From ROARMag.org, thoughtful reflections from Spain by Carlos Delclós and Raimundo Viejo, calling for a renewed focus on building alternative institutions. However in the context of the right wing triumph in the recent Spanish elections, their focus is on social centers, activist collectives, cooperatives, etc., which frequently do not directly challenge the status quo. How can social ecologists best continue to push for counterinstitutions that can also continue to offer a direct challenge to the hegemony of economic and political elites?
An excerpt:
As Amador Fernández-Savater recently put it, the questions on a lot of peoples’ minds seem to be: “where are all those people who occupied the plazas and neighbourhood assemblies during the spring? Have they become disenchanted with the movement? Are they incapable of making lasting compromises? Are they resigned to their fates?”
Fernández-Savater doesn’t think so. “With no study in hand and generalizing simply based on the people I know personally and my own observations of myself, I think that, in general, people have gone on with their lives … But saying that they’ve gone on with their lives is a bad expression. For once you’ve gone through the plazas, you don’t leave the same, nor do you go back to the same life. Paradoxically, you come back to a new life: touched, crossed, affected by 15-M[ay].”
And as he so eloquently puts it, 15-M is no mere social organization, but “a new social climate.” But how does a social climate organize itself? What new possibilities have revealed themselves after months of self-management, cooperative civil disobedience and massive mobilization, and what remains to be done?
Full article is at http://roarmag.org/2012/01/delclos-viejo-indignados-2012-15-m-spain/.
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