Red Light Politics

There has been a social upheaval in the making for the past couple of weeks in Spain. Hundreds of thousands of young people have taken to the streets to protest harsh living conditions and a seemingly hopeless future. This article from last Friday at Financial Times summarizes the gist of it better than I could:

A week before last Sunday’s elections, thousands of young Spaniards, organising themselves through Facebook and Twitter like Arab revolutionaries, took to streets nationwide to protest at high unemployment and the domination of politics by the Socialists and the rightwing Popular party. They occupied city centres, including Madrid’s Puerta del Sol and the Plaza de Catalunya in Barcelona, from which police yesterday tried to expel them using baton charges.

These self-proclaimed indignados (“the indignant ones”), mostly students and unemployed twenty-somethings, have plenty to complain about. Local politics is often steeped in corruption, and more than 100 candidates – some re-elected with increased majorities – are being prosecuted or investigated for such crimes. With unemployment at 21 per cent of the workforce, double the EU average, nearly 5m people are out of work. For those aged 24 or less, the rate is 45 per cent. For some political commentators, the only surprising thing about the youth uprising is that it did not happen sooner.

These young people get together in what is generally referred to as “Popular Assemblies”, that is, a horizontally organized group where anyone can take the podium and speak to the crowd. Someone usually takes notes and, at the end of each assembly, a “Petition” is drawn and sent to the authorities. On Friday I posted a link to the Flickr stream from one such group (a feminist collective gathering in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol). I know it can be difficult to assess or even understand what kind of change these types of organizations can bring upon. I’ve seen it happen before, though: in 2001’s Argentina, these Popular Assemblies brought down three governments in one week. The main issue I have with them is not what they can achieve, but what happens the day after. Because I’ve also seen what kind of structural change took place in Argentina after they brought down these governments (in short: nothing much). But I guess that’s a subject for another post.

(Image Description: A group of people gather in Lille’s main square to organize a protest).

Luck had it that, when I arrived to Lille, France, yesterday morning, I came across the nascent French branch of The Indignant Ones. A group of approximately 200 young people had gotten together in one of these Popular Assemblies, with signs calling for the movement to spread to the rest of the country.

As it is bound to happen, I took some photos. Since they are drawing inspiration and working together with their Spanish counterpart, the signs are written both in French and Spanish (translations all mine, so, if there is something wrong, you know who to blame):

This multilingual sign reads: The Kasbah (Tunisia), Tahir Square (Cairo), Puerta del Sol (Madrid), La Bastille (Paris), etc, etc, and in Lille?! Enough! Yallah! (The Arab word for “Let’s go” or “Let’s do it”)

The sign, in French, reads: National Assembly (the French equivalent of Congress): 17% of women, Average Age: 55 years old, Occupations: 1% Working Class (the French word for Blue Collar working class), 4% Employees (the French word for White Collar employees), 5% Civil Servants, 0  Representatives of the Unemployed.

Sign on the left, in Spanish, reads: We are all indignant. Sign to the right, in French, reads: Stop supporting the Oligarchy.

Sign, in Spanish, reads: Homeless, Jobless, Money-less but Fearless.