Video: a behind-the-scenes look at a successful grassroots campaign
We recently developed a local campaign to save a piece of Portugal’s natural beauty from private development. And it worked — in fact, it reached half its goals in only four weeks!
On May 12 we presented to DiEMers how we developed this project — what went well, and what didn’t. In case you missed it, check it out above.
This is a behind-the-scenes look at a successful campaign, and will hopefully give you ideas and inspiration for your own grassroots initiatives.
(The project was part of Campaign Accelerator, our incubator programme to boost grassroots activism. The next Campaign Accelerator round will be starting soon, once again open to all DiEM25 members).
Greece’s parliamentary irregularities during the COVID-19 pandemic
Personally, my role as MP has not changed during the pandemic, although I was barred from entering numerous committee meetings and plenary sessions, only later and eventually being granted the possibility to e-attend (to an otherwise live, in situ meeting). This, of course, defeats the purpose of parliamentary procedures.
As explained above, a discombobulating procedure was introduced, according to which (a) most MPs were asked to vote in absentia for parliamentary procedures they were not allowed to be physically present in, while (b) later a two-tier system was introduced, according to which while some MPs were present, other MPs could only participate via teleconferencing. Were parliamentary procedure in its entirety to go online, this maladroit two-tier system would not have been the case.
From the start, our party MeRA25 had requested full plenary sessions and committee meetings via teleconferencing. This has not been granted. Instead of this, we now have this malfunctioning ‘two-tier’ parliamentary system, with some MPs physically present and some MPs connected online.
The government’s ill methods of legislation in order to implement its measures during the pandemic
The great majority of COVID measures were introduced by the government not as standard legislation but as Presidential Executive Orders (Πράξεις Νομοθετικού Περιεχομένου), effective immediately and then, eventually, after some time, ratified by Parliament.
The Constitution allows for Presidential Executive Orders (Πράξεις Νομοθετικού Περιεχομένου) in extreme circumstances of dire urgency, yet the implicit context is that such Orders cannot but be particularly brief and minimal. Instead of this, the government has issued Presidential Executive Orders (Πράξεις Νομοθετικού Περιεχομένου) comprised of many dozens of articles, effectively masquerading what would have been standard proposed legislation as urgent Presidential Executive Orders, thereby bypassing standard parliamentary procedure. This is no picayune matter; the consequences for Greece’s polity are dire. This is a method of legislation that commenced during the MoU years.
To reiterate, most measures were introduced as Presidential Executive Orders (Πράξεις Νομοθετικού Περιεχομένου) and Ministerial Decrees enabled by said Orders, thus MPs were asked to vote for them (the Presidential Executive Orders, not the Ministerial Decrees of course) well after these had been put into effect, thus turning the Parliament into a decorative element of Greece’s polity, without so much as a modicum of decorum.
The great majority of important decisions are taken in a clandestine, cloak-and-dagger fashion. For example, when the government decided, contra our Constitution, to prohibit the 17th of November peaceful demonstrations (remembering the 1973 Polytechnic School uprising against the ’67-‘73 military dictatorship), the government claimed that this is what the health experts proposed. When the Opposition demanded that the minutes of the health experts’ meeting be published, those minutes included no such explicit proposal and no rationale backing it.
According to the government, its COVID-related political decisions merely comply with the proposals of the Health Experts Panel. However, the minutes of the Health Experts Panel’s meeting are not published, and when they are published after pressure, they are usually of the following form: the Chief Secretary of the Ministry proposes X Y Z measures, and the Health Experts agree unanimously, with no mention of the discussion that transpired published in the meetings. Government officials and politicians have discovered a new role for themselves as impromptu immunologists…
Criticism toward the governing party about the measures adopted in order to deal with the pandemic
The governing party has received the rightfully opprobrious criticism detailed above, as well as criticism for its (a) lack of proper support for the Healthcare System, the budget for which has been actually reduced during the pandemic, (b) its hurry to make the country available to tourists in 2020 (and, as announced, 2021 as well) with only minimal, of not merely decorative, precautions, thus leading to the current wave of the pandemic in all its destructive splendour, (c) the innumerable occurrences of governing party apparatchiks being vaccinated for COVID-19 well before their time would be due, in lieu of citizens actually having the right to the vaccine at that particular point in time, (d) COVID-related public contracts for friends of the party, and (e) the inability, or lack of will, to introduce actual mass testing — with a scheme to introduce DIY rapid-tests-turned-into-self-tests-at-home as a caricature of mass testing taking place only now. Needless to say, in my opinion this critique, in its entirety, is anything but baseless.
No proposal from the opposition has ever been taken into account by the government. Instead of that, the government mainly accuses the opposition in toto that it aims to ‘risk the lives of citizens for ephemeral political gains.’
The use of technology during the pandemic
As detailed above, instead of the whole parliamentary procedure being taken online, Greece’s government belatedly opted for a two-tier system. Rather than enhancing parliamentary procedures via technological means, this inserted a wedge, an anomaly, into the way Parliament is working and into parliamentary decision-making. Physically present MPs address an almost empty Plenary, they address mostly empty seats. Non-physically present MPs still vote via signed letter, not via a digital system. Technology could have been put to good use in enhancing the Parliament; this has not been the route taken. Instead of that, a caricature of parliamentary procedure has taken hold of the Hellenic Parliament.
Again, the consequences for Greece’s polity will prove to be dire in the long run.
This article was originally published by The Press Project, available here.
Yanis Varoufakis interviews Omar Barghouti (co-founder of the BDS movement for Palestinian rights) — May 24 at 20:30 CEST
While the massacre in Gaza is ongoing, and the repression of Palestinians everywhere is intensifying, how can progressives show meaningful solidarity with those suffering from, and struggling against, Israel’s regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid?
Looking to a future worth fighting for, is this the time for a SINGLE DEMOCRATIC STATE for Jews and Palestinians? Is the two-state solution the right objective for progressives or a formalisation of apartheid?
To discuss these questions, on Monday 24th May 2021 at 19.30BST, 20.30 CET, 21.30EET Yanis Varoufakis, MeRA25 leader and DiEM25 co-founder, will interview Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the BDS movement for Palestinian rights (*), co-recipient of the 2017 Ghandi Peace Award.
(*) BDS has emerged as a consensus movement that is increasingly recognized around the world, by trade unions, social movements, racial and climate justice groups, churches, among others, as the most effective form of solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and equality. Instead of adopting a specific political solution, it strategically focuses on ending international complicity in Israel’s system of oppression, as was done in the struggle to end South African apartheid.
Tell us your story!
DiEM Voice and Green New Deal for Europe have just announced the “Tell us your story!” campaign!
Across Europe citizens like you and me face a large variety of problems. Low wages, high rents, living in dangerous environments, toxic pollution, decent health care deprivation and so many other issues are today’s standard.
The solutions for these problems are covered by the Blueprint for Europe’s Transition, where DiEM25 outlines a comprehensive plan on how to fix current adversities with concrete and effective economic, environmental and democratic measures.
The good news is that European fiscal rules don’t even need to be drastically changed for this to happen; if we have the political power we can do so from tomorrow on.
Social justice, transparency and the green transition as a new economical model are our goal and we will keep on fighting until we achieve it. Let’s leave behind the fetishism of GDP and austerity of the many.
To do so, we need to speak up and tell our stories! By sharing, we will get closer to each other and empower one another, with real and tangible narratives. Let’s stand together.
Tell us your story is a video campaign that will bring to light real stories of real people. Just like you and me.
So hurry up and see how to submit your story here
mέta is here! (DiEM25’s Centre for Postcapitalist Civilisation) — watch the digital launch
Following the Crash of 2008, Capitalism has begun morphing into a form of Technofeudalism – a transformation that the pandemic accelerated and reinforced.
We are, thus, already living in postcapitalist times. Dystopian times. Times that bear no resemblance to those we dreamed of as Socialists, as Democrats, as children of the Enlightenment.
Can we overturn Technofeudalism? Can our postcapitalist times escape the spiral of inhuman exploitation of humans and climate catastrophe?
Through Research & Art, Argument & Poem, mέta, our Centre for Postcapitalist Civilisation is working for a rupture from our grim present – a feat that presupposes a capacity to perceive and imagine the world anew.
On Thursday May 13, 2021, mέta was launched digitally in the midst of the pandemic. You can watch the video below. It was just the beginning. The complete program (research, educational, cultural, musical and artistic) will be announced soon. Onwards!
Techno-Feudalism and the End of Capitalism – interview with Yanis Varoufakis
Following 2017’s Talking to My Daughter: A Brief History of Capitalism is 2020’s Another Now: Dispatches From an Alternative Present. Where Talking to My Daughter was, well, exactly what it says on the tin, Another Now is Yanis Varoufakis’s first adventure in fiction. Future technology causes a rip between universes, giving our heroes Costa, Iris and Eva a glimpse at what their lives could have been, had the crisis of 2008 gone a bit differently.
Alice Flanagan interviewed Yanis Varoufakis ahead of his online talk for Sheffield’s Festival of Debate on 7 May.
Q: What prompted you to jump genres in this way?
For decades, I was avoiding writing a book by which to answer the question, ‘Well mate, if you don’t like capitalism, what’s the alternative?’ I was avoiding that question like the plague, because it’s just so hard to indulge oneself in writing a modern utopia. Yet another utopic book.
But at the same time I felt the need to answer the question, because we tried Marx’s way. Marx never spoke about communism. He declared himself a communist, and spent all his life describing capitalism, but he never ever, not once did he describe communism. When he was pushed remorselessly, he came up with a nice slogan, which was “from each according to their capacities, to each according to his needs.” Ok great, but how does this work?
So he said it’s for the revolutionaries to decide what the world will look like. Well, that didn’t turn out very well, because you know, Stalin created the gulag and threw communists in it to begin with, before everyone else joined them.
And today, especially with young people who don’t give a damn about the left, or about politicians or political parties, trade unions even, if there’s any chance we can mobilise them to get involved in planning an alternative to the dystopic present and future ahead of us… Well there isn’t, unless we can offer them something worth fighting for, a vision of a society that might take hard work to construct, but will be worthwhile doing.
And then it hit me at some point that the only way I could write it was as a political science fiction novel. Both the novel and the science fiction were important. The science fiction, because I didn’t want to write something like, ‘In the future, we can do this that and the other.’
The ‘other now’ comes from my generation’s great failure: the response to 2008. That was a dismal moment for capitalism. Capitalism was imploding, far worse than it is today, and we missed our chance. We missed our moment to steer the socio-economic process in a completely different direction. So I thought it was useful to imagine how we would have done that, with the benefit of hindsight.
And then the novel part comes in because of the problem I have, that I disagree with myself on how a democratised socialist world should work. I’m not sure.
So the best way of capturing that uncertainty was to have different characters, each one of them expressing my views. In this way I can relay to the reader that I am in conflict with myself.
Q: The parallel economy you describe takes a form you call ‘corpo-syndicalist’, one marked by “markets without capitalism” and Universal Basic Income. Is UBI the way forward?
The first ingredient isn’t UBI; it’s the end of tradable shares. The idea that Rupert Murdoch can buy the shares of any newspaper in the world, and effectively turn them into his own mouthpieces, is absurd.
I mean, if that was not the case, and I came to you and said, ‘Look, I have an idea. Let’s chop up into tiny little pieces the ownership rights to every company, and then let’s trade those freely and allow the very rich to buy all the corporations,’ you would think that I am mad. That I am mad and dangerous. Yet this is what we have.
So moving from the oligarchic ownership model, where you buy as many votes… and this is how you should think of shares; shares are votes! And they are the votes in the assemblies where serious decisions are made. The serious decisions are not made in the Houses of Parliament. They are not made in the Congress or the Bundestag. They are made in the boards of directors and the general assemblies of Goldman Sachs, of Volkswagen, of Google, and so on.
This is where the big decisions are being made, the decisions that determine your life, as well as life on the planet. So these are the votes that count. And to say that there is a market for votes and the rich can buy them is the end of democracy. The democracy we have is simply a piece of propaganda. We have an oligarchy with elections and the elections are bought by the oligarchy.
So the first part is ‘one person, one share, one vote.’ That’s a very radical part, but also so simple. That’s what attracts me to it, that it is such a simple idea, and it’s what we already have in the political sphere. You have one vote; you can’t sell it, you can’t rent it, you can’t buy more. You just exercise it.
Number two is a digital bank account that everybody has with a central bank. Because at the moment you can have a bank account at the Royal Bank of Scotland or Barclays, but you cannot have a bank account with the Bank of England. But the Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays do have a bank account with the Bank of England, which means that when the central bank is printing money, they can’t give it to you, they give it to them. And [the commercial banks] give it to the large corporations, who take that money and go buy shares. This is what we have now!
So the first thing you do is ban the trading of shares and say one share per employee, and the second thing you do is you cut out the middleman. Suddenly everything changes. Everything.
Firstly, you will never have a bank account with Barclays. Why would you want one? Why would you need one? You wouldn’t. You would have an account with the state central bank. Digital, with a smartphone app, with a plastic card.
If that happens with everyone in Britain, with everyone in the Eurozone, and so on, everybody has one row of a spreadsheet. That’s what the central bank will be. Well, if that is the case, why can’t the Bank of England then give you £1,000? To each of you, just add them to every row. That’s UBI for you!
You see, I was never in favour of UBI when it came out. I’m old enough to have been involved in the debates over UBI in the 1980’s and I was not a supporter of the idea. I was not a supporter of it because the idea then was it would be funded by taxation. I don’t like this idea. At all.
Because if you go to a hardworking blue-collar person, and you say to them, “I’m going to tax you and give the money to someone who does nothing, or to a rich person,” they say, “What? You are going to tax me in order to give money to someone who doesn’t need it, or who doesn’t deserve it?” Then the whole thing becomes toxic.
Instead you say to them, ‘Look, everyone takes it, because we are on this spreadsheet, and it’s just numbers and we add it on every month.’ And to the extent that these numbers facilitate economic activity, you dont have inflation, because there’s more stuff that has been produced.
Anyone who says to me that universal basic income means people will not be motivated to work, I say, what?! Zuckerberg has billions! And he works day and night, you know? The rich never say this about their kids. They never say, ‘Oh no, he shouldn’t have a trust fund. If they aren’t starving they won’t be motivated.’ Only about the poor do they say this.
Q: You say that, in the universe where capitalism survives past 2008, this pandemic only serves to deeper entrench capitalism, the same way the crisis did. Do you see things going that way?
I call it techno-feudalism. I don’t call it capitalism anymore. We need to distinguish what was going on before 2008 from what was going on after 2008.
Amazon is not a market; it’s a fiefdom. And it’s a fiefdom that’s connected to other fiefdoms, like Facebook, through the cloud services of Amazon, which are much greater and bigger than Amazon.com. It’s like a much more technologically advanced form of feudalism.
And this is completely sustained by central bank money. So you have the combination of the king, the sovereign, the state, the central bank and the feudal lords, the techno-feudal lords.
You can see that this system is constantly doubling-down on our extinction as a species. We had the pandemic and what did they do? More of the same. They give them more money. They give it to the same people.
They gave some money to the people in furlough wages and so on, but that is only temporary. There’s been no real investment in human capital; in students, in cancelling debt. They’re not doing any of that.
They have no problem plucking the money tree for themselves. Sometimes they spread some of the money they plucked from the money tree to the many, but in a limited and transient manner. And the stagnation of the capitalist system, the techno-feudalist system as I call it, gets more and more entrenched.
Q: How do we get from here to there, ‘there’ being the ‘other now’?
You know, of course, what Bernstein said when he was in New York and someone asked him how to get to Carnegie Hall? ‘Practice, practice, practice!’
The equivalent here is ‘organise, organise, organise!’ We need a political movement. In the chapter ‘How Capitalism Died’, I’m not saying this is what we need to do, but I give an example of what might work. It’s my best attempt to show the enormity of the task, but also the feasibility of it.
As long as we combine traditional forms of action – democratic politics, financial engineering, consumer boycotts using the power of the internet – with having a very clear plan in our heads as to how we want things to work. What do we do with corporate law? I am proposing one share, one vote. What do we do with money? Well, we discussed some of that.
Let’s say we were to say on the first of May, let’s have a day of action and boycott Amazon just for one day with this demand: a substantial pay rise for workers. And we organise internationally, and we manage to reduce sales on Amazon by 8%. I’m not saying 80% – just 8%.
Well, Jeff Bezos is going to lose a little bit of money that day, but not much. But if we publicise well and we are so successful as to reduce that amount of sales, the share price is going to go down.
Jeff Bezos is getting rich not because of the profits of Amazon, but because of the increase of the share price. You’ve heard that he made what, $60 billion since the beginning of the pandemic? That’s not because of the profits of Amazon. Amazon is not that profitable. They have huge revenues, but they also have costs. The actual profits are nothing like that. It’s maybe one billion altogether, but he made 60! From the share price.
So if we hit the share price, through this kind of international action, you’ve really hit him.
Q: So the revolution needs a good publicist – is that what you’re saying?
I call it propaganda. I hate the word ‘publicity’, especially the word ‘communications’. I’m old fashioned. Call it propaganda! They have propaganda; we need our propaganda.
The powers-that-be present their propaganda as the truth and their opponents’ propaganda as propaganda. But it’s all propaganda! Progressive propaganda versus regressive propaganda. Propaganda which is good for your mind, which tells the truth.
Anyway, I just can’t stand those advertising PR people who constantly talk about ‘communication’. You’re not interested in communicating anything. You’re interested in brainwashing people.
‘Communication’ is very neutral, like me telling you tomorrow it’s going to rain. That’s not what their job is. Their job is to turn you against your self interest, and community interest.
Q: In your alternate universe, global capitalism is brought down by a movement with its origins in a utilities strike in Yorkshire. Was there a particular reason you chose us?
Oh yes. Everything I have done in this book is autobiographical. I moved to England in 1978 and the first strike I was involved with was a steel plant in Yorkshire. I was participating in a picket line there. So that’s why – it was my first personal involvement in the movement.
Q: I’ll admit I was hoping the answer would be, “Ok, I’ve worked it out, and if we can get just Yorkshire to strike…”
Yes, there is one other reason! The Yorkshire water company was, immediately after privatisation, one of the worst. And I think it would be good to target them.
I find it impossible that a place like Yorkshire, which was drenched in rain, had water shortages. It takes a real cock-up to make that happen.
Response from the Zapatistas to DiEM25
Hermanoas (word including all genders, made of hermanos/hermanas = sisters/brothers), sisters and brothers:
Comrades (male and female), compañeroas (word including all genders, made from compañeros/compañeras):
We received with pleasure your invitation so that, within the framework of the Zapatista Journey For Life, we may meet, talk and listen to each other about our histories, our dreams and nightmares, our rages and our struggles.
We know well that what we are proposing is not someone else’s fight. It is not a fight that should support and offer solidarity. No. It’s everyone’s own fight. By each in their own geography and by each according to their own calendar. Intrinsically each one puts up that fight. We should not stand doing nothing, watching misfortunes happening, listening to injustices and crimes, with resignation and conformity.
We well know that, among all the near and far laments, there is a tremor that cracks open the whole world: the sob of the earth. And not the earth as the dust, the color that we are, but everything: the valleys and mountains, the wind, the waters, the plants, the animals, the people. But the earth does not resign itself, it also resists, it rebels against that death.
And then we understand that it is not that the earth is sobbing, but that it is calling to us. And it calls for us to fight against death, to fight for life.
Then we, Zapatistas, are so pleased that we are going to discuss this matter in person. And, yes, about other matters as well. But above all about this, our fight, yours and ours.
So we write to you to tell you that we accept as an honour your invitation. And to be thorough, we ask of you the following:
The most important thing is, as you must know, that this fight is bigger than each one of us. It is not a matter of nationality, colour, sexual and/or social identity, language, culture, belief or disbelief, political and ideological position, individual or collective history. It is a matter of humanity. And we also know, however, that not everyone is willing to face this fight.
And we know that a fistful of capitalist criminals are the judges and the executioners of this war against humanity. They are few, yes. But even if there were many, even if they were the majority, we do not fight to be popular and have lots of applause, followers, likes or high percentages in the polls.
No, we fight and we will fight because it is our duty, because somehow we feel in our guts (or as each may name their heart) that it is not right like this, that it is not good for anyone: the violence against women, the destruction of nature, the persecution of differences, the exploitation of people, the contempt for the other, the thievery disguised as legality, the sentencing to slavery and death of children, the arrogance of those who have it all and hide that they have it only because they despised, stole, looted, exploited, persecuted, imprisoned, disappeared, raped and murdered under different flags, national, religious, racial, of language, ideological, cultural, sexual, whatever the Bosses can come up with.
And, although our struggles are different, distinct, and even contradictory and contrary, at least we Zapatistas want to know, to learn from you. Suddenly, who knows, it may be, both mutually, your struggle and ours, we discover that between so many and too many differences, distances and contradictions, we have something in common.
We Zapatistas put it like this: there is a “NO”. Sometimes individual, sometimes collective. Sometimes recent, sometimes already past several calendars. With the voice and the silence of each one, with our fists and teeth, with the rage that raises us even in the seemingly most definitive defeat, we say “NO!”. That “NO!”, we Zapatistas call “rebellion.” We rebel against the powerful, against their violence, their lies, their destruction, the death they plant across the planet.
But that “NO!” sometimes just stays there. That is, in survival mode. Not to die. Not to stop being what we choose to be. But it then happens that someone asks us if there is only that No!”. If everything just stays there, in a “let’s see who wins”: they (the masculine, because although some are female, the entire system is patriarchal) seeking to destroy us, annihilate us, erase us; and we, resisting so that they not destroy us, so that they not annihilate us, so that they not erase us from the world and from history.
And it may be that the someone who asks us this, is our own heart, individual or collective. And then, in trying to answer, we start looking for the how, the when, the with what and with whom. This is what we here call “resistance”. That is, to search and to build another path, another thing, another world. And then we see that they come together, that the resistance and the rebellion are joined together.
For example, we Zapatistas, what is it we do with this trip? Well, we rebel against a history that is, moreover, imposed on us as our destiny. And we then want to make another history, together, collectively, finding and learning from many paths, many rebellions and resistances. And what if we find out it’s the same? Ah, right?
But what if not, what if it is not the same, what if it is different, distant, distinct, contrary, and has nothing in common with ours? What are we going to do? Get discouraged? Get angry with those who are different? Try to convince them that they are the same as us? Force them? Impose on them our thinking, ways, tactics and strategy, by reason or by force? Try to convince them by the good way or the bad? That they surrender? That they sell themselves? That they give up?
And that one which wants everyone to think and do the same is called homogenizing. And when a thought, mode, calendar, geography is imposed on everything, it is called hegemony. Yes, we know that those words not only mean that, but we take those words like that. If you want, before you correct us and throw us a roll of semantics, use the word “domination”: the man of the woman, the hetero of the different, the white of the black, the employer of the employee, the etcetera of the other etcetera.
And so we think about it: What if what seems to be a weakness, is actually a fortress? What if that which makes our struggles different (its calendar, its geography, its way, its step, its company, its route, its destination) is what unhinges the beast? We know that they tell us “divide and conquer”, but it is not that our struggles are divided, but that they are different. We also know that they do not tell us that behind “unity is strength”, what stands is “in the union there are those who command and those who obey.”
So what do we, Zapatistas that we are, propose? None of that. Neither the division nor the union. We propose to talk, to listen. Perhaps more can be reached, an agreement. Or maybe not. Perhaps we listen with attention and respect and, in the end, we say goodbye with a: “well yes, I learned that you are more of an idiot than I thought”; or with a “well, I have learnt what we should not do”; or a “I thought I was wrong, but after that I realized that there are others who are worse”.
Well, herman@s (siblings), compañer@s (comrades), you will wonder what all this stuff is about, since what you want to know is how many of us will arrive and when. Well, for sure we are telling you that we are going to talk with whoever invites us to talk, that is, to talk and listen. And it is more than probable that we talk with people who are not only different from you, but who are also opponents and even current or past enemies. And it is more than likely that you will get annoyed and angry about why we talk to such and such since they are such and such, who etcetera.
So we don’t want you to be fooled into thinking or believing that we are only going to talk to those who think and act the same as you. We say it clearly: we go with whoever invites us (of course, if we have the right money, time, health). If this is a problem for you, if you put a condition to your invitation that we should only meet with those that you approve of, just say it and there is no problem. Likewise, if it is true that we are fighters, well, we will meet in the fight. So you can withdraw the invitation or ask us to decline. So we would say that we are honoured by your invitation, but we can’t accept it. Or whatever is done in those cases. The point is that we are not going to judge and condemn any struggles; we will learn about yours and, if you want, you can learn about ours.
And what is certain is that we are not going to impose a way of seeing the world, a method of struggle, a thought, a way. That would be trying to conquer you, and that, as your own struggle says, is not possible because you revolt and resist, or whatever you name your struggles. If you could be conquered, you would not have invited us.
That said, we ask from you:
- To tell us how many Zapatistas you can receive, host and provide food for. Preferably we want to be together, that is, in the same place. This is not only because families will travel together, but also because we support each other, for example in the language, and some of us only use our native language: that one of Mayan origin. For those who are not couples, please separate Zapatista women, Zapatista others (otroas: word for others including all genders) and Zapatista men.
- Which dates suit you best or is there no limitation for you regarding the time of our visit. That is to say something like: “we want you to come on that day, at that hour and that you leave on that date “, or ” you can come whenever you want and whenever you can and you will be welcome here”. Be careful: open date invitations are preferable, but do not exclude those of a precise date. For example: reindeers do not belong in the open calendar category, but they have their own time.
- If you can transfer the above number of Zapatistas (that you can host) from one point of the European Union to your place (geography) and back. We need this in order to find out if we can afford it.
- If you can support the return to our place (geography) because we do not want to stay and live in the places we will visit.
- If you are part of a geographic union or whatever this is called. And if the response to these issues is from the entire union or from a group, collective, town, assembly, organization, movement, or as each one is called.
- If you have activities to propose to participate in. Separating on the one hand those that are meetings for discussion, talking and listening, and on the other hand those which belong in the category of larger meetings, marches, festivals, round tables, interviews, rallies, etc., meaning those that go beyond your group.
- If any or all of the activities you propose have any special characteristics. For example: a meeting of women fighters. We would not even think of sending men to such a meeting, but if you think it is necessary to specify it, do it: “no males are allowed … no beetles. Cats-dogs yes, previous hormonal analysis ”. Just take into account that some comrades go with their babies and some are males, although they are not more than 10 years old. Another example?: “people over 99 years old are not allowed without permission in writing from their parents or guardians ”.
- If you propose some “extra” activities. For example: we are not interested in the “history” of the above (those in power) that venerates itself or monuments where Power boasts, although we are interested in culture and art. We would prefer a tour through the streets and neighbourhoods where freedom confronts fascism in its different meanings, community and union assemblies, neighbourhoods and factories, migrant camps, meet native peoples, efforts-initiatives in defense of nature, the struggles against megaprojects and against all kinds of impositions in the name or not of “progress” and “civilization”, and everything that has to do with Europe of below (peoples), instead of the “palaces” of kings, the “malls” and the European disneys. Do not discard concerts, festivals, theatre, arts exhibitions, dance and, of course, football games (Although do not be surprised if the delegation celebrates plays and goals regardless of whether they are from the opposing team to the hosts – don’t worry, just tell the misguided: “those are the damn enemies”, so that they change the cheers for boos-. Sure, insulting the referee is the best in those cases, that is something universal and has nothing to do with football -philias and -phobias).
- Take Note: in the case of women’s sports matches (there is at least one soccer match already agreed in Hamburg, Germany), it is expected that the Europe of below will support the Zapatista team in an unconditional, massive, sonorous, festive and forceful way. Even if we usually lose on the field of play, a defeat in the stands would be regrettable. Think about the return of the comrades and their anecdotes: interviewed on their return by the Tercias comrades, there is a big difference between the “we lost 7 to 0”, and the “it was very nice, there were many comrades from there shouting and making noise”. In this case, if the interviewer from the Tercia (third) insists on knowing the final score, it is to be expected that the Zapatista player will respond with a “how can I remember?”, and she elaborates on a description of the stands, their colours, their sounds and she concludes with something like “those comrades speak very differently, but they are very happy.”
- If you can provide a back and forth translation. This means, to be able to translate in your language what we say and to be able to have your words translated to us.
- If there are any tips in order to attend an activity. For example: “balaclava of etiquette”, “casual clothing”, “beetles without armour or sharp weapons”. Or things which people will choose or exclude.
- If you have any questions. Of course, it should not be an interview disguised as a question, or existential questions, personal or private.
- If you know of any person, group, collective, indigenous people, movement, organization or anything similar that are sad because they did not manage to send their invitation, tell them there is no problem. As many, too many have arrived, we have not finished reading all of them, so a few more can be sneaked in without problem. Deadline: 12 April 2021 at 2400 Mexico time.
Don’t worry about the dates of the visits and about the activities (if they are not before July 2021), because, although we can only spend 3 months in European geography, we can organize ourselves to arrive in shifts. That is, it can be throughout the second semester of 2021 or even in 2022.
We remind you that the first group of the invasion would arrive by sea in the second half of June 2021 and it is small, symbolic. Accomplished that beachhead, starting from the first week of July more and more Zapatistas will arrive in waves in European lands, according to the invitations that are accepted and, of course, according to our budget.
Finally, we insist that, although we are not closed to massive activities, rallies, marches, etc. (we even consider that some are and will be desirable and necessary), our main objective is meetings with people, groups, collectives, villages, native peoples, assemblies, movements, organizations. In general, wherever people can speak and listen.
For this reason, we ask you to put special emphasis on these types of meetings. With you and with those you fight together with.
Well that’s all for now, comrades (compañeroas, compañeras, compañeros), siblings, friends and enemies.
See you soon.
Click here to read our message welcoming the Zapatistas in Europe.
Censorship can never save democracy
Censorship by corporate behemoths is nothing to aspire to.
“Who watches the watchmen?”, asks the graffiti scrawled, over and over, on walls and buildings across New York City in Alan Moore and David Gibbons’ seminal graphic novel Watchmen.
Moore and Gibbons’ superhero tale is one of power, opaque and unchecked, concentrated in few hands. The question in the graffiti is, therefore, vital. But one must approach it with care. Rather than diluting it and making it accountable, a misguided intervention risks simply mutating that power into an even more nefarious version of itself: more opaque, more unchecked, more concentrated.
“What’s on your mind?”
In our time and place, the watchmen of public discourse congregate in the glossy, secretive corporate headquarters of Silicon Valley. Big tech companies have accumulated unimaginable wealth by ushering in a new form of capitalism in which we are the product, with a myriad of data points being collected at every second about our innermost thoughts and feelings, then churned into algorithms that convert them into behavioural predictions that are finally sold to interested parties of all sorts, eager to profit off of our emotions, anxieties and fears. Whenever obstacles to this intolerable system are raised, these corporations will fight tooth and nail to defend it.
What they had never shown much interest in, however, is policing and censoring speech. Not out of any sense of civic duty, of course: it’s simply bad for business. Regardless, one of the great ironies of the past five years or so is how the Mark Zuckerbergs, Jack Dorseys and Sundar Pichais of the world have been dragged, kicking and screaming, onto the judge’s bench of online political speech.
The guardians
Crucial to that push are traditional media. Disinformation, they argue, is one of the great perils of our time. As the narrative goes, it brought demagogues such as Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro to power, paved the way for Brexit and is behind the rise in populism and conspiracy theories across the Western world.
The dangers of disinformation are real and should not be understated. But, although social media accelerates its diffusion, false and ideologically motivated news reporting is in no way a novelty. One needs only to look at the lies peddled by revered publications such as The New York Times and The Washington Post that helped stoke the flames for the invasion of Iraq, The Guardian’s baseless reporting of Trump’s presidential campaign manager meeting Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London and whitewashing of the 2016 coup in Brazil, as well as mainstream Western media’s misinformation on, or outright support of, other recent coup attempts in Bolivia and Venezuela.
These same institutions now try to position themselves as the safekeepers of Truth in an age ostensibly dominated by QAnons, Russian bots and deranged Trump tweets, and point their fingers squarely at social media and their permissive content policies as the ones to blame. The neoliberal establishment, and even many of the most progressive of progressives, joined the chorus demanding that Silicon Valley giants introduce stricter restrictions on the political content their platforms host.
Some went as far as invoking the sanctity of private ownership to argue that, because these are private companies, they should be free to ban anyone and anything they wish from their services. Presumably these are the same people who would rightly be outraged if a shop owner refused to serve a customer based on their ethnicity, gender identity or sexual orientation.
It’s a stunning turn of events. The likes of Zuckerberg – a man who has amassed unprecedented power based on an equally unprecedented violation of billions of people’s private human experiences – found themselves surrounded by some of their harshest critics, now begging to hand them more power: a mandate to police and outright censor public discourse. As if they, of all people, could be trusted to wield it.
You’re fired
Nervous that their thriving empires could be put under even more serious scrutiny if they didn’t relent, tech companies complied. Accounts were suspended, not only on the Right. The dissemination of certain news stories was forbidden because they came from unpleasant or disreputable sources, even though their substance was not disproven. The mere fact that information may have been obtained through hacking became reason to slap a warning of reproach onto it, never mind the fact that activists such as Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden in the US and Walter Delgatti Neto in Brazil broke countless laws to reveal the crime and corruption hidden at the highest levels of society.
On January 7 and 8, Facebook and Twitter suspended Donald Trump, depriving the then-President of the United States of his main means of communication, leading to celebration by much of the establishment and many on the Left and to condemnation from figures such as Bernie Sanders, Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Angela Merkel, who understood the ominous precedent that had just been set. Twitter’s suspension is permanent, while Facebook’s was upheld on May 5th.
We should abhor politicians like Trump and their bigotry, misogyny and undermining of trust in the democratic process. But to allow anyone, let alone Silicon Valley’s oligarchs, the power to censor political speech from common individuals and senior elected officials alike is to ask to live in a world in which Zuckerberg and his ilk get to decide what is true and what is false, what can be said and what can’t. Today, the biggest loser in that world is the populist Right. Tomorrow, who knows?
To catch a thought
Disinformation is not the cause of our social ills but a symptom of a world in which public trust in elites has crumbled under the weight of austerity, backroom dealing, imperialism and astonishing levels of inequality. Similarly, the rejection of free speech by some progressives amounts to an admission of the Left’s widespread failure to speak to this disillusioned public and win them over.
Thoughts cannot be policed, to forbid their expression is not to erase their existence. Let us reject censorship and instead fight hateful ideas and lies with the only means possible: the power of our facts, the persuasion of our arguments and the command of our narratives.
Let us also curtail big tech corporations and their unconscionable business practices. As we at DiEM25 argue, tech must be democratised, surveillance capitalism stopped and its monopolies broken up.
Democracy with watchmen is no democracy at all.
Lucas Febraro
Berlin-based digital communications expert
Member of the Green New Deal for Europe campaign
Launch Event: Centre for Post-Capitalist Civilisation — Thursday, May 13 at 7PM CEST
Join us on Thursday, May 13 at 7PM CEST for the inaugural event of the brand-new Centre for Postcapitalist Civilisation.
The event — which will premiere on mέta’s YouTube channel and Facebook page facebook.com/meta.cpc — will feature artistic performances organised by the theatre group “Astronauts,” circus artists Angeliki Nikolakaki and Tina Gourtzi, as well as Vassilis Koundouris and Violet Louise of Studio19, and will also count with the participation of mέta’s Advisory Board members:
- Noam Chomsky (Linguist, philosopher, MIT)
- Brian Eno (Musician)
- Iliana Fokianaki (Founder and Artistic Director, State of Concept Athens)
- James K. Galbraith (Economist and Professor of Government, University of Austin, Texas)
- Antara Haldar (Empirical Legal Studies, University of Cambridge)
- Srećko Horvat (Philosopher, writer and activist)
- Anish Kapoor (Sculptor)
- Ken Loach (Filmmaker)
- Beral Madra (Art critic and curator)
- Preethi Nallu (Writer and researcher)
- Shirin Neshat and Shoja Azari (filmmakers and visual artists)
- Nikos Papastergiadis (Professor, School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne)
- Mari Velonaki (Social Robotics Researcher, University of New South Wales and media artist)
- Nikos Theocharakis (Professor of economic theory, University of Athens)
- Paul Tyson (Senior Research Fellow, IASH, University of Queensland)
- Yanis Varoufakis (MP, MeRA25 Secretary, Economics professor, University of Athens).
A livestreamed press conference will take place right after the event, at approximately 8:15PM CEST, with:
- Host: Kostas Raptis — Press Officer, mέta
- Danae Stratou — Chair, mέta
Sissy Velissariou — Vice-Chair, mέta
Sotiris Mitralexis — Academic Director, mέta,
Nikos Kanarelis — Cultural Director, mέta.
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About the Centre for Postcapitalist Civilisation (mέta)
The Centre for Postcapitalist Civilisation (mέta) was established in 2020 as a not-for-profit research organisation in order to facilitate the exchange of ideas in a radical direction and to support the pan-European movement DiEM25, the Greek political party MeRA25, and the Progressive International (all of which are represented in mέta’s Steering Committee).
mέta seeks to employ a dual approach, combining the academic/political/educational with the cultural and the artistic. mέta’s activities include research and publishing initiatives, the organisation of festivals, seminars, workshops and events –academic and cultural/artistic alike– focusing on the political, social, economic, ecological and cultural dimensions of the challenges we face at the national, European, and global level.
Its current Steering Committee includes Danae Stratou (Chair), Professor Sissy Velissariou (Vice-Chair), Eleni Spetsioti (Secretary), Michael Hatzitheodorou (Treasurer), Ivana Nenadović and David Adler (members).More information on its international Advisory Board may be found here.
Address: Mavrommateon 15, 10434 Athens, Greece
Website: http://metacpc.org