Anti-Capitalist Block. Ljubljana. March 1, 2013.

GOTOVI SO! They are all finished!

Three months ago people in Slovenia rose up in a decentralized massive revolt. It marked the start of an intense and largely self-organized resistance to the crisis. This uprising started in Maribor against the corrupt major and city council, but was borne out of more than 20 years of transition politics and capital accumulation that further increased inequality and powerlessness. The slow privatization of society never meant to give us a good life and now it is being rejected all over. It is in the common daily and exceptional practices that challenge the relationships of power that we see our uprising. Like the resistance taking place all around Europe, this is a process with many diferent forms of struggle and expression. All are equally important and none should be ignored, pushed aside or criminalized. It is in this multitude that we engage in a process that re-orientates power towards control over our own lives and that cannot be captured, branded or instrumentalised by any partcular interests, groups or partes. In this way, it opens a process of reclaiming space for people to intervene in the discourse of the crisis politics being applied across Europe.

This is why we say the uprising belongs to everyone and all of us!

The systematic call from the start to throw out the political elite has made it clear that this process is about more than any single politician or particular clique. The corruption of individuals in power is just the extreme example of the actual corruption we are fighting: the system itself. This is why we need continue the fight beyond the fall of the current government and beyond the borders of our cites and our states. We are demanding a different process, a constituent process based on the fulfilment of our needs. No-one in power will benevolently offer us alternatives so we will impose them from the bottom up!

This is why we say no-one represents us and we won’t discriminate: they are all finished!

In the months since the uprising started we have seen increasingly draconian attacks from the police. We are being intmidated in our homes and common spaces; we are being sprayed with tear gas and pepper spray; we are being beaten and detained for fictitious reasons and for long periods without charges; we are being persecuted and tried. The uprising itself has been criminalized! The rising police state is a clear indication that the resistance going on here and around Europe has shaken those in positons of economic and state power. The process is happening without any question of the systemic violence we face every day, which has a hugely negatve impact on our lives. The financial markets and banks attack our means of social reproduction, take our homes and threaten us with debts; the state does the dirty work of keeping us quiet during this robbery.

That is why we say there are police everywhere and justice nowhere!

This is an uprising that goes beyond the specific, local processes in Slovenia. It goes to the heart of the great lie: that a market economy and privatized industry, services and property will eventually lead to the prosperity of all people. The project of a neo-liberal Europe, a consttuent process from above, is the main poster selling us this lie, while it socializes the cost on us for a crisis we didn’t create. The system gets accumulaton, we get austerity. We cannot struggle against a transnatonal system of capital if we are locked in our naton-states. Indeed, we are transcending parochial identities, historical myths and politcal borders in this struggle.

This is why we say transnationalize the uprising! We extend a call to join the common process to all.

See also: Federation of Anarchist Organising, Slovenia: http://www.a-federacija.org/english/

Balkans Anarchist Bookfair 24-26 May 2013, Ljubljana – Slovenia: http://www.a-federacija.org/2013/01/26/balkan-anarchist-bookfair-2013/