International Revolutionary Youth Camp

Balance from the permanent student workshop

Sunday 16 September 2007 by Antoine

At the permanent student workshop of the camp we were gathered a number of comrades from Spanish State (Castile, Andalusia, Catalonia), France, Italy, Greece, Denmark, German, Portugal, England and two comrades from distant Mexico!

The number of the daily participation of comrades ranged from 10 to more than 25, with a total number of comrades that attend at least ones the workshops to be approximately around 50.

Our estimation is that the attendance to the workshops as also the level of the discussions we had had been pretty much satisfying.

More specific, we dedicated the first two days of our meetings for gathering information about the different experiences of struggles we had the last year in our universities as also for exchanging information about the extend of the amplification of ‘Bologna Process’ in our universities, the steps that our governments had done the last year and their priorities for launching their neo-liberal counter-reforms at the status of public education.

As you can probably understand it is not easy for us to summarize either in details or even in some basic axes this discussion… That is why we decided each delegation to undertake the task of sending us (to the e-mail list of FI-youth) a short report about the status of their student movement and the governmental policies on the field of public education.

Hoping that this promise we made between us will be finally feasible we will focus to the next issue that we discussed in detail to the workshop:

This was our participation to the student coordination of the Students’ European Forum, the background of this initiative (Baikaku and Paris meeting), its perspectives, and our goals inside that.

Briefly, this coordination is emerged as an initiative of Spanish comrades (inside and outside of FI) for a radical coordination of european students. Its political context could be described as a radical anti-liberal platform, a platform that is opposing to Bologna Process as also to nowadays corporate university –a university closely related to the interests of capital and ruling classes.

Until now there have been organized two meetings (in Baikaku, Basques Country, March 2006 and in Paris, October 2007) of the Students’ European Forum as also a call for an European day of action against the privatization of public education (in 17 November of 2007) under the support of the 4th European Social Forum in Athens.

The participation in the coordination of the Students’ European Forum could be characterized satisfying. In Baikaku there were participations from Spanish State –Catalonia/Andalusia/Basques Country/ Castile, Italy, France, Portugal, German, Norway and in Paris from Spanish State –Catalonia/Andalusia/Basques Country/Castile, Italy, France, Greece, and England. Although that the participations in the Student’s European Forum have to strengthen (being for example more stable) and broaden, it is truth to recognize the fact that inside of that initiative is gathering the most advanced and representative experiences of student resistances against ‘Bologna Process’ and the construction of European Higher Education Space.

At this point we have also to note the attempt of the youths of the European Left Party (or at least some of them…) for one other student coordination (around 2002, in Berlin’s EU-Summit of Ministers of Education), an attempt that finally didn’t succeed to survive.

In our discussions in the permanent workshops we re-affirmed our tactic of intervention inside this coordination: we don’t consider Students’ European Forum to be a coordination of FI’s forces either a coordination of the European Anticapitalistic Left. We regard this initiative as an attempt for the coordination of social forces that surpass our forces. This is why we insist to the autonomy of this initiative from us and we will continue to invest our efforts for building that.

Inside this coordination we appreciate as extremely important the re-born of a new internationalism, an internationalism of the student fights of our period (from Italy to France and Spanish State and from Greece to Denmark). This is why we will put our efforts to strengthen the unity of those struggles working together with other forces for developing networks of solidarity between us and a united front of resistances against EU’s educational policies.

At last, we are fighting for the unification of our struggles with the struggles of workers in the field of education. We will work for a united step with them inside the social movements, inside the forms of European Social Forums.

At the end we focused to the organization of the 3rd meeting of European Student Forum, in Athens, Greece, 19-21 October 2007.

Considering important the successful organization of that meeting we will try to support it with our forces and our presence there.

Athens’ meeting is a chance for our forces for involving much more inside this coordination. It is also a challenge for enriching and strengthening it with the participations of student collectives with which we are working together in national level.

Summarizing the conclusions of the student workshop, we agreed to:

> gather shorts reports (of 1-2 pages) from our sections about the status of our student movement, the governmental educational policies etc. Estimating as extremely important this exchange of information we are willing to stabilize this short of communication inside the youth list of FI. We are calling from now for repeating this action before the next summer camp (organizing by this way more efficient our discussions in the eliminated time of the camp)

> have an electronic edition of the brochure that the greeks have published gathering reports from the students fights of the last year (2005-2006) from France, Spanish State, Italy, Denmark, Greece as also reports from German, Austria, and England. We are looking to put this electronic edition on the site of international viewpoint.

> support with our forces the coordination of the Students’ European Forum. That means: participating to Athens’ Meeting and if not at least being members of the e-mail list of the Students’ European Forum, fulfill the questionnaire of the coordination committee of S’EF, keeping internet links to its website (from the sites of our student organizations as also our youth organization site). (Both the e-mail list of Student’s European Forum as also the internet site of that will work in some days…)

For summarizing

Christos


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