The Philippine Online Chronicles

The “los indignados” (the indignant) of Spain started it all when on May 15 last year they held a rally in Puerta del Sol Square in Madrid.

“It was about time for people to rise up,” declared Carmen Martin, a 24-year-old Puerta del Sol marcher.

The wind must have carried her call and people ‘round the globe responded by rising up, because like the “indignados” they are also frustrated, angry and fed up with the way things are going.

Now, protests are a dime a dozen. We have sit-ins, hunger strikes, petitions, human chain links, prayer rallies, barricades, mass demonstrations, that sadly most of the time end up all for naught. The other guys just would’nt budge an inch, responding by hiring burlies to haul off people lying on the streets; by waiting it out until stomachs really grumbled; dumping written protestations into shredding machines or into waste baskets; sending out docus of those long winding human chain links to the Guiness Book of Records; supplicating the heavens to bring down the big rain and sweep away the rosaries along with the hands clasping them; bulldozing to smithereens the barricades; dispersing the crowd with water cannons, truncheons, and bullets, live at that.

Nabenta na ang mga yan, they say of the run-of-the-mill protest actions. Something creative naman.

And so they came up with the Tahrir Republlic at the heart of Cairo. Organized by the throng on Tahrir Square amidst the tumultous events that overthrew Hosni Mubarak, it was a “ministate” comprising “an infirmary here, a kitchen there, a garbage collection service, defense units, places for prayers.”

The intention was for sustainability as against hit-and –run tactics.

Manned by “hundreds of thousands of people, ranging from the Muslim Brotherhood to Westernized Egyptian women,” the “creative” resistance worked like a siege and triumphed.

Other “micro-republics” (as they are also named) soon sprouted. The Occupy movement, inspired by the Occupy Wall Street encampment in New York City, quickly swept across Asia, the Americas and Europe.

Except in Rome where the protesters engaged the police in street skirmishes, other demonstations in Sydney, Tokyo, Hongkong, Toronto, Chicago and other places were generally peaceful, the marchers passing in front of monuments, financial buildings, city halls. There were the “roar of silence” at St. James Park in Toronto, the “Take the Streets” in Brussels, and the “soft approach” where a little girl (remember the flower –bearing nuns during the Edsa Revolution?) is shown offering a leaf to a soldier in Santiago, Chile.

The picture of a globe engulped by protest actions is not complete without adding the Arab Spring phenomenon, where “Arab countries in an arc from Libya to the Persian Gulf… are engaged more than ever to… overthrow “ dictators.

Although down the protest road the Arab Spring and the Occupy street movements differ in “language, landscape and scale”, both carry the same sentiment. Discontent.

The “street Occupiers” are angry at “greedy” financial “hustlers” and at the coddling, conspiring politicians. Angry that when a money crisis explodes, it is the people who are thrown in the lurch and made to suffer. “We shouldn’t bail out the banks. We should bail out the people,” says Herbert Heberl, an irater Berliner.

“Banks got bailed out, we got sold out!” goes the angry chant.

The Arab Spring uprisings have so far succeeded on toppling long-ruling strongmen like Mubarak of Egypt, Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen, Libya’s Muammar el-Qadaffi, Tunisian leader Zine el Abidine Ben Ali. Syrian president Bashar Assad, however, is holding on amidst an uprising that’s getting to be among the bloodiest of the Arab Spring with more than 5000 killed since March last year.

The Occupy Movement sought to narrow the “widening gap between the rich and the poor (1% rich and 99% poor) while the Arab Spring fighters no longer want to be subject to the whims and caprices of tyrants.

While one wants change in the things he has created, the other is just beginning to create new things for himself. Both have still a long troubled way to go.

Hereabouts, we have the Occupy Mendiola (camp-out, they say to liken it to the Tahrir Republic) but it was not only a copycat but anemic, lacking drive, led by the same so-called leaders who are just eyeing, salivating, for seats in the Senate and the accompanying perks.

Oh, but we have been in the Occupy business all along. Occupy the Palace by the Pasig River. Occupy the Senate. Occupy the Judiciary. Occupy the numerous agencies and departments of the government where the occupiers easily make fast bucks, and to heck with the “tuwid na daan.” The Boss won’t mind, anyway, if you are a kaklase or a kabarilan.

And while we are at it, where do you belong? The 1% who are getting everything, or the 99% who are getting nothing?

And while we are still at it, the Swiss have been having fun since way back in the 50s, while we are telling the world just now to come because we are having fun. Are we?

Sources:

The Phil. Daily Inquirer, October 17, 2011

The New York Times, October 29, 2011