Contract oil workers in the south of Iran are once again on strike, 66 days into the nationwide rebellion. Workers at two South Pars Gas Complexes and at the Masjid Suleiman Petrochemical plant are the first reported on strike.
I’m getting updates from comrades on the ground that workers across the manufacturing sector – in the pipe and steel works – and now the motor workers are also on strike. The most militant workers are concentrated in the south and south-west, particularly in and around Khuzestan. But it is clear as this nationwide rebellion continues that more workers across the country and across industries are going on strike.
The regime continues to rain bullets on everyone – students, workers, the young and old. But this only serves to fuel the movement. Mass funerals turn into mass protests with thousands pouring onto the streets chanting the names of those murdered by the state. These enormous and very militant street protests happen daily and offer a glimpse into the mass character of this struggle.
But perhaps the most important current development is the forms of organisation which have been born out of the struggle. Neighbourhood committees have sprung up across the country (especially in the Kurdistan region) – coordinating protests across cities, creating political demands and debating the way forward. Organising councils have also sprung up across particular workplaces – mostly in manufacturing centres in the south and south-west.
While these bodies have arisen spontaneously out of the current struggle, the initiative of small groups of committed socialists on the factory floor and in the streets, driving the argument about the need for independent working-class organisation and socialist politics, is notable. And it is these forces that need to continue to build and push the struggle forward.
As the revolutionary youth of Sanandaj neighbourhoods committee put it (quite well) –
“The people who rise up against dictatorship and believe in their mass power in unity and solidarity, must be purposeful in the struggle to overthrow the Islamic Republic. We must first establish neighbourhood councils in cities, factory and workshop councils, teachers councils, nurses’ councils, youth and student councils… these must continue to be formed by the revolutionary people.”
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