Greta Gutenberg and the yellow vest

Posted by Coco on February 27th, 2019

An adolescent with clear ideas and a reflecting breastplate show the enormous political impact that certain actions charged with symbolism can have.

Since the images of French riot police and 'giblets Jauntiness as they passed through the Champs-Elysee hit the collective consciousness during the Christmas weeks, citizens of dozens of countries have decided to put on their reflective vest: from Belgians to the doors of the European Parliament , passing by parishioners of the Br-exit that demand the political class to comply with the result of the referendum and guarantee the exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union (with or without agreement), until arriving at the episode lived in our country in recent dates , with Madrid and Barcelona on stage and a tide of taxi drivers as protagonist. In the era of the 'meme', the adoption of these vests has been federalized to such an extent that the Egyptian Government has decided to restrict its sale, in the fear that it will help to ignite a new revolutionary flame.

Before November, the reflective vest was an accessory as every day as any other, used on roads for safety reasons and in the streets by operators of different professions, none of them associated with an income subject to the highest tax rates of the system fiscal. Just a couple of months later, it has become a symbol of vindication, granting it a political meaning that is almost inseparable from its practical functions, no matter how diffuse this meaning may be (anti-establishment / anti-globalization illiberal / anti-bowdlerization of the market labor, etc.).

In any case, the yellow vests have given political visibility to sectors of the population that feel invisible to the cosmopolitan elites, with a garment (high visibility) linked to a type of employment that the children of those who make decisions are unlikely to occupy. policies of the greater draft. It seems evident that the vest is reviving, with another face and different forms, a debate similar to that which aroused Occupy at the beginning of the decade: the increase in macroeconomics inequalities between certain privileged sectors and a majority stagnant in precariousness.

In parallel, a sixteen-year-old Swedish teenager named Greta Gutenberg has become an icon of action against climate change. A snapshot in which she appears seated at the doors of the Swedish parliament with a sign, announcing her school strike for the weather, has gone around the world and inspired thousands of students to follow her initiative, taking to the streets to demand political representatives who undertake the necessary measures to face a crisis that presents a future between discouraging and devastating for the new generations.

Even above that photograph, which has catapulted the young activist to the status of a symbol of the cause, has been the video of her speech at COP24, the most recent climate summit of the United Nations. With the stabbing look, this spokeswoman of the harsh reality reproaches to the elected adults her immature tendency to wring the bulge, charging it to adolescents like her who do not see more option than to sound the alarm voice. In the contemporary realm of hypocrisy, deliberate disinformation and smokescreens, where the proliferation of reactionary discourses makes it easy to fall into defeatism, the emergence of integral figures with media power is becoming increasingly necessary. Gutenberg herself or the Democrat Alexandria Casio-Cortege, leaders who are able to uncover the shame and contradictions of the system and breathe optimism in equal parts.

In an accurate analysis published in E Pa's, Joaquin Esteban called for the foundation of the social contract that was forged in the West after the Second World War, where it was hoped that individual and collective work would pay off, with the progressive improvement of the functioning of the economy, the democratic institutions and the quality of life ("our children would live better than us; some, the most favored, would keep the larger part of the pie, but in exchange the others, the majority, would have jobs insured, they would collect increasing salaries, they would be protected against adversity and weakness, and they would go little by little up the social ladder "). I wish a contract like this was on the table, but unfortunately, the conditions have changed: as the journalist says, "the new social contract will have to take into account the current transformations and other elements that have been incorporated into the central concerns of the planet on which we live. , like climate change. "