The first excerpt is from a a report by Matt Swagler. The second is excerpted from another report of a group of Italian precarity activists visting a Tunisian youth meeting.

1. Matt Swagler:

“Since December, Tunisian society has fundamentally changed in a way that cannot be measured solely by observing official political reforms and appointments. For many people, especially workers, the importance of solidarity and independent self-organization has become a crucial point of pride.

During the 48 hours immediately following Ben Ali’s departure, Tunis and other cities became the sight of a bloody last-gasp attempt by security forces to sow confusion, fear and division. Even those Tunisians uninvolved in the protests now became the target of beatings, shootings and sniper assassinations at the hands of well-armed thugs still loyal to the ruling clique.

However, urban residents rallied together to defend themselves, especially in poorer neighborhoods that bore the brunt of the police backlash. Young men, along with some young women, worked together setting up roadblocks against intrusion and harassment by security forces loyal to the RCD. They exchanged cell phone numbers and worked in shifts, even during the state-imposed nighttime curfew.

Wary of being harassed for violating the curfew, neighborhood activists in Tunis reached an agreement with sympathetic army soldiers: those at the roadblocks wearing white t-shirts would be allowed to remain out past curfew.

With municipal workers temporarily unable to perform their duties, neighborhoods also came together to organize collective street cleaning and garbage removal. Bakers in Tunis limited each customer to five baguettes, in order to prevent hoarding by their better-off customers, while fruit and vegetable sellers put up signs on their carts inviting passers-by to take produce even if they couldn’t pay. Farmers from outside of the capital began to go door to door, offering each household a liter and a half of milk.

Within a week of Ben Ali’s fall, a spirit of collective responsibility and organization began to emerge on an even larger scale. Across the country small cities and towns, such as Siliana and Sidi Bou Ali, came together to elect provisional councils charged with organizing local affairs. With the RCD collapsing, these elections often took place at mass meetings of thousands in town squares, where friends and neighbors became nominees for various committees: liaisons with the army, cleanliness, logistics and even “awareness” and “orientation” committees.

In February, the interim government attempted to stifle these democratically elected committees by appointing new regional governors across the country. As socialist journalist Jorge Martín reported, 19 of the 24 new appointees were connected to the RCD, causing local protests and strikes to break out immediately in regional capitals. Within just a few days, demonstrators had expelled five of the new governors.

In response, the interim government agreed to consult with the national Tunisian trade union federation, the UGTT, before announcing new governors. While this compromise is an attempt by the interim administration to gain political legitimacy through the approval of the trade union leadership, it also reflects the very real power that workers have been exhibiting in the streets and workplaces of the country.

Most crucially, Tunisian workers have begun to assert control over key enterprises, especially those formerly under partial state control and those owned by the Trebelsi family – a murky distinction in many cases. The political power of the former regime was tightly intertwined with its direct domination of the national economy.

In cooperation with the International Monetary Fund, Ben Ali privatized 160 national services and industries during his reign, with most being sold off on the cheap to those in his close family circle. WikiLeaks recently released a 2006 memo from the U.S. ambassador in Tunisia providing a detailed picture of how each family member monopolized control of certain industries, establishing, in essence, personal economic fiefdoms. The memo estimated that half of the country’s economic elite was related to Ben Ali.

Thus, workers have played a key role in dislodging members of the old regime by challenging their economic grip on the country.

Within days of Ben Ali’s flight, the nearly 700 workers at the major Tunisian insurance company, Société Tunisienne d’Assurances et de Réassurances (STAR), went on strike, and forcibly expelled their CEO from his office while singing the Tunisian national anthem. These actions were repeated by workers at Tunisia’s national oil distribution company, Société Nationale de Distribution des Pétroles (SNDP), where the CEO was known to have granted the Trebelsi family control over a number of profitable gas stations.

Executives soon found themselves escorted out of their offices at the National Agricultural Bank (Banque Nationale Agricole) and Tunisie Telecom. The workers at Tunisia Telecom went on strike in mid-February after they received documentation of the salaries of the 65 highest-paid company executives.

These are major companies, with SNDP and Tunisie Telecom ranked as the fourth- and fifth-largest companies in the country. The head of Tunisia’s tax office was also booted by his employees, and at the Banque de Tunisie, workers prevented managers from returning to their offices, in order to stop the flight of bank funds and the destruction of incriminating documents and files. Journalists at La Presse de Tunisie, a newspaper formerly under the control of Ben Ali’s regime, elected their own editorial boards from among their co-workers, and informed executives that they will no longer control paper’s tone or content.

By ousting their bosses, workers have not only scored important symbolic victories. They have also started to root out the former economic dominance of the Ben Ali’s family, thereby simultaneously weakening the former cabal’s political influence of over the interim government. By taking these first steps toward democratic control of their workplaces, Tunisians are raising the possibility of a revolution that could provide much more than electoral freedoms.

While these actions reflect a new level of confidence and militancy among Tunisian workers, it is not surprising that many were already at least nominally organized under the auspices of the UGTT. Despite decades of complicity and accommodation with the regime on the part of the national UGTT leadership, the rank and file of the union federation has not hesitated to challenge their bosses or the regime over the past few months.

In recent discussions, both Alhem Belladj and Nizar Amami, members of the Ligue de la Gauche Ouvrier (League of the Left Worker) in Tunisia have argued that the initiative being taken by rank-and-file activists and locally elected union leaders should come as no surprise. As Amani points out, “This is not an accident, because for several years now, we have seen federations calling strikes without the approval of the general secretariat.”

The current escalation of workers struggle has opened a debate within the Tunisian labour movement. After Ghannouchi announced the formation of the new interim cabinet, UGTT leaders voted not to join the government, preferring to stay among the left-wing opposition. However, the Administrative Council, in a highly contentious vote, simultaneously decided to accept Ghannouchi as the temporary head of the government.

Thus, some members of the UGTT bureaucracy tried to maintain credibility with the rank and file by refusing to join an interim government overseen by a former RCD apparatchik, but simultaneously pleaded with demonstrators to temper their protests of Ghannouchi.

This willingness to compromise was immediately challenged by many local sections of the trade union federation. For example, UGTT workers in Sidi Bouazid and Sfax moved ahead with plans for short-term general strikes against the interim government, and there is now a petition calling for the election of new national union leadership. Unionists have marched on the headquarters of the UGTT to demand that General Secretary Abdesselem Jerad resign. After collaborating with Ben Ali through his final days in office, Jerad has now been pressuring local unions to end strikes and return to work.

Hafaiedh Hafaiedh, general secretary of the Tunisian Union of Elementary School Educators pointed out that the elected representatives of many of the largest and most active unions, including his own, all voted against the proposal to accept Ghannouchi’s government. These unions, along with the regional federations in places like Sfax, Bizerte and Jendouba all played a key role in forcing Ghannouchi’s resignation.

With workers taking matters into their own hands, organizing general strikes and expelling the executives of major enterprises, it is likely that the UGTT will continue to be pushed by its members to play a role in organizing opposition to any signs of retreat from the new interim government.

Since the legalization of previously banned political opposition parties at the end of January, those organizations most brutally repressed by Ben Ali’s regime have been slowly regrouping. Essebsi’s recent promise to hold elections for a constituent assembly has been a key victory for many of these emergent parties.

One of the organizations pushing most forcefully for a new constitution has been the “January 14th Front,” a coalition of eight left-wing groups, which is most visibly led by the Tunisian Communist Worker’s Party (PCOT).

The PCOT’s adherence to a Stalinist political tradition is a critical impediment to building a truly democratic mass organization, but the direction and influence of it and other radical parties may shift in the face of a constantly changing political situation. A rally organized by the January 14th Front drew as many as 8,000 people in Tunis in mid-February, showing a large opening for radical politics.

The question of a genuine socialist tradition in Tunisia has often obscured by the membership of Ben Ali and the RCD in the Socialist International, a body that includes France’s Socialist Party and the British Labour Party. In fact, it wasn’t until January 17, after Ben Ali had been deposed by mass demonstrations, that the Socialist International finally decided that perhaps the dictatorial RCD shouldn’t be included in a formation that calls itself “socialist.”

The January 14th Front provides a possible alternative to the absurd notion that the RCD could have represented “socialism” in Tunisia, but the coalition is still in the process of working out its positions, as each constituent group struggles to reorganize after years of illegality.

In a recent speech, Alhem Belladj, from the League of the Left Worker – a member group of the January 14th Front – stated that the organization had begun to assert itself as an explicitly anti-capitalist formation. However, she cautioned that the nascent grouping was only beginning to raise more concrete economic and political demands. In the face of a deep crisis of unemployment and rising costs of living, the potential exists for socialist ideas and ideas of workers direct control of the economy to become concrete.

Also in the process of reforming is al-Nadha, the main Islamic party in the country. Sheikh Rachid Ghannouchi, a long-time leader of al-Nadha, returned to Tunisia in late January, after two decades of forced exile. After a strong showing in the 1989 legislative election, over 30,000 al-Nahda members and supporters were jailed by Ben Ali’s government during the 1990s.

Upon Rachid Ghannounchi’s return, he called for a more thoroughly democratic reconstruction of the national government, including a new parliament and constitution. Despite the predictable U.S. hysterics about “Islamist” parties, he and the party’s new secretary general Hamadi Jebali have both insisted that al-Nahda is committed to maintaining a democratic, pluralist state and legal system.

Lately, U.S. press outlets like the New York Times have ignored most of the major protests shaking Tunisia. Instead, they have used their minimal coverage of events in the country to largely propagate Islamophobic fears regarding the direction of the revolution. In particular, after a protest in Tunis against city brothels led by a small group of demonstrators, the U.S. media has raised alarms about the potential future treatment of women.

Completely ignored in this empty speculation is the significant leadership role being played by women workers in the Tunisian protests, especially in municipal labour strikes. As in the struggles across the region, sexism has been dealt a significant challenge by the crucial collaboration of men and women in the face of repression. Media claims of an impending wave of women’s oppression at the hands of Islamic parties also ignore the fact that al-Nadha’s leaders have been clear that they are not calling for the implementation of restrictive policies, such as the forced veiling of women.

Perhaps more importantly, al-Nahda, like all of the parties reforming after years of repression, has only a small base of support. The political field in Tunisia is wide open at this point. While it once had a strong foundation, al-Nahda will ultimately be limited by the party’s continuing commitment to maintaining capitalism in Tunisia. While leaders have raised criticisms of the extreme concentration of welath that marked Ben Ali’s regime, they have been reluctant to propose concrete economic changes to deal with inequality.

As Tunisian postal worker and trade unionist Nizar Amami points out, the revolution has thus far been pushed by mass protests and strikes because of the relative non-interference of the army – a starkly different situation than what the people of Libya and Bahrain are facing. But the army has not been passive, clashing with protesters after the appointment of new governors in February and at other demonstrations over the past month.

The upcoming elections and the writing of a new constitution will be important milestones in the Tunisian revolution. However, it is unlikely that these political changes will confront the deep material inequity present in Tunisian society.

This is why the recent wave of workers expelling their managers, strikes for more jobs and major pay increases, and the direct democracy taking place in town squares across Tunisia have all created important new possibilities for the revolution.”

2.

“The first real achievement of the revolt in January and February is the public arena, and the singular and collective desire to speak, to break the deafening silence which for decades has blocked the Tunisian society, compressing its power. So the meeting with the italian students and precarious workers becomes immediately an opportunity to bring the critical points to the foreground, for arguing with “fellow travellers” to clarify the status of the new revolutionary subjectivity.

All agree that the revolution is just the beginning. The landslide of the rais and the establishment of a constituent political space, have not yet been accompanied by a significant economic and social transformation. The economic powers remain intact, as the exploitation and poverty: if one moves away from Tunis to the south, everything is clear, with all its hardness and roughness. If one one hand, therefore, many students (particularly students from the union Uget) read as positive, albeit critically, the institutional and political transformation under way, the polemic voices of those who consider the revolutionary process blocked, in part betrayed (these are, mostly, independent student groups or gravitating around POCT, the Tunisian Communist Party).A different reading of the phase which describes the divergence of political initiative, particularly in relation to the Provisional Government, between those who do not disdain an explicit support to the institutional transition and those who propose to return to the streets to push the revolutionary process forward. The latter option has to deal, since a few days, with the failure of third Kasbah (the permanent and conflictual occupation of the square), after the success of first and second and the collapse of the first and second provisional government. The third provisional government, in fact, seems stronger and the date of elections to the constituent assembly has already been set (July 24). All speeches stressed the centrality of the generational issue: it is the youth to be more affected by unemployment, it is freshly qualified and graduated more than others to suffer the crisis and poverty. At the same time, it is the very young people to want a radical transformation, anti-capitalist and democratic at the same time. The role of the unemployed, in this sense, was and is decisive: they are the ones who put under pressure the weak social reformism of the interim government.

There are many similarities, we have explained in our contributions, among the youth dimension of the Tunisian revolt and Italian turmoils. Affinities that do not allow us to overlook the many differences: the discovery of public arena and open political debate, as we said, are things that make their appearance in Tunisia these weeks for the first time, the poverty which characterizes the condition of the young Tunisian of the suburbs is far more violent than that experienced by the italian precarious.”