<nettime> The revolt of a generation [12-13th May] Euro-mediterranean happening about education, welfare and new political practices

[claudia bernardi <clod.zeta@gmail.com>]

In the last two years we have participated and assisted with extraordinary
movements that have fought for a quality education, for labor rights and new
welfare against the austerity politics of the European Union. The wild
demonstrations, pickets lines and strikes, the university occupations and
the turmoil of the Mediterranean signal a generational revolt and the
necessity of a new social pact that involves all those subjects that stand
up for their rights and refuse to be blackmailed. The huge strikes last
autumn in France showed us the possibility of creating an intergenerational
alliance, as blockades of production and circulation of goods constitute
different aspects of a common struggle. In Rome, as in London, the Book
Block was a collective political practice able to speak out about the
dismantling of public universities and processes of deskilling. At the same
time, the revolts of Maghreb- Mashrek demonstrate how the construction of a
future is tightly bound to both the radical claim for democracy and with the
necessity of freedom from the parasitic and corrupt power that commands over
our lives, universities, schools and workplaces. The recent revolts and
movements have crossed national and European borders as well as the limits
imposed on education and mobility by Bologna Process to clash with the
failure of a strategy we have always opposed.

The struggles of these months have indicated that the possibility of radical
change can only become concrete through the alliance among the different
actors of labor and education, through common and transnational practices
guided by those whom put their own bodies and knowledge. We hope to give a
common meaning to this new space redefined by the conflicts in which the
crises opens new possibilities to create an "other" future. It is for this
reason that we want to initiate an open debate about the common projects we
want to build together, starting in Rome on 12 and 13th May 2011.

Program

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*Thursday 12th May 2011*
6 p.m.

Aperitive - *Global video session #1*
Contribution from the education revolt - Book Bloc video and photo

Inside the happening there will be a specific space for videos and photos
that may contribute to the discussion in two crucial ways: first of all, by
telling us about new practices expressed by movements that are able to go
beyond specific local conditions: the manif sauvage born during the French
anti-CPE movement spread to the student movement in Italy. Pickets,
unauthorized demos, blockades of circulation, in this way students across
Europe took to the streets of the metropolises. The occupations were the
most common means of activating struggles, not only in universities but also
at historical monuments in city centers and the suburbs with mobilizations
eventually spreading throughout the urban fabric. The Book Block was, more
than any other, the political practice that allowed the bodies subjected to
precariousness and the deskilling of knowledge.

Secondly, we would like to give a wide-ranging discussion through
contributions from all those who build and play an active role in the
movement at a global level.
Global Video # 1 is a session to talk about conflicts and sketch the
richness of the imagery they have created in recent years.


?????????
Friday, May 13, 2011
University La Sapienza

10:00 am*
Critic of knowledge and self-education: making the other university*

The university occupations and practices of conflict signals that the
defense of  public universities necessarily depends on its transformation.
The free school born in the English movement and the self-education courses
and the self-managed learning initiatives in Italy pose the need to urgently
rethink the production of knowledge beyond disciplinary boundaries and
across national borders, without however limiting ourselves to changing just
a small segment of the educational process but, rather, with the conviction
to completely change its places, themes and times.
This first workshop aims to investigate those practices where research is
linked to learning, and the various working figures of the university -
researchers, students and precarious - able to break with imposed
hierarchies and move towards a true democratization of the university.
Rethinking research and education on a transnational level, inventing high
quality knowledge practices in the crisis of the Bologna Process means
defending public universities in order to completely transform them in a
radical way.


? ? ?
14.00
lunch break

? ? ?
15.00
*
The Wind of the South
Labor, income and democracy against the crisis: the social
euro-Mediterranean issue*

A growing intellectual unemployment and the poverty that affects more and
more skilled young people seem to be common and transversal features of the
economic growth inside global financial capitalism. Young skilled workers
are locked in a vicious cycle of unemployment and increasing poverty, but at
the same time they are the co-protagonists of economic and financial growth
within global capitalism.

In this frame, there is the need to completely rethink the forms of welfare
and the protection of legal rights: their extension is unavoidably linked
with the always open question of transversal alliances among the different
social sectors. From the Maghreb - Mashreq revolts to the European
movements, there is an urgent need to open a real debate on democracy and
the forms of generalization of the strike, starting from a central element
such as welfare.
On what basis is the reclaim of rights the recomposing weave among different
generations and actors at the transnational level?


? ? ?

20.00
Dinner - *Global video session # 2*
Contributions and interviews from the revolts of Maghreb - Mashreq

The revolts of the Maghreb-Mashreq constitute a reference point for reading
the political transformations of our time. A changing scenario in which
no-one has tools ready to grasp the complexity of such radical ruptures.
Youth and students are the subject to blackmail, by now impoverished, but
with a degree in hand, and ever so close to all those in Europe who see the
Mediterranean, and especially the Maghreb, as something far away. Yet their
high level of education, their mobility, the lack of rights in a place that
was corrupted and blocked by lobbying groups is not so far from us, indeed.
In this session Global Video # 2 we aim to collect the contributions of
young North Africans in order to better grasp such radical changes that
inform us about new democratic processes, young people forced to migrate,
and new social alliances.

*Link & UniCommon *
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info: www.unicommon.org; www.coordinamentouniversitario.it


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