News

April 22nd, 2013

We don’t owe! We won’t pay! Democracy and Debt

democracia-e-divida

Meeting of the Spanish Citizen Debt Audit Platform – PACD in Portugal.


25th-28th April, Lisbon (Portugal)


Spanish activists meet in Lisbon with Portuguese groups to analyse the problem of debt and how it affects democracy.


For several days, members of the Spanish Citizen Debt Audit Platform – PACDwill attend a series of events in Lisbon, starting with the celebration of the Carnation Revolution, with a public event on Saturday afternoon, and meetings with various groups the remaining days. Geographical proximity and similarities in the situation both countries are going through during the crisis, makes international coordination and exchange of experiences key for building constructive citizen initiatives.

April 1st, 2013

Declaration of the Assembly on Debt, gathered in Tunis, on the 29th of March 2013 (WSF)

ThomasSankara

Considering that the Debt has been, since the 15th century, the main historical instrument of colonization to plunder, dominate, subdue, humiliate and destroy the People and their traditions,

Considering that the debt of the global south has already been paid back several times, and that it constitutes, for the South as well as the North, a wealth, resources and of labor power towards capital,

Considering that debt is the key lever of foreign intervention, and the intervention of financial powers, with the complicity of the powerful elite, giving way to the violation of states sovereignty, and to the overall impoverishment of people, and to the brutal degradation of their economic and social rights,

Considering that the multinationals and the industrialized countries, have triggered an irreversible upheaval distrusting the climate and environmental balance, and hence generating an ecological debt, which the entire humanity shall suffer from, and to which those countries have due reparations.

Considering the effect that the mechanisms of indebtedness have had all over the planet, aggravating especially the living conditions of women, tackling mainly their financial independence; a main stone for their social and political emancipation,

With determination,

We, Organizations and Social movements, inspirted by the example of the combatant Thomas Sankara, Struggling for the liberation of peoples from the enslavement and the slavery of debt:

Affirm that the Arab people and the Maghreb people have reignited the flame of the struggle of the people for reclaiming their destiny and their desire to emancipate according to their own standards of living freely and with dignity,

We Strongly and determinately Support all the struggles around the world to free the people from the servitude of debt,

Rejecting the austerity policies applied everywhere around the word,

Supporting all the citizen-led debt audit for the identification and the cancellation, without condition, all audios and illegitimate debt,

And calling for a feminist-oriented audit which will consider the social debt through which women were the creditors,

Rejecting all debt –swaps or conversions that we would consider laundering of the odious and illegitimate debt,

We strongly denounce all pressures, and attempts to prevent the adoption of the bill of debt audit in Tunisia and everywhere around the world.

We don’t owe…we don’t pay!

First signatures to the Declaration (in alphabetical order) :

March 13th, 2013

Debt and Democracy in #Greece

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The policies carried out are not going to get us out of the crisis. The psychological climate in Greece is of despair, disappointment and anger, they are in shock. People seek practical and individual solutions to systemic problems; such is the case of Debt. What is the solution?

March 13th, 2013

Debt and Fascism in #Greece

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Racism is directly related to the economic crisis and the situation gets worse as social cuts progress. If for capitalists, the crisis is a creative destruction, how con we describe the destruction of social services, a youth forced to unnecessarily go abroad, pension cuts, immigration pursued and crammed in detention camps, the exclusion of the disadvantaged or the new burdens imposed on women…?

March 6th, 2013

Greece reinvents itself with the crisis through self-managed networks

Be quiet, Greeks are sleeping

Confronting the failed State and the collapse of the Welfare System, the Greeks have begun to organise, fuelling the grassroots movement that softens the effects of the cuts and resists them. These networks arise of necessity, not ideology; many of their participants are non-political or from the social left.

March 4th, 2013

Journey to Greek social resistance

Viome

Desperate people queuing for food or stone and Molotov cocktail wars against asphyxiating gas. These are some of the most common images that come from Greece. But reality is kaleidoscopic and changes depending on where you look.

On the streets of Athens and Thessaloniki you can breathe some normality, but while businesses in the center are mostly open, in the suburbs signs “for rent” are everywhere. Urban furniture that suffered the brunt of the latest demonstration or simply the passing of time has not been repaired. Aristotle University of Thessaloniki has no longer cleaning service. In the suburbs of Attica rubbish piles up because it is not collected every day. “The cuts”, they say. The majority of the population seems to be in shock. But there are also many that feed a swarm of citizen initiatives.