Shut Down London
Day of Action on 30th November!
Bring Down the Coalition Government
Build an independent, integrated mass Civil Rights Movement
Join power of student movement to the struggle of oppressed communities to win
Stop the cuts! Save the EMA! Fight for free, equal, quality education for all! Fight racism & anti-immigrant bigotry – Stop deportation, no-one is illegal! – Sanctuary Campuses Now – Make Equality Act Real – No victimizations of activists – Amnesty for all migrants – Stop scape-goating the black, Asian, Muslim & immigrant communities for the economic depression & problems we face.
Students are the most powerful force in education. The mass siege of the Conservative Party HQ in Millbank Tower by thousands of students on 10 November, the occupation and it’s mass defence, and the energy of our 50,000+ march allowed us to feel and express our true strength and potentially great power. On that march, conceived by many of its organizers as a certain-to-loose routine moral appeal to the politicians who lack any morality and decency, we went further and achieved more than many of us believed possible. Closing down the Tory headquarters, stopping ‘business-as-usual’, watching the police cower and retreat and the rich and powerful sneak out the back door was exhilarating, emboldening and a glimpse of the strength and potential of our collective power.
10th November gave students and youth across our nation and throughout Europe and other parts of the world an opportunity to see what mass struggle looks and feels like. No young person with a brain cared about how the media, pompous politicians or political commentators portrayed the day. The youth and older people experienced in union or community struggles, knew to dismiss the condemnations of the cowering student leaders who aspire to become hypocritical politicians, and those of the hypocritical politicians themselves who cried out against the “violence” by which they meant damage to property, “hurtful action against windows and vehicles”, while blithely supporting massive cuts that will cause an incalculable rise in violence, starvation, homelessness, infant mortality, suicide and loss of hope and human potential.
Critically minded young people saw the coverage of 10th November on the news and the new alternative media our movement is creating through Youtube, social messaging sites and texts and cheered for the students. Many began planning that night how they could build on what happened that day and organize their school and community to participate in the next national day of protest. These students and many of their teachers, parents, neighbors, families, communities already understood that to win our movement must reject the commonly held view that only the rich and powerful have the ability to determine the course of our nation and to make history. The students who are emerging as the real leaders of students and our movement know that it is futile and humiliating to beg the rich and powerful to value our lives as much as they value their property or that we can prevail if we use logic and beautiful arguments to convince them that they could actually get more rich and more powerful by maintaining a well educated working class. To win we need to organize and assert the will of the great power that exists within our society but has been asleep for too long. The oppressed masses have the power to change history and are the only force that can achieve progress. These forces include: the black, Asian, Muslim and immigrant communities who face police brutality, racism and scapegoating everyday; poor and working class white communities facing record levels of joblessness who are now being told if you are young there are no educational opportunities’ or hope for you, and if you are older forget about getting support to go college to learn a real skill, instead go to a token retraining program to learn how to be the perfect low skilled low paid customer friendly service worker; the middle class, including both small shop owners who can’t survive consumers having even less income, and more skilled workers like the teachers who not only face cuts but are being told that they are to blame for the problems of education and should be replaced by ex-military personnel; and other segments of our society who are oppressed because of their status as women, LGBT, youth, disabled etc, and cannot abide the suffocating limitations and lowered expectations for freedom and dignity that exist now.
It never matters whether each and every one of the activists in our movement articulates with great precision the policies we are fighting for. Our job is not to impress those in power with either our respectability or willingness to accept their terms of discourse. The young militants of our movement know things are bad and will get worse if this Government’s plan to repudiate the whole social welfare program of the post-war era goes through. We know to win we have to unite and fight, and importantly if we fight it had better be to win. That we could fight and win was the lesson of 10th November drawn by the best and the brightest young people and on 24th November, more of them acted.
On 24th November our new growing movement took three important steps forward. Firstly, we swelled our ranks, expanded the militant wing of our leadership and increased the scope of our struggle’s aims when thousands of school students walked out of schools and joined in the massive actions of the day. Secondly our movement became more of a national movement extending its reach to small towns and areas of the nation that had not participated in mass action for decades. On 25th November, following our lead, students across Italy took to the streets in their hundreds of thousands to stop their government’s proposed attacks on public education and cuts in benefits and services. Thirdly, our movement became more united, clearer politically and tactically on who our enemies are and what we must do to win. This was clearest perhaps in London where we spent the day walking out, marching, and finding ways to break through the police efforts to contain, demoralize or brutalize us into retreat. Over and over again the students who marched in London, some for the first time, many unprepared for the long hours spent in the bone-chilling cold, turned to each other, often to perfect strangers, and found a way to express our anger and determination to win, and revel together in the sheer joy and freedom that militant mass action for a cause you just know is right, provides. For those who missed the day but wished they had been there, we urge you to join us on 30th Nov, National Day of Action and Walkouts called to stop the fee hikes, defend public education and defeat the cuts.
What we are building is not just a campaign but rather a new powerful student movement capable of defeating the fee hikes, defending education and ending the stifling effects of the seemingly endless cuts and “belt tightening measures” that have worsened our conditions of life and demoralized poor, working class and middle class communities across the nation. Our aim is to inspire through our courage and determination the most oppressed and angry sections of our society to stand up and fight with us. If the cuts go through the economy spirals down more and further cuts will be proposed. 30th November is an opportunity for the students and youth to deepen our ties to the minority and oppressed communities we need to draw into our movement both to strengthen it and to assure that our movement continues to grow especially if we succeed in defeating the attacks on education, but the rest of the program of cuts continue to be proposed. Our goal is to bring down the Coalition Government. To achieve this we must make clear to the Lib Dems they have two options: 1) support the cuts and die as Party or 2) hold to your promises and supposed principles and oppose the cuts and increased scapegoating of black, Asian, Muslim and immigrant communities, and withdraw from the Government. To achieve this we must continue the mass actions –school walk outs, demonstrations etc. from now until the cuts are defeated. We must stand on a program of demands that makes clear our movement opposes racism, stands with the immigrant communities, and rejects the policy of all the political parties to scapegoat immigrants, promote free market reforms and blame the victims of oppression for the problems created by institutional policies of inequality, discrimination and a growing disparity between the privileged and the vast majority of society.
On 30th November and the days that follow we need to call national actions in which our aim is to shut down London and other cities. Our movement is just beginning to gain the organizational capacity to organize single large scale events. If our tactical aims are clear then students walking out in any part of London or other cities or towns will know even if you can’t get to the center, take action where you can to stop business as usual. Close a road, block a bridge, march through the black, Asian or immigrant communities of Brixton, Harrow, or somewhere else and draw in your community. Escalating continuous action is needed to win. The more we empower the minority and poor and oppressed communities to stand and fight the better our chances of winning and the more likely our chances of drawing in union support for our cause. This is our way forward.
In the next period we will need to build democratic organizations to coordinate and lead our movement. It is important for the activists in our movement to reject the view that the people standing at the front of the room are the actual leaders and those in attendance should defer to the chairs or conveners. At the beginning of a movement, the people chairing meetings, speaking with most confidence are likely to be from the most privileged backgrounds. Students from more elite colleges, white men, etc. are going to find it easiest to assert themselves. Many of these early leaders will hesitate, equivocate or sell-out when the most angry black and Asian youth take the lead in action and when many of their teachers, parents, neighbors, families, communities enter onto the stage of history. It is incumbent on every activist to demand full democracy including the election and constant evaluation of leaders for us to win.
We have an exciting and bright period ahead. We can free ourselves and the rest of humanity. Our time is now. All we need is the courage to believe that we should be in power and act on that belief.
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