Yes We Can (dream another Lanzarote)

"The political and economic elite that governs us is an organized mafia," Ada Colau said last week. In recent years we have become accustomed to reading and hearing terrible phrases like this from authorized and well-informed voices. Although it is a reality that is sometimes difficult to assimilate, the facts demonstrate again and again that our rulers have been deceiving us on a daily basis. And in recent years, in addition, the citizens of this country, of these islands, have had to get used to seeing in the news the heartbreaking images of thousands of evictions, of hundreds of thousands of people evicted from their homes by the greed of the banks and by the complicity of a government that works for them, for the great fortunes. And as if that were not enough, those responsible for the situation assure us that the medicine we need, which they call austerity, is the same one that is killing us. 

The human drama of evictions is the bitterest face of an economic and political absurdity that is being protected by those elites of whom Colau speaks and that is translating into that other reality, also very harsh, which points to the gradual increase of people who, despite having a job, live on the threshold of poverty. 

We suffer an overdose of figures and data that often take us away from the cruel scenario they describe to us. Eight thousand five hundred families, only in Lanzarote, do not have what is necessary to live with dignity on the island of luxury, of five-star hotels, marinas, golf courses and millionaire wineries, which coexist, as if nothing strange were happening, with the anguish of thousands of citizens.

It is not just that they have speculated with the land. It is not just that they have plundered public companies. It is not just that they have robbed us in every mega-contract, in every labor reform. The most disheartening thing about the era we have had to live through is that they have tried to speculate with our lives, that they have tried to destroy our illusions and that they have tried to steal, in short, our future. Against that pretension we have stood up.

2015 will be the year to renew the "Enough is Enough" that we had to shout so many times to defend the collective interests of this island. The insensitivity shown by these political and economic elites, their arrogance and their blindness, have forced us to organize and fight to recover the right to imagine another possible Lanzarote, in which indecent social inequalities such as those we are suffering are not allowed. If until now no one has been able to do it, we will be the ones to put on the table the political will necessary to bring common sense to public institutions.

A team of people committed to this change that is coming presents itself, with the name "Yes We Can", to the Citizen Council and to the General Secretariat of Podemos Lanzarote, because the time has come to tear off the gags and enter the institutions to demonstrate that it is possible to govern in another way. From February 9 to 13 we are waiting for you at participa.podemos.info and in the streets to begin to build that other Lanzarote that we can still dream of.