The march on May 20th, from Largo da Batata to Palácio dos Bandeirantes in São Paulo, should be understood as part of a broader process of organization and confrontation, whose central challenge is to transform indignation into organized social force. It cannot be seen as the end point of mobilizations in education and public universities at the beginning of 2026. The true objective of the mobilization should be to strengthen ongoing strikes, expand work stoppages, and build, from the grassroots, a general strike of education and public sector workers against the privatization, dismantling, and repression policies carried out by successive governments of the State of São Paulo, specifically by the current governor, Tarcísio de Freitas, of the Republicanos party.
We will not march to the Palace to perform a symbolic gesture or simply to undermine the current government's electoral performance. We advocate taking to the streets to boost the concrete organization of workers and students, strengthen occupations, expand the categories in struggle, and advance in building a movement capable of inflicting real defeats on the dominant classes' project for the public service in São Paulo, especially in education. Rights are not won by changing governments, but by the collective strength of the organized working class and direct mobilization.
Unifying struggles based on concrete demands
The unity necessary to confront the government and university administrations cannot be built on vague slogans or top-down agreements. It needs to emerge from the concrete demands of the categories in struggle.
Technical-administrative staff and university professors face squeezed salaries, outsourcing, and precarious working conditions. Students fight for student retention, housing, assistance, and against the dismantling of public universities. In basic and technical education, teachers grapple with overcrowded classrooms, class closures, the rise of private education platforms, the erosion of pedagogical autonomy, precarious contracts, and a lack of adequate working conditions. Meanwhile, students in public schools suffer from a lack of infrastructure, insufficient investment in laboratories, libraries, and adequate food, as well as increasing dropout rates driven by the need to work in increasingly precarious conditions. At the same time, workers in general face high costs, super-exploitation, and fight for demands such as the end of the 6x1 work schedule and a reduction in working hours without a reduction in pay.
At the same time as it dismantles public services, the government deepens state repression, especially against poor and marginalized youth. The increase in violent police operations in the peripheries, massacres, abusive approaches, and the militarization of popular territories express the same authoritarian policy that seeks to impose, by force, attacks on education, public service, and social rights. Police violence in the favelas and the presence of the Military Police within universities are part of the same project of social control and repression of popular struggles.
The struggle waged at USP, Unicamp, and Unesp against the presence of the Military Police on campuses concretely expresses this necessary unity. The invasion of university spaces by the Military Police, authorized by the Tarcísio government, represents a direct attack on university autonomy and the right to student and union organization and mobilization. Defending "Out with the Military Police from the Campus" is not an abstract slogan: it is defending the public university against repression placed at the service of the rectors and business interests.
What threatens the government is the advance of strikes and direct mobilization.
The Tarcísio government and the business sectors that direct the state's educational policy will not be defeated by institutional speeches or parliamentary pressure. What effectively threatens the project of privatization and subordination of the university to the market is the advance of strikes, occupations, and direct action organized from the mobilization of the grassroots.
For example, the strike and occupation of the USP (University of São Paulo) rector's office brought the model of university management, subordinated to political and economic elites, back into question. The State's response was police repression, with bombs, batons, and violence against students and workers. This demonstrates that the government recognizes where the real danger to its interests lies: in the capacity of workers and students to paralyze services, occupy spaces, and expand collective mobilization.
https://socialismolibertario.net/crimes-de-maio-20-anos-nao-esquecer-nem-perdoar/
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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