Communists Contra Capitalism
By Will Cade
Alright boys and girls, grab your dirtiest looking red shirt, your sickle and hammer, and your ready-made retractible signs: it’s time to make a picket line. May is upon us, and you can almost smell the protests brewing. The communists are gathering, posting flyers around town and posting information on that grand, digitally grafittied wall - the internet.
May 1st seems to be the day of choice in Madrid, coinciding with the Mayday protests in London. A simple Googlesearch will reveal a manifesto’s worth of blogs, message boards, and political organizations providing information for Madrid. My personal favorite (liguistically not politically) is www.kaosenlared.net. In English, Kaos en la Red means Chaos in the System, with a bi-lingual pun written between the languages (la Red - Communism). Kaos en la Red also looks to be the most organized and professional organization of the search results, but my newly acquired Spanish soul quivers when I see that they are based outside of Barcelona. A communist organization from Barcelona organizing protests in Madrid? That sounds like political upheavel in a can, or maybe a blow horn.
The protest is set to happen at noon on May 1st outside Atocha on Calle Jacinto Benavente. YouTube has tons of videos from previous protests. Just type in “Manifestaciones de Mayo en Madrid” (May Protest in Madrid) and get ready to enjoy some soft, Spanish punk music and slow moving crowds. Honestly, the crowds from these videos remind me more of a 4th of July parade in some backwoods U.S. town in the 60’s, minus the capitilism. But still, the lackadaisical sentiment remains the same. The most threatening sights on the videos are a few Mohawks - which are lethal in and of themselves - and that oh so friendly Spanish favorite, the rasta mullet: dreads and a rat tail. I wouldn’t worry about too much about safety during the day, but I hear that things can get messy at night, when the protesters go from taking it to the street to taking it from the stores.
As an a-political prankster, I might take a look at the day protest, out of mere curiousity, but I’ll skip the nightly adventures running a muck through Madrid. I’ll leave that to the adolescents and childish adults.
Tags: Anti-Capitalism, Madrid, may, Protests