SPAIN, missive: spontaneous, horizontal, emergent revolt (?)

So… It started several days ago, leading up to the elections in Spain this last weekend, when the gov denied permits to protest for the 3rd or 4th day running. What did the Spanish do? Kept protesting. And haven’t stopped.

Things swelled, unquelled. Here excerpts of one missive, The Nothing searches for more:

 The people of Madrid has risen up. What began as a demonstration and a spontaneous occupation of the town’s central square, Puerta del Sol, has become the seat for something extraordinary. We have resisted there now for 6 days. We have constituted an autonomous, self-organized village where people of every age live now by the thousands. There is absolutely no centralization of power: we have spontaneously organized in democratic working councils where decisions are taken by horizontal consensus and every task is voluntary and rotatory. The village is equipped with autonomous groups of infrastructure, nourishment, infirmary and psychological services, day-care for kids and old people, legal services, communications, cleaning, self-defense, etc etc (the list is endless, and every day new committees pop up and begin to work. The efficiency and coordination is simply astonishing). Moreover, 7 autonomous and sectorial working groups (economy, political reform, education, culture, environment, etc..) have initiated a political constituent process. Hundreds of people (from MIT scientists to housekeepers, from unemployed workers to firefighters on strike) participate in those working sessions, and we are already getting the first serious propositicnsensus, and never voting). Last night more than 3000 people attended. And it works beautifully well.

We have faced initial abuses by the police, constant fear tactics, a 12 hour tropical storm and fascist attacks. Every day (and every day feels like a month) we have at least doubled the size of the crowd which meets at 8 pm to show support. Day after day, the Electoral Board has declared illegal the camp and asked the police to take us out by any means (there are local elections this Sunday, and political demonstrations need special authorization by the board). They simply could not do it. We have protocols of civil resistance and disobedience, and above all, we have a crowd that tonight reached 50,000 people. Spontaneous assemblies and discussion groups, debates, infrastructures: tonight we have moved to at least other 7 squares in the old town. The whole place is packed with people working and discussing together. We are not only staying there: we are taking over the whole town. The project is to resist until may 28th, and then reconstitute as a federation of assemblies in each neighborhood. But things go so fast it is impossible to know what would be our best strategy, especially given the fact that after the elections, we will face massive violence for sure.
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> The depth and dimensions of the event are simply astounding. People from the whole town bring food and materials every day. They come to work for a couple of hours after their jobs. The place explodes with ideas. There is no one flag, no one party, no one ready-made discourse seen or heard anywhere -not once since the beginning. It’s all from scratch, and the only rule is equal solidarity. Money has been abolished in the village. The revolt has spread to over 50 Spanish cities and, announces itself to many other places in Europe (very slowly, and mostly as a twitter thing. Funny thing is, the movement originated here on the web, but then nobody has access to the web over there. You talk, you run from one place to the other, you write info in cardboard banners, you rely on hearsay -and it works).

slightly longer version here dsf

But another comrade cautions:

This is not defenitively a revolution . This is a moment where radical people and people that have never been involved in politics before are meeting in the squares around spain and are talking about capitalist system, financial crisis, political crisis, etc… It’s a process of ridding  fear to raise our voices. And it is complicated for people who are super radical to work with people who have never heard the word patriarchy, you know. But it is beautiful and very important that new people is getting involved, outside the political ghetto. The camp in Plaza Catalunya is very very organized, full of people cooking for free, free radios, free tv programs, people making gardens, nurseries, workshops, talks, music…