The event is organized by the Círculo de Mayores (Center for Seniors), part of the Coordinating Committee of Pensioners of the Region of Murcia.
The Podemos Seniors' Circle, a member of the Murcia Region Pensioners' Coordinator, has organized a talk-discussion in Cieza for next Thursday, October 10th, at 7:30 p.m., at the "Padre Salmerón" Municipal Public Library, located on the corner of the Convent. This event is part of the outreach and public debate campaign that the Pensioners' Coordinator has been carrying out in the weeks leading up to the large demonstration planned for Madrid on October 16th, which is expected to attract massive popular outcry in defense of the public pension system and against its privatization and degradation.
The debate, which will be hosted by José Eduardo Illueca from Cieza, will be themed "Pensions and Women: Present and Future." María Marín, Secretary of Social Rights and Civil Society for Podemos in the Murcia Region, along with retired lawyer Pedro Martínez Díaz and pensioner Miguel Campillo, will also speak.
José Eduardo Illueca tells us that "first and foremost, we must thank the Pensioners' Coordinator for their commendable efforts in bringing the public debate on pensions to every corner of the Region of Murcia, and also María, Miguel, and Pedro for their generosity and willingness to join us in Cieza on the 10th." According to Illueca, "the pensions debate will be the major issue of the coming years, and it is no exaggeration to say that the class struggle in the near future will be waged, eminently, on the subject of public pensions."
Pensions cannot be a business; they are a fundamental right enshrined in Article 50 of our Constitution, which guarantees their adequacy and periodic updating. "Therefore, they cannot be questioned, just as domestic water supply, healthcare, education, or public safety cannot be, although, naturally, they will have to be financed." This is an idea that, in Illueca's opinion, "certain economic powers are trying to turn around, propagating the mantra of the system's unsustainability. But they do so out of pure economic interest, as they have long since targeted private pensions as an opportunity to make huge profits, disregarding the full value of public pensions as an instrument of intergenerational solidarity and social cohesion."
In the context of pensions, as in many other areas, women are the most disadvantaged, with a very large income gap compared to men, as many of them never contributed or contributed much less than what they worked, "so that when they reach old age, they have no income other than non-contributory welfare pensions or meager widow's pensions." Therefore, it is entirely justified to pay special attention to the specific problems of pensions and women, as is the objective of this talk.
Finally, Illueca reminds us that the pensions of our seniors, our own pensions of tomorrow, are, above all, "a matter of human dignity, which is lost when people lack economic sufficiency; a society that doesn't recognize its seniors, that leaves them unprotected, that abandons them to their fate, is not a decent society, it's not a society I want to live in." He invites us all "to attend the event on the 10th at the Library, of course, but also the demonstration on the 16th in Madrid, which we must all turn into a resounding cry of solidarity in defense of public pensions; in defense of solidarity."
