Amauta

Nuestra civilización occidental, hoy mundializada, tiene su origen histórico en la Grecia del siglo VI antes de nuestra era. El mundo del mito y de la religión, que era el eje organizador de la sociedad, se desmoronó. Para poner orden en aquel momento crítico se llevó a cabo, en un lapso de poco más de 50 años, una de las mayores creaciones intelectuales de la humanidad. Surgió la era de la razón crítica, que se expresó por la filosofía, por la democracia, por el teatro, por la poesía y por la estética. Figuras paradigmáticas fueron Sócrates, Platón, Aristóteles y los sofistas, que gestaron la arquitectura del saber, subyacente a nuestro paradigma de civilización; fue Pericles, como gobernante al frente de la democracia; fue Fidias, el de la estética elegante; fueron los grandes autores de las tragedias como Sófocles, Eurípides y Esquilo; fueron los juegos olímpicos y otras manifestaciones culturales que aquí no cabe referir. Continue Reading

Días pasados cometí un “error imperdonable”: criticar acerbamente a la Secretaria de Estado Hillary Clinton cuando ante el quinto asesinato de un científico iraní se limitó a encogerse de hombros y decir que aquello era resultado de las provocaciones de Teherán al negarse a suspender su programa nuclear. Un programa, dicho sea al pasar, que comenzó en la época del Shá de Irán y que fue retomado a mediados de los ochentas sin que hasta ahora, más de treinta años después, apareciera el tan temido arsenal nuclear iraní. Dije entonces, y lo repito ahora, que la Clinton es “el eslabón perdido entre las aves carroñeras y la especie humana”, recordando su repugnante carcajada cuando le comunicaron el linchamiento de Gadaffi. Pero mi “error” fue postear esa opinión en Facebook: pocas horas después se me prohibió el acceso a mi cuenta y, de ese modo, tomar contacto con más de mis siete mil seguidores. Lo que vino después es una historia realmente kafkiana, aún inconclusa, para tratar de recuperar el acceso a mi cuenta. Toda clase de triquiñuelas y obstáculos fueron puestos en este empeño y aún hoy, al anochecer del Jueves 19 de enero, unos tres días después del incidente, no he podido volver a utilizar mi cuenta. Para colmo, jamás pude tomar contacto con persona alguna de Facebook y todas las preguntas que como víctima de esa arbitrariedad podía hacer eran estereotipadas, debía elegirlas de un “menú” absurdo sólo para obtener, de un robot informático, respuestas igualmente estúpidas y estereotipadas. En todo claso algo era meridianamente claro: ninguna respondía a la pregunta crucial que era, y es, ¿por qué me habían bloqueado el acceso a mi cuenta de Facebook? Continue Reading

Al despedir a Abelardo, intento pensarlo y representarlo en las distintas facetas de su vida y su personalidad que logré conocer. Lo resumo así:

- El Abelardo ser humano
- El Abelardo amigo
- El Abelardo activista por los derechos humanos de las minorías sexualmente diversas
- El Abelardo en la política, aunque nunca político Continue Reading

Seeing Beyond the Shadows on the Walls Around Us

Social movements, when broadly construed and successfully applied, serve as something akin to elaborate filters. By holding a mirror up to society, a movement causes us to reconsider basic assumptions and structural processes that often exist invisibly yet pervasively in our collective midst. Social movement activities render such practices visible, and subject them to scrutiny in a manner that can become contagious in its breadth and depth alike. Movements make us question those things that we take for granted, assume are unchangeable, or benefit from without repercussions.

In this sense, a movement acts like a lens that sharpens and clarifies the reality we observe and participate in, making the strange familiar and the familiar strange all at once. When this movement consciousness begins to “go viral” and infuse the larger culture itself — as we have seen with Occupy — it has the initial effect of breaking down the facade of “consensus reality” that subsumes a great deal of “normal life” without much investigation or contestation. A viral movement perspective, in short, begins to erode the virtual prism that envelops the larger part of our daily existence. Continue Reading

Costa Rica necesita remediar su situación fiscal para garantizar el bienestar, la prosperidad y la buena convivencia social. Necesitamos de un Estado vigoroso que administre eficientemente los tributos, procurando el mayor bienestar a sus habitantes, organizando y estimulando la producción y el más adecuado reparto de la riqueza, tal como lo establece nuestra Constitución Política, de manera que los derechos básicos de las personas no se conviertan en privilegios exclusivos de quienes los pueden pagar. Continue Reading

La mujer, desesperada por obtener las mejores ofertas en la tienda de descuento Wal-Mart, regó con un spray de pimienta a las personas que esperaban con la intención de alejarlas de la mercancía que ella quería”. Ésta podría ser la escena de una película de Pedro Almodóvar si no fuese porqué la imagen pertenece a la realidad y tal relato fue publicado, el 25/11/2011, en el periódico Los Angeles Times.

Visto lo visto podríamos sugerir que frente a los grandes centros comerciales, y aún más en época de rebajas, se colocaran grandes carteles advirtiendo que “consumir perjudica gravemente su salud”, al más puro estilo de las Autoridades Sanitarias. Y es que el consumismo irracional, superfluo y no necesario, que promueve el sistema capitalista, no sólo puede afectar de manera inesperada y contundente nuestra salud vía “ataque de spray pimienta”  sino que sobre todo afecta la “salud” del planeta.   Continue Reading

Significado y vigencia del 19 y 20 de diciembre del 2001

El movimiento asambleario que eclosiona el 19 y 20 de diciembre del 2001, retoma las tradiciones rebeldes de nuestro Pueblo y de sus grandes movilizaciones, así como del Cordobazo, de la huelga general de 1975, de los paros contra la inflación en los años 80 y de las movilizaciones contra el desempleo en la década del 90. Se trató de una sublevación que confirmó el espíritu de resistencia de nuestro pueblo. En tal circunstancia se concretó una ocupación masiva de las calles y los piquetes confluyeron con las cacerolas para rechazar el ajuste neoliberal. La rebelión fue una respuesta desde abajo a la crisis itinerante del capitalismo, que se desplaza por distintas zonas del planeta provocando sucesivas tragedias sociales. Nuestros padecimientos a principio de la década anticiparon el colapso que actualmente afecta a muchas economías desarrolladas. Continue Reading

(Atención: éste es un remix alternativo de un original del New York Times.)

BAGDAD: El Pentágono declaró oficialmente el jueves la muerte de su invasión que costó 3 billones de dólares y suma y sigue, relacionada con la “guerra contra el terror”, ocupación y matanza de la nación iraquí, incluso mientras el país se preparaba para una guerra civil suní-chií de baja intensidad y el mundo musulmán se pregunta qué es lo que pasó con el Gran Medio Oriente del gobierno de George W Bush. Continue Reading

On September 17^th, we took Liberty Square, used it to begin to create the social norms and institutions of a society to come, and became the Occupy Movement. We hit the streets fiercely, abandoning the metal barricades they once contained us in, rejecting the marching permits they offered us, refusing their sidewalks. We were dragged, handcuffed, into the front pages of people’s minds, and brought with us a story many were trying to silence – a story about the profit of the tiny few through the exploitation of the many, a story about deep and systemic economic, political, and social injustice. We danced in the streets and parks we reclaimed, and then in the jail cells they took us to when they realized we weren’t going home. We were confident, invincible; it’s hard to be afraid when the sun is out.

(Art: Karen Kaapcke)

But the season has changed. Autumn has ended and winter is upon us. We’ve lost Liberty Square, and each day brings news from across the country that another occupation has been evicted. Winter is here, and with it the cold; but it’s more than that. Winter brings the sober understanding that we won’t be in the headlines every day, that we need to be more than a string of events or actions or press releases, more than an endless meeting. Winter is the nagging truth that the next decade of organizing must be more sustainable than the first months we spent in the sun; that this is a struggle for the long-haul, that burn-out and martyrdom are no good for anyone and no good for the cause. Winter tells us to see our families and take a day off when we are sick, because the movement has to be healthy if it’s going to last. Winter is here to remind us that revolution is not an event but a process, and that social transformation means not only harnessing a moment, but building a movement.

Winter is here. But winter is not sad, and it’s not tragic; it’s just real. We do not fear the cold, and we will not hibernate. We will use the winter to become the movement we know is necessary.

We Will Not Hibernate: A To Do List for the Winter

Grow. We will continue to build relationships with communities who have been fighting and building for decades already, from tenants organizing eviction defense in Bed-Stuy, to AIDS activists in the Staten Island. We will grow by joining struggles that protect people from the daily assaults they experience – from austerity to police brutality – and by waging struggles to meet peoples’ needs, like reclaiming foreclosed homes. We will transcend the open calls to action and the expectation that they are enough to build a movement; we will organize the hard way, because the hard way is the only way. We will have the million one-on-one conversations it takes to build a movement, door to door if we have to, and we will do it out in the open, because we have nothing to fear and nothing to hide.

Deepen. We will finally take the time to learn how to do what we are doing better, from those who have been doing this for so long – from the land liberation movements in Brazil to the women on welfare building community power in Yonkers. We will also teach, because we are reinventing the struggle as we go, and we have learned a lot already. We will ask each other difficult questions we never had time for: How do we organize in a way that is inclusive and liberating? How do we build a movement led by those most marginalized and oppressed? How do we use decentralization to actually empower people and address the imbalances we face in society? We will think radically about what systems and historical processes led us to where we are now, dream deeply about the world we want and the institutions we will need in order to live it out, and plan thoroughly for the building and the fighting it will take us to get there.

Build. We will continue to build systems for de-centralized coordination and decision-making, because liberation means participation, and participation demands structures for communication, transparency, and accountability. We will take our cue from the neighborhood assemblies in Sunset Park, and the university assemblies at CUNY, who are pioneering a shift from general assemblies to constituent assemblies – assemblies in neighborhoods, workplaces, and schools. We will build there, because that’s where people actually live and work, where we have direct, concrete, and permanent relationships with a space, the institutions in it, and the people around us. We will create stable platforms for organizing and growth, and the foundations necessary for a concerted long-term struggle – from complex things like participatory decision-making forums and systems for internal education, to simple things like office space and phone trees. We will create mechanisms to meet people’s needs using the skills we honed at Liberty Square to provide things like food, legal aid, shelter, education, and more. We will do it all in a way that is in line with the values of the world we are fighting for.

Liberate. We will take new space, indoors and outdoors. We will do it because the movement needs bases in which it can create the values of a free society, begin to build the institutions to carry them out, meet peoples’ needs, and serve as a staging ground for the struggle against the status quo. We will take space for the movement to have a home and workplace, but we will also take space back for the communities from whom it has been stolen, and for the families who need it in order to survive. We mean not only to take space for its own sake, but to liberate it; we will transform foreclosed houses into homes, empty lots into gardens, abandoned buildings into hospitals, schools, and community centers. We will use the space we win for dreaming up the world to come.

Fight. We will continue to use direct action to intervene in the economic, political, and social processes that govern peoples’ lives. We will use our voices and our slogans, our banners and our bodies, to shine a spotlight on the classes and institutions that oppress and exploit. We will make it so that the tyrants who are ruining this planet cannot hold conferences or public events without our presence being felt. We will fight in a way that is not only symbolic, but also truly disruptive of the systems of oppression we face. We will block their doorways and their ports, interrupt their forums, and obstruct the systems of production and consumption they depend on. We will do it until they will have no choice but to disappear.

Spring Will Come

The conditions that brought us here – the brutal and systemic oppressions we face – aren’t going to disappear on their own. The window we have opened to the world being born can’t be closed. Now winter is here, but we are not afraid. We will face the cold with intention and wisdom, using it as an opportunity to grow our movement, deepen it, and build structures that can carry it forward. We will continue to build the world we want while fighting to topple the institutions that stand in its way.

It will take some time for the seeds we have planted to grow into the beautiful flowers they are meant to be. Patience. Spring will come.

Yotam Marom is a political organizer, educator, writer, and musician based in New York. He has been active in the Occupy Wall Street Movement, and is a member of the Organization for a Free Society. Yotam can be reached atYotam.marom@gmail.com.

And the Collapse of the Middle Class

“Class happens when some men, as a result of common experiences (inherited or shared), feel and articulate the identity of their interests as between themselves, and as against other men whose interests are different from (and usually opposed to) theirs.”

– E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class Continue Reading