Emma Avilés is from 15-M’s PACD (Citizen’s Debt Audit Platform) working group – Barcelona, 7th October 2012
Occupied Times: When did you start this campaign?
Emma Avilés: The international debt audit campaign began in the summer of 2011 at a summer university course with Eric Toussaint, an expert in world audits. Then in October, we discovered the Observatory of Debt and Globalisation. That was a three-day meeting of talks about debt, with speakers from Iceland, Greece and Portugal. We set up a debt audit platform and started slowly building small groups around the country. End of October, we’re having our second state meeting in Saragossa and in April, our first international meeting. The campaign currently involves ten countries. We’re also participating in the Florence 10+10 encounter. We’re still quite precarious as a group but growing rapidly.
OT: Why the focus on debt audit?
EA: Prior to this campaign, I was involved in the environmental side of the [15-M] movement but Toussaint’s course made it clear to me that the scarcity of resources was what had forced us to start seeking credit. I realised that before the environment, before anything else, it is debt that needs to be confronted. If you get rid of debt, you’re slashing capitalism because capitalism is based on debt. There is a common consensus between all the countries involved that the mechanism of debt is capitalism’s WMD. We need ask ourselves what the priorities are because we’re running out of time. There’s a very black scenario ahead of us, it’s hard even to imagine. The ESM treaty of 2012 for example, it’s an irrevocable treaty. All states have to give a huge quantity of money and have seven days in which to do it. There’s no time for justifications and argument. There’s immunity on legal, administrative and executive levels of the ESM, and no democratic control. Our aim is to bring complex economic issues down to the people. We do different things in parallel; there’s the audit itself, data collection, software processing, educating and bringing out the message to the people, spreading, organising, measuring our strength, building up political pressure. There are people from the German parliament coming to talk to us. We are very well prepared, have some very good speakers. We will be showing our forces, make it clear that this is our intention, we’re not stupid, we’re fighting and uniting groups under the big issues.
OT: There are a number of organisations working on debt, such as the Jubilee Debt Campaign in the UK, the Anglo: Not Our Debt campaign in Ireland and so on. How is the 15-M debt campaign audit different?
EA: Although they produce very good work, these campaigns do not have much connection with grass-root movements. We are much faster in the ways we communicate (via social networks) and engage people. Eric Toussaint said, you’ve managed to pull debt from the traditional spheres down to society. We want to have citizens who can check out what their mayors are doing. It’s about recovering control.
OT: Are you seeking a moratorium on debt?
EA: There is disagreement within the debt group on this issue so we decided to leave it aside for the moment and talk about it again in a few months’ time. The thing is, even if you declare a debt moratorium but leave the mechanisms that created it intact, you’re going to end up with debt occurring again at some point in the future. In Spain, our problem is private debt. We had a very low public debt before the crisis started. Now of course with so many people unemployed, it has grown. There are solutions but our politicians are not up to them. They are not interested in building for a new system and their values and morals are far from our own. There has to be a generational swap. We have lots of overeducated people in their thirties and forties prepared to take over but the old people don’t want to let go
OT: What’s your best-case scenario for your campaign?
EA: Peoples’ minds are changing. They are now talking about the scam on TV, a medium that is so controlled. The issue has jumped from the street to confront the system. Maybe eventually we’ll come up with something similar to SYRIZA, who knows. We do have some short-term initiatives. For example, we started a lawsuit against Rodrigo Rato. He was ex minister of the economy, also worked in Brussels and was president of Bankia, the main bank that is insolvent and will be bailed out by Spain. We decided to identify the people behind the corporations, the system, the banks and go after them. We set up a website to collect money to help the campaign. We had estimated one week to reach €16,000. Our website kept crashing due to heavy traffic. We reached our target in six hours.
OT: It sounds like you’re very successful at reaching your supporters. How do you go about communicating your message?
EA: I’m still overwhelmed by how easily people’s eyes open to issues once you’ve explained things to them. We’ve had so little work to do with debt week because people have been organising from their own initiative. The way presenters explain debt on TV is so that people don’t understand. We have people from small villages asking, can you send me some material. We’ve been lucky. Politically, Spain was dead up to one and a half years ago. Suddenly it burst out like that. We were not at a critical stage then and have had time to organise in a more comfortable climate than, say, Greece.
OT: Any specific suggestions for communicating difficult subjects to people?
EA: If you were to walk in to one of our debt meetings, you would consider us freaks. We have to translate what we do to a different language. How to understand the debt in fifteen minutes, graphics, videos, easy explanations. I had this guy e-mail me from Canary Islands, wanted to print some material on debt and send it round. I sent him a 2-page flyer. He spammed the whole state but condensed it even more. That means he’s processed the information and put it into a different language. If something is replicating, it’s because it works. We have suggestions for involving everyone in this campaign, even activities for children with Monopoly-like games; you win if you do things in a more ethical way. We also provide information on how to set up your own local debt group. You can get involved with education, communication, processing of data, any number of things. It’s about creating a dynamic where people are able to participate. Our smallest debt audit group is in Guadalajara. It’s only four people, including a housewife and an administrative assistant but it’s working. Empowering people is so very, very important, giving people the confidence that they can do things. We’ve spent a whole day of education on a theme with no one there as a teacher. There was a facilitator but no teacher. People started saying what they knew about the issue and we started building the class based on what people knew. At the end, they feel that they have come up with the ideas and solutions themselves. Our traditional one-way, top-down educational system, we’ve been playing with that a lot. Humour is especially useful. If you say something is horrible and you’re going to suffer, people stop listening, they close off, prefer not to know. If you bring humour out of what’s happening, you have a very powerful message.
OT: Are there regional differences in your approach to this campaign?
E.A: There are differences. Catalunya was really strong with co-ops and social centres in the barrios before the dictatorship. There was no funding from the government, so lots of people put in their own water channels. Madrid has very different realities, different dynamics. It’s a political centre, has always had lots of money, 15-M there tends to go much more into political discussions. In Barcelona, we’re more about doing things. We still work together.
OT: What’s your relationship with the barrio assemblies?
EA: Again, there are different realities. We’ve come together with the barrios for 13O but they have completely different dynamics. Their outlook is short-term, not strategic. They have consumer co-ops, want to go occupy places, things done immediately. They don’t go to national and international gatherings so don’t know, like we do, that things are happening. They’re limited to their microcosm.
OT: You’re starting the International Week of Debt with a football game. What’s that all about?
EA: It’s a 1% versus 99% match. The 1% have a very big goal post on which they can score, the 99% a very small one and a lot of other difficulties to prevent them from playing successfully. In the end of course, they win. Other evenings, we have a range of performances and music. We will also be blocking some important part of the city. There are different plans.
OT: You have linked your debt audit campaign with the international global noise protest as well as with Columbus day. Why is this?
EA: 12O (12th October) is traditionally the day celebrated for Columbus discovering America. But it’s been some years now where people have realised there’s nothing to celebrate and a lot to denounce. We’ve brought in collectives from the [global] south because what’s been happening in the south is now happening here. In the 80’s, we were enjoying capitalism while they were suffering it. Maria Lucia Fattorelli from Brazil and Miriam Ayala from Ecuador wrote a guide to audit debits in the south. They said, we all have our eyes on Europe because what could happen would be a disaster for you but a nightmare for us. We’re adapting their guide to audit debt for the [global] north. It should be ready early next year. The idea is to have the same [debt audit] criteria for everyone. Linking 12O and 13O was critical. Pot-banging empty of content would have never worked in Spain, not without the debt campaign. But there’s a big gap between the situation here and the realities behind Anglo countries.
OT: Any other actions planned for this month?
EA: October 29th we’re calling for a general, non-typical strike involving the undercover economy, caretakers, students etc. It’s a different concept of a strike. The yayoflautas, third age activists of 15-M, will also be participating as that day coincides with their one-year anniversary. The participation of elderly people has been spreading throughout the country; there are about 300 such activists in Catalunya. They are all learning how to use computers and so on. On demonstrations, they always insist on going up in the front. They say, we have to protect you guys with the ideas, the police won’t hit us and even if they do, it’ll be a big scandal. We’re working together on the Citizens’ Rescue Plan. This includes a platform against evictions. In Spain, if you have a mortgage, you don’t just risk losing your house. You’re in debt for life. Debt condemns you to social exclusion. There are a number of other initiatives and collectives, such as legislative, educational, healthcare and basic income, with Real Democracy Now as a base.
OT: In the U.S., Occupy entered into a strong but temporary alliance with the unions, most notably in Oakland. In the UK, the relationship has been more peripheral. What is the situation with organised labour and 15-M in Spain?
E.A: We see the unions as a lost cause. The syndicates have actually placed themselves against us, at some point calling us an immature movement. They’re completely stuck in the old way of doing things. In the last two decades, societal evolution has been really fast but if you listen to their speeches, I could play a video ten years back and they’re saying the same thing. They can’t connect with us. At workplaces, people are frightened of losing their jobs. Miners up in the north did a three-week walk from Asturias to Madrid. They reminded me of the Zapatistas. They were going into forests, building their own weapons, getting into attacks with the police everywhere. There had a lot of support from the [15-M] movement but nothing happened because they wanted to keep the mines working, their jobs back and everything the same as before. We couldn’t find common ground. We had a similar situation with the workers at Carrefour [French multinational retailer]. Carrefour are about to collapse and have started firing workers, thousands of them, in ingenious ways by making them work overtime, 10am-2pm then 4pm to 8pm, changing their timetables and so on, without regards for mothers or families. People were going through hell so started quitting. But quitting means you’re not going to get compensation. We talked to these workers but they didn’t want to make the effort. The thing is that people haven’t changed their mind frame and want to go back to their comfort zone. But we can’t go back to a growth economy. We need to think about distributing work, working less, consuming less. It’s a long-term process. I have an easy, nine-to-three job with no stress. It’s a crappy job with a crappy wage but it leaves the rest of my day free and I’m not a consumer. It’s not how we’ve been programmed, it’s not easy for anyone, not for me either. It’ll happen with time.