Gute Nacht, Freunde…
In Sol on 16 October 2011 at 22:39
AcampadaBrussels @ Jubelpark
Dear people,
Yesterday’s demonstration concludes a chapter of the revolution, or maybe just the prologue. On the day after, many of us say goodbye. People go their own way. Some are returning to Spain, some are hanging around. I go up to Holland.
It has been an honour to march with these people, or most of them at least. It will be a pleasure to see them again, wherever, whenever. We are dedicated to the revolution, we are the first wave, we have a bond.
Almost five months ago I arrived in Sol, and I camped. “If this is going to be the defining moment of my generation, then I want to be there”.
Since then I have had the pleasure to witness and to document the acampada, the summer of the popular marches and the big demonstrations, the destruction of Sol. Finally the March on Brussels, the occupation of the university and World Revolution Day.
It has been an extraordinary experience. And now it’s time for me, and for many of us, to take a rest.
The first winter of the movement is at hand. Revolutionary HQ has been cleared and sealed by the police. The experiment of the free space has been too short to properly evaluate. In this week we were severely handicapped due to sanitary problems and lack of internet. The society might have seemed to be on the edge of collapse, but it could just as easily have selfregulated itself. I’m actually pretty optimistic about that. I’m convinced that we can fruitfully occupy covered spaces as a movement.
I also think these actions should have a clear goal, as opposed to the wild occupation of Revolutionary HQ. Spaces for living. Spaces for meeting. Spaces for study. Spaces for art. There are spaces enough. And together we can make them useful. All it takes is a little fantasy.
People are occupying squares in all the world. Also in Holland occupations are going on, in front of the Stock Exchange in Amsterdam and on the Malieveld in The Hague. We really did come a long way in the last five months. Even my brother, a notorious capitalist, wasn’t ashamed to walk along with the demonstration in Brussels. He doesn’t believe that something like a revolution is really possible. But he believes in evolution, in change for the better.
Now that it has started I plan to keep coveering it, but I do not know yet where and when. In the next few weeks I want to try to put my experiences, and the current expansion of the movement into perspective. Then I’ll see.
It concludes my chronicles of the march and the initial months of the 15M movement. I thank you, first of all my revolutionary brothers and sisters with whom I have had the pleasure to share this. And of course I thank you, my beloved readers. If it weren’t for all the heartwarming and inspiring comments I received I might never have been able to keep it up until the end. I thank you too for the sporadic negative reactions, because I’m convinced that if something doesn’t meet with opposition it can have little meaning. It’s the same reason why I don’t support the consensus model. If an idea is shared by absolutely everyone, it can hardly be a good idea.
I leave you with the image of our outsourced Media Center. People behind computers twenty-four hours a day. Empty bags of crisps on the table. A comrade of mine who wants to remain Anonymous, tells me how it all starts. The march, the occupations, the acampadas, the demonstrations, the whole damn thing. It starts right here.
“You know that the idea for a March on Brussels, has been circulating since February. We did that. We simply started bombing the social networks with messages about a march on Brussels. After that, people began to talk about it, it went around on Facebook, and in the end, a group of people started walking. I was overjoyed the day that the Mediterranean came by right beneath my window.”
I imagine things like Occupy Wall Street being organised in the same way. A couple of nerds behind a computerscreen on a sunday morning, eating donuts. “What shall we do today?”
“Global revolution?”
“Heck, why not? #globalrevolution it is.”
Cheers,
Oscar
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