"We
won't pay for your crisis", this is the slogan with which a few weeks
ago we started our protest at the university of La Sapienza, Rome. A
simple, yet at the same time immediate, slogan: the global crisis is
the crisis of capitalism itself, of the financial and real estate
speculation, of a system without rules or rights, of unscrupulous
companies and managers. The burden of this crisis can't fall on the
educational system - from the school to the university - on the health
system or generally on taxpayers. Our slogan has become famous,
spreading by word of mouth, from town to town. From the students to the
precarious workers, from the working to the research worlds, nobody
wants to pay for the crisis, nobody wants to nationalize the losses,
whereas for years the wealth has been distributed among few, very few
people.
And it is exactly the contagion that has been produced in these weeks,
the multiplication of the mobilizations in the schools, in the
universities, and in the cities that should have stirred up a lot of
fear. It is well known that a fearful dog bites; similarly, the
reaction of President Berlusconi was immediate: "police against who
occupy universities and schools", "we will get rid of violence in our
Country". Only yesterday Berlusconi declared that he was willing to
increase the financial support to the banks and that the State and the
public expense would stand surety for the companies' loans: in a few
words, cutbacks to education, less founds for the students, cutbacks to
the health system, but public money for the companies, for the banks
and the private sector. We are wondering where is violence: is it a
violence to occupy universities and schools or instead that of a
government who imposes the Law 133 to cutback the founds for the
education system refusing the parliamentary debate? Is it the dissent
violent or is it violent who intends to put it down by the police? Who
is violent: who mobilizes for the public status of university and
schools or who wants to sell them for a few private profits? Violence
is on Berlusconi government's side, while in the occupied schools and
universities there is the great joy and indignation of who fights for
his own future, or who doesn't accept to be put in the corner or forced
to be silent. We don't want stay in silence in the corner, of who wants
to be free.
They tell us that we are only able to say no, that we don't have any
proposal. There is nothing more false: the occupations and the meetings
of these days are really building up a new university, a university
made of knowledge, as well as of sociality, of learning, but also of
information, and consciousness. Studying is very important for us: and
it is exactly for this reason that we think that the protests are
necessary: we are occupying so that the public university can endure,
to continue to study and do research. There are a lot of things that
have to be changed both in the universities and in the schools, but one
thing is certain: the change can't pass through these cutbacks.
Changing the university means increasing founds, to sustain the
research, to qualify the educational processes and to guarantee
mobility (from study to research, and from research to teaching). The
cutbacks mean just one thing: transforming the public universities in
private foundations, decreeing the end of the public university.
The design and its tools are clear: Law 133 was approved in august, and
against the protests of dozens of thousands of students they claim the
police. This government wants to wreck democracy, through the fear,
through the terror. But today, from La Sapienza in mobilization and
from the occupied faculties, we want to say that we have no fear and we
won't step back. On the contrary, our intention is to make the
government retreat: we won't stop struggling before Law 133 and the
Gelmini decree will be withdrawn! This time we will proceed till the
very end, we don't want lose, we don't want submit to this arrogance.
For this reason we ask all faculties of the Country to do the same:
they want to repress the occupations, so that a thousand of faculties
occupy!
Moreover, after the extraordinary success of the general strike on
October 17th, we think that is the right time to give an unitary and
coordinated answer in our cities. We suggest two national dates: a day
of mobilization on Friday November 7th, with demonstrations spread all
over the cities; a huge national demonstration of the educational
world, from university to School, on November 14th in Rome, the day
the unions proclaimed the general strike of the university; a day to be
built from the bottom and in which the central figures have to be the
students, researchers and teachers in mobilization. At the same time we
think that it is useful to cross, with our forms and claims, the
general strike of the school proclaimed by the unions on Thursday
October 30th.
What is happening in these days tells us of a powerful, extraordinary
and rich mobilization. A new wave, an anomalous wave that doesn't want
to stop and that rather wants to win. We have to increase this wave and
the will to struggle. They want us idiots and resigned, but we are
cleavers and in movement and our wave will go far!
From the occupied faculties of the La Sapienza, from the University in mobilization, Rome.