The wave is not stopping; on the contrary, it’s growing day by day. People are waking up and channelling their protests through novel movements and new forms of struggle that are gaining renewed strength. It could be that this will not stop until it reaches and moves the consciousnesses of the entire planet.
These mobilisations mark a before and an after. In general they start from the motor of “outrage” against injustice, corruption, a lack of democracy and loss of social advances, and they are taking novel paths, being carried out peacefully and based on the methodology of nonviolence. A current with these dimensions is occurring for the first time, moving spontaneously, without leaders, without indoctrination, with horizontality and in a totally new way. All of this marks a point of inflection from previous, violent revolutions. The model of the “guerrilla” has passed into history. Now people are talking about the “nonviolent rEvolution”.
This way of doing things is disturbing for the powers that be who are prepared to fight against violence. The violent system needs violence to perpetuate itself. And, when these movements act peacefully they receive broad popular support with which its strength grows unstoppably. The testimony of an activist makes it clear, “They can’t stop us. It doesn’t matter what the police do. If they come and evict us, we won’t oppose with violence. We will dissolve, but tomorrow we will return to demonstrate once again and there’ll be even more of us. Everyday more people are coming. Time and time again.”
The new moment has also made it clear that the so-called “markets” are setting the agenda of government policy and not the reverse. We can clearly speak of a dictatorship that subjugates even the most “advanced” countries and sets the working agenda. This has a devastating effect with unimaginable cuts and privatisations. All so that speculators in the dictatorship of money may continue to thrive.
The Markets have declared a war
In this moment, the “Markets” have declared war on the people, subjugating governments, forcing them to break agreements, to eliminate social advances in education and health, to reduce advances in pensions, employment stability, etc, etc. There is no limit to their greed that is taking a headlong path towards an abyss in a crisis that they themselves have produced.
Citizens, the people, have been conned. They have been made to believe that there is a big crisis with which everything can be justified. But it is not explained who generated this crisis, who got themselves irresponsibly into debt, who followed incorrect policies, who proposed fictional ways out until they could no longer sustain the financial bubble that they themselves created. This is not a crisis for everyone. Here there is deception, manipulation and distortion, because those who created this crisis, the banks, are those who continue to benefit and end up in profit because of it.
There are clear indicators of perversion in the political arena. It has been implanted in the social consciousness that profits are earned through private enterprise and that if there are losses they will be covered with public money. If there is a public company that’s doing well, it is privatised. If there is an important private company that is doing badly, it is rescued with public funds. Corruption abounds in all countries like an epidemic that people have to fight everywhere.
People are starting to consider themselves
Recent transformations produced in countries, over a very short space of time, show once more the true strength that people have and their great transformational capacity, if it happens using nonviolence and the path of peace. If on the other hand it is violence that prevails, everything ends up in a war where, besides the human loses and the impacts on society, problems multiply exponentially without the possibility to finally resolve them, on the contrary, aggravating them even more, like in the recent cases of Iraq and Afghanistan and more recently in Libya.
We think that these new forces now awakening will find in nonviolence the truly rEvolutionary tool that will open the future for them, if this tool is directed towards creating truly democratic societies, to improving living conditions and making advances in society so that every human being may have a dignified life.
A generation is awakening
In all of these demonstrations, even if they count on broad and total popular support in almost all sectors of society, we must point out that the principle protagonists are young people. Or maybe we can go even further and affirm that for the first time in history, we are facing the fact that a generation is in tune, connected and becoming aware of its power, awakening and revolutionarily projecting itself on a global scale. Is it possible that we are witnessing the awakening of a generation with a global consciousness? The first non-violent generation in human history that is aware of itself?
Nonviolence opens the future
Here, where the methodology of nonviolence is developed and deepened, adapting it to the country or society, according to its historical moment, combining the virtual work of social networks and the internet with the experience of action in the neighbourhoods, local action and existential contact between people, recovering contact at a human level and where the “I” combines with the “we”, where these components are found, movements will advance.
In the process it will continue to open itself to other countries and cultures, connecting with planetarisation, with the global rEvolution. It will end up as unstoppable as a force of nature. How rapid will this process be? It’s difficult to predict. But what is for sure is that it’s going in this direction.
In this context World without Wars and Violence believes it is convenient to say:
1. The War of the “Markets” against the people and against the citizenry is a new scenario that must be identified, defined and combated as it was not previously identified in the socio-political panorama. Today the great problem on a global level is the voracity of speculative markets. Here is where famines, epidemics, general poverty, deterioration in healthcare and education, discrimination, dictatorships, corruption, social fragmentation and exclusion, and of course, conflicts, wars, an increase in military spending, etc, etc, all start. This is the path of general dehumanisation on an international level.
2. We see winds of fresh air in these new movements. In them are the seeds of the new world to which we aspire. We express our support to any nonviolent direction that they set out on. This is not just a declaration, because in all countries where WWW is present, our activists are participating in the development of these movements or helping them to form. These non-violent revolutions, then, open the future for the whole of humanity. We are approaching the Universal Human Nation.
3. To push with all our strength so that the direction of nonviolence is not abandoned by these movements. We mustn’t be naïve because the entire system will be against them. The system will try to manipulate, infiltrate, deform, corrupt, deviate, influence, discredit, persecute and even get rid off the Movement’s followers. Their violent methods are broad. This is why we have to train ourselves and advance in the struggle of organised nonviolence.
4. In the short term, there is a roadmap that is being put together for the first time on an international scale. On the 15th of October there is an international call for united action inviting movements in all countries.
