Spain’s Micro-Utopias: The 15M Movement and its Prototypes

Dear comrade, for sure there are a lot of projects In this article that Void Network  disagree with them or we could critisize them as naive, non antagonistic, alternative or passive. But we have to agree that there is a lot of inspiration, a lot of creative effort, a lot of fantasy and many many good intentions in all these projects that this article includes. It is the work of all of us to bring these projects further and further
to understand their limitations and use them as better as possible  as 21st century beneficial tools for radical social transformation
VOID NETWORK


Translated by Stacco Troncoso, edited by Jane Loes Lipton – Guerrilla Translation!
Originally published in two parts at 20minutos.es. Part 1. Part 2

“The old protests, so dull and single-minded, have passed into obsolescence, and given rise to infinite possibility. We’ve rethought the concepts of action, protest, relationship, the public, the common…”

In the collective text,  This is Not a Demostration, we find a hidden corner of thoughtfulness completely ignored by mass media. This is Not a Demonstration isn’t an exercise in nostalgia. There’s no sense of longing for that Vibrant Mass that Occupied the Squares which formed that unpredictable collective body, the tangle of relationships some call “The 15-M Movement”.

This is Not a Demonstration has taken all-inclusive stock of actions, processes and projects which simply can’t be done justice by the old lexicon of protest. This is not a demonstration, we said: “And our imagination has totally overflowed the space of what’s possible, even as we build new worlds upon the carcass of the old”. This is not a demonstration. This is not a sum total. This is more than a rattling-off of victories. This is more than an echo of  “we’re going slow, because we’re going far”.

Some of the media is too quick to bury “what’s left of 15M”. After the second anniversary protest of May 12th, which took place all across Spain, some will rush to hammer the final nail in 15M’s coffin. After the headcount, they’ll pick the photo with the sparsest crowd. They’ll even go so far as to manipulate some images, like any dictatorship would.

Alone in their cave, they’ll toast the funeral, reflected in the tarnished mirror of old-world media. They won’t see the details, the process, the steady drip. They will not take note. They will not listen. They will not read this text.

Surely, 15M is too complicated to be easily categorized, explained, translated. Besides, the eye sees what it’s used to seeing, as Amador Fernández-Savater reminds us in his highly recommended Seeing the Invisible: on Unicorns and the 15-M Movement. But it might just be possible to catch a glimpse of its transformative power by describing the little things, the modest dreams, the collective projects, invisible to many. There´s no need for that utopia of May 68, that ridiculous “Beneath the paving stones, the beach” which never materialised. There´s no need for it because 15M has already built its own: dozens, hundreds, thousands of networked micro-utopias. 15M has no use for a utopian model because it already has one, hundreds, thousands, of working prototypes. Micro-utopian prototypes, connected amongst themselves and (almost) in real time.

Keyword: Prototype.  “An early sample or model built to test a concept or process or to act as a thing to be replicated or learned from”. Digital culture, copyleft processes and the hacker ethic, so pervasive in the leadup to 15M, all imbued their spirit in this new revolution of the connected crowd. The working prototype, within this new, open, process-based world, replaces any fixed model. And 15M is still churning out prototypes. It has built them collectively, as a network and in an open way.

The initial Acampada Sol (encampment at Madrid’s Puerta del Sol square) wasn’t made up of groups protesting the collapse of the system. Within the encampments were prototypes for the new world. And the devil was in the details: its day-care centers, its open libraries, its food gardens, its video streaming, its analogue and digital mechanisms for proposing change. 15M –  whether seen as a signal, a movement, a state of being or a set of human interactions – has built its prototypes, and they’re many: judicial, urban, cultural, economical, technological, communicative, political, affective.

The true power of 15M doesn’t lie in its (necessarily) reactionary collective defense of the welfare state. Its real, and massive, hidden strength is in its creative, innovative, proposal-oriented nature. Given our willfully blind politicians and media, increasing the visibility of these real, shareable, living prototypes is crucial, now more than ever. But it’s not a list we need, it´s more like an act of poetic justice. A subjective inventory, giving shape to something so big we don’t yet have a name for it.

As we’ve been saying for some time,  being happy is our best revenge.



PROTOTYPE 1:
THE METHOD MICRO-UTOPIA

                     
 Image: Ondas de Ruído. Creative Commons Share Alike 2.0 

 The encampments of 2011, specifically their restoration of community assemblies, took the political old guard by surprise. Here were non-hierarchical, open assemblies that anyone could take part in. For the first time in decades, we saw political assemblies held in public spaces. Assemblies that turned into method, human hardware for uniting urban citizens.  The need for consensus arose from a spirit of dialogue and coexistence, born in reaction to the visceral antagonism of the old political class:  we won’t go until we reach an agreement. Following the erosion of the mechanisms of consensus during the encampments, the strategy of geographical and thematic diaspora came into being. #TomaLosBarrios (#TakeTheHoods). #TomaLaPlaya (#TakeTheBeach). #TomaLoqueQuieras (#TakeWhateverYouWant. Join with others. Open it up. And, from the hardships of coexistence, the slow nature of consensus, from decentralization, the workings of autonomy emerged..

In free software jargon, “fork” describes a peaceful deviation within a common project. The term was quickly adopted in 15M citizen politics. The newly formed Comité Disperso (Scatttered Committee) sums up 15M’s fresh ways of dealing with an assortment of processes. “You can be there without always being there.  You can be, without being the same. You can participate without needing to tie yourself to anything or giving up your autonomy. Acting from mutual respect, scattered organization allows varying degrees of collaboration amongst people and collectives, according to their own wishes, goals and abilities at any given moment”. It isn’t surprising then that Partido X, Partido del Futuro, which forked out from 15M, defines itself as “a method”.




PROTOTYPE 2: 
THE URBAN MICRO-UTOPIA

\Image: Campo de Cebada. Creative Commons Share Alike 2.0


The encampments led to a double mutation of urban space. First: the shift from public space into common space. Public squares, beset by excessive prohibitions and the privatization of their usage, were reborn as the urban commons. A leaderless, non-hierarchical citizen network organized this urban space “peer-to-peer”, consisting of interconnected public squares.

Second mutation: hybrid space. These weren’t squares made of paving stones. These squares were of bits and atoms. Analogue and digital life were intimately intertwined, inseparable. During the encampment at Sol, theTwittómetro connected networks and public squares, virtual and physical spaces. The #AbreTuWIFI, (#OpenYourWifi) campaign, which encourages people to open their home WI-FI access during protests to allow easy communication, nurtured this new hybrid urban space. Another good example is the #Voces25S map, created to protect mass groups from police violence. You only had to tweet from your GPS-activated mobile phone to lay out the “digital rug” over the physical city-space.

The first of the two mutations described above is building a network of former public spaces, now transformed into self-organising, self-governed places bristling with activity, like Madrid’s Campo de Cebada, recent winner of Ars Electronica’s prestigious Golden Nica Award in the Digital Communities category. These spaces are often supported in part by stale, dried up public institutions desperate for new ideas. The second mutation is branching out through Convoca!, a mobile app that allows you to check in at gatherings, protests, events or encampments. Both mutations coalesce in a melting pot of networked spaces, connecting peers locally and globally, beyond institutions or boundaries, on the fringes of commercial logic.


READ MORE NEW PROTOTYPES OF STRUGGLE HERE:

“Democracy kidnapped” in Spain

 

 Thousands marched yesterday in Spain near the parliament building, demanding the resignation of Mariano Rajoy’s government as well as the rewrite of constitution. The police have fired rubber bullets and baton-charged protesters. Spanish media reported that at least 32 people were detained and more than a dozen injured. The protesters dispersed after MPs left the building. A demonstrator, Montse Puigdavall spoke at BBC:

I’m here because of all the social cuts and rights that we have lost, that took a lot of hard work to achieve – we are here because we’re determined not to lose them

ROARMAG’s writer Carlos Delclos appeared live on RT during today’s clashes in front of Congress, explaining how Spain’s democracy has been kidnapped.

What you are seeing out here right now is the Spanish — and by extension the European — citizenry reacting against austerity. Austerity right now is at a level where it’s affecting people’s daily lives. It’s affecting whether or not people can get medical attention. It’s affecting whether or not people can advance socially through education and social progress.
What you’re seeing now is a country where an entire generation is being relegated to a class of emigrants. People that have been invested in with public money, to be educated, are now going to move out and generate wealth in other countries. That’s not a project for a country. Meanwhile, child poverty in Spain has increased exponentially.
I think the first thing the government can do is call for a referendum on paying back the debt, and on the constitutional amendment that they made. It’s no mistake that these people are gathered here today to talk about the constitution of Spain; a constitution that has been around since the transition from the Francoist government, and it was always said that it couldn’t be touched, that it was the basis for what Spain is today.
But they did change it without a referendum or even consulting the citizenry or submitting it to public debate, to pay back an illegitimate debt taken on by the private sector.

source: Eagainst [ http://eagainst.com/articles/democracy-kidnapped-in-spain/ ]

A bar owner in Madrid protects the protestors in his store

Indignados! Talking about 2011 Spanish Revolution

Online TV Shows by Ustream

just a brief hello from the middle of an unexpected maelstrom.

http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/14628

And at least 20,000 people in the Plaza Thursday night, tonight there will probably be even more and the police may or may not try to evict everyone. Been there since Wednesday evening, with brief stops back by the house to write texts, trips to the copy shop, to cook. The whole city is passing through, everyone is debating about getting rid of all the political parties and even the government, meanwhile the grassroots politicians are trying to centralize everything in one assembly dominated by various specialized conditions, today they tried to kick out our tent where we have a distro, and they posted (without going through any of their precious commissions) a text saying that the "violent minority" handing out texts against nonviolence were probably police agents and everyone should get their cameras and take pictures of them.
But we've printed out tens of thousands of flyers of our own critiques, many including critiques of the assembly, people are really interested, and in the central assembly tonight there might be a big debate. Have to get back there, I'll be out of touch for a little while.

Similar things are happening now in most other cities of Spain.

p

A Democratic Revolution in Spain

Barcelona, Wednesday night:
"Aquí comença la revolució!"
The revolution begins here, shouts the crowd on Plaça Catalunya. There's maybe five thousand people, ten thousand people, mostly unknowns, mostly young, many older folks as well, no single aesthetic or political line. The plaça is full. They're calling it "our Tahrir square," and so far, they're not entirely wrong in this claim. In 60 other cities throughout the Spanish state, people are gathering in their central squares, with easily over a hundred thousand people participating in total, and it's only the third night.
In Madrid the police evicted the crowd from Plaza del Sol on Tuesday. They thought they were learning something from the recent general strikes, of September and January, by not letting a public area remain occupied to serve as a base for struggle. But somehow, the science of control always breaks down, it only ever works in retrospect. This time, they threw a torch in the powder keg, and the crowd came back 30,000 strong, also manifesting outside the prison, with anarchist banners, demanding freedom for those arrested. Since then, the police have been unable to control the situation.




All this started when a Twitter protest broke out all across the Spanish state on Sunday, 15 May, demanding "¡democracia real ya!" I didn't go because there was a debate, because democratic discourse makes my stomach turn. The protest in itself wasn't anything amazing, but the fact that it happened simultaneously all across the state made people hunger for more. Central encampments were suggested, and on Monday night a small group of people started camping out in Barcelona's Plaça Catalunya and in a few other cities. It struck me as the wrong idea at the exact right time. I told a friend, "90% chance it's a misguided social critique based in self-recuperating liberal values that won't go anywhere. 10% chance it's a misguided social critique based in self-recuperating liberal values that will explode into a revolution."
In the last half year, Barcelona has been rocked by two general strikes, one of which bloomed into a day-long insurrection, and the most combative, vengeful May Day protest in over a decade. The elections, state-wide as well as municipal, are on Sunday. It is strictly forbidden to have any political rally on election Sunday or the prior Saturday. The protestors in Plaça Catalunya are already calling for the camp-out to last "at least" until Sunday, and for a protest march to take place during the elections.
The police have already been indicating that the encampment is illegal, but to uphold the constitutional order of the country they are practically obliged to evict before Saturday.
Pacifism has made creeping gains in the Spanish state since the arrival of democracy, and it already proved itself capable of defeating the equally massive anti-Bolonya student movement in 2009, which the police easily and brutally evicted from the occupied universities and subsequently from the streets. But since the last half of 2010, people seem to be more fed-up, a little too indignant and indignified for pacifism, and mass situations have been tending towards violence.
The encampments have not been organized by Democracia Real Ya, nor is the latter a permanent organization, but the gathering has a decidedly democratic character, and an organizational structure based on separate commissions whose proposals are rubber stamped by a nightly central assembly where someone--often a crypto-Trotskyist living out his wildest fantasies--reads them via microphone and periodically remembers to ask the crowd to cheer and wave their hands as a sort of vote of approval.
During the Wednesday night meeting, an anarchist stood up and starting shouting a criticism of the centralized form of organization, at which point the Trot quickly snatched the mike away from the woman who had been reading her commission's proposals to explain to, and drown out, the benighted anarchist that it "wasn't a perfect system" but it's the best we had, and it was "absolutely necessary to organize ourselves." (An article that appeared shortly thereafter on lahaine.org spoke of the need for organization to achieve a long term "accumulation of forces," the tried and true Marxist strategy).
Several anarchists subsequently left the assembly but stayed in the square, talking and debating.
It seems that our place, as always, is in the margins, subverting the center, ignoring the unified assembly, multiplying conversations and meetings, assuring that the margins stay more interesting and more creative than the One Big Meeting. While most people did not seem to understand the critique that was shouted during the meeting (or even able to hear it), it was plain that most people felt more empowered and happy in the chaotic moments of the crowd than in the general assembly, when they were just listening and passively approving. Before the meeting, anarchists who were handing out literature--including critiques of democracy--were often swamped by people who wanted more, who were looking for new ideas and directions they hadn't considered before.
Self-organization in the plaça and a multiplication of conversations and debates will continue, and it remains to be seen if the central organizers will achieve the establishment of their real democracy and attempt to kick us out if we don't pass through their commissions, or if the police will evict us first before the conflict is able to ripen.
What's important is that we are here, on the fault line of social conflict, we've clearly taken sides, and we're looking for allies, while not being (too) arrogant with those we consider enemies. Because at this stage there is still a difference between those who are reproducing what they know but still acting from their passion, and those who get paid to do it; a difference between the politicians (or voters) of tomorrow, and those of today.
Social war is society against the State, not us against society. We're here, in our revolution, and it's a shitty, unromantic thing, but we already knew this was the world we lived in. At the very least it constitutes a definitive rupture with the daily isolation, and that's more than a starting point. The important thing is that we are here, ready to fight and ready to learn, struggling for total freedom, and unmasking recuperation wherever it rears its head.
link to two anarchist texts distributed in the plaça, for those who can read Catalan
http://barcelona.indymedia.org/newswire/display/420985/index.php