something nice

something nice from a first-hand account of the democracy movement in Spain:

The general assemblies are always held in public spaces, usually symbolic places in the center of the city: Puerta del Sol in Madrid, Plaza Cataluña in Barcelona, Plaza de Encarnación in Sevilla, etc., all reminiscent of the Agoras from ancient Greek city-states. The fact that those squares are public has not been obvious to all observers. The traumatic experience of police repression in Barcelona on June 27^th illustrates this. As a matter of fact, public spaces are only public insofar as we actually use them. Our rights as citizens cannot be weighted against commercial considerations or a "bad image" for tourism. Neglecting that right leads authorities to treat it as touristic "capital" and to undermine our collective property right. Participatory democracy begins with reclaiming that space and our right.

http://www.zcommunications.org/indignant-and-organized-from-15-m-to-19-j-by-david-marty

This reminds me of two things:

In El Paso, Texas, I once met a homeless man who told me that the police harassed him

when he was on North Mesa. (Incidentally, North Mesa is one of the ugliest places in the world. It is filled with enormous trucks boiling in the hot sun. Despite the theory of traffic management it is, essentially, a no-go area for pedestrians. If the city of El Paso had any common sense, they would ban cars and put in a tram line....)

In Bratislava, capital of the Slovak Republic, I once read that a person taking pictures at a local (Canadian owned, I believe) shopping center had his camera taken away by security guards--lest the pictures be used in a way bad for the image of the place.