We are an activist and research collective based in Greece, with members all around the Balkans, and organised transparently on democratic and collectivist principles. We participate in the global fight for economic justice, focussing on the abolition of the huge and growing economic inequality in our part of the world caused by public and private debt.
We fight for abolishing the debt or, where conditions for this are lacking, for debt workouts favouring the people. Focussing our action on Greece and the countries of the Balkans and the South-East Mediterranean, we stress the role of debt crises in the rapid spread of poverty, as well as in the destruction of rights and in the development of oligarchic and extreme-Right tendencies in many countries.
We recognize that our struggle will be long, taking many forms and demanding broad alliances. We pursue them through raising awareness of debt issues among the public and promoting egalitarian approaches to debt management, aiming to ultimately end debt. Thus we engage vulnerable groups of our society, especially the youth, students, and women.
The first pillar of our work is researching political and economic alternatives aimed at liberation from debt and the end of financial inequality. Through them we reveal the antidemocratic dimensions of the current forms of debt, and its role in reproducing dependence and oligarchy. By documenting and presenting clearly the history of debt and taxation, and the case for alternative forms of their management, we also exercise pressure on those in power.
The second pillar of our work is to diffuse and popularise this research, thus creating the intellectual infrastructure and accessible materials that facilitate mass mobilisation against debt and economic inequality. We do this through the mass media and new media, seminars, workshops, documentaries, and infographics. We aim not only at diffusing ideas, facts, and charts, but also at changing the ways that the social relationship of debt is being conceptualised by the people.
The third pillar of our work is contributing to the building of mass democratic movements against the economic exploitation and political oppression linked to debt. The national and international aspects of this struggle entail our linking locally and globally with other similar-minded organisations, and keeping an open dialogue with groups and persons that participate in it in our part of the world and also globally.
Image: detail from Guercino, Christ Driving the Money Lenders from the Temple, c.1600.