THEIR RESERVES AREN'T BIG ENOUGH... FOR THE DEPTHS OF OUR DESIRE
Throughout France students are mobilising...
All around us: 3.5 million unemployed, a growing mass of workers whose jobs
are on the line across the planet, the growing impoverishment of whole
continents whilst the wealth of the world never ceases to grow...
Here, even in Perpignan (TN: SW France) there are loads of us who live in
shit, unemployment, on a minimum income, grabbing a free ride on the
transport and tax system often not knowing where to sleep and what to eat.
Are our actions apolitical? Ridiculous question! It's unbelievable... as if
the wish to jeopardise the whole of society wasn't a political decision
aiming to provide a compliant and obediant workforce on demand. We are
opposing this set-up however naive we may be! We haven't understood at all!
Paying people as little as possible is the only way to be competitive within
a neo-liberal framework and to oppose restraints is to oppose the logic of
the market... In other words our action is as political as that which would
take the taxpayers money to Mururoa instead of investing it in education...
All around us despite the false pretences of the media the flood of
repression and exclusion is growing... Our future is being pawned, the
present brings its own impoverishments. There is the right to be layed off,
the right to despair or anger, there is the humiliation of immigrant
workers, there are the expulsions and the extraditions, there is the return
to moral, sexist and religious order, there is selection in our universities
and the employment exchanges, there is the teachers crisis, there is the
restructuring of the social security system. There is nothing but the rich
getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Then there's the police and wage
slavery which beckons. There's the take-over of education by the bosses and
Pasqua's schemes paid for out of public funds and there is racism.
20% of the population own 68% of its wealth whilst 60% make do with 12%. We
face the end of education for pleasure, we face Chernobyl and the hole in
the ozone, we face work which crushes us and unemployment which kills, we
face a growth in public begging - now forbidden as it was in Perpignan this
summmer, we face the fall of the APL, we face the right which attacks and
the left which lies, the unions in a state of crisis, we face a miserable
income and an income of misery, overcrowded prisons, housing crises,
boredom, a dead end future. We have had enough!
- Students on strike.
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SCALP-NANTES
MISERY... IT'S ALWAYS THE POOR YOU ATTACK THE MOST.
For more than 20 years the various austerity programmes continue. From that
of the socialists in 1983 to that of Juppe' they all have in common the aim
of building a liberal Europe (Maastricht Treaty) which imposes the need for
squeezing public expenditure (reducing the budget deficit). This anti-social
Europe is being built to make the old continent a competitive economic pole
in the world market. The aim is to bring down the cost of labour by giving
free reign to business interests but not workers (paying off public debt)
(...) This is why the state is making political decisions as to which
budgets to cut: education, health, ASSEDIC, social security... whilst
leaving alone, of course, armaments and the political gravy train (6% rise)
Must we continue to submit our health, education and the rest of our living
conditions to the laws of competition? The globalisation of the market
economy is synonimous with insecurity and poverty in the countries of the
North and intense misery in those to the South. Everywhere we can see the
installation of a real social apartheid between rich and poor regions,
prosperous urban centres and the rotting suburbs, health for the rich and
minimla security for the rest, schools and universities abandoned and
starved of funds... This divided development depends on people being willing
to take it (...)
It's well known: the thinner the carrot the bigger the stick. In order to
maintain this unequal social order the state announces repressive measures:
community policing since 1981, neighbourhood watch, a new penal code,
increassed police powers, video surveillance, repression of social
movements, Schengen agreements etc. Scapegoats must be found. Today France
is an openly racist country with racist laws. Finally there is the principle
of divide and rule: oppose the French and foreigners, workers and the
unemployed, the haves and the have nots, women and men...
The pillage and exploitation of the countries to the East as well as the
South is tearing apart social structures and on top of capitalist barbarity
we have religious and nationalist obscuranticism.
Our revolt against the logic of liberalism manifests itself by a refusal of
all authoritarian systems and a call for solidarity between individuals and
nations based on free exchange. We desire a share of wealth rather than
simply misery. With or without work we must aquire the means to live with
dignity. When we think of the profits linked to financial speculation and
also the fiscal fraud linked to it which in France, every year, is equal to
the budgetary deficit (230 billion francs) we no longer want them to speak
to us of sacrifice.
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RIOTS - JUSSIEU
30/11/95
* Demonstration of about 20,000 people better than the previous one (30,000
but that was before the transport strike)
* Students, school attenders but also the unemployed showed more determination.
* During the demo there were confrontations with the riot police but it is
hard to tell if this was the work of agents provocateurs or demonstrators
* The demonstrators moved on to Jussieu (as part of a national
co-ordination) and perhaps a thousand were there throughout the night.
* Attempts were made to form barricades (cars were overturned) but with
little success up until now. Only the ordinary police were called out.
* There were many arrests
FREEDOM PRESS
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