"there is just no way to grow stronger and smaller at the same time."

-Service Employees International Union, president, Andy Stern

Proposals from Love and Rage for the Education and VSU Planning Day.

[1.7.99]

1. Continuous agitation.

After six months of hard campaigning and a win on VSU looking likely, it is

tempting to think that we can look forward to a quieter second semester.

The reality is however that there are many attacks on higher education at

the moment which are in pressing need of our attention - the effects of the

1996 restructuring of higher education are continuing to bite, with

increasing student debt, the axing of staff, subjects and courses, massive

restrictions on access to income support, and a general decline in the

conditions of education on campus. Secondary education is facing similar

problems, with public schools getting $100 government funding per student

while priviate schools receiving more than $800 government funding per

student. In the near future we also face multiple attacks: the Research

Green Paper released yesterday proposing research vouchers, the West Review

last year proposed vouchers for all students, and the suggestion in recent

media reports, that the Prime Minister is likely to take up education

‘reform’ as a ‘leadership’ issue in the near future.

We think therefore that it is important that as education activists on

campuses we don’t just ‘wait for the next big issue’ or bide our time until

the moment is right for activism or simply turn to running a ‘propaganda’

campaign in second semester. Nor can we wait for student conciousness to

reach some kind of a pinnacle- we as activists need to be aware of the role

we play in raising awareness and to some extent shaping conciousness. We

need to make this semester a semester of active campaigning, a semester of

continually agitating and organising

An additional reason for us to ensure that we keep actively campaigning this

semester is that activism is not something which can be turned on and off

like a tap - we need to be continually training up new activists, and

keeping the wheels of our activist collectives well oiled. If we don’t the

activist base which we have gained from the VSU campaign will quickly

disappear. We only need to look at what happened between the end of 1997 and

the end of 1998, where there was a relative lack of activism around

education issues - vibrant EAGs of 10-15 people in 1997 at Sydney Uni. and

UTS, virtually fell apart in 1998, and the CCEN (which had had up to 90

people attend) contracted dramatically - this was not only bad in itself,

but meant when it came to fighting VSU, we had a quite small activist base

from which to build.

We also need to admit that there is no time for complacency - while we may

have defeated VSU - the onslaught of the neoliberal/economic rationalist

offensive continues at a rapid rate. We continue to see attacks on unions,

privatisation, attacks on the welfare state , including health care and

education, the extension of police powers and numbers, and general

enrichment of the already super-wealthy, and enforced austerity for the

rest. Now, as much as ever, we need to be building activism, militancy and

combativeness amongst students and the general population if we are to have

any hope of defending ourselves, fighting back, and making real social

change happen in a long term sense.

2. The need to reach out to students

A major problem at the moment on campus, is that it is only in times of

absolute emergency, i.e. if there is an NDA or similar in two or three days,

that student activists and Office Bearers take seriously the idea of needing

to reach out to all students with their campaigns. Instead, many Office

Bearers and activists resign the horizons of their activism to a few poster

runs, calling a forum and a collective meeting and maybe leafleting the

cafes for a few hours.

The major limitation is that there just aren’t enough people organising

together to make reaching students seem like a realistic objective. Often

there are only have one or two activists in each collective who actively

build their events. To combat this, one suggestion we have is that SRCs and

the left on campus should pick one or two issues on which they are going to

attempt to reach all students, and all activists and Office Bearers put in

time over a period of two or three days to make sure that every student on

campus knows about this particular campaign. Since we are all students and

higher education is under such massive attack at the moment, it seems that

the most obvious campaign for the left to prioritise would be an education

issue, but this need not be the case. Another option is to have an SRC stall

which has material for handing out, postering, lecture bashing for a number

of campaigns/issues that is staffed/used as a base by students from

different collectives/departments.

3. We need more than just hard-working activists, we need organisers.

One problem with the 1999 VSU campaign was that on many campuses 99% of the

activist work (leafleting, postering, lecture bashing, ring arounds ,

mailouts, photocopying, etc.) was done by only a few, very hard working

activists. Most people recognise the problems with this - it means that new

people may come to the rally, but they fail to be involved in a more active

way, and unless new people are helping to build the NDA’s and actions we

have, we won’t be creating and training-up new

activists. Also this can mean in some cases that there is no accountability

or collective control over the campaign.

We see the key to overcoming this problem is a change in the way current

activists conceptualise themselves. Many activists today organise as though

we are in the 1970’s-80’s when student assistance and the dole were more

easily available and students weren’t disciplined and restrained as much by

debt and high unemployment.

We believe that current activists and office bearers need to shift from just

being ‘activists’, who do lots of activist work, to also being ‘organisers’,

who facilitate the involvement of other people in activism. For example,

putting time into making it easy for new activists to pair up with older

activists to do leafleting or lecture bashing, or when doing ring arounds

giving students, who have little time because of study and paid work, a

variety of concrete options for helping build a particular action, e.g. pick

up petition from the SRC or the stall, meet at 8am for leafleting, help with

the stall for an hour, or taking leaflets to their classes.

"Activists in the Classrooms", is no worn out cliché. This is essential for

two reasons. Firstly, it means that students whose study or outside

commitments are such that they are not able to spend a great deal of time

campaigning in a conventional way, are able to be involved and supportive.

We believe essential they are also essential. With living conditions for

students and the working class becoming more and more difficult it is not

unreasonable to accept that many people will not be able to give as much

time as others. This should not translate into total non-involvement or

being shut out of a campaign entirely. It is up to activists/ office bearers

to reach out and involve people who are supportive of the campaign. It is

important to take steps to ensure that students identify with the

collective/src and can undertake some small piece of action in support of

the campaigns. An idea is to make sure that t-shirts, stickers, petitions

and leaflets for the classroom are available.

This is of course, simple to say, and a lot more difficult to implement,

but with patience and practice we believe that a transformation can happen

which will pay off significantly in the near future.

4. Building Coalitions

We believe that student unions and activists on campus needs to prioritise

building links with groups that can act as long term allies in our campaigns

both against the Liberal Government, and also against any ‘New Labor’ ALP

government.

Through these coalitions we can both provide concrete support for each

others campaigns, as well as build up links which can lay the base for

broader anti-neoliberal coalitions and which in the future may push forward

a left agenda of their own.

Concrete forms which this coalition building could take include mass sign on

campaigns of trade unions, social welfare groups, churches, ethnic and other

community groups, and maybe even celebrities, like the coalition building

which was undertaken in the anti-VSU campaign, involvement in joint rank and

file activist groups like the Anti-GST Alliance, students attending and

speaking at mass delegate and workplace meetings of trade unions (and

inviting trade unionists to our meetings etc) , and students providing

concrete support to the struggles of workers by attending picket lines and

demonstrations. It is also important to "get to know" rank and file trade

unionists as well as organisers, as it is the rank and file membership who

are often the most militant. We also think that cross publishing in student

union and trade union papers would form a vital way of building a support

for such coalition work amongst our members.

5. Militancy and boldness

In general we believe that the student movement, both activists and also

those who more passively participate, lack a level of boldness and militancy

which holds us back - one only need to see how many people resort to

hip-pocket rather than political arguments around funding cuts or VSU to get

a sense of this.

Boldness.

The main strategies for increasing the boldness and conviction of activists

and office bearers is proper resourcing and training, and being surrounded

by bold and convicted people who are confident in their politics. Confidence

in and of itself is not enough, it must be combined with political

conviction so it that it translates into bold action. Things like the

‘Student’s Strike Back: VSU Campaign Pack’ from NUS National preceding the

last NDA was really helpful for putting the arguments against VSU in the

finger tips of students and sample lecture bashes made it much easier for

new activists to make the arguments. We think that a ‘Campaign Information

and Training Night’ which was focused on running through the strategy and

arguments of the NUS/CCEN campaigns for second semester, held late in the

first week of second semester would be a good way of providing a large

number of activists with the conviction and tools they need to campaign.

Militancy

We think that activists and student unions need to be prepared to take risks

and to undertake militant action - from calling on students to joint trade

union picket lines, to supporting things like campus rallies, tent cities

and occupations.

The main reasons for this orientation are:

i. Direct actions such as rallies and occupations are one of the few ways

that students can actively take back some control over their lives and

exercise power directly.

ii. For this reason they have an incredibly galvanising effect of those

students undertaking collective action. In terms of increasing the size of

the activist base on campus, direct action can be really effective. [see the

Leunig cartoon on the covering page]

iii. Direct action is also quite effective at forcing concessions from

University Admin. and, if they reached a significant enough size, the

Federal Government, as they fear that radicalisation now may put in jeopardy

other plans and priorities which they have.

iv. Direct action is a recognition of the futility and illegitimacy of the

methods which are currently available through formal measures such as

university councils and senates, and in society more generally.

Many people may be hesitant because of the problem of backlash form a

broader student population and that it may divide the movement. The best

insurance against both these problems is-

i. putting resources into outreach to the general student population &

winning the majority of students into at least passive support for the

campaign.

ii. talking to people in which you are in coalition with about examples of

how militancy has been incredibly effective - UTS - 97, RMIT - 98, Bathurst

- 99, or even the picket lines of 30 people at Hyde Park Plaza Hotel or

outside Woolworth’s this year which each produced near immediate victories.

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Suggestions for second semester

i.Taking up immediate fights on campus

We think it is important that we prioritise taking up immediate fights on

campus, especially the effects of funding cuts. Why?

- will arise relatively spontaneously because of $800 mil cut to funding

- such campaigns could show the immediate effect of funding cuts to all

students.

- the could also show the effectiveness and relevance of activism to all

students.

- These campaigns provide an opportunity to discipline VC’s and University

Councils.

ii. Public Education Campaign

We think that it would be good for us to initiate a campaign for public

education which we expect to run over the next 12 to 18 months.

A suggestion for its format is :

i. that it initially consist of a petition on the problems with higher

education and our demands on the federal government. These petitions would

be put to students, trade unions, community groups, University Councils,

VCs, general student meetings… campaigns could be run around VCs who don’t

sign.

ii. The second stage (beginning of next year) could involve another petition

which contains a commitment to action if the government doesn’t meet the

demands by a certain date (say April 2000: students walk out, Uni

Councils/VCs close university, unions strike/stop work…

In terms of immediate campaigns we propose that rather than a central rally

this semester, that campuses hold GSMs or on campus rallies around the end

of the month, and that Sydney Uni and UTS hold theirs on Tuesday 24th

August, to coincide with the ACTU anti-2nd wave rally, and that after campus

rallies, they march to the ACTU rally.

iii. Building Links with Unions

Because unions don’t fit into the neoliberal model which is the current

concensus fo the global elite, they are being forced to radicalise and reach

out or be smash - This provides us with opportunities to make links with

them around common issues. We suggest that we resolve to:

- support local union rallies and picket lines

- prioritise building links to sectors which are

i. militant - ie. the CFMEU and AMWU

ii. where students work - ie hospitality and services - ASU and LHMU