living politically (Toulouse)

Sitting at a long table in the dinning room of my hosts, in Toulouse.  I am taking to the road once more, boarding the midnight bus in direction of Spain.  Final stop: Sevilla.

Time here in Toulouse has been quite rich.  Meeting more new people, facing more parts of me, witnessing moods, expectations, ephemeral moments of communions.

First of all let me state it: I finally experienced a little bit of a life in a squat; a real one.  And not any one, for I am told it's perhaps the oldest one still standing in the city!  Indeed, the house has been inhabited for eleven years now.  No rent, no mortgage.  This beautiful big building used to belong to a crew of university researchers that worked at the observatory around the corner.  Then the observatory closed down and the building was left unattended for about five years before a group of students decided to come in and make it their home.

Political posters placarding the walls, an impressively clean and well-stocked kitchen, a ''ballroom'' (also used for self-defense and other community classes), a fumoir (keeping most of the house smoke-free, for the kids), and of course, several bedrooms for residents and guests (I had my own)… This place is huge!   And it is perfectly equipped for an experience in community living.

The food supplies are everybody's; and whoever decides to cook on any given meal generally asks who else might be around to partake.  Every month, a bunch of them goes to work on an organic farm for a day, and they are given boxes full of fresh vegetables.  The rest is supplied from a few selected dumpsters, and from regular grocery stores, of course.

Lately the squat has become the base of operation for the organization of a demonstration to take place in a couple of weeks, denouncing the pernicious mechanisms of the prison-industrial complex (as we'd call it in the USA) and demanding the liberation of six friends who have been incarcerated a few weeks ago.  

(Back in July, they went and caused a ''bit of a mess'' in the offices of the child ''protection'' agency in order to protest against the incarceration of minors.  On November 15th, dozens of policemen broke into their houses to take computers, books, and a few activists with them.)

Makes me wonder.  

I support the cause...  even though I prefer not to think about the injustice, about the repression and the brutality that is committed daily against the people our wonderful political-legal-economical power structures make sure to keep stigmatized and struggling.  

Thinking about prisons... Asking... is this really the only solution?  Is this an ethical solution?  What else do we have to offer, when it comes to maintaining the "good functioning" of society.  (One might ask: which society?)

One can point to the long tradition of many civilizations, to isolate, reject, and shun antisocial individuals who betray the social ethics of the community.  Yet what are the intentions?  There's retribution, and there's rehabilitation. ?

I remember reading about a native american tribe, which considers the whole community to be guilty if an individual misbehaves.  They sit together and perform rituals to heal the whole of society.

A concept that makes so much sense to me... for aren't we all products of our environment?  Aren't we caught in such a tangle of historical, racial, economical mess of a system, that it is actually quite absurd and impossible to speak of "justice" at this point?

Let us not be fooled.

It just doesn't seem to me like modern prison system isn't meant to heal society.

Anyway.  (I just found some very interesting historical information about ostracization in ancient Athenian democracy... check it out:  here.)  

It's good to be in such a politicized place.  A bit stressful and heavy, but good.

Cafe at the University of Toulouse