This is what democracy looks like today, people have realized that if wish to claim their freedom, if they take away vested rights or the right to collective bargaining only is the streets ... they
There are currently some 30,000 people camped in the capital of Wisconsin Madison has been demonstrations that some have estimated to have reached to be 80,000 people.
I take this opportunity to point out that in Madison, Wisconsin, with a few thousand demonstrators camping including inside the Capitol, there has not been a single arrest or violent incident. In fact, the Madison Police issued a press release congratulating the protesters can demonstrate that non-violent protest. H been an almost entirely peaceful activities, full of annoying people without a doubt, many angry insurance, but not violent, in fact organized to keep the premises clean.
When we remember the brutal episodes of violence police who has lived Puerto Rico, including the Capitol, when we remember the restrictions that the legislature has imposed in Puerta de Tierra, we know beyond doubt that our island, which has affected a vicious and wild pattern of violations of fundamental civil rights . That's why the comments of, say, Rep. Luis Gutierrez are applauded while the resident commissioner excuses not project any credibility or seriousness. The evidence is submitted and compare the events in Puerto Rico and Wisconsin clearly shows the differences.
The battle in Wisconsin is the beginning of a struggle that leads the attack against Republican unions and middle class families. Similar attacks are expected by Republican governors in Ohio and New Jersey and some 21 other states "trifecta" states in which both houses of the Legislature are held by Republicans, as the case of Puerto Rico. When we recall the disastrous implementation of Law 7 we can fully understand the kind of neoliberal strategy that breaks out again.
Some analysts predict that the protest process in Wisconsin has begun to spread, for example the state of Ohio has seen demonstrations, which can be converted into a scenario in which at least 38 states recorded demonstrations mass. We should be questioning what the reaction to our island when we see that the American nation has raised thousands if not millions of people to fight injustice with which we have lived these past two years on the island.
What causes these events?
teachers and college professors say they are struggling to survive.
In Puerto Rico there are similar concerns among teachers but we still see areas by rethinking what is idealistic clearly ahead. These famous dreamers with their hesitations seem to be, worth say unconscious, pandering to the proposal to redefine the industrial bases of the university system if for some cases hoping to achieve some kind of collaboration that allows repeat some of their benefits. Armed with flowery prose constructions and conceptual mirages games deny the harsh reality that so clearly American schools fail diagnosing. Things paths.
Wisconsin analysis is clear and unfortunate, would increase health plan costs and stability game is a contract - the contract a teacher could be negotiated each year without necessarily having to honor considerations of permanence. The professors would have to completely redefine their relationship as an individual professional service without further assurances.
Teachers recognize that the current situation with clear references to the protest movements in countries like Egypt and Tunisia, and the current struggles in Libya and Iran, is a great educational moment in which civil rights (workers' rights are civil rights as so eloquently said Martin Luther King) and the sovereign power of the masses actually illustrate concepts of justice and democracy beyond the usual political procedures.
John Russo, professor and codirector of the Center for labor studies at Youngstown State University in Ohio said in a legislative hearings: "This is a real teachable moment. We have this debate about the role the public sector. This is a true test of democracy. "
Republicans in virtually every state where they are in power are following a similar strategy, targeting universities and public sector unions in Ohio, Indiana, Idaho, Tennessee , Nebraska, and Florida, to name just a few states.
Through Wisconsin schools and universities have been closed by teachers, students and communities to defend their right to education. Workers and students from Wisconsin representing the rights of workers everywhere. They have done this despite threats from the governor to mobilize the National Guard who recently returned paradoxically be fighting in Iraq and now face the possible order of battle in their own neighborhoods against their neighbors, relatives and friends.
"Power pal ' Pueblo ('Power to the People') "is heard of the alliance of workers and students as they occupy the Capitol filling every inch of the building.
His approach is fundamental: the Capitol is owned by the people of Wisconsin and is supposed to work for the common good and welfare of the people. When used on their lives, people have a legal and moral right to take it again. Is raised again in a dramatic way the First Amendment: the right of people to meet in open meeting and require remedies to their grievances.
Is this the same First Amendment that we stand for Puerto Ricans who we are limited to confined spaces and rights of expression prohibited activities?
protests of public employees in Wisconsin are actually a "battle of a coming national war," according to Professor Raphael Sonenshein of California State University at Fullerton. The fight for the rights of public employees in Wisconsin is relevant to people across the nation, and is looking nationally. Moves like this are happening beyond Wisconsin because the Republicans have been pushing for limiting the power of unions. "You has a number of new Republican governors who have a strong agenda to weaken the bargaining rights of the public sector, "said Professor Sonenshein.
Solidarity between workers and teachers to support students. The Republican proposals, such as that being discussed in Wisconsin, acquired rights and eliminate the bargaining rights of faculty and staff of the University of Wisconsin, while nearly eliminating the negotiations for the remaining workers.
undo authorization Apart of university faculty to unionize, cut retirement benefits and sick pay university employee. The Republican governor and his supporters say they will close the budget deficit. Opponents, however, described the plan as an unabashed ideological effort to cripple unions in a state with a strong history of organized labor and to begin to transform public education in a private company.
Students and teachers also expressed concerns that the deterioration in negotiation skills, with reduced benefits, hinder retention of faculty. "It shocking to Wisconsin, because we are known for excellence in education, "says Jessica Scholl, a student at the University of Wisconsin in Eau Claire.
addition, Wisconsin, losing the right to negotiate salary, the proposals would need to increase pension contributions to 5.8 percent of their salaries. The contribution to health insurance would also be doubled, to 12.6 percent.
Peter Rickman, a member of the Association of educational assistants and a third year student of law at the Madison campus, said had grown into a family that believed in collective bargaining to maintain a middle class existence. His reaction, Rickman said, "I feel like we have been kicked in the ass." Without being able to negotiate lower wages ensure more concerned with benefits such as health plan and lose the protections of "just cause" against arbitrary disciplinary proceedings " , according to labor lawyer Timothy E. Hawks, means that "the faculty and academic staff have lost everything."
quote from a letter I have posted:
"Everything is under threat. Propose to terminate the right of collective bargaining for all public employees, including faculty. You lose the right of the right to negotiate wages and working conditions. You lose the power authority to ensure due process in labor offenses against tax administrators. You lose the right of the right to define merit. Be forfeited negotiated intellectual property. You lose the right to academic freedom. Lost property rights related to the number of positions and removal. All this would be replaced by administrative fiat. "
http://ortizfeliciano.blogspot.com/2011/02/carta-de-un-profesor-de-la-universidad.html
theorists of rhetoric, citing the work of Michael Calvin McGee and Maurice Charland, recognize that collective identities are not given, but constructed in discourse. While the rhetoric often discussed how individual texts create identities for their audiences, it seems that the collective identity is forged in the protests of Wisconsin and Puerto Rico, as in Egypt and Tunisia, and now in the heat of battle a Libya without political parties is not a leader or a core group, but is generated through various and diffuse samples. At this point we again have an impact on comparisons to be drawn from the protest movements in Egypt and Tunisia. This novel phenomenon in a way that adverse conditions or oppressive, or in the case of Puerto Rico and Wisconsin government proposals promoting protest movements that do not respond to previous patterns of centralized leadership and concepts defined ideologies changes .
so at this point now and force Puerto Ricans see as some commentators insist on forcing schemes obviously are irrelevant: the need to proceed to action ignoring these processes of intellectual debates with their utopian ideologies of the future. As posed by Dr. Mohammed ElBaradei, while protesting, we take an aside and discuss whatever.
As I mentioned to Egypt include the most recent column by economist Paul Krugman Nobel Prize in the New York Times:
"Last week, referring to demonstrations ... Representative Paul Ryan did not want a convenient comparison: "It's like Cairo has moved to Madison." ... It was not the smartest thing to Mr. Ryan say, as unlikely to want to compare Mr. Walker (Governor of Wisconsin), a fellow Republican, to Hosni Mubarak ... In any case, however, Mr. Ryan had more reason than he knew. What is happening in Wisconsin is not on the state budget, although Mr. Walker pretend you are trying to be fiscally responsible. It's about power. What Mr. Walker is trying to do is to make Wisconsin less a functioning democracy and more an oligarchy ... In principle, every American citizen has an equal voice in our political process. In practice, of course, some are more equal than others. The billionaires can finance armies of lobbyists, can fund studies to propose preconceived ideas on political, can spend money on political views compatible (like the Koch brothers did in the case of Mr. Walker). On paper, we are a nation of one vote per person, in fact, are only slightly more than a bit of an oligarchy, where a handful of rich people dominate. Given this reality, it is important to have institutions that can act as counterweights to the power of money. And the unions are among the most important of these institutions ... There is a bitter irony here. The fiscal crisis in Wisconsin, as in other states, was caused largely by the increasing power of the oligarchy ... "
Any resemblance to Puerto Rico and the government spent a hundred millionaire friends of the Governor does not seem a coincidence. And this comment from Krugman can add to the detriment of public universities autonomous institutions is also undermine institutions that can challenge the government.
"This is a time of Martin Luther King . Here is where it is. This is the epicenter of the struggle for the future ... Labor rights are civil rights! Labour rights are human rights! .. This is the first long battle to restore the integrity ... "so spoke the Reverend Jesse Jackson in Wisconsin and said:" The labor laws, barriers to unions, they were placed to prevent workers unite to make it impossible ... rise up together ... Now, after all these years, we are joining. "Jackson, who was with Martin Luther King supported a strike by workers in Memphis when he was killed, said:" This is a time of Martin Luther King. "
Wisconsin and Puerto Rico joined the public education issues and working conditions of teachers and university employees. In Wisconsin and Puerto Rico without a doubt the examples of protests in Egypt, Tunisia and inspire faith in the ability of peaceful demonstrations. In Wisconsin and Puerto Rico economic issues are only a facade of camouflage civil rights principles and human rights are actually at risk. When we hear people argue that the issues are different, that the interests of teachers and students are different are wrong.
know that teachers and educators are critically important to the success and growth of the business of education. Without these opportunities are scarce for people to achieve their goals, without which the society is impeded progress towards its development. Being an educator is not just a job, is a call to pursue the good of others and the collective welfare. There can be a teacher but in the context of his relationship with a student. It essentially false to speak of the existence of teachers without students is the wood carpenter, the fisherman without seas, rivers or lakes. Always need your passion to achieve our dreams. A classroom without students even with a teacher, is an empty space. There may be university without buildings like when the earthquake destroyed the university in Port-au-Prince, because there were college students, what is there can be no university without students but has thousands of teachers and hundreds of buildings. It is inescapable symbiosis, creative and beautiful.
also no education without teachers or students, are the very blood of the universities. Actions that violate the rights of students undoubtedly undermine public education enterprise thus undermine the entire university community. When we next hear or read diatribes convoluted that what they propose is the division rather than unity we must be clear que el proceso de lucha depende estrictamente de la solidaridad. Las propuestas colaboracionistas son falsas en su faz porque realmente son ceder derechos. Como dijo el abogado laboral de Wisconsin: si ceden “la facultad y el personal académico lo han perdido todo.”
Hoy 22 de febrero de 2011 se celebra una asamblea de estudiantes de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, recinto de Río Piedras, las decisiones que se tomen han de ser hechos fundamentales en una lucha que tiene su contraparte en la lucha en Wisconsin. Esperemos que la unidad y claridad de objetivos se imponga y que la fuerza de espíritu los vuelva to accompany. On my behalf and on behalf of thousands of Puerto Rican solidarity attest, I hope that even their teachers, although many have been fully solid support, recognize that the struggle of students is everyone's fight.
Kamal Abbas, General Coordinator of the Center for Trade Unions and Workers Services in Cairo, he sent a message to the demonstrators in Wisconsin:
" I am speaking from a place near Tahrir Square in Cairo, "the square of liberation", which was the heart of the revolution in Egypt. This is the where many of our young people paid with their lives and blood to fight for our just rights. From this place, I want you to know that we are with you as you were with us. [...] No one believed that our revolution could succeed against the dictatorship in the region stronger. But in 18 days, the revolution achieved victory for the people. When Egypt began working class revolution 9 and 10 February, the dictatorship was condemned and the people's victory became inevitable. We want you to know that we are at your side. Be firm and not resign. Do not give away their rights. The victory always belongs to the people to sign requires fair rights. "
traducción, edición y redacción adicional.
roberto 'pachi' ortiz feliciano
posdata.- publicado este escrito se desprenden al menos dos temas urgentes que se asocian a dicha temática y perspectiva, a saber:
el proceso de la educación pública, las escuelas y los maestros; y,
un análisis de los temas económicos que sirven de alegatos de las acciones de los republicanos en sus acometidas neoliberales.
Veremos si podemos atender prontamente these issues while others urge colleagues to address those problems.
ROF (22/02/1911)
pdd .- Thousands Protest in Wisconsin and Ohio under the snow (see comments).
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