[Campaignforrealdemocracy] European Revolution is Coming

[Mark Barrett]

"Here we have a social left which does not coincide with the political
'left'," says the communiqué from the so-called Nomad University. "The
latter has been absorbed by economic elites to such an extent that it is
difficult to distinguish between the recommendations of the big business
groups and the decisions of the politicians… we need more: popular citizen
assemblies, open encounters, public discussions, institutions which
supervise and control the political parties. That's the ideal...as real as
the "Error Del Sistema" placards in Madrid's Campo Real."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/24/european-dream-single-currency
*The European dream is in danger: prepare for another rude awakening*

http://madrilonia.org/?p=2241
*Sol, or when the impossible becomes unstoppable*
Marta Malo

Write to orient oneself, at the velocity imposed by the moment. Between
poetics and theory, write to offer something to the con-fabulation of the
world, to contribute, from inside, to the creation of the square, to prolong
the event which is Sol. Because yes, Sol has been an event: one of those
unexpected ocurrences which redraw the map and reopen the horizon of the
possible.

In the demonstration the 15th of May, overflowing with joy at the size of
the demonstration and its fresh atmosphere, a Radio Mobile Unit interviewed
some of those present. “What does the future look like to you?” Despite all
the energy circulating, many of the interviews were clearly pessimistic: “It
looks grim.” On Monday, when news of the camp in Sol started to blow like
gunpowder in the social networks, in a list for exchanging goods and
services someone wrote: “What does it matter if some people are camping, as
long as others are shopping at the department store next door?” It does
matter, because this wasn’t just any camp: the bold gesture of a few became
a signal to the many: it was “now or never” and the hunger for doing was set
loose, the hunger to speak.

One graffiti read: “The impossible becomes unstoppable.” There is no better
description of the event that is Sol. Generosity is deployed, smiles
everywhere, groups of friends decide to “go to the square together.” Others,
no longer strangers to each other, have become companions in a common
movement, the square as an irresistable magnet… One afternoon, the son of
some friends, just a year and a half old, started shouting “Sol! Sol!”: we
had walked away from the square and he was looking for that Sol which has so
affected all of us these days. Ten days ago no one could have imagined that
Sol could be anything but the touristic and commercial center of a European
capital city.

Sol, not as a geographic place but as an unexpected event, has come along to
shatter two of the pillars upon which the state of things was based: on the
one hand, it broke the consensus established after the Transition, according
to which the current party system is the best system of government
imaginable, and to question that is to open the doors to chaos and the
darkness of dictatorship (against the “We must not fall into the temptation
of questioning the present democratic system” of the comentator Angels
Barceló, the movement insists: “They call it democracy but it isn’t.”) On
the other hand, it rejects the interpretation of the crisis that makes it
seem a meteorological accident, faced with which there is no choice but to
tighten our belts. Against the political management of the economic crisis,
the square shouts: “They aren’t bail-outs, they’re blackmail!” and points to
those responsible, the governing politicians and bankers.

Excited, unable to believe that in fact “something is moving”, anxious to
discredit it before it has the capacity to make a real impact, the
politicians throw back to the square the blackmail of “alternatives”: “You
say no, but you don’t have any proposals.” What they don’t know is that, for
generations with no future, uncertainty about what is to come is an everyday
matter, and Sol allows us, at least, to live this uncertainty together with
others.

It seemed clear that the effect of the Sol-event, and in general, the May
15th movement, was not going to do anything but deepen the already existing
electoral tendencies: and indeed, the debacle of the Socialist party has
been resounding, even in cities already governed by the Popular party, like
Madrid. Now what?

The camps (not just the one in Sol, but the ones set up in so many cities)
continue. One friend said: “It’s not a matter of taking the street anymore,
it’s a matter of making the square.” Based on that intuition, I’ll throw out
an hypothesis: the square is only created by insisting, digging deeper into
those elements which made it possible: the critique of political power
(“Real democracy now!”) and its management of economic power (“The crisis
should be paid for by those responsible for it!”) as a minimal common
denominator; the cooperation of many as a practical force which makes the
square real and tangible, which makes this minimal common denominator not
only habitable but delightful, something which makes it worth pushing for.
Against the (self)representation of the thousands of pre-existing
collectives and struggles, with the corresponding risk of Balkanizing the
square, the Sol-event invites us to look for a point of connection, a place
from which we can contribute to this common, starting from who we are – of
course – but also from a commitment to that which brings us together.

Not only that. May 15th confirms the force of that unpredictable actor,
which we might call “Pass it along!”, because it self-organizes with this
simple and proliferating phrase. “Pass it along!” has a geneology: from the
mobilizations against the war, March 13th, V de Vivienda. With no structure
beyond the networks of friends and social cooperation, without big
organizations or programs, with simple, direct slogans, reacting against an
external event which serves to bring people together, marking time, making
it urgent to go into the streets (the war, the bombings of March 11th, the
elections…). From its first appearance, many are those who have attempted to
make use of it, circulating various dates on the internet, but “pass it
along” is a skittish actor, particularly for organized groups. Child of
decades of political demobilization and non-affiliation, it insists on the
power of “people”, “persons”. It is only interested, we might say, in
peer-to-peer calls for action.

One boy who arrived from Bilbao at the camp in Sol after days of being
fascinated with what was happening there, was asked: “Now what?” He
responded: “We don’t have to be afraid of the camps loosing steam. Sometimes
activists, when they get excited about something, pour themselves into the
thing and they exhaust it, like an overprotective mother with her child. I
am not an activist, I will leave here and go back to my life, and when
another thing comes up, I’ll reappear.” “Pass it along” appears and
disappears. How to contribute without overwhelming. How to inhabit the
(predictable) diastole of the movement without heartbreak. How to learn to
come together as a part, a tiny part, but a part nonetheless, of this
unpredictable actor. Questions which Sol leaves on the table.

Some Argentinian friends insist: “This is all very interesting, but it is
not like 2001 in Argentina. In 2001 who took over the city were the most
dispossessed by the crisis. Here it is not that, we barely see signs of the
crisis.” It is not interesting to think about a movement in terms of “what
it is lacking,” but it is important to think about how Sol effects those
most hard-hit by the economic crisis: those who have lost their homes, the
chronically unemployed, those who have been definitively pushed into the
informal economy, those who don’t have papers and have no hope of
regularizing their situation for lack of a contract, or those who have lost
their papers because they couldn’t pay the social security… those social
terrains most penetrated by “social intervention,” most effected by
political dis-affiliation… they are the great unknown in this new phase
which Sol ushers in. How will they involve themselves?

There is a long way to go, but the paralysis has ended. We can smile.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.aktivix.org/pipermail/campaignforrealdemocracy/attachments/20110525/630dd685/attachment.htm>