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Вкратце
Students occupied over 200 schools in São Paulo to protest the governor’s plan to close schools, forcing him to reverse course, and igniting a wave of student resistance across the country.
In September 2015, the governor of São Paulo, the richest state in Brazil, announced a so-called “reorganization” of public schools that concentrated students in fewer, larger schools in order to cut costs. The measure would have led to the closing of 94 institutions and the transfer of 311,000 students and more than 74,000 teachers, many of whom would have been relocated to schools far from their homes. The decision was made without any prior consultation with teachers, students, or families. And, even worse, the plan did not address any of the severe issues faced by the public education system, such as lack of teachers, lack of safety, overcrowded classrooms, crumbling infrastructure, and poor-quality meals — on the contrary, it only aggravated these issues.
In response to the announced plan, after street protests and appeals to the Secretary of Education, city councillors, and regional directors of education were met with silence, the students of Diadema State School decided to occupy their school, located on the outskirts of the state capital. The next day, students from Fernão Dias Paes State School, located in downtown São Paulo, did the same.
The occupations soon became the educational spaces that the students had always wanted.
The state government made several attempts to intimidate and demobilize the students. They ordered that both schools be cleared, a decision that was soon overruled by a state court upholding the students’ right to protest. State police were constantly showing up at the occupations, threatening the protesters and causing disruption. And the authorities fueled a media campaign to portray the students as vandals who were destroying and looting school property.
However, the repression only increased public support for the students: Their families and teachers, demonstrating their support, were quickly joined by artists, journalists, opinion makers, trade unions, social movements, and other groups. The public outrage generated by the government and police attacks triggered a massive wave of school occupations: In the following weeks, 213 schools across the state were occupied by students opposing the “reorganization” plan.
The occupations soon became the educational spaces the students had always wanted (see: THEORY: Prefigurative politics). There was a busy schedule of daily activities such as lectures, debates, public classes, and workshops on a variety of subjects (e.g. gender issues, direct democracy, digital culture, environmental education, permaculture, drugs and harm reduction, languages, etc.), most of which were crowdsourced to volunteers. Moreover, the students made sure that basic tasks such as cooking, cleaning, and safety were collective and self-organized. The collaborative and autonomous experience constituted a clear opposition to the government’s authoritarian discourse of austerity, and was a practical display of the quality that the public education system had failed to provide. As the occupations grew, there was no indication that the status quo would prevail over a self-organized, autonomous student movement that had turned the ideal of free and democratic education into reality.
In December, after two months of occupations, the state government finally announced the suspension of the school reorganization plan. The next day, the Secretary of Education resigned. The students’ uprising had launched a debate on the role of democracy in schools and the true meaning of public education. The students and their supporters emerged as a strong coalition with the ability to respond quickly to future attacks on education. And best of all, the movement soon spread beyond the state: In the following months, occupations took place in several other states in Brazil, reaching over 1.000 other schools in protest against precarious infrastructure, inferior meals, lack of quality, lack of transparency, and privatization of education, as well as demanding free public transportation.
Originally published in Beautiful Rising.
Ключевая теория
When the students demonstrated that quality public education could be effectively implemented with no financial or political excuses, it was easy for the public to understand what was going on: Students were keeping schools open in order to keep schools open.
Ключевая тактика
The occupations were initially intended to defend the schools against closing, but they also ended up serving as hubs to activate a solidarity network around the students’ uprising. Almost every aspect of the daily life in the occupations was crowdsourced, from basic necessities such as food and materials, to the workshops and classes. Therefore, the tactic in itself served as a way to broaden the movement and build support.
Ключевые принципы
The students used the occupation to create the schools they wanted. They built a fabulous schedule of classes, demonstrating that the claim that the students did not care about their studies was fallacious. While the government was calling them vandals, they were fixing what was broken with the voluntary help of the community.
The occupation was not the only tactic employed by the students. In order to build up even more pressure, they made use of other actions simultaneously, such as street blockades in major avenues in São Paulo, music festivals with the support of famous singers, mass demonstrations, and creative interventions.
The students created and recorded songs, many of which were political adaptations of widely popular Brazilian funk songs. These interventions were boosted by nimble and impactful communications on social media, independent media, and the use of celebrities, which served as a reliable alternative to the conservative mainstream press. Updates on each of the occupations were posted on an hourly basis, and a channel was established to connect with supporters and issue calls to action.