As long as the lions do not have their own historians, the stories of hunting will continue to glorify the hunter.
African proverb
Spain’s public prosecutor has recently asked for cumulative legal punishment of up to 74 years and 3 months for those involved in the initial disturbances that led to the acampada of the Puerta del Sol, in Madrid (2011), and the subsequent rise of the movement that came to be known as 15M. (Público 15/10/2014) This is but another expression of the politics of fear that the government has employed against the diversity of social movements that 15M has become. And it is paralleled by the effort to efface the memory of the movement, to retell its story in such a way that its radical possibilities are marginalised and silenced.
The illusions of political representation
As many of the streets of Hong Kong remain occupied, the movement unmasks the nature of the power that it contests. If a guarantee of formal representative democracy was the stated motive for the protest, it has already become, as it was at its origins, far more. In the squares and streets of the city, the very notion of democracy is transformed; it is lived directly, in collective decisions, common actions, in solidarity and resistance, in creativity.
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