Withdraw the police, stop the repression
The resignation of Oaxacan governor Ulises Ruiz
Justice for the people of Oaxaca
The struggle in Oaxaca began on May 22 when Section 22 of the teachers
union went out on strike. On June 14, the governor, Ulises Ruiz, brutally
repressed the teachers with a mobilization of several thousand police.
Several teachers and other protestors were killed. In response the
masses of people from all sectors joined to form a peaceful resistance
under the banner of APPO, "The Popular Assembly of the Peoples
of Oaxaca." (see interview with Gilberto López y Rivas)

Oaxaca's people's movement has garnered widespread support throughout
Mexico and the world, but the Mexican government has been preparing
for a brutal takeover of the city.

www.answercoalition.org
Oaxaca
- look what's going down
By Benjamin Melançon,
Posted on Mon Oct 30th, 2006 at 01:19:55 PM EST
In a state in Mexico with little money, and not much of that going
to public services, teachers hold their annual strike for better wages
and against the imposition of fees on children who go to school.
The state government is less tractable this year, and has police
attack the teacher's encampment on the zocalo in Oaxaca. The teachers,
without guns, repel this attack.
A huge, loose network of popular groups pledge solidarity with the
teachers, and the central demand of the movement - a demand supported
by the majority of people in the state - becomes the resignation or
removal of the corrupt governor.
At the same time, they begin setting up new forms of self-government,
many directly based on or inspired by indigenous forms of local self-government,
and creating a democratic coalition called the APPO, to push for broad
changes in state and local government to begin respecting, and meeting
the needs, of the population, which is majority indigenous and where
many have long been excluded from exercising power and left in poverty.
The state government, while ceasing to function in almost all normal
respects, wages a low-intensity dirty war against the rebellious population
through police officers in plain clothes and, well, thugs. They kill
at least thirteen people over the course of the half-year since the
people's uprising began, and the government ceased to function (while
the governor who precipitated the rebellion refuses to leave). Meanwhile,
the protesters, who have put up barricades in the city of Oaxaca to
fend off these attacks, kill no one.
A central part of the struggle, from the start, is control of and
access to information. The police destroyed the teacher's small mobile
radio station in the initial attack, and student allies soon began
broadcasting from a public university. Supporters of the movement
took over a number of government and commercial radio stations, and
while state and private security forces have struck back and knocked
some stations off the air, the movement is giving voice to a people
long excluded from public conversation.
The thirteenth person that the ruling PRI-affiliated attackers kill
is an independent, activist journalist from the United States, Brad
Will of Indymedia. Days later, the Mexican federal government sends
militarized police into the state. They do not go after the murderers,
but instead use tanks and force to try to dislodge the nonviolent
social movements from the city of Oaxaca. At least one boy is killed
by a federal police tear-gas canister. The people of Oaxaca still
hold the zocalo, the city's public space.
What's the box in your living room telling you, if anything? Do
you believe the story sold to you in the newspapers, that this is
some sort of evenly-divided internal conflict - does that really ring
true, as the struggle continues despite the weight of government against
the protesters? - rather than a vast movement of the dispossessed
against corrupt and uncaring government?
Reporting on the Drug War & Democracy from Latin America since 2000,
the Narco News Bulletin has been reporting from Oaxaca since long
before the teacher's strike began, let alone became a revolution.
The U.S. newspapers simply have not had people there, yet they consistently
report authoritatively, and always in ways that reinforce entrenched
power and exclude the perspective of the powerless.
Please, if you want to understand the situation at all, read Narco
News, http://narconews.com/ (Supported
by donations to the Fund for Authentic Journalism - http://www.authenticjournalism.org/
)
WE WANT OUR COUNTRY BACK
AND
THE TROOPS HOME FROM IRAQ
MASSIVE SIT-IN:
Nov
7 & 8
The
White House
Washington,
D.C.
A message from Cindy Sheehan: We hope that there are enough Americans
who are willing to stand up and be counted with us to demonstrate
to BushCo and Congress, Inc. that we are tired of having our rights
taken away from us faster than our bombs destroyed Babylon. We are
tired of having our young people die and kill innocent people to enhance
corporate America’s bottom line. We are tired of the constant
drip, drip, drip of the wearing away of everything that we hold dear.
I withdrew my consent to be governed by maniacs long ago. I withdraw
my consent to be hauled off to Guantanamo and be stashed away for
matriotically dissenting from this crime-ridden regime. Are you sick
and tired of being sick and tired of the corruption and heartache?
Show your discontent with us. Vote absentee so your vote will have
a better chance of being counted and join Gold Star Families for Peace
and other prominent peace groups and organizations in our continuing
quest to end the illegal and immoral occupation of Iraq and hold our
government accountable.
Info:
GoldstarfamiliesforPeace.org
or
email campcaseymom@yahoo.com
word of the demo from:
What's
a Citizen to DO?
ABSOLUTELY MUST READ:
Bush Moves Toward Martial Law
by Frank Morales, October 26, 2006; towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/911
