It has been just over a week since on October 29th, various ravines in
the Valencia river basin flooded the entire belt of villages in l'Horta
Sud, that is, the municipalities that are south of the city of Valencia
in the direction of the Albufera. At the moment, just over 220 deaths
and dozens of missing people have occurred, mainly in the Valencian
territory, although there were also victims in Albacete and Malaga due
to the effects of the Mediterranean DANA. A natural phenomenon that can
be foreseen, which the AEMET data update daily and are taken into
consideration to take measures and activate alerts of moderate, serious
or extreme risk. A mass of cold air that meets the accumulated heat of
the waters of the Mediterranean Sea causes this phenomenon, which is
becoming more frequent and with worse consequences due to the sustained
increase of 1.5ºC on average in sea temperature.
This climate scenario must always confront the denialist theses, both
from the highest spheres of power and from the outsider theories
promoted by the extreme right, predicting, however, a greater intensity
of these catastrophes in relation to the ecological and climatic crisis
we are experiencing. These will occur more frequently, and we will see
new dramatic situations that, at the same time, are closely linked to
political and social decisions. For this reason, it should also be noted
that, having seen the real estate growth and speculation with housing in
recent decades, completely ignoring environmental reports, construction
has been carried out for many years in areas that have a very high risk
of this type of catastrophic situations due to floods. Above all, beyond
the complaints about the social and climatic crisis that we want to
express in this text, we stand in solidarity with all the victims and
those directly affected by these historic floods in Valencia and other
regions.
Under the waters, class consciousness emerges
These events are possibly the greatest peninsular flood catastrophe in
our recent history, together with the Vallès floods in Barcelona in
1962, and the floods in Andalusia and Murcia in 1973. In the present and
directly, the events of the last few weeks are accompanied by the
extreme vulnerability suffered by thousands of workers forced to go to
their jobs despite a situation of risk to their lives. Despite the
warnings of a historic flood for days before, and on that very day,
reasonable preventive measures were not put in place and, in addition,
the Valencian emergency system, greatly deteriorated by budget cuts,
completely collapsed, leaving thousands of people at the mercy of
natural events without any alternative for help.
Since midday, some public workplaces and university education have
ceased their activity, and private companies have put monetisation and
labour exploitation before the lives of workers. Then they tear their
clothes off, claiming that it is the employer who takes the risks, when
the working class is the one who explicitly and brutally exposes their
own body and life for the enrichment of a few. Very recognisable
companies in the country have followed the same dynamic throughout the
week in other places and regions where there has also been heavy rain.
The main "union" organisations (such as CC.OO. and UGT) did not make a
single statement at the time demanding that private companies not force
workers to put lives at risk by sending them to make home deliveries or
travelling to their workplaces. Even though they had both membership and
majorities in the workforce and the company committees, these "unions"
refused to react in any way, neither by the strength of their affiliated
workers nor by the mechanisms of prevention of occupational risks of the
company committees. Thus, they failed in the most basic mandate of a
workers' union, which is to defend and protect them. It is truly
shameful to see that common sense and the final decision rest, together
with the assumption of very delicate work responsibilities, on the
workers themselves who, ultimately and because they see that their lives
are not at risk, must personally decide to refuse to go to their jobs,
both during this catastrophe and afterwards due to the impossibility of
travel. This situation, even with legislation in hand on rights in these
situations, leaves us completely unprotected against the capitalist
logic of maximum production and performance.
The disastrous official management of these floods by state institutions
shows that they do not protect us at all and that, in class alliance
with companies, they will always put capitalist interests above our
lives, as has been seen in other similar crises such as the Covid-19
pandemic. The current squabbles in state power over the search for those
responsible is a case of every man for himself, and they do not come to
resolve the material needs of those who have lost everything. They point
us to a return to normality, but that return to normality from the
capitalist perspective implies returning to the logic of exploitation
and waiting for the next great ecological and social crisis that will
once again make us mourn our dead with helplessness and rage.
These experiences in which direct conditions of direct loss of our lives
occur, bring to the surface a class consciousness that is always
camouflaged behind this imposition of capitalist logic, but which
becomes explicit in these types of gaps and which are cumulative
experiences in our memory as an exploited class. There are no longer as
many messages as there were a long time ago where people complained
about "natural disasters" and that was it. Now they are put on the table
and these social injustices and the class-based problems that are
directly related to these events are made evident. We have also seen how
this week there were situations of looting by the population in shopping
centres and premises due to the lack of basic provisions after the days
of absolute neglect. These actions, mostly driven by an awareness of
survival versus other mercantile logics, are acted upon by racist and
xenophobic discourses, trying to relate these events to migrant or Roma
social communities.
Mutual support springs from the mud
During the floods through many testimonies, but also afterwards and up
to a week later when the different power groups continue to fight over a
story that will save them from public burning, it is solidarity as a
basis that has been most evident in all this. A wave of cooperation and
volunteers from all over the peninsula and in Valencia itself are
organizing the work that allows us to affirm that only the people save
the people. In fact, through this medium we encourage and, of course,
participate in solidarity initiatives that have set up a support
network, from "Suport Mutu Dana València" to union structures such as
CGT and CNT València with the support of the rest of the federations and
also neighborhood associations, neighborhood unions, self-managed social
centers, popular centers or revolutionary political organizations. We
also see that this solidarity needs class coordination and unity, that
is, solidarity must be as broad and widespread as possible, and class
consciousness and mutual support must operate on it as a political
strategy, since it will have to be from the mud where we start the
revolution. The cultural reality imposed by American fiction is not very
consistent with what we actually see in situations like this one today,
or Hurricane Katrina in the USA in 2005. The most recurrent social
action is mutual support and not the competitive struggle for survival.
A few days ago we saw how the arrival of King Felipe VI and Queen
Letizia, the President of the Valencian Community (Carlos Mazón) and the
President of the Government (Pedro Sánchez) unleashed great indignation
in Paiporta and a protest against their presence there due to the
disastrous management of this social and ecological crisis. Some
minority far-right groups were also present, they tried to make
themselves visible, and they succeeded, and above all they intended to
mark a political discourse. Many left-wing organisations have rejected
that display of popular anger because it has been portrayed as an act of
the far-right outsider. Beyond the performativity of the event, it was
based on the legitimate anger of hundreds of people from Valencia,
Paiporta and other affected towns. It denotes a crisis of the regime,
which is becoming more and more pronounced and with greater indicators
that are escalating more frequently. If solidarity is not linked to
class consciousness and unity, it will be the extreme right that will
take advantage of this breeding ground and even of our slogans. Mutual
support is needed as a tool that connects human solidarity with an
alternative revolutionary path against capital, because if not, this
indignation will be expressed as a fascist reaction coordinated by an
extreme right that presents itself as an outsider but is another arm of
the regime that supports the neoliberal system. In short, we cannot
allow ourselves to give up space and, above all, we cannot allow
ourselves to give speeches to the extreme right; we must fight for this
terrain, we must give it an anti-capitalist and anti-fascist political
direction. Anger is organized, if we do not do it, the right will do it,
dividing this class unity.
The military deployed in Valencia are not for emergency work, for that
there are other services conveniently trained for it; they are given a
job with citizen capitalization to give themselves a facelift, but we
know that they are there to exercise social control over a population
that has seen that the private company sent them to die and the public
government left them unprotected. "Only the people save the people" is
not only a solidarity proclamation; it is also the social force that can
lead to an overcoming of the logic of power; to an experience of
self-organization and class struggle.
Life is worth life, and we are condemned to die for being workers, to
"lift the country," for the benefits of small and large companies. That
is why we always call for self-organization of the exploited class, to
pressure and escalate the demands of our class; to build Popular Power
so that these demands on which our lives depend, become the impetus to
carry out a revolutionary transformation of our world.
May our lives be flooded by mutual support and not by capitalist misery.
https://www.regeneracionlibertaria.org/2024/11/08/comunicado-conjunto-sobre-la-dana-una-crisis-social-y-ecologica/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
the Valencia river basin flooded the entire belt of villages in l'Horta
Sud, that is, the municipalities that are south of the city of Valencia
in the direction of the Albufera. At the moment, just over 220 deaths
and dozens of missing people have occurred, mainly in the Valencian
territory, although there were also victims in Albacete and Malaga due
to the effects of the Mediterranean DANA. A natural phenomenon that can
be foreseen, which the AEMET data update daily and are taken into
consideration to take measures and activate alerts of moderate, serious
or extreme risk. A mass of cold air that meets the accumulated heat of
the waters of the Mediterranean Sea causes this phenomenon, which is
becoming more frequent and with worse consequences due to the sustained
increase of 1.5ºC on average in sea temperature.
This climate scenario must always confront the denialist theses, both
from the highest spheres of power and from the outsider theories
promoted by the extreme right, predicting, however, a greater intensity
of these catastrophes in relation to the ecological and climatic crisis
we are experiencing. These will occur more frequently, and we will see
new dramatic situations that, at the same time, are closely linked to
political and social decisions. For this reason, it should also be noted
that, having seen the real estate growth and speculation with housing in
recent decades, completely ignoring environmental reports, construction
has been carried out for many years in areas that have a very high risk
of this type of catastrophic situations due to floods. Above all, beyond
the complaints about the social and climatic crisis that we want to
express in this text, we stand in solidarity with all the victims and
those directly affected by these historic floods in Valencia and other
regions.
Under the waters, class consciousness emerges
These events are possibly the greatest peninsular flood catastrophe in
our recent history, together with the Vallès floods in Barcelona in
1962, and the floods in Andalusia and Murcia in 1973. In the present and
directly, the events of the last few weeks are accompanied by the
extreme vulnerability suffered by thousands of workers forced to go to
their jobs despite a situation of risk to their lives. Despite the
warnings of a historic flood for days before, and on that very day,
reasonable preventive measures were not put in place and, in addition,
the Valencian emergency system, greatly deteriorated by budget cuts,
completely collapsed, leaving thousands of people at the mercy of
natural events without any alternative for help.
Since midday, some public workplaces and university education have
ceased their activity, and private companies have put monetisation and
labour exploitation before the lives of workers. Then they tear their
clothes off, claiming that it is the employer who takes the risks, when
the working class is the one who explicitly and brutally exposes their
own body and life for the enrichment of a few. Very recognisable
companies in the country have followed the same dynamic throughout the
week in other places and regions where there has also been heavy rain.
The main "union" organisations (such as CC.OO. and UGT) did not make a
single statement at the time demanding that private companies not force
workers to put lives at risk by sending them to make home deliveries or
travelling to their workplaces. Even though they had both membership and
majorities in the workforce and the company committees, these "unions"
refused to react in any way, neither by the strength of their affiliated
workers nor by the mechanisms of prevention of occupational risks of the
company committees. Thus, they failed in the most basic mandate of a
workers' union, which is to defend and protect them. It is truly
shameful to see that common sense and the final decision rest, together
with the assumption of very delicate work responsibilities, on the
workers themselves who, ultimately and because they see that their lives
are not at risk, must personally decide to refuse to go to their jobs,
both during this catastrophe and afterwards due to the impossibility of
travel. This situation, even with legislation in hand on rights in these
situations, leaves us completely unprotected against the capitalist
logic of maximum production and performance.
The disastrous official management of these floods by state institutions
shows that they do not protect us at all and that, in class alliance
with companies, they will always put capitalist interests above our
lives, as has been seen in other similar crises such as the Covid-19
pandemic. The current squabbles in state power over the search for those
responsible is a case of every man for himself, and they do not come to
resolve the material needs of those who have lost everything. They point
us to a return to normality, but that return to normality from the
capitalist perspective implies returning to the logic of exploitation
and waiting for the next great ecological and social crisis that will
once again make us mourn our dead with helplessness and rage.
These experiences in which direct conditions of direct loss of our lives
occur, bring to the surface a class consciousness that is always
camouflaged behind this imposition of capitalist logic, but which
becomes explicit in these types of gaps and which are cumulative
experiences in our memory as an exploited class. There are no longer as
many messages as there were a long time ago where people complained
about "natural disasters" and that was it. Now they are put on the table
and these social injustices and the class-based problems that are
directly related to these events are made evident. We have also seen how
this week there were situations of looting by the population in shopping
centres and premises due to the lack of basic provisions after the days
of absolute neglect. These actions, mostly driven by an awareness of
survival versus other mercantile logics, are acted upon by racist and
xenophobic discourses, trying to relate these events to migrant or Roma
social communities.
Mutual support springs from the mud
During the floods through many testimonies, but also afterwards and up
to a week later when the different power groups continue to fight over a
story that will save them from public burning, it is solidarity as a
basis that has been most evident in all this. A wave of cooperation and
volunteers from all over the peninsula and in Valencia itself are
organizing the work that allows us to affirm that only the people save
the people. In fact, through this medium we encourage and, of course,
participate in solidarity initiatives that have set up a support
network, from "Suport Mutu Dana València" to union structures such as
CGT and CNT València with the support of the rest of the federations and
also neighborhood associations, neighborhood unions, self-managed social
centers, popular centers or revolutionary political organizations. We
also see that this solidarity needs class coordination and unity, that
is, solidarity must be as broad and widespread as possible, and class
consciousness and mutual support must operate on it as a political
strategy, since it will have to be from the mud where we start the
revolution. The cultural reality imposed by American fiction is not very
consistent with what we actually see in situations like this one today,
or Hurricane Katrina in the USA in 2005. The most recurrent social
action is mutual support and not the competitive struggle for survival.
A few days ago we saw how the arrival of King Felipe VI and Queen
Letizia, the President of the Valencian Community (Carlos Mazón) and the
President of the Government (Pedro Sánchez) unleashed great indignation
in Paiporta and a protest against their presence there due to the
disastrous management of this social and ecological crisis. Some
minority far-right groups were also present, they tried to make
themselves visible, and they succeeded, and above all they intended to
mark a political discourse. Many left-wing organisations have rejected
that display of popular anger because it has been portrayed as an act of
the far-right outsider. Beyond the performativity of the event, it was
based on the legitimate anger of hundreds of people from Valencia,
Paiporta and other affected towns. It denotes a crisis of the regime,
which is becoming more and more pronounced and with greater indicators
that are escalating more frequently. If solidarity is not linked to
class consciousness and unity, it will be the extreme right that will
take advantage of this breeding ground and even of our slogans. Mutual
support is needed as a tool that connects human solidarity with an
alternative revolutionary path against capital, because if not, this
indignation will be expressed as a fascist reaction coordinated by an
extreme right that presents itself as an outsider but is another arm of
the regime that supports the neoliberal system. In short, we cannot
allow ourselves to give up space and, above all, we cannot allow
ourselves to give speeches to the extreme right; we must fight for this
terrain, we must give it an anti-capitalist and anti-fascist political
direction. Anger is organized, if we do not do it, the right will do it,
dividing this class unity.
The military deployed in Valencia are not for emergency work, for that
there are other services conveniently trained for it; they are given a
job with citizen capitalization to give themselves a facelift, but we
know that they are there to exercise social control over a population
that has seen that the private company sent them to die and the public
government left them unprotected. "Only the people save the people" is
not only a solidarity proclamation; it is also the social force that can
lead to an overcoming of the logic of power; to an experience of
self-organization and class struggle.
Life is worth life, and we are condemned to die for being workers, to
"lift the country," for the benefits of small and large companies. That
is why we always call for self-organization of the exploited class, to
pressure and escalate the demands of our class; to build Popular Power
so that these demands on which our lives depend, become the impetus to
carry out a revolutionary transformation of our world.
May our lives be flooded by mutual support and not by capitalist misery.
https://www.regeneracionlibertaria.org/2024/11/08/comunicado-conjunto-sobre-la-dana-una-crisis-social-y-ecologica/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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