Industrial Workers of the World

Red November, black November, Bleak November, black and red.

Hallowed month of labour’s martyrs, Labour’s heroes, labor’s dead.

Labour’s wrath and hope and sorrow, Red the promise, black the threat,

Who are we not to remember? Who are we to dare forget?

Black and red the colors blended, Black and red the pledge we made,

Red until the fight is ended, Black until the debt is paid.

— By Ralph Chaplin author of Solidarity Forever

“Up until now,” Hernandez said, “we’ve heard of 16 marches in other states, and just in the state of Michoacan for example, 11,000 schools went on strike, as well all the higher education institutions. It’s also necessary to consider the amount of disorganization and domination which the large part of the Mexican working class has found itself in. What happened today signifies, without any doubt, a ‘leap’ in the consciousness of the Mexican working class. We need to be patient, but it seems to me that we’re on the threshold of qualitative change.”

http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2214/79/

Since the US-Mexico trade agreement, NAFTA, the number of Mexicans illegally crossing the border into the US seeking employment has risen to 500,000 a year. Add to this the financial crisis (Mexicans repeat to me “When the U.S sneezes Mexico gets pneumonia”) and Mexican president Calderon’s measures to handle the crisis, which consist in a “fiscal package” of an increased consumption tax including food and medicine, new communication taxes and decreased government spending. Then add the fact that the minium wage in Mexico today buys a third of what it bought twenty years ago, and you can see how the government’s firing of 44,000 electricity workers, members of the county’s most combative and independent union, SME (Mexican Electrical Union), became catalyst for a movement of people deeply angry at both an unfair economic system, and towards a president who, most studies admit, used fraud to win the elections in 2006.

The electricity workers were fired on October 10th. On October 16th, around 500,000 people marched in the capital in protest. One month after the firing the people’s anger still had not cooled, and on November 11th there were again massive marches, road blocks, full strikes and partial strikes all across the country.

The decision to strike was taken on November 5th, in a massive meeting of the newly formed National Assembly of Popular Resistance. This is a convergence made up of around 400 unions, student, rural workers, and indigenous movements, women and gay rights organisations and left and revolutionary political parties from across the country. With more chants of “It’s a struggle of all workers of this country”, “Here the workers’ movement is forming”, “Give me an S, M, E…what does it spell…SME! SME! SME!” and “Unions united will never be defeated!”, the meeting concluded with a vote to strike on November 11th and to allow the SME to form a temporary organizing committee of movement representatives to coordinate the strike plans and campaign.

related: http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php

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