Species in danger of extinction either tell our story or only the version of the story told by those who make us extinct will remain.
On summer nights, at the door of my house, in a social housing neighborhood reached by a dirt road on the outskirts of Plasencia (Extremadura) in the early seventies of the last century, I listened to stories told by a neighbor who knew how to tell all the stories in the world. He, a cattail chair, the others, floor or standing. Until so many. Seduced Storytelling is power.
My nephew says that Israel bombs Gaza because the Palestinians attacked Israel before, on October 7, 2023. In his story, nothing happens before October 7. Blank page. There is no 1948, nor 1967. Nor the Nakba, nor 77 years of colonial occupation. Neither England, nor the unfulfilled UN resolutions… The story of a child without memory. The Community of Madrid wants them without memory, which threatens the educational centers that explain Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
But girls and boys always ask questions. And there are always teachers or aunts who respond, while the education departments that would like everyone to be amnesiac rage.
A genocide is a programmed mass extinction strategy. Whoever executes him never calls it genocide. And whoever tells it has to tell complex stories, without blank pages. My neighbor told us complex stories. He dwelt on details that had nothing to do with anything, we thought as we listened to him. But then, it always ended up making us exclaim: Oh, of course, that’s why before…!
Everything was planned from before. And everything was understood later.
The world runs well if 5% of the population handles knowledge and 95% settles for stories full of blank pages. Easy stories for amnesiac audiences
For example, President Ayuso’s story: Public universities are idiotic, they don’t know how to manage, they lack a business mentality. We have to end this.
A blank page in this story: the growth of private universities is supported by the growth of the debt of families, who have to request loans to finance the careers of their sons and daughters. In five years, study loans have increased by 60% in Spain. One in every seven credits requested is for study.
Another blank page: no public university has been created. It is not due to the law of supply and demand, because the majority prefers to study in a public university. But creating private universities is easy, less is required of them than public ones and the Government of the Community of Madrid lets them pass even if they lack requirements.
The threat of extinction falls on the possibility of building a less unequal society
Another blank page: the Community of Madrid offers as credit to the public university what it should be paid by law. That they suffocate is fine with him. With 5% of the population being adequately trained in elite universities, it is enough for them to direct the lives of the remaining 95%. Furthermore, that 95% always has the option of going into debt to pay for a title at a beach bar. Ayuso sees no reason to finance with public money the university studies of so many middle class people who are only expected to efficiently consume stories for amnesiacs and accept salaries below the average price of a rental.
When we talk about 5% versus 95%, 60% credit growth, and an expansion of the private versus a contraction of the public (in 1995 there were 10 private versus 45 public and today there are 46 versus 50), we talk about the structure. The class struggle is played out today in those numbers. The threat of extinction falls on the possibility of building a less unequal society, where people who as children live on unpaved streets can also be university professors one day.
The university is going on strike in Madrid on November 26 and 27. It is not a strike just for 1% of GDP for financing. It is not a strike only to demand that the Community of Madrid comply with the LOSU. It is not a strike just to be able to turn on the lights in the classrooms. Each of those reasons
It is a strike against the extinction of article two of the Spanish Constitution of 1978. Against the extinction of the social state. And of the entire tradition of political thought that made it possible for that article to exist.
