We now count five years of austerity, which the Portuguese population had to survive. Today, we therefore live a violent social regression, the largest in the history of our young democracy: 28% of the population lives in poverty and 41% in severe material deprivation (source: INE); poverty risk rate for children under 18 years is 24,4% (UNICEF); 7% of children have permanent hunger (BACF). Rising unemployment contributes to the aggravation of the situation, with a real unemployment rate reaching 29%. Among youngsters is positioned at 35%. And we also have to count with the increase in long term unemployment (64% of total unemployed) and the huge increase of labor precariousness.
The general lack of prospects in the future feeling has dramatically increased emigration, which corresponds today to more than 20% of the resident Portuguese population. In the last years, the amount of new economic exiles has been even bigger than because of dictatorship’s escapes from colonial war, political police and poverty.
Nowadays people are struggling to find their family’s next meal, not being able to organize themselves in order to protest nor to create new solutions for their lives and for the country, even if they wanted to.
Today the Portuguese democracy is at risk!
It is urgent to point new paths, seeking for a real democracy: there are also people willing to intervene in society, but do not know how to – because of the lack of resources, spaces, organizations or actions; there are new ways of communication and interaction (including digital), providing new forms of organization and social participation; we are watching and participating in the emergence of a new social development paradigm based on principles of sustainability, autonomy and self-organization. It’s vital to know them better, to study and analyze and disseminate them.
We seek new paths for participation and citizenship, facing and fighting government authoritarianism and financial totalitarianism. Active citizenship not only makes communities stronger, but also offers a critical look at the decisions taken by governments, either through questioning, whether through monitoring, putting the control of people’s futures back into the people’s hands.
The Citizenship Academy believes that civic engagement will multiply the answers for today’s problems, which respond to the real needs of citizens. With a more active presence of all of us in the public sphere, based on values such as cooperation, solidarity, respect, justice, equality, we will be able to do more – and better – in the social field but also in the economic one.
To struggle against the lack of democracy, the Citizenship Academy fights back with more democracy!
Contribution sent by Academia Cidadã