Students in Germany are on strike against fees, budget cuts and the commodification of education. A solidarity for the Oxford occupiers...
Solidaitiy statement:
I want to write you that i support your struggle against top-up fees and
hope you will stop these fees and the neo-liberal logic behind it.
I`m comming from the Netherlands but study political science at the
university of Duisburg in Germany. In Germany we had a first wave of protests in
December 2001 with strikes, demonstrations and students occupying universities,
buildings of polical parties etc. etc.
The second wave was a big strike in the state of Nordrhein Westfalia. The
strike went on for about 3 months in Spring 2002 and again we have occupied
universities and buildings of political parties.
Since November 2003 the third wave of protests started. Universities in
several states in Germany are on strike for about 2 weeks, than the next state
starts and so on. We disrupted about 5 live tv shows with banners chanting our
demands, we occupied buildings of universities, political parties and we
occupied a builing of the Bertelsmann corporation which is one of the
corporations that are behind the commercialisation of education in Europe. We disrupt
almost every event where members of the German- and state government are
speaking by organising blockades of the entrance. A couple of times we also
surrounded buildings where ministers ere speaking so they couldn`t get out. At the
same time there are alternative lessons in cities, underground etc. to inform
students and other citizens about the commercialisation of education.
I wish you gut luck with your struggle and hope to hear from you during the
European days of action at April 2 and 3!
In solidarity
René Schuijlenburg
Education is not for sale network
http://www.education-is-not-for-sale.org
I want to write you that i support your struggle against top-up fees and
hope you will stop these fees and the neo-liberal logic behind it.
I`m comming from the Netherlands but study political science at the
university of Duisburg in Germany. In Germany we had a first wave of protests in
December 2001 with strikes, demonstrations and students occupying universities,
buildings of polical parties etc. etc.
The second wave was a big strike in the state of Nordrhein Westfalia. The
strike went on for about 3 months in Spring 2002 and again we have occupied
universities and buildings of political parties.
Since November 2003 the third wave of protests started. Universities in
several states in Germany are on strike for about 2 weeks, than the next state
starts and so on. We disrupted about 5 live tv shows with banners chanting our
demands, we occupied buildings of universities, political parties and we
occupied a builing of the Bertelsmann corporation which is one of the
corporations that are behind the commercialisation of education in Europe. We disrupt
almost every event where members of the German- and state government are
speaking by organising blockades of the entrance. A couple of times we also
surrounded buildings where ministers ere speaking so they couldn`t get out. At the
same time there are alternative lessons in cities, underground etc. to inform
students and other citizens about the commercialisation of education.
I wish you gut luck with your struggle and hope to hear from you during the
European days of action at April 2 and 3!
In solidarity
René Schuijlenburg
Education is not for sale network
http://www.education-is-not-for-sale.org
e-mail:
Homepage:
Comments
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Thanks solidarity with the German students
27.01.2004 11:55
Please accept our thanks and we return messages of solidarity to you.
keep up the pressure
big snogs
Oxford Students xxx
Oxford Occupiers
European Mobilization
28.01.2004 13:32
Collecting the reflections at the European Social Forum in Paris, we understand that in the struggle against the mercantilisation of the education we have to enter in a new stage, where the local or national struggles do not have the capacity, for themselves, to give an efficacious reply to the actual neoliberal offensive against the world of the university, and the education in general.
Today, the attacks we suffer are not only statal, and our reply neither can be in this way; front the international and european offensive, we need to act in a co-ordinated way and to start walking together.
The General Acords of Trade and Services (GATS) of the WTO –that pretend to convert the education in a simple trade- and the Process of Bologna (of european integration in the universitarian subject) are the direct causes of the universitarian reforms that we are suffering in our countries.
For theses reasons, we make a call to the companions of the student movement of whole Europe to start a common sweep of discussion and struggle that culminates, in spring, in an european student mobilization against the Process of Bologna and the GATS, in the context of the european struggle against the European Constitution project that the social movements have decided to develop.
In order to discuss about this, to co-ordinate our struggles and to prepare this mobilization that has to represent the beginning of a common run, we invite you to an EUROPEAN STUDENTS MEETING, the March 13th and 14th of 2004 in BARCELONA.
To make it productive, we ask you for sending a representative delegation of your collective or student assembly; it is not an open assembly about the European Space of Upper Education but a meeting to mark a common calendar of mobilizations.
Disobey WTO, disobey Bologna, resist from universities!
Plataforma Mobilitzadora en Defensa de la Universitat Pública
(Coordinadora d’Estudiants dels Països Catalans, Associació d’Estudiants Progressistes, Alternativa Estel, MUA, and many faculty assemblies)
P.S.: For further information, and for all the logistic aspects of the meeting in Barcelona, please contact us and confirm, the soonest as possible, if you are going to come to Barcelona, to these electronic adress:
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