Archivo de la categoría: News

Strike Debt Manifesto

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We must transform our failed economic system that impoverishes millions while destroying the ecosystem. Using a diversity of tactics that includes a Rolling Jubilee, a People’s Bailout, and vigorous organizing towards a debt strike, Strike Debt seeks to abolish debt as it currently exists and reconstruct a just society where our debts and bonds are to one another and not the 1%. The 99% are forced into debt to pay for basic social needs like education, housing, and healthcare while the 1% profits. We can no longer afford our own oppression. We are citizens, homeowners, renters, teachers, students, parents, children, debtors, and defaulters who don’t owe the banks anything. We owe each other everything.

Source: http://www.nplusonemag.com/Gazette5.pdf

PACD Manifest General Strike 14N

Spanish Citizen Debt Audit Platform (PACD) joins the General Strike of November 14th and encourages all to take the streets shouting, loud and clear, to the political, financial and business elite in Spain and Europe that we do not believe their lies:

1. We know that the origin of this crisis is private debt you built up, not public debt spent on building the welfare state and a more just and egalitarian society.

2. We know that you have accumulated large profits for years with this debt, while real wages decreased and the price of  basic commodites, such as housing, increased.

3. Cuts, privatizations and reforms are a way of making people pay a debt that is not ours, but yours, so you can continue making profit at the expense of our rights and our planet.

4. We know the anti-democratic mechanisms you use to transform private debt into public debt: bank bailouts, constitutional reform, EU bailout to the banks and the signing of the ESM.

5. We will not stay quiet at home, we are not afraid and we will use all the tools at our disposal to not pay this illegitimate debt.

DON’T OWE! WON’T PAY!

Firenze 10+10 ends: call for action and road-map.

More than 4 thousand participants, 300 networks and organisations from 28 countries from all over Europe and beyond, met at Fortezza da Basso in Florence from November 8th to 11th, to debate and strategize together for another Europe.  Over 100 meetings took place and many new networks and campaigns were launched.  A call for common action and a proposed roadmap emerged from the convergence meeting: 

JOINING FORCES FOR COMMON EUROPE

Our Democracy instead of Their Austerity

Social organizations, social movements, trade unions and citizens working against austerity and debt, for natural and social commons, for social and labour rights, for democracy, global justice and peace, for gender issues and migrant rights have gathered in Florence 10+10.

We call for a European permanent mobilization to support the fights against the crisis and build a future for everyone in Europe and in the world. This mobilization will include both convergence and decentralizes actions.

The first unifying initiative towards a European-wide convergence is the General strikes and mobilisations against austerity in many countries in Europe on the 14 of November 2012.

We propose to have a common day of action on the occasion of the EU Spring Summit, which will take place in Brussels on March 23rd. The format and final call for this common mobilization will be discussed and agreed in the following months in an open and participatory process.

We call for endorsement of the following actions and mobilizations

  • 18 December 2012: World Migrants Day
  • 23-27 January 2013: Action Against Finanziarization of life and commons (actions against banks)
  • 8 March 2013: European action affirming women emancipation against austerity and debt
  • 26-30 March 2013: World Social Forum in Tunis
  • May 2013: Blockupy in Frankfurt (Germany)
  • 7-9 June 2013 (proposal): Alter Summit in Athens (Greece)
  • June 2013: G8 Counter Summit in UK (tbc)
  • Concrete solidarity actions to support the people hit by the Austerity policies as well as the victims of racist violence and abuse

 

Consensus Debt Axis, Agora99: Don’t Owe, Won’t Pay!

Published in Greek – Greece Debt Audit Campaign.

Activists from different social movements, have gathered in Madrid during this weekend in the Agora99% grassroots meeting, to work and find shared agreements on debt among movements of different countries. These are our main conclusions:

Lack of democracy in Europe has allowed that, under the threat of debt, people’s basic rights are being violated. We denounce the responsible agents of emptying democratic institutions from people’s sovereignty. We point at transnational corporations, specially international banks, for grabbing wealth through the payment of interests and the privatisation of the public companies in strategic sectors.

We already know that debt claimed to governments has not been acquired for the benefit of the people. We therefore consider it illegitimate debt and will not pay. The link between debt, austerity and privatisation is clear. We consider it urgent to end the growing impoverishment of the people and ensure that all can cover their basic needs, as reflected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; housing, food, healthcare, education, employment and social services. We call on social movements working on protection of these rights to coordinate protest actions and build alternatives together. Sigue leyendo →

See you in Agora99 – Nov 1st to 4th, Madrid

From the Citizen Debt Audit Platform in Spain (PACD), we have worked on convergence with different groups in the Debt axis in order to be able to come up with common strategies, dynamics and calender (with Florence10+10 in mind) and the objective of building a united international resistance movement to face the neoliberal agenda.

Why we consider it important? European economic austerity policies are attacking our rights, draining our democracy and destroying what we knew as «welfare state», particularly affecting vulnerable groups (children and young people, women, immigrants, precarious workers…) and regardless of the environmental perspective, betting on dead economic growth.

This is why we consider strategic to directly attack the root of our problems. Austerity, cuts, loss of rights, the depletion of our imperfect democracy… are symptoms produced by the debt mechanism; a tool in hands of EU neoliberal policies. Africa, Latin America, Asia … have already been through this, now it’s our turn.  ¡No pasarán!

 

AGORA99 2nd-4th Nov, Madrid

http://99agora.net/2012/07/euro-mediterranean-meeting-debt-rights-democracy/ Sigue leyendo →

Thomas Sankara: an African leader with a message for Europe

By Nick Dearden, Jubilee Debt Campaign UK. Published at Red pepper, October 2012

15 October marks the 25th anniversary of the assassination of an African liberation hero. We need to remember him, to challenge the dominant view of Africa’s helplessness and to fight our own debt crisis in Europe. 

On 15 October 1987 a revolution was brought to an abrupt and bloody end by the murder of Thomas Sankara, President of the newly named state of Burkina Faso. In the years following Sankara’s assassination, by his once trusted friend Blaise Compaoré who runs Burkina Faso to this day, his revolution was overturned and the country became just another African fiefdom of the International Monetary Fund. But for a brief period of 4 years, Burkina Faso shone brightly, a stunning example of what can be achieved even in one of the world’s most impoverished countries.

Sankara was a junior officer in the army of Upper Volta, a former French colony which was run as a source of cheap labour for neighbouring Corte ‘d’Ivoire to benefit a tiny ruling class and their patrons in Paris. As a student in Madagascar, Sankara had been radicalised by waves of demonstrations and strikes taking place. In 1981, he was appointed to the military government in Upper Volta, but his outspoken support for the liberation of ordinary people in his country and outside eventually led to his arrest. In August 1983, a successful coup led by his friend Blaise Compaoré, brought him to power at the age of only 33. Sigue leyendo →

«A week of fighting for freedom from debt»

 «A week of fighting for freedom from debt»

The Global Week of Action against Debt and IFIs; a global mobilization that is gaining strength in Spain.
 From October 8th to 15th, the Global Week of Action against Debt will be celebrated worldwide. The Citizen Debt Audit Platform (PACD) has joined this initiative and is planning numerous actions and activities in various cities in Spain to denounce the illegitimacy of debt and social cuts. Sigue leyendo →