Lisbon, Portugal: Anti-authoritarian demonstration on May 19th

To the streets with everyone

I want to be on the streets with all those who decide to act on their own, with all those who don’t identify with  representative politics, who don’t share the idea that there are organizers and organized, leaders and followers, activists and activated. I want to live a moment in which we are all together in the streets, amongst equals, at our pace and with the desires that each and every one might have.

If taking to the streets without political parties has always been evidently necessary for many, acting without syndicates or representative organizations can also be seen as making sense for much more than a small minority of people. The bureaucrats and future leaders see the streets as a stage, trying to restrain all the tendencies that aim to try new things, new ways of being in struggle on the streets and on a daily basis. They also insist on making their followers bored to death.

The demo of May 19th is the result of some peoples’ will to take the initiative, instead of following the dates predetermined by institutions which perpetuate this world of misery and authority.

We take to the streets on strikes, on May Day, on the dates of the “indignados”, etc… We don’t care about it because even these moments can turn out to be interesting. But they become interesting precisely whenever they are able to go beyond the limits, the habits and the rules imposed by those other than ourselves. Besides that, the ability to set up our own dates, places and forms of action can mark the difference between the despair of the old world and the enthusiasm of a new experience.

I also want to experiment with how it will be to take to the streets for 3 weeks in a row (following May Day and the 12th of May demos); how it will be to be side by side with friends, comrades and people unknown that will become partners in the street. How will we maintain the tension and the enthusiasm in the streets? How will we connect these moments, with an anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist continuity, day after day, so that these moments can feed this continuity and so that they become contextualized in return? This is is a debate which I hope that will continue, for the sake of each and every one of us who cannot stand this social order any longer. As for the demos, the feeling I have is that whatever happens on each of them, it will be reinforced on the dates that follow. Another feeling is that whenever a collective moment comes to an end, one is left wanting more.

Because the potential is there, this can turn out interesting!
Join the demo at Martim Moniz metro station, at 15.00.

source: ruacomtodos via pt.indymedia