The REVOLT of the Penguins in Chile (student power and stuff)
| By RevolutionAM - Jun 15th, 2006 at 9:26 am EDT |
Now this is what I call student power!
CHILE HAS been overrun by high school students whose mass protests have forced the government to drop planned cuts in education spending.Look at that! in a society as socially rigid as Chile, still just coming-to after the decades of Pinochet, and the students can mobilize and do something like this. And the great thing is it shows the fundamental power of democratic structures:
Called "penguins" because of their suit-and-tie uniforms, the students have shaken the foundations of the rigid Chilean social structure, inherited from the bloody dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Now, the government of President Michelle Bachelet of the Socialist Party, which took office earlier this year, has been forced to retreat.
The last six weeks in Chile have been marked by a strike of over 1 million students; the occupation of up to 1,000 high schools and most of the country's universities; and weekly, sometimes daily, marches.
The movement has also persevered in street battles against Chile's sophisticated repression machine--complete with carabineros (the national police) clad in riot gear and tanks firing water cannons that shoot a mixture of water and tear acid. Students, some as young as 13, fought back with sticks, stones and Molotov cocktails.
The struggle began as a defensive fight--stopping the Bachelet government proposals last March for an increase in the cost of the University Entry Exam (PSU) and a restriction on student transportation passes to two trips per day.
The ACES is composed of two delegates from each school, and it elects a committee of 34 representatives to negotiate with the government. The democratic character of the ACES has meant active participation of students at the occupations--and made the movement difficult to derail, despite the youth organization of Bachelet's own party being one of the main forces leading it.I guess the closest thing we've seen to this here in the States recently was the wave of walkouts at scores of SoCal schools this spring over the immigration issue. The student mobilization also showcases the power and importance youth can play on the national stage given the opportunity:
The march of the penguins has brought behind it broad layers of Chilean society, including university students, various sections of the working class and most parents. According to opinion polls, 87 percent of the population supports the students.
The 15-, 16- and 17-year-old students who lead this movement have become a phenomenon in Chile, embarrassing senators on live televised debates, infuriating news anchors and treating government ministers like kids who don't get it.[Entire article here]
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What I want to know is...what's the secret? What's the trick? How do you get such a large-scale movement going -- how do you surmount the laziness and apathy prevalent in many students? I'd love to see any information about that -- do you have any good sources/suggestions?
I ask only because Amnesty's Youth Activist college is planned for next month (shameless plug) and I'm doing a workshop on event planning/organizing...I would love to use this as a case study! :)
Howeve r, I have a few starting points toward a partial answer (hopefully to be released as a book sometime in the next two or three years).
One important fact in Chile's situation is that the proposed changes affect all the students in a really concrete, quantifiable way: money. If we look at the swell of student opposition to the Vietnam war here in the states, a good number were in the streets primarily because they were scared shitless of being drafted. Of course lots and lots of people wanted the U.S. out of Vietnam regardless of their draftability, but the tipping point occurred when students realized how the devastation in Vietnam was being visited upon the lives of their close friends and relatives, and could easily be visited on themselves.
Anothe r crucial point, and it's a point I intend to hammer and hammer away at in my book, is that the process was inclusionary and participatory. Rank-and-file students actually had a say in things, which gave them all 'ownership' of the actions and of the movement. It was a fight for a shift in policy, but it was also a fight for student power in the broad sense. And it's the latter that's the key ingredient for a lasting, successful campaign that will lay the seeds of future successes.
And , as one good plug deserves another, I have spoken recently on various campuses about student power and organizing around it, and I'd be more than happy to come speak at JHU to your group, and maybe get a useful, empowering dialogue going. :)
Every government policy has some people it negatively impacts; the world has few Pareto improvements on offer.
If you don't like it? Vote 'em out. The idea that you're part of a "class bloc" with "class interests" is patent bullshit, and should have died everywhere along with the USSR.
Are you, or are you not, the guy that insisted that, rather than institutional racism, it was economic roadblocks against the poor that resulted in the hindrance of class mobility?
Sounds like an instance of clear class interests.
I'll stick with Weber's "Nation-State and Economic Policy" myself.
Second , many of those involved are beneath Chile's voting age of 18, as the article clearly states (more than a thousand high schools participated).