Monday 31 October 2011

List of Mininum Demands

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In Barcelona, collecting the wisdom and contributions of hundreds of people who are collectively writing several papers that discuss the various levels at which we operate to achieve change. They are all open documents in constant modification and improvement.
This is just one of them. With the intention of adding more specific and specialized documents to this subcommittees have been created for editing content.
We are changing the world. Absolutely.
Meanwhile politicians who represent us are still there vomiting and lurching legislating about our lives. This is why I write here are some steps you can easily understand and apply now. We will be in the street to get it.
Ojo! This document is a minimum. In fact, what we want is much larger.
So we’ll know the mayors and full to be elected the next day, the 22nd.  demand of them point by point as follows, starting from point 1.

1 – No more privileges for politicians, starting in Barcelona:

  • Drastic cuts in the pay of politicians and comparing it to the salary of the average population
  • Removing privileges on tax payments, allowances, and pension during contribution years (only in Barcelona this would save half a million euros per month minimum).
  • Prohibition of pension exceeding the maximum pension provided for other citizens.
  • Abolition of his legal immunity and limitations for cases concerning corruption. Cessation of this and corrupt politicians.

2 – No more privileges for bankers:

  • Prohibition of any kind of bailout or capital injection to banks and savings banks: those institutions in difficulty should fail or be nationalized to form a public bank under social control.
  • Return immediately to transparency concerning public funds from banks all provided with public capital.
  • Regulation of speculation and penalties to the bank guilty of malpractice. Ban on investment in tax havens.
  • All the properties acquired by foreclosure stay in socially rented to families evicted.

3. No more privileges for the super-rich:

[This is to implicate the 5% tax cut that was applied for by the officials in the 50 largest fortunes to solve the deficit problem of the Spanish State]
  • Increase the tax rate on large fortunes and banks. Elimination of the Investment Company Capital Variable (SICAV).
  • No to the elimination of inheritance tax. Recovery of property tax.
  • Real and effective control of tax evasion and capital flight to tax havens.
  • Promoting international adoption of a tax on financial transactions (Tobin tax).
With the application of these 3 points we obtain the budget to address the next four. Because they do not need money, it is clear that there is economic availability.

4. Living wages and quality of life for everyone:

  • The economy in the service of people and not vice versa
  • Establishment of a maximum wage as well as a minimum.
  • Reduction of the day so that everyone can enjoy, think and reconcile their personal and working life, no reduction in pay. This reduction in day-length will allow a sharing of tasks that end with structural unemployment.
  • Withdrawal of pension reform.
  • Job security: the impossibility of collective dismissals for objective reasons in large companies while there are benefits; large audit of companies to ensure that temporary workers are not working jobs that could be permenant.
  • Considering pay for domestic, reproductive and care work.

5. RIGHT TO HOUSING:

  • Expropriation of disused houses that have not been sold the market to increase public housing in socially rented spaces.
  • Declaration that cities are free of foreclosures and evictions of occupied or unoccupied and unused houses.
  • Penalty for mobbing practices.
  • Foreclosed homes to cancel mortgages. Retroactively pay from the beginning of the crisis.
  • Prohibition of speculation.

6. QUALITY PUBLIC SERVICES:

  • Withdrawal of the cuts proposed by the Government of the Generalitat. Withdrawal austerity plans and cuts that affect the public services at a national, European and global level.
  • Reinstatement of the services have been cut in health and education
  • Increased health personnel and infrastructure to eliminate waiting lists.
  • Increase in faculty and infrastructure to ensure the ratio of students per classroom, more transition groups and support groups.
  • To ensure truly equal opportunities for access to all levels of education, regardless of socio-economic background. Allocate public resources to public education only. Secular and quality education.
  • Public funding of research to ensure its independence.
  • Economically affordable, quality public transportation that is environmentally sustainable  to all people (this point has not been agreed. MISSING DISCUSSION / DEBATE)
  • Utilities and free child care for people with special health care needs
  • Prohibition of privatization of public services
  • Submit our NATO membership referendum

7. FREEDOM AND PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY:

  • Stop controling the Internet. Sinde Abolition Act.
  • Protection of freedom of information and investigative journalism and its independence. Removing legal barriers preventing the exercise of the right of issuing free and non-profit community media. Elimination of de facto monopolies airwaves.
  • Using free software in public institutions to adapt to the digital age with sustainable costs.
  • Withdrawal of the ordinance of citizenship: the removal of any ordinance that restricts freedoms of movement and expression.
  • Mandatory referendums in binding the wide-ranging issues (including organic laws and European directives).
  • Elimination of the raids on migrants, removal of the immigration law and closing the detention centers for foreigners (CIE). Full rights for migrants.
  • Amendment of Electoral Act …. (This point has not been agreed. MISSING DISCUSSION / DEBATE)
  • Establishment of effective mechanisms to ensure internal democracy in political parties: open lists, direct election of the council … (This point has not been agreed. MISSING DISCUSSION / DEBATE)
  • Participatory budgeting approved by citizenship.
The following will be referred to as the closure of some industries and professional bodies. We call the resulting relocation of these professionals or the conversion of industrial activity in those sectors.

8. Environment

  • The economic system can not be based on unlimited growth. This is not sustainable.
  • Food sovereignty, development of agriculture for the farmers, not corporations. Promotion of agro-ecological agriculture. Suspension of GMO based on the precautionary principle, to resolve uncertainties about the impacts on the environment and health. For agrarian reform.
  • Responsible consumption and fair trade. Prevent monopolies in the distribution ensuring access for all producers.
  • With all these measures and others, to achieve reduction targets for CO2 emissions that go beyond the Kyoto Protocol. For a real climate justice.

Tuesday 25 October 2011

LETS LINK 15.O GLOBAL REVOLUTION TO 11.11.11 GLOBAL STRIKE FOR LIFE

LETS LINK 15.O GLOBAL REVOLUTION TO 11.11.11 GLOBAL STRIKE FOR LIFE | Mapping Social Network Unionism Worldwide | Scoop.it

For a social structure free from classes, states, borders, work, money, war and based on the commons we share… Join the world wide strike and global demo on 11.11.11... We are reclaiming life, now!

Join assemblies, join forces, join us,in our facebook group:  http://www.facebook.com/groups/11.11.11worldstrike/ 

Monday 24 October 2011

INTERNATIONAL MARCH TO ATHENS


Next step for dignity!

After our participation in the Ágora and 15th of Octuber global manifestation in Brussels, we have decided that our march can't be stopped. And since our desire is to continue spreading our message and to connect with the other assemblies of the world, the International March to Athens is borned, as an open project to all who wants to support and participate in it.

We will meet in Niza on the 5th of Novembre 2011 after the G20 Summit (30th Octubre - 4th Novembre) to organize ourselves and go few days afterwards. We will pass by different villages and cities of Italy. We will cross the Adriatic Sea from Bari to reach Greece, then we will walk to Athens as final destiny. In both of Rome and Athens, we will participate in the Global Agoras the will be organized at the arrival of the marches.

The march will be formed by small groups of walkers and cyclists (12 to 25 person aprox.), that will advance by parallel routes to reach out more people on the way. The idea is to reunite in cities then to walk part of the distance together. Everytime that the number of the group reaches about 25 person, the main group will be divided in to two independent groups. And in every village the march will call for asemblies and will exchange experiance, problems and ideas.

The values that unite the different marches are the horizontality, the active participation, the no-violence, and the inclusivity of the members. We propose to continue the asambleary work and the decision making through consensus by practicing direct democracy. We will also work to reach the sustainability of the march and to convey a message of respect to the environment.

We make this march to to animate people to take the public space and meet, to talk about politics and decide for their own lives. We make this march to propose and learn, to inspire and το be enriched, to speak and listen, to give and receive. We want to reach Rome and Athens to bring a message of hope and unity. Most of all, we want to participate in the Global Agoras to in order to coordinate at international level, to prepare projects in common, to confront together the problems and create a just society for everybody.

We walk for dignity. Together we can reach the Utopia.


                http://www.scoop.it/t/march-to-athens 
               
    To enter our mailing list send a message to:  marchtoathens@gmail.com

              Spread it out!
               


March to Athens

Sunday 23 October 2011

MESSAGE FROM GARY ZUKAV: OCCUPY WALL STREET: A THOUSAND THANKS


A thousand thanks to the people in Liberty Plaza and places like it who are giving voice to much that is destructive and painful about our social structures and what lies beyond them.  Your presence and courage and commitment are water to the great tree of awareness and freedom that will grow if it is tended carefully.  Fortunately, each of us is responsible for tending it.  Freedom from fear is the only freedom that now unlocks the prisons of hatred, violence, prejudice, and greed.  The kindness of some police officers in NYC is on display to the world and so is the brutality of others.  The greed of banks that engorge themselves on the losses of millions of people are on display around the world, and so also are the alternative social structures that will replace them.  A thousand thanks are not enough for the glimpses of these emerging structures you are giving us.

You are showing us new forms of cocreation that are built on harmony, cooperation, sharing, and reverence for Life and contrasting them with old forms that are built on manipulation and control.  These new social structures are taking root in Liberty Plaza and places like it and in millions of us as we watch and hold the vision of a new world, a world without victims and without villains, a world where heinous policies are relentlessly uprooted and destroyed and where the people who create and execute them are not hated but constrained appropriately (think of handcuffs and bars).  In short, a world of love, growing out of awareness and responsibility, consciously constructed with intentions of love, a world with the courage to experience fear fully – such as anger, vengefulness, and righteousness – challenge it by not acting on it, and cultivate love instead.

This new world will emerge strong and healthy from the decay of the old world not because the dying world is supported by a wealthy few while billions of us are eager for the new world.  It will replace the old world because billions of us will tend the tree daily, even in difficult times – challenging hatred, anger, greed, and revenge in ourselves by choosing awareness and love instead.  In short, the new world will grow strong and healthy while the old world dies because the old world is based on fear and the new world is built on love – clear, conscious, responsible, courageous, and capable.

Monday 10 October 2011

Debt solutions

Campaign for an International Debt Court



One thing we can do is sign our support for this:  http://www.defusethedebtcrisis.org/

Sunday 9 October 2011

Occupy Manchester UK

Today I made contact with the guys at Occupy Manchester. They are camped in a small garden called the Peace gardens, near the Town Hall (M60 2LA) -in the area of the Peterloo Massacre which occurred in 1819, when cavalry charged into a crowd of 60,000–80,000 that had gathered to demand the reform of parliamentary representation. There are about 16 tents with around 25 people, and more people arriving during the day. Quite a lot of support from local people, food being provided, and some donations. A couple of policemen came through and we chatted to them about the restrictions on them expressing any political opinions. While I was there we set up a  gazebo with a table to give info to passers by about the public meeting happenng tomorrow 1.0'clock at the gardens, everyone welcome. There is quite a buzz of excitement around, and it feels like a  good beginning.