Resources on the Revolutionary Socialists
The Center for Socialist Studies is organizing a lecture, Tuesday May 22, at 6pm, on: Present and Future Challenges facing Egypt’s Labor Movement.
Speakers will include strike leaders from Cairo, Daqahliya, Mahalla, Beheira, and the 10th of Ramadan.
Members of Parliament will also take part, including: Saber Abul Fotouh of the Muslim Brotherhood, Saad Abboud of the Karama Party, and independent parliamentarian Gamal Zahran.
The Center is located 7 Murad Street Giza.
The Socialist Alliance, Leftist Union, and civil society organizations are holding a press conference, Tuesday 10 April, 12 noon, at the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, to brief reporters about the crackdown on the Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services activists in Naga’a Hammadi, and the intimidation faced by labor activists in Mahalla.
The HMLC is located: 1 Souq el-Tawfiqiya St, Fifth Floor.
The Socialist Alliance and the Leftist Union (two umbrella organizations that coordinate between revolutionary and reformist leftist factions) have already come out with a statement in solidarity with the CTUWS.
And here is a Daily Star Egypt report on the government crackdown against Upper Egyptian labor activists:
A coalition of 37 civil society organizations has called on the governor of the Upper Egyptian province of Qena to re-open the offices of a workers rights organization which was closed by the city government of Nagaa Hammadi last week.
The local branch office of the Center for Trade Union and Workers Services (CTUWS) was closed on Thursday, March 29, after an order to shut down the group was issued by the Chairman of the City, General Al Sherbeeny Hasheesh.
A broad range of Egyptian civil society organizations have endorsed the call for solidarity with the CTUWS, including the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, the Hisham Mubarak Law Center and the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information.
The 5th Cairo Anti-War Conference’s final statement is available in Arabic.
And here’s a report about the Conference from the Guardian’s Comment is Free:
The rich and powerful have their conferences and we who oppose them have ours. For example, some very rich and powerful characters were meeting in Saudi Arabia last week.
But as the tyrants met in Riyadh, delegates from 17 different countries gathered in Egypt for the Fifth International Cairo Conference incorporating the Third Middle Eastern Social Forum under the slogan: “Building an international coalition for resistance” – resistance against colonialism, globalisation, imperialism and Zionism.
There was a lot to discuss: the catastrophe of Iraq, the clear build-up against Iran, the on-going agony of the Palestinian people and the almost universal despotism which characterises the Middle East.
The conference met in a country on the brink of revolt. Hosni Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt as a police state for over 26 years, has recently increased his people’s suffering. Last December he announced changes in the constitution to “rid Egypt of socialist principles launched in the 1960s (and) also seek to create a more favorable atmosphere for foreign investments”.
This was the usual neo-liberal bullshit for slashing wages and forcing people to work harder. The workers resisted with massive strikes. Some 20,000 mobilized to defend their bonuses at the Ghazl el-Mahal factory in Mahalla el-Kubra, north of Cairo, 8,000 at Kafr al-Dawwar factory did the same, followed by similar strikes at Zifta and Shibin al-Kum in Alexandria.
