thanks, thanks to all the comrades.The struggle continues!
Diana Lamb
IN MADRID ACTIVISTS GATHERED TO STOP THE EVICTION OF A FAMILY, ONE AMONG HUNDREDS DAILY.
They succeeded in blocking the evacuation of the family who’ve lived there for generations. Hundreds gathered in solidarity to ocupy the street, roof, garage and indoors, staying there 24 hrs a day for 2 weeks until the Eviction order finally ran out. Solidarity CAN win, and the anti eviction movement is fast expanding.
”One more sleepless night on the roof of Ofelia Nieto street number 29,
A few hours more and we will stop the eviction. So that this process that started 15 days ago has a fair result. But anyway, beyond what happens, incredible solidarity is a victory, and the struggle of Ofelia Nieto 29 is a benchmark for what’s to come.
Hours pass and it smells like victory. It already is, no doubt. This fortnight of resistance, solidarity and shared struggles are a reference and a fine example that YES YOU CAN WIN. They thought we were going to get discouraged, but no no no! The fight was growing every day, in the latter times (last days) the amount of people supporting has increased.
Since the mass media could not pretend we did not exist: Ofelia Nieto got media exposure and that’s an achievement .. This morning a national photo journalist was on the rooftop of doing an interview with a neighbor who had stayed there and supported the struggle. As a partner wisely said “I do not know if finally it got on the radio or how much of what was said they cut out, but at least they are here.”
It is now 23.59! Time to shout! This smells like victory. And it smells even thousands of kilometers from Madrid. This is one of those victories firm, sustained, which have become a strong process of collective, creative, delivery and above all seeking justice.
As I said yesterday: We women and men are fortunate to be living this, not to miss this chance to regain our dignity/integrity.
por Diana Cordero translation thefreeonline
Pasan las horas y ya huele a victoria. Es que ya lo es, sin duda. estos quince días de firmeza, solidaridad y luchas compartidas representan una referencia y una muestra acabada de que SI SE PUEDE. Pensaron que íbamos a desanimarnos, pero no fue así. La lucha fue creciendo cada día, esto es lo evidente, hasta convertirse en lo que es hoy en que en estas últimas horas (los últimos días) la cantidad de personas apoyando se ha multiplicado. Ya los medios masivos no podían hacer como que no existían: Ofelia Nieto tomó visibilidad mediática y eso también es un logro.. Esta mañana rodaba la foto de una periodista de RNE en la azotea de ON29 haciendo una entrevista a una vecina que había pernoctado allí y apoyaba la lucha. Como sabiamente decía un compañero “No sé si finalmente lo pasaran por la radio o cuanto de lo que se dijo, pero están aquí”.
Queda ahora esperar a las 23.59 de este día para gritar que vencimos, pero huele a victoria. Y se huele hasta miles de kilómetros de Madrid. Esta es de esas victorias firmes, sostenidas, que han devenido de un proceso sólido de construcción colectiva, creativa, de entrega y por sobre todo buscando la justicia.
Como decía ayer: Somos afortunadxs de estar viviendo esto ¿Vamos a perdernos esta ocasión de ser más dignxs?
On the 14th of August, over a hundred people resisted successfully the attempted eviction of the Gracia González family from their home, 29 Ofelia Nieto Street, in the neig
hbourhood of Tetuán, in Madrid. The family has lived in the house for three generations, since 1957. It is today made up three families, or ten persons. Their eviction order was the consequence of a 2004 city urban plan that called for the expansion of the adjacent walkway by 5,98 m². The family’s house was simply in the way. Behind supposed concerns with urban mobility lies the more obvious reason: real-estate development and speculation that has transformed a formerly working class neighbourhood into a landscape of towers. In 2010, the city claimed the land upon which the house sits as its own.
A first effort at eviction occurred in September 2012, with the family resisting. Fearing a repetition, the family turned to the “housing group” of the Popular Assembly of Tetúan, a child of spain’s 15M and other social movements. A line would be drawn around the González’s home, as so many others have been drawn by the PAH and 15M’s city assemblies in their struggle against the savagery of hundreds of daily evictions. As the eviction approached, the house’s inhabitants would be joined by as many as could resist from within, for days. Camping on the terrace, barricaded from within, and with many more outside, on the 14th of August, the occupiers held their own against the riot police. But as the end of this month approaches, the legal calendar limit for the execution of the eviction order, the resistance will have to continue.
The defense of the home of those who for whatever can no longer afford to pay for it is an act of extraordinary political significance because it places human need above commodity value. It is also, and equally important, if not more so, a profoundly ethical gesture, that is, a free and creative gesture of a community of people who in so acting intimate a different world from that of capitalism.
Gustav Landauer, the german anarchist of the early 20th century would often speak of revolution as “first and foremost a movement of spirit”. If he did not deny the religious genealogy of this manner of expression, it was nevertheless for him something not associated with any institutionalised form of religion. For Landauer, the spiritual is precisely what we have been calling the ethical, namely, the capacity to autonomously and collectively assume our lives as something created in equality. The resistance at Ofelia Nieto is such a gesture; it is an act of revolution.
video by Jaime Alekos, Amanecer en #OfeliaResiste
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