[unomada-info] It's not just indignation

[Infos de la Universidad Nomada]

IT’S NOT JUST INDIGNATION. Inventing new ways of doing politics.


It’s true that we’re indignant. But not just that. If it were just
indignation that brought us together in the streets and squares of our
cities, the movement would have less force. Once the moment of
excitement had passed we would have gone home. That is not what is
happening. After the demonstrations, groups – some larger, some smaller
– have camped in the squares and after being evicted, have returned
again and again. This shows a will to be heard which goes far beyond
mere indignation, a will which is opening up new means of doing politics
on the basis of the idea that “politics” is not only nor principally a
profession – the “business” of the so-called political class – but
rather that politics is the only way we have to resolve problems
collectively. The capture of politics by those professionals who have
turned it into their exclusive terrain, reducing it to a matter of
representation and exercising it against the interests of a large part
of the population, takes out of our hands those tools without which we
are doomed to savage competition amongst ourselves, war between the
poor.


The increasing intensity of the crisis has made this model of politics
blow up. It has shown clearly that the current politicians use the
legitimacy which the voting box grants them in order to make citizens
ever more impotent against the demands and requirements of a global
capitalist class which the politicians either do not know how to or do
not want to tame. No one said things were easy. What we are saying is
that we need the tools of politics, of a new kind of politics, in order
to find solutions to the current situation.


The partial movements that have emerged recently give us hints in this
direction. All of them, from platforms like “Victims of Mortgages”,
“Real Democracy Now”, “Youth with no Future”, to the offices of social
rights, the social centers, and the assemblies of the unemployed as well
as many others have shown a tremendous capacity to oppose the measures
imposed by the public administration, to construct partial alternatives
and to attempt to disrupt the privatization measures and impoverishment
which are underway.


So here we have a social Left which does not coincide with the political
“Left.” The latter has been absorbed by economic elites to such an
extent that it is difficult to distinguish between the recommendations
of the big business groups and the decisions of the politicians. The
narrow filter of party democracy impedes meaningful participation. This
is why it is now time to get our imagination rolling and seek new forms
of articulation which reinvent the political community, putting our
collective intelligence to the test. The internet networks are at work;
they give shape to the new virtual political space. But we need more:
popular citizen assemblies, open encounters, public discussions,
institutions which supervise and control the political parties… it is
our future, this is our moment.


Montserrat Galcerán, Nomadic University

http://www.universidadnomada.net

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