Yo no pago! Report from Barcelona by Mikifus

Hi,

I’m going to make a report, explaining my personal view of some of the last protests in Spain, wich I think could be really interesting in many other places.

– This is the situation:
In Spain, public transport is being affected by the austerity and the companies decided to lower the salaries, fire the employees and increase the price of the service. There was no needing of anything of this, they’re just taking profit.
Also, the public transport increases every year the price, it’s normal because salaries also increase.
This year the salaries are freezed because of the crisis (only some governors increased theirs…), so the price of the transport shouldn’t increase.
Well, they did it, 12% of increasing. So fucking nice, privatization of healthcare, families on the streets, closing of public schools… Everybody is having fun.

– This is the reaction:
Most of people does nothing, you know.
Well, public transport it’s not a basic need, so it’s nothing to care so much, there are worse things out there. But the ideas on how to solve it are really interesting: an increase of price has become an opportunity to use the services for free!
Based on the greek movement, we are starting one with the same name: “I don’t pay”, in spanish: “Yo no pago”. Of course Occupy/15m gives support and the movement medias are being used to collaborate.

This movement started with a massive jumping inside the metro (underground,subway I never know how to call it in english), it was a success and yesterday the did it again.
Yesterday in Madrid the metro station was sorrounded by a lot of police and 5 persons were arrested, the protesters made also an improvised demonstration.
In Barcelona was so nice, nobody did nothing to stop it, the doors were open and blocked for hours and workers or police didn’t care. Everybody could enter for free and some random people also joined the demonstration inside the midtown big station.
You’ll find photos and videos here: https://twitter.com/#!/search/yonopago
These ones are great: http://yfrog.com/h65vvbrj
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PltYATuelmg
And today I was surprised when reading about a new parallel movement: “Yo no paro”, in english: “I don’t stop”, literal translation makes it not understandable, I would call it “I won’t stop them”. This is a calling made by the public transport workers from Madrid, they said that they’re not going to ask the people for the tickets nor stop them when jumping the doors in solidarity with the “yo no pago”.

– To the point:
Our movement made a great achievement, not doing only protest, but working on find solutions. So the “Yo no pago” it’s on the same way.
In Barcelona, a group of people is working on a cultural association to support the people that has a new mental illness: “memetro”. This illness it’s the lack of memory to remember if the law punish the unpaid usage of the public transport, normally due to a mental shock after the price increases so much.
This association works right now on twitter with the hashtag #alertamemetro, that allows you to send a warning if there are controllers on any station and check it out from other people. They’re also working on a phone app.

But the best of all is that, based on some french similar movements, they’ll pay the fines of the people that travel without ticket, for 7€ a month, while the 10 travels ticket costs 9.25€.
Or maybe the best is that they’re getting funds of the government to pay the fines…

– Why I report this:
I didn’t participate (yet) on this protests, but I like how they’re being done.
I don’t know if on some other places this is happening as well, but this ideas can be used on every city that needs to do an active, original and smart protest.