An exploding spring burns the Arabic countries against dictators that had been in power for decades. In an invisible cloud thoughts are shared around the world. People from a Europe in crises, which leaves millions unemployed cutting salaries and public investments, protest and camp in the streets of many cities. In China, pro-democracy protests; in the United States,many manifest against the current economic crisis; in Chile, protests for more investments in education. In the whole world, although the police repression, people stand in the hope for a better future for its habitants. In common, the will to change the logic, that leaves more and more pieces left in gear and that raises even more the distance, the abysm between Manhattan and Ethiopia.
We are outraged and we are counted. We sank more and more in the abysm of inequality, of misery, of gentrification, of work explosion, of poverty criminalization, of the raising of the State militarization. Our politicians deny the possibility of social improvements, as education, health and public transportation. While lots of money are invested in huge projects, as the construction of new stadiums for the World Cup and also the building of Belo Monte hydroelectric. Besides, the real estate speculation excludes people that live in the big centers, ignoring their basic needs and undoing their bonds as a community.
Every popular organization that goes against those who have the power is violently repressed. The state oppresses our freedom of speech with rubber bullets, tear gas and arrests. Clear and recent examples of that are: the violent “reintegration of possession” at Pinheirinho, the evacuation of homeless workers that were occupying in downtown São Paulo and the brutal repression to the homeless and chemical dependents treated like a police problem and not as a public health one. At the same time, the corporate media in Brazil, in the hands of those same powerful people since before the dictatorship, does anything to make the abuses of the State to look and sound normal, natural.
Outraged by this, we decided to act, escaping the logic of loaded dice and marked cards of bureaucratic politics. Based on the principles of non-partisanship, non-violence and consensus decision making, we are building a horizontal policy, in other words, made by all and for all.
Instead of accepting ready leaders or templates, we look to build collectively, considering the views and opinions of everyone involved. Instead of the “democracy” of the vote, the horizontal political process guarantees people the real decision-making autonomy on the political construction.
In this new logic, we seek to directly participate on the decisions, not allowing any organization to represent us. Therefore, we consider the partisanship one of the principles of our movement.
Just as we do not accept that people overlap the other by bureaucratic or structural routes, we do not accept any kind of violence between them, be it gender, class, color, psychological, physical or group. Only by the way of respecting the differences of each we will be able to build a true horizontal process, as this process depends on people willing to build it collectively.
In this may 12, may we go and take the streets, raise our tents and occupy public spaces to share our lives, our experiences and practices that go beyond the simple logic of the coming and going in the city. Let us express our dissatisfaction and start the building of an autonomous collaborative process that will weaken more and more the structures that which we disagree.
The revolution can only be learned in practice!
12M – OCCUPY, SHARE, BUILD.
