[progchat_action] Venez popular movement responds to RCTV events
 
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2007 01:01:47 -0500 (CDT)


As in 2002, the Revolution Will be Defended with Popular and Worker
Articulation and Mobilization

By Gonzalo Gsmez
New Socialist

Once again the paradox of the "whip of the [counter] revolution" advancing
the revolution has been fulfilled. The "soft coup" offensive has caused the
reanimation of forces that usually remain sleepy in periods of greater
political stability. This time, we have escaped the new "media war" -
unleashed with the non-renewal of the RCTV concession - in the face of the
staging of actors and extras of the coupist right (conscious or not). The
popular movement has responded as it did before the conjuncture of April 11,
2002, constituting and attempting to develop a call for articulation and a
united front of national and regional social organizations, together with
local organizations of the Metropolitan Area of Caracas.

During the initial days of the reactionary offensive, and in the absence of
a clear line of action on the part of the government and political
operatives related to the state, the popular movement and social
organizations convened themselves and began to work together in coordination
assemblies and a Sala Situacional Popular (Popular Town Hall). This brought
together the FNCEZ, the C-CURA/UNT, ANMCLA, Comitis de Tierras Urbanas
(Urban Community Committees), Comiti de los Sin Techo (Committee of the
Homeless), Foro Itinerante de Participacisn Popular (Itinerant Forum for
Popular Participation), Cmrculos Bolivarianos (Bolivarian Circles), Consejos
Comunales (Community Councils), and other social factors of the
revolutionary process. This meeting promoted defensive actions of popular
spaces and spaces for mobilization to face up to or counter right-wing
actions, before and after President Chavez's address to the marches that had
converged on Bolmvar Avenue.

Among the actions that we carried out was the joint action of the popular
sectors of La Vega, alternative community media, and participant popular
organizations in the call for articulation, that dissuaded student
protesters from the private universities (UCAB and others), who were trying
to leave from there to advance towards Miraflores. Confronted with the
popular presence they chose to retreat towards Conferencia Episcopal.

Meanwhile, workers from various unions of the Metropolitan Area, principally
from the public sector (FENTRASEP), tied to C-CURA, held a preventive
assembly in the Plaza Miranda, the starting point of the failed opposition
march.

The articulation of social organizations helped the mobilization of
socialist students when they launched their counteroffensive in the UCV.

Also, students of the M 28 supported the Frente Nacional de Abogados
Bolivarianos (National Front of Bolivian Lawyers, FNAB) and the Fuerza
Socialista de Profesionales y Ticnicos (Socialist Force of Professionals and
Technicians, FSPT), when they concentrated in front of the TSJ to demand
speed in the opening of the trial against the owners of the Globovisisn for
the violation of human rights and against RCTV for propagating prostitution
and pornography.

Fuel transport workers (gandoleros) were integrated in this articulation and
announced to the transport and construction business owners in MINEP that
they would take control over their transport trucks (gandolas) in order to
guarantee distribution in the event of any sabotage attempt. They stated,
firmly, that they would not stop transport, in spite of non-compliance and
employer provocations with respect to payment of salaries and debts, because
they were aware that this is what the coupist bosses were trying to provoke.
In order to solve the problem, they argued to MINEP that, because it was
already paying service to insolvent employers, it should resolve to pay
workers directly and should nationalize fuel transport because it is a
central and strategic issue for national security.

The right-wing, pro-RCTV student demonstrations forced a shake-up of the
revolutionary student movement which had found itself in a prolonged ebb and
put up for discussion themes and objectives that had not occupied the first
page on the agenda of the revolution; these included the reclamation of the
popular character of the universities, lost with the elitist character of
the neoliberal restructuring of higher education and the conversion of
universities into enclaves of the right during the period of application of
the neoliberal measures of the Fourth Republic. This misunderstood
"autonomy" which the right tries to defend in order to move aside national
plans concerning university education in accordance with the transition
toward a socialist model, became a boomerang against the dictatorship of the
authorities at the private universities. The democratic transformation of
the universities for the revolution was put on the agenda.

Another reactivated question was the fight against impunity, considering the
fact that the same coupists as always continue acting with impunity in the
current period, without producing an appropriate and forceful conduct of
justice.

Of course, the subject of RCTV becoming one of the fundamental affairs on
the political agenda goes beyond the decision not to renew the concession of
the capitalist owners of this enterprise; therefore, as the revolutionary
protesters yelled in Bolmvar Avenue. "Now Let's Take Globovisisn!", with
which they were point toward the socialization of the media as a true path
to full freedom of expression, putting them in the hands of communities,
workers, the new popular communicators of the alternative community media,
and of the social organizations of the revolutionary process.

Also it has served, this whip of the bourgeoisie, to tighten the
anti-imperialist struggle and develop the consciousness achieved by the
Venezuelan people in this sense.

The "soft coup" offensive is becoming an opportunity to drive forward
popular initiative, to advance the levels of mobilization, organization and
consciousness, to propose and struggle for measures that deepen the
revolution towards the definitive rupture with capitalism and the
construction of socialism. From the experience of April 2002 arose the
chant, "If They Come Like on the 11th, We'll Come Out Like on the 13th!" Now
the chant is: "Permanent 13th, so the 11th Won't Return!", such that the
"soft coup" doesn't become a "hard coup." Revolution will be defended by
making revolution; socialism will be built through socializing. And,
therefore, it is necessary to continue articulating and strengthening the
organization of workers and popular movements.
*********

This article appears in the first issue of Marea Clasista y Socialista (June
23, 2007), published by former members of the Party of Revolution and
Socialism who have joined the PSUV, the new party created by Chavez.
Translation by Jeff Webber.

http://www.newsocialist.org/index.php?id=1308

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