Global indignation

Saturday saw tens of thousands of people on five continents answer the call to action by Spain's indignados, the ad hoc grouping of associations and collectives that appeared this spring and have merged into the 15-M movement. The protest marches that have taken place in Spain's main cities over the last six months have inspired others abroad, notably in New York and Brussels — two of the world's major political and economic decision-making centers, and considered by many as responsible for a lot of the planet's current woes. Leaving aside the question of the exact numbers of people involved in the marches, the main achievement of what has now become the 15-O movement has been to mobilize tens of thousands of people around the world to support systemic change, at the same time as making clear their opposition to cuts in social spending as well as to our political and financial elites.

It is the global dimension of the protests that makes 15-O so different. This is the first time that a popular initiative has managed to organize with such a degree of coordination so many marches in so many different and distant places. Compared to the anti-globalization protests staged more than a decade ago in cities hosting major summits, and which typically ended in violence, this is a peaceful worldwide response to the questionable management by the planet's governments of a financial crisis that has led to a global depression.

The 15-O movement's demands are supported by a considerable section of society at a difficult moment, when the burdens and costs of the crisis are seen by many as not being equally shared. Young people have been particularly hard hit. The inaction of the past, typical of our consumer societies, has given way to a more positive response that nevertheless requires considerable amounts of organization and, above all, a heightened sense of civic responsibility. The disturbances in Rome represent a serious threat to a movement whose long list of grievances should be of real concern to our politicians. The health of our democracies depends in a large part on the response to the 15-O movement by governments around the world. Politicians who believe that they can in some way incorporate or co-opt the movement in the hope of garnering more votes are making a potentially disastrous mistake.