Dates for a first GLOBAL EDUCATION STRIKE in history agreed on!

[Mo]

Hey there,

yesterdays global chat meeting was attended by about 25 people in Cairo, Kuala Lumpur, Marburg, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver, Vienna, Zürich as well as somewhere in Italy and Spain.

The main focus was on the idea to call for a first GLOBAL EDUCATION STRIKE in history: http://ism-global.net/discussion_global_education_strike_2012

The participants agreed on the following:

• after setting up a poll, sending a call for feedback to the global ISM mailing list and discussing a common timeframe for a Global Education Strike during chat meetings it was decided to call for
  a Global Day of Action for Education on October 18th
  and a Global Education Strike for November 14-21st!!
  the idea is to have strikes at as many educational institutions simultaneously during those 7 days as possible. of course the situation is different at each location, therefore not everyone might be able to strike for a whole week - or sometimes not even a few days. so some might also 'just' arrange a rally or other types of actions in the context of the Global Education Strike. Most importantly is the COMMUNICATION on the global level!!
  

• a common famework (e.g. symbols, slogans, statement) will be discussed during the next chat meeting. basis of discussion will be the framework used during the Global Weeks of Action for Education in November 2011.

• we invite to the next chat meeting on June 1st - if nobody on the global mailing list rejects this date. Anybody interested in participating in the next global chat meeting and not having time on June 1st (friday) - noon EST, 4pm GMT/UTC, 6pm CET, 9.30pm IST (to check what time 4pm UTC is for you: www.timeanddate.com)?? Then send a mail to the mailing list or drop a line at united.for...@gmail.com before May 23rd (wednesday)!
  

Besides these important decisions participants also shared reports on their local situation:

• Quebec:
  "To give a quick overview of the movment here, before going in details, the province wide general strike started in February. Next Tuesday, we hit tht 100th day of general strike. The movement have seen some successes and held it ground over this period, but we definitely have had and and having a lot more of our share of challenges. Now a new law was introduced, which is basically to suspend the semester until August, and removes any right from the student associations to go (vote) on strike, and comes with penalities of between 25,000$ to 125,000$ if the associaiton execs go against that.
  Last but definitely not the least, the right to assembly and demonstration is being infringed - any gathering bigger than 25 people have to inform the police before hand, and give a lot of details. Students and general public is pretty enraged by this, and the plans are to challenge this at all levels. there.s been protests every night since 23 nights, and the plans are to intensify them."
  "Here in Quebec its pretty big, 3 months strike, there have been protests everynight  for the last 2 weeks, and if there is a global Strike this fall we will be in."

• Vancouver:
  "We literally started organizing last night in van- but we were waiting to pick a date here befoere starting an action plan. Its all very informal and small. And the day before ubc raised tuition 3% like every year so I suppose depressing.  But heres hoping this is a turning point."

• Toronto:
  "Has been trying to organize protests in solidarity with Quebec but they have been fairly small and spaced out from lack of effort and a lot of folk being skeptical. There are plans for the next fews months to initiate a twin movement over here.The priority at the moment is raising awareness and replacing apathy with determination and belief.
  we have teams moving back and forth from QC to TO to make this happen. And slowly but surely it seems to be working."

• Germany:
  "I can just share with you that school and university activists from across Germany met at the beginning of May and decided to call for a week of action in november. the exact date is still to be decided - also depending on the coordinations on the global level."
  "here the commercialisation of education works through increasing cuts to the budgets of the public universities, which leads among other things to a dependency of universities to private corporation to fund their research projects. also higher education is transformed in all of europe (european union) to produce "better" human capital faster and more efficiently."

• Kuala Lumpur:
  "A little update to all of you, we did a rally regarding abolish PTPTN - the study loan, and call for free education at 15th April. And we occupy our independence square with #occupydataran movement as protest camp for 14 days. Now the movement will focus on free education and revise education system.
  PTPTN is a higher education loan. need to pay back later when graduate with 1-3% interest."
  => an entry on the rally in Kuala Lumpur was also published on the ISM website: http://www.ism-global.net/free_education_rally_KL_april14

• Austria:
  "in austria, tuition fees were just reimplemented, after being abolished earlier this year due to non-conformity with the constitution, but not much is happening and most people dont really care :/"
  "they are actually voting now at each university if they should introduce tuition fees or not. at some they did now and at others they rejected them."

• Italy:
  "University reform in late 2010 (Berlusconi government) with the aim of more efficient and companies based universities. grand budgets cuts."

• Spain:
  "the university of sevilla will have a strike for 10 days that start before the General Stike in Education (22th May). In Madrid the teacher for School and High School have a strike since september. The government high the tuition fees a 108% respect the last year."

#1world1struggle

greetings from marburg,
mo.


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