Spain: Thousands of People Take the Streets
- Thread starter ColdBlooded
- Start date
Spain protests spreading across Europe
Spain protests spreading across Europe
Protest in the Med: rallies against cuts and corruption spreadSit-ins planned at parks and squares across Madrid, Rome, Barcelona, Milan and Florence
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/19/protest-med-cuts-corruption-spain
Share2634 Giles Tremlett in Madrid and John Hooper in Rome guardian.co.uk, Thursday 19 May 2011 17.24 BST Article history
A youth-led rebellion is spreading across southern Europe as a new generation of protesters takes possession of squares and parks in cities around Spain, united by a rejection of mainstream politicians and fury over spending cuts.
Protests are also planned in Italy, where the tag #italianrevolution is a trend on Twitter. Plans have been announced for a piazza occupation in Florenceon Thursday night, and for further protests in Italian cities, including Rome and Milan, on Friday.
In Madrid demonstrators have refused to budge from the central Puerta del Sol despite a police charge that dislodged them temporarily on Tuesday night.
Now they have occupied a quarter of the square, covering it with tarpaulins and tents, setting up kitchens, tapping at laptops and settling down to sleep on sofas and armchairs.
Similar scenes were being played out in Barcelona, where protesters held a midday Argentinian-style pan-bashing protest in the Plaza de Catalunya, and in numerous other cities where protesters raised the banner of what they call "the Spanish revolution".
The protests come as Spain prepares to vote for municipal and regional governments, which jointly account for half of spending and most of the welfare state. Town halls and regional governments are expected to increase the pace of spending cuts after Sunday's election as the country battles to rein in its budget deficit and avoid the fate of other eurozone countries such as Portugal, Greece and Ireland that have needed bailouts.
"Everyone is here for their own reasons and with their own proposals," said Luis de Pinedo, 20, an anthropology student who was handing out flyers in the Puerta del Sol explaining that the protesters did not represent any political party. "We are having to pay for an economic crisis that we didn't cause but which was provoked by the banks," he said.
Groups were gathered in debate. About the only demand most could agree on was a change in the electoral law to end the two-party system that shifts power between the socialists of the prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, and the conservative People's party.
"Mostly people are tired of the two-party system," said De Pinedo. "But I am also angry about corruption."
Javier de Coca, a 32-year-old protester in Barcelona, said: "Some people are trying to turn this into a leftwing or Marxist thing, but that is not what it is about. The really important thing for the moment is that we are raising our voices. No one should think we are just sitting around and taking this."
All age groups were present in the protests but the emerging leaders were mostly under 30, part of a generation suffering 45% unemployment. Protesters said they were inspired more by the protests that followed the recent banking crisis in Iceland than by those that have swept through north Africa.
"Spain is not a business. We are not slaves," read one of the hundreds of protest posters glued to the Pueta del Sol's metro station walls.
Demonstrations have been arranged for outside the Spanish embassy in London and in other European cities. "A lot of people have left the country precisely because of the situation we are in," said De Coca. "And they want to protest too."
Police have been instructed to leave the protesters alone.
. Political demonstrations and campaigns are banned on Saturday because of the elections. Zapatero's socialists are facing severe setbacks across the country amid popular anger over 20% unemployment and the spending cuts. There is a general election next March.
Italy so far has not been forced into the sort of austerity measures imposed on Spain, Portugal, Greece and Ireland. But its economy has barely grown in the past 10 years and there is increasing evidence of exasperation with its billionaire prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi.
Over the past two years the Italian government's time has been increasingly devoted to finding ways of dealing with Berlusconi's legal problems. He is a defendant in three trials in which he faces vice charges and a range of accusations relating to his business conduct.
Frustration was evident in the results of partial local and provincial elections held last Sunday and Monday. Berlusconi's candidate for mayor in his home city of Milan, Letizia Moratti, was outstripped by a centre-left contender in the first round of voting, forcing her into a run-off on 29 and 30 May.
Spain protests spreading across Europe
Protest in the Med: rallies against cuts and corruption spreadSit-ins planned at parks and squares across Madrid, Rome, Barcelona, Milan and Florence
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/19/protest-med-cuts-corruption-spain
Share2634 Giles Tremlett in Madrid and John Hooper in Rome guardian.co.uk, Thursday 19 May 2011 17.24 BST Article history
A youth-led rebellion is spreading across southern Europe as a new generation of protesters takes possession of squares and parks in cities around Spain, united by a rejection of mainstream politicians and fury over spending cuts.
Protests are also planned in Italy, where the tag #italianrevolution is a trend on Twitter. Plans have been announced for a piazza occupation in Florenceon Thursday night, and for further protests in Italian cities, including Rome and Milan, on Friday.
In Madrid demonstrators have refused to budge from the central Puerta del Sol despite a police charge that dislodged them temporarily on Tuesday night.
Now they have occupied a quarter of the square, covering it with tarpaulins and tents, setting up kitchens, tapping at laptops and settling down to sleep on sofas and armchairs.
Similar scenes were being played out in Barcelona, where protesters held a midday Argentinian-style pan-bashing protest in the Plaza de Catalunya, and in numerous other cities where protesters raised the banner of what they call "the Spanish revolution".
The protests come as Spain prepares to vote for municipal and regional governments, which jointly account for half of spending and most of the welfare state. Town halls and regional governments are expected to increase the pace of spending cuts after Sunday's election as the country battles to rein in its budget deficit and avoid the fate of other eurozone countries such as Portugal, Greece and Ireland that have needed bailouts.
"Everyone is here for their own reasons and with their own proposals," said Luis de Pinedo, 20, an anthropology student who was handing out flyers in the Puerta del Sol explaining that the protesters did not represent any political party. "We are having to pay for an economic crisis that we didn't cause but which was provoked by the banks," he said.
Groups were gathered in debate. About the only demand most could agree on was a change in the electoral law to end the two-party system that shifts power between the socialists of the prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, and the conservative People's party.
"Mostly people are tired of the two-party system," said De Pinedo. "But I am also angry about corruption."
Javier de Coca, a 32-year-old protester in Barcelona, said: "Some people are trying to turn this into a leftwing or Marxist thing, but that is not what it is about. The really important thing for the moment is that we are raising our voices. No one should think we are just sitting around and taking this."
All age groups were present in the protests but the emerging leaders were mostly under 30, part of a generation suffering 45% unemployment. Protesters said they were inspired more by the protests that followed the recent banking crisis in Iceland than by those that have swept through north Africa.
"Spain is not a business. We are not slaves," read one of the hundreds of protest posters glued to the Pueta del Sol's metro station walls.
Demonstrations have been arranged for outside the Spanish embassy in London and in other European cities. "A lot of people have left the country precisely because of the situation we are in," said De Coca. "And they want to protest too."
Police have been instructed to leave the protesters alone.
. Political demonstrations and campaigns are banned on Saturday because of the elections. Zapatero's socialists are facing severe setbacks across the country amid popular anger over 20% unemployment and the spending cuts. There is a general election next March.
Italy so far has not been forced into the sort of austerity measures imposed on Spain, Portugal, Greece and Ireland. But its economy has barely grown in the past 10 years and there is increasing evidence of exasperation with its billionaire prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi.
Over the past two years the Italian government's time has been increasingly devoted to finding ways of dealing with Berlusconi's legal problems. He is a defendant in three trials in which he faces vice charges and a range of accusations relating to his business conduct.
Frustration was evident in the results of partial local and provincial elections held last Sunday and Monday. Berlusconi's candidate for mayor in his home city of Milan, Letizia Moratti, was outstripped by a centre-left contender in the first round of voting, forcing her into a run-off on 29 and 30 May.
Seven key words on the Madrid-Sol experience and 15-M.
“I don’t want a new iPad, I want a new life”
- graffiti during the mobilisation of the 15th of May.
1. Time
Time accelerates. The senses are shaken. Fear paralyzes the senses, vertigo sends them haywire. The permanent camp in puerta del Sol is pure vertigo. The hours pass quickly between one concentration and the next, but then time stretches. The nights are loooooong. Time contracts and expands, moved by a tide of people (mainly, though not exclusively, young people). It seems we have been there for years, and not even three days have passed.
Revolts are real when they change space-time.
The space-time created in the last days has a sole obsession: continuity. Paradoxically, this is only possible through interruptions. Through a physical “entrance and exit” from Sol. Keep the experience going even though you are not present. This is why the camp in Sol-Madrid (and so many others) can’t be understood without social networks. The continuity of the experience is achieved through deterritorializing it. I am in Sol even though I am at home. I am in Sol because I keep talking about it, because I can’t concentrate at work, because it doesn’t leave my head. And as soon as I can, I head off there again. I run there, I insert myself again in this new “social connector” and by this others can go and rest.
The classical conception of social revolts sets forth a scenario that ties together the gathering of forces, and continuity. If we keep at this longer, we will be more. If we keep at this longer, the tyrants will fall. This mystification is drawn from a simplification of what has gone on in Egypt and other Arab countries. Places from which we have not had any news of even the end of a process, nor of its seed, nor of its years of visibility and invisibility, its failed experiments, its one way streets and its setbacks.
What is happening these days is not final, it is not the decisive moment, it is the point of departure.
2. Communication
Communication is the form of political organisation. People become the medium of communication. Social networks are not so much the medium, as the expressive and organisational territory. Common sense is knit by way of flux and meme. From the logic of shared trust of Facebook one moves to the logic of direct experience of Twitter.
The slogan circulates and multiplies. With no official versions, rumour takes off. The traditional communications media find themselves in a Dadaist cacophony that brooks no interpretation. They cling on to what they can, they project their own conceptions.
The auto-narration of the process does not pass through (for the moment) live streaming, but the need to tell one another, to narrate what has been lived, the anecdote, the “I was there” intensifies.
The obsession of the communications media of retransmitting the demonstrations from their “interior”, as though they were “one more” points to an obsession with the loss of their centrality. The experts and analysts reveal themselves as incapable of thinking with their own head and return (to both left and right) a singular voice. The sensation for the spectator brought into the experience is the same as that of those fans of Lost who turned up to attempts at debates on Cuatro (Spanish TV channel – HG) to explain the end of the series: a mixture of stupor, embarrassment and clowning.
3. Powers
In these times an enormous expressive capacity is unfolding in which any person gathered in a group believes to be the representation of the whole. The sensation of empowerment is such, that one ends up believing that what each one does is represent everyone else. It is a reasonable logic, and difficult to get out of one’s head, but it has to be de-activated. The power of the movement comes from its unrepresentability. They do not represent us..because they cannot represent us.
As with any disperse network, there are a multitude of centres that are not “the centre”, but stations of sign repetition, of proposals and directions. Creativity is foremost. The hegemony of whoever holds sway (Democracia Real Ya? The assemblies in the squares? The commissions in those assemblies? Twitter? Me and my mates?) is totally changeable.
The assemblies are not spaces of production of a direction, but rather of a collective catharsis. Of an enormous desire to talk and talk and talk. Memorized registers are mixed together “The people united will never be defeated” with new forms of expression “Error 404 System Failure” “Downloading democracy” “This is not a crisis it’s a swindle”
In the institutional field madness reigns. In 72 hours we have seen the political class in its entirety move from “this is not happening” to “this is not important” to “this is dangerous” and in the last hours to “We are you!”. Once again, grotesque. The impossibility of fitting the mobilization into a clear “left-right” frame that has maintained social consensus since the transition begins to reveal a new logic of conflict: “Above and Below”.
Unable to control what is happening, the control mechanism over the movement is a simple question, a constant question: What do you propose?
4. Proposals
The demand for proposals is a control mechanism. A way of filling up the vacuum of the unrepresentable. A mechanism that is not the preserve of the media and the political class, but also of some expressions of the movement. Getting an answer enables putting the rebels in a place. It enables one to say “ah, they’re utopian” “ah they’re populists”, “uff, they’re leftists”, “ah, what they want is impossible”, “Oh how naïve”, “Bah, they aren’t radical”, “Ooh, they have some reasonable things”.
What is imposed, however, is silence. Or something very similar to silence, which is a cacophony of contradictory signals.
However much anguish it might generate, maybe a good point of departure would be to say “Contrary to those of you who fake knowing everything, we don’t know yet”. The person who urges haste wants to get somewhere soon. This is not the case.
In the squares, the very discussion is more important than its conclusion. The responsibility is to defend and extend that. To continue discussion. To continue speaking. To trust in the same common sense that has brought thousands of people to resist in the streets for days. Until know, it hasn’t gone too bad for us.
5. Democracia-Real-Ya:
This logo, this slogan that cuts through the whole mobilisation is one of its constituent parts and from this, the media and the political class have decided not to give it much thought. But it is quite easy: “Democracy”, not any old democracy, but a real one. The real is opposed to the simulated. This means that the logo (or one of the logos) under which the movement is built says that what institutional power calls democracy is a lie. And it demands the construction of something else that breaks this simulacrum. But on top of that, it does not set it forth in utopian or far off terms. We want it now. “Now” means urgency, “now” means nerve, “now” means we have to be able to touch it, that it has to cut through our live, that it is not babble, but construction. That it does not exist, and, as such, it has to be made.
6. And so, tomorrow?
It is very difficult to think about tomorrow when you are so taken up by the events of today. It is even more difficult when the rhetoric of the political class has always sustained itself on what happens tomorrow. In the movement tomorrow is unthinkable at the moment. Only the now exists.
For institutional power, the elections of next Sunday 22nd May are a moment of relegitimation. A moment of restitution of governmentality. A moment for putting one’s foot up on the desk and get back to drawing up the map of the possible.
The elections have functioned for the moment as a sketchy element and, perhaps, a unifying one at a symbolic level. But in the camps, in the meetings, etc, the words heard most are “connect”, “extend” and “build”.
On the 23rd of May one will begin to resolve this question mark, as a painted slogan read on the day of the demonstration.
“I don’t want a new iPad, I want a new life”
PS – Point 7: Joy, joy, joy.
“I don’t want a new iPad, I want a new life”
- graffiti during the mobilisation of the 15th of May.
1. Time
Time accelerates. The senses are shaken. Fear paralyzes the senses, vertigo sends them haywire. The permanent camp in puerta del Sol is pure vertigo. The hours pass quickly between one concentration and the next, but then time stretches. The nights are loooooong. Time contracts and expands, moved by a tide of people (mainly, though not exclusively, young people). It seems we have been there for years, and not even three days have passed.
Revolts are real when they change space-time.
The space-time created in the last days has a sole obsession: continuity. Paradoxically, this is only possible through interruptions. Through a physical “entrance and exit” from Sol. Keep the experience going even though you are not present. This is why the camp in Sol-Madrid (and so many others) can’t be understood without social networks. The continuity of the experience is achieved through deterritorializing it. I am in Sol even though I am at home. I am in Sol because I keep talking about it, because I can’t concentrate at work, because it doesn’t leave my head. And as soon as I can, I head off there again. I run there, I insert myself again in this new “social connector” and by this others can go and rest.
The classical conception of social revolts sets forth a scenario that ties together the gathering of forces, and continuity. If we keep at this longer, we will be more. If we keep at this longer, the tyrants will fall. This mystification is drawn from a simplification of what has gone on in Egypt and other Arab countries. Places from which we have not had any news of even the end of a process, nor of its seed, nor of its years of visibility and invisibility, its failed experiments, its one way streets and its setbacks.
What is happening these days is not final, it is not the decisive moment, it is the point of departure.
2. Communication
Communication is the form of political organisation. People become the medium of communication. Social networks are not so much the medium, as the expressive and organisational territory. Common sense is knit by way of flux and meme. From the logic of shared trust of Facebook one moves to the logic of direct experience of Twitter.
The slogan circulates and multiplies. With no official versions, rumour takes off. The traditional communications media find themselves in a Dadaist cacophony that brooks no interpretation. They cling on to what they can, they project their own conceptions.
The auto-narration of the process does not pass through (for the moment) live streaming, but the need to tell one another, to narrate what has been lived, the anecdote, the “I was there” intensifies.
The obsession of the communications media of retransmitting the demonstrations from their “interior”, as though they were “one more” points to an obsession with the loss of their centrality. The experts and analysts reveal themselves as incapable of thinking with their own head and return (to both left and right) a singular voice. The sensation for the spectator brought into the experience is the same as that of those fans of Lost who turned up to attempts at debates on Cuatro (Spanish TV channel – HG) to explain the end of the series: a mixture of stupor, embarrassment and clowning.
3. Powers
In these times an enormous expressive capacity is unfolding in which any person gathered in a group believes to be the representation of the whole. The sensation of empowerment is such, that one ends up believing that what each one does is represent everyone else. It is a reasonable logic, and difficult to get out of one’s head, but it has to be de-activated. The power of the movement comes from its unrepresentability. They do not represent us..because they cannot represent us.
As with any disperse network, there are a multitude of centres that are not “the centre”, but stations of sign repetition, of proposals and directions. Creativity is foremost. The hegemony of whoever holds sway (Democracia Real Ya? The assemblies in the squares? The commissions in those assemblies? Twitter? Me and my mates?) is totally changeable.
The assemblies are not spaces of production of a direction, but rather of a collective catharsis. Of an enormous desire to talk and talk and talk. Memorized registers are mixed together “The people united will never be defeated” with new forms of expression “Error 404 System Failure” “Downloading democracy” “This is not a crisis it’s a swindle”
In the institutional field madness reigns. In 72 hours we have seen the political class in its entirety move from “this is not happening” to “this is not important” to “this is dangerous” and in the last hours to “We are you!”. Once again, grotesque. The impossibility of fitting the mobilization into a clear “left-right” frame that has maintained social consensus since the transition begins to reveal a new logic of conflict: “Above and Below”.
Unable to control what is happening, the control mechanism over the movement is a simple question, a constant question: What do you propose?
4. Proposals
The demand for proposals is a control mechanism. A way of filling up the vacuum of the unrepresentable. A mechanism that is not the preserve of the media and the political class, but also of some expressions of the movement. Getting an answer enables putting the rebels in a place. It enables one to say “ah, they’re utopian” “ah they’re populists”, “uff, they’re leftists”, “ah, what they want is impossible”, “Oh how naïve”, “Bah, they aren’t radical”, “Ooh, they have some reasonable things”.
What is imposed, however, is silence. Or something very similar to silence, which is a cacophony of contradictory signals.
However much anguish it might generate, maybe a good point of departure would be to say “Contrary to those of you who fake knowing everything, we don’t know yet”. The person who urges haste wants to get somewhere soon. This is not the case.
In the squares, the very discussion is more important than its conclusion. The responsibility is to defend and extend that. To continue discussion. To continue speaking. To trust in the same common sense that has brought thousands of people to resist in the streets for days. Until know, it hasn’t gone too bad for us.
5. Democracia-Real-Ya:
This logo, this slogan that cuts through the whole mobilisation is one of its constituent parts and from this, the media and the political class have decided not to give it much thought. But it is quite easy: “Democracy”, not any old democracy, but a real one. The real is opposed to the simulated. This means that the logo (or one of the logos) under which the movement is built says that what institutional power calls democracy is a lie. And it demands the construction of something else that breaks this simulacrum. But on top of that, it does not set it forth in utopian or far off terms. We want it now. “Now” means urgency, “now” means nerve, “now” means we have to be able to touch it, that it has to cut through our live, that it is not babble, but construction. That it does not exist, and, as such, it has to be made.
6. And so, tomorrow?
It is very difficult to think about tomorrow when you are so taken up by the events of today. It is even more difficult when the rhetoric of the political class has always sustained itself on what happens tomorrow. In the movement tomorrow is unthinkable at the moment. Only the now exists.
For institutional power, the elections of next Sunday 22nd May are a moment of relegitimation. A moment of restitution of governmentality. A moment for putting one’s foot up on the desk and get back to drawing up the map of the possible.
The elections have functioned for the moment as a sketchy element and, perhaps, a unifying one at a symbolic level. But in the camps, in the meetings, etc, the words heard most are “connect”, “extend” and “build”.
On the 23rd of May one will begin to resolve this question mark, as a painted slogan read on the day of the demonstration.
“I don’t want a new iPad, I want a new life”
PS – Point 7: Joy, joy, joy.
A statement by the anarchosyndicalist CNT of Spain on the May protests and occupations which have swept the country.
The countless demonstrations and occupations that are taking root in the main squares of cities and villages since the 15th are a clear example of the organizational capacity of the people when they decide to be the protagonists of their own lives; overcoming apathy, resignation, and the absence of a self-awareness with which to articulate solutions to take on and construct alternatives to the many problems that today face all of us: workers, the unemployed, students, immigrants, retirees, the precarious...
The organizational formulas developed in these mobilizations prove the viability of direct participation through assemblies for taking decisions that channel our aspirations and demands and make us overcome individualism. We become protagonists, rather than spectators of a system based in representation and delegating authority, which erases our individuality. Assemblies, a rotating microphone, working groups, responsibility, capacity, organization, self-responsibility, coordination, involvement and visibility are the collective teeth that move our gears, capable of challenging the institutions and provoking an expectation and public debate that have eclipsed the electoral campaign and the recurring contents of the national and international press.
The illusions generated by the massive mobilizations shouldn't allow us to forget that this situation will be an object for instrumentalization, distortion, and management by political, social, and union groups; these groups are even more afraid than the government of losing the small amount of legitimacy that they have left in the minds of some citizens. Likewise, the proposals and messages emanating from these mobilizations must be analized in-depth. Overcoming the two-party system and gaining a modification to the Electoral Law will not make us freer, nor will it favor individual sovereignty. We must state that the demands are centered in the necessary sociopolitical changes; but there is a lack of denunciations or proposals discussing the world of work – clear and explicit denunciations of the collaborationist role of the institutional union federations, of the Labor Reform currently in force, and of the wide legal margin for implementing layoffs and destroying jobs...
Disobedience is the fundamental element that, since the 15th, has characterized all of the mobilization and expressions of protest. It is challenging and defying once again the repression and the attempts to hold back the occupations that are coming from various offices of the government and the Electoral Commissions; it is further strengthening the participation, involvement, and self-awareness of our need to organize ourselves. Disobedience is a collective pulse that demonstrates our overwhelming force when we work together and decide not to give up on our demands. It is a throb in our hearts that fuels an awakening of consciences that will allow us to react, and to extend our mobilization, our solidarity, and the overcoming of the fear that neutralizes struggle.
“Cualquier noche puede salir el Sol” [“Any night the sun could rise” - a line from a popular rock song about revolution, also a reference to Madrid's 'Puerta del Sol'], and in Madrid's central square we've already spent a week avoiding the sunset. We have materialized our practice, that it is not only possible but necessary to work together, unite, and fight to change our immediate present and to outline from our self-organization the pillars of a society without power, inequality, repression, and delegation of authority. On May 22 [Election Day], more consciously and visibly than ever, we will respond with abstention, because we ourselves have demonstrated that the politicians do not represent us, nor do we need them.
From the CNT, we will continue participating and calling for a permanent mobilization and struggle, as a means to resolve the problems in all spheres of our lives.
We continue to build at the same time as we disobey. The protest continues!
Night or day, the struggle is ours!
Secretaría de Acción Social del SP del Comité Confederal- CNT
The countless demonstrations and occupations that are taking root in the main squares of cities and villages since the 15th are a clear example of the organizational capacity of the people when they decide to be the protagonists of their own lives; overcoming apathy, resignation, and the absence of a self-awareness with which to articulate solutions to take on and construct alternatives to the many problems that today face all of us: workers, the unemployed, students, immigrants, retirees, the precarious...
The organizational formulas developed in these mobilizations prove the viability of direct participation through assemblies for taking decisions that channel our aspirations and demands and make us overcome individualism. We become protagonists, rather than spectators of a system based in representation and delegating authority, which erases our individuality. Assemblies, a rotating microphone, working groups, responsibility, capacity, organization, self-responsibility, coordination, involvement and visibility are the collective teeth that move our gears, capable of challenging the institutions and provoking an expectation and public debate that have eclipsed the electoral campaign and the recurring contents of the national and international press.
The illusions generated by the massive mobilizations shouldn't allow us to forget that this situation will be an object for instrumentalization, distortion, and management by political, social, and union groups; these groups are even more afraid than the government of losing the small amount of legitimacy that they have left in the minds of some citizens. Likewise, the proposals and messages emanating from these mobilizations must be analized in-depth. Overcoming the two-party system and gaining a modification to the Electoral Law will not make us freer, nor will it favor individual sovereignty. We must state that the demands are centered in the necessary sociopolitical changes; but there is a lack of denunciations or proposals discussing the world of work – clear and explicit denunciations of the collaborationist role of the institutional union federations, of the Labor Reform currently in force, and of the wide legal margin for implementing layoffs and destroying jobs...
Disobedience is the fundamental element that, since the 15th, has characterized all of the mobilization and expressions of protest. It is challenging and defying once again the repression and the attempts to hold back the occupations that are coming from various offices of the government and the Electoral Commissions; it is further strengthening the participation, involvement, and self-awareness of our need to organize ourselves. Disobedience is a collective pulse that demonstrates our overwhelming force when we work together and decide not to give up on our demands. It is a throb in our hearts that fuels an awakening of consciences that will allow us to react, and to extend our mobilization, our solidarity, and the overcoming of the fear that neutralizes struggle.
“Cualquier noche puede salir el Sol” [“Any night the sun could rise” - a line from a popular rock song about revolution, also a reference to Madrid's 'Puerta del Sol'], and in Madrid's central square we've already spent a week avoiding the sunset. We have materialized our practice, that it is not only possible but necessary to work together, unite, and fight to change our immediate present and to outline from our self-organization the pillars of a society without power, inequality, repression, and delegation of authority. On May 22 [Election Day], more consciously and visibly than ever, we will respond with abstention, because we ourselves have demonstrated that the politicians do not represent us, nor do we need them.
From the CNT, we will continue participating and calling for a permanent mobilization and struggle, as a means to resolve the problems in all spheres of our lives.
We continue to build at the same time as we disobey. The protest continues!
Night or day, the struggle is ours!
Secretaría de Acción Social del SP del Comité Confederal- CNT
Spain: Incendiary attacks in memory of Mauricio Morales
This morning we carried out two attacks with fire in memory of our brother; in the Carabanchel barrio fire was set to a van of the Cobra company (dedicated, among other things, to the destruction of the earth and to collaboration in the construction of prisons); moments later fire was set to the door of a church in the center of this necropolis called Madrid.
“To the dead they light not candles, but barricades.”
Like Mauri, we confront this wretched system, denying those who want to manage life, rejecting negotiation, consensus, and dialogue with those who want to proclaim themselves our representatives, rejecting democracy and attacking it wherever it is found, whatever it may be called. Those who suffer day to day the violence of the State and of capitalist relations in all their diverse forms cannot respect the pacifist citizenist proclamations; for us they are an insult, thus we opt for the attack, the revolt against all that dominates us, against the artificialization of our lives.
Patricia, Foundas, Mauri, Giuliani… are alive.
You are dead.
http://waronsociety.noblogs.org/
Ataques Incendiarios en Memoria de Mauricio Morales
Esta madrugada realizamos dos ataques con fuego en memoria de nuestro hermano, en el barrio de Carabanchel fue incendiada una furgoneta de la empresa Cobra (dedicada entre otras cosas a la destrucción de la tierra y a la colaboración en la construcción de cárceles), instantes después se le pegó fuego a la puerta de una Iglesia, en el centro de esta necropolis llamada Madrid.
“A lxs muertxs no se le encienden velas sino barricadas”.
Como Mauri, nos enfrentamos a este maldito sistema, negando a quién quiere gestionar la vida, rechazando la negociación, el consenso y el dialogo con quién se quiere proclamar como nuestro representante, rechazando la democracia y atacándola allí donde se encuentre, llame como se llame. Quienes sufrimos dia a día la violencia del Estado y de las relaciones capitalistas en todas sus diversas formas no podemos respetar las proclamas pacifistas ciudadanistas para nosotrxs son un insulto, por ello optamos por el ataque, la revuelta contra todo aquello que nos domina.contra la artificialización de nuestras vidas.
Patricia, Foundas, Mauri, Giuliani… están vivxs.
Vostrxs estais muertxs.
http://madrid.indymedia.org/
This morning we carried out two attacks with fire in memory of our brother; in the Carabanchel barrio fire was set to a van of the Cobra company (dedicated, among other things, to the destruction of the earth and to collaboration in the construction of prisons); moments later fire was set to the door of a church in the center of this necropolis called Madrid.
“To the dead they light not candles, but barricades.”
Like Mauri, we confront this wretched system, denying those who want to manage life, rejecting negotiation, consensus, and dialogue with those who want to proclaim themselves our representatives, rejecting democracy and attacking it wherever it is found, whatever it may be called. Those who suffer day to day the violence of the State and of capitalist relations in all their diverse forms cannot respect the pacifist citizenist proclamations; for us they are an insult, thus we opt for the attack, the revolt against all that dominates us, against the artificialization of our lives.
Patricia, Foundas, Mauri, Giuliani… are alive.
You are dead.
http://waronsociety.noblogs.org/
Ataques Incendiarios en Memoria de Mauricio Morales
Esta madrugada realizamos dos ataques con fuego en memoria de nuestro hermano, en el barrio de Carabanchel fue incendiada una furgoneta de la empresa Cobra (dedicada entre otras cosas a la destrucción de la tierra y a la colaboración en la construcción de cárceles), instantes después se le pegó fuego a la puerta de una Iglesia, en el centro de esta necropolis llamada Madrid.
“A lxs muertxs no se le encienden velas sino barricadas”.
Como Mauri, nos enfrentamos a este maldito sistema, negando a quién quiere gestionar la vida, rechazando la negociación, el consenso y el dialogo con quién se quiere proclamar como nuestro representante, rechazando la democracia y atacándola allí donde se encuentre, llame como se llame. Quienes sufrimos dia a día la violencia del Estado y de las relaciones capitalistas en todas sus diversas formas no podemos respetar las proclamas pacifistas ciudadanistas para nosotrxs son un insulto, por ello optamos por el ataque, la revuelta contra todo aquello que nos domina.contra la artificialización de nuestras vidas.
Patricia, Foundas, Mauri, Giuliani… están vivxs.
Vostrxs estais muertxs.
http://madrid.indymedia.org/
The Arab spring conquers Iberia
By Pepe Escobar
But to live outside the law you must be honest
Bob Dylan, Absolutely Sweet Marie
"No one expects the #spanishrevolution." That's one of the signs in Madrid's iconic - and occupied - Puerta del Sol Square; Monty Python revised for the age of Twitter.
"I was in Paris in May '68 and I'm very emotional. I'm 72 years old." That's one of the signs in Barcelona's iconic - and occupied - Plaza Catalunya. The barricades revised as a Gandhian sit-in.
The exhilarating northern African winds of the great 2011 Arab revolt/spring have crossed the Mediterranean and hit Iberia with a
vengeance. In an unprecedented social rebellion, the Generation Y in Spain is forcefully protesting - among other things - the stinging economic crisis; mass unemployment at a staggering 45% among less than 30-year-olds and the ossified Spanish political system that treats the citizen as a mere consumer.
This citizens' movement is issuing petitions that get five signatures per second; it can be followed on Twitter (#spanishrevolution); streaming live from Puerta del Sol at Soltv.tv; to see its reach, click here. Reverberations are being felt all across Spain and word-wide - from Los Angeles to Sydney. A mini-French revolution started at the Bastille in Paris. Italians are planning their revolutions from Rome and Milan to Florence and Bari.
Outraged of the world, unite
They call themselves los indignados - "the outraged". Puerta del Sol is their Tahrir Square, a self-sufficient village complete with working groups, mobile first-aid clinic, and volunteers taking care of everything from cleaning to keeping an Internet signal. The May 15 movement - or 15-M, as it's known in Spain - was born as a demonstration by university students which spontaneously morphed into an open-ended sit-in meant to "contaminate" Spain via Facebook and Twitter and thus turn it into a crucial social bridge between Northern Africa and Europe.
They were only 40 people at the beginning. Now there are tens of thousands in over 50 Spanish cities - and counting. Soon there could be millions. Crucially, this is without the support of any political party or institution, trade union or mass media (in Spain, totally exposed to ridicule by political power). That's extraordinary in a country not exactly known by its tradition of dissent or the power of citizen organization.
The outraged are pacifists, apolitical and altruists. This is not only about the unemployed, "no future" youth - but an inter-generational phenomenon, with a middle-class crossover. This full stop to Spanish inertia - as in the sign "the French and the Greek fight while the Spanish win on soccer" - implies a profound rejection of the enormous abyss between the political class and the population, just like in the rest of Europe (Greek and Icelandic flags are seen side-by-side with the Egyptian flag.)
The outraged want citizens to regain their voices - as in a participative democracy embodied by neighborhood associations, and in favor of the right to vote for immigrants. Practically, they want a reform of the Spanish electoral law; more popular say on public budgets; political and fiscal reform; increased taxes for higher incomes; a higher minimum wage; and more control over big banking and financial capitalism.
Early this year, students in London protested en-masse against the rise in university tuition costs. The potential for protest is huge all across Europe. In Mediterranean Europe, the lack of prospects is absolutely bleak - from Generation Y to unemployed thirty-somethings stacked with diplomas. Even though the context is markedly different - in Northern Africa the fight is against dictatorships - the Arab Spring has shown young Europeans that mobilized citizens are able to fight for more social justice.
The Spanish left has tried to co-opt the movement. Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodrํguez Zapatero - badly bruised by these past Sunday elections, obviously boycotted by 15-M - said they must be listened to. The right, predictably, privileges a Hosni Mubarak approach, even asking the Ministry of Interior to go Medieval, as the former Egyptian president did. Right-wing media accuse the outraged of being communists, anti-system, urban guerrillas and having relations with the Basque separatists from ETA. The only thing missing was an al-Qaeda connection.
The outraged respond they are not anti-system; "it's the system that it's against us." Their original manifesto condemned the Spanish political class as a whole, plus corporate media, as allies to financial capital; those that have caused and are benefiting from the economic crisis. The outraged J'accuse includes the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the European Union, financial risk agencies and the World Bank.
The Spanish economy is in fact being controlled by the IMF. Whether or not he was a reformer, the IMF under disgraced Dominique Strauss-Kahn's unleashed major social devastation over Spain, Greece and Portugal. It's not only the unemployment rate of 45% for under-30-year-olds in Spain; it's pensions and wages reduced by 15%. The IMF is leading the way for the economies of southern Europe to, in a nutshell, regress.
It's as if the 15-M movement had been electrified by that famous dictum by Polish Marxist theorist Rosa Luxemburg - according to which capitalism is unredeemable in its antagonism to true democracy. The record shows that's exactly what's happening in the industrialized North as well as in the global South.
The new 1968
So this goes way beyond a student revolt. It's a revolt that lays bare a profound ethical crisis convulsing a whole society. And it goes way beyond the economy; this is a movement seriously inquiring over the place of human beings in turbo-capitalist society.
No wonder baby boomers - the parents of Generation Y - cannot but be reminded of the late, great German philosopher Herbert Marcuse. Compared with this breath of fresh air amid the asphyxiating social and economic landscape in Spain and great swathes of Europe, how not be reminded of Marcuse in a conference in Vancouver in 1969, talking about a worldwide student rebellion.
Marcuse then evoked how French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre was asked the same question - why these rebellions everywhere? Sartre said the answer was very simple - no sophisticated reasoning necessary. Young people were rebelling because they were asphyxiated. Marcuse always maintained this was the best explanation for this rebel yell denouncing a structural crisis of capitalism.
Marcuse was an ultra-sharp analyst of the degrading of culture as a form of repression, and the necessity of a critical elite capable of smashing the totalitarian opium of consumer culture (the outraged are also performing this role).
Marcuse identified the French and the American 1968 as a total protest against specific ills, but at the same time a protest against a total system of values, a total system of objectives. Young people didn't want to keep enduring the culture of established society; they refuted not only economic conditions and political institutions but also a rotten, global system of values.
In 1968, they were realists; they were demanding the impossible. Today, one of their signs read, "If you don't let us dream, we won't let you sleep."
Bob Dylan turns 70 this Tuesday. In Bob We Trust; he won't tell us, but deep in his heart and mind he knows where los indignados are coming from. If, as he wrote in Absolutely Sweet Marie, to live outside the law you must be honest, los indignados couldn't be more honest themselves, because they refuse to live under this law that is in fact killing them as well as most of us.
That's why it feels so great to be stuck inside of Madrid with the Cairo blues again.
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
He may be reached at [email protected].
By Pepe Escobar
But to live outside the law you must be honest
Bob Dylan, Absolutely Sweet Marie
"No one expects the #spanishrevolution." That's one of the signs in Madrid's iconic - and occupied - Puerta del Sol Square; Monty Python revised for the age of Twitter.
"I was in Paris in May '68 and I'm very emotional. I'm 72 years old." That's one of the signs in Barcelona's iconic - and occupied - Plaza Catalunya. The barricades revised as a Gandhian sit-in.
The exhilarating northern African winds of the great 2011 Arab revolt/spring have crossed the Mediterranean and hit Iberia with a
vengeance. In an unprecedented social rebellion, the Generation Y in Spain is forcefully protesting - among other things - the stinging economic crisis; mass unemployment at a staggering 45% among less than 30-year-olds and the ossified Spanish political system that treats the citizen as a mere consumer.
This citizens' movement is issuing petitions that get five signatures per second; it can be followed on Twitter (#spanishrevolution); streaming live from Puerta del Sol at Soltv.tv; to see its reach, click here. Reverberations are being felt all across Spain and word-wide - from Los Angeles to Sydney. A mini-French revolution started at the Bastille in Paris. Italians are planning their revolutions from Rome and Milan to Florence and Bari.
Outraged of the world, unite
They call themselves los indignados - "the outraged". Puerta del Sol is their Tahrir Square, a self-sufficient village complete with working groups, mobile first-aid clinic, and volunteers taking care of everything from cleaning to keeping an Internet signal. The May 15 movement - or 15-M, as it's known in Spain - was born as a demonstration by university students which spontaneously morphed into an open-ended sit-in meant to "contaminate" Spain via Facebook and Twitter and thus turn it into a crucial social bridge between Northern Africa and Europe.
They were only 40 people at the beginning. Now there are tens of thousands in over 50 Spanish cities - and counting. Soon there could be millions. Crucially, this is without the support of any political party or institution, trade union or mass media (in Spain, totally exposed to ridicule by political power). That's extraordinary in a country not exactly known by its tradition of dissent or the power of citizen organization.
The outraged are pacifists, apolitical and altruists. This is not only about the unemployed, "no future" youth - but an inter-generational phenomenon, with a middle-class crossover. This full stop to Spanish inertia - as in the sign "the French and the Greek fight while the Spanish win on soccer" - implies a profound rejection of the enormous abyss between the political class and the population, just like in the rest of Europe (Greek and Icelandic flags are seen side-by-side with the Egyptian flag.)
The outraged want citizens to regain their voices - as in a participative democracy embodied by neighborhood associations, and in favor of the right to vote for immigrants. Practically, they want a reform of the Spanish electoral law; more popular say on public budgets; political and fiscal reform; increased taxes for higher incomes; a higher minimum wage; and more control over big banking and financial capitalism.
Early this year, students in London protested en-masse against the rise in university tuition costs. The potential for protest is huge all across Europe. In Mediterranean Europe, the lack of prospects is absolutely bleak - from Generation Y to unemployed thirty-somethings stacked with diplomas. Even though the context is markedly different - in Northern Africa the fight is against dictatorships - the Arab Spring has shown young Europeans that mobilized citizens are able to fight for more social justice.
The Spanish left has tried to co-opt the movement. Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodrํguez Zapatero - badly bruised by these past Sunday elections, obviously boycotted by 15-M - said they must be listened to. The right, predictably, privileges a Hosni Mubarak approach, even asking the Ministry of Interior to go Medieval, as the former Egyptian president did. Right-wing media accuse the outraged of being communists, anti-system, urban guerrillas and having relations with the Basque separatists from ETA. The only thing missing was an al-Qaeda connection.
The outraged respond they are not anti-system; "it's the system that it's against us." Their original manifesto condemned the Spanish political class as a whole, plus corporate media, as allies to financial capital; those that have caused and are benefiting from the economic crisis. The outraged J'accuse includes the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the European Union, financial risk agencies and the World Bank.
The Spanish economy is in fact being controlled by the IMF. Whether or not he was a reformer, the IMF under disgraced Dominique Strauss-Kahn's unleashed major social devastation over Spain, Greece and Portugal. It's not only the unemployment rate of 45% for under-30-year-olds in Spain; it's pensions and wages reduced by 15%. The IMF is leading the way for the economies of southern Europe to, in a nutshell, regress.
It's as if the 15-M movement had been electrified by that famous dictum by Polish Marxist theorist Rosa Luxemburg - according to which capitalism is unredeemable in its antagonism to true democracy. The record shows that's exactly what's happening in the industrialized North as well as in the global South.
The new 1968
So this goes way beyond a student revolt. It's a revolt that lays bare a profound ethical crisis convulsing a whole society. And it goes way beyond the economy; this is a movement seriously inquiring over the place of human beings in turbo-capitalist society.
No wonder baby boomers - the parents of Generation Y - cannot but be reminded of the late, great German philosopher Herbert Marcuse. Compared with this breath of fresh air amid the asphyxiating social and economic landscape in Spain and great swathes of Europe, how not be reminded of Marcuse in a conference in Vancouver in 1969, talking about a worldwide student rebellion.
Marcuse then evoked how French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre was asked the same question - why these rebellions everywhere? Sartre said the answer was very simple - no sophisticated reasoning necessary. Young people were rebelling because they were asphyxiated. Marcuse always maintained this was the best explanation for this rebel yell denouncing a structural crisis of capitalism.
Marcuse was an ultra-sharp analyst of the degrading of culture as a form of repression, and the necessity of a critical elite capable of smashing the totalitarian opium of consumer culture (the outraged are also performing this role).
Marcuse identified the French and the American 1968 as a total protest against specific ills, but at the same time a protest against a total system of values, a total system of objectives. Young people didn't want to keep enduring the culture of established society; they refuted not only economic conditions and political institutions but also a rotten, global system of values.
In 1968, they were realists; they were demanding the impossible. Today, one of their signs read, "If you don't let us dream, we won't let you sleep."
Bob Dylan turns 70 this Tuesday. In Bob We Trust; he won't tell us, but deep in his heart and mind he knows where los indignados are coming from. If, as he wrote in Absolutely Sweet Marie, to live outside the law you must be honest, los indignados couldn't be more honest themselves, because they refuse to live under this law that is in fact killing them as well as most of us.
That's why it feels so great to be stuck inside of Madrid with the Cairo blues again.
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
He may be reached at [email protected].