International solidarity with U.S. youth, students

The following excerpted statements were issued in solidarity with the March 4 National Day of Action to Defend Education.

BANGLADESH

Revolutionary greetings. It is our great pleasure to get the chance to express our solidarity with the March 4 National Day of Action to Defend Education being held countrywide in the U.S. Thanks to all who have arranged such a painstaking movement struggle against the violation of education rights in the U.S. We express our heartiest solidarity to your movement, especially this March 4 program. Nowadays, the capitalists and imperialists are intensifying their attack on basic human rights, including widely in the education sector. They are trying to resolve their crisis and maximize profits through privatization and the commercialization of education, and curtailing the budget in the education sector. In Bangladesh our organization is fighting against the attempt of national capitalists and imperialists to privatize and commercialize education, including fee increases and cuts of different student facilities.

We feel deeply that, in this era of globalization and imperialism, the movement for education rights should be through solidarity among the students’ organizations worldwide.

We are very much interested to build up and strengthen solidarity with all of the organizations fighting in the U.S. for this cause. Please inform how we can communicate with each other regularly.

Wishing for a successful March 4 National Day of Action to Defend Education.

With revolutionary greeting,

Central Committee

Socialist Students’ Front-Bangladesh

PHILIPPINES

Struggle for Education Rights
Resist State Abandonment and Commercialization of Education

Solidarity Statement from the Philippines

Various students and youth belonging to the ANAKBAYAN Philippines (Sons and Daughters of the People), League of Filipino Students and Student Christian Movement of the Philippines, together with the National Union of Students of the Philippines and College Editors Guild of the Philippines, join in solidarity with the students, youth and education sector across the United States in the March 4 Nationwide Day of Action to Defend Education.

The picture is clear everywhere. It is the people who bear the brunt of rescuing big capitalists in this great recession, with the increasing slashes of social welfare funding including education.

In the U.S., the anti-students and anti-people policies, like the 32 percent tuition hike passed by the University of California Board of Regents last November, deserve the strongest condemnation of the youth. Most affected are people of color and students from working families who are still struggling with their outstanding mortgages.

Similar cases of tuition hikes have been experienced in other states, which all blame cutbacks in government funding.

Last year students, workers and faculty in the State University of New York and City University of New York militantly defied Governor Paterson’s ill-willed proposal of slashing $698 million from the education budget, which would directly raise tuition fees for SUNY by $620 per school year, $600 for CUNY and $400 for community colleges.

In Europe too last November there were massive worker-supported student strikes, like the mobilization of about 250,000 all across Germany in the clamor against the introduction of tuition increases and curriculum revisions.

Students in Austria and even in Scandinavian countries decried the bailout for the banks and held walk-outs and university occupations in resistance to the European Union’s Bologna process, which is to drive education more to serve imperialism.

Student movements in the Asian Pacific, especially in Indonesia, India and Korea, have also agitated against the worsening condition of youth with the state abandonment of education.

We therefore commend our fellow youth and students in California, New York City and throughout the U.S. for their courage to stand up inside the belly of the beast.

Cutbacks on state funding [are] abandonment of government’s responsibility and an outright attack to the people’s most basic right to education. [They pave] the way to exorbitant fee and tuition increases, academic staff layoffs, cramped rooms and a host of other infringements as a commercialized regime on education is imposed in various levels.

To delude the public, the government uses as an excuse the nominal increase in education funding, which is always lopsided and disproportionate to the number of new entrants. More obscene is the use of the argument that higher education is no longer a right and therefore, with the use of the globalization mantra, everyone is urged to pay for their education. Education is a commodity with a price-tag.

In the Philippines the myth of the liberal education, instituted from the direct [U.S.] American colonialism in our country up to the current regime, is unmasked a worsening education in crisis that is colonial, commercialized and fascist in character.

The global recession only further worsened the Philippine education sector, for in truth, the current Arroyo regime has been ruthlessly attacking our basic right and with all servility imposes the policies of imperialist globalization that has led to worsened commercialization of education. In the tertiary level from 2001-2008 alone, the Arroyo regime presided over the 70 percent increase of the national average tuition and an allotment of a measly 1.8 percent of gross domestic product given to the entire education budget, pathetically way below the international standard and among the lowest in the world. This attack is done side-by-side with the enriching of international usurers, as the government favors foreign debt servicing and militarization in the annual national budget.

What happens to the youth who cannot continue their education? They are added to the battalions of the reserve labor force, or unemployed, or join the cheap semi-skilled workforce who are most exploited in times of capitalist crisis.

Faced with such attacks on our fundamental rights, we have no other option but to fight back. This is a lesson we have learned through decades of fearless struggle, and a lesson we will continue to uphold until we are victorious.

Once again, we Filipino youth raise our fists in solidarity with you in the continuing struggle to end the foreboding annual budget cuts and tuition increases. We must join our hands in resisting the onslaught of imperialism against our education and the youth’s future.

Education is a right, not a privilege!

Long live international solidarity!

The ANAKBAYAN Philippines, League of Filipino Students and Student Christian Movement of the Philippines are members of the International League of People Struggle and BAYAN; the National Union of Students of the Philippines and the College Editors Guild of the Philippines are the two biggest national alliances of student unions and campus publications in the Philippines.

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