From November 19 to 21, the Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne student elections will be held, where students will be able to elect their representatives in the central councils of the university. The Raised Fist is presenting itself for the 4th consecutive time at Paris 1, because students need anti-capitalist and combative elected officials, ready to bring their voices and mobilizations to the university councils. Faced with Macron's continued attacks and the projects carried out by the far-right, students need a worthy organization to defend them in the councils and in the streets.
Selection, precariousness, censorship and witch hunt: which university do the government and the far right want to impose on us?
This November 10, the Minister of ESR Patrick Hetzel reiterated in a column published on the JDD his wish to censor and criminalize any solidarity with Palestine and Lebanon, going so far as to threaten with prosecution those who dare to defend the rupture of the partnerships with Israel. Yet another demonstration of the university project that the government and university management want to impose on us.
On the one hand, the appointment of the architect of the LRU of 2007 (also known as “Act 1 of university autonomy”), who also participated in the development of the ORE law of 2018, reflects the desire of the ruling classes to accelerate reforms of social selection and sorting. On the other hand, the policy of censorship towards supporters of Palestine shows their determination regarding the deepening of the interference of private actors in the financing and development of training and research. In this context, everything is done to muzzle the political opponents of the regime in universities in order to avoid student protests as much as possible. Le Poing Levé is particularly paying the price, as evidenced by the attempts to ban its meetings in Aix-Marseille and Sorbonne University, or the refusal of domiciliation in Montpellier and Bordeaux.
For this, in addition to Macronist lists and falsely “apolitical” like the “Fédé” which accompanied the latest reforms of the destruction of the public university such as the ORE law, the government knows that it can count on the extreme right as stinking relays of its xenophobic, reactionary and sorting policy social. In October, the Minister of ESR took part in the congress of the UNI, a far-right union founded in opposition to the May 68 movement, which defends a university reserved for the richest and foreigners, and in which we chase away any trace of “wokism”. To Paris 1 is added La Cocarde, a small group close to the GUD and Zemmour, which defends the theses of “big replacement” and campaigned in the elections around a pro-repressive and anti-mobilization, elitist and racist discourse.
The Raised Fist, the organization that fights for another university and another society!
Campaigns, actions, mobilizations: Le Poing Levé campaigns daily in Paris 1 and in the 16 universities where the collective is present for a free university open to all, which is a place of individual and collective emancipation in which students and workers can organize ourselves to respond to the challenges facing us: precariousness, the climate crisis, the acceleration of trends towards war in the world, the fight against the extreme right, patriarchy and racism.
In this logic, we have made the fight against student precariousness a central aspect of our activity in recent months, while poverty is a social sorting tool in universities. To deliver precarious young people as quickly as possible to the job market, the government and its institutions are making higher education inaccessible to the working classes. Data revealed by our large survey carried out among 5,000 students throughout France: while 85% of students are poor and 11% say they have already been homeless, almost half have already considered interrupting their studies in reason for this situation. To deal with it, we do not believe in the strategy of questioning the government favored by organizations like the Student Union or the UNEF, and we are banking on building the balance of power to wrest the Crous meal at 1 euro for all, but above all the establishment of a student income equal to the minimum wage and the requisition of empty accommodation.
A method that has proven itself at Paris 1: while the presidency was trying to pass its “social sorting reform” last year, which would have prevented more than half of the students from validating their license, we participated to build a mobilization of several hundred students. Thus, unlike the SAP1 (Student Union) and the UNEF which negotiated meetings with management to obtain crumbs in exchange for the establishment of the essentials of the reform, our mobilization and our refusal to amend or negotiate the project, in accordance with the wishes of the majority of students, made it possible to push back the presidency across the board. The demonstration that even to improve our study conditions, only the struggle pays!
At the same time as we defend a university open to working classes and foreigners – in particular by demanding the repeal of racist and xenophobic selection laws such as Welcome to France – we are campaigning for a university closed to private interests. In addition to agreements with Israeli universities and companies like Thalès which participate in the genocide in Gaza, Paris 1 has several partnerships with private companies. Typically, the partnership between Eiffage and the BioTERRE master makes this training nothing more than a greenwashing tool for the ecocidal company. This partnership hides many others, with Total, Louis Vuitton and BNP Paribas, which plunder resources all over the world and destroy the planet.
Faced with this, we defend the breaking of agreements with Israel, but also the end of all partnerships with employers who use our knowledge for their profits. To defend a university run by students, teachers and staff rather than by multinationals, we contributed to the drafting of motions for the termination of partnerships with Thalès and Israeli universities, participated in the creation of committees to support the Palestine and the blockades and occupations against the genocide, or even organized conferences and meetings on the climate crisis in the presence of researchers like Paul Guilibert.
Students alongside workers, who do not negotiate social regression
Attacks against the right to study of the working classes and foreigners, the increase in precariousness or even the deepening of the integration of private actors in the decision-making bodies of higher education are part of an entire system based on the interests of a minority. Also, Le Poing Raivé presents itself as a revolutionary leftist list, convinced that to change the university it will be necessary to change the whole of society.
In this logic, our fight goes far beyond the walls of the university and our elected officials aspire to be the voice of all the youth who have stood up in recent years against the climate emergency and the genocide in Gaza. , systemic police violence or even against patriarchy and femicide. While we have to face a radicalized bourgeoisie ready to do anything to impose its social project on us, we therefore focus centrally on the class struggle, alongside the workers who keep society running. During the cleaning workers' strike in Tolbiac in 2022, we accompanied them every day to hold a picket and a strike fund, allowing them to engage in a balance of power with the university and the subcontracting company. for more than a month. Likewise, we organized a delegation of around a hundred students from the Paris region to support the refiners in Normandy facing their requisition during their strike against pension reform. And when the agri-food giant InVivo launched a repressive offensive against Christian Porta and the combative workers of the Neuhauser factory, Le Poing Levé supported the strike until victory.
A strategy that distinguishes us from other left-wing lists, which limit their activity to student issues then call to vote for the electoral unions of the institutional left – the SAP1 and the UNEF claim to be the “ youth of the New Popular Front “. Rather than delegating our future to alliances including organizations like the Socialist Party having been at the origin of a multitude of attacks against youth and the working classes, we consider that the strength lies in the mobilization of the movement student and the world of work.
From this point of view, we have no illusions about the “university democracy” and central councils. Students are under-represented, and even when elected staff or student representatives manage to win votes to curb attacks from the presidency, the latter can invalidate them. In 2020 during confinement, Le Poing Levé had been before administrative justice to defend the automatic validation of students after management appealed against the motion adopted by a majority of votes in CFVU. This November 10, yet another proof of the democratic masquerade of the central councils, Patrick Hetzel explicitly instructed university presidencies not to submit to a vote motions relating to the termination of partnerships with Israel. In other words, our participation in student elections and then in central councils is centrally aimed at carrying the voice of students, and acting as whistleblowers when management hopes to pass its reforms without everyone's knowledge. This is what we did with the reform of social sorting, or even with regard to false accusations in “anti-Semitism” of the presidency with regard to the mobilization in support of the Palestinian people, which we have publicly denounced. Clearly, like the elected officials of the Poing Raised of Paris 8 who support the mobilizations of undocumented students for their regularization, or those of the University of Mirail in Toulouse who actively worked against the closure of a Master's degree and established the menstrual leave at university, we put our seats in these councils at the service of student struggles.
To achieve this, we are not afraid to face repression and intimidation. Last year, several Raised Fist activists were in custody for occupying La Sorbonne against the genocide in Gaza. In recent days, La Cockarde has increased its attempts at intimidation on campus while the UNI campaigns for the unblocking of La Sorbonne and Tolbiac. But whether against the government or the far right, we will not back down!
More than ever, while the ruling classes are determined to put an end to the public university and to make us pay for their crises and their wars, while we see the barbarity of capitalism a little more every day, we need activists of fight in universities and organize ourselves!
