"International Student Movement"

Invitation to the Spring of Resistance

To students, education workers, and friends of a free education,

The social movements in the 60s claimed universal access to education; ethnic, linguistic, and sexual minorities claimed legitimacy in academia.  Since then, we have witnessed the ongoing erosion of these victories: increasingly punitive discipline over teaching practices, the strangulation of working-class education through underfunding, the re-assertion of nationalistic curricula, and many other outrages.  The upsurge of militancy in reaction to recent austerity measures, both global in scope, reveals that people will tolerate the theft of a public good no longer.  It presents us with a new challenge: can the revolt in defense of education become as global as the system which imposes on us, both in the form of the crisis, and in the ongoing attacks of the last forty years?  And it presents us with an opportunity: given the failure of those who claim to lead us, what visions of free and liberating education can we now create?

The International Student Movement (ISM) aims to facilitate this kind of organisation.  To this end, its coordinators have created several resources, including a mailing list, a newsletter, a website, and more.  Check out the full list here: http://ism-global.net/ism_en

It is not the purpose of the ISM to restrict local autonomy; to issue directives to local organisations; or to sacrifice our greatest asset: the creative power of the grassroots.  Rather, it is to encourage conversations between local organisations and the building of new, global models of resistance.  We merely offer these tools as a gesture of solidarity.

To that end, we further invite you to participate in the Spring of Resistance (March-May; week of action 21-26; Day of Action 2 May).  This will be a month of global action against the austerity programmes and for a universal, meaningful education.  We hope that you embrace the opportunity to define what these ideas mean for you, in your situation, and to decide what action it is appropriate for you to take.  Once again, it is not the purpose of the ISM to impose the Spring of Resistance upon student organisations.  Rather, we hope that it will be perceived as an opportunity to invent new forms of resistance, at a new scale, to stretch our hands across borders and greet each other as brothers and sisters.  The struggle did not begin with the ISM or this call to action, and it will not end with the Spring of Resistance.  We are under no such illusions.  But we can be sure, whatever happens, that it will leave us stronger, better organised, and, dare I say it, better educated.

Love and solidarity to you all,

[your name here]

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Joint statement by the ISM.  Please talk to your group about endorsing it:
http://ism-global.net/international_joint_statement

Details for the Spring of Resistance:
http://ism-global.net/SoR_2011

Mailing list:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/international_students_movement