noborder/precarity thoughts from the South of Spain

¡Viva San Precario!
In transit-Entránsito through MayDaySur

1> Yes, we can! Determination and construction of a post-identitary common
sense

It is no comfortable to inhabit a territory where the big truths are
falling down to pieces, where impotency, conformism and fear are
tonalities that accompany contemporary life. In that very territory, we
decided to grab strongly the proposal of MayDaySur without really knowing
clearly how it would work. It was in fact a political experiment that
arouse lots of doubts and some bad auguries. In the process of gestation
of this creature we shared many moments of vertigo and indecision.
However, some odd trust had installed among us. "Odd" because it didn´t
provide us with a clearly defined plan, it was more a kind of instinctive
gesture. and a "trust" due to the organizative capability of our
movements, to the intelligence, desire, creativity and strength that we
are able to deploy when connecting and working together. We also did trust
the "multitude", that experiences directly the "precarization" and still
carries, in its ambivalence, the power of rebelliousness and disobedience.
We think that the building process of this MayDaySur has proved us that
the collective, excited about creating a new "common" and generous work,
going beyond rigid identities is able to produce very powerful
connections. We celebrate the intuition and determination in the
beginnings of this process, as well as the generosity and enormous
disposition to collective working demonstrated by the movements in Seville
in particular, and by all those who composed this true event.


2> New political animals: flexgeneration

-"Not a single worker in here. We should have gone with the Unions. This
is a "botellón (=spanish term for young meetings to drink alcohol in the
streets)!"- shouted indignant a union mate.
-"Behave yourself, fuck! This is no demonstration, this is a "puterío"
(=despective Spanish term for sex work)!- cried an overflowed policeman.

The composition and the way of being-in in a demonstration left many
perplexed. All those fierce-looking people, that music, those
watchwords and, to make matters worse, demonstrating the 1st of May!, the
traditional working day. These two personages share, everyone in his way,
a feeling of strangeness towards the new and singular expression forms of
the precariat. It gets difficult, both for the Order forces and for a
certain leftist sector, to understand the codes and modalities of action
of those bodies. What are we celebrating? The joy of taking back the
streets and giving a contundent visibility to that precarity as conjugated
in 1rst person. We demonstrate that we are blazing a trail to get things
upside down. We feel that we are thousands who share similar situations
and that together we can overcome them. For us the political practice,
even at the hardest working time, is a joyful passion. In the words of
Gilles Deleuze : "don´t you think that you ought to be sad to be militant,
even if what you fight against is abominable. What does possess a
revolutionary force is the bond of desire with reality (and not its
getaway under form of representation)". We talk about a new generation of
workers and that means that those living today from their work cannot be
reduced to an unique identity.

Today the soundsystem, the beats, the dj´s and the "speakers" are to the
new generations what country orchestras, the bass drums, the noisy tracks
and the megaphone were for the former ones. It would be a bit absurd to
maintain that expressive forms, communicative codes, the "ways of feeling"
and even the "class aesthetics" would remain the same throughout the
history.


3> Expressive richness of the rebel "precariat"

We understand the communication as raw material for politics. The
expressive, creative and enunciative capability that we deployed because
of and for the preparation of this event is just a sample of the
imaginative power on which we count. Virgins and Saints flooding Seville,
"tronos" (=spanish term for thrones carrying images of the Passion of
Jesuchrist used in religious parades) flowing through as hung in the air,
moved by the precarious multitude while passers-by couldn´t help but
laughing at the show. Speakers widespread all over the demonstration that
invade the streets with their cries to the rythm of the collective body.
Amusing "piquetes-cofradía" squatting the job centers to break the
commanding silence. Innumerable machines assuring the memory-image of the
event and contributing to the construction of the new urban myth:
MayDaySur.
How many times have we realize the sadness and disaffection that provoke
in us those 1st of May demonstrations empty of strength, imagination and
conflict? The MayDayParade breaks for one day the circulation-consume
metropolitan meaning field to turn it upside down. Going through the
streets collectively, joyfully and powerfully, stoping the traffic,
pointing out together at the places of the precarious city while we shout:
Here we are!, We are invisible but we are making the world!, We are
invisible but we don´t want to be so anymore!


4> Eurovision

It´s impossible not to admit that the EuroMayDay 2005 mobilized 200.000
people in 20 european cities, therefore it appears as obvious that we are
becoming a part of the irruption of a powerful network of movements that
encompasses the whole continent. In the face of the post-Genoa situation,
the crisis of "contrasummits" and the social forums, the process of
euromayday launches an strategic project of political construction. And
this is so because the precarization is the central issue in the
contemporary social reorganization. We, as millions of people, know very
well what we´re talking about.

Europe actually exists, it´s a territory of concrete and open conflict.
It´s clear that the constituion model of the Europe of the powerful goes
through a deep crisis. Anyway, for this crisis not to derive into a
nationalist, conservative and racist turn we are in need of an european
movement that is able to go beyond "No", to articulate a program of
concrete demands, a process of mobilization that gets Europe out of this
dead-end road, restrains the neoliberal offensive and leads Europe towards
a horizon of freedom. What we are talking about is the antagonist
constitution of a force ready to talk about, and practice, a new way of
citizenship. It gets more and more indispensable to densify the idea of an
european public space of fights capable of radically influence the
material composition of the world-Europe.

The political movement space, far from the orchestrated and empty fiction
of a Europe "from upside’ with its constitutional pantomime, and also far
from those leftists who intend to defend themselves from globalization by
entrenching themselves in State-nation forms, that very movement wants to
get politics far beyond this. Situated in the emerging of the subjective
figures that, in the last years, have revolted throughout the continent
against the permanent global war, the illegitimacy of the new global
institutions, the precarization of the existence, the borders regime and
the reduction of social rights and digital freedom.


5>Invisibles from the south.

When we set into motion this MayDaySur project, we had clear that both the
event and the process would help us composing a network and connections
space that would go beyond one or two cities. We believe that these events
can work as "accelerators" of cooperation and collective work processes
among different movements. Although our movements act on a "local" or
"metropolitan" ground, the MayDaySur invites us to consider the whole
region of Andalucía as our “theatre of operations”. We inhabit similar
territories together with precarious mates from Málaga, Huelva, Granada,
Córdoba and Jerez that attended the parade in Seville and also with our
migrant brothers and sisters in Almería, also participant of the process.

We propose to think about the 1st of May in Seville as a partial
synthesis, a snap of networks that move beyond our imagination. If we
stopped a moment we could listen that in different points of our territory
small nodes of precarious are just begun to emerge and to define their
problems. There were countless fighting and political processes inside the
job place and outside it, the conflict with speculation, the housing and
the so-called city-firm, the demand of citizenship for immigrants, the
squatting of new social spaces. It´s important to perceive that beyond the
militant background, our territory is determined by the crisis of
citizenship and working and that the term “precarity” is able to design
the living conditions in Andalucía today, it´s a "public matter”. So let´s
never forget that we are not talking to each other, that we question the
society as a whole.

After years of effort and collective work, we are beginning to glimpse the
gestation of participative and autonomous organization spaces able to see
each other as unyielding in a common project: the battle against
neoliberalism and its program of precarization of life, the challenge to
conquer new social rights and dignify our existence.


6> Next stop...

The most important matter now is to keep walking, learning from what we
have done and designing the following steps of this experiment. We all
seem to agree in the importance of going beyond the event MaydaySur, in
giving consistency and richness to this new political space we are
inaugurating. A virtuous dynamics of investigation, cooperation and action
against the precarization of existence. A laboratory that is open to the
new precarious constellations and that brings together the best of the
"base unions" and the social movements of our generation.

In this sense, we can imagine “intervention programs” that we deem central
for the continuity of this experiment:

- To investigate the subjective background and the everydaylife und
underground fighting fashions of the "precariat" in order to communicate
and strengthen them.
- To create imaginaries, myths, statements that can reach, affect, seduce,
dialogue and compose with the precarious of the south.
- To compose new alliances so that we spread the process effects to
different movements and collectives and so we continue increasing the
importance of this new political space (unions, social and neighbourhood
collectives, cultural movements, etc.).
- To organize new physical spaces capable of mixing up juridic and social
consultancy to back up and promote the self-organization of the
precarious.
- To promote actions in the public sphere so that we become main
protagonist in the irruption of precarity as a public issue. To articulate
common proposals and mobilization routes that shakes the institutional
politics.


We keep walking.
Colectivo Entránsito (Investigation and action from and against precarity)
Málaga, southern European and northern Africa border
September05.