Categories
Capitalist crisis

General strike in Barcelona report

The 14th of November general strike in Barcelona started in the very first hours of the night, with pickets closing bars and spaces still open at night in several city’s neighborhoods, such as Gràcia, where more than 300 people managed to shut down bars, while a supermarket and banks were attacked by hoodies. Earlier, trade unions pickets had blocked the accesses to industrial parks of the metropolitan area, where no activity was reported at all. No one was arrested during the night. As the sun was rising, fire barricades were erected in all city’s points, with police making the first arrest of the day in the Eixample neighborhood. At 8am neighborhood assemblies pickets started shutting down the whole city, with Sants and Gràcia being the areas with more police presence, mainly due to incidents during the M29 strike. Barricades were set up in Gràcia to prevent Mossos from reaching the picket. The turnout in the neighborhoods, both in pickets and strike following, was higher than in all previous strikes. Although no central picket had been called, strikers spontaneously gathered from noon on in Plaça Catalunya, were the biggest picket of the day kicked off. When this reached the boardwalk, an undercover cop attempted to arrest a striker, which caused demonstrators to attack other secret cops, who were rapidly rescued by a riot unit.

At 5pm an anticapitalist demonstration organised by neighborhood assemblies, M15, CNT, CGT, independentist left and autonomous anarchists had been called at Jardinets de Gràcia, just some meters away from where the demonstration by yellow trade unions CCOO and UGT was taking place. The anticapitalist demonstration was constantly surrounded by units of riot cops geared up with gas masks and rubber bullets guns. Along the way, banks and capitalist symbols were attacked with paints and stones although police didn’t charge until the demonstration had finished in Via Laietana, where cops started firing rubber bullets and crowds of hoodies answered with stone and bottle throwing, as well as homemade missiles. Two Spanish police cars and a bank were set on fire. The crowd was suddenly dispersed by a group of 20 riot vans which quickly arrived and clashes moved to the narrow streets on the side of Via Laietana, at the Born neighborhood. There, protesters (some of them filling the air by singing A las barricadas) resisted during an hour the attacks of riot police. The main entrance of the Palace of Catalan Music, symbol of corruption from the currently ruling party in Catalonia, was destroyed. Several cars and trash bins could be seen on fire in the surrounding streets.

[youtube width=”560″ height=”315″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKj-pNY8Jy0[/youtube]

At the time the more confrontational demonstrators had dispersed, cops started clearing the whole centre area, charging against people who were merely walking back home. In one of these attacks, a woman was shot in one of her eyes by a rubber bullet and eventually lost her sight in it. Felip Puig, head of police in Catalonia, has lied by denying that rubber bullets had been used that day, although what actually makes the matter more disgusting is the fact that they were actually shot from a newly acquired type of guns which allows cops to aim, which means that the cops were probably aiming at the protesters’ eyes. Finally, 23 people were arrested and many injured.

The strike was the biggest in the city since 1988, due in part to the aim set on the first of the austerity crisis strikes on September 29th 2010: to turn these general strikes into social strikes, where all kinds of movements and social communities could feel part of it. This time, even more communities joined the strike and once more, alternative trade unions along with social movements managed to break through the lines of the agreed, planned and designed strike by the yellow trade unions and turned the strike into a day of struggle beyond the limits of this institutionalized trade unionism.

Categories
Capitalist crisis Direct actions

October 31: general strike in Barcelona

Back in September, CGT announced a general strike for October 31 around the whole Spanish state. Weeks later, yellow unions CCOO and UGT called for another one on November 14 and CGT decided to move its strike to the same day as the main unions. Nonetheless, CGT kept the strike in Barcelona for October 31 (labelling it as “Day of struggle”), where local CNT had also called for a general strike. The impact has been minimum, as expected, but sectors such as metro, taxis or post offices have recorded high numbers of strikers.

Several pickets had been organised during the morning in several neighbourhoods, while CNT had called for a central picket at plaça Catalunya. Along the way, an Apple Store and a Zara were attacked by protesters and shut down.

Categories
Capitalist crisis

Poster appeared on the streets of València

We are the 50% of unemployed young people, the hundreds of families evicted every week, the migrants being harrassed each day, the pensioners struggling to make ends meet, the fired workers, the precarious ones, the exploited ones. Those who cannot stand this situation anymore, those who are fed up of being lied while they take advantage of our misery and they steal our future.

But we are also those who have dignity, those who day after day break the unfair laws in order to survive, those who feel this system is a fraud, those who stand up against power by organising ourselves, those who defy the strategy of fear by taking the streets, those who they won’t be able to stop. We are the ones who fight and this has just started…

When the injustice becomes law, revolt is duty

Categories
Capitalist crisis Social control and repression

Demonstration in Madrid against the State repression

A demonstration has been called in Madrid for October 20 against the repression suffered by social movements since the beginning of the May 15M movement back in 2011 or generally since the capitalist crisis started. Below is the statement calling for the demontrations.

The crisis of the capitalist system has been getting worse over the past four years, laying on our shoulders the heavy burden of their crisis through harsh measures.

In order to deactivate and fight labour mobilizations, identifications, arrests, fines have increased, the struggle is criminalized, police-legal set-ups are invented, repression against workers in the workplace, imprisonment, draft amendments to the penal code, illegalisations, ill-treatment, torture, new techniques of social control as video surveillance, communication interventions, creation of political militancy databases, cops infiltrations, racist raids, evictions, etc.. That is, a series of repressive measures aimed at stopping the workers’ struggle and it preventing it from extending to the whole society.

The end of this crisis is each day more far away, it gets worse every day, and so are is the austerity and the repression. Since this is a time in which the conditions for emancipatory projects materializing are given, the State does its best to spread fear throughout society and to avoid these conditions for the change being created.

Our dutiy as the only affected ones by these measures is the mobilization and the struggle. But this should not be done in isolated groups, but instead unity should be looked for. We believe that creating duplication in meetings, speeches, demonstrations, only makes us lose momentum. Therefore we call all kinds of social, political, trade union or other type of organisation to join against the repression in order to make, among other things, a large demonstration by the downtown streets of Madrid demanding the end of the repression to our class. Since it is an issue that affects us all us, we must be defend ourselves together and we should do it immediately.

Some numbers provided by the Legal Commission of Sol, which collected numbers on repression during the past year and a half: (Ed. note: only in Madrid)

Over 200 arrests recorded: in demonstrations (over 30 in the latest demonstration on September 25th), civil disobedience actions, evictions, strike pickets, occupations, etc… The most common charges are offenses on assault against authority, disobedience and resistance, public disorder, damage and offenses against the worker’s rights.

More than 700 administrative fines, the final amount from May 2011 to May 2012 would be of 217,800 euros. Hundreds of attacks, of which many of them have not been notified. Most cases are still under investigation, so it is necessary to pay attention to calls and show our solidarity with repressed people.

The only decent solution for the working class is unity and struggle.
Against repression, solidarity! If we touch they touch one of us, they touch all of us!

Source: madrizrebelde.blogspot.com.es

Categories
Capitalist crisis Direct actions

Updates about the students’ strike

We stop today… to build the tomorrow

On October 11, the first university students strike of the school year was held against tuition fee increases taken both by the central and regional goverments. The strike had been called by most of the student unions, especially the left-wing independentists ones, and demonstrations were held all around the state. In Barcelona more than 5.000 people demonstrated despite the rain and massive police presence. In the early hours of the morning, dozens of cops entered the UAB campus outside the city and prevented students from blocking the highway and railroads located next to the university. During the demonstration several buildings such as the stock exchange, the European Union offices in Barcelona and the headquarters of Convergència i Unió party (currently ruling the Catalan goverment) were attacked with paint. An ATM was set on fire and many graffitis were made along the way. 300 people demonstrated in the city of Lleida, with cops assaulting three students at the end of the demonstration and arresting one of them, accusing him of throwing objects against cops.

Demonstrations occured as well in many other cities around the state, such as Valencia, Málaga, Mallorca, Valladolid, Iruñea or Santiago de Compostela. In Bilbo, cops charged against protesters after some of them had broken into the headquarters of the Basque goverment. 90 people were identified. Hundreds of students demonstrated too in the centre of Madrid and boycotted an act by the rector of the Complutense University of Madrid.

Some links with pictures about Barcelona demonstrations [1], [2], [3]

Categories
Capitalist crisis Speculation and squatting

Demonstration in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona): We’re taking back our dignity

We are fed up, fed up of the failure and the alienation of your education system, of dying in hospital queues, of banks always winning, of becoming homeless, of estate agents and city councils taking control of our neighbourhoods, of the torture happening inside your jails, of your state terrorism, of the deportation of our neighbours just for being from outside and poor, of living in order to work and working in order to live, of your mercenaries in uniform, of the acceptation of self-declared fascists inside your democratic system, proving all this is all a covered dictatorship.

That’s why we are TAKING BACK our hospitals and schools, our spaces, our houses, the solidarity, mutual aid, cooperativism, direct action, oru streets.

Let’s take back freedom, let’s take back the dignity

Rage assembly of L’H.

Source: barcelona.indymedia.org

Categories
Capitalist crisis Direct actions

Videos of the 26S general strike in Iruñea

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVfJO3UDyY0[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7I19ojwjFxg[/youtube]

 

Categories
Capitalist crisis Direct actions Social control and repression

Arrests in Madrid after calling for the blockade of the Parliament

At least four people were arrested today 15th of September during a demonstration in Madrid by the yellow and pro-state trade unions CCOO-UGT against the latest austerity measures. During the course of the demonstration, a group of people attempted to place a banner calling for the blockade of the Parliament, scheduled for September 25. Cops then immediately attempted to stop the action and arrested its participants. Anarchosindicalist CNT and Solidaridad Obrera had called for an alternative demonstration.

Source: Periódico Diagonal