Citizen Reporter

Students Take on the Gov in Chile

My guest on this edition of Citizenreporter.org is Chilean-American, community organizer, world citizen Nick Farr who has been traveling around Chile observing many of the activities connected with the student protests demanding education reform in that country.

For several months students throughout Chile have been holding mass rallies, protests as well as occupying university and high school buildings, demanding the government take action to address inequality in the education system and the creation of the country’s first free higher education option.

Presently education in Chile consists of a few prestigious charter-type schools, many more prestigious private schools which are very expensive, and then the rest of the public system that is considered poor quality-undesirable schooling. Rural areas, which is most of Chile, are especially plagued by a lack of affordable education. But even in cities these days, access to good schools is entirely dependent on where you live.

The student movement that has exploded throughout the country is focused on the need for better quality and more accessible public education at all levels, especially secondary and university education. While occupy wall street started just over a month ago, students in Chile began occupying school buildings 4 months ago. As part of the occupation, they carry out a fully functioning program of providing meals, classes and cultural activities.

One of the arguments against the students stems from the main leader of the movement who is a very vocal communist. Political opponents and many critical Chileans view his role as “evidence” that this protest is a communist invasion of the country.

Meanwhile the nation, that is highly dependent on the price of copper, struggles as global commodity prices have become so unstable. Graduates who come out of the current higher education system find themselves with little choice when it comes to jobs and career. Despite whatever specialized skills and training they might have had, the only work available to them might be in the low paying service industry.

With the protests as the backdrop, negotiations take place and one point the government hopes students will compromise on is the goal of a “free” education. A point that student leaders refuse to compromise on.

After several decades of tremendous socio-economic progress which saw Chile become a much admired country in the region and around the world, there is talk now of a shrinking middle class and a return to the former paralyzing state of cronyism and inequality.

Will Chilean students achieve their goal? Will the unpopular Chilean government give in to a mass movement sweeping the nation and conducting mass action in the streets and in the schools? In a time where so many nations have bought into the idea of corporate schools or charter schools, could Chile be the place where an old idea is given new life – universal public education.

Link:

Educación 2020 – One of the Movement’s Web Sources

El Mercurio – News from Chile

Don’t Just Take a Picture

Occupy Amsterdam is officially one week old. Occupy Wall Street is now over a month old. Around the world masses of people occupy their public spaces to discuss and demand big changes in how governments and business have been conducting themselves for the last few decades. Many do what they have always done: watch it on TV, read about it in the press, discredit the idea of taking action on such a broad scale. Still the whole world is watching, the authorities are scared, they seek to find ways to diffuse the energy and passion that has been unleashed and seems to keep growing. They’re counting on the weather, the entertainment industry, costs of living, and sometimes elements of public safety to shut down this dangerous movement. After all, those in charge have built their careers on this system. They’re power and lifestyle depends on it.

Today at #OccupyAmsterdam, as I’ve been doing each day this week, I was speaking with people, interviewing, collecting information and testimony to report to you the audience. Being the activist- journalist that I am, I climbed up on stage to say something.

My Buddy Marc took video that includes crowd shots. If you’re interested in seeing more of the atmosphere today.

Your OccupyAmsterdam Moment of Zen

Two minutes captured during a General Assembly meeting on Monday the 17th of October.

Not Yet A Report from OccupyAmsterdam

I’m reluctant to write anything yet about the #occupy movement, specifically my local occupy Amsterdam. On the one hand it seems like everyone has already heard about the actions nearest to where they live, in the US, Europe, Asia, South America…. all over the world. Which makes me think perhaps all the minds have already been made up. One role I don’t want to have when it comes to “occupy” is the one where I try to convince people of something and they try to argue counterpoints against me. I don’t want to convince anyone to follow along, come on down, or anything like that. Yet each day I still run into friends and strangers who have no idea what occupy wall street is, or here in our own city, what occupy Amsterdam is. So I write, or at least, start to write, even if I’m not actually ready to write about everything I’ve seen and think from daily visits to this burgeoning community nestled on the former financial center of this city so famous for international trade.

We live in a world of categories. On websites. On forms. In our minds. You fit here, you fit there. Don’t fit, we’ll make you a new box if you’re lucky. Even with alot of disorganization among us, we try to organize. You’re either this kind of person or that kind of person. Your action is either good or bad, in between is confusing and hard to process. And when it comes to our protest activities, when it is about using or not using time, energy and resources towards a certain goal… the public tends to evaluate as quickly as possible and render their verdict if the cause is worth it.

Enter the occupy wall street actions- which are taking place all over the world. The average person looks, reads/watches briefly, and makes their decision. Few visit, but many write or talk about it. Based on images, sounds, text and other material coming from these epicenters, people make their judgement. They condemn, they approve, they ignore or something in between all these. We still live in a world where you can ignore a lot and keep going about your life; war, corruption, injustice, the environment… few of these topics have stopped the general public, so it should come as no surprise that sustained demonstrations against the status quo would be any different.

And still they are out there, building something together. People ask “Are there still people down there?” They’d probably not believe me if I told them the truth – there are more everyday.

“But what do they want!?” – I knew you’d ask that.

Behind the Famine in Somalia

Earlier this year a famine was declared in Somalia. It was not the first time the world had heard about a humanitarian crisis in that struggling country. How did the world respond? How did Somalia get to the state it is in today and who was involved in getting it that way?

As part of a new monthly series, a veteran of the international scene and my good friend Tarak and I sit down here in Amsterdam and talk about the case of a massive under-reported concern with many lives on the line and a lot of money invested or, not invested, as the case may be. We break down the situation and look at it through a critical and caring lens.

Workers in Indonesia Rise Up Against Freeport

Here’s what we know:

Freeport MacMoRan is the world’s lowest-cost copper producer and the largest gold producer in the world. Producer is a funny term, they pull it from the earth. I suppose the production label comes from everything they do to the stuff they take from the earth.. the processing.

The company is almost 100 years old with its headquarters in Arizona, but of course its operations are located all over the world. Freeport operates the largest copper mine in the world, the Grasberg Mining Complex in West Papua, a province of Indonesia.

West Papua has long been the stage for conflict, where the Indonesian government uses whatever means at its disposal to keep the independence movement down. For many Papuan people the mine is a major part of that conflict, due to the massive environmental damage it causes on their territory, the lack of financial benefit or return to the region, and the use of notorious elements of the Indonesian Military to handle security. Since 2002 there have been several incidents involving the shooting deaths of workers at the plant.

For the past two months workers at the mine have been on strike, demanding better wages. According to Reuters, their current payrate is $1.5 to $3 an hour. They are now demanding that it be raised to $12.50 to $37 an hour. Recent demonstrations by the workers have attracted crowds numbering around 8,000. According to the Jakarta Post, during one of those demonstrations police fired into the crowd and killed 2 workers. The paper also reports that Freeport had been trying to fire all the workers and have them replaced, a tactic an Indonesian Minister said would be a violation of their labor laws.

Freeport is number 136 on the Forbes Fortune 500 list, with over $4 billion in profit for 2010. They have been heavily criticized by human rights organizations and corruption watchdogs for their payments to the Indonesian Government and the Military in an effort to maintain the status quo and quell labor disputes at their mine. The millions of dollars in lost revenue are often mentioned in the media for every day their mine is shut. What does their copper go into? The list is massive and touches on many aspects of our everyday lives in the western world.