#NotOurDebt Interview with myeurop.info

Wed, 18/01/2012 - 22:50 | Contact.ie

I was emailed some questions today by a journalist with myeurop.info about the #NotOurDebt campaign against paying unsecured and unguaranteed Anglo bondholders. Here are some of my responses.

- How many people are involved/participating in the campaign ?
Contact.ie is a one-man-show. I do all the work on the site in terms of design and functionality. I have a mailing list of about 1500 people who I email about once a month or so to let them know about what campaigns have been set up and how they can help things along. It's a site for online campaigning - email campaings (like Avaaz.org), petitions, event notices, articles, and rating politicians.

So far about 600 people have emailed about 225 politicians (making it about 120,000 emails) in two days. We hope to get about 4,000 people to email politicians within the next week, which will mean about 1,000,000 emails sent.

There is also another campaign coalition called "Debt Justice Action" which has many groups involved in it. As I am based in rural Ireland and those groups are based in Dublin, I have not become involved in an official capacity, though we both agree with each other's work. www.AFRI.ie is one of the main groups in that coalition (they launched with their press conference today):
http://www.afri.ie/campaigners-call-for-halt-to-anglo-debt-re-payments/

- What is the role of Contact.ie in this campaign ?

As above, Contact.ie is an independent organisation that provides action tools to groups/individuals that wish to avail of them.

In this particular campaign, we don't have an official capacity, but have been one of the main driving forces so far.

- What has been the impact of the campaign, so far ?

It is the same as with many campaigns on this nature. Politicians ignore us. They don't want to discuss issues of national importance with citizens. They care about our voices only a election time.

On the ground for those of us involved in the campaign and everyone who is emailing politicians and engaging in direct actions and civil disobedience, it is quite a moving experience. From Occupy Dame Street (and the other occupations around Ireland), there is a real sense of solidarity being built up. Ireland is on the verge of something huge in terms of how people interact with each other and how they interact with politicians. Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" lays out the experiences of countries when their economies collapse and they find themselves under IMF and/or EU administration. Ireland is not different in this manner - everyone is totally shocked by what is happening, but as a nation a consciousness is awakening and once it is awakened it will not go back to sleep.

- What has changed in Ireland since the last payement in november ?

Everything has gotten worse. The country is more fucked than it was. We realise even more now that our politicians don't speak for us, represent us, or care about us. We see the members of the last government criticising this government for paying debts to speculators - the same debts they used to pay and that the present government used to complain about).

Since the last payment, we have realised we live in what Eduaro Galleano calls "the upside down world".

Comments

Submitted by Don (not verified) on Wed, 18/01/2012 - 23:25.

Fair Play

The work is to be commended - i recieved 4 replies only. What is effective though is it is getting people talking. Not a trickle down effect as such - but the present incumbants have been found out already in spite of national media bias and people are waking up to the fact that Ireland has been subject to a what can only be described as social criminality. We may talk enough before the horrors of what it means to be under the control of an IMF country and escape before we lose absolutely everything. Ireland's changing alright - it is just going to depend on how fast.

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Dear TDs, Senators, and President Higgins,

We, Irish citizens, are very concerned about our democracy.

We believe that whatever decision is made regarding the Fiscal Compact treaty will have long-term and far-reaching effects on our society - on our children, our elderly, ourselves, and our social structures - effects that will far outlive the life of this government.

For this reason, we insist that, as citizens of this state, we have a right to partake in deciding whether or not Ireland should sign up to this treaty.

We are currently suffering the effects of decisions made on our behalf that many of us given the choice would not have made, (such as the bank guarantee scheme and others) and for that reason we are demanding that  from now on we must be consulted and have our will taken into account.

We demand to be asked about this new agreement by referendum before our government puts it into Irish law.

(The point of this email is not to advocate for a YES or a NO vote - simply for us to be given the choice of voting YES or NO.)

Regards,

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