ChDI at COP25. In everything or nothing!

All it took was for the government of Chile, 12 days after the beginning of the popular uprising, to communicate its inability to hold the COP25 in Chile and the decision of the UN, the next day, to move the event to Madrid so that Chileans from Chile Despertó Internacional (ChDI) living in Europe could begin the preparations to have presence at COP25 that took place during the first week of December 2019 in the capital of Spain.

February 13, 2020

 Dani (Barcelona) & Leo (Berlín)

Background

The Conference of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is an annual meeting where government representatives of the participating States try to generate agreements and channel efforts to mitigate the effects of human action on climate change, mainly to set quotas for reducing CO2 emissions.

Parallel to the COP, as a social response, the Social Summit for Climate (SSC) is held, convened by groups such as: Fridays for Future, Climate Alliance, Extinction Rebellion, among others. During a week, several talks and workshops are held around six main axes 1) planetary limits and climate emergency, 2) economic and financial power, 3) social, environmental and economic justice, 4) political systems and institutionality, 5) intersectionality and 6) alternative actions. Read more

ONE HUNDRED DAYS OF ACTIVISM IN THE CHILEAN COMMUNITIES ABROAD

October 18, 2019 was Chile’s transversal awakening, but not only there; it was also the awakening of Chilean communities living abroad in 150 cities, in more than 30 countries around the world.

January 31, 2020

By Betzabeth Marín Nanco

It seems that it was a couple of days ago when we were watching CNN Chile that exceptionally released its signal outside the country. There, President Sebastián Piñera declared a State of Emergency to counteract the increasingly justified and well-attended street demonstrations against the injustices that the neoliberal experiment had generated. In Piñera’s words, the mobilizations were led by “a powerful, implacable enemy who respects nothing and no one and is willing to use violence and crime without any limits” How can we forget these words? More than a hundred days have passed and they are becoming more and more absurd.

Image of the Documentary Chile in Flames

The idea of the powerful enemy was the Government’s initial justification for sending the Military into the streets along with the Carabineros. Those of us who live abroad saw the images of Pinochet’s dictatorship come to mind. We imagined the military and police repression and the terrible consequences this would have on our people. The impotence of being far away did not take long to arrive, in front of our eyes we saw the beatings, the wounds, the mutilations, the illegal detentions, the abuses against girls, boys, children…

That helplessness, and then fear, led us to organize ourselves, to coordinate ourselves from that very day in what we would later call: the international territory. In Barcelona and Copenhagen we immediately thought that if this situation escalated – to a dictatorship, why not say so – international coordination and solidarity would be fundamental.

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ChDI launches first manifesto in support of social movement in Chile

Today, Tuesday November 19, 2019, from the Chilean communities abroad we have a message for the people who live in Chile: Without justice there is no peace. As a community of Chileans abroad, we greet and deeply appreciate this transversal awakening, after 30 years of postponing social demands and unresolved precarization, which have been caused by the neoliberal model installed in our country since the civic-military dictatorship of Pinochet.

The social awakening, triggered by acts of civil disobedience and the massive demonstrations that – in these 30 years – have been led by high school students demanding public, quality and non-sexist education. An awakening that they spontaneously joined:

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ChDI gathers first results of collaboration with European Parliament

Chile Despertó International Network collects the first results from the collaboration with the European United Left/Nordic Green Left GUE-NGL

Brussels, November 14, 2019

The Human Rights Committee of the Chile Despertó International Network would like to thank the members of the European Parliament Idoia Villanueva and Miguel Urbán, from the Spanish coalition Unidas Podemos, for the report they produced following their visit with more than fifty Chilean organizations. They met with representatives of human rights groups, student associations, indigenous movements, ecologists, feminists, and unionists.

The decision by Sebastian Piñera, Chile’s president, to declare a state of emergency on Sunday October 27 th aroused the communities of Chileans living abroad. This has been the principal motor that ignited the coordination from Barcelona of Chileans on all five continents.

Chileans and their allies filled the streets of more than 130 cities, in a chorus of international condemnation against Piñera and his government for police violence that Read more

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