According to Granada Indymedia and other things I’ve seen, a local “coexistence” ordinance for Granada entered into force on 10 November which prohibits on the city’s streets, well, basically everything not approved by the authorities. From my perhaps defective reading of the commentary I’ve seen in Spanish, “coexistence” is indeed the correct answer, if the question is, “How shall we, the city’s ruling class, suffer these filthy beggars?”

Among the acts banned are:

Prohibido todo - Everything banned

• All forms of prostitution (via legal constructions which, I hear second-hand, are worded so generally that the police could arrest attractively-clad women based on the types of glances they cast at men)
• Begging at public transport locations, “institutional attention” centers and private property (read: damn near anywhere), with the goal of forcing beggars into the welfare system
• Acrobatics and games of skill involving bicycles, skates, skateboards or balloons, outside ares designated for such
• All “public acts” or protests done without permission, which might in any way block traffic or create a public security hazard
• The purchase or acquisition in public spaces of food, drinks or other products from unpermitted walking vendors
• Allowing dust to fall on the street as a result of cleaning clothes or carpets on balconies or terraces
• Allowing water to fall on the street due to watering plants located outside a building
• Spitting or meeting other bodily needs in public spaces
• Performing as a street musician, especially if collecting money
• Handling or selecting things deposited in city trash bins (which, by the way, you’re not allowed to put your rubbish into except between 8pm and 11pm)
• Washing, fixing or carrying out maintenance work on vehicles in public spaces
• Placing pamphlets or leaflets on vehicles or movable property

Nope, no institutionalized privilege here.

The law provides for the immediate seizure of any instruments, object, money or other “fruits or products obtained via the violating activity”, subject to being passed into evidence in a court proceeding or being forfeited.

A leaflet distributed at the protest says: “They are converting the streets into a place reserved for going to work or to shop”, and, “With the excuse of ‘promoting coexistence’, they would try to rob us of one of the last remnants of freedom left to us: the streets.”

Policía Local - hired thugs

All told, there were maybe 400 people in attendance at Plaza del Carmen. My friend, from a smaller city in northern France, remarked that such an event there might have drawn 10,000 people without being a big surprise.

Policía - Se puede obedecer

The protest was largely street theater. A guy with a seriously-modified, six-foot-tall bicycle came riding around with a sign attached saying how what he was doing was illegal. A couple of girls invited the crowd to jump rope in the square. Another pair carried a clothesline strung between two broomsticks, festooned with underpants. Juggling occurred. Balls were thrown around, as were balloons. A guy cheaply costumed as a police officer (complete with cardboard riot shield, helmet face mask, inner-tube baton and a sign on his back reading “You may circulate and obey”) made a show of beating up some giggling kids.

Maybe 20 local police were there, and made a show of putting their riot helmets on as the protesters made a show of rushing the entrance to city hall. Not a whole lot really happened, though, since none among the protesters seemed to have had the foresight to bring pitchforks or rifles along.

Oh well.

Rebellion: If I had a middle finger, I would extend it.

If I were to break down the door to my neighbor’s home, push a gun in the face of the family that lives there, announce that they had offended me, or my masters, for some behavior of theirs which was proscribed by the scrawlings of blind yet dutiful scribes in some mysterious set of holy books that they had neither read nor subscribed to, and then demand that they comply with my instantaneous orders or be subject to the instantaneous power of death which issues from the barrel of my gun — would they or would they not be justified in defending themselves? Would they or would they not be justified in attempting to escape? Would they or would they not act morally by exerting every possible influence, by applying every possible force, to stop me enforcing whatever arbitrary proscription I found in my holy book?

Of course they would. Be it that my presumably holy book contained a proscription against eating rabbit, that it spake ill of cooking and eating meat on the bone, that it condemned the growing and ingestion of cannabis sativa or salvia divinorum or cooking up a bit of methamphetamine in the bathtub, you should rightly denounce me thus:

Of course! You have no right to come into their home, to disturb them, to push weapons into their faces, to threaten them with death, torture, imprisonment, sanction, condemnation or to demand anything! Your act is a crime, and when the rest of us in the neighborhood get together and hear about it, we’re going to throw you OUT of our community at the very least, and if you resist, use every power and force to be rid of you, so that we may protect ourselves and our children and our families and our loved ones and our comrades and our friends and our colleagues and our neighbors and our acquaintances and the bitchy middle-aged spinster who works as a cashier at the shop on the corner from YOU and your insane, arbitrary, needless, senseless, highfalutin proscriptions.

I would be a criminal. Perhaps misguided, perhaps insane, perhaps deluded or perhaps only following orders, I would still be a criminal, a violator, a trespasser and completely out of my right.

Oh, but… the objection is raised, as was done by that listserv contributor and fellow human being whose name I have long forgotten, “What if I’m wearing a clown suit when I do this?”

“Oh! A clown suit!” all proclaim, prostrating themselves and genuflecting before the one true God. “Why, if he’s wearing a clown suit, it must be all right! We know that clowns want only the best things for our children, and of course clowns must go through rigorous training and certification in order to be granted, by the powers that be, that most sacred privilege of wearing the clown suit! Surely, if he’s wearing a clown suit, he is in the right, and they are the evil doers, they are the ones who have transgressed, and, indeed, they must be punished.”

Ridiculous, isn’t it?

Per Bylund, whose writings are far more incisive than mine, describes it thus in an article which goes far beyond the issue of drug prohibition:

What is it with a uniform that makes a vice a virtue? Let me tell you a secret: there is nothing with a uniform that gives you the right to kill, pillage, destroy, and attack. The villain here is not only the person committing the crime – i.e., carrying out the attack – but to a great degree you. You are the problem with this world, for as long as you react not to the crime but what the perpetrator is wearing there is no hope for this world.

But, when you ask yourself, deeply, honestly, in that still place that is the center of your universe, whether or not the clown suit makes any difference, what is your answer?