The protesters had called a "civic strike" on Thursday to demand better water and electricity services. Oil industry workers in a pay dispute joined the protest.
Reports reaching Caracas said state police fired volleys of tear gas around noon. Arturo Monzón, a spokesman for the protesters, was quoted as saying their only objective had been to talk with Energy and Oil Minister Rafael Ramírez, who's also president of state oil corporation Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA). They want a highway project completed, another road repaired and pay arrears brought up-to-date.
In Aragua state, a man was injured when he was run over by a motorist who tried to drive through another protest march on the Autopista Regional del Centro. The marchers intended to reach Caracas.
It's not much of "socialist" anything if the people not only aren't organized to get what they need out of the state as a matter of course (assuming the resources are there), but are even met with armed police goons who are there to maintain the present bourgeois status quo.
ReplyDeleteThis kind of top-down crap has to end. It's these people on strike who must be in control of these roads and services in their area -- not some unaccountable, unelected bureaucrats hiding behind an equally-unelected police apparatus. I hope these revolutionary citizens continue and escalate this struggle -- and do not end there, even if the bureaucracy and politicos try to buy them off now.
It is time for exactly people like these to take power thru their consejos and combines of consejos -- all the way up to sovereign state power. Assuming that this really is a "socialist" revolution.
Is it?