The Advantage of Chaos

Aalst, October 7

Day 74 of the March on Brussels. From Gent, 29 km.

'Saludo al Sol'

Dear people,

We left Gent this morning in group, and we were singing our usual songs in French and Spanish. “They call it a democracy, but that isn’t true / It’s a dictatorship, and you know it!”

To me, it sounded a bit strange to sing something like this in a country without a central government for one and a half years running. But we are not talking about political dictatorship. National governments don’t matter that much any more, the states have lost their sovereignty bit by bit. The economy is queen, and her high priests united in obscure institutions like the Fed, the IMF, and the ECB decide on policy for the world at large. National states only need to implement their directives.

In a nutshell, this is what we are going to denounce in Brussels. Our political system has nothing to do with democracy. The socialist government in Greece is forced to sell the people’s property to multinational vultures in exchange for loans at unpayable interest. If it weren’t for the revolution, which will take place more sooner than later, the country would be enslaved indefinitely.

Action interview

St. Peter's Square in Gent, this morning

In Belgium, the crisis hasn’t yet made a real impact. Some of the Belgians I spoke say that this is in part thanks to the fact that they don’t have a government. Drastic measures cannot be taken by a provisional government, so deep cuts were not made until now. Life goes on here, banks are falling, but as long as people don’t feel it in their pocket, they don’t really care. They look at our protest as something picturesque. They are sympathetic towards us, but they’re not yet worried about themselves. In the South of Europe the tempest is raging, but here only few people have noticed the clouds rumbling in the distance. The storm is heading towards them as well, and when it arrives, they will remember us.

Leaving Gent

Gent is the most northern point of our expedition, from here we turn straight East, towards the rising sun. Like yesterday, the city never ends. These are still the suburbs of Waregem. The national roads are a very interesting urbanistic shadow zone. It seems like things are permitted here that you will not see in the cities themselves. There is no real need to keep up a façade, because apart from us, no-one walks by. Between the houses, the villas and the shopping hangars, you find lots of erotic night clubs and brothels, where people from the city can enjoy themselves anonymously, far away from peeking eyes, and far away from the lord our god. You will find all kind of buildings on the way, but you won’t find a single church.

Along the road a police van stops to ask us where were going. We are going to Aalst, our last stop before Brussels. It’s four thirty in the afternoon when we arrive, but it seems like it’s three a.m. on a saturday night. High school students are clustering around the bars in the center, drinking beer. Disco beats are blasting out onto the streets on every corner.

On the central square the mayor is there to welcome us. She offers us a camping space near the swimming pool at the edge of town. We respond that we prefer to camp in the center, and we create a ‘Square Commission’ ad hoc, to look at the different possibilities. The central square is out of the question, because there will be market tomorrow. We choose a square with access to water. A bit reluctantly, but with a smile, the mayor accepts our decision. I doubt they have sufficient police force at their disposal to evict us.

Instead of an assembly, cancelled because of the rain, we take the square and we play a game of ‘stoelendans’. The revolution is fun. It can only be fun, or else it won’t be worth the effort.

Scenes from a 'stoelendans' on the central square of Aalst

Tomorrow Brussels. It’s going to be a different story than what we’ve encountered in the Belgian towns. In a world without national states, the metropoles form a Champion’s League apart. The capital of Flanders, Belgium and the European Union has more in common with cities like Barcelona, Paris, Milan and Tokyo than with a small town like Aalst.

Yesterday evening we lost a lot of time in an internal assembly, trying to decide if we will accept the invitation of a Scandinavian left wing party to enter the European parliament. We could have made much better use of that time, to work on the preparation of debates and actions. To me it seems that many people consider all the talking to be an activity already. Once they finally decide on something, they don’t see the necessity - or they are too exhausted – to put it into practice.

The result is that we don’t really know what is going to happen in Brussels. Things have been prepared, but it’s not really clear by whom and how it will turn out. It might become a very constructive week of exchange. But it might also turn into complete chaos, which is more likely.

Still, as the great Dutch philosopher (and former football player) Johan Cruyff says: “Every disadvantage has its own advantage.” And the advantage of chaos is that everything becomes possible.

Revolutionary Sabotage

Gent, October 6

Day 73 of the March on Brussels. From Waregem, 30 km

Popular Assembly in Gent

Dear people,

This morning the lowlands were covered by a sky in all the different shades of grey. A strong wind was blowing, and while we were having breakfast, the rain started.

It felt good. The rain and the wind are as a much a part of this country as the canals and the dikes. It fits. And besides, we have been too lucky already with the weather. A bit of rain is always good for the epical aspect of our expedition.

It didn’t last long. While we walk over the bicycle lane of the national road to Gent, the wet weather ceases. From then on the walk is easy.

Belgium has lots of peculiarities. One of these is the urbanisation of the roads. When we arrive in Gent it seems like we never left Waregem. We didn’t really cross the countryside. All along the way there were houses, villages or shopping centers.

Through the years Belgians have kept up the tradition of building their own house. And up until not so long ago they could legally do so wherever they bought a piece of land. And because most people for convenience’s sake want to be close to a road, this resulted in an endless variety of houses lining the national roads, from one village or town to another. It might seem that most of Belgium is one big city, but that’s an illusion. The country side starts in people’s back yards.

Comrades Charlie, Cowboy and Abel

Comrade Maria

The Avengers, from the Flemish public television

Along the way I talk a bit with comrade Rino, from Italy, who has been with us before on various occasions. After Paris he has joined the Mediterranean for a while, and I was happy to hear positive news about them for the first time.

They called themselves ‘Ecomarche’ when they left Paris, because they wanted to give an example of an expedition without a carbon footprint. They went without support vehicle and carried their bags on their shoulders. That was the beginning, later on they were joined by a support vehicle all the same, so to uphold their ecological image they started gathering the trash they found along the road. Some of the many, many bags they filled were piled up on the squares of the villages and towns where they arrived, to confront people with everything they just throw out of the window.

Rino denied that Lady Blue is a dictator and that the marchers wouldn’t reach Brussels without her. She’s with the vanguard, she prepares the arrival and coordinates the diffusion in the towns. The others contribute to the march in their own way and sharpen their objectives with the feedback of the assemblies they hold in the towns. If it’s all true I would have to admit, shamefully, that their march is working out better than our own at the moment.

Scene from an assembly

We enter the lively town of Gent and we occupy the impressive square of Saint Peter. All day long we have been followed by a Flemish television crew. They have the occasion to film our first trilingual assembly. Dutch, French and Spanish. The indignados from Gent have been very active in preparing it, they have been waiting for us and they received us with cakes and sweets and lots of food. Some of them were already present at the border and at Kortrijk. It was a great occasion, but before too long it was sabotaged by a band of anarchist squatters. They came with drums and a whistle. A brilliant move.

Late night demonstration

As the samba rhythm echoes over the square, our bagpipe player joins in and people start to dance and jump around. Finally, after all the endless assemblies in Spain and France we had to come here to the cold and windy lowlands to find the one fundamental and indispensable ingredient of the revolution.

Music.

Belgian Hospitality

Waregem, October 5

Day 72 of the March on Brussels. From Kortrijk, 17 km.

Dear people,

 

When we showed up on the central square of Kortrijk yesterday, the authorities were completely taken by surprise. After a while  a police car came up, a big friendly looking officer stepped out, he walked up to us and started to ask, in his best French, who we were, where we came from, what we were doing here etc. He was visibly relieved when I responded to him in Dutch.

For lack of a good equivalent word I told him we are “les indignés”.

“How do you spell that?”

I spelled it out, without forgetting the accent. He had never even heard of us. So I gave him a very short history of the movement and I told him we planned to camp and to speak to people about local problems and the problems of society. “Tomorrow we leave. We will go to Brussels.”

He scratched himself under his cap and said: “Sure, I can appreciate that, but all the same it’s not possible to camp here. I will have to contact the municipality to find a solution for you.”

“Very well, but I can’t guarantee that we will accept it. We are a horizontal movement, and we will decide in assembly what to do.”

Minutes later the mayor showed up in person. When he heard our discourse about participative democracy he went into ‘campaigning mode’, and he affirmed that his administration was very active in inviting people from the neighbourhoods to participate in politics. I don’t think he really understood that our concept of participation is slightly different from his own.

Still, in no time we were offered a space, with showers and coverage in case of rain, outside of the center. Camping on the square remained strictly forbidden. We would risk jail time.

Surprisingly, it didn’t take long for the assembly to reach a decision. People didn’t want to risk. They accepted. So off we went. Our first night in Belgium. We didn’t even hold a Popular Assembly, also because at night fall the streets were deserted.

This morning, many people stayed around to work or to do some propaganda in the square. This is a very rich part of Belgium, but as I heard, people seemed to be interested and open minded. Unfortunately, we hadn’t prepared any flyers in Dutch. This is my fault, I admit it. We only had flyers in French. When they were handed out, people lost interest on the spot. Welcome to Flanders.

 

Unlike many others I walked early, together with comrade Infiltrado. He is not really an informant, but he got the fame to be one, and it stuck. The walk was short, only a couple of hours under the wide grey skies of the North, partly along a river. I’ve never been here before, but it feels like I lived here all my life.

In the small town of Waregem the news about the arrival of our march had already reached the authorities. I must say I was flabbergasted, almost embarassed. In general the people of the hot southern and eastern countries have the reputation of being very hospitable to strangers, as opposed to the countries of the North. This doesn’t go for Waregem. The town council offered us a space in the center, next to the football stadium, with all possible facilities, they invited us to hold an assembly or a concert or whatever in any square of our choice. They sent the police to our camp, not in riot gear, not to threaten us or to evict us or to gas us, no, they sent them to bring us food. A present from the town of Waregem.

'Popular Assembly' in Waregem

It didn’t really matter at that point that our assembly in the empty central square was visited by very few locals. One, to be exact. But it was typical that that one person, an ex-construction worker who was rebuilding a former conference room, offered anybody who suffers the cold to camp indoor. “I have enough space for the entire group. All of you are invited.”

 

 

Brightness and Darkness

Kortrijk, October 4

Day 71 of the March on Brussels. From Rijsel, 29 km

 

Dear people,

 

At Arras a shadow march was born, the so called ‘super indignados’, consisting of people who are angry with the indignados for various reasons. In the beginning there were three, Alexis and two other comrades. Yesterday we met them again in Lille, and by now their march is numbering nine participants already. I’m curious to see how many they will be in Brussels.

 

Comrade Canario

 

The Intelligence commission in Tourcoign

 

While we walk through the metropolitan area of Lille, comrade Roberto, my partner in Intelligence, reveals his true objective. I could have guessed what it was, but it is so obvious that I never considered it. As an ex-banker, an ex-stockbroker, and an ex-choirboy, he has infiltrated in the 15M movement to reestablish capitalism under the enlightened guidance of the pope.

“And that is only the beginning”, he says. “We will create a New World Order.” He turns around. The group follows in the distance. “Look at these people. Do you think they will make a change? Do you really believe in the revolution?” He smiles. “Come with me to the Dark Side.”

I don’t answer, I watch him, as if to say: ‘Go on.’

“As long as you leave them the illusion that they are free, it’s easy to forge people’s minds. That is what we do.”

“Who is we?”

“We are the one percent. We are the Patriarchate.”

I remember a banner that was attached to one of the metro entrances during the Acampada in Sol. ‘The Revolution will be feminist,’ it said, ‘or it will not be.’

“Before the advent of civilization”, Roberto explains, “society used to be administered by women. People were equal, and they were free. It must have been incredibly boring, and thankfully, we changed all that. First through the sword, and later through the church.” He looks at me. “Don’t you think it’s amazing that the church has managed to transform the image of woman from a reveared and honoured symbol of fertility to one of chastity and submission?”

“I’m not that enthustiastic about it.”

“Think about the implications. Once people subdue their women, they will be able to subdue mother earth as well. There are no limits to the human potential for us to exploit.”

“But what is the reason?”

“Power doesn’t need reasons. It only needs to grow.” I see a twinkle in his eyes. “We will create new humans. We will use technology. We are already doing so. In the near future man will be unable to rebel against us. We will have him consume the planet and we will force him to find ways to emigrate to other planets. Our power will spread through the universe. We will consume it all, and we will leave a desert. The Dark Side is too strong. You can’t stop us.”

 

At first sight Roberto seems to be a perfectly normal person. He must be joking. But the fact is that I’m not completely sure about it. To avoid the temptation of the Dark Side, I walk ahead.

Towards the border

We arrive at the border. I can’t believe it. Six weeks ago we entered France, and now we crossed it all on foot. Even though the only ones who walked every single leg of the way were Jesus Christ and me.

Belgium at last. It’s a ridiculous country and I will never understand it, but I’m fond of it. For a Dutchman, Belgium has something ‘exotic’. It’s slightly different. People come from a catholic tradition, they have a funny accent, and in the South they even speak another language. There is some nature as well, hills and forests, things that an artificial country like Holland doesn’t really have. On the other hand, for a Dutchman abroad, Belgium feels very familiar. It’s the combination of the two that makes it such an adorable place.

 

Crossing a border gives you a lot of energy. It’s like you accomplished something. You don’t worry that much about all the practical and social problems in the march any more. You put them into perspective. I did the same yesterday in Lille, when two young locals came up to me to express their admiration for what we’re doing. “We are with you. Remember that.”

They are by far not the only ones who said so. It’s always good to hear. It makes me realise that our march is much more than just a group of people walking.

 

Arrival in Kortrijk

Legal Precedent

Lille, October 3

Day 70 of the March on Brussels. From Carvin, 20 km.

 

Dear people,

 

Our last stop in France, and finally we had an assembly like I remembered them in Spain. Lots of interested people, lots of signs and banners on the square, many appassionate interventions. Lille and the local indignados have prepared us the warm welcome we have been waiting for for a long time, in a fabulous panorama.

Popular Assembly in Lille

Entering the city we passed by a trailer camp inhabited by people from Montenegro. They have been living in France for many years, they have children born here, but they are not allowed to participate in society. The reason being that they don’t possess certain documents.

Lille is a charming city. Like many others, the center has been recently facelifted for the shopping pleasure of the middle class citizen. Now, the authorities want to clean up the outskirts as well. These people will have to go, their presence is anti esthetic. It brings down the real estate prices of the zone.

 

Acampada Lille

 

 

Tomorrow we enter Belgium. In the Route commission yesterday we decided to go through Flanders instead of Wallonia. The Mediterranean will already go by Mons, so there is no reason for us to go there as well. We will make a visit to the Popular Assembly in Gent. Still, some of the French were doubtful about Flanders. Worse, they were prejudiced. “Lots of fascists there.”

“Watch it”, I said, “I’m Flemish as well.”

It was a bit of an exageration, but the fact of the matter is that I can’t stand this kind of talk. The same thing happened that very morning when people were spreading fear for right wing radicals in Carvin. More than a dozen people went straight to Lille to avoid the friendly little town.

For the Intelligence Commission it was an occasion to gather valuable information about people’s rational and irrational fears, about the contagiousness of fear and its possible uses as a weapon. But most of all, it showed us whom we can count on in a case of emergency.

Another reason for us to opt for Flanders was the distance. It can be covered in four days. Or at least, that resulted from a route proposal that was send to us by ‘Brussels’. This way we would have one day off in Gent for preparations.

The proposal turned out to be flawed. The distance Lille-Waregem was presented as being 28 km. By simply looking at the map, you will notice that it’s much more than that. It’s 42 km.

The Route commission decided yesterday to stick with the long leg to Waregem, to save our day off. We have done these distances before, day after day. It was decided upon by six persons. Today a French communications comrade came to me to verify the route for publication in internet. I confirmed: Lille-Waregem-Gent-Gent-Aalst-Brussel. First leg 42 km.

The news went around quickly, and many of the people who had come directly to Lille by train were scared of this distance. They hadn’t been walking for two days and sure they wouldn’t walk tomorrow. A counterproposal was formulated. Divide the leg in two, and cut the full day in Gent. Comrade Canario vetoed it on the spot. “Out of the question. This is decided upon. Don’t be woosies.”

Tonight a campaign against the marathon distance was started. Up to forty people attended an improvised Route assembly to change it. They are still discussing at the moment of writing, but they will probably succeed.

The reason why I speak at length about something so futile as this, is because it presents a very interesting precedent from a legal point of view. It undermines our system based on consensus. If people can come together to invade a commission and overturn a veto, then our decisional structure is open to be changed.

It probably should. Consensus leads to paralysis. In the General Assembly of Sol they know what that means. The other day comrade Alexis told me about an assembly in Sol where someone bluntly said that the consensus system itself was never decided upon by the assembly in Sol. It’s used out of custom and inertia. And there’s no reason why any one single person should be able to block the will of everyone else to change it.

 

It’s late at night. The new route is official. Tomorrow we don’t go to Waregem. We go to Kortrijk.

"Freedom still exists. You only need to be prepared to pay the price for it."

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?

Carvin, October 2

Day 69 of the March on Brussels. From Arras, 30 km

First light in Arras

Dear people,

I arrived in Arras yesterday together with comrade Alexis. He remained with the march, so far, and he tries to avoid Cowboy and most others where he can.

Alexis is not a vicious person or a slacker. He just makes himself impossible for most. Since he lost his faith in the march, a couple of weeks ago, he has become a bit more sympathetic. Now, instead of getting angry, he ridiculises things. Many people can’t appreciate that, but I can.

In Paris he has spent a couple of days with the Pretorians. To him, they must have seemed a gang of small time crooks from a Woody Allen movie. They were battering the cities and the towns, asking for money in name of the movement, but their booty didn’t ammount to much. In Paris they wanted to make their big move. They tried to open a bank account, where acampada’s could make deposits for the march.

It didn’t work. The word got out. But I would have loved to see it. The Cuban as the godfather, Felix as his little helper, and Legionario as the brainless muscleman. None of them speaking a word of French, in Paris, trying to set up a hoax.

The possible routes from Lille

This morning Alexis left with other two people who are fed up with the march, to take another route. We go on, but not after some people have been sowing fear in the group this morning.

Terrorism, far from being a threat to our contemporary way of life, is one of its most important pillars. It means control through fear. The average citizen is controlled and influenced through fear all day long. Fear for himself, fear for the safety of his children. Fear of his boss, fear of losing his job. Fear for his health, fear of losing his looks. Fear about his home, his property, his pension, his future. Terrorism is everywhere, and we call it advertising. It strengthens power and it sells products.

One of the countless cemeteries in the region. Many of the graves simply say "A soldier of the Great War. Known unto God."

Terrorism has entered our march, not as a tool, but as a result of genuine fear. Today we go to Carvin, and when some people heard that name this morning, they began a rumour campaign. Carvin is supposedly controlled by the extreme right. People made it seem like the place was a nazi stronghold where gangs of skinheads roamed the streets and snipers fired at anyone who didn’t correspond to the description of blond hair and blue eyes.

The people who sowed fear were the same ones who were drinking and dancing the night before when comrade Abel repeatedly announced a meeting of the Route commission.

“You should have been there to talk about this. Now the route is made up, we are going to Carvin.”

Some people will go directly to Lille, and the rest made the summertime walk through Picardy.

In Arras the familiar signs of flemishness got stronger, in the architecture, in the beer and the fries, in the names of the streets and the faces of the people. Walking further North, we enter the miners’ district. A big agglomeration which goes far into Belgium, centered around Lille. You see impressive artificial hills in the land, to indicate the mines, you pass by village after village made of bricks.

Carvin has suffered much from having to adapt its economy from soil exploitation to debt slavery. There is a lot of unemployment, which might explain the surge of the far right of which people are so fearfully rumouring. But we don’t meet gangs, nor snipers. Only hospitable citizens and a man on the parking lot who lost his house after he divorced from his wife. He still has his job, but he has to sleep in his car. He is as indignado as the rest of us, and more.

Carvin

With Christ in the morning I reviewed the state of the march. The positive news is that we will make it to Brussels. As for the negative news, there’s a wide choice. The ‘Logroño case’ is exemplary for certain human weaknesses in our group.

Lately, the Acampada Logroño has donated a couple of hundred euro’s to the march. They said they would like it to benefit the group, but they left the decision about the money to the three people from Logroño among us. These three didn’t hesitate to divide the sum among themselves.

As for two of them, I’m not surprised. The third person was our oldest comrade, Abdullah. He sold the respect and the moral authority he enjoyed for a fistful of euros to buy tobacco.

On the positive side, I can reveal that the grave things that had happened in Paris are resolved. We feared that in Paris we lost the so called ‘Book of the People’. It’s the notebook in which we have written down the problems of the villages and the propositions of the people which we want to bring to Brussels. It would have been scandalous if it had come out. What on earth are we doing this march for if we can’t even safeguard all the things we want to bring to Brussels? We were already planning a dissimulation, trying to gather whatever information we could get from the acts and from memory.

But yesterday, fortunately, Christ asked for a piece of scrap paper to one of our comrades.

“Here”, was the answer as our comrade ripped a piece of paper out of a notebook.

“Hey! That’s the Book of the People!”

“Is it?”

“It is! Give it to me! I’m the official librarian of the march.”

Problem solved.

Acampada Carvin

Show Trial

Arras, October 1

Day 68 of the March on Brussels. From Acheux, 31 km.

Acampada Arras

Dear people,

 

Every march has its own spirit. It’s there in the beginning, with the people who start the march, and even though the participants might change, the spirit usually remains.

If the march is chaos in the first few days, it will probably stay that way. You can talk and talk, you can draw up perfect organisational schemes every now and then, but in practice they won’t work.

Our march is far from perfect. We are strong, we have lots of people walking, but we didn’t really try to integrate the people who joined us in Paris, just like we never really appreciated the experiences of the people from the Toulouse march. We are operating the same way we did when we entered France.

By now, it’s too late to try and change things. In a week we will already be in Brussels. Nevertheless we held an internal assembly yesterday, which was centered around the issue of convivencia.

This morning

Our march has known all the problems of society. Theft, violence, polarisation, conflict, free riding, anti-social behaviour, lying, threats, etc. The way to deal with this has been mostly to look the other way, and to talk about it behind people’s backs.

Yesterday, all these problems were to be discussed in public. At the beginning of the assembly, people who felt like they had something to confess where asked to speak up.

Complete silence. A bunch of angels. All of us. Except for one, our Greek comrade Marianne. She has been part of various commissions and working groups, most notably Communication. She admitted that she could have done more than she did. She’s so sweet.

After Marianne, all the others didn’t talk to confess something, but to self glorify themselves and accuse the others of lack of dedication. They didn’t dare to use names. After all we are decent and understanding, we only accuse in general, everyone knows whom people are talking about.

It was disgusting. For a moment I considered to propose that we declare our march a failure and that we all go home. Goodbye Brussels.

I didn’t do it of course. I went to my tent, and I heard the rest from there.

 

In yesterday’s assembly, our (ex-)comrade Felix was present. He had come to salute us, and he had come alone. People must have been very relieved, because instead of talking about ourselves and our sins, we could turn on him.

His drinking vices, the money, the story about the secession, it all came out again. The discussion about our internal social problems turned into a revolutionary tribunal, a show trial. A hand full of people led the attack, and the others followed. Many of those people had never even seen or heard about Felix and the Pretorians before, but now they were yelling at the top of their voices for him to be expelled and crucified. It was the beast that hides in every mass of people. It was the spectre of the forks and the torches.

 

Felix didn’t enjoy any of the guarantees that a fair justice system should offer. Presumption of innocence, the right to defense, etc. We definitely need to work on this before we change the world.

As a movement we are open and inclusive. We have never expelled anyone before, even though we should have. This time the wolves were crying blood, so once the accusation had stated its case and silenced the defendant, the moderator proposed the verdict.

Propositions in our movement are always formulated in a negative sense. Not ‘Who is in favour of…?’, but ‘Is anyone radically against…?’

Felix was saved, because two persons blocked the verdict. They argued indeed that as a movement we shouldn’t expel people but always try to resolve our problems internally. The funny thing is that the ones who blocked were not even a part of our march. They were bikers from the Mediterranean, and this morning they went away again.

Their intervention could have had grave consequences. Because when Felix was allowed to stay, comrade Charlie decided to leave, together with his van. It would have meant we had to carry our stuff, and the kitchen, on our shoulders.

There was a cheer when he reappeared this morning. It turned out that yesterday’s trial had been completely superfluous. Felix never intended to stay in the first place. He was already gone when people woke up. So we had our breakfast, we left our bags next to the van and started walking as if nothing had happened.

 

 

Popular Assembly in Arras