“Nativa o Extranjera, La Misma Clase Obrera!”

Around 5:30pm, December 20th, in the Plaza Sant Jaume, in the Gothic neighborhood of Barcelona, some 500 immigrants started up a boisterous march through the neighborhood’s narrow and winding streets. That chant - “Native-born or foreigner, we’re the same working class!” could be heard all the way to Las Ramblas*, where confused or interested holiday shoppers struggled to discern what was being said. This march wrapped up ten days of protests across Spain (www.redi.org.es) and other parts of Europe by grassroots organizations, NGOs and communities, in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (December 10th) and the December 18th International Day of Migrants. But the protestors - from various parts of Africa, the Middle East and South Asia - were also on the streets to denounce the new European Union’s anti-immigrant law passed in the summer which, among other things, allows for people to be detained up to 18 months before being deported. Spain initially put a cap at 40 days of possible detention, but last week raised it to 70 days. It was a very energetic and positive march and I promised myself after the march that I need to go buy a camera...

Which I did. After buying my camera from the Miró electronics chain store, I understood more about American freedoms, and why the US launches wars for “Enduring Freedom.” With Iraq, the US took on more than it could chew. We should have started with something easy, like Spain. Take for instance, the Miró store I entered. I was extremely frustrated that the overworked employee (here, an 8-hour day is pretty much 10-1, then a two hour power lunch, then continuing on from 3-8) kept forcing me to choose a camera without letting me see what was in the box! They didn’t even have batteries in the camera so you could take silly pictures of yourself and leave it for the next shopper! If that’s not a lack of freedom, I don’t know what is! Spain is almost there, we just need to bomb them into the free world. Maybe later, I’ll put up a picture of the obnoxious street-side recycling bins: every time you put in your recyclables, you have to force them through a tiny hole and you get your hands dirty. It makes you want to just throw everything in a trash can, and let New Jerseyites sort it out at the landfills.

And then today, December 22, I went to a talk about the Congo, and how the need for coltan is fueling the war there. Coltan is short for columbo-tantalite, a mineral used to make electronics, from your totally unnecessary iTouch to your very necessary MacBook Black (wassuppp, Natty!). Basically, US, German and Chinese companies are paying off different actors in the conflict to safeguard their mines (much like the blood diamonds of Leonard Dicaprio fame; speaking of, Leonardo is involved in a campaign to save the endangered mountain gorilla from the effects of coltan mining... what a nice guy), and in the process, some 2 million black people have been killed. If I ever get down to the Congo, I’ll fill you in on more information, but for now, when T-mobile tells you that “since you have been a faithful customer for two years, you are eligible” for another useless bluetooth phone with touch vibration and a cool 2-inch HDTV screen, tell them to you-know-what.

Oh, so welcome to my blog. I hope to keep you all up to date on what I get involved in here. If you have links that you want to add, please let me know. I want to add pics one day and audio. I have never done this before, so any help is much appreciated!!


*Las Ramblas comes from the Arabic word al-rambl, meaning “creek” or “river”, because a river used to run down that area, later to be turned into an open sewer canal before being turned into a tourist paradise. I like to think about all those tourist walking down Las Ramblas when shit was still oozing down there.

Armando and Madai, están en mis pensamientos.