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Spain's 'Indignant' Launch New Protest March
Spain's Indignant: First We Took the Steets, then the Squares, Now the Roads. "After That, We Will Take Europe."
Spain's "indignant" activists began their last and longest protest march on Saturday, leaving from the northeastern city of Barcelona to cover 650 kilometres on their way to a major Madrid rally on July 24.
Demonstrators lift their arms as they protest against the handling of the economic crisis near the Spanish parliament in Madrid June 22, 2011. The sign reads: "We are not filthy, we are indignant". (REUTERS/Juan Medina)
Two other marches set off earlier this week, from Valencia in the east on Monday and Cadiz in the south on Thursday, spreading the message of their anger at unemployment, welfare cuts and corruption.
Some 50 marchers left Barcelona early in the morning to applause from passers-by and sympathisers, expecting to pick up more en route.
They carried sleeping bags, groundsheets and prophylactics against insect bites, sunburn and muscle cramps. The party also included a doctor and a nurse.
Some walking and others cycling, they planned to pass through 29 towns and villages, holding a meeting at each stop on the 652-kilometre (407-mile) route.
"It's a further step for the indignant," said Rafael de la Rubia, international coordinator of the movement World without War, who is well used to marching for a cause.
"First we took to the streets, then the squares, and now the highways," he added.
"After that, we will take Europe."
The protest movement started in Madrid on May 15 and fanned out nationwide as word spread by Twitter and Facebook, bringing tens of thousands of people into city squares around Spain ahead of May 22 local elections.
On Sunday, about 200,000 protesters packed the streets of Madrid, Barcelona and other major cities to vent their anger, according to estimates by the Spanish media and some regional authorities.
On Wednesday some 200 rallied near the Spanish parliament after camping out overnight to protest plans to overhaul workers' collective bargaining rights.
The "indignants" have inspired similar offshoot movements in other European countries, notably Greece, where the government is also trying to implement a strict austerity programme to avoid defaulting on its loans.
The Spanish central bank said last week the recovery in Spain's beleaguered economy would likely remain slow, and that unemployment could remain high for the foreseeable future.
Spain announced Friday it will reduce a government spending cap by 3.8 percent in 2012 as it fights to retain the trust of markets.
25 Comments so far
Show AllWhen will we organize such things?
And make no mistake, things are not worse over there, they are far worse here. USAns sullenly put up with stuff ten times worse than there - and if they complain, they blame "socialistic big-government" and call for giving their capitalist tormentors even more concessions!
A Spanish person would be in the streets in a minute over the paperwork and fees, and always errors - in billing, claims, and most scary - medical that I have encountered for even the most minor stuff involved in seeing a doctor and getting some routine tests. And I have a federal employee "cadillac" plan!
Perhaps when we observe our thoughts turning to crime to survive; or when reaching out to steal what we need, we hesitate and think there is a better way; or we suddenly see ourselves as that poor senior whose purse or wallet we want to take by force; or as a banker our conscience awakens and we want to make recompense by plying our skills in the direction of just practice that does not degrade, but lifts our neighbors; or as a servant of the people, our legs don't spring open to the lobbyist/seducer.
Barring that and more, perhaps we will learn from the past that an accumulation of wealth by the few, while others begin to starve, begs catastrophe and a new method of essentially chopping off heads and dragging down the towers of entrenched power.
"Oh Marie, where is the speculated commodity; and how shall it be afforded to bake the cake?"
This is not a CRIME! the right to demand redress has not yet been taken! The time is now though, we already have government tinkering with our voting and collective bargining rights! Or do we wait till the Koch-plauge brings Ze mercineries down on us?
>^^<
I must say, I am involved in various activist groups, have been for years. There isn't any coherent strategy as far as outreach and organizing. Most "activism" these days consists of people protesting, holding up signs, doing clever chants. Doesn't change anything. Trying to get people to reach and figure out ways to grow, to move beyond protests and the like and figuring out different types of direct action, people just don't see it.
The left is impotent in the US because it doesn't, on the whole, do anything different now than it did back in the 60's. The left has never moved beyond simple protests. Putting alternatives into place, having coherent alternatives to neo-liberalism, working to get people involved that are currently de-politicized, on the whole it just isn't happening.
If you want things to change working within a group, organize others (especially the de-politicized poor) and try to change things yourself.
When will it come? When we do a good job recruiting people who are angry but don't know where to turn and empowering them. Convincing people that some elected politician can't and won't solve their problems, they have to do it themselves.
If people aren't willing to do this, if they are afraid of getting arrested, or beat up, then they shouldn't expect too much. They might be able to change things a bit, but not enough to matter.
Until enough Americansstop buying GE products, stop shopping at Wal-Mart, take their money out of too-big-to-fail banks and stop supporting other global corporations, corporate control of governments around the world will continue.
I agree with much of what you write, but the indignatos are basically just an ordinary protest too - but one with far greater numbers of participants - and I suspect they get far more participants because the Spanish media gives widespread coverage to their protests.
I see the "older generation" and their aversion to anything confrontational or risky as a big problem. The activist organization I was involved in pretty much collapsed after 60-something and older, well-off, white, pacifism-purist Catholic and Quaker left basically told the young and minority members, who preferred more confrontational tactics, that they (literally, in a letter sent via registered mail), were no longer welcome at the center because they were insufficiently pacifist, where "pacifist" has come to mean never breaking a single law - i.e. marching in the street without a proper police permit paperwork, refusing to immediately obey orders to disperse, etc.
We are seeing exactly this behavior right now with the "Audacity of Hope" passengers and crew, where their whole protest action is going to be canceled rather than disobey a Greek maritime port inspector and a few cops.
But having written the above, the biggest problem is simply the media, which completely ignore the activist left 90% of the time, and attacks and slanders it the other 10% of cases where it can't be ignored.
I think the idea of a 400-mile march is a good one. That way activists can educate the masses in every town they pass through. We ought to do that in the US. At least up and down the coasts. A march to end cuts in social spending, a march to end the empire. And how about a jobs bill to repair the broken infrastructure in every state and to build up a vibrant alternative energy sector? But how to organize it? I've got to find employment in the next 12 - 18 months. I imagine many other potential marchers are in similar straits. Others are tethered to 9 to 5 jobs and can't just take off...Still, there ought to be at least big one-day protests in big cities.
In truth forms of Socialism existed throughout History and served their peoples well for many thousands of years.
This until "Capitalism" took root and introduced the concept of "Private Property" and then began to declare that what was once "owned in Common" was now to be "owned" by the "Ruling Class'.
Viva Espana!
"Unitat per la victoria!"
"No pasaran!"
Democracia directa!
Scorchio!
Yes, we have active working counter economic institutions like food co-ops and open source software that are neither capitalist nor state centralist socialist. The poster above is right protest has been a fail for 30 years now, we need to instead educate people about sustainable and human alternatives like co-ops, open source, CSAs, community gardens, bike collectives, etc.
In Europe and the Mideast, and in other nations across the globe, people take to the streets to oppose the $ociopathic behavior of the ruling class. Some of them die while facing guns and tanks.
Butt in Amerika... the corn-syrup consumer/citizens waddle into Wal Mart to buy sugar-pop water beverages and junk food $nacks for pro-$ports tell-lie-vision. Oooh yeah! Amerikans love gobbling down der Pringles... to make liquid the poo! And at the airport... the dumbed down Amerikans make hardly a peep when their sons and daughters are sexually fondled and 'corn-holed' by government agents wearing AIDES infected latex gloves.
Don't like this post? Hey! What ewe folks want me to say? It ain't true? Come on! Look in the mirror, bozo! See the coward! See the violent, capitalist/fascist beast that Amerika has become!
Do you show up in the mirror?
Oh say cay ewe see by the dawn's early light... the cowards that now live in Amerika?
Mr. Lion Heart, Just don't say that in the face of the wrong American.
Liberals turn the cheek as you know since you are still alive so your safe here of course.
Jesus was wrong and a coward?
The very last sentence in the article perfectly sums up the problem, perhaps unwittingly:
"Spain announced Friday it will reduce a government spending cap by 3.8 percent in 2012 as it fights to retain the trust of markets."
The very same tiny handful of people who have bankrupted much of the world are still calling the shots. And the leaders of Spain and other countries seem not to realize that the indignados are saying : F..k the "trust of the markets!"
It's the shackles of the markets they must throw off! Look at Argentina, and now Iceland. They have said, effectively, "Take your investment money and stick it you-know-where. We will put our own house in order without your greedy help."
It's the only way.
I suppose things will have to get really bad before Americans take to the streets.
The threat to Social Security and Medicare will do it for a lot of people. Things are heating up..I see more and more people commenting about the need to do something. A general strike, or tax strike ,and there's this: http://www.october2011.org/
It's a start
I got some phone message about taking our state back (Ohio) today, but it sounded kind of like those Teatard messages right before the last election. Like the facetious poster above, I believe most of my fellow countrymen have become too fat to do much more than operate their remote and type missives about taxes. The war is over, and we lost.
"I suppose things will have to get really bad before Americans take to the streets."
Only if things get bad all at once instead of slowly, like the frog in the pot
"Spain announced Friday it will reduce a government spending cap by 3.8 percent in 2012 as it fights to retain the trust of markets."
Having the trust of the markets is more important to a country than having the trust of that country's citizens?
As this seems to be true in most countries today, obviously the priorities of most governments are perverted.
Money is more important than people.
An evolving thought, rough around the edges...welcome your comments.
As our numbers increase we might see that, in part, simply ignoring, circumventing and/or shunning the unsustainable corporate state, rather than direct resistance, will accelerate the change we seek. The "establishment" has to spend an amazing amount of time and money keeping the vast majority contained in the fog of the idea that their world definition/narritive is the only one.
Walking around in groups, talking, even joking with each other (Russians did it to good effect) , networking, all help progress.
We read and share the works of T Hartmann, Paul Hawken (Blessed Unrest), Lipton&Bhaermann (Spontaneous Evolution), and the many others who have helped clarify the issues.
The business form "corporation" is revealed as a central issue.
But, such a form can only arise and be maintained by a humanity that manifests itself as "not-part-of-Nature".
So, as much as we can, we make individual decisions, and support group decisions that Recognize Reality --- we are one with Nature. The non-natural cannot match that power. Nature is absolute.
The current maximum concentration of wealth and power may be seen as an effort by the non-natural to insulate themselves from that reality. It begs the application of direct opposition.
But wait....
The corporate state, etal, is the spawn of a race that still has some evolving to do.
The corporate state is something a clever, but immature, race would do.
Perhaps the massive concentration of power is Natural...humanity's battery being charged to the max to propel the leap to our next level. Much the same as the atmosphere being charged with heat and moisture to kick off climate change...as above, so below. Also Natural is the fact that it cannot stay this way for long...any more than a pendulum can hang at one end of its travel, or the cap of a pyramid remain suspended in thin air without its base under it....
You feel it. You have felt the tremors. You know what comes next.
Humanity, at one with our planet, is on the rise.
"Humans will always explore, but the end of all their exploring will be to arrive at where they began, and see the place for the first time." (by some English poet)
"The only things that work well are the things that work the way Nature works."
---Black Elk, in Black Elk Speaks, by Neihardt.