Archive for the Category 'Reports'
Tendencies towards radicalization threatened by the treacherous leaderships of the trade unions
Following three days of protests against the pension reform since the end of the summer (September 7 and 23, and October 2), the government was betting on an ebbing of the demonstrations, especially considering that the Senate hurriedly voted on the main articles of the law, enabling Sarkozy to send a clear message to the public: “everything has been decided, there’s no need to demonstrate, the law has been passed.” Nonetheless, the day of strikes and demonstrations on October 12 in France was historic. »»»»
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In response to social cuts and worsening working conditions, 40,000 trade unionists and opponents of the government went onto the streets of Prague on September 22. Workers in the Czech Republic are rightly worried about attacks on their rights: The government plans to reduce the budget for salaries in the civil service by 10%, which means wage cuts for all workers and also layoffs. The firefighters and the police lost their patience first, but also doctors, teachers, government employees, cultural workers and even military staff joined these protests. »»»»
The sixth European Social Forum was dominated by bland NGO politics and obfuscatory Maoism
About 3,000 people participated in the sixth European Social Forum (ESF) in Istanbul. There were 200 seminars about the economic crisis, climate change, students’ protests and many other topics. »»»»
On Saturday, June 26th, RIO (the Revolutionary Internationalist Organization) organized a special Hiphop concert in the ”Red Island” in Berlin: a far cry from mainstream and ghetto-gangster-rap, three artists from Germany, England and Chile showed what political rap can sound like – class struggle rap to be precise. »»»»
In the Czech parliamentary elections at the end of May, all the traditional parties lost
On May 28 and 29, parliamentary elections were held in the Czech Republic. The last elections four years ago ended with a draw (the right-wing and the left-wing parties got exactly 100 seats each) but thanks to corruption two social democrats supported the election of a right-wing government. »»»»
RIO, the Revolutionary Internationalist Organization, was present at May Day demonstrations in Berlin, Prague, Zurch and St. Gallen this year. The following are reports from these actions. »»»»
(the past tense of ¡No pasarán!) – a report from the blockades against the Nazi demonstration on February 13 in Dresden
They didn’t pass! The planned Nazi demonstration on February 13 in Dresden was blocked by more than 10,000 people. At 5 o’clock that morning, 25 fully-loaded buses set off from Berlin to go to the blockades – all in all, more than 100 buses from across Germany and neighboring countries arrived in Dresden. »»»»
Report from the Luxemburg-Liebknecht-Lenin-Weekend-2010 of the Revolutionary Internationalist Organization (RIO)
This year’s Luxemburg-Liebknecht-Lenin demonstration on January 10 in Berlin was marked by snowstorms and freezing temperatures. But our “LLL-Weekend”, held on the Saturday before the demonstration, was a surprising success. At the seminar about the left in Europe, just over 50 people – from Berlin, Dresden, Kiel, Rostock, Hamburg, Essen, Saarbrücken, Witten, Zurich, Prague, Liberec and Paris – participated in the discussion, and at the class war hip-hop concert afterwards there were more than 100 people. »»»»
After the Honduran elections on November 29, the bourgeois press was triumphant. The newspaper El Heraldo proclaimed: “Honduras defeats abstentionism with a massive turnout”. The same evening, the Supreme Electoral Court declared that participation had been around 65%, far higher even than the participation in the presidential elections of 2005, which had been just 46%. »»»»
On 17 November more than 80,000 school and university students in 60 German cities demonstrated as part of the nationwide “education strike”. On International Student’s Day, the largest demonstrations took place in Berlin (12,000), Munich (10,000) and Wiesbaden (10,000). The education strike was smaller than the strike in June this year when more than 250,000 people were on the streets – but this was primarily due to a shorter mobilization period. Roughly 50 universities were occupied in the two weeks before the strike. In addition, during the week the first two high schools were occupied, in Dusseldorf and Berlin-Neukölln. »»»»
Current reports and photographs from Honduras.
For months a military regime has existed in Honduras which made a coup d’état to drive the democratically elected president Zelaya out of office. Since the end of September he has been back in the country and the coup-makers are having more and more trouble staying in control. Wladek Flakin reports from Honduras about the current situation. We will publish new reports and photographs here. »»»»