November 12, 2019, MADRID – It was the last night of the Ingobernable social center. No one knew, but the next morning it would be evicted. I waited outside with the rest for the usual 7 p.m. opening to join the Extinction Rebellion assembly. A young man with lipstick and painted nails opened. Upstairs some two dozen people were walking around singing, practicing a chorale for the “funeral for the seas” to be part of the big demonstration Friday for the COP 25. The Cumbre Social por el Clima Madrid 2019 – the Social Summit – would begin the next day. (The Democracy Now video program will cover that event during the week December 8-13.)
The young man, named Lukas, told me they were also making a giant whale skeleton for the procession. Saturday they would start. It had been a while since I was in La Ingob, and new wall paintings had appeared. I must bring my camera on Saturday, I thought.
But Saturday there was no meeting. The morning after my visit, La Ingobernable was evicted. Instead of whale-building there was a huge crowd of people out front of the barricades erected by the police. More than a thousand rallied to yell their rage at the loss. A tweet urged people to come with flowers to mourn the closure, but I may have been the only one carrying a sunflower. Everyone else was angry, yelling: “One eviction, another occupation!” Pablo Carmona, a councilman in the last city government unseated by the rightwing, wrote that there was never a chance for legalization of La Ingobernable. The foot-dragging of the unseated left city council may have cost them their base in the last election.
Ten years ago, Pablo Carmona had taken me to visit CSO Seco, my first squatted social center in Madrid. (I blogged the visit on this site at the time.) Seco in 2009 was in an old school building. It’s logo was the pink panther. After eviction and a loud demonstration, the collective had been given a room in a corner of a newly constructed city social center in the deeps of Vallekas, amidst an all new urbanization. It was there that the construction of the giant whale skeleton was to continue.
Anatomically Correct
Lukas’ plan for the piece was anatomically correct, which meant building up layer upon layer of newspaper and paper tape on thin cardboard shapes to make the massive whale vertebrae. I did three which could then be papier mached, then painted. The ribs were more elaborate, requiring wire armatures. The skeleton parts were later moved to a room in central Madrid. The UGT union building at c/ Horateleza 88, was given over to activists coming for the official COP 25 and its aftermath, the social summit. Ecologistas en Acción has an office there, and I am guessing that very active nationwide organization played a key role in securing this excellent site for the activists of the social summit.
The ribs of the whale at CSO Seco
The building was buzzing when I visited. Rooms had become dormitories, and were just beginning to fill up. Many were named for murdered indigenous activists Chico Mendes and Berta Caceres. One for Mariella Franco. There is a Standing Rock room as well. Indigenous people are the ones on the front lines against primitive extractive capital – mining, dam-building, oil and gas drilling. It is their lands and waters being ravaged.
5 December – journal extract: I am on the subway to the UGT convergence center with a giant cardboard box. It’s a beauty – 123x49 cm, from a “digital signage” device. It can make four great solid paper fish for the funeral of the seas. The “artivist” party is tonight. I wonder if I’ll meet someone I know? Or… what can one do? What one can is all, and that’s a bit done. It seems pitifully little, but cardboard is heavy in quantity, even this one box.
Reflecting on all the people killed defending resources – land, trees, water, animals. They are not only “resources” but the beautiful raiment of our earth. It is fitting to call these “wars”. And these are new kinds of deaths…. Although not for indigenous peoples!
The dimensions of the coming action are clear in the people gathering in the UGT building claimed for the COP week as a convergence center. They are coming from all over Europe, with many from South America since the Chileans are taking the lead in organizing the social challenge to the COP which was displaced from their country on account of the persistent unrest. (Over a million were on the streets of Santiago in late October.)
Trying to Be Useful
I printed out a bunch of posters I found online. Most are from the invaluable JustSeeds cooperative website. I run around the UGT building putting them up on the wall. These are excellent designs, many from the NYC Climate Strike earlier this year, and others from COP 21 in Paris 2015. I think they are much better than the XR posters, and better by far than the bland UN and NGO produced images.
I run into Terry Craven of the Desperate Literature bookstore; he’s doing finance for Extinction Rebellion, and quickly falls into conversation with a group of English. As he passes, I tell him I’m trying to boost morale for the people who are sleeping and eating in the center.
That is a lot of what is going on in our lives now, not only among climate activists and the many indigenous people here. Things are continuously changing at a pace which is hard to conceive, and is demoralizing. One group at this COP social summit is dedicated to helping people to cope with the sadness they feel. Reason alone can’t help when the problem is so grand, so systemic, so entirely engrained in the way we live our lives. Climate change means life change.
What’s In the Belly of the Whale
That’s right – plastic.
Last night on TV channel 6 (“La Sexta”) broadcast “Vivir sin plástico”, living without plastic which is a plague in the world’s oceans. It was astonishing, saddening, sobering to see how completely our lives have been permeated by this material. While initially modelled on insect waxes and resins, modern plastic is made from petroleum and has a functionally eternal life. Scraps of discarded single-use plastic are used by sea animals as sites to deposit eggs, which are eaten by turtles and whales. Every commercial haul of fish brings up a large quantity of discarded plastic which fishermen deposit in special containers on the docks.
How did we get along without this material? How did food circulate? It’s hard to remember grocery shopping before plastic bags. Food was shopped in baskets, cans, paper bags, and glass containers. In Spain, all glass bottles had a few centimes deposit and had to be returned for cleaning and refilling.
I was a hippie in college, and acquired the habit of buying food in bulk, recycling and composting. This hasn’t been possible to maintain living in big cities. NYC has numerous health food stores which support aspects of a plastic-free lifeway. (Not any longer a “style” but a “way”, yea.) Most people don’t shop at them, nor do they live like that. Now, living abroad, the Spanish food distribution system is really into plastic, and “bio” stores are few and underdeveloped compared to their US counterparts.
The way I lived as a student 50 years ago is the way we need to live again now.
NEXT: The Big Procession
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LINKS
Pablo Carmona, "Cómo gobernar a La Ingobernable. Relatos de una negociación imposible"
https://www.elsaltodiario.com/tribuna/como-gobernar-a-la-ingobernable-relatos-de-una-negociacion-imposible
"2019 Chilean protests" at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Chilean_protests
Desperate Literature | Librería Interhttps://desperateliterature.com/nacional — Madrid.
Subjects | Environment & Climate - Justseeds
https://justseeds.org/subject/environment-climate/?js-post-type=product
Climate change activism - The Independent
https://www.independent.co.uk › ... › Education News
28 nov. 2019 - 'Standing shoulder to shoulder with activists helps overcome sense of powerlessness,' head says ...
Vivir sin plástico: dos familias eliminan el plástico de su vida durante un mes
https://www.lasexta.com/noticias/medio-ambiente/vivir-plastico-dos-familias-eliminan-plastico-vida-mes_201912035de6b9360cf255871f1bc570.html
Vivir sin plástico - Acompáñanos en nuestro camino hacia una ...
https://vivirsinplastico.com/
100 Steps to a Plastic-Free Life
https://myplasticfreelife.com/plasticfreeguide/
The vertebrae of the great whale at CSO Seco
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