what unforgettable memories i have of our past semester together, spent in solidarity and in struggle. such beautiful times we have shared.
for five glorious weeks, i watched your heroic and historic fight against the government forces that have silenced we students for decades and decades. while enjoying my basil-topped pizza at la continental, i beamed with pride watching you on the television, gallantly storming the minister of education's offices and taking on oppressive police forces once and for all. those long wooden poles you carried to whack them?? ingenious!!! i laughed helplessly watching the police lamely respond with a gentle hose. non-violent measures?? HOW SILLY!!!! hopefully all that cold water woke them up from the brainwashed institution world they have been representing and dreaming in. comrades, what courage you demonstrated!!! after weeks of waiting and assembling, it was time to up the ante!! i applaud you. students like you set such an inspiring example for the younger generation of students here in buenos aires. i dream of the day when even kindergarten kids stand up for themselves. i can just imagine the beauty of their struggle: protesting the lack of adequate straws for their juice boxes, they cut the lights to the kiddy classroom, mask themselves in PERFECT piquetero fashion, and take their tyrannical teachers hostage until snack time meets their expectations!! i can totally see it!!! can't you?? gives me the chills!!
in late october, after we had finally triumphed in our five-week fight, i remember begrudgingly returning back to my studies. what a bore to be in the classroom, when i could be out in the streets fighting for a better one instead!!! after countless weeks of fighting for education by inhibiting all forms of education, i had sure forgotten the sensation of exercising my brain for once, not my whiny voice like i usually do!! i LONGED for those beautiful days of our student struggle. memories of the takeovers flooded me: barricading the doors of the social sciences building, marching to la plaza de mayo and burning effigies of mauricio macri along the way (such a hoot!!), sipping mate in the streets with my favorite comrades and discussing the student revolution upon us, standing in avenida corrientes face to face with angry bus drivers and hearing roaring drumbeats from the comrades at my side. WHAT MEMORIES!! i desperately missed the glorious times of the tomas.
in the thick of such torturous nostalgia, the che in me started getting REALLY antsy. so, instead of paying attention to my anthropology lecture, i admired the exquisitely painted posters around the classroom and looked for inspiration in the passionately graffiti-covered desk in which i was seated. with each passing moment, i started to worry that maybe we had run out of things to fight for. could that be possible?? i started getting quite stressed about this possibility and wondered how i would ever be able to continue calling myself an UBA student if i didn't have a student cause to keep me going. the mere prospect made me break a sweat.
but no need to fret, i have found us the perfect new cause!! this undertaking might not be a glamorous one, but we must organize nonetheless. hear me and join me.....
during my ten minute break between lectures, i had the epiphany. after grabbing some cheap medialunas and coffee at the new student-run café (well done, comrades!!), i headed to the bathroom and found that, even after six weeks of no classes, there was not a scrap of toilet paper in sight. i was hardly in shock. this is completely customary at the various UBA buildings and we have become so habituated to this abuse that it has ceased to even appear as such. but no toilet paper in the bathrooms?? how can the government deny us the right to pee in peace?? simply unjust, simply unjust.
i refused to let the establishment one up me and my booty yet again and, as such, had to take some extreme measures. the saddest part of the whole thing however was that, in order to defend my right to pee in peace, i was forced to compromise the solidarity with my fellow comrades that so defines me!! here is what i had to do: i headed back into the hallway instead of using the bathroom, on a mission for some paper. unfortunately, the student café had no extra paper towels laying around and no one seemed to be carrying tissues either. in that moment of desperation, i hit rock bottom. a fellow comrade approached me with a colorful leaflet and shared a few goosebump-giving words with me about his party's activism agenda for the next months. i listened, enraptured, as he expounded on the virtues of the collective fight (totally agree), then i flipped through the pamphlets he was distributing. very moving.
that's when it hit me. in my hands was a nicely-sized piece of newspaper, a more or less adequate alternative for toilet paper. the ethical struggle just about killed me however. dirty (literally) the poignant words of my peers in the effort to keep myself clean?? after several moments of torturous oscillation, i finally succumbed and headed to the bathroom once again, newspaper leaflet and all. i felt ashamed on one level, having betrayed the beauty of the student struggle for the first time in my life, but on another, excited about what this moment represented: an opportunity to rally together under a unified cause and fight against the powers that be. between september and october, we fought six long and hard weeks, eventually obtaining 20 million pesos from the government to improve our classrooms. doing the math, each day of struggle eventually amounted to almost 500,000 pesos in committed funding by the government. can you imagine if we were to fight one more day?? how many kilos of toilet paper that could buy?? all our bathroom battles will be solved forever and ever!!
here is my proposal: on the last official day of classes next week, we clear out the student center where all reading materials and course readings are located, taking every last sheet of paper to the hostile and unhygienic bathrooms around the corner. there, we storm the stalls and utterly stuff each toilet with computer paper until every last one is helplessly blocked with the words of great thinkers and intellectuals. those reading packets are already free ANYWAY!! what else do we have to lose?? students will be unprepared for class (perfect!!) and janitors, after the tedious job of pulling so much paper out of the toilets, will want nothing else but to join us in the fight!!! brilliant, no??
i refused to let the establishment one up me and my booty yet again and, as such, had to take some extreme measures. the saddest part of the whole thing however was that, in order to defend my right to pee in peace, i was forced to compromise the solidarity with my fellow comrades that so defines me!! here is what i had to do: i headed back into the hallway instead of using the bathroom, on a mission for some paper. unfortunately, the student café had no extra paper towels laying around and no one seemed to be carrying tissues either. in that moment of desperation, i hit rock bottom. a fellow comrade approached me with a colorful leaflet and shared a few goosebump-giving words with me about his party's activism agenda for the next months. i listened, enraptured, as he expounded on the virtues of the collective fight (totally agree), then i flipped through the pamphlets he was distributing. very moving.
that's when it hit me. in my hands was a nicely-sized piece of newspaper, a more or less adequate alternative for toilet paper. the ethical struggle just about killed me however. dirty (literally) the poignant words of my peers in the effort to keep myself clean?? after several moments of torturous oscillation, i finally succumbed and headed to the bathroom once again, newspaper leaflet and all. i felt ashamed on one level, having betrayed the beauty of the student struggle for the first time in my life, but on another, excited about what this moment represented: an opportunity to rally together under a unified cause and fight against the powers that be. between september and october, we fought six long and hard weeks, eventually obtaining 20 million pesos from the government to improve our classrooms. doing the math, each day of struggle eventually amounted to almost 500,000 pesos in committed funding by the government. can you imagine if we were to fight one more day?? how many kilos of toilet paper that could buy?? all our bathroom battles will be solved forever and ever!!
here is my proposal: on the last official day of classes next week, we clear out the student center where all reading materials and course readings are located, taking every last sheet of paper to the hostile and unhygienic bathrooms around the corner. there, we storm the stalls and utterly stuff each toilet with computer paper until every last one is helplessly blocked with the words of great thinkers and intellectuals. those reading packets are already free ANYWAY!! what else do we have to lose?? students will be unprepared for class (perfect!!) and janitors, after the tedious job of pulling so much paper out of the toilets, will want nothing else but to join us in the fight!!! brilliant, no??
our resistance cannot die down now. there are still pressing issues that we must attend to. once again, we need to resist the oppressive powers that deny us our rights, particularly our right to pee. don't back down!! just like the last one, we can win this one!! join me in the collective fight, in the battle for the baños!!!
until victory, always!!
your comrade,
sarah
until victory, always!!
your comrade,
sarah
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