Since the Spring last year the social struggles against the economical inequalities and against the contemporary forms of representational democracy which are no more effective towards executing the will of the citizens stepped into the new dynamics.
The Indignados, the Occupy Movement(s) and many other new initiatives which appeared active in the period of last year took the streets and the squares of the cities all around the world to act for increasing the level of the people’s participation in the political decisions-making process through establishing direct democratic practices which are aimed to affect also the economical factor and stop it from deepening the social-economical stratifications.
The global outreach of the Movement’s actions and the new forms the Movement introduces concerning the human relationships, the social bonds and the democratic procedures meet the ongoing struggles the already existing institutionalised political organisations lead to accomplish the same goals regarding the quality of the future individual and common lives.
Although the two dynamics – of the Movement and of the institutionalised political organisations – until now have rarely combined to empower each other in order to enlarge the effectiveness of the common struggle, we believe that the similarities of the goals and the common roots regarding the vision of the equal and just societies we share, invite us to act arm in arm to achieve the aims we are fighting for together.
The representatives of the Polish organisation Political Critique, of the Italian collective ESC and the activists of Occupy Geneva from Switzerland met in Rome on March 23-24, 2012. We spent two days together getting to know each other, sharing our experiences and knowledge regarding the practical functioning of the Movement and of our organisations and the general approaches towards the basic issues related to the mechanisms which rule the contemporary world. We discussed the differences and similarities between the three of us. In order to also practically share the know hows of accomplishing the political actions we improvised the protest in front of the Ukrainian embassy in Rome against the acts of censorship on arts which have recently happened in Ukraine. And most of all – we created the direct bonds between each other followed by the mutual understanding and the strong will to collaborate together in the future.
In the duration of our meeting we have arrived to the conclusion that many of the concerns which might evoke the distance between the Occupy Movement(s) practitioners and the institutionalised political organisation’s activists are due to the lack of the direct relationships between us. Other concerns – which often eventuate from the differences of the methods implemented by us to proceed with our social struggles – could be easily overworked through the permanent common interactions: through the active presence of the institutionalised political organisations’ activists in the structures of the Occupy Movement (in it’s committees, commissions, camps and assemblies) and – on the other hand – through affecting the effectiveness of the actions initiated by the institutionalised political organisations by the Movement’s practitioners via supporting them with the experiences related to the continuous interactive social actions of the global outreach.
We – the Political Critique, ESC and Occupy Geneva address both – the activists of the Occupy Movement(s) all over the world and the institutionalised political organisations – to ask for the effort of stepping into the process of the vital interactions and collaborations in order to combine the dynamics of our practices and increase the social-political effectiveness of achieving the goals to establish the values we are commonly standing for. We believe that the example of what had happened between us in Rome proves the great possibility and chance to combine the dynamics of the Occupy Movement(s) and the institutionalised political organisations which put together might become the undefeated power against inequalities and lacks of the political representation we are all experiencing and actively opposing against.
ESC (Italy)
Occupy Geneva (Switzerland)
Political Critique (Poland)
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Information:
The meeting in Rome was supported by the Swiss Institute as the part of the Solidarity Action with the 7. Berlin Biennale which will last from April, 27 till July, 1. In the duration of the Biennale the groups from the Indignados/Occupy Movement from Germany, Spain, Netherlands, United States and other countries will act together in Berlin. We intent as the next step to develop the possible collaboration between the Occupy Movement(s) and the institutionalised political organisations to meet in Berlin and to repeat the Roman meeting in the larger scale with other groups of the Movement and other political organisations.