The 15M [the Indig­na­dos ‘move­ment’] is very alive, we see this in the great chal­lenges that await it. It has many achieve­ments, some very vis­ible, like the cre­ation of a dif­fer­ent social cli­mate or hav­ing social­ized the idea that the crisis is a con, and that this con star­ted well before the crisis. A year later it has been made clear that the gov­ern­ing are part of the prob­lem: they haven’t been able to make even one min­imal reform to facil­it­ate par­ti­cip­a­tion nor to pro­sec­ute cor­rup­tion. Faced with this block­age in the sys­tem, we would like to focus on some ele­ments that might be import­ant to think strategically.

We’ll start from what is closest, our local and daily situ­ations. For a met­ro­polis like Mad­rid, we sup­pose in other cit­ies as well, the 15M has meant vari­ous things. With the 15M a social com­pos­i­tion emerged that does not feel rep­res­en­ted and that was dis­persed, which res­ul­ted in polit­ical impot­ence. Madrid’s PP [Pop­u­lar Party] has con­sol­id­ated itself in the last 15 years, cre­at­ing a city that is very com­pet­it­ive in social terms, where it is dif­fi­cult to simply artic­u­late with oth­ers. How­ever, in Mad­rid things were hap­pen­ing on a micro-​level, social pro­jects tak­ing place before the 15M, and, on a lar­ger scale, a ton of people that were on the mar­gins of party polit­ics but that came together in key moments like “No War,” the social response on March 13, 2004 to the polit­ical man­age­ment of the attacks, the sit-​ins of V de Vivienda [V for Hous­ing] and finally, the tak­ing of Puerta del Sol.

It’s clear that the 15M has been a machine of con­nec­tion in front of the exist­ing dis­per­sion and that this cre­ates pos­sib­il­it­ies on dif­fer­ent levels. In the neigh­bor­hoods, new fab­rics have emerged that have recon­figured the way of being in the ter­rit­ory and have pro­voked open­ings in the pro­jects that were already going on in those places. Spaces of solid­ar­ity and polit­ical inter­ven­tion have opened over the prob­lems that cur­rently affect the major­ity of people. Pro­cesses, which only a short time ago were unthink­able, have achieved vic­tor­ies that modify the sur­round­ings and the people par­ti­cip­at­ing: defend­ing pub­lic ser­vices, occupy­ing houses, net­works of sup­port, stop­ping evic­tions, res­ist­ing police pres­ence, etc. The con­nec­tions estab­lished between dif­fer­ent neigh­bor­hoods through the assem­blies con­struct a dif­fer­ent map of the city. Surely those nodes and links will provide much sup­port at the time to block the crim­in­al­iz­a­tion of “poverty,” the increase in police inter­ven­tions, the racist out­bursts and the viol­ence that could come in many areas hard hit by the crisis.

When the ground that you walk trembles because those on top have decided that nor­mal people pay for the crisis, the first response is to get angry, to protest and to try to defend what they are steal­ing: houses, health care, wages, edu­ca­tion, pen­sions, etc. But with time, the social responses have gone about cre­at­ing a pro­gram where the defense of the stolen rights appears along­side new ques­tions. For example, address­ing the cuts in health care, it is very prob­able that the people that try to con­struct a response to the lack of response to their demands will end up pro­pos­ing the neces­sity to rethink care and health. Social cooper­a­tion is in the 15M’s DNA, which will, and is already con­trib­ut­ing to the recu­per­a­tion of com­mon resources for people in the con­text of the state’s with­drawal in favor of the profits of private com­pan­ies, that many times have ties to the politi­cians. The 15M and the social waves are open­ing up paths to exper­i­ment new forms of man­age­ment that ensure access and improve­ment of that which is essen­tial for people’s lives.

At the insti­tu­tional level, the cre­ation of assem­blies, col­lect­ives like Juven­tud Sin Futuro [Youth without a Future] and the nodes of DRY [Real Demo­cracy Now], the var­ied com­mis­sions and work­ing groups, has a double mean­ing for us. On the one hand, we see its import­ance for what it sup­poses in terms of social aggreg­a­tion and polit­ical inter­ven­tion at dif­fer­ent levels, but at the same time it is fairly clear that these entit­ies should con­stantly look out­ward, because there are many people that feel part of the move­ment but for dif­fer­ent reas­ons don’t dir­ectly par­ti­cip­ate. The Inter­net is another space of debate, par­ti­cip­a­tion, and aggreg­a­tion, that enhances the move­ment by con­trib­ut­ing oper­at­ive capa­city and dis­tri­bu­tion. What is import­ant is not who or where things are done (copy­right), but rather that those things are eas­ily access­ible, usable and adapt­able (copyleft). The chal­lenge con­sists in exper­i­ment­ing with ways to decent­ral­ize while con­tinu­ing to col­lect­ively state object­ives and con­cen­trate forces to achieve them. The 15M has not built a large insti­tu­tion, but rather has cre­ated a cli­mate that encour­ages tak­ing the streets to defy the logic of dis­pos­ses­sion at the same time as it stim­u­lates desires to do things with oth­ers to improve our lives. In both aspects, it’s about con­nec­tions put to work that have to work from the closest scale while still inter­ven­ing in a gen­eral con­text of polit­ical crisis and eco­nomic fraud.

The cel­eb­ra­tions of May 12 – 15 met expect­a­tions, the plazas were taken massively but not per­man­ently, which has been used by the gov­ern­ment to repress dis­pro­por­tion­ately. An encamp­ment did not emerge at Sol because people already are doing things and share a dia­gnostic about what is hap­pen­ing. The desire to feel togeth­er­ness floated in the air, but it was seen that in order to stay in the plaza we needed clear object­ives. A year later the moment of chal­lenges has arrived. We know that this is a con and that the lead­ers are in the ser­vice of this con. There are pro­jects, tools, con­nec­tions and lots of social sup­port. Now it is about going on the offens­ive in a decent­ral­ized and intel­li­gent way. That is to say, to act in ques­tions where we can achieve vic­tor­ies increas­ing the social sup­port. For example, it’s not the same to protest against a law that attacks fun­da­mental rights, as for small groups to dis­obey this law and cre­at­ing a social con­ta­gion. The case of Bankia is a cata­lyst that we must take advant­age of, with dif­fer­ent ini­ti­at­ives that could go from put­ting pres­sure on decision-​makers to tak­ing over hous­ing owned by the insti­tu­tion, actions that come together as part of a dis­persed attack by the same swarm. In terms of the gen­eral con­junc­ture, the plazas con­tinue to be the meet­ing place to express out­rage, and, if the oppor­tun­ity arises, to con­struct clear objects for which to remain in the plaza until they are met, whether it is the approval of dación en pago (deed in lieu of pay­ment) next Octo­ber or for the gov­ern­ment to resign if it con­tin­ues cut­ting rights and wel­fare faced with the escal­at­ing risk premium.

At the inter­na­tional level, we see that the power of the plazas has spread from Tahrir to the rest of the world. If there is some­thing that the 15M has con­trib­uted it is massive and diverse par­ti­cip­a­tion in the coun­tries of the Global North. This has trans­formed the lan­guages, the forms and goals of the people that con­tinue par­ti­cip­at­ing in and sup­port­ing the 15M. This qual­it­at­ive leap happened in the US sev­eral days after the begin­ning of Occupy Wall Street. In Europe it hasn’t been like that, except for Ice­land and Greece, with a very intense cycle of struggles that has over­flowed the pre­vi­ous forms of par­ti­cip­a­tion. In these moments the game for the EU’s future is played in the Medi­ter­ranean. For the crisis to stop being a ques­tion of adjust­ments imple­men­ted by states with barely any sov­er­eignty to being a prob­lem on the European scale depends on what hap­pens in Greece and Spain. As much the oper­at­ive abil­ity of the indig­na­dos against the pres­sure of the fin­an­cial elite, as Syriza’s pos­sible vic­tory, could change the dir­ec­tion of policies that con­demn entire coun­tries to ruin. If Rajoy’s gov­ern­ment falls with the plazas full and Syr­iza revokes the impos­i­tions without leav­ing the Euro, a new cycle would open that would dir­ectly point to the anti-​democratic struc­ture in Europe.

We are not lack­ing any ingredi­ents to pro­duce import­ant hap­pen­ings and achieve neces­sary vic­tor­ies. From above there is no doubt that they will con­tinue with the con although they are begin­ning to talk about growth, false dis­courses like when they prom­ised to reshape the sys­tem. From below, we must defy that logic build­ing solid­ar­ity, improv­ing the com­mu­nic­a­tion tools and being cre­at­ive at the moment to carry out peace­ful and force­ful actions. The chal­lenge is to win being the 99%. The means jus­tify the ends. We will go far if we take advant­age of the cir­cum­stances that appear along the way. May the European cit­izenry accom­pany us.

This is the third of three trans­la­tions of pieces that appeared ori­gin­ally on the Span­ish blog Mad​ri​lo​nia​.org. All three were trans­lated by Liz Mason-​Deese. This art­icle was ori­gin­ally pub­lished on May 31^st, 2012.

From Irish Left Review