FREE TRANSPORT FOR ALL TRAVELLERS IS IT POSSIBLE?
The SNCF and the RATP, along with Air France and Air Inter, are the main
means available for French people to travel and get around. But these means
have to be paid for and they can be expensive an so many people cannot use
them. The right to freedom of movement is no no longer an inalienable right
since it depends on income if not skin colour. Today simple merchandise gets
around more easily than men and women.
How can we deal with this situation? We are taking advantage of this
exceptional period which has led to this wide social movement to have this
debate with the real operators of the transport system: the personnel on the
SNCF, RATP and the airlines. Even if there was no dialogue with the
government, we can rejoice in the fact that it exists and is developping
between many of our citizens whatever their social status (railway workers,
ticket inspecters, postal workers, 'users', employed, unemployed, students,
the insecure...)
The managements of these companies no longer transport us they take us for a
ride (TN translatable play on words - a rarity ;-)) Movement is a need and a
right (work, social relations, play). The bosses of the RATP and the SNCF
along with the French state, under cover of 'profit' or 'deficit reduction'
use and abuse their monopoly by putting up tarifs and closing lines.
They speak of non payment of fares but must the unemployed, the insecure or
students without income be forced to get about on foot or pay higher and
higher fares which, in any case, they cannot afford?
They speak of security but is it any solution to set up in the heart of the
metro and the railway stations arme militias (GPSR, CSA) ready to beat up
the homeless and the peanut sellers?
They speak of a public service but the contract plan for the SNCF is it not
simply another step towards dismanteling and privatising the railways?
Moreover, JC Bailly - the director general of the RATP - no longer speaks of
'users' but of 'customers'.
Is it really non-payment which costs so much to these public services or
rather the development on all the networks of videosurveillance, the
enormous cost of the computer system 'Socrates' (which had so many problems
when being set up), the maintenance of the anti-non-payment system
(automatic doors, electric eyes...) and the paramilitary militias: The
government and the boss class have clearly laid down their politics: that of
exclusivity and exclusion. Shortly the right to travel will be reserved for
a minority: those who have the means to pay. Faced with their critics the
managements float certain false hopes such as the project 'youth on the
RATP' or a 50% reduction in cost for season tickets for students and the
unemployed. But all this is quite insufficiant (...)
We propose the opposite: free transport for one and all. And this is far
more than just and empty slogan cut off from reality: let us debate, all
together, this notion of free transport and its application. Is it possible?
Partially? Fully? The right of movement should it be subservient to profit,
the logic of profit just like any other consumer product? We know what the
management thinks but what about the workers in the RATP, SNCF and the=
airlines?
Let us state that whatever the outcome of this movement that relations
between citizens be they users, non-payers, ticket inspecters or drivers can
exist other than by the agency of force and power and that they no longer
are forced to obey the dictates of profit imposed by some on the many
>Parlons de la gratuit=E9 des transports
>Dissolvons les milices ultra-s=E9curitaires
>Vivons et voyageons sans entraves !
>
>(Distribu=E9 dans des d=E9pots SNCF et RATP en gr=E8ve et au cours de la
>manifestation du 16 d=E9cembre =E0 Paris)
>
> R=E9seau No Pasaran, Reflex-Scalp Paris
> 21 ter rue Voltaire, 75011 Paris (France)
> Tel : 43 48 54 95
>
FREEDOM PRESS
http://www.lglobal.com/TAO/Freedom