Rage against the ECB: What's Blockupy against?

[CJCRANE]

Blockupy, an alliance of leftist groups, has repeatedly organised protests in Frankfurt's banking district, mostly directed against the European Central Bank. Who are Blockupy, and what is it they're against?

Excerpts:

A broad church

Blockupy isn't some rag-tag little group of anarchists. It's a leftist alliance composed of more than 90 organizations from across Europe - some big, some small - that have united in opposition to what Blockupy calls "the European crisis regime".

Some of the bigger member organizations include the activist groups Attac, founded in 1998 to advocate a financial transaction tax; the German political party 'Die Linke' (The Left), which currently has a little over ten percent of the seats in the national parliament; and even Germany's second biggest union union, Verdi, which has over two million members.

What is Blockupy's mission?

The organization describes itself as a broad Europe-wide movement whose aim is to "build democracy and solidarity from the bottom up". It's against the economic policy stance of most current eurozone governments, which Blockupy describes as 'austerity,' or a push for balanced budgets at the expense of the poor and middle class.

Link (Deutsche Welle):

http://www.dw.de/rage-against-the-ecb-whats-blockupy-against/a-18321709

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. Good! n/t