Tijuana conference to take up hemisphere’s struggles

By Cheryl LaBash

Nov 5, 2011

Where is the electrifying Occupy Wall Street movement headed?

From capitalist media pundits to the Occupy Wall Street encampments struggling to hold public space in countless cities and towns across the U.S., this question is bubbling underneath the daily actions and police repression.

An opportunity to discuss the experience of other such movements will take place just across the U.S. border from San Diego in Tijuana, Mexico, on Dec. 2 to 4 at the 8th U.S./Cuba/Mexico/Latin America Labor Conference. It will follow a three-day Workers’ School with instructors from the Lázaro Peña Cadre School in Havana, Cuba. Online registration and information are available at http://LaborExchange.blogspot.com.

Occupations, general strikes and militant marches are being renewed in the U.S. today. On May 1, 2006, the massive immigrant rights marches were effectively general strikes in many areas. This national movement had a strong impact. Earlier this year, tens of thousands mobilized daily to support an occupation of Wisconsin’s Capitol in Madison to challenge an anti-worker program. Through all this, the working class is learning to take action in its own name.

In Central and South America and the Caribbean, workers, Indigenous people and rural farmers have walked this path before us. They have been on the receiving end of imperialist economic domination, coup d’états, military dictatorships and rigged elections sponsored by the United States. Today the Mexican electrical workers are occupying the central square in Mexico City, which they have held since March. Chilean and Colombian students are fighting for education rights. Moreover, tiny Cuba has held off the imperialist giant to the north poised to destroy them for more than 50 years with a battle of ideas and profound unity.

The Oakland call for a citywide general strike and march to the port on Nov. 2 to “block the flow of capital” states the truth: “The Oakland General Strike will demonstrate the wide reaching implications of the Occupy Wall Street movement. The entire world is fed up with the huge disparity of wealth caused by the present system. Now is the time that the people are doing something about it. The Oakland General Strike is a warning shot to the 1 percent: Their wealth only exists because the 99 percent creates it for them.”

That is true. For those who want to discuss where this truth can take us with active builders of independent social orders, send a representative to the December conference in Tijuana. We have a world to win!