Blockupy Frankfurt / May 2012
"Piano, piano .." or resistance against war democracy?
Four days in the financial and political heart of Europe in Frankfurt, were undoubtedly a milestone in the relentless death march of democracy: ban on demonstrations, ban the right to meet in public, police revocation of the right to movement, an entire block in a state police, surrounded by 5000 police. The state of emergency decreed by the council grounds of Frankfurt was ratified on the eve of the official start of the days of protest Blockupy ( http://17to19m.blogsport.eu/), both at first instance by the Administrative Court of Kassel, and subsequently, by the Supreme Constitutional Court. 5000 Police did the rest (a total of 15 000 policemen were deployed), setting up a scenario unheard of police control, closing several subway stations and commuter train, enclosing an entire city block, with double barriers, checkpoints and the adjacent streets in permanent patrolling in a perimeter of 1 km, where the Polizei entertained themselves hunting backpackers, dreadlocks and people on suspicious costumes.
In Germany, after World War II, no one remembered citizens being controlled, identified, searched and arrested in masse for having the "look" to come to exercise won rights (like to demonstrate, to assemble and circulate in public space), and above all, received police "Single Restriction Orders" of movement, with immediate effect of control on their free movement, on suspicion that they may come to manifest or meet in public, for the purpose getting maps indicating the locations where they were forbidden to drive. If a citizen reported were caught in prohibited places, receive arrest warrant and would be judged for disobedience.
When leaning against the wall, there are moments when democracy shows at mouthful that only a great apparatus of propaganda and continuous production of consensus can hide the anti-democratic, authoritarian and potentially fascistic basis on which it rests.
The evidence accumulates so shamelessly that it becomes superfluous to try to convince with the causes and reasons those who already should have very lucidly perceived the vest-of-forces, parliamentary and legalistic, with which the culture of "bourgeois democracy" destroyed the horizontal and real democratization of society, serving the interests of dominant economic elites.
Euroland: million euros to control its own collapse
The political initiative of Blockupy, called by leftist organizations, trade unions and the anti-globalization movement Attac, ended up having a double success before even start officially: it revealed the falsification on which democracy underlies and the operationalization of the law that supports it (with the legal decisions already mentioned above), and forced the police to block the financial quarter for four days, the central goal of the activist platform.
Not only the European Central Bank building was locked - the overriding and more mediatic objective of Blockupy – but the entire neighborhood in which the financial world and the luxury trade in Frankfurt concentrates. Employees of the base of the pyramid were given one compulsive day off... subtracted from the vacation days, as some janitors reported the Blockupy organization.
Since the beginning of the new millennium, it is not rare the introduction of undeclared state of emergency, for example, on the days of performances consecration of G8 and NATO summits, but until now such a broad suppression of civil rights had never succeeded in Europe because of an initiative of the social movements, anti-capitalist in nature, a meeting of minds, practices and values diametrically opposed to those that motivated the state of exception when the military elites, economic and political meet. Millions of euros are spent on the war operation against those who up rise and basic constitutional rights suspended just to maintain a degree of control over a society in collapse
When it is said that the cities of the contemporary world were mobilized by neo-liberalism to survive in a permanent state of war it may be due to clarify that the securitarian power elites strategy is not so much enter into open war, but exercise a continuous control on populations depleted physically, spiritually and materially (in practice, subjecting them to the consequences of a state of war) to refrain them from openly entering the conflict to which they are subjected. This game management by the imaginary structures of power fostered us the ability to live in established truths as if they were no evidence of the destructive culture that results from the mercantilization of all aspects of life. In this sense, we could ask: is the state of war a stabilization of a unilateral confrontation of capitalist forces while whole strata of the population are neutralized by continuous anticipation of their exclusion from direct confrontation? Populations facing only the effects of that state of control: impoverishment, exploitation, loss of rights, racial discrimination and persecution of immigrants, destruction of community ties, existential emptiness, and of course, the isolation of minority focuses of resistance. If European civilization has imposed for more than two centuries this program of spiritual impoverishment, cultural and material in other continents, cultures and civilizations astray, with disastrous consequences, especially in Africa, without retreating an inch, now shows that it is ready in its own territory to stray pockets of resistance from poorer geographical places such as Greece, Portugal and Spain.
To the leaders in power the current state of things is the price to pay for large sectors of the population, so that a few enjoy an unprecedented concentration of wealth and power and the masses of a life of tragic-happy misery, techno-flooded goods, cement, toxins, pollution and cultural stupefaction.
It should then be ask whether democracy (the model of power and political organization of society which until now met with more scope and efficiency the oligarchic objectives of concentration of power and wealth) is not in itself and continuously a state of exception?
Thursday, May 17 - Occupy
Uprising biberons to implode tourists
After two dozen arrests on Wednesday afternoon at Frankfurt's Hauptwache (and a record identification of over 500 people who were already in Frankfurt and made the first opened meeting, dissolved immediately by the police), the next day, the first large group of about 800 activists who tried to camp in Pauls-Platz were surrounded. In the square next to (Romer Platz), in front of City Hall, activists were getting closer, even when the police state made preventive buses stop at the gates of the city, as happened to at least three buses coming from Berlin. Robocop panic reached the point of officers forcing a couple to drink of her baby's biberon, in an preventive expertise on chemical attacks. Democracy will soon forbid these tanks called terrorists baby strollers to get closer to the centers of power... At this very moment, the Israeli secret services formed regiments of special agents with specialized odorous sensors matter in toxicological screening of diapers from breastfeeding terrorists with diarrheic tendencies...
The unusual lurks around every corner and entraps us when we least expect. The culture jamming is also spontaneous-reaching unsuspecting activists. Not witnessed, we were reported. A group of prisoners (near university campus), sitting on the floor waiting for the trucks entering the Polizei, sees a man shaggy and ragged that drove them. Insults them to the left and right. No beggar in the vocabulary. Some activists feel uncomfortable. They come to ask the police to withdraw. Police laughs. The image is too significant not to reflect on it. To challenge the dominant power we also need a security perimeter? A string that keeps us safe from the most deprived? Is this the "clash of civilizations" ...? The cultural capital disintegrated us and separated us from each other more than the drawers in which each class is arranged according to their purchasing power. The pestilence of this civilization clung deeply and long ago. Not come out with a thermal bath. Isolation is one of the triumphs of the enemy.
Tourists sitting in the square breweries reported inhaling indifference - even indifferent to their own beer warming in afternoon sun. They have lost the air of easy amazement or curiosity that often characterizes them. They seemed to pay off their holiday not to be there, but for not being on-site ever. Do not ask. Do not want answers. Appear as bitter as the bitterest aftertaste of pints. They have paid to not be on the other side, the B-side and continued rotation of a boring lives. Thus, dull-no-beer flavor and disgusted of no-lupins, in no way affect them a square occupied and under siege by the police. Mortal boredom. From the tourist point of view, three beers and a soft Apple Strudel meet the afternoon.
Among the withering tourists in the city most tourist spot, when the number of activists of the second group was about 400 it was decided to set up the tents, disobeying at outlawing of the camps, and meeting one of the objectives of Blockupy.
This attitude of civil disobedience led to a prompt police intervention, which met with physical resistance, and a blockade by activists who made the police retreat. At that time, the square would be about 50 riot police. It took more than three hours until reinforcements arrived and stayed the whole square surrounded by hundreds of police (impossible to calculate, but would never be less than 600 who were in direct operation to disperse the activists camped, not counting the agents who were over the waterfront within walking distance of the siege). Before the evacuation of the square, we register the intervention of a group of activists who prevented a police van, with a plethora of remote-control cameras, approaching the center of the square.
After the financial district be protected to the full by the police, and the obstruction of activists camp - unable to stay concentrate on the same site during late afternoon and evening, the planned program of meetings and discussion groups theme was unviable, hindering own decisions and the fluidity of communication between activists - the different thematic groups (particularly anti-militarist block, anti-privatization of public services block, work block, anti-racist block , anti-capitalist block, and ecologist block) and coordination of Blockupy were discussing, in different locations, what to do on the day that was meant to block the European Central Bank. He decided to try to get as close as possible to the area of democracy-off, to make protests, but always preserving the autonomy of collective wishing to carry out other actions.
Friday, May 18 - Direct Action
"Hungry? Eat a banker ".
Before 8 am we were on the street. As we approached the block of high finance in Europe, were seen funeral dances choreographed by rows of police. Glazed buildings, concrete and trees, so artificially arranged, which seem to be fueled by biodiesel, this eco-pathological agent. All the hassle of civilization. And one morning nausea.
Adjacent to the headquarters of finance, in Kaiserstrabe, a proliferation of casinos and strip clubs housing all the patriarchal coarseness. It is still a cultural metaphor of capitalism: on the one hand, with banks, offices and market agencies, aridity and infertility, discipline and inhibition, the dietetics and light sandwich, obedience to the business organization and lack of horny; on the other, ongoing dramatization of ejaculation and the supremacy of phallic power, self-service disinhibition and mac-kebabs, purchased excitation and reactionaries orgasm.
Among morning plans, drew up direct actions such as blocking a shuttle that would transport executives from top management of the ECB and that'd leave early from the central station. We were part of groups that tried to do, unsuccessfully, that action. The reinforced device of police in Frankfurt central station prevented any attempts to gathering. Another action that has had more success in the morning was "taken" the Messeturm, the skyscraper where are the offices of Goldman Sachs, where the "pirates" placed the track "Hungry? Eat a banker ".
Thwarted attempts to perform direct actions near the financial center, after a game of cat and mouse on the streets around the block no-civil-zone (twice we were identified; in one of those attempts to escape, the police stopped six minibuses in a one way street just to identify four people!; both times, the police communicated to a central our names in order to know whether we were on some black list), we received the information (there was a “line” that would give information to affinity groups) that the morning aim went to hold a protest in one of the closest points of the ECB before the double fence that limited access to the target Blockupy.
When more than two hundred activists had already met, the beat of samba Rhythms of Resistance rolling, the police began their attempt to complete the siege. We assume that the arrest of the first large group that managed to meet in Gallusanlage Park, hours before and glued to the front north of the police security zone, after the same type of enclosure, led people to disperse in the direction of the promenade that follows the river. The police pop out from every corner and, already in Untermainkai, a group of more than 200 people became trapped, riot police in front of and behind our backs. Or we resisted in the marginal or the only way out was to jump into the garden, from a height of 4 meters. Realizing that the police tightened the siege continuously without any intention to retreat over the first jumps, most activists eventually jump.
Greek Unionists came to take the picture without the “flash” and “mob” of Athens streets
It came to the end of the morning and the various groups of activists headed to a supporting base, on the facilities of DGB (the largest German union confederation) quite close to the financial quarter and face the river. Restoring forces, with the efficient support of the team dealing with the food, discussed a bit, made some contacts, actions up planned for the afternoon. During this time, at two different times, police have made a move to enter the facilities. It seemed more a maneuver to intimidate. They settled with 3 or 4 lines of police, at entire length of one of the entries of the union (steady before the gate, the north front, permanently open to the movement of activists). However, it seemed to us that impunity would not reach the police to invade private property of the largest German union... as many times does in the property of collectivized anarchist squats or social centers, in several German cities.
Who came from Greece, in tour guide at DGB, was a crowd of well-posed union members, which passed us when we try to take a nap after lunch on the terrace of the DGB. They leaned against the railing of the terrace to have behind the “freak” scene and took pictures to hang in inter-union. They came without the flash and mob of the streets of Athens, Patras, Thessaloniki... Chosen the best framework, the most picturesque, even the red and black flags of the anarcho-syndicalists could fit on the Nikon. But in the photo album of real life, in the streets of Athens, will the image suffer of a post-production make-up, erasing of overview everything that does not have sickle and hammer and move with freedom of action?
Although there have been over 400 arrests in the morning, the whole afternoon there would be certainly around 2000 activists programming actions. Not only was it impossible to be in most of them as until now there is no a complete record of the various actions. The next day, before the demonstration, the informal conversations we had with activists from other blocks, we easily saw that we were unaware of many interventions that have been triggered.
(In Friday afternoon we participated in two actions)
14h/15h - The first intervention was carried out jointly by anti-racist and ecological block. Due to police millimeter persecution in the morning, the two blocks agreed to hold the intervention outside the city center. In small groups, the intention was to gather a considerable number of people on a tram stop that would take us to the other side of the river. Not without some orders from the police and dispersal limitation on freedom of movement, we managed to gather a group of nearly 100 activists who took the tram completely. The local concentration was in front of a delegation from Deutsche Bank, specializing in the allocation of credits for investment in African countries. Although practically since we left the tram a police van followed us, only 10 or 15 minutes after the action has begun is that the police presence was felt in the square occupied by more than one hundred activists. There was just time to put banners, distributing flyers, and more than five or six people address us at the microphone. More activists arrived and the always welcome Rhythms of Resistance samba. The traffic was partially cut, although it was the police circus that stopped the tram line crossing the square. After the second dispersion order, someone spoke against the police action and its connivance with the great mercantile interests. Performed the intervention, the activists decided to disperse the square, but were "imprisoned" in a side street until determined otherwise by the speaker of service. Time for the clown army into service making fun of Robocop’s aligned. When we left the siege, the staircase of Deutsche Bank was vigorously washed with floods of water and detergent... purging up of the terrible activists humours...
The antifascists: under 20 and full of determination
18h - Meanwhile, we get informed of an antifascist action. The intervention would take place in Offenbach, a small town borderline Frankfurt. Outbound on the local station, we walked a few hundred meters to find in a side street a small group of 30 activists in the middle of the road and surrounded by police. Other activists were arriving. They told us then that the intention of carrying out this action to denounce police repression and to make a spontaneous demonstration in Offenbach was aroused by the fact that the bans are limited to Frankfurt, so the police could not prevent it, resorting to legal arguments. Only with insistence the police dissuaded to derail action. They were about 200 people, mostly around the 20 years of age, even with teens and some seniors to the mix. We walked up the streets of this suburb inhabited by Arab immigrants to the sound of anti-capitalist slogans and calling for international solidarity. Arriving at the central square, the speeches were made by the newest. One of antifascist activists present, in constant hyperactivity and seemed to have 14/15 years, was eventually interrupted by a fellow who mobilized the group to be directed to a corner of the square where the police barred the entry of six members who wanted join the concentration. Five minutes of pressure were enough to police let them pass, an example of determination and solidarity of the youngest activists we found over the days we were in Frankfurt.
21h - At night, in university campus of Bockenheimer Warte, would be close to 2000 people. Chatting in the courtyard, discussing in the rooms where meetings were taking place, attending lectures (a humorous activist told us, "Today is the day of the pop-stars," referring to David Graeber and to the “negrism” without block from Michael Hardt), or resting on the upper floors, where most of the activists who came from abroad were settled. The counter-cultural political environment, reminded the older the student struggles of May 68 or the fruitful theoretical debate developed there for decades by post-Marxists of “Frankfurt School”.
But you cannot change the reality for a plate of nostalgia. And the lentil soup, the spicier of Blockupy days, was not consensual. The one who writes, repeated three times and blessed the Iran couple, who was aware the kitchen, having a hand tuned.
An internationalist meeting ("International Meeting", so was announced), promoted by anti-capitalist block focusing the Saturday demonstration, took place with foreign activists.
The stressed activist and girls in white, chaste and pure
It was not really a meeting, but a point of information. Because of the inability to meet in public, would be understandable that the anti-capitalist block, previously organized, would only provide information about demonstration, and especially on their block. However, call it "International Meeting" was a mistake. Nothing was discussed at all. Although some people clearly show that they have that expectation. There were four members of the anti-capitalist block, and two dozen activists from the Netherlands, England, Italy, Belgium, France and Portugal (do not remember if there were activists from other places). While she was saying that the forefront of the anti-capitalist block would be formed by women dressed in bright colors (it was not at all possible to discuss here gender issues...) and the anti-capitalist block would be the most targeted by the police and the media, the activist who led the meeting stressed that it was "necessary to pass a political image that would convey the message of former days", assuming with this that we should be careful make-up not to hurt the susceptibility of TV viewers (it was not at all possible to discuss here the whole society of the spectacle...). The activist who led the order of data points was the most tense that we found over the four days and the one most often seen cutting the word to someone (in fact, except the justified stop teen speech in anti-Fascist Action, as described above, no seen one who did it). Noted however that was only four days and this info-meeting only lasted half an hour, we are not turbo-activists, not "were" everywhere, nor had twitter or laptop, and we do not want to extrapolate. The same activist could still step on eggs, with great delicacy, stating "that they were not sure if the Black Block would be present," but adding that "his fellow staff would then talk about these issues." And his colleague spoke, and after he had spoken with the usual elements that make up Black Block they had confirmed to him that they would be present. Maybe the stressed activist and the activist who contacted with the Black Block had not exchanged views on the subject before the information session, despite the order of data points have been so rigid and pre-established by themselves. After a few questions thrown by foreign activists (activist, increasingly tense, repeatedly reminded, "asking only at the end of explanations"), we intervened to say "it seemed they were doing a taboo of Black Block, and feed this taboo was not realistic; that they surely would be present and would act with the autonomy as we know them; that the conditions of the massive presence of police and the more than certain presence of undercover police gathered the perfect conditions to trigger conflicts ". (But it was not at all possible to discuss here why an anti-capitalist block wanted to be color all the colors while "bleached" the black...). Had it been possible to make humor still we would have said at activist who led the service info-line to take care of her extremely graduated glasses, were not they be confused during demonstration with anti-tear gas goggles made famous by Greek anarchists...
Although seem at least a very bad presage this taboo on the Black Block, this panoply of angels and chaste women in front of the cord, and this cosmetic techno-color achievement for a good image at dinner time there home (after all, with a good deal off, a more understandable point if we accept the diversity of different self-portraits), it would not be honest to hide that our integrity bothered us, i.e., we do not feel like that Robocop’s squash our face.
Saturday, May 19 - Demonstration
In solidarity with the Black Block "rivoltati" told us "piano, piano ...”
Already after 13h, the Blocupy Frankfurt demonstration began, culminating three days of activities inspired by the strong movements of “Acampadas” in Spain and the latest Occupy Wall Street. The keynote seemed to be the denunciation of an overall policy of impoverishment, with criticism on austerity policies determined by the Troika and the Eurozone. However, it seemed that the anti-capitalist slogans, thundered more often and loudest than many other slogans.
We have integrated the anti-capitalist block, next to the large group of Italian activists, mostly students who are part of Ateneinrivolta collective (www.ateneinrivolta.org).
Almost invariably the final block of the demonstrators (approximately the last quarter) broke up right in front on our line of march, due to police attempts to isolate the tail of the demonstration. The method of provocation of riot police was invariably try to forcibly remove the sidebands, there where the block of protesters was more black.
This division of the body's unique manifestation in two happened at least five or six times. At all times, we launched the warning cry to stop the demonstration and gesticulating to pull back, avoiding the gap. We found that in most cases, and especially as the demonstration drew to an end, not only the group of Ateneiinrivolta showed no great resolution to stop or reverse, as in two or three situations they restart to march before the separate group restarted theirs.
n those situations where the police tried to isolate the tail of the event and when we turn once more to the large group of Italian activists screaming at them to stop their march to retreat and avoid the gap that is created, they told me "Piano, piano ... ". In that context, there was hard to keep a conversation to explain what seemed coolly in a repeated lack of solidarity with the block black. Adding the fact that since the first stop of the body of the demonstration took place there was an Italian activist Ateneinrivolta who struggled to give instructions to his group to close themselves, not only in normal march - which was understandable at times when the police approached -, but at times when the demonstration broke, when it created a gap, and when we shouted for them to stop and back off.
The great symbolic moment of solidarity came from a 6th floor of a building: a man at the window tirelessly threw chocolates and bottles of water... it had emptied three bags of candies, continuously being applauded by protesters. Recognizing it as a probable immigrant, all sang up "international solidarity".
Irony of ironies, some windows below, giving it the second spontaneous culture jamming. Someone who intentionally not shown on the window, to the effect while keeping the shutter half-closed, put a laconic sign on the parapet: "Animal Riots." Enthusiasm reigns, applause, effusion. Automatic devices for the (false) consensus? 25 000 people in the decrepit financial heart of Europe to challenge the politics of human and ecological destruction is an achievement, a party that cannot stop. But do not judge that the windows will always have people waving and feeding us with candies. Some will give us the "trick"... or a cold plate of lentils. And from this tray we should not want to eat, much less applaud... in that right moment, have been few who realized that the poster "Animal Riots" was not placed by an activist of the Animal Liberation Front...
Cunts against capitalism
As the demonstration progressed, in reverse flow to many demonstrators who arrived at the front (ATTAC, the environmental groups and the precarious, had left behind the Black Block, so it had been previously established), we were going back more and more to the tail. We ended in the third row from the end. In the final section, always in block, arms crossed. With a string of six rows of riot police platoon in the entire length of the demonstration tail and continuously flanked by a row of two or sometimes three cops. As long as blocks/groups, no longer had the hundreds of protesters from ATTAC, environmentalists and the precarious behind the Black Block. Many have gone to other fronts. However, it is fair to say that among the Black Block there were hundreds of activists who set a polychromatic, where diversity was sworn and not staged for the TV cameras. Although it was not possible to determine whether other activists also rowed against the tide, certainly not just we have done it. We realized, for example, the "Cunts against Capitalism" that had started in front of us and that in the end were with the Black Block target of police provocations. The "Cunts against capitalism," claimed that, within the genre, there is always a place that they occupy if they wish so and without being booked ahead, as if refusing that in an anti-capitalist block there are lady quotas for occupying the front line, to benefit when it sounds better and if well dressed, very white full and puritanical...
Four days are just four days. Worth for the nomadic and erratic collective action with those we did not know; worth the common language that intertwines above the native languages; worth by the will of the elders insist on the permanence of the links; worth the solidarity determination of adolescents. On TV, if the image is worth... and pleases the plasma? This charm that endures, does it not hide a trapped way? Is there or not a misconception – repeated – when thinking that we will be more, those who are at home will come to the street, because of fleeting images at dinnertime?
If the reality of oppression caused by financial fascism and the dehumanization fostered by the managers of representative democracy is not enough to motivate rebellion and radical transformation of society is because the bridge between them effectively fulfill the political control, the integration of the left and the dominant cultural washing. The way to regain control of our imagination - bringing more and more people – will not be televised, it will pass there where we struggle to live on the street, in schools, workplaces, in the suburbs, the slums and in places where the path of liberation has already begun.
It is the day-to-day that we shall strengthen these ties. It is this path of alleys that we will open up the walls that separate us. Where this happens, the TV becomes a obsolete mean, at best, a museum piece of collective laugh. Let us not miss the humor.
Occupy life, now
But, now what? Or, if you will, and yesterday?
Although it seems a cynical view, we can think that any initiative to challenge current dominant power always falls on a basis of negotiation with/on the ground that power holds. Negotiation does not mean here the exchange of pennants, social contracts and backstage meetings, but only a process of means recovery, cycled robbed by a world of practices and values that must be rejected. We need to recover a colossal corpse, abounds at our feet, to free ourselves from it. The picture is not very optimistic, and says much of the tragic dimension of a model of organization of the collective life (patriarchal, individualistic, hierarchical, and based on profit and continuous growth, militarized...), disproportionately accelerating in the last three decades, destroyed natural resources and human capacity to live in autonomy.
That this view is not confused with the mainstream of the last revolutionary process across borders in Europe during May 68. During this period, ran a general belief that the capitalist logic (production and growth = progress and development) should not be fought itself as a model of economic organization of human life: was necessary to go in the chain and through reform or revolution, reach the central power of the state to change the faces, leadership, values, practices. So best to regulate the wealth generated by the capitalist logic. The problem for the left was not the mode of production and technology of capitalism, but the fact that this model "only served the capitalists, instead of serving mankind" (Castoriadis). This dream has fueled generations of those fighting against "capitalism" with factual achievements of labor and social rights. Fights in the street, and by perseverance, and presence in state institutions. Since the 80's we don't see other thing than neoliberalism getting rid of this dream of a Marxist left and/or social-democratic, with a pinch of counter-culture and the birth of environmental movements.
Dilapidated natural sources of energy like never before, economic oligarchies had no other option to maintain profit rates they got used but to come through this return on European soil on primitive capitalism. In addition, end of the romance of the left (the so-called extreme, by the corporate media) with capitalism with a human face. Meanwhile, we lost a long time. More than any other continent, in any historical moment, Western European was wasting a heritage of material accumulation and experience unheard. Today, we are dismayed and powerless with the imminence of the general collapse.
In this sense, occupying the enemy ground does not mean occupy the command of their towers, except to dismantle them. The "long march through the institutions" that spoke Rudi Dutschke, the best known German leader of the student struggles May 68, was a technique of integration by the "occupation." Three decades of Reagan-Thatcherism destroyed the remains of the partial achievements thereby made by this process. Lack a tactic occupation for the disintegration.
Democracy is nothing more than fascism ludic playground
Increasingly thicken the numbers of those who are not willing to actively govern their lives by anti-democratic practices of representative democracy, which embrace more and more libertarian principles of collective decision, which increasingly participate in direct action to confront power - thereby draining the traditional political power through this fight made in the streets and squares - the field of action remains to be occupied by these masses of indignant and protesters is the construction of daily life alternatives.
The imagery of the capitalist culture is stronger than the imaginary of democracy. There are clear signs that the latter will not survive much longer (and will be the parliamentary left, Marxist, Trotskyist and ecologist, who will be pressed to change their view of power, their practices and organizational models, or will disappear themselves with the obsolete model of representative democracy and the consequent cutting edge culture that fosters more-prone to control dissent and discourage the politicization of society, rather fostering outbreaks of politicization everywhere where this germ spreads). However, the industrial quantities of a future that want to integrate us, made the scale of the myths of society welfare, production and consumption continue to mobilize the day-to-day of most “indignados”.
Poor in pocket is a consequence of the degrading and precarious principles in which capitalism is based. The real and profound precariousness is the precariousness of the imagination. Staying up only for demanding better pay and a fairer distribution of wealth generated is not understood the fallacy of the first cultural and ethical civilization that, in little more than two centuries, won the whole scale, the planet and human life. Stay up only to claim better conditions is to leave the utopian thinking a little more rotten.
Since the end of World War II, society produces future in inhumane doses to achieve an ideal of inhuman scale. We are so surrounded by the future that the reason it clogs every corner, every window, every conversation, every book we read, every class in college, every human relationship established, every millisecond that the acceleration and cyber motorization of urban life makes us believe we lost.
Everything leads us to lose or not regain control over our lives, as we adapt to the course of things in search of a more comfortable position when in fact we are sodomize on all sides. All makes us subjected to a wedding of eternal and perfect life with the future, forgetting us to make love with the present. While we do believe we live to forget that we are mortal, we will continue to sleep, waiting for the miracle of a future neo-social state, social security, technology, science, social networks, the medicine that will give us a infinite death. In an uncertain day, they will do miracles while every day watches over our sleep. This promised future is indefensible. And it already seems to be generalized rational evidence. It remains to not fear to stay without that future promised by the society of capitalist progress and techno. This orgy with epidermal future is so large that present time seems useless and horny. Worse, we no longer know how to build the present time. It is this gift that is missing. The permaculture have to be in the public gardens not on the field, on the balconies of the buildings hydroponics-hitting with satellite dishes, solar panels on the rooftops bloom craft, every public school a social center, in each neighborhood a open meeting, horizontal and sovereign ...
If the construction of a human economy, self-managed, controlled and made to the scale of human needs, will not expand as the protest movement is growing in the street, as is happening, we run the risk of returning to hear that "revolutionary premises were not yet mature”. It would be an achievement to see in anti-capitalist shout echoed in Frankfurt not an escalation for the seizure of power but rather than see it as another step in the neutralization of that power. As grow(s) self-government(s) and horizontal and autonomous control in places where we live, while we refuse to act as a company, operating as employers of others around us and ourselves being goods with which we have to sustain us miserably. A revolutionary way implies to demobilize from the future that capitalism sells us (while, in practice, denies and laughs in our face), implies deserting of wide avenues, but rather do it with the solidarity instinct to look in back, look at who is still subjected to rubbing elbows with politicians, bosses, priests and policemen. In resume, this revolutionary path assumes that human beings again be master of himself and of his present in public spaces where it fulfills its life, thereafter projecting another basis of relationship with others and a different future. If this seems a simple statement - although it is a human and political essential issue - is due to the degree to which the time we live in has hit the bottom of the desire for social emancipation and made disappear from our horizon the invincible will to act on our own world, our needs and our desires.
Vadio
(in any case someone from the lost, last European country...)