Supporting Resistance to Corporate Globalization and Building Popular Power!

2013 is a critical year for El Salvador. As the nation prepares for the 2014 Presidential elections, the Salvadoran social movement is mobilizing to defend the historic gains of the nation’s first progressive government. The CISPES Education Fund is proud to be supporting the important work of our allies in El Salvador at this historic moment in their struggle for justice, self-determination, dignity, and democracy! Please join us in fulfilling our commitment to raise $10,000 in support of women-led, worker-led, youth-led and community-based organizing.

$ 3,500 to the FMLN Women’s Secretariat

Women constitute the majority of the population in El Salvador and are on the frontlines of socioeconomic exclusion, violence, and marginalization. The FMLN Women’s Secretariat develops strategies and policies to promote the women’s leadership in solving these problems. Their main goals are to promote women’s political participation and to empower women to assert their rights at home, in their communities and in society. Funds will support a series of leadership trainings and local assemblies that will serve to build class and gender consciousness based on women’s analysis of their own experiences.

$3,000 to the Salvadoran Union Front

The Frente Sindical Salvadoreño (FSS) is a coalition of more than 60 unions, founded in 2005 as “the working class’ instrument for struggle.” The FSS’s strategy is to organized labor movement in order to demand profound change to El Salvador’s economic model and justice system. These funds will support in-depth trainings for new union organizers to learn about El Salvador’s labor history and to gain leadership, organizing and collective bargaining skills. CISPES’s support is particularly crucial now as the FSS mobilizes to fight the US-backed Public-Private Partnership Law, which would set the stage for the auctioning off of state industries to private corporations at the expense of public services and protections for public sector workers.

$2,500 to the FMLN Youth Secretariat  

Throughout El Salvador’s history, youth have played a crucial role at the forefront of struggle. After decades of marginalization and violence, it is an urgent priority to re-integrate youth into political and social organizing. With these funds, the FMLN Youth Secretariat will mobilize volunteers for the National Literacy Program, an initiative of the Ministry of Education inspired by the Cuban model. These youth volunteers will lead literacy circles in their communities, strengthening inter-generational community ties, building organizing and leadership skills, and helping hundreds of Salvadorans to empower themselves through reading, writing, basic math and critical thinking.

$200 to the Roque Dalton University Front

Student organizations have a long and radical history in the Salvadoran popular struggle. The Frente Universitario Roque Dalton (FURD) is a student group at the National University (UES) that provides political education, organizes artistic and cultural activities in honor of important moments in revolutionary history, and serves as a voice of youth in advocating for public and university policy. Funds will help the FURD organize for the annual march and vigil that commemorates the 1975 massacre of UES students in San Salvador who marched peacefully in protest of the military dictatorship. 

$800 to the Strategic Organizing Fund

The Strategic Organizing Fund serves the important role of allowing CISPES to respond to the immediate needs of the Salvadoran social movement. In the past, this fund has been used to finance emergency mobilizations, strikes, protests, picket lines and other mobilizations that are not included in the rest of the docket. Women-led projects, those that promote gender-consciousness and other actions that may not get funded by more mainstream sources will be prioritized.