ODG SEMINAR: (Not) everything is a commodity. Life must be in the centre!


CANCELLED
In the face of the political context and the announcement of the Supreme Court’s sentence regarding the catalan political prisoners, the ODG team has decided to cancel the ODG Seminar planned for this Saturday, October 19th.
In addition, we are sharing our position regarding the current political moment in Catalonia & Spain
👉 https://odg.cat/en/blog/catalan-sentence/

 

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We invite you to ODG’s seminar on Saturday October 19th at Convent de Sant Agustí (C/ Comerç 36, Barcelona), from 9:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.

We will build a collective analysis of the financial, ecological and climate crisis we are living and design joint strategies in participatory spaces about how to mobilise and confront them.

We’ll discuss impacts of current processes like the new wave of privatisations, corporate power, climate change and financialisation and present proposals within the new cycle of social mobilisations around the defense of the commons, feminism and climate movements.

Over than ten years after the outbreak of the financial crisis, we are confronted with a possible new economic and financial crisis, shortening the time of the cyclical crises of capitalism. This converges and feeds the social and democratic crisis we are experiencing, with an alarming rise of the extreme right, accompanied by the ecological crisis and, especially, the climate crisis.

The politics implemented by Brussels to get out of the crisis have been austerity, the prioritisation of debt payment and the deepening of processes of privatisation of public goods and services. For example, Brussels has opted for the construction of large and expensive infrastructure, often unnecessary, to the detriment of social spending. The hoped reactivation of the economies’ growth on an extractive base however is deteriorating the global environment.

This has led to an increase of financialisation and market solutions, giving more and more power and presence to the private sector in traditionally public spaces. For example, we witness an increase of the public-private partnerships (PPPs) model as a solution for constructing and managing traditional public services. In the Spanish state, hospitals, highways, water and energy supplies are being outsourced/privatised through this model, with high negative impacts on basic human rights, democracy and, public finances and debt. Additionally we are witnessing a fast transformation of the labour market and the economy driven by the hand of platform capitalism (e.g. Uberizació, Airbnb, false freelancers), generating more inequalities and new forms of precariousness.

With this background, mobilisations have re-emerged worldwide and suggest that 2020 may be key to social transformation. On one hand, the feminist movements have managed to summon two strikes (8M) with extraordinary participation. On the other hand, new climate movements, and especially the young people of Fridays for Future, are globally claiming governments’ responsibilities and demand their right to have a Future.

The fight against patriarchy and the inaccessible socio-ecological transition appear as two major challenges that must be faced collectively to put life at the center and to guarantee lives that are worth living. Precisely, ecofeminism faces this double challenge and constitutes a current of thought and action essential for the next decade.

ODG invites you to the seminar “(Not) everything is a commodity. Life must be in the centre!” wanting to work on these questions:
What are some of the key issues that we have to visibilise as collective challenges for a new cycle of mobilisations?
What strategies can facilitate this new cycle and which groups are already working in this direction?

See you in Barcelona!

 

PROGRAM:

9:30am: Welcome and registration

ROUND TABLE DISCUSSIONS

10am-11am: Life or capital. Climate and financial crisis, the challenges of our time with an ecofeminist perspective
Elena Gerebizza, Re:Common
Iolanda Fresnillo, Citizen Debt Audit Platform (PACD)

11am-12:15am: Threats and opportunities. Energy, climate, debt, commons and ecofeminism
Amaranta Herrero, Climacció and Universitat Autonoma de Balcelona
Bodo Ellmers, Eurodad
Alfons Pérez, ODG

Coffee break 12:15am-12:45am

12:45am – 2 pm: Mobilisations. From action to political and social advocacy
Olivier Hoedeman, Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO)
Lidón Gasull, FaPaC and Aturem la Llei Aragonès Platform
Fridays for Future Member

Lunch 2:30 pm. – 3:30 pm.

EMOTIONAL AND ACTION WORKSHOP

3:30 pm-7pm: Crisis, emergency, collapse… how can we face the challenges of the next decade by putting life in the centre?
with Resilience Earth

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