Chileans Students Still Stand for their Rights · Global Voices
Rosario Lizana

It is the first time in more than 15 years that public school students have coordinated to make the government hear their petitions. So far they have mobilized more than 150,000 students. How did they make it happen? Using technology. They all have blogs, use messenger, emails, and fotoblogs. These tools allowed them to act fast and communicate nationally.  A complete list of all the schools is here.
This week they made peaceful manifestations in the main streets of the capital that were infiltrated by hoodlums. Policemen were really tough and had to make public excuses for the way they treated students. “Grafica Rebelde” posted photos and videos of the incident.
President Michelle Bachelet, in national TV last night, responded to the petitions. She only offered free matriculation and public transportation for those in need and the student transportation pass now can be used 24 hrs and on weekends. This declaration, open ed a new problem, because the association of transportation does not agree with the solution. 520 public schools will improve their infrastructure and also 1,200 schools will be benefited by new furniture. Bachelet also announced the creation of new educational counselling, that will be in charge of student matters and will make modifications to the substantive law.Zaiditawaxona (ES) posts extracts of the speech and says that she doesn’t agree will the entire proposal.
Another viewpoint comes from Petruska (ES) who writes “I think that education is not that bad, because have teach something really profit for us, to made people associate for a common benefit “
Students are still deciding about these resolutions. If they don’t agree on Bachelet's proposal, next Monday there will be a national strike again. One of the public schools wrote in their blog (ES) that “tell all the president and delegates of the courses that we will have a meeting with a resolute character on Monday 5”.
To have a deep feeling of the animus and sensations of the students in these weeks, “In Plain Words” made a report each day and also got into the schools during the strike to post photos about the life of students while the occupation happened.
We will have to wait until Monday to know what will happen.