CATASTROIKA WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES por infowar

Dia 4 de Maio, 6ª feira, às 18,30H                   

                  DOCUMENTÁRIO

  CONFERÊNCIA E CONVERSA COM

                CLAIRE AUZIAS

         Investigadora e especialista

  No Museu da República e Resistência

        Estrada de Benfica, 419 – Bairro Grandela  (Metro Alto dos Moinhos)      

               UMA INICIATIVA DA TERTÚLIA LIBERDADE

 www.tertulialiberdade.blogspot.com

www.liberdade365.co

No dia 25 de Abril de 2012, aconteceu uma das mais magníficas manifestações de poder popular que vi acontecer, ainda que à distância. No dia seguinte, a polícia voltou a entrar no edifício para agora destruir todas as suas infraestruturas de abastecimento de água e luz assim como emparedar o edifício numa clara demonstração da verdadeira face deste sistema: prefere a destruição e a alienação a qualquer forma espontânea de criatividade  que coloque em causa o seu aparato produtivo. A existência de um território no qual as normas e relações sociais não sejam regidas pelo paradigma económico que vivemos abana este sistema, por isso tem sido tão importante a resistência que temos assistido desde que a Es.Col.a tomou forma. Revela-se a falta de racionalidade do capitalismo, cuja única função é a de reforçar as relações de exploração existentes mesmo que para isso seja preferível a morte e a destruição. Opta por entregar o bairro à degradação e marginalização do que assistir à sua reabilitação pelos meios que as pessoas possam vir a conquistar exercendo de modo emancipatório o direito à organização dos locais em que habitam. A compreensão de que o território sempre foi um dos principais elementos fundamentais no exercício de soberania encontra-se no cerne deste antagonismo.

http://www.publico.pt/Local/agua-e-luz-cortadas-na-escola-da-fontinha-1543659

by Jean Sibelius

Text from flier that was thrown from the roof:

As winter approaches, we need a space to stay dry and healthy. We need a place to have a stable kitchen to feed our collective self. We need a space where we can better share our ideas and experiences – rooms for discussions, a library, space for workshops and casual conversations – all of which have become harder and harder to have in the plaza.

The occupation of this building is an act against the structural violence entrenched in our political, economic and social systems. As we move into the space, our intention is to collectively re-appropriate its use. We’re trying to discover ways of interacting with each other as equals. How to talk so everyone is heard; how to make decisions so everyone’s considered and included; how to feed and maintain a shared space; how to make sure work, responsibility, pleasure and ownership don’t fall on some more than others. It’s a hard process in itself, but it’s made even harder by the fact that it flies in the face of how almost everything in this city (the whole world practically) is run.

We know our ideas and actions, while currently small, have already proven to be contagious. They have the power to expose the explicit violence that we see in the police department and the jails. That violence also exists in work-related deaths and injuries, in deportation camps, and in communities that have been promised so much only to be left to rot in poverty and addiction. Our very homes and bodies are pushed to the limit by laws and workloads. Wilderness, which has the chance to exist outside of this madness, is, like the County Parks, slowly being sold off to those who want to drown it in this misery.

What would our world look like if we decided how our communities and neighborhoods functioned? What would this self-directed process be like, without a handful of people in charge of it all? What would our workplaces look like if those who actually did the work got to control them, too? What if schools were run by those who learned and taught in them, not by the dictates of careers or the economy? What if your own household, whether shared with friends or family, ran the same way?

So much of our lives are decided without our say. It’s made all the more degrading and humiliating by the fact that those who make the decisions claim to do so for our benefit or in our name. We no longer want to continue the farce. If the word of the handful of people who run this city and our lives is to be taken at face value, this is hardly an unreasonable request. They’ve left this building to rot. It isn’t the site of spectacular sporting events or corporate Christmas tree lightings. The city officials have long-since abandoned the building – much in the way they have abandoned us.

We have no intentions of reforming capitalism or improving democracy. We know there is no golden era to harken back to and restore – this country (like so many others) was founded on genocide, slavery and exploitation, and it continues this tradition today. We have only each other to have hope in.

We occupy in solidarity with those who struggle, but will not look towards the empty promises of politicians. We need to think beyond the Downtown Partnership and the Mayor’s ideas about creating condominiums for the elite, and start thinking about using these buildings for collective purposes. As long as we continue to look to politicians to solve our problems and the ruling class to have a conscience, things will only get worse. Power concentrated in the hands of a few will only bring more oppression and exploitation. We want to make decisions horizontally, and to share the little we have. Who knows, we might even surprise ourselves by what we’re capable of.

Come join us if you’re interested in getting to know each other, treating each other with genuine respect and plotting ways out of this mess. We carry a new world in our hearts, one much more fantastic, more empowering, and more just than the current.

Text from a leaflet handed out Tuesday Night.

“Wall Street Protestors, Occupying Till Whenever”- NYT headline

The “Occupy Wall St.” model has done what many have tried and failed, it has pushed past the apathy and created a venue for possibility. In cities and towns across the country people are finding one another in situations few ever dared to venture into before. Meetings are being held, food shared and ideas discussed. But as one participant put it - “The fuzzy ultra-left ideal about forging new kinds of relationships through struggle and finding each other and such can’t just be about meeting in space and time, otherwise we could start a bowling league and be done with it.” What the gatherings themselves lack is a coherent substance, a sense of self-understanding. Towards this end, we raise the following questions.

Are We An Occupation or Just a Gathering?

The term occupation is often associated with a few things, namely the idea of disruption of or interference with the flow of goods or capital. When you ask for permission, when you seek a permit, the “occupations” become ‘camping’ and the term becomes a catch phrase.

The original encampment, which has spawned many franchises in it’s wake, has been likened to other movements from around the globe, most notably the Tahrir Square occupations this past January. The major differences between the movement currently emerging in the US and those of the square occupations throughout Northern Africa and Europe is strength. It was not merely the fact that 50,000 people took over Tahrir Square, it was the fact that they would not be forced to leave that made the difference. As a movement they were ready to physically defend the areas they had liberated and attack those trying to destroy it. By deciding on a strategy of “non-violence,”we have cut our legs out from under ourselves. They do not hold Zuccoti park, it is given to them under police supervision, and will be taken away just as easily when the moment is deemed appropriate, i.e. when the police and the mayor have had enough.

When the Occupy Wall St. protestors took their message outside of the NYPD contained area they were attacked. Over 80 arrests occurred when the crowd marched near Union Square. When they tried to cross the Brooklyn Bridge hundreds were detained and received citations. While the numbers swelled after those attacks, we missed a chance to sway the balance of power for just a moment.

That could change if the parameters of conflict were widened, if new avenues were opened to the possibility of physically holding space, not negotiating for it’s rental. Our individual refusals are small but collectively it is one of the last and strongest weapons we can wield together.

Are we Anti Capitalists or just Anti Corporations?

There is a difference between being an anti-capitalist and being against corporations, or “corporate greed” as some have chosen to describe it. Anti-capitalists reach for a world free of the kinds of social relationships that require domination. Landlords and tenants; bosses and workers; police and prisoners. These are relationships inherent to a capitalist system and to the democracy we live under. It is not indicative of a “broken” system for unemployment rates to soar, inflation to reign and wages to continually drop. The money can not even out, congress can not legislate it’s way to equality. From where we all sit now, our personal freedoms and any wealth we can accumulate is done on the backs of someone else or at our own expense.

Though it may have acquired new forms, none of the poverty or exploitation we are protesting is unique to our modern age of corporate dominance. Regulating or taxing corporations will not come close to solving these problems, because these institutions are only one part of the vast structure of social relationships called State and Capital.

The future is wretched and marked with the poverty we all feel today.  This in and of itself is a cause for indignation. When that rage turns towards petitioning congress for a brighter tomorrow or demanding accountability of corporations, we have already lost.

 The Police are not our friends!

Capitalism, as a system, is based on a series of relationships between those who have power and those who do not. The police, whether they are a beat cop, a detective or the Chief act as the enforcers of this economic system. They stand between us and the food we need to survive. They evict us from the homes we can no longer afford. Their job is to enforce the laws of capital, the ones created not to keep us safe but to protect capital and ensure the system works as smoothly as it can.

The police who enter our liberated zones, our occupations, are doing so as agents of the State. As individuals they may have families and problems. They may hate their jobs just like the rest of us, but that does not mean they will not do them. If we are to stand together as the proposed 99% we can not allow the thugs and mercenaries of the 1% to pierce our spaces.

<<O Hugo quer acrescentar qualquer coisa: “Tem de ser, claro, que nós não somos missionários, nem temos o espírito de que estamos aqui para interagir com os pobrezinhos e dar-lhes coisas que eles não têm e assim ganhar-lhes a simpatia, isso é coisa de políticos. Nós fazemos coisas com eles de uma forma solidária”, conclui. Ao longe ouve-se o rap dos jovens da Fontinha: “ Estratégia solidária, consciência e obra. A nossa escola está de volta. O povo manda.”>>

http://www.ionline.pt/portugal/anarquistas-uma-escola-okupada-no-coracao-porto