After the Indignation: A Speech from within the Spanish Resistance

Last 25S (25^th of Sept) we called to sur­round the Con­gress of the mem­bers of par­lia­ment to res­cue it from the kid­nap­ping of the pop­u­lar sov­er­eignty car­ried out by the Troika and the fin­an­cial mar­kets. An occu­pa­tion executed with the con­sent and col­lab­or­a­tion of most of the polit­ical parties. Besides the con­stant threats, the manip­u­la­tion of the media and the intense cam­paign to inflict fear in the people, thou­sands of people atten­ded the call and said loud and clear that we have no fear, that we are together in this and that we are not going to stop until they resign and a Con­stitu­ent pro­cess is started.

The answer of the Span­ish gov­ern­ment was based on hit­ting the demon­strat­ors, using police infilt­rat­ors, arrest­ing and hurt­ing them with an out­rageous viol­ence as part of an amaz­ing police deploy­ment rarely seen in the past. The Gov­ern­ment lost, how­ever. The whole world has seen the TV images of its repres­sion and har­ass­ment against the demon­strat­ors, while the Span­ish pres­id­ente, Mr. Rajoy´s speech at United Nations was extremely over­shad­owed due to our effect­ive com­mu­nic­a­tion abil­it­ies. Right now there is an open debate about the legit­im­acy of the actions made dur­ing September-​25, which roots deep inside the reg­u­lar daily life — com­mon people talk, debate, defend their ground. A great national con­ver­sa­tion, involving the whole Span­ish soci­ety, has begun, and this is the path we are will­ing to keep walk­ing together.

We keep on learn­ing. Today, Septem­ber 29^th, the streets have again been filled with thou­sands of people who say “enough” and want to pull the brakes on a real­ity that is turn­ing more and more unbear­able. And moreover, today, we went out to accom­pany and feel com­for­ted by our por­tuguese, Greeks and itali­ans broth­ers and sis­ters who are sur­round­ing their own par­lia­ments. The “PIGS” are them, we are South­ern Europe, and without the south there’s no Europe, there is no pos­sible Europe

We con­tinue to sur­round the Con­gress because we want to jump on in the social mobil­isa­tion and put that core in the recov­ery of the sov­er­eignty and the cit­izen power, i.e., of the Demo­cracy. In this year and a half we’ve learned to integ­rate, to think and to act col­lect­ively, strik­ing up unfore­see­able alle­gi­ances: tides of all col­ors tak­ing the city; neigh­bours stop­ping evic­tions, civil ser­vants clos­ing off the streets… Now we know how to decipher com­plex eco­nom­ical and legal con­cepts, take care of ourselves and the oth­ers, com­mu­nic­ate bet­ter, admin­is­trate spaces and dis­cus­sions on the net, on the squares and in our jobs; to laugh at the viol­ent stu­pid­ity of the power, in front of which we res­ist instead of run­ning. We have achieved to make the old strug­gling meth­ods big­ger, and we have car­ried out ini­ti­at­ives that we want to develop from the bases, without short­cuts, step by step. Because we believe that time for the decisions taken by a few is over, because in front of those who want to take our future away, we have the means and the col­lect­ive intel­li­gence to decide and build the soci­ety we want; because we don’t need false inter­me­di­ates, but only col­lect­ive resources and tools that act­ively fund the polit­ical par­ti­cip­a­tion of all the people in the com­mon affairs.

We con­tinue to sur­round the Con­gress to say “no” to those who decide to tell us what to do, that we are going to dis­obey their unfair impos­i­tions, such as pay­ing their debt, and that we are going to defend the col­lect­ive rights: hous­ing, edu­ca­tion, health, employ­ment, demo­cratic par­ti­cip­a­tion, the rent. To start a pro­cess that allows that those respons­ible of the crisis don’t go unpun­ished, the pyro­ma­ni­acs that cre­ated our crisis not to be rewar­ded and take them to court instead. Neither the gov­ern­ment of Zapa­tero, nor Rajoy’s have listened to us. Both have betrayed their own voters car­ry­ing out meas­ures that they prom­ised they would never carry out. They don’t obey the cit­izens, they don’t have neither the cour­age nor the interest to do it. The gov­ern­ment of Rajoy, there­fore, doesn’t serve us and we demand their resignation.

Today the national budgets for next year had been presen­ted. Those budgets are the res­ult of a con­sti­tu­tion reform per­formed within PSOE and PP without the citizen’s opin­ion on it. The budgets ded­ic­ate more money to pay an odi­ous debt than to the social needs that could help to a col­lect­ive way out of the crisis. Those budgets are a shame to the national sov­er­eignty, to the demo­cracy. That is why we have to stop them. We want to make a call to a new mobil­isa­tion for when the national budget is dis­cussed in the Par­lia­ment. We want to be there again these days to say no, that rul­ing without ask­ing the people first is over.

We demand the crim­in­al­iz­a­tion to stop, the free­dom of the people still under deten­tion and that all the charges attrib­uted to the other com­rades that were as well humi­li­ated and treated badly in police pro­ced­ures abso­lutely unbear­able in a state based on the rule of law. An invest­ig­a­tion about the police action dur­ing the 25S must be opened.

Those days we saw that we can, if we organ­ise ourselves, if we com­mu­nic­ate, if we use our nets and gain con­fid­ence, calm and col­lect­ive intel­li­gence. That is why we make a pro­posal to you, to par­ti­cip­ate in the Coordinadora 25S, not only here in Mad­rid, but every­where else, organ­ize your own nodes in this net­work, do your own calls… They are tak­ing away from us the very little that we still have left to defend. We have abso­lutely everything to build.

We have no fear

We are going to sur­round the shame­ful budgets

They have to go

Yes we can.

Repub­lished from Coordinadora 25s

This entry was posted on 1 October 2012 at 10:51 am and is filed under Finance & the Economy, Political Philosophy, Radical Politics. Published under Creative Commons (CC) Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License: You are welcome to share and remix this content for non-commercial purposes. Kindly acknowledge and hyperlink the source.