Rob: And another way to put it is it's relocalization, or localization.
MS: That could be a part of it, yeah.
Rob: Okay another concept is autonomy as in autonomous schools, health, agricultural production planning, media, and you didn't mention it, but how about public banking and charter schools? The idea of autonomy and how it's applied.
MS: Yeah, the charter schools and banking would have to be location specific. That would be hard for me to -- I mean we didn't put it in and it would be hard to talk about because it really depends on where and how in the question of control and self-organization. So it's not just about being autonomous but it's from who and how and who can be included or not in this autonomous project. So I think its location -- that can be location specific or regionally specific -
Rob: Okay, so let's jump back, what is the concept of autonomy and autonomous whatever?
MS: Right, and there's a whole body of literature about autonomy and we make it a point to say, this isn't about engaging with some big theoretical discussion on autonomy. Not that it's not interesting but that's not what we're talking about. This is more when you talk to people in the movements and they say, we're autonomous we want to be autonomous and they just mean, we don't want to be a part of these institutions of power that got us into this situation to begin with. Whether that's governments or banks, or whatever the institution is that created the problem, its saying we're organizing autonomously from that. And that also includes left political parties, traditionally unions, doesn't mean there's never a relationship to these institutions, that's different. There's often -- or sometimes anyway -- different relationships to these institutions of power, but the idea of autonomy is we're going to self-organize, in this horizontal way, ourselves first. And then from there decide how and if we're going to have relationships to other institutions of power as they exist now.
Rob: Okay, what happens when the state sees autonomous self organization as a threat to state power?
MS: Then they come in and repress and co-opt and there's a whole bunch of different ways the state comes in because I think they fear losing their legitimacy and actual power. I think in some regions of Spain some of the movements have become so strong, especially the housing movement, they're now 260 groups of this Plataforma, it's this group in defense of housing, people who are being foreclosed on and evicted and what sparked the crisis to begin with, the 2008 housing crisis. But people have been organizing in Spain on such a wide scale in keeping people housed, families housed, occupying new homes and entire buildings that some of these municipal governments have said, okay we're putting a freeze on foreclosures or putting a freeze on evictions. And I think they're doing that, not because they care because they would have done it earlier if they actually cared, but because such power is being built from below that they don't want to get bypassed because it's not just about housing in a lot of these areas. There's also barter networks that are being developed and different types of assemblies for making decisions on all kinds of things related to school and healthcare. So, the fear is people stop looking to the state so one thing they do sometimes is try to co-opt it or try to usurp what the movements doing and try to get credit for it and see if the movement will stop organizing. And in other places it's physical repression so this is where the question of how we create our own autonomy and yet figure out how relate to these institutions' power. Particularly the state is really important because as we continue to develop these autonomous projects and recuperate space in life, there will be increased attempts to shut us down and so thinking about that ahead of time is really important.
Rob: Okay, next concept: Todos Somos -- we all are, as in we are all Bradley Manning; we are all Trayvon Martin.
MS: Exactly. That's exactly. That's what it is, I mean it's related to those concepts of we and affect and seeing ourselves in the other. Not just seeing ourselves in the other, but really being the other. It's not just, oh I feel solidarity with, it's more than just feeling solidarity it's that you are - who you are is linked with that other person and so then, we all are. And linked not just the political outcome of what might to this person, but as a woman who is in a heterosexual relationship, my life it is important to me that we are all gay and lesbian because the society we live in, it affects me how gays and lesbians are treated even if I'm not practicing lesbianism or something. It's that everything is interrelated and how other people are treated is also directly affecting us in a kind of concrete way and then an also more of a philosophical way.
Rob: Okay, how is that manifesting in say, Greece?
MS: For a little while, there were some challenges with it actually because -- in the -- and I'm thinking very specifically about the relationship of the assemblies in neighborhoods and then there were separate groups meeting of migrants. And it -- while in theory people saw themselves as in the same -- that we are all migrants, that wasn't how people were organizing in the beginning in a lot of areas. Not all areas, but in a lot of them. And then with the increased repression by the group Golden Dawn, it's this fascist group that for a long time was given cover by the government and the police and they were beating migrants and sometimes killing them, setting fire to places where they were living. And the assemblies took this on very seriously and started to organize, not just in defense of the migrants but together with migrants organizing and started to make joint assemblies and then see the struggle as interconnected, that it had to be it wasn't just okay now we go and we defend the migrants in our community, but that what they're creating is intertwined with the life of migrants and what's happening to the migrants, so it would be one, one Greek example.
Rob: Okay, we gotta move on because we're running out of time. I'm hoping you might be able to go over a little bit, but we'll see. Free territory or piquete, which means blockade.
MS: Yeah. that's a study again in parts of the world in Latin America but other parts of the world where there's often so much either unemployment or not places of work. So traditionally when people protested workers, you had the strike as an option or a school, you could shut it down, but if you're unemployed or you're in a region of the world where there's not these same spaces that in institutions that can be shut down, people make this piquete, this road blockade. And it's literally blockading major arteries so that traffic can't slow; so it's a different way of kind of stopping commerce. But what's important is that not just what happens in that stopping, but what opens in it and this is where the concept of territory actually kind of starts to play in as well. So this is something that the unemployed movements have done, but it's something that's being done right now all over the world, especially in Argentina I'm thinking of in the north where international mining companies and deforestation projects, think tar sands as well; these projects that are going to exploit the earth that are being planned and people block roads and block major arteries to not allow the passage of say trucks to go and blow up part of a mountain as this happening in la Famatina in Argentina or part of tar sands, to block the road so that the pipeline can't be constructed. But then in that space of shutting something down, people talk to each other and form assemblies and create something new in that space. So it's actually the creating something in that space that's a territorial space, but it's also the construction of something different in these new relationships, in the new politics, in taking care of one another.
Rob: Okay, another concept which I love, and you have a great kind of a mythic story of that -- and demonstrate it, walking and questioning, or making the road as one walks. A multiplicity of paths towards ever changing ends, the end as a process; the rationale behind Occupy's no demands that drove top-down thinking authoritarianism needing people crazy. I love this idea that walking and questioning describes a work in process based on values, solidarity, mutuality, community, equality, self-administration, freedom and that's what you said and I would add other bottom up values like localization, interdependence, caring, empathy and compassion. Talk a little bit about how they fit in.
MS: All of them, I mean I think all of what you said, all of what you named and thinking about it as we go so there's no blueprint, there's no answer it's that we created, and we have to create it together because we don't know and we're only going to find out as we meet each other and talk to each other and see and then kind of go into this concept of -- then we're going to change as we know each other, as situations change so that necessarily means that what we want or what's going to happen or what we try to build is going to have to change, so it's that kind of walking, questioning idea bringing in all of what you mentioned and being -- not having the list of okay we're going to start in with our transitional program, how could we do that? We haven't even talked to each other. You can't have a list of demands until you at least know each other and even still, you probably -- the things you want probably can't be gotten by those institutions of power anyway, out of all of them anyway, so doing it ourselves.
MS: That could be a part of it, yeah.
Rob: Okay another concept is autonomy as in autonomous schools, health, agricultural production planning, media, and you didn't mention it, but how about public banking and charter schools? The idea of autonomy and how it's applied.
MS: Yeah, the charter schools and banking would have to be location specific. That would be hard for me to -- I mean we didn't put it in and it would be hard to talk about because it really depends on where and how in the question of control and self-organization. So it's not just about being autonomous but it's from who and how and who can be included or not in this autonomous project. So I think its location -- that can be location specific or regionally specific -
MS: Right, and there's a whole body of literature about autonomy and we make it a point to say, this isn't about engaging with some big theoretical discussion on autonomy. Not that it's not interesting but that's not what we're talking about. This is more when you talk to people in the movements and they say, we're autonomous we want to be autonomous and they just mean, we don't want to be a part of these institutions of power that got us into this situation to begin with. Whether that's governments or banks, or whatever the institution is that created the problem, its saying we're organizing autonomously from that. And that also includes left political parties, traditionally unions, doesn't mean there's never a relationship to these institutions, that's different. There's often -- or sometimes anyway -- different relationships to these institutions of power, but the idea of autonomy is we're going to self-organize, in this horizontal way, ourselves first. And then from there decide how and if we're going to have relationships to other institutions of power as they exist now.
Rob: Okay, what happens when the state sees autonomous self organization as a threat to state power?
MS: Then they come in and repress and co-opt and there's a whole bunch of different ways the state comes in because I think they fear losing their legitimacy and actual power. I think in some regions of Spain some of the movements have become so strong, especially the housing movement, they're now 260 groups of this Plataforma, it's this group in defense of housing, people who are being foreclosed on and evicted and what sparked the crisis to begin with, the 2008 housing crisis. But people have been organizing in Spain on such a wide scale in keeping people housed, families housed, occupying new homes and entire buildings that some of these municipal governments have said, okay we're putting a freeze on foreclosures or putting a freeze on evictions. And I think they're doing that, not because they care because they would have done it earlier if they actually cared, but because such power is being built from below that they don't want to get bypassed because it's not just about housing in a lot of these areas. There's also barter networks that are being developed and different types of assemblies for making decisions on all kinds of things related to school and healthcare. So, the fear is people stop looking to the state so one thing they do sometimes is try to co-opt it or try to usurp what the movements doing and try to get credit for it and see if the movement will stop organizing. And in other places it's physical repression so this is where the question of how we create our own autonomy and yet figure out how relate to these institutions' power. Particularly the state is really important because as we continue to develop these autonomous projects and recuperate space in life, there will be increased attempts to shut us down and so thinking about that ahead of time is really important.
Rob: Okay, next concept: Todos Somos -- we all are, as in we are all Bradley Manning; we are all Trayvon Martin.
MS: Exactly. That's exactly. That's what it is, I mean it's related to those concepts of we and affect and seeing ourselves in the other. Not just seeing ourselves in the other, but really being the other. It's not just, oh I feel solidarity with, it's more than just feeling solidarity it's that you are - who you are is linked with that other person and so then, we all are. And linked not just the political outcome of what might to this person, but as a woman who is in a heterosexual relationship, my life it is important to me that we are all gay and lesbian because the society we live in, it affects me how gays and lesbians are treated even if I'm not practicing lesbianism or something. It's that everything is interrelated and how other people are treated is also directly affecting us in a kind of concrete way and then an also more of a philosophical way.
Rob: Okay, how is that manifesting in say, Greece?
MS: For a little while, there were some challenges with it actually because -- in the -- and I'm thinking very specifically about the relationship of the assemblies in neighborhoods and then there were separate groups meeting of migrants. And it -- while in theory people saw themselves as in the same -- that we are all migrants, that wasn't how people were organizing in the beginning in a lot of areas. Not all areas, but in a lot of them. And then with the increased repression by the group Golden Dawn, it's this fascist group that for a long time was given cover by the government and the police and they were beating migrants and sometimes killing them, setting fire to places where they were living. And the assemblies took this on very seriously and started to organize, not just in defense of the migrants but together with migrants organizing and started to make joint assemblies and then see the struggle as interconnected, that it had to be it wasn't just okay now we go and we defend the migrants in our community, but that what they're creating is intertwined with the life of migrants and what's happening to the migrants, so it would be one, one Greek example.
Rob: Okay, we gotta move on because we're running out of time. I'm hoping you might be able to go over a little bit, but we'll see. Free territory or piquete, which means blockade.
MS: Yeah. that's a study again in parts of the world in Latin America but other parts of the world where there's often so much either unemployment or not places of work. So traditionally when people protested workers, you had the strike as an option or a school, you could shut it down, but if you're unemployed or you're in a region of the world where there's not these same spaces that in institutions that can be shut down, people make this piquete, this road blockade. And it's literally blockading major arteries so that traffic can't slow; so it's a different way of kind of stopping commerce. But what's important is that not just what happens in that stopping, but what opens in it and this is where the concept of territory actually kind of starts to play in as well. So this is something that the unemployed movements have done, but it's something that's being done right now all over the world, especially in Argentina I'm thinking of in the north where international mining companies and deforestation projects, think tar sands as well; these projects that are going to exploit the earth that are being planned and people block roads and block major arteries to not allow the passage of say trucks to go and blow up part of a mountain as this happening in la Famatina in Argentina or part of tar sands, to block the road so that the pipeline can't be constructed. But then in that space of shutting something down, people talk to each other and form assemblies and create something new in that space. So it's actually the creating something in that space that's a territorial space, but it's also the construction of something different in these new relationships, in the new politics, in taking care of one another.
Rob: Okay, another concept which I love, and you have a great kind of a mythic story of that -- and demonstrate it, walking and questioning, or making the road as one walks. A multiplicity of paths towards ever changing ends, the end as a process; the rationale behind Occupy's no demands that drove top-down thinking authoritarianism needing people crazy. I love this idea that walking and questioning describes a work in process based on values, solidarity, mutuality, community, equality, self-administration, freedom and that's what you said and I would add other bottom up values like localization, interdependence, caring, empathy and compassion. Talk a little bit about how they fit in.
MS: All of them, I mean I think all of what you said, all of what you named and thinking about it as we go so there's no blueprint, there's no answer it's that we created, and we have to create it together because we don't know and we're only going to find out as we meet each other and talk to each other and see and then kind of go into this concept of -- then we're going to change as we know each other, as situations change so that necessarily means that what we want or what's going to happen or what we try to build is going to have to change, so it's that kind of walking, questioning idea bringing in all of what you mentioned and being -- not having the list of okay we're going to start in with our transitional program, how could we do that? We haven't even talked to each other. You can't have a list of demands until you at least know each other and even still, you probably -- the things you want probably can't be gotten by those institutions of power anyway, out of all of them anyway, so doing it ourselves.
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