Article from the Solidarity Economy Portal, REAS, May 2020
This new crisis, which once again makes visible the shortcomings and failures of the current economic system, once again puts into debate what economic, social and political model we want. It is time, therefore, to make visible the contributions of the Solidarity Economy as well as other transforming economies and social movements and to make a firm commitment to other frameworks and logics that are more just, solidarity-based and sustainable.
With this objective, REAS Red de redes launches the campaign #PorUnaEconomíaSinVirus (For an economy without virus) where through the simultaneous publication of 6 articles in various media, it seeks to highlight the proposals and contributions of the Solidarity Economy and other transforming currents and movements such as social ecology or feminisms, and to show citizens once again that it is time to make a decisive commitment to the construction of new economic, political and social frameworks that are more just, solidarity-based and sustainable.
This campaign has texts from people of reference whose reflections and contributions are extremely useful in the present moment of systemic crisis. To begin with, we are privileged to have the collaboration of the Argentinean economist, Jose Luis Coraggio, one of the pioneers of the solidarity economy movement, who shows us the possible scenarios that can be opened up to us in the coming months, depending on whether we continue to bet on the current model where the market is above any other consideration or if, on the contrary, “instead of an omnipresent and individualising market, it is based on a complex network of territorial communities, with relative economic autarchy and political autonomy”.
We continue to deepen the solidarity initiatives that are being generated to attend to the multiple needs that are emerging in this pandemic, in accordance with the Guide to Initiatives that we promoted a few weeks ago, which has exceeded 100 initiatives. With the help of Genoveva López and Carlos Rey, we will go into some of the most representative initiatives.
We interviewed Amaia P. Orozco and her colleague from Colectiva XXK Silvia Piris, together with Álvaro Porro, from the Barcelona City Council’s Commissioner for the Social Economy, Local Development and Consumer Affairs, like-minded people from the network, to continue revealing together the flaws in the current system and find clues for this necessary transition, courtesy of Blanca Crespo.
Jordi Garcia, the father of the Social Market proposal, invites us to continue exploring the proposals and tools of the solidarity economy, to take advantage of the maturity and trajectory of the network and the movement generated over these 25 years, as well as the opportunity that these moments of crisis offer to project ourselves as the way out in a “decisive period for the history of humanity”.
And to do this, to get out of this “triple pandemic (health, economic and care) caused by the COVID-19” and which, “has broken the current model by highlighting the deficiencies that existed in the provision of public resources for basic services such as health, as well as the fragility of the care system and the precarization of much of the economic fabric,” Sandra Salsón and María Atienza show us what the proposals for public policies should be from the perspective and contributions of the Solidarity Economy.
Finally, from the hand of the Feminist Confluence, product of the process of articulation of the World Social Forum of Transforming Economies, we enter into the reading of the crisis from a feminist perspective, highlighting the contradictions of the system in times of pandemic and before this one, as well as outlining the elements for a transforming agenda for an economy for life.
This series of texts will later be collected in a digital publication addressed to the social base of REAS Red de redes in the framework of its 25th anniversary.
