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The first are the dead. People of all kinds who on Tuesday went out to live their lives because they did not know that it was dangerous and because that life, maintaining it, implies obligations that, if not fulfilled, have serious consequences. That’s why most of them were working; because you don’t choose whether you work: either you work or you get fired, you work or you don’t pay your mortgage, you work or you don’t make the purchase, you work or energy poverty comes and, with it, comes cold, hunger, the disease. The first thing is the dead and respecting them in going out to live their lives, because they neither knew nor were they allowed to do anything else.
The first thing is the dead and respecting them in going out to live their lives, because they neither knew nor were they allowed to do anything else.
The second thing would be to ask Why, if the AEMET had already warned of the danger and exceptional nature of this meteorological phenomenon – and it is clear that it did so, with sufficient advance notice -, these people were not warned that it was not safe to live as usual. I venture to say that power is afraid of stopping the economic machine and here it is possible to distinguish two types of power: economic power, which is fed by a logic of constant and unsustainable growth; and the politician, who, even legitimized at the polls, is burdened by clientelism and the money of the economic power that has elevated him. Because both powers are flawed and do not respond to a dynamic of service, but rather the exercise of power, the imposition of will and enrichment without assumption of responsibilities or prevention of risks, except for the power itself. More clearly: because the capitalist model only cares about profits.
The third thing is to consider how we contribute each and everyone, in our daily lives, to this model. How we treat those who work with us, under us or in our direction; how we consume, where and what we choose to buy; where we choose to educate our sons and daughters. What do we vote for? And thus a long list of daily decisions that usually seem unimportant to us, but that shape the world in which we live. Because the companies that did not close on the day of the floods of water were either not informed or, if or when they were informed, in many cases they made decisions in which their workers were not the priority. It is in our hands as consumers to continue supporting these companies or pressure them to change those protocols that do not put life at the center.
It is our obligation to be informed and not remain in false dilemmas, hoaxes, and beautiful but simplistic phrases.
The fourth thing is our obligation to be informed and not stop at false dilemmas, hoaxes, and beautiful but excessively simplistic phrases. This idea that only the people save the people is spreading on social networks. Firstly, in many of the videos in which this maxim or its spirit is introduced, the State is spoken of as if it were identified with the Government of the nation, which is false. The State is made up of multiple institutions, hierarchical and with a series of powers that they must assume, in the appropriate order and space, to be efficient, effective and not hold the legitimate power of others. That is why the central government cannot override Mazón, which would have terrible consequences for our conscience of the democratic system, undermining the right we have given ourselves. It is not about systematically distrusting administrative institutions, the media, security or emergency forces, but about removing from the equation those who do not know how to manage them or do so with a predatory attitude, at any level of responsibility.
That is why we must try not to fall into the temptation of scroll of videos of volunteers very understandably overwhelmed by circumstances; of defamers and anti-system conspirators; of deniers of scientific evidence; of people who may not understand all the motivations for some measures that a priori seem controversial, such as the limitation and coordination of volunteering, probably to protect them from an unhealthy environment for which they cannot be unprepared. Those who see a black hand behind everything or spread that image curiously console us, because that leaves us outside of any responsibility, past, present or future. Who can do anything against the faceless darkness.
The fifth thing is hope. All those acts of solidarity in the form of selfless work, necessary hygiene products, food and water that are being collected throughout Spain, of people who risked their safety or offered their homes. The fifth is the lives of the survivors and their physical, psychological and economic needs; aid cannot stagnate again. The fifth requires all of the above: respect for the deceased so that everything that is restored, reconstructed or encouraged is done with the awareness that their lives matter and that the lives to come need this memory; that those responsible for failing to warn in time and administering the disaster response so negligently be removed from their positions and held accountable; of our exercise as informed citizens, so as not to succumb to misinformation, to anger always directed in the same tortuous sense of patriotism, to partisan and disloyal confrontation with the people whom they claim to want to represent.
#order
