Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 14:43:29 +0200 (MET DST) From: malecki-AT-algonet.se (Robert Malecki) Subject: M-I: Cockroach Flash! Hundreds close down parliment! Monday, October 21, 1996 Ume=E5, Sweden In a growing atomsphere of rage and militancy the local parliment for one of the biggest Communes (States) in the north of Sweden, hundreds of demonstraters took over the parliment house while it was in session today and closed it down! As the representatives of the parliment from the Social Democracy to the right wing bougeois parties in unison condemned this takeover as "anarchy" and "unacceptable" hundreds of youth and to back them up many women cleaning workers in a quiet and disiciplined rage with their placards demanding a stop to the cutbacks in the public sector took over the parliment building while in session forcing these grey bureaucrats to first whine, then scream and threaten with the police for disturbing their meeting to make even more cuts in the public sector! To no avail the building just kept filling and filling with enraged and determined demonstraters with one message. That's it ! No More cuts. The perverbial drop that made the bucket run over after a number of years of deep cuts into the public sector throwing hundreds and thousands of mainly women out onto unemployment and social welfare was new plans by the Social Democrats and their bougeois allies of a new round of cuts. These cuts were a scheme to privatize the cleaning women's jobs, contracting them out to small or big private cleaning firms, instead of having these women employed by the Commune (state) as their employer as has been the norm in the whole of Sweden.There is a long term tradition that the public sector (childcare, healthcare and care of the old) be in the hands of the state and commune. Thus putting the cleaning women into the hands of private companies which would lessen their job security, pay and benefits was the igniting spark to today's demonstration and occupation. This linked to the massive cuts in Daycare cernters for children and activity centers for the older youth, who are also the biggest sector of the population worst hit by permanent unemployment, (35 percent of the youth under 25 years old do not have or never have had a job) was the spark that led to todays militant demonstration and occupation of the Commune parliment while in session. Naturally the above must be seen in the context of the growing desperation of nearly a quarter of the adult population and a large majority of both women, foreign nationals and youth have been hit hardest by unemployment and the general rollback of the public sector. That is a million adults either out on the dole or job retraining. But also that larger and larger sections of the grass roots of the Social Democracy no longer believe that this party who has represented them for years if not decades has deserted them for their bougeois partners in the Center Party, the political demands of the middle class, and a ticket into the common market and the monetary union. This political split by a growing segment of the population from the Social Democracy linked to the cuts and unemployment which appears to have created a permanent class of poor people for the first time in Sweden since the depression. It is not only a split from the Social Democracy but a deep hate for any of the present political parties that is growing here. Thus the demonstrations recently both locally and nationally have a very spontaneous character and are usually started and led by people with no *real* political experience other then being in a trade union. Another interesting point is that it is women! who stand at the head of these iniatives! Already the politicians are doing a grandstand number about these new and frightening events for them. First trying with whining, then threats of police throwing out the demonstrators and in fact a complete attitude of "how dare you come here and tell us our jobs", in other words out right contempt for the rightful demands put forth by the demonstators. Finally they were forced to ajourn the meeting because the demonstraters were determined to have their voices head. The left which is represented up here in the North of Sweden by the Euro-Communists, the militant group and the Usec (fake Trotskyists) and a growing group of militant anarchists have in a sense been rather late in hooking up to this growing radicalization. An unfortunately to not have a program or in fact a strategy for fighting for the leadership of this growing discontentment amongst the grass roots of the Social democracy. They are either tailing this movement or at best putting forth a couple of demands (mainly economic demands) in an attemp to outbid one another to the crowds. In fact none of these groups are prepared to tell the truth about the present crisis and especially its international consequences after the fall of the Soviet Union. These left groups are in a spiral of tailing this growing sentiment instead of using this new radicalization in an attempt to to link these struggles to what is going on in the rest of Europe and the neccessity of a new Communist International that is prepared to go all the way. In fact many of these one time potential revolutionaries are at best playing into the hands of the traditionalists and the trade union bureaucracy who at best want to go back to the "good old times" of the heydays of reformist Social Democratic politics of the post war boom. Not realizing that what is going on today is a new round of imperialist rivilry and preparations for the next war which will decide who gets what in a redivision of the world market. Today the attacks in most countries are directed at the reforms of the post war boom-tomorrow it will be the war drum beating of patriotism and new wars of conquests as the various imperialist powers decide who is going to get what The only way forward for poor and working class people is already NOW at the beginning of this new cycle of wars and revolutions in the coming period will be to forge a new revolutionary Communist International with sections in every country in the world. Armed with a program of struggle and International solidarity for poor and working class people the world over is the only way forward. That only Communists that have a program and the ideas of this kind of party are the Trotskyists. For all of us know that the present crisis in the last decades was and is the crisis of leadership! But the years of relative class peace and domination of the Social Democratic and Stalinist traitors in the workers movement has led to a crisis in the Trotskyist movement Internationally. Where many of the groups and parties who started out on a revolutionary or leftist foundation have moved far to the right and in fact have either incorporated a lot of Social democratic or Stalinist political garbage in their politics along the way or they have liquidated the programatic basis for a real revolutionary Communist International along the way. Only by returning to the fundemental documents and tactics of the Bolsheviks,The documents of the first four congresses of the third International, the history of the Left Opposition and the founding documents of the Fourth International can we find a way forward to lead the coming revolutionary uppsurges that will arise in the future. Victory to the Youth and cleaning women and their rightful demands. Lets turn Ume=E5 Commune into the second Paris Commune! Towards the reforging of a Trotskyist Revolutionary International! Bob Malecki Robertsfors, Sweden ------------------------------------------------------- http://www.kmf.org/malecki/ Read the book! Ha Ha Ha McNamara, Vietnam-My Bellybutton is my Crystalball! COCKROACH, a zine for poor and workingclass people NOW ON LINE -------------------------------------------------------- --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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