November '04 Bulletin

The International Committee of the PSC, as part of its mandate for internal education in the union, will prepare a brief monthly international bulletin for the Executive Council, Delegate Assembly, and Chapter Chairs. This is the first of the series. We hope you will send feedback to the IC, distribute the bulletin in your chapters, and contribute items of interest. The IC is also available to facilitate chapter discussions. This month the bulletin highlights the PSC’s Colombia solidarity work.

Solidarity/ Solidaridad/ Solidarité/ Solidarietá/ Solidarität/ Solidariedade/ Ubuqukatha.

Renate Bridenthal, Chair, International Committee

10/12/04: Colombia Teachers Join General Strike, PSC Marches in Support

October 12, Colombia: up to a million people take to the streets of the major cities in a massive jornada, a one-day general strike and day of action. Called by the national unions, including the teachers in FECODE, it’s a political strike against the Uribe government and the Free Trade Agreement with the U.S., and for public health and education. It’s a call to end death squad assassinations. It’s scary and tough, but El País quotes María Rosario Niño, a 65-year-old teacher on a three-day march into Bogotá: “Además, un docente nunca siente cansancio” (“Oh well, a teacher never feels tired”).

The jornada is common in Colombia, but this time, as they marched in Medellín and Cali and Bogotá, some teachers marched in solidarity with them in New York City. FECODE had asked for support from the PSC International Committee, which, together with the Solidarity Committee, organized a PSC picket at the Colombian consulate, with signs like “Stop U.S. Military Aid to Colombia” and “Right to Organize, Right to Strike,” and chants like “La lucha obrera no tiene fronteras” (“Workers’ struggle has no borders”).

The consulate closed early, probably because they did not want visitors to see the 70 picketers. Alongside PSC members marched other unionists, activists in the Killer Coke campaign, and a few students. A FECODE teacher wrote to the New York union the next day: “We appreciate your connection to this jornada through your picket in New York, and we know the significance it has for our country.”

11/5/04: Death Squads Threaten to Assassinate Leaders of SINTRAUNICOL, the PSC Sister Union in Colombia: PSC Sends Letters of Protest and Support

E-mail from the José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers’ Collective in Colombia: “On October 30 a leaflet was delivered to the offices of SINTRAUNICOL in Bogotá, threatening its leaders: ‘The National University Commando AUC [paramilitary organization] will kill the following guerillas: Antonio Flores, Milena Cobos, Ariel Diaz, Carlos Gonzalez, Eduardo Camacho and Alvaro Villamizar. They will be executed this term. We warn that all other members of this organization must renounce their membership now. The trade union must disappear.’”

SINTRAUNICOL, the union of university staff workers, is a sister union of the PSC; we have met with several of its members (including Carlos Gonzalez and Ariel Diaz). Ariel Diaz replied to our last letter saying it was really helpful to them for us to send statements to the Uribe government. Now the International Committee calls on all PSC members to do that, protesting this latest death threat. At www.psc-cuny.org, click on “Committees” in the upper right-hand corner, and scroll down to “International Committee” to see a sample letter for e-mailing to the Uribe government.

A 2003 text from SINTRAUNICOL gives a sense of its struggles as a university union, with some obvious similarities to our own:

May the University Live in Colombia: Critical Human Rights Situation in the Colombian Universities

The neoliberal model in the universities:
The neoliberal model shows that education, formerly considered a right, is now a service. The national budget for higher education is steadily reduced; many public universities have been closed for lack of budget. (As places are being closed in the university, ironically, places are opening in the army and in jail.) University autonomy is threatened; banks and the IMF decide the future of the universities. Reduction of the size of the state means employees and professors are fired.

The University and Armed Conflict:
Social and armed conflict has an extremely high cost in lives and in economic and political costs. The universities have attracted the attention of all the actors in the conflict. The development of thought and knowledge do not escape unharmed. In the university crucial themes of the search for transformation of society are discussed, and this link has cost many lives. Students, professors, workers, employees, leaders, and their families have been victims; more than 55 members of the Colombian university community have been murdered in the last five years.

The government of Uribe and its Democratic Security Policy
The present government has openly adopted a policy of supporting the interest of transnational capital and obeying the demands of the IMF. The so-called strategy of democratic security attempts to adapt all the structure of the state to heighten the armed conflict and defeat the insurgency on and off the field of battle. This implies criminalization of social protest, because more than 2,400 directors, leaders, activists and ordinary citizens have been taken to court. In education they are imposing the policy of Educational Revolution. When students, workers, and professors protest, several universities have been raided; several teachers, activists, and students have been haled into court; some universities are being controlled by paramilitaries. The executive council of SINTRAUNICOL is receiving death threats and the government is not doing anything.