Throughout the Basque Country, in the face of the emergence of the COVID-19 epidemic, self-managed bottom-up surveillance movements, self-management of custody and fighting begin to emerge from the neighborhoods. We are told that we are creating “contagious networks” from institutions. And that's right, we're creating contagious networks, we're polluting collective solidarity in neighborhoods and towns. The virus of class solidarity is spreading throughout Euskal Herria at an exponential and unstoppable speed.

1. On the dialectic between emergency and “normality”: Two worlds in the mirror, two worlds in war.

As for the “health crisis” of these first days, contrary to what is said, we consider that the emergency situation does not represent a radical change in society and in the way in which it confronts the world, but that it evidences, as well as in the emergency, what happens in a supposedly “normal” state.

In times of crisis, like the “nomarleza” (capitalist), there are two ways of being in the world, two opposing worlds and two antagonistic ethics: there are those who are committed to delegating everything to institutions, who face the situation individually under the logic of “save whoever can”. But there is also a world in which we opt for other ways of doing and organizing, by collective and community forms, that we aim at networks of mutual care, mutual support and neighborhood defense.

On the one hand, we have a police response to a situation of exceptionality militarized by the popular neighborhood, according to the expansion of the apocalyptic and patriarchal imaginary; and on the other hand, there is a socialization of surveillance, from the people and for the people, as we have long said under the motto "take care of us friends and neighbors, not policemen".

On the one hand, the world of companies, which wants to bring this emergency to the working class through layoffs or cuts of rights; on the other hand, we are organized workers, who are creating networks of struggle and solidarity against violations of rights and exploitation; those who want to go beyond your charity and assistentialism, who are organizing solidarity and class struggle.

On the one hand, we have an old world that is emerging its cruelty and showing its decadence and insustainability; on the other hand, there is the possibility of another world – a new ethical and solidarity world, which can be seen in these moments of crisis.

Breaking the class struggle, deepening the war between worlds.

2nd On the position of the institutions: You are not the emergency response, but the response to popular self-organization!

From the institutions they are showing us their two inseparable faces: assistentialist face and oppressive face; good police and bad police; priest and jailer…

They talk about the least resources and the most needy, they fill their mouths with great words, while closing shelters and social services and sending cipayans, threatening people who don't have a home and saying they can't eogn in the streets.

They are building their welfare and charitable networks on large public budgets (“official and organized” networks such as “Entre Todos”) and at the same time criminalise the networks of citizen solidarity – also ordering the identification of the people who are organising them.

Then, we have some doubts: Was it really so necessary to mobilize all these resources to respond to the solidarity networks that were already organized at the village and neighborhood level, to create a network of "volunteers" who would work the same way? What are you building is a response to the emergency or a response to the self-organization of the people? Isn't that what you're afraid of isn't the health emergency itself, but an organized and willing people to fight?

Instead of thinking about counter-propaganda for self-managed initiatives in neighborhoods, why does it not intervene in hotels, apartments and vacant houses of real estate, to offer shelter to those who do not have or to enable places for the sick?

Why don't they block the rents, mortgages and payments of all members of the working class? Why do they not secure the minimum income for workers who have been left without work and for all people who are unemployed or without social support? Why don't you strengthen the health system by taking on more staff and reducing the workload of toilets?

You against paternalism, you weave the people’s self-organisation.

3. As for the media discourse “We are all on the same boat”: “We are not and do not want to be on your same boat”.

We are not “all in the same boat.” The owners of luxury and real estate hotels and the unpaid workers who are being laid off are not on the same boat; the businessmen of the Basque oligarchy or the multinationals who are going to lose a little of their surplus value and the workers of their companies who are going to be left without pay and without rights; they are not on the same boat, the people who work to take care of the children and the elderly and have to decide on food.

The capitalist pigs that are inventing tricks to take advantage of this crisis, to make it an opportunity to enrich themselves and implement permanent measures in a state of emergency, and on the other hand, the people in the neighborhoods that we are organizing, are not reeling in the same boat. We do not want to return to your individualistic and patriarchal normality, but to build another model of life and a new mode of collective functioning. A mold that goes beyond the emergency, of your “normality”.

We have never rowed on the same boat as you, your yacht is a luxury yacht, and the storm hurts you to the extent that you cannot go out to bathe in the sun; our boat, contrary to what you had, is nothing but a boat in the midst of a storm, which we cannot avoid with our cooperation. But we're organizing, not just to stop them from coming to us, but to form a pirate boat. And once the storm is over, we will approach the yacht of capital and socialize it, from the people and for the people.

Organize the neighborhood defense, build the auzobote!