The unceasing activity of the Iranian people, headed by women, especially the young generation and high school students, has completed its second month after the murder of the 22-year old Mahsa Amini at the hands of the so-called morality police. This extraordinary mass movement is now bearing its fruits in the form of the organising of the masses. We are here presenting two documents, one from the school system, where teachers and students are among the most active actors of the uprising, the other one from among the mothers of the youth for our readers to get a taste of the orientation of the movement.
RedMed
Statement of announcing the existence of student and school protection committees
A centaur, or occasionally hippocentaur, is a creature from Greek mythology with the upper body of a human and the lower body and legs of a horse. In modern political literature, centaur refers to the form of the government and political sovereignty, which guarantees its permanence and continuity with the help of its head and upper body (meaning the ability to create satisfaction among the citizens) and the lower body and four legs of its horse (the tool of coercion and oppression).
In Iran today, the government is a headless centurion that tries to maintain its survival and perseverance only with the help of its four horse- legs. It means the government resorted to open force and violence to maintain its continuity. The intense police war against the society, the criminalization of any protest and resistance, and the intensification of the culture of brutality indicate that the ruling centaur in Iranian society has lost its head.
The terror caused due to the loss of the head (centaur)and the fear caused by the outbreak of violence and hatred imposed by the government should not make the structural and invisible violence of the dominant order be hidden from view. The lack of recognizing and not seeing the full dimensions of existing structural violence will take the movement of confronting oppression to the state of reductionism and limited goals. And it disempowers society. The structural violence caused by the ruling political-economic order is not only the leading cause of the loss of the centaur's head and the outbreak of governmental terror but also is the cause of looting of the society's wealth, exploiting the labor force, and cause of serious insecurity problems for Iran.
We know very well that the procedures mentioned above have imposed outrageous costs on the education institution in Iran: the continuous reduction of the education budget, the extensive privatization, the commodification of education, and the aggravation of social inequalities are the results of these policies. Also, the sharp drop in the quality of education, the imposition of Ideological and ineffective content for the lives and souls of students, lack of providing teachers and human resources are some parts of the continuation of the prevailing structural violence in the field of education, along with other processes of taking the lives of the majority of Iran's society hostage.
However, a newfound matter at this stage, and in the course of the revolutionary uprising of recent months, is the combination and continuation of more severe structural violence along with intense police warfare and criminalization of any resistance and protest action in school and other spaces of society. Attacking the educational environment with tear gas, threatening and arresting teachers, mass arresting of students, and killing them every day represent the eruption of politics and culture rooted in brutality and death to rule society. From our point of view, this issue is not exceptional, intermittent, or fleeting. On the contrary, it is the process of turning the exception of naked repression and mass killing into the rule and routine that dominates the life of Iranian society.
In the meantime, it is evident that in recent years, the teachers' movement, in opposition to the exploitative trends of the labor force and the destruction of the education institution by the government, has organized vigorous and nationwide resistance in various forms of protest, such as sit-down strike, gatherings, etc.
While praising the previous fighting trends of the teachers' movement, we believe that in the current period and during the recent national uprising, the last fighting forms need to be completed and strengthened by creating new forms of togetherness and new centers of resistance and struggle. Based on this, while emphasizing the necessity of formation and organizing at all levels of society, we believe that to protect our students' lives, we should be composed as a platform of students and schools at the school level and in the form of protection committees. It is clear that we, the teachers, have no other tools at our disposal, apart from the adventurous claims and in the way of protecting the students, except to build a shield of our bodies to deal with the baton of repression and the killing arrow of the revolutionary student force. The committee for protecting students and schools is not only a human and defensive shield for teachers against the attacks or organized attacks of repressive forces. Also, these committees can be a place to remember all the previous struggles and sum up the lessons learned from the earlier resistances. It also intends to strengthen the spirit of solidarity in the fight for the demands for teachers' rights and create a space to brainstorm about fighting against the various dimensions of structural violence ruling over society.
We had previously announced that it is a political guild (union). Still, due to the current sensitive situation, we declare that it is a political guild and a public. The struggles, hardships, and complicated relations of the status have taught us that guild liberation is impossible without having freedom of all. Our endeavor and organizing at the school level is a platform for developing and strengthening such a vision.
Protection committees of students and schools, along with other layers and sections of the recent movement of democratic people, are pursuing freedom and equality and negating any form of hierarchy and oppression in society. A practical step to realizing such a horizon is the proliferation of student and school protection committees. So then, let's move forward to forming student and school protection committees in schools all over Iran!
Students and Schools' Protection Committees