From September 11 to September 17

From September 11 to September 17

By Dalia Céspedes

Januay 07/2012

Those of you who were in New York in the aftermath of the Twin Towers´ catastrophe will remember how in the arrogant atmosphere of that city where, to put it like Nike, impossible is nothing, a certain air of dolorous humanity was prevailing, along with an spontaneous solidarity present in a number of civic initiatives which the city´s inhabitants carried out so as to transform pain into love for life.

Nevertheless, September 11 was used also, and above all, to strengthen an “America against the world” sort of behavior, mixing fear and resentment in order to enhance the works of violence. Which explains why some New Yorkers went out to celebrate the death of Osama Bin Laden, and the New York Times greeted the execution with an-eye-for-an-eye discourses disguised in the anthropological philosophy of moral retributions.

And behold! 10 years and six days later, the same metropolis is shaken by a different cataclysm, that of commonsensical prescriptions about the impossibility of direct democracy, with no recognizable leadership, no considerable budgets, nor any programs which could be translatable to the logic of the usual intermediaries: professional politicians, the passive mass media and those intellectuals reluctant to abandon the comfort of think tanks.  

To those questioning the probabilities the Occupy Wall Street movement has to provoke real changes, those who participate in it answer that this movement is, in itself, a change. And they are right. First because OWS is not only an American phenomenon, it´s part of a massive wave of reaction to the global crisis, of civic contestation of state violence: economic and military violence, which are now, more that ever before, the executive branches of politics.

It is an act of Mediterranean justice that those barbarians of North Africa, those underdeveloped and suspicious “Arabs” have inspired this wave of civic conscience. As if all the hatred and suspicion disseminated by Hollywood, Bush and Co., were riding back now on an even hotter Saharan wind, charged with fresh dignity. 

There was thus something North African, something Greek and Spanish, in the days and nights of preparation anteceding the occupation of Liberty Plaza (also known as Zuccotti Park) on September 17. That´s the story told by some who participated in those meetings and which appears in a book –which my friend Nina Tomassef has just brought me from the Big Apple as a New Year´s present:  This changes everything, edited by Sarah van Gelder and the staff of YES! Magazine. It´s a compilation of 16 laconic texts -including a Naomi Klein´s speech on the spot and the “Declaration of the Occupation of New York City”, the first OWS official statement- most of them conceived in the heat of the battle. For that´s what it´s all about, a clash between the only two known human races: those who want to awake and those who don´t.

Readers won´t find a programmatic recipe book in the guise of “What we shall do and how” but rather a stimulating report of “what is already being done”. And that is captivating enough because occupation is not an intellectual asset, even if it shakes the dormant intellect, nor is it a factory to produce brand new political categories, even if it lends new force to that fourth class category which the modern citizen is.

 That occupation itself is a space of political creativity, social regeneration, and simple daring and effective human therapy is made clear by the editor van Gelder when she makes it clear that: “Cynics might question the importance of this deepening sense of community. But people who have lived in a competitive, isolating world are tasting a way of life built on support and inclusion, in some cases for the first time.”

Such a first time, in a selfish violent civilization, should not be overlooked. And neither should we minimize the fact that OWS has organically embraced non violence, meditation and direct non-hierarchical  democracy, horizontal assemblies which build consensus out perseverance in each person´s truth and not via numerical, or other, representational games.

As David Graeber, an anarchist writer and activist, puts it in an article devoted precisely to the consensus-based assembly, “in the same way human beings treated like children will tend to act like children, the way to encourage human beings to act as mature and responsible adults is to treat them as if they already are.” And it so happens that the manner these neighbors have chosen to finally stimulate themselves into action, leaving their “private” shells behind to undertake a difficult conversation with their own reality, seems mature and responsible enough, specially in comparison to those other neighbors who are still betting on that money-making inequality-producing machine which contemporary capitalism is, believing perhaps, as millions did before them, that they will never find themselves in the dark side of the spectrum.

So, let us observe with some attention and respect whatever this movement is doing, and about to do, because, in the end, today´s sleepers could be tomorrow´s indignados.

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