Inspired by the Arab Spring movements in the Arab world and movements in other places such as Portugal, hundreds of thousands of Spanish citizens have mobilized to demand real democracy or “Democracy Real Ya” in Spain under the banner of the “May 15th” or “15th de Mayo” which was the day the movement began. On that day 100,000 Spanish people marched in Madrid and tens of thousands in other cities around Spain, but what made this movement different to the phoney resistance to the austerity measures in Ireland, Greece and the UK was that the protestors have stayed on, setting up a protest camp in the Puerta del Sol square in Madrid as well as in many other city squares around Spain. They are uniting under many demands including opposing cuts to public spending and services and demanding more employment. They state that the bankers should pay for their own crisis. The movement is an independent one free of all institutional control, that opposes both major parties, the mainstream press and the Union movement for all supporting the attacks on ordinary people currently being carried out by the state in Spain. The movement is happening in the week preceeding a national election but many of the protestors reject the idea that the Parliament will bring the changes they demand. .This is exactly the kind of movement we need in Australia where all Parliamentary parties and the Union movement share the consensus that it is ordinary people not the banks and big business that should bear the costs of the financial crisis. Solidarity actions in Australia have now occured in Sydney and Melbourne.
Related: Madrid Indymedia --Democracyrealya website -- May 21st Solidarity actions in Australia -- tens of thousands protest in Spain (WSWS) -- Protestors occupy city squares(WSWS) -- Democract Real Ya video on Youtube -- BBC news coverage -- Spain takes to the streets youtube clip
One of the most exciting things about this movement is the way that the many of Spain are rejecting illusions in not only the Spanish Socialist Workers Party PSOE(the equivalent of the ALP) but also the union movement. The following protesters were quoted in the WSWS:
Isabel stated, “We want that the politicians to listen to us and defend our interests, not the interests of the banks, and the only thing the trade unions do is do deals behind our backs with the government”.
Asked about the role of the unions in the crisis, Diana said that “before they use to be, to some extent, responsive to workers, but now they defend the state. How are they going to defend us if they receive such huge subsidies from the state?”
These observations mirror the experience of Australian workers where it is obvious that in Australia the ACTU exists only to help keep the ALP in power and to help contain real resistance to attacks on workers rights and the economic position of working people. For example all the resistance to Work Choices was harnessed by the ACTU to get the Rudd government elected who then went on to keep most of Work Choiceslegislation under its so called “Fair Work Australia” legislation, including the ABCCC. Similarly the ACTU does not oppose the Gillard’s governments aggressive moves against the welfare state in the last Federal Budget. Cuts to welfare are being made so that the Australian economy can be returned to surplus without taxing the mining and other corporate sectors. The Gillard government has overseen the gutting of the proposed mining tax and a reduction in the corporate tax rate however we are meant to believe it is the people on disability pensions who have to pay the price of the global financial crisis.
Such attacks are almost certain to worsen in the next few years, particularly if the Chinese economy slows, and whoever wins the next election will implement these attacks on the working class of Australia. The Greens have also shown that they will cooperate with the ALP, almost as a defacto left wing faction of the party, only offering tokenistic words of resistance whilst voting to keep the ALP in power. The Greens have also shown that in order to be seen as “responsible” they will not propose anything that upsets the financial markets, thus witness their slavish devotion to “market solutions” to climate change such as the doomed to fail carbon tax proposal.
That is why the left in Australia should be inspired by slogans such as “We will not pay for this crisis”, “This will not finish with the elections” and “Where is the left? Essentially on the right.” As it is only with a mass movement outside of Parliament and the Unions that a decent fight to protect both “real democracy” and the interests of ordinary people in this country can be waged.
Manifesto of the "Democracy real Ya" movement in English
We are ordinary people. We are like you: people, who get up every morning to study, work or find a job, people who have family and friends. People, who work hard every day to provide a better future for those around us
Some of us consider ourselves progressive, others conservative. Some of us are believers, some not. Some of us have clearly defined ideologies, others are apolitical, but we are all concerned and angry about the political, economic, and social outlook which we see around us: corruption among politicians, businessmen, bankers, leaving us helpless, without a voice.
This situation has become normal, a daily suffering, without hope. But if we join forces, we can change it. It’s time to change things, time to build a better society together. Therefore, we strongly argue that:
* The priorities of any advanced society must be equality, progress, solidarity, freedom of culture, sustainability and development, welfare and people’s happiness.
* These are inalienable truths that we should abide by in our society: the right to housing, employment, culture, health, education, political participation, free personal development, and consumer rights for a healthy and happy life.
* The current status of our government and economic system does not take care of these rights, and in many ways is an obstacle to human progress.
* Democracy belongs to the people (demos = people, krátos = government) which means that government is made of every one of us. However, in Spain most of the political class does not even listen to us. Politicians should be bringing our voice to the institutions, facilitating the political participation of citizens through direct channels that provide the greatest benefit to the wider society, not to get rich and prosper at our expense, attending only to the dictatorship of major economic powers and holding them in power through a bipartidism headed by the immovable acronym PP & PSOE.
* Lust for power and its accumulation in only a few; create inequality, tension and injustice, which leads to violence, which we reject. The obsolete and unnatural economic model fuels the social machinery in a growing spiral that consumes itself by enriching a few and sends into poverty the rest. Until the collapse.
* The will and purpose of the current system is the accumulation of money, not regarding efficiency and the welfare of society. Wasting resources, destroying the planet, creating unemployment and unhappy consumers.
* Citizens are the gears of a machine designed to enrich a minority which does not regard our needs. We are anonymous, but without us none of this would exist, because we move the world.
* If as a society we learn to not trust our future to an abstract economy, which never returns benefits for the most, we can eliminate the abuse that we are all suffering.
* We need an ethical revolution. Instead of placing money above human beings, we shall put it back to our service. We are people, not products. I am not a product of what I buy, why I buy and who I buy from.
For all of the above, I am outraged.
I think I can change it.
I think I can help.
I know that together we can.I think I can help.
I know that together we can.
Comments
TV, beer and footy to dull the ache of a vacuous existence
Hell yeah Flowerpower, that's really inspirational.
I've often contemplated what it would take for Australians to rise up. Most of the time I end up walled in by the unfortunate consideration that the majority of Australian workers are (entirely blamelessly) too ignorant / uneducated / content / easily manipulated by the media machine to care enough.
Sure, they might be struggling to make payments on their ridiculously oversized mortgage, but once they've worked 50+ hours who can blame them for adopting Tv, beer and footy to dull the persistent ache of a vacuous existence?
How do we make them angry enough to act, hopeful enough not to fall into apathy, and educated enough not to identify with the inevitable conservative media nonsense?
People don't react until they fear they'll be next to lose
Hi Sean.
I'm a spanish citizen currently living in Australia. So i understand pretty well whats behind all these protests. I just wanted to let you know that the situation in Spain a few years ago was exactly like you mention in your post. People struggling to pay oversized mortgages, working 50+ hours... and people did numb themselves through football, beer, drugs and tv.
And meanwhile, politicians have been pretty busy selling out the public health system, the educational system, etc. Banks and multinational corporations have been rubbin their hands all this time.
The unemployment rate now is over 20%, and in under-30's it goes up to almost 40%. Massive amounts of public money have gone to rescue banks out of a crisis they created. The media is totally controlled by the two main parties. People cant foresee a solution and thats why they (us) are taking it to the streets and the net. Because its about time to wake up, its time to stand up. It has taken us a really long time. People dont react until they fear they can be the next one losing his/her house or job... So thats what would take australians (or anyone) to raise up.
Lets just hope that your country doesnt get as vandalized by multinational companies and banks as mine has, in the time it takes you to raise up.
Salud y revolucion.
Not a lot of journalism here but a clear bias against unions
poorly researched opinion. not a lot of journalism here but a clear bias against unions. The YR@W campaign was not Kevin-07. Its goal was soley to ridicule and make untenable the Howard government. The ACTU does not defend the Gillard government on bank bailouts - there weren't any here (The systemic problems with a too deregulated system occurred in the 90s and lead us to a Keating Government -if you care to know). However, many Unions across Australia are disaffiliating from the ALP - mostly over varying reactions from members over privatisation of public assets and divisions over climate change debate. And here lies the story of the "union movement" in Australia: at the moment there isn't a united movement. The most cohesive campaign running right now is the Pay Up - No More Lip Service to Equal Pay (http://www.payup.org.au/more_info/).
A couple of points
Joanne - I really think it is a stretch to deny that the Your Rights at Work campaign did not explicitly aim at replacing the Howard Government with Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister. In fact from memory this was what the whole strategy of the campaign was based on - it was not based on defeating the laws industrially but rather defeating them electorally ie having the Liberals kicked out. The problem with this stragegy was that the Unions did not then hold the ALP government to account once elected, allowing it to keep much of the substance of Work Choices in place.
Secondly, whilst there was no bank bailouts in Australia, there was a massive stimulus package in response to the Global Financial Crisis caused by the banks and financial industry globally. It is this that the ordinary people of Australia are now being asked to pay for to "get the budget back into surplus" whilst at the same time the level of tax being paid by corporations is being cut under the ALP. These attacks are also part of a global pattern whereby the financial elites are demanding cuts back to public spending as a response to the GFC so the bank bailouts of Europe and the US are very relevant to the Australian experience.
Lastly, your right there is some dissent in the Union movement to the slavish support of the union movements leadership to the ALP but it is small and atomised. Which are the "many" unions that have dissafilliated from the ALP that you refer to? I would be very interested if you could list them. It cannot be more than one or two around the whole nation. So whilst there are some good campaigns being run by some unions around the country, I think it is very clear that the Union movement as a whole of last few decades has become industrially much weaker due to its subordination of the interests of its membership to the electoral success of the ALP.
You are also right to point out that this piece is more opinion than research however I stand by the general thrust of my opinion which is that there are alot of parallels between the crisis of legitimacy in the political classes, including the Trade Union leadership, in Spain and Australia and that a similar movement is required in this country.
It is great that you replied to my article as I think this is exactly the debate the left needs to be having at the moment as the role of Parliamentary parties and the unions really needs to be carefully scrutinised if we are to build a mass movement for justice in this country.
A forum for discussion
Flower Power it would be possible to debate this issue or at least to ask questions in this left/democratic forum in Sydney tonight.
http://politicsinthepub.org.au/
Politics in the Pub
27th of May 2011
Gaelic Club
Devonshire St
LABOR JUST DOESN’T GET IT - IS IT POSSIBLE FOR THE ALP TO BE RESTORED AS A GENUINE SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY?
Rodney Cavalier, former NSW Labor Minister, author Power Crisis - Self Destruction of a State Labor Party; Prof Rick Kuhn, Political Science, ANU, co-author Labor's Conflict - Big Business, Work, Politics & Class
110526Th Viva Espania, but y' gotto get to the roots!
110526Th Viva Espania, but y' gotto get to the roots!
From the article and the Manifesto of the "Democracy real Ya" it appears the Spanish PROTESTERS! are getting down to it, and voicing a Collective rejection of the ridiculous hegemony, as has grown in Spain and across the first world for centuries.
AND about time, we of the third, 'southern' world think!
Therefore, VIVA Espania! or whatever!
How similar are their demands, to those of the so-called 'Rebels' of Libya, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, Wadeye..., Et Al Et Al?
Getting to the ROOTS of a REALRevolution, demands a Unity yet seen - GLOBALLY.
However, along with that, now more and more possible, is for a CLASSLESS UNITY, where UnderClass, Working Class, Middle Classes, and those still with Ethical Intellects of the Upper Class, all-over, throw off the shackles of erroneous dogma, religious of course, but fundamentally erroneous, false, BULLSHIT ECONOMIC DOGMA, economic theory, and Collectively embrace the bottomline of Fundamental Land Re-Distribution.
This must therefore challenge most everything the International Monetary Fund IMF, and it's media cabals, have forced upon the world for centuries, and must have all of us re-evaluate our own beliefs and expectations, from having children, to taking money for any work which is not firstly 'Environmentally Sound', to how we expect to 'construct' our families, our Communities, and the accommodation designs within which we all expect to live, from this period forward, into the distant future.
This needs us to go to how we live in the environment - how we work and what we produce, how we educate the younger generations, and what Community and 'housing models' we inhabit.
This means we, all of us, from the pissed-off first-world upper-middle class Protesters in Madrid, to the Daliks of India, to the Aborigine everwhere, to the multifarious 'Criminal Classes', Gangs, and One-Percenter Outlaws, from 'Frisco to Moscow to Tokyo, Et Al, Et Al, have to work HARD at dropping the understandable, futility-ridden expectations of life, as we know it, and thus Armed with the Basic Economic Truths - that Proper, Equitable, Calculable, Scientific Land Distribution lies beneath all Human and Social Justice, get out onto the streets, as the many, many are doing, from Yemen, through the Middle-East, through Greece, Spain, etc.
Once such 'Manifestos' as the one in the article, from the PROTESTERS! in Madrid, include this bottomline FACT, of the need for Land Re-Distribution, and is picked-up by other Groups and Organisations across the globe, THEN..... We'll have the Revolution, the REALRevolution so many of us, and so many of our forebears, have dreamed-of, argued for, and as often fallen for, from our first advances out from over-populated Tribes, in search of new Land upon which to settle.
Personally, I shun the 'Twitterverse', the 'Facebook-olution', etc., but they are Powerful, and are there for us to use, to maximum effect, globally and Classlessly!
So, again... !!!VIVA ESPANIA!!!
And, GREECE! SYRIA! YEMEN! PAKISTAN! AFGHANISTAN! And-on and-on, all around the World, 'til we're all 'Dancin' in th' streets'!
We have also to get off the 'blame-game' off putting one or two individuals in the dock, other than forcing them to admit their misdemeanours, but also forcing them to name and shame the machinery, the ideological and economic mechanisms which induce, force them and us to accept the bribes, the corruption and the apparently insurmountable force of false dogma, etc, and thus - utterly fucking stupid, untenable, unsustainable lifestyles - seeking to satisfy the insatiable, merely as a band-aid over our, 'til now, unrealisable and suppressed self-knowledge. Primarily, that genuine, material-profit-free relationships are the 'Juice', the Essence, the Source of Harmonious and Healthy lives, Communities and now, Planet.
It's all there for the taking, Humanity!
Jus' got to, 'Get Y' motor running!'
Yours,
Omaxa
LONG LIVE THE PROTEST!
corruption among politicians, businessmen, bankers
The assessment of Spain in this article Spain the Indignant and the Paris Commune could easily be applied to Australia. I'm not sure if the manifesto of Real Democracy Now reproduced above is explicitly anti-capitalist in fact it states that the movement contains people that are conservative,
"Some of us consider ourselves progressive, others conservative. Some of us are believers, some not. Some of us have clearly defined ideologies, others are apolitical, but we are all concerned and angry about the political, economic, and social outlook which we see around us: corruption among politicians, businessmen, bankers, leaving us helpless, without a voice."
http://www.zcommunications.org/spain-the-indignant-and-the-paris-commune...
true Australian unemployment much higher than government lets on
This article points to high youth unemployment as a key factor behing Spanish Real Democracy Now. The true rate of unemployment in Australia is much higher than the government lets on. As far as i know you only have to worked one hour a week to be no longer considered 'unemployed'.
http://www.zcommunications.org/spain-s-real-democracy-now-movement-by-da...
The movement seems to engulfing many other parts of Europe:Greece, France,parts of UK.
true Australian unemployment much higher than government lets on
it may not long before we see something similar in Australia
Here is a timetable for a non-violent action in London it 'acampadas' (camps) are in London & other parts of the timetable and program was posted on Facebook.
Real Democracy Now London Assembly Timetable
.by UK Revolution- Real Democracy Now on Wednesday, June 1, 2011 at 7:47am.London Assembly of 15M movement – Calendar weekend June 4-5
ESSENTIALS: Non-violent attitude, no alcohol, no drugs
Friday, June 3rd - 20.00 Weekend acampada starts at Belgrave Square in front of the Embassy (tube stations: Hyde Park and Victoria Station) - 20.30 Preparatory meeting for the Assembly: London Assembly and 15M movement’s identity; framework for collaboration with other UK and European collectives.
Saturday, June 4th - 8.00 Wake up and breakfast - 9.00-12.00 Protest activity (activity code: CONDRY). It’ll take place in the Spanish consulate. Turn up promptly for instructions. -14.00 Lunch (back at Belgrave Square) and evaluation of CONDRY.
- 15.00-16.30 Workshops (Electoral System Reform, Yoga, Globalization and International Financial System)
- 16.30 – 17.00 SIESTA - 17.00 – 21.00 Grand Assembly: future of 15M movement, London’s Assembly identity, framework for collaboration with other UK and European collectives. Session 1: Small working groups. Session 2: Discussion in Assembly with spokesperson of each working group presenting main points. - 21.00 - 22.00 Possibility of a workshop on nonviolence in Hyde Park and / or Yoga - 22.30 Dinner and Committee’s meetings / Getting to know each other
Sunday June 5th - 9.00-10.00 Wake up and breakfast - 10.00 – 11.00 Morning informal talk
- 11.30-13.30: 'Global Direct and Participative Democracy: 2011, the world's political earthquake' workshop: the wave of grassroots' revolts across the Arab world and Europe and the role of the 15M movement in that wave.
- 13.30-14.30 Acampada dismantling and lunch - 15.30-17.30 Taste of Spanish Revolution: protest activity (Regent’s Street)
- 18.00-19.30: Sit-in and debate at Trafalgar Square with other UK groups. End of weekend.
With the viral nature of the internet it may not long before we see something similar in Australia