(en) 142 years of the Paris Commune: Louise Michel and the female protagonist in the struggle for freedom (pt)

The Paris Commune completes 142 years today. It was on March 18, 1871 that began the 
formation of the first historical experience of self-government workers' and popular, 
which lasted about forty days before the resisting French and German troops who massacred 
out more than 20,000 rebels until the crushing of the Commune , which until then had among 
its achievements: ---- The night shift was abolished; ---- Workshops that were closed were 
reopened so that cooperatives were installed; ---- Empty homes were expropriated and 
occupied; ---- In each official residence was installed a committee to organize the 
occupation of dwellings; ---- All rebates were abolished in salary; ---- The workday was 
reduced, and came to propose the eight-hour day; ---- The unions were legalized; ---- 
Instituted to gender equality;

Designed to self-management of factories (but could not implement it);

The monopoly of law by lawyers, the judicial oath and the fees were abolished;

Wills, adoptions and hiring lawyers become free;

The marriage became free and simplified;

The death penalty was abolished;

The office of judge became elective;

The revolutionary calendar was adopted again;

The Church and State were separated, the Church ceased to be subsidized by the state and 
the spoils without heirs began to be confiscated by the state;

Education became free, secular and compulsory. Evening schools were created and all 
schools have become mixed sex;

Holy images were melted and societies of discussion were adopted in the churches;

The Church of Brea, erected in memory of one of the men involved in the repression of the 
Revolution of 1848, was demolished. The confessional of Louis XVI and the Vend?me column, too;

The Red Flag was adopted as a symbol of Federal Unity of Mankind;

Internationalism was put into practice: the fact that a foreigner has become irrelevant. 
The members of the Commune included Belgians, Italians, Poles, Hungarians;

Instituted up a central office of the press;

Was issued an appeal to the International Workers Association;

Conscription and the regular army were abolished;

All finances were reorganized, including the post office, public assistance and telegraphs;

There was a plan for rotation of workers;

It was felt to establish a National School of Public Service, which the current French ENA 
is a copy;

The artists began to self-manage the theaters and publishers;

The teachers' salary was doubled.

The barricades raised on March 18, 1871, the Paris Commune proved to the whole labor 
movement that the process of revolutionary break through class struggle could position a 
universe of values ??and ideologies of socialism specifically. The oppressed and exploited 
classes not come to power constituting the state, on the contrary, destroyed by the 
project construction federalist power, the "people power". Not breaking the continuity of 
French policy reforms, as many claim, but accumulation of practical and theoretical that 
the working classes were able to take advantage by implementing the long experience of 
workers' strikes and the recent International Workers Association. For the uncompromising 
defense of the concept of social ownership, the victory achieved at great cost was just 
the historic breakthrough of demonstrating that the authority of the state may collapse 
when the oppressed classes are organized from the bottom up, destroying the shackles that 
prevented their emancipation.

The defeat of the Commune is not signed under the discretion of the inability of the 
people to self-organize. The repression and the strengthening of capitalist nations are 
articulated and readequam gradually as there is a risk of overcoming the capitalist order 
itself. The Paris Commune is the assertion of the primacy bring forth internationalism and 
the historic achievements of the working class. Among these achievements, it is essential 
to highlight the importance of women's struggle. As at March 8 media always ends up 
symbolizing this commemorative date so superficially, the rescue of the history of 
struggle for women's emancipation is more than that contained in the episode of the 
revolutionary Paris Commune. In tribute to the combatants anonymous and known, we recall 
that the article Gaucha Anarchist Federation brought public, denoting the role of the past 
extends to the present.

From Mary Wollstonecraft to Louise Michel, and Lucy Parsons Elena Quinteros, this 
recognition fulfills the attempt to break with the views and practices, still in effect, 
patriarchal relations in left field. The gender issue has progressed in social visibility, 
but also know that lack concrete material elements of change. This text speaks of the 
people of these real fighters like Louise Michel, the daughter of a servant, teacher, 
creator of the group "Women's right", formed by socialists and feminists, and the militia, 
which commanded battalions of women in front of the barricades in the Commune . Warrior 
and libertarian, defended the independence of the French colony of New Caledonia when he 
was deported there. In "Memories of the Commune," 1898, Louise Michel defended libertarian 
feminism and class, come to know in the 1890s, Malatesta, Emma Goldmam, Kropotkin and 
Pietro Gori. In 1905, the year of the first experiments federalists in Russia, is buried 
wrapped banner of the Paris Commune.

In 1902, Louise Michel wrote:

This winter has nowhere to tie up,
the boulders here are always green (...)

Here, expires in chains:
The prison is worse than death.
survives In our hearts hope,
and if we see France again,
will be fighting to follow! (...)

In the air hangs Freedom!
calls us The battle
cry of the disinherited! ...
Dawn ... hunted the thick shade,
And the new world rises

from: http://www.cabn.libertar.org/?p=907