About us?
Fadu en Lucha is a space for students, graduates, non-teachers and self-convened teachers of the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Urbanism of the UBA. This organization was born in January against the DNU and the Omnibus Law in order to defend the public university, the right to free university education, our future, our culture, for an educational ticket, against budget cuts. We organize ourselves democratically in weekly assemblies, in which we discuss and vote on an action plan and carry them forward in the organizational commissions.
We began mobilizing in front of Congress in the days of the Omnibus Law together with the neighborhood assemblies, and we took a leap when layoffs began to emerge in INCAA and Télam. Our first participation with the name “Fadu in Struggle” was in the 8M march – International Women’s Day. We were also in the protests in support of the Gaumont, putting our bodies together with other workers, artists and students, against the intimidation of Patricia Bullrich’s police.
Red Focus
We were also at the march on 24M- Day of Memory, Truth and Justice, along with our exact companions with the EMVyJ. Where we said very loudly “There are 30,000”, bringing the flags of struggle of our 117 detained-disappeared comrades, of our faculty.
We presented ourselves publicly on the first day of class at our faculty, with great interventions, from handing out flyers, making noise, reading the cover letter, artistic-graphic actions, going around classrooms to talk to teachers and students about the current situation. Our next stop is the Federal University march this April 23 where we have to be thousands demanding an increase in the budget and salary restructuring.
What context are we in?
We find ourselves in an emergency context, with uncertainty due to the lack of response and speculation by the authorities regarding the situation. We do not know exactly what the future will be of our universities, our careers, our future and all public education.
The freezing of the 2023 budget announced by Javier Milei’s government is an attack on the functioning of the UBA. They boast that they took a measure in this regard, a 70% “increase” in the budget, but it only serves for executive and operational expenses such as water and electricity. It does not cover teaching salaries, salaries that have lost 27% so far this year, and within the framework of interannual inflation of more than 273%. This is the worst budget since 1997.
The government’s objective is clear, to promote the emptying of courses, so that only a few can access education, move towards privatization and commercialization of our knowledge, benefiting a few. Did you know that only with the multimillion-dollar subsidy that the national State provides to Galperín (only him) could the university budget of all the universities in the country be financed?
It already happened during the military dictatorship, when a quota system and a cost per exam were established. With the return of democracy, university normalization was experienced. The free nature of the Public University was always questioned by the liberal governments, Menem, Macri and now Milei. The student struggle was always the stick in the wheel that stopped attempts at tariffication and privatization of higher education.
In this context, teachers and non-teachers denounce the destruction of their salaries and advance measures to organize. Today, in the midst of a deepening crisis, there is also a big problem with students remaining in university. Given the lack of educational tickets, the high rates, the increase in job insecurity on us and the destruction of salaries. There are fewer and fewer of us who can keep up with the course, which is why we also fight so that no one is left out of the workshops!
Currently, we find some faculties such as philosophy, medicine, social and fadu without light, or directly the Faculty of Psychology based in Chivilcoy in the province of Buenos Aires, which are evaluating charging a fee for studying or like the faculty of the UNCo (Neuquén) that went into default due to not being able to pay for electricity, gas and cleaning services.
The days go by and there is more and more news that we find. How much longer are we going to wait? Until they close careers or fire teachers?
What do the UBA and FADU authorities say?
On April 9, the radical rector of the UBA, Ricardo Gelpi, together with the vice-rector Emiliano Yacobitti (UCR), called on all the rectors of the national universities, gathered at the CIN (National Interuniversity Council) to a large federal mobilization in defense of public education. However, its political space Franja Morada – UCR, which directs the majority of university student centers including CEFADU led by ReFadu (Franja Morada), seeks to make the national mobilization for education part of a negotiation strategy with the government. of Milei to achieve some measly budget increase for the operation. While they are threading a new labor reform and a new Omnibus Law together with the government against the working people and the youth. What’s more, the UCR in Mendoza fined the university teachers union 1 million pesos for marching in defense of quality public education.
With an intentional policy to force the closure of public universities by the current government, it is striking that those who are governors from JxC, radicals and Peronists, do not open their mouths in the face of the closure of universities that are distributed throughout throughout the country. No one who governs a district can look the other way when their university is being openly defunded. The pre-existing budget was already very deficient, several universities have been operating for years with free teaching work, incorrectly called ad-honorem, with a lack of scholarships and the absence of kindergartens.
Faced with this scenario, our authorities, the Dean DG. Carlos Venancio
and the Vice Dean Architect. Walter Gómez Diz (both radicals), do not say anything about it, as is to be expected, being part of those who plan to give governance to Milei, already applying auto-adjustment by turning off the lights of our faculty and reducing the use of elevators . They act in conjunction with the leadership of the student center, ReFadu (The Purple Strip, from the same political space), which feigns dementia as if we were in a year like any other. The center only talks about registrations, a new water dispenser for mate and spreads a petition to demand an educational ticket, but not a word about the current budget, the march on the 23rd and the situation of teachers and students. Nothing is to be expected when last year they self-extended the mandate, as in the entire UBA.
This is why we do not have any type of trust in him and that is why we students saw the need to fight to promote this self-convened and democratic space, in which we coordinate to truly solve our problems. These go beyond the University, sky-high rents, impossible access to healthcare and increasingly expensive transportation along with high rates and food prices are part of the fact that the course is increasingly inaccessible for the most.
What we want?
We have already seen that the force is like on January 24 with the general strike, or on March 24 against an openly denialist government, there are millions of us in the streets ready to fight. For this reason, we demand a general strike and a plan of struggle uniting everything that they intend to divide.
We tell the President of the Nation, all his officials and the faculty authorities that we are not going to allow the closure of the Public University, know that on the other side there will be a force with great capacity for mobilization and action that will not to allow that to happen. For this reason, this April 23 at 3:30 p.m. we are going to march from Congress to Plaza de Mayo in the federal educational march carrying all our demands.
Join us!
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
