The struggle of the Movimento Passe Livre - Movement for free public transport - against
the price increase transport tickets, triggered extensive and impressive popular
mobilization in Brazil last June. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people took
to the streets of major cities. ---- Movimento Passe Livre (MPL) was founded in January
2005, at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, as a network to bring together local
community. Charter principles MPL defines it as "an independent autonomous horizontal
movement, non-partisan but not anti-party". The horizontal is the expression of a
libertarian approach that distrusts centralized and vertical structures and institutions.
The independence from the parties intended to avoid exploitation by the latter, but the
movement does not reject cooperation and joint action with political organizations,
including the radical left.
It also cooperates with associations of popular neighborhoods, movements for housing
rights, control networks for health, and some unions (subway workers, teachers). Free
transportation is not an end in itself but "a means for the construction of another
company". Small, the network has never exceeded a few hundred activists, es implanted
first in schools and later in some neighborhoods.
Horizontal and libertarian movement
The control method of the MPL is also libertarian inspiration: direct action in the
streets, often playful and cheeky, rather than negotiation or dialogue with the
authorities. Activists and militants do not love violence, but are not necessarily for
non-violence one of their typical actions is blocking streets, the sound of brass bands
music, setting fire to tires and of catracas (the catracas are metal terminals in the bus
to force passengers and passengers to buy a ticket). We must remember that public
transport, which were originally a public service, have been privatized in all cities, and
belong to the capitalist mafia practices companies. However, the councils maintain control
over ticket prices.
A victorious fight to continue
Tactical intelligence MPL was to first give a concrete and immediate goal against the
increased ticket price decided by local authorities in the main cities of the country,
both those run by the center-right that by the center-left (the Workers' Party, became a
social-liberal). Rejecting the arguments of the authorities, the MPL has mobilized
thousands of protesters and demonstrators are brutally suppressed by the police, and they
and they were quickly millions (at the price, it is true, a certain political dilution),
and local authorities were obliged, in the rush to cancel increases. The fight pay, we can
win, and bend the "responsible" authorities!
While conducting this practical and urgent action, the MPL has not forgotten a single
moment its strategic goal: free "under the control of the workers and the population,"
according to the charter movement by public transport. This is what activists MPL call
"classist perspective" of their struggle. This is a requirement of basic social justice:
the fare is prohibitive for the poorest segments of the population, who live on the
outskirts of large cities, and depend on public transportation to get to work or study.
This is a claim which affects young people, workers, women, slum dwellers and inhabitants,
ie the vast majority of the urban population.
But free is also a deeply subversive and revolutionary demand, against the grain of the
capitalist logic, where everything must be a commodity. So this is an intolerable,
unacceptable and absurd for a mercantile system concept. Especially since, as suggested by
the MPL, free transport is a precedent that could pave the way to free other public
services: education, health, etc.. In fact, free is the possibility of another company
based on other values and rules other than those of the market and the capitalist profit.
Hence the fierce resistance of the authorities, whether conservative, neo-liberal,
reformist, centrist or social-liberal.
Ecology and Public Health
There is yet another dimension to claim free transport, which for the moment has not been
sufficiently emphasized by the MPL: the ecological aspect. The current system of unlimited
development of the private car is a disaster both from the point of view of the health of
inhabitants and residents of large cities and the point of view of the environment. The
car is a major emitter of greenhouse gases, responsible for the ecological catastrophe of
climate change. Yet the car is from Fordism to today's flagship commodity the world
capitalist system and the cities are fully organized according to traffic. However, all
studies show that an effective public transport, comprehensive and free, would
significantly reduce the use of private cars. The challenge is not only the price of a bus
ticket, but another mode of urban life, another way of life itself.
The struggle for free public transport is both a fight for social justice, for the
equipment and youth workers interest, the principle of free, public health, for the
defense of the ecological balance. It allows the formation of broad coalitions and open
gaps in the market system. Should not we, in France and Europe draw on the example of the
MPL by pulsing in our cities large movements, unitary, autonomous struggle for free public
transport?
Michael L?wy , author of Ecosocialism. A radical alternative to capitalist catastrophe ,
Arabian Nights, 2012.
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