#BARCELONA #15M Newsletter n.8
Hello from Barcelona,
this is the weekly newsletter that will inform you about the activities of 15M movement in Barcelona, Catalonia and occasionally the main events in Spain. If you do not wish to receive it anymore, please say so.
1. A BLOG COLLECTS TESTIMONIALS ABOUT 29M POLICE EVICTION IN BARCELONA
After police violent charges against demostrators on the 29M general strike in Barcelona (Spain), a group of people injured by the autonomical police (Mossos d’Esquadra) has launched a blog to collect testimonials of victims. They are on the way to place a class action.
The blog is just a tool to document how human rights are compromised in our country and how police and politicians responsible of them get away with impunity. As we can see, there are several testimonials from elderly people, families with young children gassed or shot with rubber bullets by the police… They report how riot police are never properly identified by police identification numbers, how they point their rubber bullet shotguns to the head and torso of demostrators, among other police abuses, which are illegal according to our legislation.
Police violence is getting worse and worse in Barcelona, and predemocratic tactics like the use of tear-gas on peaceful protesters are coming back after 16 years of not being used in Spain.
Links
To the blog http://denunciacolectiva29m.wordpress.com/
about http://denunciacolectiva29m.wordpress.com/about/#ENG
2. RADICAL COMMUNITY MANAGER WORKSHOP
A two-day workshop on hacktivism has taken place recently in Barcelona: The idea was to give a perspective of how several small, well coordinated groups can achieve a high impact by using effectively web 2.0 tools. The Radical Community Manager workshop by the X.net collective was held on March 31st and April 1st, 11 am to 8 pm. Over 60 activists attended the workshop, raging from the totally new in social media to some well-known names in the local hacktivist scene, and quite a few more were following the streaming and participating through twitter.
During 16 hours many ideas were shared. First, a bit of theory on netiquette and how to create your own identity, specially collective identities: sticking to a specific style, knowing your target and dealing with collective accounts. Then, a series of 1 or 2 hour sessions devoted to using in a radical and effective way blogs, streaming, twitter, facebook, petition platforms, several options for sharing photos and videos, and third-party websites that make your life easier when programming and planning strategies. The use of pads and mumble for a more effective coordination was a huge success among those who had never heard of them, and many good tips were given by trainers and participants -and then applied in a case study, working in groups. Finally, there was a great talk by Simona Levi on memetics, virality and how an idea needs to be worked on until it becomes ‘sexy’ enough to catch on.
This workshop had an opening session on March 30th, a series of talks on Technopolitics and web democracy with several participants, including a skype connection with Michel Bauwens, who reflected on Occupy Wall Street from the Peer-to-Peer point of view and stated that the future is a collaboration between Free culture, Peer production and Social movements.
Links
Website for the Radical Community Manager workshop http://whois–x.net/tecnopolitica-community
Streaming http://whois–x.net/streaming-jornada-tecnopolitica-y-community-manager
Simona Levi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simona_Levi and X.net http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La-EX
3. SECOND ENCOUNTER BETWEEN PEOPLE AND NATURE DURING RURALES ENREDADXS MEETING IN HUESCA
Rurales enREDadxs (Rurals Networked) is a collective of people, cooperatives and associations that promote projects of a social, eco sustanible and alternative way of life. Their aim is to connect and coordinate rural enviroment and cities, in order to integrate everyone in a human village through information, training, education and conciousness-raising.
In Capdesaso (http://g.co/maps/s5kwj) during all week long – from the 30th of March to the 8th of April -hundreds of people from Rurales enREDadxs met for the 2nd time to exchange ideas, to train, to know each other and overall to start the project of a steady settlement, to live togheter and produce concerning about the natural enviroment. They will also restore some contructions and they will build a few cabins. People who settled there have 8 hectares of ground to use. It is now preparing the ground for the summer kitchen garden. It is possible to follow the work in progress from outside Capdesaso, connecting with them by Mumble every Monday and Thursday from 8pm.
Server: mumble.tomalaplaza.net
Tutorial: How to use mumble
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmQw8MWFvAY
During the week various workshops and talks took place: “free software”, “how to use mumble”, “how to stop smoking”, “forgiveness meditation”, “Unity and Equality”, “Chi Kung”, “Alternatives in Education”, “A different way to Travel”, “Personal Revolution”, “Environamental Education”, “Human body as tool”, “how to grow the spirulina”. “Toma la tierra” (take the earth/ground) presented his project of a coordination, projects and struggle state network.
Links
Blog of the project “toma la tierra” http://tomalatierra.com/
Radio to listen to parts of the meeting http://www.radioxaman.com/
Website of Rurales enREDadxs http://ruralesenredadxs.org/
Blog of the project: http://huertavieja.ruralesenredadxs.org/
FB group: http://www.facebook.com/groups/277310748977112/
Twitter : @ruralenredadx
Several short streamings of the project http://bambuser.com/channel/curro2012
Interview http://bambuser.com/v/2524852
4. HOW TO END EVIL… FIVE DAYS OF CREATIVE ACTIVISM
Description of the 5 days workshop
It was a great sucess! over 200 people from different areas of the world attended the workshop at the Antic Theater. It was really full every day and there was great interest in exchanging experiences and methodologies about how to use art and frivolity tactics in political activism.
During 3 days there were different presentations of well know art-activism all over the world such as A.F.R.I.K.A. colective from Germany , who shared their experience with ”guerrilla communication” metodologies. Or John Jordan´s work that merges the imagination of art and the social engagement of politics. He has been deeply involved in Reclaim Streets actions in London and is one of the creators of Rebel Clown Army.
On Friday and Saturday the workshop swifted places to Sala Adriantic, where over 100 activists were collaborating on different working groups and thematics of how to use creativiy and art to engage in social change. There where 5 stable working groups created that will be developing the ideas that came up during the workshop, in order to use and experiment them on #12M15M. One of the greatest successes where the Inflatables, a creation of play-joy tools with a great potential against repression in demonstrations, you can read more at http://www.eclectic-electric-collective.blogspot.com.es/
Links
How to end Evil http://comoacabarconelmal.net/en/
Video with English subtitles: https://vimeo.com/37311580
Streaming by ICBcn of the first day of How to end Evil http://bit.ly/GTUCqT