IndyMedia - Vrij Media Centrum Nederland

Waar: joe's Garage, Pretoriusstraat 43, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Wanneer: 23/04/2015 - 19:00

Thursday April 23rd 2015, Benefit for Popular Assembly of Lavapiés in Madrid. Concert with Almudena and Davide. Volkseten Vegazulu, 7pm
When the boroughs are self-organized, the State answers with punishment.
“No, they won’t stop us”

In our neighborhood, Lavapiés (Madrid), there is always an helicopter surveying the area. It is part of the state of fear and shock they try to impose. They arrest us, they issue fines against us, they search for us in our homes, they put us in jail…but that will not stop us, because our solidarity is strong and for real.

We are facing an increase in the repression from the Spanish government as it was in the Eighties. Activists from different movements are locked up daily (anarchist, members of independantist movements, feminists, communists, housing activists, squatters …) Nothing new, what else is to expect from the government? Even if that has always been the case, it is true that there has been an increase of the repression. This is partially explained because there is a certain fear from the power of these seeds of self-organization coming from the neighborhoods. These activist movements are steadily increasing and stopping evictions, producing in different ways, creating solidarity networks, transforming plots into kitchen gardens, trying to find and experiment ways of getting away step by step from the usual commercial networks…and that is scary for the power. The power reacts wickedly against movements, against this solidarity among the oppressed.

The Asamblea Popular de Lavapiés (people´s assembly from Lavapiés neighborhood) is a collective attempt based on self-organization and mutual support. It is an open organization from the inhabitants of the Lavapiés neighbourhood in Madrid. It started back in Spring 2011, emerging from the “15M” activist movement occupying squares, camping in the cities´ public spaces, generating public and open assemblies…We are together since then, facing and finding solutions for many of the problems in our neighborhoods: evictions, racist police raids, real state speculation, male-chauvinism, job insecurity, gentrification, etc…But from this neighborhood initiatives, there has been other outcomes: a public vegetable garden, coops or the Public Women University….

The government has brought charges against more than a ten of the members of the Asamblea Popular de Lavapiés: due to the first protest of the “15M” movement, for demonstrating against the police racist raids (our migrants neighboors are constantly suffering racial profiling from police and even a stronger harassment), for stopping evictions and due police set ups. This is without taking into account other sorts of government repression (administrative repression). Even if it may look like, we are not the most punished and repressed activist movement in Madrid.

Nevertheless, we are not frightened by their repression, we feel even more united, we feel even more aware of what we are fighting against. We have created “resistance boxes” to save money to face all this and as well formal and informal support networks. There are counter-information and supporting campaigns. We know that solidarity among us is our strength. With this “resistance boxes” we can fund the support for the trials, the fines, the administrative repression from the government. Thanks to this mutual support we can carry on with our actions, increasing and extending the areas of our lives covered by the self-organization, taking them back from whom intend to take life and freedom away from us.

We shall be free, we shall have the freedom to keep on fighting and creating a different world,

Asamblea Popular de Lavapiés´ group against repression.

Volkseten Vegazulu is a people’s kitchen, every monday and thursday, 7pm, vegan food for 4€ or donation. All benefits go for social & political struggles. No reservation.