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Towards the Week of Global Action against Debt and IFIs

Activists from all over the Spanish state celebrate the III State Meeting of the Citizen Debt Audit Platform (PACD)

 

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From May 31st to June 2nd the III State Meeting of the Spanish Citizen Debt Audit Platform (PACD)We don’t owe! We won’t pay! took place. Activists from all over the Spanish State (as well as some from Portugal and Belgium)participated in this meeting, that took place in Barcelona, where they put together all the work done by the regional groups and developed the strategy for the next months. Three days of intense work at the fantasticcollectivised space of Aurea Social. The meeting started with an international conference organized by the Observatory of Debt in Globalization (ODG), where different activists fighting against the oppression of debt in Tunisia, Ecuador, Philippines, Mexico, Peru, Portugal and Spain were heard. During this third encounter it was visible how the PACD has been growing in strength since it first started in October 2011. Nowadays it has become a reference for the fight against debt and austerity both inside and outside our borders, through the International Citizen Debt Audit Network (ICAN). Sigue leyendo

What the PACD means by «Citizen Debt Audit» and «Illegitimate Debt»

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This text was written collaboratively by PACD-Barcelona after receiving proposals from different political parties on debt audits.

 

Political Parties and Audits.

This past March 12th the left-wing parliamentarian group Izquierda Plural (IU, ICV-EUIA & CHA) presented in the Congress of Deputies a non-legislative motion for “the creation of a Public Debt Audit”, as well as “a commission to determine the economic and social criteria so as to qualify part of the debt as odious.”

Almost simultaneously, both groups ICV and CUP separately questioned the Government of the Generalitat de Catalunya in the Parliament on the question of the debt. This questioning derived in motions to propose an audit of the Catalan public Debt. The coalition Compromís in Valencia (Bloc, IdPV & Verds) also made public last March 20th a report on the illegitimacy of the Valencian debt, and proposes “to audit the accounts of the Generalitat Valenciana to check whether the public debt is due to operative functioning necessities or to other causes, therefore identifying and quantifying what is known as illegitimate debt.”

Furthermore, in the European Parliament, the group Verdes/ALE has managed to introduce a proposal for a Public Debt Audit in the Gauzés Report (about the efforts to supervise the economy and budgets by the member States that are going through, or are in risk of having, great difficulties with financial stability within the Euro zone).

In October 2011, the proposal to do a Citizen Debt Sudit of the Spanish debt arose from a meeting between different social movements and organizations, assuming as their own the proposal from social movements in the South. Since then, several political parties have also adopted as their own the proposal of auditing public debt as a tool for fighting against payment of illegitimate debt, both by including such initiative in their electoral programme and by making specific proposals in the institutions where they are present.

It is encouraging that the proposal to analyse the origin, composition, management and impact of the public debt has become a priority to some political parties. To promote and to demand citizens’ right to know what is behind a debt that is being paid with social cuts and reforms, cannot but overjoy us.  Nonetheless, we understand that these are distinct proposals that, although complementary, have different objectives and methodologies. Sigue leyendo

The Spanish Debt Audit Platform (PACD) celebrates in Barcelona its 3rd national meeting (31M, 1-2J).

After more than a year active, the Spanish Debt Audit Platform (PACD) met in Barcelona to celebrate their 3rd national meeting where groups from different cities, created around the Spanish state, attended to share together the work done so far. Topics such as: what do we mean when talking about illegitimate debt, strategy issues, a workshop on how to audit, territorial extension work and commissions’ dynamics were worked on.

2013-06-01 - Encuentro estatal PACD Barcelona. Foto grupo

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The event started on Friday May 31st with an open public event with the following agenda: Sigue leyendo

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

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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. Sigue leyendo

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

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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) : Sigue leyendo

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…? Sigue leyendo