March to Athens – 26 of November Press Release
1. Chronicle of an apparition
A few months ago, after the rising up of the Arab countries, on the 15th of May of 2011, thousands of people progressively congregated to “Puerta del Sol” in Madrid and other large Spanish cities throughout the country to protest their indignation against the current political, economic, and social state of their own country. During the proceeding weeks, the public squares in Spain and across Europe were little by little invested in by the local population to house their popular assemblies. This quickly turned into a reappropriation of the public spaces and the emergence of the self-managed camps such as ”Acampada en la Plaza Catalunya y en la “Puerta del Sol”, “Acampada en Roma” y “Occupy Wall Street”, for example who resisted and reflourished against strong political repression.
In this context, the so-called ”indignados” spontaneously put themselves in march in June throughout all of Spain, towards Madrid. Afterwards, those
marching left Spain, France and other countries across Europe with direction to Brussels generating upon their arrival, after three months of making their way, an Agora of one week for international coordination and massive global participation on October 15th, 15O throughout 886 cities and 87 countries around the globe.
We are the witnesses of the birth of this global movement which is now evident. This isn’t a linear or unilateral movement, but one composed of a
phenomenon of multiple flows and counterflows, diverse but which coincide, characterized by the principle of horizontality and active participation. A
web of specific local actions which create an echo, expand and respond to each other; regroup and expand again… the March to Athens is one of this flows.
2. Why do we walk?
Within the context of trusteeship of Greece and then Italy, we want to manifest our support to all the people that are fighting and to create a convergence at an international level.
Through the popular assemblies, our first objective is to liberate the word and reappropriate the political realm through exchange, testimonies, and
questioning in order to think individually and collectively and propose alternatives to this dead end road of capitalism.
We work to construct a direct democracy, based on the principle of horizontality, to win the power of decision-making from the supposed democratic representation run by the financial speculative market.
This happens, necessarily so, by a new concept of space and time, by the reappropriation of the public spaces as places for common life, permanent
dialogue, artistic creativity, and freedom of expression- a self-managed space, respecting of the environment- the camps are a prototype of this concept.
Our conduct is pacifist yet determined. We are on the side of civil disobedience, fundamentally, not in what is legal or illegal but what appears to be legitimate or illegitimate.
We make a call out to all people who want to participate in the march. This one will arrive in Rome on the 15th of January and in Athens on the 15th of
April and will produce international protests.
We will organize two successive global Agoras of one week each, in which the work and information gathered along the way will be collected and the
“Book of the People” which will be nourished by the testimonies of the people in the cities and villages crossed along the way, will be compiled and formatted for analysis and diffusion on the global scale.
The Internal Assembly of March to Rome and Athens.
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