The Camp is the World: Connecting the Occupy Movements and The Spanish May 15th Movement

The Camp is the World:

Connecting the Occupy Movements and The Spanish May 15th Movement



We write this letter as participants in the movements, and as an

invitation to a conversation. We hope to raise questions about how we

continue to deepen and transform the new social relationships and

processes we have begun … to open the discussion towards a common

horizon.



The evictions and threats to the physical Occupations in the United

States have again raised the question of the future of the movement.

That the movements have a future is not the question – but what sort

of future is. For example, should our energy be focused on finding new

spaces to occupy and create encampments? Should we be focused more in

our local neighborhoods, schools and workplaces? Is there a way to

both occupy public space with horizontal assemblies yet also focus

locally and concretely?



A look at the recent history of a movement similar to Occupy - the

Spanish indignados or 15M movement can shed some light on the

opportunities and urgency of this new phase.  It is a moment that we

see as a potential turning point, and one with incredible

possibilities.



There are three key elements that have made the global movements of

2011 so powerful and different.  The extraordinary capacity to include

all types of people; the impulse to move beyond traditional forms of

the protest and contention, so as to create solutions for the problems

identified; and the horizontal and directly participatory form they

take.



Let’s look at the first element. Unlike other movements that have

strongly identified with concrete social groups (workers, students,

etc.), both the indignados and Occupy are movements that anyone can

join, just by choosing to do so.  Again and again in Madrid as in New

York we have heard the demonstrators chanting solidarity slogans to

the police: “they’ve also lowered your salary” and “you too are the 99

%”.  In both places the movements have been able to bring out many

people who had never been to a demonstration before and made them feel

welcome and useful.  It is a culture and politics of openness and

acceptance of the other.



The second element, the capacity to create solutions, is consistent

with this non-confrontational aspect of the Spanish and American

movements.  Like their predecessors in Egypt and Greece, both

movements began with the occupation of a public space.  Rather than

reproducing the logic of the traditional “sit-in,” these occupations

quickly turned to the construction of miniature models of the society

that the movement wanted to create – prefiguring the world while

simultaneously creating it.  The territory occupied was geographic,

but only so as to open other ways of doing and being together. It is

not the specific place that is the issue, but what happens in it. This

is what we could call the first phase of the movement.  Solutions

began to be implemented for the urgent problems of loneliness,

humiliating competition, the absence of truly representative politics,

and the lack of basic necessities, such as housing, education, food,

and health care.  In Spain and in the United States this first phase

saw the creation of two problem-solving institutions: the general

assemblies and the working-groups.



The ways in which we organize in these spaces of assemblies and

working groups is inextricably linked to the vision of what we are

creating. We seek open, horizontal, participatory spaces where each

person can truly speak and be heard. We organize structures, such as

facilitation teams, agendas and variations on the forms of the

assembly, from general assemblies to spokes councils, always being

open to changing them so as to create the most democratic and

participatory space possible.



The very existence of the encampments, together with the general

assemblies, was already a victory over the increasingly desperate

battle of all against all that the neoliberal crisis has imposed on

us.  The participants in these movements create spaces of sociability,

places where we can be treated as free human beings beyond the

constant demands of the profit motive.  In a city like New York where

debates about our society tend to occur only in government

institutions, and expensive spaces of limited access (universities,

offices, restaurants and bars), the assemblies at Zuccotti provided a

public forum that was open to anyone who wanted to speak.  In

addition, from the very beginning the movement created working groups

designed to directly address problems related to basic human

necessities.  In Zuccotti, the loading and unloading of shopping-carts

full of jars of peanut butter and loaves of bread on the afternoon of

Saturday 17th, an initiative launched by the already-functioning food

committee, was the first sign of this effort to provide solutions. By

the 5th week of the Occupation in New York the food working group was

feeding upwards of 3000 people a day.



In these working groups the dynamic of the second phase of these

movements was already implicit.  In Spain this phase began over the

summer and in the United States it is beginning now.  This phase is

characterized by the gradual shift from a focus on acts of protest

(which nonetheless continue to have a crucial role, as we must

confront this system that creates crisis) to instituting the type of

change that the movements actually want to see happen in society as a

whole.  The capacity to create solutions grows as the movements expand

in all directions, first through the appearance of multiple

occupations connected among themselves, and then through the creation

of—or collaboration with—groups or networks that are able to solve

problems on a local level through cooperation and the sharing of

skills and resources. For example, Occupy Harlem is using direct

action to prevent heat from being shut off in a building in the

neighborhood – this action has been coordinated with OWS and Occupy

Brooklyn.



In the case of Spain, this expansion began in June, when the movement

decided to focus its energy more on the assemblies and the working

groups than on maintaining the encampments themselves.  To maintain

the miniature models of a society that the movement wished to create

did not necessarily contribute to the actual changes that were needed

in the populations that needed them the most.  Which is why the

decision to move away from the encampments was nothing more than

another impulse in the constructive aims of the movement: the real

encampment that has to be reconstructed is the world.



Of course, it is true that the encampments continue to have a crucial

function as places in which the symbolic power of the Occupy movement

is concentrated.  It is also true that the efforts to defend them have

produced moving displays of solidarity.  But the viability of a

movement is not only defined by its capacity to withstand pressure

from the outside, but also in its ability to reach and work together

with people outside the space of the plaza or square. It is this – the

going beyond the parameters of the plaza - which the assemblies and

the working groups have already started to put into effect.



So, for example, what this could continue to look like in the US is

that there are assemblies on street corners, in neighborhoods, in

workplaces and universities, working concretely together with

neighbors and workmates, as well as then relating together in

assemblies of assemblies or spokes councils in parks, plazas and

squares, sharing the experiences from the more local spaces. All the

while continuing to occupy space and territory, but seeing the

territory as what happens together, with one another, in multiple

places, and then coming together to share in another geographic place.

This could take places on the level of neighborhood to neighborhood –

to the level of city to city, all networked in horizontal assemblies.



In any case, to return to the case of Spain, what is certain is that

while the indignado movement no longer has encampments, its presence

is felt everywhere.  It’s a culture now, composed of thousands of

micro-institutions that provide solutions through the common efforts

of people affected by the same problems.  There are cooperatives

addressing work, housing, energy, education, finance, and nutrition,

and many other things, as well as a web of collaboration that connects

these cooperatives.  Catalunya and Madrid already have “Integral

Cooperatives” whose function is to coordinate the different services

offered by various cooperatives within a particular locale, to the

point that in some places in Spain it is almost possible to live

without having to depend on the resources hoarded by the 1%.  The

movement has made it possible for these institutions, which used to be

dispersed and limited, to grow and grow connected, and it has provided

them with a visibility that has led to much more interest, respect,

and support for their functions. Also, the movement keeps coming back

to the streets every so often in big demonstrations and assemblies

that display its force and allow all of those working in the many

projects associated with the spirit of May 15th to see each other,

network together, and welcome more people.



The creation of alternative institutions and solutions has already

begun in the United States.  With or without encampments, the

constructive phase of the Occupy movement is here, and all indications

are that it will not slow down, as it has not slowed down in Spain.

Every day on the news and on youtube, we see the police removing the

occupiers from parks and plazas, but the movement continues to grow –

and to grow outside of these places.  While the tumult of raids and

returns jolts occupiers and the public alike, thousands of working

groups around the world meet weekly in libraries, community centers,

churches, cafes, and offices to share their extraordinary abilities

and resources.  They are already creating the schools, hospitals,

houses, neighborhoods, cities and dreams of the 99%.



This is the beginning of the occupation of an encampment that will

never be dislodged: the world.



Luis Moreno-Caballud

Marina Sitrin



Luis Moreno-Caballud is a participant in the Spanish May 15th movement

and the Occupy Wall Street movement. He collaborated in the formation

of the NYC General Assembly before the beginning of OWS, and works

with both the Outreach and Empowerment and Education working groups.

He is an assistant professor of Spanish literature and cultural

studies at the University of Pennsylvania.



Marina Sitrin is a participant in the Occupy Wall Street movement, and

was a part of the NYC General Assembly that helped organize OWS. She

is a postdoctoral fellow at the CUNY Graduate Center Committee on

Globalization and Social Change, and the author of Horizontalism:

Voices of Popular Power in Argentina.