[P2P-F] Spanish democracy movement, article of May 27

[Michel Bauwens]

thanks Mike!

On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 12:45 PM, mike stagman <artemesium at yahoo.co.uk>wrote:

>  Published on Friday, May 27, 2011 by CommonDreams.org<http://www.commondreams.org/>
> Cleaning up City Squares in Democratic Spain
>  by Pablo Ouziel <http://www.commondreams.org/author/pablo-ouziel>
>
> On Friday the 27th of May, five days after an overwhelming victory by
> center-right political parties in the local and regional elections across
> Spain, the country woke up to the bitter reality of how nonviolent
> movements calling for economic democracy, political justice and peace are
> going to be dealt with by the country’s police forces in this new era of
> right-wing political dominance.
>
> Just twenty-four hours after Spain’s largest telecom company, Telefonica,
> announced a new round of layoffs affecting 8500 people, 25% of the work
> force, and as the G8 is meeting in Deauville, France, to discuss amongst
> other things the discontent sweeping across Europe, the Catalan police
> force – the Mossos d’Esquadra – following orders from the Town Hall’s new
> Catalan Nationalist Party (CiU) government, surrounded the nonviolent
> citizens camped at the Plaza Cataluña in Barcelona’s city center. Armed with
> full riot gear, batons and machine-guns with rubber bullets, the police
> kettled in the protestors, making it impossible for them to leave or others
> to enter.
>
>
> With the excuse of cleaning up the square for safety reasons, in
> preparation for tomorrow’s Champions League soccer final between Barcelona
> and Manchester United, the city government called for the dispersal of the
> crowds in order to allow for clean up teams to enter. Although this was the
> official stance, it soon became apparent that cleaning garbage from the
> square was not the true intent, and that the real aim of the operation was
> to seize computers, printers and documents from the movement’s steering
> committees, and to put an end to this popular uprising which is posing a
> threat to the country’s political and economic elites.
>
>
> As soon as the police surrounded the crowds and the news aired on local
> television stations and radios, citizens from across the city began to leave
> their work places and made their way to the square in order to show their
> solidarity with those being harassed by the police. The scene they
> encountered resembled one of Gandhi’s legendary acts of civil disobedience– the demonstrators sitting on the floor, in silence, with their legs
> crossed and hands up in the air; symbolizing their defiance to the
> oppressive and brutal nature of this unannounced police action.
>
>
> Unlike during pre-election campaigning time, eleven days ago, when the 15M
> Movement began to congregate in city squares across the country with
> shouts of indignation, this time the police did not hesitate, the orders
> where clear. The police began to point their guns at those outside the
> square that were shouting “This is our democracy”, and one by one they
> began to pull those sitting down inside the square – beating them with
> their batons. I have just heard that economics professor Arcadi Oliveras
> (Spain’s Noam Chomsky), was amongst those on the receiving end of the
> police’s indiscriminate use of batons.
>
>      {Note from M.S. -- "This is our democracy.": only DIRECT democracy
> such as the ancient Athenians possessed   can be OUR democracy.
> "Representative' democracy was designed from the start to be Oligarchy in
> disguise, the Rich and Powerful buying the representatives.}
>
>
> At the time of writing, thousands of citizens are making their way to the
> square in Barcelona, and following two arrests and 99 injured, around 5000
> protestors have already reclaimed the city square. In Madrid Esperanza
> Aguirre, who presides over the autonomous region and who also heads Madrid’s
> Partido Popular, has asked the ministry of the Interior to evict the
> protestors at the Puerta del Sol. On their part, the protestors at Madrid’s
> plaza have sent messages of solidarity to those being attacked in Barcelona.
> The police force in the city of Lerida has also evicted the crowds camped in
> the city square using water canons, and two protesters have been arrested.
> While in the city of Granada, the town hall is in negotiations with the
> central government about how to empty the city’s square.
>
>
> The ambiance in Barcelona’s plaza is now jovial, once the city showed its
> support to the protestors, the police was forced to leave, and despite the
> fact that they have confiscated many laptops and pamphlets, and have
> destroyed tents and equipment, which the protestors have been using for
> their popular assemblies, people intend to stay. A large banner in the
> middle of the square reads in Spanish: “You have cleaned up our exhaustion
> and now we are back”  {Beautifully said!! -- M.S.}
>
>
> Despite the fact that the political elites in Spain, in this new era of
> right-wing dominance are showing their mass use of force, they have
> encountered a well-organized nonviolent movement. If the movement holds to
> its principles, and other European countries join in the struggle, it will
> be the European Union which will be forced to restrain this police
> brutality, and which will eventually have to make concessions to this
> democratic citizens fighting non-violently for change. If the movement
> spreads, as many signs already seem to indicate, European political and
> economic elites will have to decide between reform and revolution.
>
>
>  [image: Pablo Ouziel] <http://www.commondreams.org/author/pablo-ouziel>
>
> Pablo Ouziel is an activist and a freelance writer based in Spain. His
> articles and essays are available at pabloouziel.com
>



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