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Date: Sun, May 22, 2011 at 9:15 AM<br>Subject: Martin Hardie sent you a message on Facebook...<br>To: Michel Bauwens <<a href="mailto:michelsub2004@gmail.com">michelsub2004@gmail.com</a>><br><br><br>
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<a href="http://www.facebook.com/n/?auskadi&mid=4426ef3G1f7c632bGeae3597G0&bcode=ecz9iCEG&n_m=michelsub2004%40gmail.com" target="_blank"><img src="" alt="Martin Hardie" style="border: 0pt none; width: 50px;"></a></td>
<td style="padding: 7px 0px;" valign="top" align="left"><div style="padding-bottom: 7px;"><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.facebook.com/n/?auskadi&mid=4426ef3G1f7c632bGeae3597G0&bcode=ecz9iCEG&n_m=michelsub2004%40gmail.com" target="_blank">Martin Hardie</a><span style="padding-left: 7px; color: rgb(136, 136, 136);">9:15am May 22nd</span></div>
<div style="padding-bottom: 7px;"></div><div style="padding-bottom: 7px;">frederic neyrat to nettime-l<br> Un article sur le mouvement ?crit par des copains de l'Universidad N?mada.<br><br>*On 15thMay 2011, around 150,000 people took to the streets in 60 Spanish<br>
towns and cities to demand ?Real Democracy Now?, marching under the slogan<br>?We are not commodities in the hands of bankers and politicians?. The<br>protest was organised through web-based social networks without the<br>
involvement of any major unions or political parties. At the end of the<br>march some people decided to stay the night at the Plaza del Sol in Madrid.<br>They were forcefully evacuated by the police in the early hours of the<br>
morning. This, in turn, generated a mass call for everyone to occupy his or<br>her local squares that thousands all over Spain took up. As we write, 65<br>public squares are being occupied, with support protests taking place in<br>
Spanish Embassies from Buenos Aires to Vienna and, indeed, London. You<br>probably have not have read about it in the British press, but it is<br>certainly happening. Try *#spanishrevolution*, #*yeswecamp,#nonosvamos*or #*<br>
acampadasol*on Twitter and see for yourself. What follows is a text by<br>Emmanuel Rodr?guez and Tom?s Herreros from the Spanish collective*Universidad<br>N?mada.<br><br>*IT?S THE REAL DEMOCRACY, STUPID*<br><br><br>*15**TH**May, from Outrage to Hope*<br>
<br><br><br>There is no doubt that Sunday 15thMay 2011 has come to mark a turning point:<br>from the web to the street, from conversations around the kitchen table to<br>mass mobilisations, but more than anything else, from outrage to hope. Tens<br>
of thousands of people, ordinary citizens responding to a call that started<br>and spread on the internet, have taken the streets with a clear and<br>promising demand: they want a real democracy, a democracy no longer tailored<br>
to the greed of the few, but to the needs of the people. They have been<br>unequivocal in their denunciation of a political class that, since the<br>beginning of the crisis, has run the country by turning away from them and<br>
obeying the dictates of the euphemistically called ?markets?.<br><br>We will have to watch over the next weeks and months to see how this demand<br>for *real democracy now*takes shape and develops. But everything seems to<br>
point to a movement that will grow even stronger. The clearest sign of its<br>future strength comes from the taking over of public squares and the<br>impromptu camping sites that have appeared in pretty much every major<br>
Spanish town and city. Today??four days after the first march??social<br>networks are bursting with support for the movement, a virtual support that<br>is bolstered by its resonance in the streets and squares. While forecasting<br>
where this will take us is still too difficult, it is already possible to<br>advance some questions thatthis movementhas put on the table.<br><br><br>Firstly, the criticisms that have been raised by the 15thMay Movement are<br>
spot on. A growing sector of the population is outraged by parliamentary<br>politics as we have come to known them, as our political parties are<br>implementing it today??by making the weakest sectors of society pay for the<br>
crisis. In the last few years we have witnessed with a growing sense of<br>disbelief how the big banks received millions in bail-outs, while cuts in<br>social provision, brutal assaults on basic rights and covert privatisations<br>
ate away at an already skeletal Spanish welfare state. Today, none doubts<br>that these politics are a danger to our present and our immediate future.<br>This outrage is made even more explicit when it is confronted by the<br>
cowardice of politicians, unable to put an end to the rule of the financial<br>world. Where did all those promises to give capitalism a human face made in<br>the wake of the sub-prime crisis go? What happened to the idea of abolishing<br>
tax havens? What became of the proclamation that the financial system would<br>be brought under control? What of the plans to tax speculative gains and the<br>promise to stop tax benefits for the highest earners?<br><br><br>
Secondly, the 15thMay Movement is a lot more than a warning to the so-called<br>Left. It is possible (in fact it is quite probable) that on 22ndMay, when<br>local and regional elections take place in Spain, the left will suffer a<br>
catastrophic defeat. If that were the case, it would be only be a preamble<br>to what would happen in the general elections. What can be said today<br>without hesitation is that the institutional left (parties and major unions)<br>
is the target of a generalised political disaffection due to its sheer<br>inability come up with novel solutions to this crisis. This is where the<br>two-fold explanation of its predicted electoral defeat lies. On the one<br>
hand, its policies are unable to step outside a completely tendentious way<br>of reading the crisis that, to this day, accepts that the problem lies in<br>the scarcity of our resources. Let?s say it loud and clear: no such a<br>
problem exists, there is no lack of resources, the real problem is the<br>extremely uneven way in which wealth is distributed, and financial<br>?discipline? is making this problem even more acute every passing day. Where<br>
are the infinite benefits of the real estate bubble today? Where are the<br>returns of such ridiculous projects as the airports in Castell?n or Lleida,<br>to name but a few? Who is benefiting from the gigantic mountain of debt<br>
crippling so many families and individuals? The institutional left has been<br>unable to stand on the side of, and work with, the many emerging movements<br>that are calling for freedom and democracy. Who can forgive Zapatero?s words<br>
when the proposal to accept the *daci?n de<br>pago*1<#13009270aa1ab38e_sdfootnote1sym>was<br>rejected by parliament on the basis that it could ?jeopardise the solvency<br>of the Spanish financial system?? Who was he addressing with these words?<br>
The millions of people enslaved by their mortgages or the interests of major<br>banks? And what can we say of their indecent law of intellectual property,<br>the infamous Ley Sinde? Was he standing with those who have given shape to<br>
the web or with those who plan to make money out of it, as if culture was<br>just another commodity? If the institutional left continues to ignore social<br>movements, if it refuses to break away from a script written by the<br>
financial and economic elites and fails to come out with a plan B that could<br>lead us out of the crisis, it will stay in opposition for a very long time.<br>There is no time for more deferrals: either they change or they will lose<br>
whatever social legitimation they still have to represent the values they<br>claim to stand for.<br><br><br>Thirdly, the 15thMay Movement reveals that far from being the passive agents<br>that so many analysts take them to be, citizens have been able to organise<br>
themselves in the midst of a profound crisis of political representation and<br>institutional abandonment. The new generations have learnt how to shape the<br>web, creating new ways of ?being together?, without taking recourse to<br>
ideological clich?s, armed with a savvy pragmatism, escaping from<br>pre-conceived political categories and big bureaucratic apparatuses. We are<br>witnessing the emergence of new ?majority minorities? that demand democracy<br>
in the face of a war ?of all against all? and the idiotic atomisation<br>promoted by neoliberalism, one that demands social rights against the logic<br>of privatisation and cuts imposed by the economical powers. And it is quite<br>
possible that at this juncture old political goals will be of little or no<br>use. Hoping for an impossible return to the fold of Estate, or aiming for<br>full employment??like the whole spectrum of the Spanish parliamentary left<br>
seems to be doing??is a pointless task. Reinventing democracy requires, at<br>the very least, pointing to new ways of distributing wealth, to citizenship<br>rights for all regardless of where they were born (something in keeping with<br>
this globalised times), to the defence of common goods (environmental<br>resources, yes, but also knowledge, education, the internet and health) and<br>to different forms of self-governance that can leave behind the corruption<br>
of current ones.<br><br><br>Finally, it is important to remember that the 15thMay Movement is linked to<br>a wider current of European protests triggered as a reaction to so-called<br>?austerity? measures. These protests are shaking up the desert of the real,<br>
leaving behind the image of a formless and silent mass of European citizens<br>that so befits the interests of political and economical elites. We are<br>talking here of campaigns like the British *UKUncut*against Cameron?s<br>
policies, of the mass mobilisations of *Gera?ao a Rasca*in Portugal, or<br>indeed of what took place in Iceland after the people decided not to bail<br>out the bankers. And, of course, inspiration is found above all in the Arab<br>
Uprising, the democratic revolts in Egypt and Tunisia who managed to<br>overthrow their corrupt leaders</div></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" style="border-top: 1px solid rgb(207, 215, 228);"></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" style="padding-top: 5px;">
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