US: Solidarity protest
Protest November 20: Defend the Oaxaca Commune
17/11/2006
US, Mexico, Hands off Oaxaca!
Troops and police out of Oaxaca!
For a general strike until Ulises Ruiz falls!
For a government of the APPO and the workers’ organizations!
Demonstration
Monday, Nov.
20, 3PM
Kennedy Plaza
Providence
In Oaxaca (pronounced wa-HA-ka), a city in southern Mexico, the workers
and poor people are storming the heavens, leading a heroic struggle to
overcome the poverty and oppression imposed on them by the government of
bosses and landlords. What began as a teachers’ strike in May grew into
a general revolt in June when the governor of Oaxaca state, Ulises Ruiz
Ortiz (URO), sent heavily armed police to attack the striking teachers,
driving them out of Oaxaca’s main square, the Zócalo. The workers and
poor people of Oaxaca responded in self-defense by re-occupying the
Zócalo and a large proportion of the city, setting up the Popular
Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) which has functioned as an
alternative government of the city and the central organizer of the
people’s struggle, and vowing to continue the struggle until URO resigns.
The governments of the US and Mexico, which serve the interests of the
bankers, business owners, and landlords, can not allow the Oaxaca
Commune to become an example of how the workers can throw out the
government of their oppressors and build their own government to solve
the universal problems of poverty, racism, and war that no bosses’
government can ever solve. Thousands of Mexican army and federal police
forces attacked and occupied Oaxaca on October 28, killing dozens of
APPO supporters and kidnapping or disappearing at least sixty-six
comrades (as of a November 4 tally in the Mexican newspaper El
Universal). But the people of Oaxaca have not been defeated, the APPO
and the other organizations have pledged to continue the struggle until
their demands are met, and protests against the repression have erupted
around the world. The Oaxaca Commune can succeed if the teachers’ strike
is expanded into a general strike throughout Mexico, and if workers and
their allies in the US and internationally take militant actions
including massive demonstrations, strikes, and boycotts of aid cargo to
the Mexican government.
A victory for the people of Oaxaca is a victory for all the workers and
oppressed people of the US, because it will be a defeat for the same
bosses who are imposing poverty, war, and racist oppression on all of
us. Help us build this demonstration! Distribute this flier and build a
Oaxaca solidarity committee in your workplace, union, or school! We call
on all the unions, workers’ and student organizations to join us in
mobilizing for this demonstration!
For more background information on the struggle in Oaxaca, check out
Working Class Emancipation’s new bulletin on Oaxaca, with thirty three
pages detailing the history of the Oaxaca Commune and our perspective on
the situation in Mexico and the solidarity movement in the United
States. $1 union printed.
Working Class Emancipation
