Two rallies for one science

On December 1, two rallies in support of education and science took place in St. Petersburg

"Stop the collapse of education and science!" - The same slogan in St. Petersburg on Lenin Square on Sunday, December 1, two rallies were held at once, organized by the city trade union of teachers and opposition movements. Even the participants themselves talk about the "old illness", which the St. Petersburg opposition cannot defeat in any way for many years - about the inability to agree and hold one total large -scale action with the maximum number of participants.

The organizer of the rally under the red banners, the coordinator of the “Left Front” and AKM Maxim Malyshev tells that he and his colleagues from the very beginning invited the teacher’s union to unite and speak together, but long negotiations were not brought to anything:

- It happened because activists of the teacher’s union do not want to allow strangers to themselves. We persuaded them to arrange a single rally, but they refused, so now in the same place - two promotions, one after another. Although we know that many of those who came to the campaign of the teacher’s union, planned for an hour of the day, then remained on ours.

The second rally was prepared by the organizing committee created at the initiative of the youth department of the Party December 5. It included representatives of various youth and student associations and public organizations, activists of the “Left Front”, AKM, the “Democratic Choice” party, the Youth Apple and others. But as a result, on Lenin Square under the New Year tree, icy wind and wet snow at some point, everyone mixed: both teachers and political activists.

One of the speakers, a participant in the Russian socialist movement, Ivan Ovsyannikov, said that in Soviet times, education was an organic part of the political system, and today it from the point of view of the ruling class becomes excessive and unclaimed.

- We see that a huge number of young people who have received education in the same way as our parents, today erasure a miserable existence in low -paid work and cannot take their position appropriate. As in the 19th century, we see a whole class of "extra people", thrown into the labor market with their diplomas, which cannot find application in today's political system.

The main banner of the rally, blue, read: "Save on schools - go broke on prisons!" Other, homemade posters in the hands of the participants of the action called students and teachers to unite to combat the advance of education and science.

The resolution of the teacher’s rally contained 13 points, among which there were requirements to abandon the per capita financing of education and reduction of benefits to rural teachers, to establish the minimum salary of teachers of all types, starting from kindergartens, and working hours of not lower than the secondary salary in the region, strictly observe the secular nature of Russian education, stop the “compaction” of preschool institutions, and many others.

In the speeches of different activists, the idea was heard that the teachers, like other "state employees", in vain give themselves to use to falsify the elections, to fill in official rallies, that Russian life will change only when the employees of the budget sphere cease to be a support of the regime.