19/06/11 Democracy Real Now!Claim the streets!People have the power

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Madrid protests: 'We are a virus ... rooted and entrenched' - video

Thousands protesting against Spain's political establishment continue their occupation of Madrid's Puerta del Sol square, in the 'tent city' established after the mass demonstration on 15 May




See this new in The Guardian

Democratic revolution LVP manifesto

“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind”. (George Orwell)

When did we lose faith in the power of ideas? When did we unreservedly decide that we would drop our dead weight into the hands of politics that we no longer believe in?

We fall and are swept along by the consequences of our own non sense.

We do not feel represented by the politicians or politician’s ideas, or, perhaps more sadly, we do not have enough ideas. Political parties who we voted for do not listen to us. They say nothing about our values, our dreams or about the freedom and democracy that we crave and even less concerning the ideas that we do believe in. And even so, we are still drawn into them. We were the stationary generation, until all of us emerged as a movement.

Democratic Revolution Liverpool believes in the possibility of change - in that, by thinking differently, we will be able to reach a new aim. To do this we have proposed to rethink the current structures that govern us, from the largest to the smallest, and to raise awareness, renew ourselves and achieve change.

As citizens, we demand to be heard - pay attention to us! We believe in the system and therefore we believe in the necessity of building a new one, a fair one. This is our contribution to the future. This is the minimum that we crave and we are ready to fight and work to achieve it.


1. Real direct democracy

Why do we say that our system is not democratic? Because not all state powers are democratic and nor are all of our structures. Then how we can recognize their legitimacy? What kind of power is governing us?

As responsible citizens - owners of our destiny and future - we want to take part in the system. We want to be a responsible part of democracy. There are enough legal methods to start working on the idea to govern people by the people and not without us, not ignoring our needs and ambitions.

As an example we propose the return to decision-making meetings in districts and towns which will be submitted to the executive representative of the people or could be managed by the ombudsman. We talk about the need for referendums, when a decision is made that affects the citizens in a political or economic level.

Our system should be reviewed and updated continuously. Laws are not eternal and are not always suitable to defend the interests of the people.


2. Economics is the real power as opposed to politics

What it is the use of having different political parties, if there is just one economy and it is immutable? What chance has a political party to act or make changes, if the bases of its priorities are a global economy that we have not voted for and which has been decided upon behind closed doors?

3. Transparency

What do we know about the state? What do we know about the government?

We demand complete transparency in the mode of action. We demand to know how policies are to be developed as well as how they are implemented and, more importantly, why.

We cannot participate if we do not have all the information. We cannot remain relegated to the political messages we receive from the media. It is our state, our democracy, we want to know.

Ours is an information society and we cannot deny the power of new technologies. We must live by utilising our own resources for our own benefit. We propose an official government website that provides useful information.

4. Suppression of politician’s benefits and limited terms for politicians

We ask only for common sense. While the crisis takes with it the future of an entire generation, politicians close parliamentary agreements that increase their own benefits and give them more power to act.

5. Real journalism

We are tired of listening to politicians in the mouths of the media. We demand that journalists be free to tell the truth and to protect our right to be informed.

Journalism is not just a business; it is about freedom of speech and the right to have information and should be treated as such.

6. Change the education system

How can we take part in a real democracy and be able to think critically about the information that we receive without a proper education?

To encourage new generations to have knowledge, the ability to decide and act we must begin by changing the way citizens are educated.

7. Create a real fair common educational framework (Europe)

We live in a Europe that set up an economic framework (which is not real), that has an environmental policy (which is not developed), that has a labor policy (which is not fulfilled), and we implemented an education system that does not fit reality in Europe.

19 June 2011 Liverpool

Democratic Revolution Liverpool – 2nd ACT
Against the EuroPACT, and claiming our FUTURE.

Meet at 12:30 PM at the -out Church.
Wear white T-shirt with your personal slogan on it.
Bring your pans and pots!!!

Event in FB









March Route


View 19 June in a larger map

14 June 2011 Minutes

14/06/11 Reunion Minutes
After 2h deciding going to Manchester or not, WE finally decided to STAY IN LIVERPOOL ON 19th JUNE.

Preparation of the Demonstration on 19th June:
Tasks for today:
o Contact the police (Sandra)
o Design the map with the route (Marta), to be added to the event!
That´s the route, what a efficiency:

o Announce the event in FB (Valentina):

Tasks for the event:
Description: we will march from the “bomb church”, meeting at 12.30 there, by stairs, to…(see the map route).
We need for this nice, joyful and enjoyable day:
o Wearing “homemade” white t-shirts, “homemade” means writing on them some sentences about the protest, maybe also the name of the group? (everyone of the group)
o Bring pans, pots, whatever to make noise (everyone of the group)
o Contact musicians, drummers (Maria), anyone knows someone?
o Distribute leaflets; Jonathan makes the short version of the manifesto, plus adding the group contact. (Not sure if we do 2 leaflet versions, one with the manifesto and other with the info of the group, or everything in one) Angela and Umut print them. (Any volunteer?) Marco is the graphic designer and editor of the leaflets.
o English songs (Maria, Ben?)
o Bring banners. Contact Angela, Natalia if you need cardboard. Check the old banner conditions and valid messages. (Angela and Natalia). Contact Barbara.
o Masks??? (sorry I miss this point?). We can also make up our faces, with some face paints. (Are we a circus?)
o Contact someone to record a video of the event! Anyone knows someone or has a camera?(?)
o Bring a music player with speakers? (Marco??)
o Smile (everyone)
Ideas for messages:
o Broken democracy
o Transparent democracy
o Take your future back
o Reclaim your future
Saturday we are going to meet again, to make the t-shirts, the banners and after that, going to Oye festival in Sefton park, wearing the homemade t-shirts, trying to grab more people for Sunday and for the group. Event on Saturday: Marcolentina´s sweet home close to Sefton park, Marco will send the indications. 2pm meet there (I think). Bring markers, t-shirts, cardboards!
Please complete if I forgot something. People who hasn´t been assigned to anything, I encourage to volunteer yourself. Thanks a lot for everyone. Have a nice day!
PS. Many thanks to Sandra for having written the Manifesto. Looking forward to receiving it!

Obsolescencia Programada

This is highly recommended, don´t miss it, but it is in Spanish. There are also a lot of clips in it in English, German and French. So I think everybody can get the idea.

Enjoy it,

Nocticelta

Friday Meeting 10 June 2011

Yo chaps,

Just a brief summary of what has been discussed Friday night during our lovely evening at the Egg Cafe (thanks Sandra for the hospitality).
The 19th of June all over Europe there would be political demonstration against the new Euro Pact (here for more info). Therefore initially we’ve discussed the best way for our growing group to attend this. We could go to the Manchester event or organizing something here in Liverpool. Going to Manchester would be nice to meet their group and coordinate our actions. On the other hand organizing something here it would be cool considering the number of people we could reach. Possibly we could do both and perhaps some of us could join the Manchester protest and surely we can contact them using FB.
Regarding the event in Liverpool, one idea that was circulating around the table was to focus on three main topics and use them as themes for our event on Sunday the 19th. The three topics would be:

- Real democracy (electoral laws, corruption, popular participation)

- Euro pact (what it is, effect on everyday life, can it be stopped?)

- Financial crisis and origin (neo-liberalism, inequality, profits of companies)

Two or three people each topic should collect information and facts in order to be ready to discuss it during the event. Choose freely which topic you prefer to take care of and if you have time start to collect info please do it. Tuesday we can debate together on how to organize the event.

A proposal could be to organize three discussion groups, one each topic and at the end of the event we could collect the best/most common opinions for each topic and further discuss them in a general assembly.

Another thing that we should plan carefully would be the logistic of the event. I think that the following elements would be essential:

Music (does anyone has a portable stereo or sound system?)

Leaflets (Marco: editing and photocopy)

Other forms of entertainment

Banners (some banners should still around from last time)

Flags (Marco: 1 Italian, 1 Spanish)

Feel free to add and suggest other things and/or modify this plan. Please use this e-mail list to further discuss the event and related issues.

We are going to meet up on Tuesday at 19:45 at the Clove Hitch in Hope Street (here the link for the event on FB)

Hasta la vista, baby

Marco

Get horizontal, get organized!

Roll-Up Extensión - Exterior on Prezi

Tuesday Reunion, 31/05/11

Democratic Revolution LVP
Minutes: Clove Hitch 31/05/11 7:00pm
Plans made:
Williamson Square occupation (AGORA): next Sunday 12/06/11. Time to be arranged.
• It was agreed to solicit slogans for banners, in different languages, via the face book group (Jonathan).
• We will try to arrange music and musicians to accompany us. We need a megaphone, speakers and musical instruments (drums etc.)
• Other entertainers will be contacted to add variety to the protest with some performances: Juggler (Jonathan), Actors (Marco).
• We will make an increased and organised effort to invite more people, including local and international press (Jonathan, Sandra, Valentina). Please, invite all the people/social groups you deem appropriate to increase our numbers and impact.
• Leaflets containing bullet points about the current political/economic situation in the UK and parallels with the demands of the protestors throughout Europe. Carlos is investigating an online programme that we can all edit together in order to produce the leaflet. Marco will do final edit, print and photocopy. Deadline: Sunday.
• Leaflets will be posted around town and handed out in city centre on Saturday 11/06/11 by volunteers.
• We agreed to dedicate a section of the protest to an “open mike” assembly, in which participants are free to open discussion or provide their point of view on any aspect of democracy/economy/politics.
• Finally, a subsequent meeting to finalise plans for Sunday will take place at the Clove Hitch, Hope Street at 8pm next Tuesday 07/06/11.

AOB:
• More engagement/discussion of posts in facebook group.
• Increase engagement and contributions to the blog.
• Email list created for those involved in organising Democratic Revolution LVP events and meetings. Please, indicate if you wish to be added to this email list.

Next event click here!

Mouseland by Thomas C Douglas

Thomas C Douglas led the first social-democratic government in North America and introduced single-payer health care to Canada...read more in this Wiki link

First Action by Democratic Revolution

22 May 2011 Williamsom Square, Liverpool
Although there is an interested review of what happened on last Sunday, read here, I would like to add what happened in the 24h-ish previous to the event:
In only one night and a whole day, 10 people worked very hard, which I felt very proud of all of you. The just born group contacted the police and the press to inform about the demonstration; we created leaflets to analyse the politic situations in other European countries, see below. We also spread the word, by opening a new FB group and this blog. We even wrote the minutes of the first spontaneous reunion on Friday, containing what we had to do for the Sunday protest and for the future. In particular for Sunday, we looked for a lot of cardboards, poles, markers to compose signs and banners, adding up with portfolios of the last day press news and photos. In order to pay the attention of the people, two kind of masks were printed: a Pig and a Vendetta-like or Guy Fawkes...and finally all of us meeting at Williamson Sq, on Sunday noon, checking all the boxes of the TO DO LIST of the first demonstration. The group were excited to see the reaction of the people, to listen what they knew about the last demonstrations in Spain and just spreading to other parts of the world.

11.50am. we found at the square a pair of perfect fences, or steel railings, to stick on all the banners and signs, becoming "a wall of solidarity with Spain- and also for Greece and Italy", called like this by the Liverpool Solidarity Federation. We also provided the material to other people to make their own banner and protest. In one hour a lot of people turned up, from a lot of different backgrounds, and I copy again from Truth, Reason & Liberalism blog, as I can´t express better: "It was also noteworthy that almost all of those involved were Spanish, and certainly not recognisable as any of the same faces you see at every protest and demo in the city. In fact, the only people there who could be described as "regulars" in activism were two of us from Liverpool Solidarity Federation and a small bunch of teenagers involved in UK Uncut. Anarcho-syndicalists and youth with no particular deference to the traditional hierarchies of the left arguably fitting into the event with far more ease than a stall staffed by old Trots living on well-worn formulas for theory and action ever could". I only have to add, we were mostly Spanish, but also Italians, Greeks, English, French, Polish....from other countries of the world, not belonging to any particular active group.
We were just innocently happy to feel all of you there, so, without any idea of how to organize a group of spontaneous people (WE ARE AN APOLITICAL GROUP without any experience!!!!), we decided to make a circle on the floor, in order to listen what people wanted to say and why they had joined us. As the circle ended up being quite big, next time we will split in smaller groups, some pieces of paper were handed out for the circle to write: why did they come, and what do they want. You can see in the photos what everybody wrote. These photos should make you reflect...I encourage you to comment them*. That afternoon, we also created an email list to keep in contact. If you want to contact us, to contribute to this blog, you only email us: democratic.revolution.lvp@gmail.com or just join the page and group in FB!

To summarize that wonderful day, that was a successful protest to support the other demonstrations occurring in Spain and the spreading wave of protests across Europe. Meeting more people interested in join us and discussing with you, was highly grateful for all of us. Remember, analysing together how other world can be possible is the beginning, and everybody needs to contribute a bit and get involved, if we want to make this real, firstly with their own awareness of the actual situation in the world!DON´T LOOK AT US, JOIN US!

Please group, I encourage you to complete my partial point of view of what happened on 22/05/11.

Thanks everybody for coming last Sunday.
Join us in the next events

Calendar:
Next event Tuesday 31st at 7.00pm

These are the leaflets distributed by very encouraged members of the group, they had a really good discussions on the street.

Sun Day 22 May 2011

*Photos: work in progress.

nocticelta

Arturo Perez-Reverte en Twitter

Viaje americano concluido. De nuevo aquí. Me he perdido doble movida. Votos y gente gritando basta. De las elecciones, poco que decir. Voto de castigo previsible y evidente. Me importa más lo otro. Lo nuevo. Lo emocionante.

15M. El día en que los españoles se negaron a seguir siendo cómplices.

Hacía mucho tiempo que no me sentía orgulloso de la gente. De mis compatriotas. Desde Argentina se veía todo aún más emotivo. Ya estuvo mi hija, dando la cara por mi. No sé qué diablos pasará al final. Si se mantendrá la limpieza o al cabo también el 15M se transformará en lo de siempre. Lo que me importa es que ha ocurrido. Que los españoles han dejado de ser cómplices pasivos. Borregos silenciosos mientras los esquilan y degüellan. Ahora sé (sabemos) que las cosas son posibles. Que es posible conseguir que los corruptos, los incompetentes, los irresponsables, los hijos de puta, dejen de creerse impunes. No sé si servirá de algo. Pero #acampadasol ha sido ejemplar. Perfecto. Consolador. Higiénico. Ahora, los sinvergüenzas que gobiernan o los sinvergüenzas que aspiran a gobernar saben que es posible amotinarse en 24 horas. Amotinarse de verdad, pacífica y civilmente. Para esto o para lo que sea. Ojo: para lo que sea. El futuro es largo y ancho. Es la principal lección,creo.

No va a cambiar nada de golpe, pero sí puede cambiar en el futuro .El fin de la impunidad. El miedo a la gente. Lo de menos es lo que se pida o no. La utopía o lo razonable. Si es de izquierda o derechas lo que se pide. Aquí me importa más el método. Eso es lo deliciosamente revolucionario del 15M: el método. El contenido está lejos, por desgracia. Esas listas electorales con 1.000 imputados lo prueban. Por eso lo que de verdad me interesa de esto es el método.En cómo la gente lo ha visto e interpretado.Ahí está la gran novedad, a mi juicio. Esos políticos de toda laya desconcertados por fin. Acojonados. Corriendo luego para hacerse allí una foto que les negaron. Y ese magnífico, espectacular, miedo que pueden tener a partir de ahora. Han visto, al fin, el campo de minas. Espero.

Es bueno que los políticos le tengan miedo a la gente. El miedo de un político es la mayor garantía de su rectitud. ¿Qué otro freno tiene un político sino el miedo? Esos canallas arrogantes llevaban demasiado tiempo creyéndose a salvo de todo. Ahora saben que no están a salvo de nada. Que son vulnerables. Me encanta que esa pandilla de funcionarios de la golfería institucionalizada se sientan vulnerables, por fin. Ojalá no se infiltren en esto los canallas. Ojalá no se transformen en politicos quienes ahora tienen la palabra de tantos en su boca.

Tengo una duda no resuelta: ¿Es bueno seguir en la calle, o se perderá el efecto? Me pregunto (sin respuesta, sólo me lo pregunto) si no sería más eficaz la táctica de guerrilla. Golpear simbólicamente, disolverse, volver a golpear en caso necesario. Disolverse, reunirse, golpear con la palabra y la dignidad y desaparecer de nuevo. Hasta la próxima. Concentrarse cada vez,para luchar con la palabra y el número. Abrumando a los canallas,que se sentirían vigilados y no dormirían tranquilos. Con esa amanaza siempre ahí, difusa pero real, nunca se corromperían tranquilos. Ni nos corromperían. Han sido 30.000, o 50.000… La próxima pueden ser 200.000. O más. Por eso me preocupa que se mantenga artificialmente lo que ya ha sido un éxito en ese sentido. Que eso pueda matar la eficacia. Bastaría un chispazo para desencadenarlo de nuevo. Unos cuantos cabreados o desesperados con un teclado y Twiter o facebook o lo que sea. Una ocasión próxima y el saber que puede hacerse. Que ya se ha hecho. Ha nacido,en mi opinión,una temible,incruenta y modernísima forma de guerrilla urbana. Una amenaza que del sentido común depende sea grotesca al fin, o permanente, limpia, desinteresada y global. Mi resumen es que, si hay rescoldo razonable, y hemos visto que lo hay, siempre se le puede echar gasolina. Si hace falta.

Ah. Y estoy de acuerdo con muchísimos de ustedes. La extrema derecha ha demostrado que sí. Que hay una estúpida extrema derecha. Yo creía que era un invento de los golfos de turno, y resulta que no. El tratamiendo de algunos medios ha sido para echar la pota. Pero claro. Tontosdelculo con orejeras los hay a diestra y siniestra. La gilipollez no tiene ideología, sino psicopatía ideológica.

Españistan by Alex Saló

Our group like this video, as some of our members posted on the group page, which explains how Spain ends up in the actual economical situation. Thanks to Alex Saló to created a summarized video with a great sense of humour.

Map of Camps

Italian Revolution: Date e luoghi per la rivoluzione italiana … anche Pisa,Palermo,Bari,Taranto,Reggio Emilia

Italian Revolution: Date e luoghi per la rivoluzione italiana … anche Pisa,Palermo,Bari,Taranto,Reggio Emilia

Democratic Revolution Also as in FB

as a Group in FB

As a page On FB

Spain's anti-cuts protesters defy pre-election ban - video

The Guardian

BBC: Spain protesters defy ban to remain in Madrid square

On Air: Puerta del Sol, Madrid, Spain

Online TV Shows by Ustream

TOMA LA CALLE 15.05.11

CLAIM THE STREETS!
Manifiest from Democracia Ya

Democratic Revolution Also in Liverpool

Just today a group of people from different European countries, Italy, Greek, Spain; being concerned about what´s going on in Spain, just decided to join the Spanish revolution and create a similar protest in Liverpool. For more info please click the  event Democratic Revolution in Liverpool on FB
Come along to meet us, support, bring your ideas, your banners!We are waiting for all the support!
Other concentrations around the world
You can also contribute with this blog with different ideas and connect each other in different parts of the world.


All together we can make a change!

If you would like to email us any post, just to: democratic.revolution.lvp@gmail.com