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December 2, 2020 –
From Aotearoa Workers Solidarity Movement (New Zealand)

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On November 19 and 21, there were two days of mobilization and national protest that we consider important to review and analyze. In the first place, on Thursday, November 19, in which the National Unemployment Committee sought to focus its forces, marches were called in at least 22 cities in the country. That day in Bogotá a classic union mobilization was presented from the national park to the Plaza de Bolívar, from the morning hours, with about 7,000 attendees. The participation of the CUT is noteworthy, with health workers with ANTHOC, Sintraiss and the unemployed health union coordinator of this sector, Ade’s teachers and a small Adec column, USO oil companies, UNEB bank employees o Anebre, university workers like Sintraupn,

In addition, a vehicular caravan of union activists was added to the background of the mobilization, as well as inhabitants of popular neighborhoods and associations of recycling workers, while a small concentration for the freedom of political detainees was presented in the center of the city . In the day we participated with a small red-black and purple and black delegation activists from the Grupo Libertario Vía Libre together with colleagues from the Coordinator of Popular Education Processes (CPEP) En Lucha.

With demands focused on the demand for social measures against the current socio-health crisis and its economic impact, and compliance with the diffuse national list of demands, once again the only sector that carried out a partial and diminished strike was that of teachers state, and although it is possible that there have been low levels of labor abnormality in some state institutions and the judicial system, there was no real stoppage of general economic activity.

Two days later, on Saturday 21 of the same month, at least 15 mobilization activities, mainly concentrated in Bogotá, were summoned by a more disjointed group of social and political organizations, most of which were not carried out or were presented in very limited dimensions.

On that day in the capital, where the government’s strategy that combined militarization with the presence of soldiers and military police in the city center and discount days with the consumer fever of the third day without VAT was shown, a greatly diminished cultural act was presented in the Plaza de Bolívar that was supposed to pick up the attendees to 4 more activities and a concert in the Hippies Park, with strong disconnection from the rest of the day.

Likewise, there were small marches with dozens of attendees at the National University that resulted in clashes with the Police, as well as the Plaza de la Hoja in the center and the Los Héroes sector in the north. Later in the afternoon a few hundred people mobilized from the National Park to Calle 19 in front of the memorial plaque for Dilan Cruz. In the late evening, a more interesting neighborhood march was presented in Ciudad Bolívar and Bosa at night, which ended with a cultural event.

Balance elements

The activities of November 19 and 21, 2020, one year before the great day of national protest in 2019, show a considerable ebb and represent a relative political defeat of the popular movement. What is supposed to be the second general strike of the year and the seventh movement of this type during the government of Iván Duque after the meager call in 2018 and the fluctuating 4 days called in 2019, showed scant results, and even more limited than those of the calls prior to November of last year.

Although the second semester of the current year showed a reactivation of the levels of mobilization, it is clear that due to various factors that we must investigate in depth and may go through physical and political exhaustion, the pandemic and the economic crisis, the repression against certain sectors Politicians, or the effects of the revolt of September 9 and 10, there was no continuity with the movement of last year and the sectors of popular youth that emerged in the last two months of 2019 have fragmented and retreated. Twenty-oneism, this is the ritual call for mobilization every 21st of the month in the hope of keeping alive the November-December 2019 movement, which began its ritual dynamics in January of this year and was installed since August, I conclude as was evident from early on, with a clear failure.

The mobilizations of November 19 and 21 of this year, the second in a much more dramatic way than the first, were clearly smaller than the day of the protest a month ago, carried out on October 21, which achieved the assistance from more diverse social sectors and a greater concurrence of union bases. On this day, several of the supposedly convening organizations such as the ACRES student bureaucracy or the pension confederations had less than symbolic attendance. On the other hand, there is simply no framework for comparison with the massive union and popular mobilization in the center of the capital that occurred within the framework of the national strike on November 21, 2019.

Although it is not a new phenomenon, the union movement showed its interconnected problems of bureaucratization and fragmentation, in which, on the one hand, a majority of small unions fail to convene their board of directors to march with union permission, and on the other, medium-sized organizations They incorporated a large number of young people paid to carry flags and banners, whose presence sometimes exceeds the number of affiliates, and where the artists hired to energize are central, despite their few protest elements.

Partly due to the severe impact of the pandemic and the social distancing measures, the grassroots social work that we had identified as vital to rebuilding the movement that emerged from the 2019 national days of protest, weakened or paralyzed. Addressing this task continues to be urgent from the libertarian socialist perspective, although it will clearly be necessary to face it under the new circumstances of relative withdrawal of the movement.

Up those who fight!

Libertarian Group Via Libre