Henri Lefebvre: A Critical Introduction - autonomous learning

s p o n t a n e i t y
“Spectacular agitation” has already been glimpsed, has already
erupted on our streets, coalescing around many different agendas,
voiced by many different groups, pitched at many different scales:
canceling third world debt, banning child and sweatshop labor,
ridding cars from our cities, keeping city life vital, saving turtles,
shutting down the World Trade Organization and International
Monetary Fund, taming unfettered globalization, changing the
world, and changing life. Participation has shown its muscle: people
have joined hands, especially as the batons flail and the tear
gas flows. A reenergized militancy and spontaneity has reared its
head. Its contestation has posed unflinching questions while it’s
grappled for answers. It has shown an amazing capacity to politicize
people, especially young people, those disgruntled with ballet-box
posturing and Bush banalities, people who care about our
fragile democracy and our sacked society.
Some protagonists, like Global Exchange, a San Francisco–
based human rights organization, comprise nomadic gadflies,
young activists who travel up and down America, living in trailers
and pickup trucks. They spread the anticorporate word at hitherto
unprecedented decibels, mixing painstaking planning with spontaneous
militancy, clearheaded analysis with touchy-feely utopianism.
Indeed, their whole ontological raison d’être is organizing:
politicking and proselytizing, conducting teach-ins and speak-outs,
staging demos and boycotts, and masterminding blitzes, everywhere.
Their ideas and ideals fill the gaping void that capitalist
consumerism bequeaths young, intelligent people today. Global
Exchange is also a prime mover in the umbrella group, DAN, a
driving force in the “Seattle Citizen’s Committee’s” plan to shut
down World Trade Organization talks. DAN’s ethos is nonviolent
protest, and the group denounces the cops for sparking Seattle’s
street infernos and curfew alerts. DAN détourns high-tech media
and works it for its own ends, coordinating on the Internet, initiating
guerrilla action, radicalizing fellow-traveling affinity groups
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