“Leave the Axe
Hit the Roots
Fall the Tree of Venom,” a phrase
from the nineteenth century Luddites

You can also knock it down without a axe. Using the tree as a symbol of capitalism, patriarchy and repressive states that oppress us, of course, the beautiful trees of our forests remain proud and long! With the axe we hit several corrupt trees and threw some bumps.

The need to leave the axe and the lack of direction, doubts and moves. How do you start the rarefied forest to give way to strong old robles or free outbreaks? Giving priority to the institutions? Filling and shaking the street? Reaffirming the popular movement? Creating new tools? I have always understood all of them as fingers of the same hand, yesterday and today.

Because, although we do not believe in the institutions, they can be an effective weapon to hurt the tree, but not only them, but also because we believe in the current pseudo-democratic substitution system. A power that is in the hands of a few, because it will never be a genuine freedom, because that delegation of power denies the direct participation of the citizens, the decision, and the same action.

Power of a few vs Power Popular. Institutions vs Self-management – Sovereignty. Because, as Kropotkin said, revolution is not just a change of the authorities, but the destruction of all those powers that have hindered social development, by the hand of popular power. Because the bourgeoisie, while owning the capital, will never allow us to develop any “socialist experiment”, even if we assume the power of the institutions. The words he wrote in the 19th century have, for me, great news.

The Luddites, in England and elsewhere in the world, helped by mythology and imagination, destroyed the machines that came to steal their work. We too, in this old town on the hillside of the Cantabrian River, have a great capacity to correct our struggle, to continue to knock down corrupt trees without axes. One of the keys can be the strengthening of the popular movement and the creation of new instruments for it; the free inclusion in this popular movement for sovereignty, efficiency; the understanding of institutions as an instrument more than an end; the construction of a transformative social economy, with the consolidation and multiplication of all these small projects of towns and cities… and, of course, continue to shake the streets, because they are as ours as ever. All with illusion, with the strength of nature that queen Mab can give us, and with reason. The “Sorionekuak” us!