
and here's a reportback and letter of solidarity from some of us here in Aus:
http://indymedia.org.au/2011/08/19/reportback-from-the-emergency-solidarity-meeting-for-chilean-students-in-struggle
oh, and just saw a statement by Sydney's Colectivo Mujer's 'Statement of solidarity with the Chilean students.'
Umm, outside of that, some of the best pics are at the waronsociety blog
umm yeah, hope thats of interest to peeps!
It's great that people are
It's great that people are doing things in support of the Chilean movement,
and across the globe at nearly the same time.
It would be neat if there could be some heading on libcom that would allow people in various places to post reports on what actions they
are doing or are planning, with photos and updates.
Having it all in one place (under one heading) would let everyone
see what everyone else was doing, and let those in Chile see
that others are taking note of what they are doing, and more than that,
doing something themselves.
Mike in Australia got in
Mike in Australia got in touch with some important information about
the latest news on the teenager who was shot by the carabineros in Chile.
Manuel Guttierez may have been a bystander, and not a protester.
We have revised our text to reflect this information, and the new version
will be posted here.
If libcom wants an article based on this text, please get in touch with
me.
David Jacobs wrote: Mike in
David Jacobs
Part of a Chilean press report posted on alasbarricadas (first post in the thread)
Going off this report he had asked his parents for permission to take his disabled brother to watch the protest, they had never taken part in demonstrations and this was the first time they had seen them first hand and not on TV. So they sound like bystanders rather than participants.
Thanks very much, Mark, for
Thanks very much, Mark, for the additional information about the
killing of "Manolito," as they call him in the Chilean press. I have
updated the text to more accurately describe what happened and
who Manuel G. was. He was still a victim of the state, mind you,
and the carabinero who shot him used an Uzi, apparently, not
standard issue for these thugs.
Cheers,
David
[email protected]
Just an update on the action
Just an update on the action itself, which took place yesterday in San
Francisco.
It went really well, all things considered.
The older generation was there on time, and ready for the show. But the younger contingent that showed up a bit later brought a lot of creativity, spirit, and energy, all of which made a huge difference.
These were for the most part Latino/Latina
youth from San Francisco State and elsewhere.
We (CR) had not met most of these people before the vigil/protest. Some were from the SF State branch of Mecha, which once was almost exclusively devoted to
Chicano and student issues.
Today the SF State Mecha members are
anarchists, and endorsed the action, along with Unconventional Action in the Bay, an assembly of Bay Area anarchists.
Not a single leftist party builder showed up. They had been disinvited
in our posting on the local Indymedia.
The younger participants actively engaged passersby, and we had
a Spanish version of the flyer to distribute as well as the original English language one.
Signs said, "The Other September 11th....Santiago, Chile 9/11/1973"
and had an image of a Chilean tank from the coup of 1973. This did
get some attention from those passing by.
To be sure, a lot of people ignored the whole thing, and we were probably "read" by many as just another bunch of noisy leftists on
Market Street as people were starting their weekends.
There are some good photos to share, but I can't figure out how to post
them here.
David
More news from Chile
More news from Chile yesterday:
- here.
Guardian report from a school
Guardian report from a school occupation in Santiago
Edit: this article gets criticised on the urban75 thread on the Chilean education protests. tbh urban is doing a better job of covering this than libcom.
Briefly spoke to a Chilean
Briefly spoke to a Chilean woman yesterday and she said that, due to the movement there, the government has called the winter holiday three weeks earlier than normal (hoping to dissipate the movement and give the State 3 extra weeks to work out its strategy). Consequently, students in Santiago have surrounded the parliament building with sand and gone there in their swimming costumes pretending it's the summer holidays, sunbathing on the sand....and remember - it's winter there.
(No subject)
[youtube]tu4tPw5ND7M[/youtube]
Santiago Times: Largest
[youtube]xMYSsC_3v1Y[/youtube]
Santiago Times: Largest student protest of the year draws 150,000