In recent days, teachers have staged nationwide strikes, while the wave of strikes in the oil, petrochemical and other sectors has not really developed or widened. Many workers participated in the growing movement in the streets and saw and experienced the increasing brutal repression. It is crucial that workers in all industries take action in an organized way on the basis of a revolutionary program: to demand the release of all political prisoners, full rights for women, LGBTQI+, and for national minorities , ethnic and religious and to link these demands to the need to seize political and economic power to ensure a complete break with the regime of the mullahs, by expropriating the Revolutionary Guards and their massive wealth acquired by exploiting the masses. Workers’ councils and their coordination are essential not only to further develop the struggle – into a general strike. But also, to begin the fight for workers’ democratic control over the economy and key industries as a crucial step for a successful working class and socialist revolution.
Together with activists in Iran and abroad, the ISA has drafted and offers a set of demands for discussion here.
We call on all those – inside and outside Iran – who wish to join the fight for such a socialist alternative to contact us. It is necessary not only to coordinate, but to build a unified socialist force, to build a revolutionary party of youth, workers, poor and peasants to lead this struggle to victory.
Declaration of the “Revolutionary Youth Council of Sanandaj”
Here we publish a statement from the “Revolutionary Youth Council of Sanandaj”. The founding of this council and others like it throughout the country is a very important step in democratically coordinating and organizing the revolutionary movement.
“Now is the time to transform our communication networks and links, which we managed to build during this period of struggle, into a more evolved organization. Now is the time to think about creating neighborhood committees and councils and student councils. in universities and in schools. Our call to other parts of society is to form work and neighborhood committees and councils. Whether these forms of organization are underground or open depends on the balance of powers, which can be determined by the revolutionary youth and freedom-loving people. The council movement and the effort to create it give our movement such a force that, with the courage and the sacrifices of the youth and the people, encourages the hope of victory, makes repression more difficult for the oppressors and lowers the cost of struggle.
The creation of these councils will help the scattered struggles of the youth to coordinate better, to develop a program, to draw up plans and to choose certain tactics. These immediate and effective measures, in addition to providing the youth movement with order, direction and planning, will also prevent individual mistakes and increase the confidence of those who fight in the streets and prevent wasted efforts. In addition, taking the initiative in this way, increasing the level of organization and developing distinct leadership, will increase the confidence of different social strata in young people and provide them with the basis and the possibility to join the movement. Local youth organizations will be able to mobilize neighborhood residents for the fight. Urban youth organizations help to mobilize the inhabitants of the city. This problem also applies in universities, schools and other fields, and it attracts a greater force of students and other parts of society in a coordinated struggle. We insist that all young people unite and coordinate in one movement, with one organization, direction and project in neighborhoods, universities and high schools, and form one front.
We must try to enter the organization phase immediately, after a month of effort and sacrifice which has changed the balance of forces in society. Organizing is no easier than street protests. This work requires an enormous effort, the task of which falls to more experienced, organized and knowledgeable young people. Friends and comrades! The Iranian people’s revolutionary movement has entered a new stage. Today, in addition to the unwavering support of the militant teachers of the National Coordinating Council, we are witnessing strikes by workers in the south and in the key sectors of oil and petrochemicals, workers at Haft Tappeh, tank truck drivers , etc. We hope that other sections of the working class and workers in the transport and urban service sector will join the national revolutionary movement. Undoubtedly, the adherence of different parts of the labor movement to this revolutionary uprising contains the promise of advance and victory.”
