> Originally published in Spanish by La Jornada
> Translated by irlandesa
>
>
> Masiosare
> La Jornada
> Sunday, March 24, 2002.
>
>
> How Barcelona Defeated Violence
>
>
> Jesu's Rami'rez Cuevas
>
> Today Barcelona is the new reference point for the
> global movement.
> Following the mobilization of more than 500,000
> persons, it will be
> difficult to discredit protests against economic
> policies in the world as
> something which has to do with "radical and violent
> minorities."
>
> The significance and dimension of what took place in
> the City of Marvels
> must be assessed from the perspective of the last
> few years. Seattle was
> the surprise, the birth of the new movement, the
> break in the world
> consensus in favor of globalization. Governments
> did not know how to
> react to the novel dissidence. Afterwards came the
> protests in
> Washington, Davos, Prague and Quebec. New actions
> and new reactions were
> tested at each summit. After Gothenburg, last year,
> a new strategy was
> launched which involved making the police cordon
> around the demonstrators
> more effective, and the repression more open and
> brutal. Genoa
> represented the climax of this policy. Even though
> the convocation was a
> success, it also demonstrated that governments had
> decided to finish off
> the globalphobes at the cost of violating democratic
> liberties. The
> assassination of Carlo Giuliani by the Italian
> police was a clear
> message.
>
> Added to this is the atmosphere which has been
> created following the
> September 11 attacks, which has been used to
> stigmatize and criminalize
> demonstrations, by comparing them with terrorism.
> There was widespread
> paralysis in many sectors. In this context,
> Barcelona represents a
> change which broke with the tenets of the previous
> marches.
>
> Walking Out on the Prepared Script
>
> The task was not easy. In addition to media
> demonization and the Spanish
> government's political harassment, there were the
> difficulties of
> coordination and of understanding inside the
> movement. The government
> placed the entire city under a state of military
> siege, and the media
> discouraged participation in the anti-summit
> campaign.
>
> I~aki Garci'a, a member of the Solidarity with the
> Zapatista Rebellion
> Collective, and one of the organizers of the
> "Against the Europe of
> Capital and Against the War" events of March 15 and
> 16, explained to
> Masiosare: "We understood that there was a lot at
> stake in Barcelona,
> and even more so after Genoa. The climate was
> strained because of last
> June's experience (the march against the World Bank
> that had been heavily
> crushed). It wasn't easy confronting the
> organization of the protests
> against the European summit, and there was fear
> concerning the huge
> police intervention that was being developed."
>
> Some activists warned in assemblies that "the
> repressive machinery" could
> make many of them try and hide instead of thinking
> about protesting.
>
> "Despite everything," I~aki recounted, "there was
> agreement to promote
> it." The organizers were clear about one thing from
> the beginning: "We
> didn't want the terrain they were preparing for us,
> the direct
> confrontation where we had to lose," she said.
>
> "We began with many doubts, and things were
> advancing until we had lots
> of initiatives. It was a tremendous amount of work
> in very little time,
> but there was a lot of enthusiasm. The differences
> and tensions had been
> quite strong, but the campaign was able to be put
> together with a radical
> and innovative content."
>
> The majority of the people and collectives who were
> participating wanted
> to do something quite different from confronting the
> police and
> destroying banks. The main challenge was conquering
> fear and claiming
> the street. There were groups tied to the Okupa
> movement and the
> Independent Catalans and Basques who were insisting
> on direct violent
> action. But a consensus won out in favor of actions
> that would nullify
> the government's belligerent strategy.
>
> "We agreed, all of us I think, to avoid blockades
> against the summit,
> because they would have been suicidal," recalls
> I~aki. Decentralized
> mobilizations, fiestas, concerts, mass
> demonstrations and acts of civil
> disobedience were promoted.
>
> The CGT (anarchist union) called for carrying out
> "everything that occurs
> to us and which demonstrates the diversity and
> vitality of the social
> movements. We called for walking out on the script,
> for using direct
> action and civil disobedience as mechanisms for
> struggle that go beyond
> violent confrontations with the police. We have to
> regain the furiously
> festive and subversive nature of our activity,
> breaking military
> frameworks (summit-blockade-clash with police) the
> powers want to confine
> us to."
>
> They opted for decentralized actions, "as many as
> the people proposed,"
> under the idea of convergence and mutual respect.
> During one of the many
> meetings, it was argued: "We are not afraid. The
> entire police strategy
> is based on creating a state of exception, where
> people stay inside their
> houses, and an activist elite confronts 10,000
> police. Given this
> reality, the movement should go back to using its
> creativity and
> decentralization. Achieving, through that, a more
> complete visualization
> of the resistances, of their diversity, beyond the
> framework of a
> medieval joust, which is what the police are
> proposing."
>
> This is how the city's local struggles were
> involved. Hundreds of
> liberation associations, human rights, labor,
> women's, gay, ecologist,
> Okupa, student and immigrant associations promoted
> more than 25
> decentralized demonstrations and actions throughout
> the city.
>
> They even invented forms of protest like "the first
> mass participation
> action, a very media-friendly and entertaining
> choreography that
> represented the symptoms of turbo-capitalist Europe,
> presented as the
> first global-animal experiment in the world of
> demonstrations."
>
=== message truncated ===
===== "The tradition of all the dead generations
weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living"
-Karl Marx
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