In 2011, two women activists stood out enough to me that a penned a few words about them in When Women Lead.
The first one, Asmaa Mahfouz, had been instrumental in a revolution and the ouster of Mubarek. The hopes and dreams of the revolution have been more elusive. Maybe one day.
Then there was the elected leader of the University of Chile’s Student Union, Camila Vallejo. She and her colleagues shut down the University. For months. In August of that year:
Wednesday saw the start of a two-day nationwide shutdown, as transport workers and other public-sector employees joined the burgeoning student movement in protest.
But unlike the US Occupy movement that began shortly after the Chilean general strike, Vallejo and her associates continued their political activities. And last Sunday as reported in The Guardian, Vallejo and comrades independent candidates Giorgio Jackson and Gabriel Boric and fellow communist Karol Cariola were elected to lower house seats in Chile’s government.
Vallejo’s political career is just beginning. At the top of her agenda is to pull Michelle Bachelet back towards her socialist roots and away from the neo-liberals should she manage to get elected to a second Presidential term.
When a spoonful of socialism is no longer enough, a huge dose of communism may be required.
Congratulations Camila — and hope you are an inspiration to others of your generation around the world.
A comrade friend of mine disagrees. She is also fluent in like 10 languages and says she cannot stand how the English media is reporting this. See here for her thoughts; part II will be coming along soon.
http://meldungen-aus-dem-exil.noblogs.org/post/2013/11/19/understanding-the-chilean-elections-part-i
-setting-the-stage/
That perspective was included in The Guardian article. It’s also important — the dynamic and tensions between informal politics or outside the formal institutionalized powers and the formal ones is likely a necessary component of democracies that haven’t fossilized into a modern version of monarchies. Chris Hedges is one of the most prominent voices in the US arguing for “power in the street.” He and your comrade aren’t wrong. However, as long as the oligarchs and their hand picked puppets have sufficient arms and militarized bodies to handle “the street,” they can ignore it. Even when “the street” gets crowded and stays crowded, they need only make minor concessions because they appreciate the high personal costs to those on the street and that sufficient numbers on a continuous basis aren’t possible.
Have to go inside along with outside. The trick is to get in without turning those with natural leadership qualities into new demi-gods. Not to allow such leaders to forget that they serve the street and not vice versa. And the street must resist and reject those chosen leaders that take them for granted and when that’s not enough, manipulate them. That conferring leadership on any individual is provisional and there is plenty more leadership potential available from whence the chosen ones came.
While Obama’s rise to prominence was partially a function of a faction of the 1%, an element of the street was involved. More a grudging acceptance that he was as good as we could get and might at a minimum not further advance neo-liberalism. The latter was demonstrated to be a pipe dream within days of his election, and those that saw it clearly were cowed and/or their voices drowned out by the complacent and/or those that can’t seem to function without a demi-god. (Psychologically the Obamabots are no different than the Bushies.) And will excuse and rationalize all the failures of their demi-god.
Part II
Part III is coming up, too.