“I am totally depressed as I believe a huge amount of work has been totally undone … support structures to assist the most vulnerable have been undermined, which will mean that discipline and pastoral care structures will be affected”
- Principal, boys’ secondary school, Leinster
Free Education for Everyone (FEE), a
student group fighting the reintroduction of fees and cutbacks in third
level education, is calling on all secondary and third level students
to join the ICTU National Demonstration this saturday to show
solidarity with all workers facing pension levys, job losses and pay
cuts.
The Irish Congress of Trade
Unions (ICTU), the umberalla group of 55 unions representing about
600,000 members in the Republic of Ireland, has called the February
Bertie Ahern (ex-Taoiseach - ie Prime Minister)was due to speak at the Literary and Debating society of NUI Galway tonight. The event was cancelled due to student protest and scuffles with the Gardaí.
Over 20 students from UCD have occupied the office of Paul Gogarty Green Party TD for Dublin Mid-West and Spokesperson on Education in Lucan Village. This is in protest at the increase in college registration fees to €1500 per year and the possible full re-introduction of fees.
This essay first appeared on indymedia.ie.
According to the Irish Times 'At least 5,000 teachers, parents
and students gathered outside Leinster House this evening to express
their opposition to Government spending cutbacks.' More like 12,000
according to organisers. The response to budget cutbacks have shaken
the political establishent. Opposition though has been mostly
sectional, first pensioners, later on the same day Students and tonight
parents and teachers.
There is an NGO located in the capital of Liberia (Monrovia) called Youth for Community Academic and Development Services (YOCADS). A friend of mine has been in touch with the executive director (called Alphonso Weah) for months now and he is very keen to organize protests on Nov.5th in Liberia.
For
some years the student movement in Colombia has been the victim of
systematic persecution on the part of state agencies (DAS, OTP, CTI,
ESMAD, Army and National Police) and parastatals. In our memory are the
murders of 14 students between the years 2002 to 2006, the many
arrests, disappearances, torture and displacement that in recent years
have been filed against the students, or made subject to such agencies.
get connected: 
