Flamenco Flash Mobs in Spain occupying Banks

From the BBC
Flamenco flash mobs - seemingly spontaneous dance and song performances - have been taking place in banks not just in Seville, but all over Andalusia, causing short, if amusing disruptions to the working day Some involve just one or two dancers, performing silently in front of bemused customers and clerks. Others can be made up of several dozen bailaores clicking their fingers and stomping their feet to recorded music. The flash mobs are staged by an anti-capitalist group known as Flo6x8 to express anger and frustration at the economic crisis

. . . . Talk to many people involved in flamenco today and they will tell you that there is nothing political about the music. Yet look back at the history of flamenco, and a different picture emerges. Far from concentrating on love and passion - themes that one might expect from such an explosive art form - the lyrics sung in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries were largely about poverty, suffering and the hardship of everyday life.

. . . . The Spanish government is clearly rattled - after a Flo6x8 video (see top of story) got over a million hits on YouTube they changed the law to make it much more difficult for the bank flash mobs to be carried out, and none has happened over the past year. Instead it has gone international. Flamenco flash mobs have been taking place, not only in Spain, but across Europe, in Milan, Rome and the UK, though it has become harmless fun, rather than a political act.

LYRICS:
The character & the will/ you have changed,my friend/ the character and the will/ since that you have money/ you have turned unbearable/ those are things of brand new rich man
Don't you bustle me anymore, Rodrigo (RATO-wikipedia: ex economy minister, exbankia and FMI director) because thanks to your bad head, we'll finish as furtives. I've looked for 2 jobs to pay the mortgage. U get into troubles, u fire me/send me out to the street because there is no money
ay bankia (x6) for u 6 lungs, for me not even a gill (x2). Am not gonna love u, not gonna want u, not even if u take my interest rate away, not even if you reduce my interest, is that i dont want u, Bankia i dont want u, no way! ay bankia bankia... 4 u 6 lungs, 4 me not even a gill

People Power in Nebraska saying NO to Keystone XL

 Mary Pipher wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times this week (April 17, 2013 -- Lighting a Spark on the High Plains) in which she talks about "ordinary heroes" combatting the Keystone XL pipeline.  She does a superb job in explaining how people power starts to grow.

Newly minted activists organized potlucks, educational forums, music benefits, tractor pulls, poetry readings, flashlight rallies, wildflower drops in Capitol offices and pumpkin-carving protests. Grandmothers created the Apple Pie Brigade and arrived every Monday at the governor’s mansion with small gifts and letters opposing the project.

 She points to the potential radicalizing role that non-profits can play in creating "newly minted" activists (in spite of their participation in the nonprofit industrial complex)

Groups like Audubon Nebraska, Bold Nebraska, the Farmers Union, the National Wildlife Federation and the Sierra Club worked together to educate and activate our citizens. The League of Women Voters and college students joined to stop what we called the Keystone Extra-Leaky

And how the importance of community as a foundation for an incipient social movement.

How did this amazing set of alliances ever happen? In part, our unity came from our shared history and geography. Many of us are the relatives of homesteaders and modern farmers and ranchers. Whatever our politics, we all believe in the sanctity of home. In the Beef State, we understand the importance of water, especially today, when every county in Nebraska suffers drought conditions. . . .Many of our citizens had seen their parents or grandparents struggle to hold on to family land, and they weren’t about to give up their rights without a fight. . . . .

Mike Miller has always argued that you opponents will inevitably hand you an issue around which to organize people.

TransCanada made the mistake of bullying our fiercely independent farmers and ranchers. Landowners say the company threatened to take their land if they didn’t cooperate and warned them that later offers of money would be much smaller if they delayed. TransCanada also insisted, landowners say, that they sign papers agreeing not to talk to the press or anyone about their agreements.

Many Civil Rights Veterans talk about the transformative effect their work in the movement had on them.  Here is Mary Pipher's take on that effect:

Today, we still don’t know what will happen with this pipeline. But we do know what has happened to us. Our coalition allowed us to transform our feelings of sorrow, fear, anger and helplessness into something stronger and more durable. We became agents of our fates and joined together in what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called a “beloved community.” We became a state of ordinary heroes who decided that money couldn’t buy everything and that some things were sacred.

And that Freedom is a constant struggle:

The great global skirmishes of this century will be fought over food, energy, water and dirt. Our remote, conservative, flyover state seems like an odd place to make a stand for clean water and fertile land, but we will be at the heart of those battles. We are fighting not only for ourselves but for people all over the world. And we know that everywhere, in their particular places, people are fighting for us. The campaign to stop the Keystone XL is not over. It won’t be over until we give up, and we aren’t giving up.

Mary Pipher, a psychologist, is the author of “The Green Boat: Reviving Ourselves in Our Capsized Culture.”