Rob: In 2001, this was way before the Arab Spring, but it is a precursor to what happened in Tunisia and Egypt and other places.
Marina: Very much; and then it's even more similar over time, I think, to what's been happening in Greece and Spain and the U.S., and in some other places.
In Egypt the struggle still is about a centralized government, but in Argentina, and so many other places, people did say, have been saying, "We actually don't want hierarchical power. We don't want to look to institutions of power to solve our problems. Of course, we want health care, we want people not to be a evicted, but that that we're not looking to put in a new government to solve the problem, to make the answer. We're actually going to look to one another, and form assemblies, and use forms of direct democracy and indirect action to meet our needs." So, similarly in Argentina, with people taking over land, or taking over buildings - In the U.S. and in Spain, the massive movements have been around preventing people from getting evicted, and preventing them from being foreclosed on, and that's a very similar kind of direct action and to protect people's lives.
Rob: You wrote that protesters were not demanding something new, but were creating it.
Marina: Yeah.
Rob: I think that's so important. It seems like so much like what has begun with the Occupy Movement. The other thing you write a little on is that, "Political parties created front groups, false neighborhood assemblies in this case, so that they would have the right to speak at the assemblies," and it seems like that's going on too. We're seeing that with the Occupy Spring or 99% Spring that there are actually front groups representing the moderate liberals and democrats trying to horn their way in and tap the power of Occupy, or maybe not tap it, but diffuse it.
Marina: Yeah, I do acknowledge it's going on here. I think it's not at the same level of Argentina, or it's not insidious. I think there the difference is, in the U.S., they're honest about what they're doing. They might be using the slogans of Occupy, but they say who they are. They're MoveOn, they're the Democratic Party, where in Argentina, these were small left political parties who pretended they were a neighborhood assembly, and put forward an agenda as a neighborhood assembly, but actually they were something else, and that's also something they're facing in Greece: it's much more like what happened in Argentina. I do hear you, that it is very similar, and problematic, but the Democratic Party is the Democratic Party or they want to get people into office, and I think they will say that out loud. So, we can deal with it on their terms.
Rob: I'm reading what you wrote about how the government would offer things or space to the movement. It reminds me of how in New York and in LA, physical space was offered if they would leave the environs that they had occupied.
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