The cost of college has risen sharply in recent years, making it much harder for young people to get access to education after high school, and making many fall back on low-level, dead-end jobs. But it wasn’t always this way. Not all that long ago, in 1996, a year at Rutgers cost only four thousand dollars, as opposed to the $12,755 it costs now.

The biggest difference is that the federal and state governments used to subsidize colleges much more, which allowed them to provide students with quality education under much less financial pressure. N.J., for instance, used to give public universities about two thirds of the cost of each student’s tuition. But from 1990 to 2009 the situation reversed: now, the state government covers only one-third of the costs, meaning that each student has to come up with the remaining two- thirds by themselves. Now, the average four-year student in America graduates $24,000 in debt.

Social programs can make higher education much cheaper, something we can access without going into debt, but an active, united student movement is the only thing that will make government officials take measures that help us, rather than helping the banks and financial institutions that profit from our debt.

To see how this can be done, let’s look at Rutgers, where a student movement recently won a major victory: a cut of hundreds of dollars from a proposed tuition hike.

Student protesters "Walk Into Action" on April 13

Rutgers University students organize

At Rutgers New Brunswick, a wide number of student groups formed Rutgers United to serve as an umbrella group for progressive forces on campus and to organize against tuition hikes. Rutgers United includes the Women’s Center Coalition, the United Black Council, Queer Caucus, Asian American Leadership Cabinet, and many others.

Some of the Rutgers United organizers had run “Tent State” in past years, an ongoing annual event in which students set up temporary encampments on Voorhees Mall, host concerts, invite other students to hold workshops on things they’re interested in, and encourage everyone passing through to write to their legislators supporting public funding for higher education. This was inspired by a longer Rutgers tradition of activists setting up camp in prominent campus locations, as a tactic to pressure the administration for policy changes on many issues, from similar matters of affordability, to divestment from South Africa’s former apartheid government.

Rutgers United reached out to progressive students from Rutgers Newark and seven other public universities around New Jersey, and formed New Jersey United Students (NJUS).

Some Rutgers United members ran for Student Assembly (RUSA), an assembly which currently acts like a student government, although the administration can override its decisions. The Rutgers United candidates said that the Student Assembly shouldn’t be an organization for governing students, but rather, a student union that represents student interests to administration– that is, stands up for lower tuition, the rights of students to privacy and due process, and other common concerns.

The Rutgers United ticket won a majority of Student Assembly seats in the spring of 2010. Because of this, they were able to vote to affiliate Rutgers New Brunswick with the United States Student Assembly (USSA).

The USSA works like a student union on the national level. Campuses pay dues to join, and work together to build student power within colleges, and reinforce each other’s organizing projects on the state and local level.

“Being part of a national organization expands your capacity to organize,” said Rutgers United organizer and RUSA vice-president Matt Cordeiro, mentioning that the USSA was helping to raise funds for NJUS.

In fall 2010, Rutgers United hosted a teach-in to educate people on student debt, how the banks were profiting from it, and how it could be resisted. This was followed up by a number of large-scale actions in the spring of 2011.

“The way I see it is that we put pressure on the administration all semester, from storming into McCormick’s office during the Walk Into Action, to the sit-in, to constantly having a presence at the Board of Governors meetings. And it was the mix of exerting student power and using the very selective means that the administration gives us to exert power intelligently,” said Renee Coppola, a student who was elected to RUSA to represent off-campus students and took part in an occupation of the administration’s Old Queens offices.

At Rutgers, like at many colleges, the Board of Governors is the unelected group of officials in charge of administrating the college, who often represent corporate interests. For instance, at Rutgers, the B.O.G. is headed by Ralph Izzo, the CEO of Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG, formerly Public Service Electric & Gas).

The Walk Into Action was the first major demonstration of the semester. On April 13, over three hundred students walked out of class and shut down College Aveue.

Students at N.J. public colleges intensify fight

This walkout was part of a Day of Action that went far beyond New Brunswick. The other colleges in NJUS held similar demonstrations around the state at the same time. They had also talked to student organizers and university workers nationally, to decide how to make their efforts most effective, and wound up scheduling the Walk Into Action for the same day that many schools in California participated in marches and sit-ins.

Then, on April 27, twenty Rutgers students occupied the Old Queens administration building. They held a sit-in at University President McCormick’s office that lasted a day and a half. The protesters demanded the following:

• That the students, faculty, and staff each be allowed to elect their own voting members to the Board of Governors, to make it a more democratic structure.
• An immediate freeze on tuition, meaning no more price hikes.
• Fair and speedy arbitration for campus workers whom Rutgers hired through subcontracts.
• That students be able to get copies of their own transcripts without paying a fee.
• That the university drop its affiliation with the Fair Labor Association, which is a corporate front group.

At the end, the administration publicly stated that it would not meet any of these demands. But that day, without announcing it, they quietly removed the fees they had been charging for getting transcript records.

Students’ and workers’ alliance

These actions have been stronger and more effective because the student movement has built a coalition with the faculty and staff of the university, who are also suffering from the decisions of the Board of Governors. The student-labor coalition was formed under the name of Rutgers One.

Rutgers One is made of student organizers, the R.U. chapters of the AAUP and AFT (the unions that represent faculty), and the university’s blue collar workers, who are in AFSCME Local 888.

In 2009, when negotiating the budget for the upcoming year, the workers in these unions agreed to forgo salary raises and adjustments for inflation, but signed a contract with the administration stating that these raises would be given to them in 2010. Rutgers administrators, however, broke the contract, and none of the faculty or staff have yet received the money which was promised to them in the current contract.

For Rutgers employees working for companies under subcontracts, the situation is also bleak. The Rutgers bus drivers, for the past ten years, were hired through Academy Bus. When the contract was signed ten years ago, the workers were paid low wages and received poor benefits. But the drivers organized, and over the years, successfully pushed their wages to much higher levels, and won better health coverage from Academy. Now, however, Rutgers has cut its ties with Academy, and instead given the contract to First Transit. Under the new contract, First Transit doesn’t have to pay the same wages, provide the same benefits, recognize the union that existed under Academy, nor even allow all the bus drivers to keep their jobs.

Tuition increase disappears

On July 14, the Rutgers One coalition rallied at a meeting of the Board of Governors over the administration’s refusal to freeze tuition and meet other demands of the sit-in, their breach of contract by withholding promised pay raises, and their union-busting of the bus drivers via the First Transit contract.

The B.O.G. has made it quite difficult for people in the university community to talk to them. They insist that people sign up to comment at meetings over 24 hours ahead of time. In the past, they have had students and faculty shut out of the building during meetings which are supposed to be public, and have suddenly built makeshift walls around themselves when people have said things to them that they did not like.

Nonetheless, on July 14, many students and workers went inside to talk to the Board members, before rejoining the larger crowd of about a hundred protesters outside.

It was at this rally that Board Chairman Izzo announced that the proposed tuition raise would be cut in half–a raise of 1.8% rather than 3.6%–by far the lowest hike in years. Tuition has gone up by around 7% per year since 2001. This year, the rise of the cost will actually be less than inflation.

Many students reacted with surprise to this victory. Certainly, it is a concession that the Board would not have made if there had not been such intense pressure on them. But why this particular maneuver by the Board?

Trying to pacify certain sections of social movements by giving them concessions like these is a typical move for college administrations–and governments–to make, so that they can marginalize those who they are still oppressing. Even before the tuition hike was dropped, the administration had long been using divide-and-conquer tactics in its negotiations, telling students that the high wages of workers were the reason they had to pay so much and telling workers that they should support higher tuition because it was the money that their wages came from.

Students and workers assert common interests

But wages have not risen with tuition–rather, both have gotten worse. And trying to convince people otherwise has been a futile task on the administration’s part. The students and workers at recent rallies were clear on this, carrying signs such as, “Freeze Tuition, Not Wages,” and there have been widespread objections to the amount of money that is being wasted on athletics, administrative salaries, and inflated pay and conspicuous benefits for sports coaches.

This realization of common interest between students and workers–and of the fact that neither has anything to gain by siding with the administration–is by no means limited to Rutgers or New Jersey. On April 13, while hundreds of students shut down College Ave, Sonoma State University (California), too, was swept with protests against both wage cuts and tuition hikes.

Now, seeing the way that unity and persistent action can reverse the pattern of soaring tuition at one school, we should look at reversing the same trend on the national level, and explore how the student and workers’ movements can best amplify each other.

Fortunately, we have many good examples of the latter. Student groups like United Students Against Sweatshops have, for years, been organizing boycotts to help workers fight for better pay internationally, especially in the garment industry. The AAUP was instrumental in reaching out to other chapters nationally and coordinating rallies in California on April 13.

The California student movement, too, focuses on stopping tuition hikes at public universities– especially the University of California, which has campuses in ten cities. The diverse and militant movement to keep these schools affordable has organized under the banner of the Education Crisis Movement.

The largest UC campus is in Los Angeles. Here, the tuition fight-back is made up largely of local youth who don’t know whether they’ll be able to go to college at all. They are rooted in the communities of Los Angeles, and they, their families and neighbors are often already engaged in broader struggles against a power structure which continuously murders civilians, the Oscar Grant case being the most publicized but far from unique.

Nation-wide frameworks for student activism, like the USSA, can be very helpful for learning effective tactics from each other, building solidarity, and encouraging organizers to learn more about the different circumstances faced in each university and each state.

“The administration does not give us much room to express grievances but every chance we got, we took, and when that wasn’t enough we were willing to take matter into our own hands,” said Renee Coppola. “I’m still surprised that what came of it did, but for the future I know we have a group of determined people who all have the same goal–and that is what will make us successful.”

Discussion at the well-attended supporters’ meeting, which included workers from other New York and New Jersey unions, ranged over many issues: whether public sentiment is for or against so-called middle-class workers (those with relatively decent wages and benefits), the long-lost concept of “no contract, no work,” and whether, as a result of the massive demonstrations in Wisconsin at the beginning of this year, there is now a new dimension to “class warfare” in which private and public sector unions are linked. Private and public workers’ mutual support appears key to reversing the push to break unions and lower workers’ standard of living.

Verizon employs 45,000 unionized workers. The August strike was the largest U.S. strike since the General Motors strike in 2007 that lasted just two days. But other Verizon workers are not unionized, including the cell phone workers. Verizon claims that it is entitled to cut back its costs for employees who work on declining landline phone services, while the union points out that the company has never been more profitable. The strike was called after six weeks of negotiations, during which Verizon did not budge from its demand for 100 givebacks. Verizon doesn’t claim it cannot afford to maintain the pay and benefits in the expired contract, but instead claims that it should not have to maintain them in this day and age.

“The strike is not over”

Vincent Galvin, a worker with 34 years in the union at Verizon and its predecessor companies, declared at the meeting: “The strike is not over: this is just a time-out.” He said that Verizon was more likely to bargain in good faith now because the strike had crippled its ability to accomplish repairs and installations. He noted the extra repair problems caused by the weather: “God must be a union man, because heavy rain and old copper wires don’t mix.” Phones went out and customers were angry when they weren’t fixed.  Potential customers trying to order new phone service or Fios were being given installation dates in December. An official of one large corporation approached the union and asked whom he could see about getting its phones working; he was directed to go tell the head of Verizon to settle the strike.

The other “success” of the strike was in shutting down cell phone stores, “Verizon’s cash cow.” Galvin noted the great help at the workplace and store picket lines from the public and from members of other unions, including the Transit Workers Union, United Federation of Teachers, District Council 37 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (New York’s largest public employees union), the Teamsters, and Service Employees International Union 32B-J, especially their youth brigade.

Other strikers we met on a wireless store picket line a few days earlier praised the public’s support in New York City, but feared the company’s campaign to paint the workers as making “too much” and being “greedy” was getting traction elsewhere. The union publicized Verizon’s huge profits––$24.2 billion in 2009 and 2010, and $6.9 billion in the first six months of this year–while it failed to pay any income tax at all, according to the union. But while the union played up “saving middle class jobs,” it failed to attack the idea of give-backs head on. It is not even asking for improvements in pay or benefits, but only to continue current pay and benefits without making concessions.

CWA workers set wages for others

Local 1101 works on landlines and the infrastructure on which cell phones depend. Verizon, Galvin said, does not want to have a work force, preferring to contract out all the work to companies using non-union workers. Verizon claims that the workers must expect to pay a larger share of their health care costs at a time when so many other workers are agreeing to givebacks; Galvin explained that Verizon workers had helped build up the company over the years, including the wireless division and Fios, all the while receiving only small wage increases, and they had done this in return for increases in their benefits.  Due to the phone workers’ long and militant history of unionism, Galvin said, “Everyone in the world is watching us; we set the wages for union and non-union workers.”

Ron Spaulding, with 17 years in the union, spoke about the Rebuild 1101 Movement of rank-and-file members who are challenging the current CWA leadership. The last long and militant strike of phone workers was 22 years ago. Since then, the union has accepted a two-tier system in which new hires have lower pay and fewer benefits and rights. Now anyone hired in 2003 or later has no job security. As Galvin put it, “we gave away the unborn.”

Spaulding described the creative strike activity that had just taken place, including harassing scabs, chasing managers, and shutting down wireless stores. There was great energy, he said, such as the rally of 2,000 strikers when members of Local 1109 marched across the Brooklyn Bridge and joined Local 1101 and others in a mass demonstration. All the speakers remarked on the strike’s good side effect of breaking down long-standing divisions among the union locals that cover different areas in New York and other states.

Strikers see their strength and possibilities

Amy Muldoon, a young Verizon worker, said that “the wheel is turning” toward workers’ victories after a long period of defeats. “I feel like we’re discovering our secret power,” she said, although she knows victory is not guaranteed. She pointed out that the stewards, not the union leadership, instituted the pickets of the wireless stores: “It felt like we were turning the wheel.”

The workers lost two weeks’ pay while on strike, and 59 people are facing disciplinary action. The conditions under which they returned to work on August 22 stipulate that they cannot resume the strike for 30 days, during which period there is no cap on the amount of overtime they can be forced to work. “They will attempt to demoralize us and break us,” Muldoon opined, “but we can have an aggressive in-plant policy, like work-to-rule and pursuing grievances.”

There was also criticism of the union for not preparing for the strike and for failing to provide strike pay, or even to advise the workers during the futile bargaining period that they should save up money for a possible strike. If the strike had continued to the end of the month, the workers would have lost their health insurance coverage. Yet no one hesitated to join the picket lines, the workers reported. They even viewed returning to work under the pay and benefits provisions of the expired contract as a kind of victory, since the alternative was givebacks.

Muldoon had spoken at a large rally a few days earlier outside the Department of Education (DOE), where the Panel for Education Policy (PEP) was voting on a $120 million contract with Verizon. Teachers, transit workers, and the general public turned out with the strikers in a mass rally to oppose renewal of Verizon’s contract. They pointed not only to the strike, but to the recent discovery that a contractor stole $3.6 million dollars from the education system by falsely billing for wiring schools, and Verizon was found to have concealed the theft from the DOE!  Nevertheless, PEP approved a new contract with Verizon.

Several audience members asked if the workers had “a plan” for fighting from the inside now. Galvin suggested that it could take some time to get work back up to speed: “The first week, we’ll all be talking about the strike at the water cooler. The second week, we’ll be so tired from all the activity that we’ll have to rest. The third week, we’ll be remembering how to do our jobs. By the fourth week, I hope we’ll have a contract.”

Relations between private and public workers are key

Some in the audience criticized the CWA for calling off the strike without having a contract in sight, while others noted that the teachers, transit workers, and other unions had done the same thing, and some of them then worked for years under disadvantageous expired contracts. However, it is illegal for public employees in New York to strike, and so easier to force their unions to end strikes through fines and injunctions than it should be to force private sector unions to end strikes. In spite of their differences, public employees’ unions were the biggest supporters of the Verizon strike.

The strikers were asked what supporters could do now that there are no picket lines. The workers suggested they continue to picket the wireless stores, but we haven’t seen that happen.

Much audience discussion focused on the issue of whether new alliances between public and private sector workers could “turn the wheel” back from defeats to victories. One person said that if the Verizon workers give concessions, “the message will be that striking doesn’t work.” Another pointed out that although public sector workers have recently had concessions forced on them, there has been much resistance: in Connecticut, the public workers voted down concessions, but the union forced a re-vote that put them through; New York State public workers were just pressured into passing a concessions contract under threat of massive job cuts, but 40% of the vote was against accepting the contract. And private sector workers sometimes win: the concrete workers at the World Trade Center site went out on strike recently and got a better contract.

Also, it was pointed out, there are organized rank-and-file groups within several unions that could gain control of locals and defeat bad contracts in the future.  Some in the audience termed the Verizon struggle “class warfare” and an overtly political fight, calling it preparation for breaking the union. To the Verizon workers, one supporter said, “thank you for being the spark for war.”

Since only two papers were presented, the discussion period lasted more than an hour. The bulk of it concerned Kliman’s presentation. During his replies to questions and comments, he displayed a quotation, several graphs, and a table from his forthcoming book. The discussion period begins approximately fifty minutes after the start of the recording.

Click here to listen to the audio recording.

McDonald’s presentation was entitled “The Cry for Jobs: An Absurd and Brutal Affirmation of Labor’s Subordination to Capital.” Kliman’s presentation was entitled “The ‘Stagnant Pay’ Myth and the Persistent Frailty of Capitalist Production.” For video recordings of similar presentations by Kliman, click here or here.

“Is an Emancipatory Communism Possible?”
A talk by Allan Armstrong
Recorded Wednesday, April 13 at 7:00 PM at TRS, Inc. in NYC

Mention of the word “Communism” today conjures up visions of tyrants. Young people, even when they clash violently with the representatives of global capitalism in Seattle or London, call their protests “anti-capitalist,” not communist. However, anti-capitalism is not enough. Revolutions can lead to immediate feelings of intense liberation, but they are usually followed by much longer periods of defense, setbacks, and painful reconstruction. The 20th century was the “Century of Revolutions,” but it eventually produced so little for humanity at such a high cost, that it is not surprising that many are very cautious, despite growing barbarism.

Allan Armstrong will argue that it is vital that we outline a genuine new human emancipatory communism, which takes full stock of the failings of both “official” and “dissident Communism,” and which can persuasively show that human liberation can still be achieved. He will explore Marx’s vision, particularly as detailed in his “Critique of the Gotha Program,” which emphasizes the need to break with capitalist production relations rather than expecting a new society to come about through political changes.

Allan Armstrong, a republican, Scottish internationalist, and communist, is currently co-editor of Emancipation & Liberation, the journal of the Republican Communist Network. He is also involved with the commune, a collective dedicated to outlining a new communism for the 21st century. Armstrong is the author of  “Why We Need a New Emancipatory Communism” and “The Communist Case for ‘Internationalism from Below.’”

Presented by Marxist-Humanist Initiative & the New SPACE.

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The village of Honda Valle, DR. Image courtesy www.everyculture.com.

The agrarian leaders, headed by the president of the Farmers Alliance in Puerto Plata, Mr. Vicente Silverio, said that they wanted to commemorate the International Day of Farmers’ Struggles. The farmers of Puerto Plata joined together with other organizations of the National Farmers’ Union, who are mobilized in the rest of the country, to demand land for small and medium-sized farmers by distributing some 100,000 tareas of land [this is about 24 sq. miles] owned by the State Sugar Council. They also demanded new laws to carry out agrarian reform, and the voiding of a contract with the mining company Barrick Gold and others.

In presenting the petitions, the president of the Farmers Alliance was accompanied by leading representatives of the Gregorio Luperon Farmers Association, the Union of Farmers Bloc of the mentioned locality, the Jose Augusto Puig Association, and the Association of Farmers Without Land in Saballo, Imbert, among others.

The agrarian leaders were received by representatives of the governor, who justified her absence because she was accompanying the president of the republic on a surprise visit he made to the businessmen of Puerto Plata.

In addition, the farm leaders demanded that the governor’s representative arrange a special audience for them with the president, so that the farmers of the area could propose the distribution of 8,000 tareas of land [about 2 sq. miles] that belong to the Monte Llano and Amistada sugar companies, in order to settle 300 families of the region on the land.

Background notes from our Dominican correspondent:

These are farmers who do not have sufficient land to enable them to live by working the land. In our country, the neoliberal or capitalist model preserves a political structure that concentrates wealth in the hands of a minority, who believe that their privileges are inalienable rights. One of the results is the permanence of thousands of marginal rural communities, inhabited by very poor farmers who are actually not treated as citizens by the institutions of the state. This excluded rural population is the basis for the strong current of migration to the largest cities of the country, where they form an impoverished majority in the surrounding neighborhoods, and for a Dominican diaspora in cities around the world.

Another effect of the neoliberal model is the privatization of public enterprises and the appropriation of large areas of land by corrupt methods. In the province of Puerto Plata, there are large expanses of land that are still the property of the state, or which were delivered in an onerous manner into private hands. The associations of farmers who do not have the means of production to support themselves, demand that the government give them the land to form cooperative projects for the production of food.

At the end of 1961, approximately 50% of the national wealth was owned by the state, because when the dictator Rafael Trujillo fell, his huge haciendas and corporations became state property.  For the land in sugar production, the government formed a state corporation, the State Sugar Council. Now, with the change from an economy based in production to a service economy, this corporation has shrunk its holdings, selling its land to privileged groups, foreigners, and tourist enterprises, instead of distributing it to the farmers to form cooperative farm enterprises.

Note from MHI on the International Day of Farmers:

We just learned that April 17 is marked as the Day of Farmers by farm workers’ and poor people’s movements around the world. Today we received an invitation to a commemorative event in Cape Town from Abahlali baseMjondolo, the Shackdwellers Movement of South Africa, which explained that the date is the anniversary of the 1996 massacre of landless farmers at Eldorado dos Carajás in southern Pará, Brazil. On that day, 1,500 members of the Movement of Landless Workers (MST) blocked a highway in order to protest the state’s delay in land reform. The military opened fire, killing 19 farm workers, wounding hundreds (two more died later), and maiming 69.

Dr. Binayak Sen is a medical doctor in India who has devoted his life to defending human rights and to treating some of India’s poorest and most vulnerable citizens. He was recently convicted of sedition and conspiracy under several outdated and unjust laws, and has been sentenced to life in prison. After the verdict was announced in a Chhattisgarh sessions court (a lower court) on December 24, 2010, Binayak Sen appealed the case to the high court of Chhattisgarh, and the appeal was admitted on January 8. However, his plea for bail was rejected on February 9.

In response to the public outcry against the rejection of bail, Brijmohan Agarwal, a senior minister in the Chhattisgarh government, welcomed the judgment as “a vindication of the state government’s stand on Binayak Sen. Now that the high court has dismissed the bail application, it is better for so-called human rights activists in India and abroad to keep away from attacking the Chhattisgarh government and the state police.”

Why would a senior minister make such a statement–which is little more than a thinly veiled threat against any human rights activist who dares to take a stand against them?  And under what circumstances does a government attempt to turn “human rights activist” into a pejorative term?

To understand what is going on, we have to look at the history of the Chhattisgarh region and Dr. Binayak Sen’s involvement there.

Chhattisgarh is still a young state, formed in the year 2000.  However, Dr. Sen’s involvement there began in 1981, when, at the age of 30, he moved to district Durg to set up the Shaheed Hospital for the miners working there. The hospital, which is still running today, is almost entirely worker-run, and brings health care to people who would otherwise have no reasonable access to it.

Sen worked in district Durg for six years, and then moved to the even more remote Dhamtari district to develop a health program for the tribal population living there. This is a region where almost no doctor will agree to work, due to the remoteness and lack of monetary incentive, so Sen trained a large group of village-based health workers to supply basic medical treatment.  This program was also highly successful, and when Chattisgarh was formed in 2000, Sen was appointed as an advisor to the Department of Health and Family Welfare.

The models for rural health care developed by Sen were eventually expanded and implemented in India’s National Rural Health Mission. Sen’s work in community health has also been internationally recognized, most recently winning him the Jonathan Mann award for Health and Human Rights from the Global Health Council in 2008, although he was in custody at the time and unable to accept the award in person.

Had Binayak Sen’s work in Chhattisgarh been restricted to treating the physical ailments of his patients, he may never have come under target by the Chhattisgarh government. However, he naturally saw the medical tragedies he witnessed around him, such as severely undernourished children, deaths by preventable disease, and accidents due to unsafe working conditions, as symptoms of larger injustices.

His initial project, Shaheed Hospital, was done in collaboration with his friend Shankar Guha Niyogi and the Mukti Morcha–the mine workers’ union founded and led by Niyogi.  Sen was not directly involved in union politics, but Niyogi was frequently at odds with the local industrialists and the state government, and in 1992 he was shot dead in his sleep by hired thugs. The assassins and the industrialists who hired them were apprehended, with very convincing evidence mounted against them. However, in a perverse reversal of Dr. Sen’s present-day circumstances, they were exonerated by the High Court due to “insufficient evidence.”

Although Sen was not directly involved with the workers’ unions, he has been a member of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) since the year he moved to Chhattisgarh. Similar to the ACLU, the PUCL is an organization devoted to the preservation of constitutional civil liberties and human rights in India. In 2004 Sen became general secretary of the Chhattisgarh unit of PUCL, and is currently president of the Chhattisgarh unit and vice president of the national body. It was Sen’s involvement and leadership within the PUCL that pitted him against the state government and the state police. To understand how this happened, I’d like to read from Sen’s final statement to the court:

“In Chhattisgarh, the PUCL has been in the forefront of exposing the atrocities of the police.  Atrocities by men in uniform against vulnerable sections continue to be a serious problem in the state … Apart from investigating and documenting the many cases of human rights abuse involving the police, the PUCL has acted as a whistleblower in the matter of exposing the true nature of the Salwa Judum [a civilian militia]. The Salwa Judum … has been represented by the state government as a spontaneous peoples’ movement against the Maoists active in the area.  However, an investigation led by the PUCL and involving several other Human Rights Organizations revealed that it is in reality a state-sponsored and state-funded as well as completely unaccountable vigilante force to which arms were provided by the government. The activities of the Salwa Judum have led to the emptying of more than 600 villages and the forced displacement of over 60,000 people [a conservative estimate--it is believed that 300,000 people have been displaced].

“Concerns regarding the activities of the Salwa Judum have been expressed by several independent organizations including the National Human Rights Commission. International organizations like UNICEF have also voiced serious concern and have invited me to dialogue with them about the restoration of normalcy in the region ….”

“The PUCL has also, during 2006, organized two major conventions, opposing the proposal to enact the Chhatisgarh Special Public Security Act, because it has been, and continues to be, our view that this Act contravenes the civil liberties assured to us in the constitution.”

If the claims of the PUCL, and of Dr. Sen, are indeed valid, one can see why the state government would want him out of the picture. After all, they are accusing the state of terrorizing villages with its police force, supporting an inherently unstable civilian militia, and enacting a draconian “security” act that infringes on civil liberties.

To understand this, you need to know that the Chhattisgarh region is extremely poor, with 96% of its population made up of lower caste Hindus and indigenous Tribals. However, it claims on its government website to be “[India’s] richest state in terms of mineral wealth, with 28 varieties of major minerals, including diamonds.” The government website continues: “The State is lucky to have large deposits of coal, iron ore, and limestone in close proximity, making it the ideal location for the lowest cost of production. There is great scope for private participation in the mining sector of Chhattisgarh …. The State is ensuring a minimum lease area with secured land rights so that investors can safely commit large resources to mining projects.”

It is rather incredible that the State can promise secured land rights to private investors, when the majority of the mineral-rich areas have been continuously inhabited by India’s indigenous populations for many centuries, and possibly millennia. However, that is exactly what the state government has done, and at the moment it has signed 117 separate MoU’s (Memorandums of Understanding) with different national and multi-national corporations. In addition to issuing MoU’s, the Chhattisgarh government has become the first in India, and quite possibly the world, to sell its rivers to private corporations. The Sheonath in Durg was the first river to be sold, in 1998, to the company Radius Water Limited. After it gained ownership of a 23.6 km stretch of the river, iron gates were promptly built to prevent locals from accessing the water for drinking, fishing, washing, and irrigation. The water was instead diverted for industrial use.

In light of all this, the accusations by the PUCL and Binayak Sen of a frame-up seem plausible.  The state certainly has a motivation, and in some cases a self-imposed obligation, to clear the land of villagers and make space for industrial development.

If questioned, any state official would paint a different picture, however: invariably he would claim that everything the police and the state government are doing are necessary steps in combating the growing Maoist insurgency, which is the only true threat to the region. And on May 14, 2007, Binayak Sen was arrested under the charge of carrying letters from the alleged Maoist Narayan Sanyal to the businessman Piyush Guha, who is also accused of having links to the Maoists.

After being arrested, Sen was held without proper charges for seven months, which is possible under the very Chhattishgarh Special Public Security Act that he and the PUCL had previously criticized. When he was formally charged, it was with that same act, in addition to two other repressive and controversial laws: the law against sedition (article 124(a) of the Indian Penal Code) and the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, which is similar to the Patriot Act in the U.S.

Binayak Sen was denied bail and remained in detention for two years before bail was granted by the Supreme Court in consideration of his heart ailments. His freedom did not last long, and after the verdict on December 24 of 2010, Sen was again imprisoned, this time sentenced to life in prison. Amnesty International immediately issued a statement that “[t]he life sentence handed down against Dr. Binayak Sen … violates international fair-trial standards and is likely to enflame tensions in the conflict-affected area.” Indeed, the evidence mounted against Sen was extremely weak by any standards. The prosecution’s narrative hinged on just two suspect pieces of evidence: a letter which Sen has stated from the beginning was fabricated, and an instance of third-hand hearsay of his admitting to being a Maoist.

Even were one to believe the evidence and the narrative presented by the prosecution, there are serious flaws in the interpretation of the laws that Sen has allegedly violated and in the laws themselves. The British-era sedition law, which was used against Gandhi, “prohibits any words either spoken or written, or any signs or visible representation that excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards the government.” This law is clearly outdated and in violation of the right to freedom of speech, and in fact the Supreme Court long ago ruled that unless the accused actually incited violence by his speech or action, it could no longer constitute sedition. The judge in the Chhattisgarh sessions court blatantly ignored this ruling.

Secondly, Sen and two others convicted with him, all of whom were handed down life sentences, were convicted of somehow being affiliated with the Maoist party, which is a banned organization in India. However, on February 4, the Supreme Court of India ruled that mere membership in a banned organization is no longer a crime. Whether or not this ruling will be upheld in Sen’s upcoming trial before the High Court is another question.

If this could happen to somebody like Binayak Sen, who has an international presence and has great legal resources at his disposal, one wonders how many other unknown people are being persecuted by these same forces. There are already convictions of and charges against a number of human rights activists and journalists, and those are just the known cases.

The Committee of Concerned Scientists wrote a letter to the president of India in January, and a group of 40 Nobel Laureates wrote a letter in February, just before Sen was denied bail by the high court. This international pressure is making headlines in India, but we have to keep up pressure. The Indian government must understand that it will be held accountable.

Recorded March 22, 2011 at TRS, Inc. in NYC. Presented by Marxist-Humanist Initiative and the New SPACE (http://new-space-nyc.org). Click here for more information.

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Recorded March 19, 2011 at the Left Forum at Pace University in lower Manhattan. Featuring Alan Freeman on “Waking from the Dream: Europe in the Great Recession,” Andrew Kliman on ”The Great Recession and the Persistent Frailty of Capitalist Production,” David McNally on “Global Slump, Age of Austerity, and the Growing Resistance,” and Fred Moseley on “A Lost Decade for Jobs in the U.S., Unless…”

MHI NEEDS YOUR HELP

Please consider a donation for viewing this video. MHI makes this and other videos available free of charge to stimulate the widest possible discussion, but we need your help to continue providing resources like this. Monetary contributions may be made through PayPal below. If you would prefer to send a check or money order, click here for more information.

Recorded March 19, 2011 at the Left Forum, Pace University. Featuring Andrej Grubačić, Anne Jaclard, Antti Ronkainen, and Alex Steinberg. Click here for more info.

Is Socialism Possible? (Panel II)

Recorded March 20, 2011 at the Left Forum, Pace University. Featuring Michael Albert, Andrew Kliman, and Cindy Milstein. Click here for more info.

MHI NEEDS YOUR HELP

Please consider a donation for viewing these videos. MHI makes these and other videos available free of charge to stimulate the widest possible discussion, but we need your help to continue providing resources like this. Monetary contributions may be made through PayPal below. If you would prefer to send a check or money order, click here for more information.

In the spring and summer of 2010, crisis gripped Europe, highlighting the continued instability of the capitalist system across the globe. Financial meltdown was averted only by means of a massive bailout package, totaling as much as €750 billion, and the European Central Bank’s move to begin purchasing sovereign debt of the weaker Euro zone countries to prevent a breakup of the zone. Will the patch hold?

Antti Ronkainen will give special attention to the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), established last summer to help safeguard financial stability in the Euro zone. He will argue that the EFSF is not designed to solve the Euro crisis, but rather allows the European Central Bank to engage in potentially risky lending and provides a mechanism for redistributing income from taxpayers to banks. Ronkainen will also discuss the European workers and students’ demonstrations and strikes against new austerity programs, especially the current situation in Finland. Will the resistance succeed in saving the unions and government benefits?

Antti Ronkainen is a student of social sciences in Finland. He is an editor of and writer for Megafoni, a Finnish autonomist web journal (http://megafoni.org).

Presented by Marxist-Humanist Initiative & the New SPACE (http://new-space-nyc.org).