news

The mobilization seeks to pressure Congress to guarantee workers’ rights, said a SintraONGS spokesperson. On Thursday, Colombians continued their two-day national strike in support of a popular referendum on labor reform promoted by President Gustavo Petro.

In Bogota, workers, and students gathered in the morning at the National Park with flags and loudspeakers, organized by the leftist Historic Pact party, the Single Central of Workers (CUT), the Colombian Federation of Educators (FECODE), the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), and other grassroots social organizations.

Citizens marched through the streets to the rhythm of batucada in a spectacle that included some protesters on stilts waving Colombian flags. As the march advanced along Seventh Avenue, people from other parts of the city joined the mobilization, which maintained a festive and combative tone.

The massive march arrived at Bolivar Square, where citizens waved Colombian and Palestinian flags, symbolizing the convergence of social struggles in the agenda of the popular mobilization. “This mobilization is part of the national strike to pressure Congress to guarantee workers’ rights,” said Yeimi Cante, spokesperson for the Union of Workers of Non-Governmental and Social Organizations (SintraONGS).

Bolivar Square was filled with banners proclaiming “The referendum will happen because it will happen” and “The people say so and they are right,” while citizens shouted slogans against 30 years of neoliberal governments that have stripped Colombians of their labor rights with the false promise of creating more jobs.

“Labor legislation is more than 80 years old. We are proposing that it should be more progressive and updated in accordance with reality,” said CGT President Percy Oyola, who announced that another national strike has been called for June 11.

“Today we are here because the social, political, and popular summit determined that we would hold a 48-hour strike,” he added, denouncing that the political elites “continue to steal Colombia’s chances of having better working conditions.”

This week, social protests were sparked by the Senate’s rejection of a referendum on labor reform, which was proposed by President Petro, who called on citizens to take to the streets to defend social justice.

“We’re here because this issue isn’t just about politics, it’s about dignity. We don’t want to grow up in a country where working means precariousness and fear of getting sick,” said Mariana, a sociology student who was marching with a banner demanding the approval of the referendum.

At the conference of the DKP party executive committee, which took place last weekend in Leverkusen, its chairman Patrik Köbele called for the protest against the genocide of Palestinians to be taken to the streets. UZ documents excerpts from the speech:

There is no word that sounds more terrible than genocide and yet we have to realize that Israel is escalating the genocide in Gaza and is both taking people hostage and starving them out in multiple violations of international law. The media are not above reporting that a Hamas hostage has been starved to death, while the more than two million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip are starving because Israel has been blocking the supply of food and aid for weeks. Then this starving population is urged by leaflets to flee immediately to another, also destroyed part of the Gaza Strip, because a few hours later they are bombed again and ground troops move in. When you see the few pictures in the media showing thousands of people with empty pots hoping for something to eat, it's heartbreaking. And the federal government? They don't think it's great either - although we don't know whether they are talking about the way people are being treated or the fact that pictures of it are being shown on television. The government continues to blather on about the Staatsräson (official euphemism for German-Israeli coercion, translators note).

There is protest against this in our country, some of which is repressively crushed. This resistance is still far too small. We, our party groups, must also do more to organize protest and solidarity with the Palestinian people and take this protest to the streets. The pressure against the anti-Palestinian policies of German politics must increase.

We must also make it very clear that this so-called Staatsräson is anti-Semitic at its core. Why? It is derived from the responsibility for the Shoah, i.e. the industrial mass extermination of Jews by the German fascists. To use this as a justification for claiming that it is Germany's responsibility to defend the so-called security of Israel is to portray Israel's policies as stemming from Judaism. That is in fact anti-Semitism. This policy of Israel has its cause in Israel's role as the agent of imperialism in the Middle East in combination with a murderous policy of Zionism.