Commentary: Oaxaca Teachers Strike Is About Defending The Revolutionary Educational Tradition
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Commentary: Oaxaca Teachers Strike Is About Defending The Revolutionary Educational Tradition
John Ackerman of UNAD says that acts of state violence, like the police killings at the Oaxaca teacher strike and the "disappearance" of 43 students Guerrero, show that Mexico is not a democracy
transcript
Commentary: Oaxaca Teachers Strike Is About Defending The Revolutionary Educational Tradition
JOHN ACKERMAN: Almost a dozen teachers and community members fell dead this Sunday, June 19 in Oaxaca. The press said this happened in clashes between police and teachers, as if it was somehow a balanced battlefield. No. This is not the case.
On one side we had federal police, masked gunmen with high-caliber weapons, at the service of a government which now has a long track record of assassinating, eliminating its adversaries in various parts of the country. On the other hand, we have teachers, armed with pencils and notebooks, defending their jobs, defending their freedom of speech, and high-quality education.
The Mexican government now has a few years, ever since, particularly, Enrique Pena Nieto came to power on December 1, 2012, weve had every few months massacres committed by state government forces. The most obvious case internationally known is the disappearance of 43 students and the assassination of another 3 on the night of September 26, 2014 in Iguala, Guerrero. Students from the Ayotzinapa teachers college. But before that we had the Tlatlaya massacre. After that, Apatzingan, [inaud.].
The Mexican security forces are out of control. There is no limitation of force, and there is a systematic abuse of human rights. This last Sunday we had a protest of teachers, supported by community members. They were blocking a highway, a very typical form of protest, against the education reform. [Register the] parentheses, here. The education reform is not really an education reform. Its a labor reform designed to push out the most critical participative teachers. Its designed to purge the long history of democratic unionism and critical, even revolutionary, education, which Mexicos had for the last hundred years.
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