Lucky White Girl

WP editorial on Colombian free trade deal

The Washington Post editorialized today in support of the new free trade agreement with Colombia!  It was probably a necessary reality check for those of us hoping for a revival of the distinction between left and right in this country and a reminder that we need to renewed opposition to legislation such as this that is harmful to the interests of working class people and the values of this country.  Globalization should be about human rights and common welfare for all, not outsourcing labor to whoever will work for the least amount of money!

Working Life,a good blog for labor issues, has a link to a Public Citizen report that reminds us of some of these issues as well as a post about how the human rights situation in Colombia continues to be problematic.

Shame on the Post for its support of profits for the few and misery for the majority!

Uh-oh, guess it's time to up the PR machine!

New poll indicates evidence of international class solidarity.

Review/evaluation of the USSF

The seed sprouts: Another historic moment in the U.S. South

an article by barb howe for The Gainesville Iguana

A platoon of young men and women dressed in desert Army fatigues moved silently through a hotel lobby in downtown Atlanta last week.  Despite the din of hundreds of socializing convention-goers, the troops remained silent and focused.  Arms positioned to mimic M-16s, members of Iraq Veterans Against the War swept the luxury hotel as if patrolling a Baghdad neighborhood. 

A hush fell over the lobby.  The performance was a powerful visual scenario intended to announce an anti-war strategizing session about to start in Ballroom B of the Westin Hotel.  Meanwhile, at the Civic Center, only a ten minute walk away, people gingerly stepped over hundreds of empty shoes which led the way to a photo exhibit called Dreams and Nightmares: Life and Death in Occupied Iraq.

Welcome to the newest manifestation of the global justice movement.  The first ever US Social Forum (USSF) was held in Atlanta this summer.  The location was appropriately symbolic of another people’s movement that triumphed despite deep institutional apathy and in spite of powerful forces arrayed against them.  For five days, this historic southern city pulsated with the energy of ten thousand people who, in the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. and others who struggled for justice and dignity in the U.S. South, came together to strategize, network and build the connections for a new kind of globalization in the 21st century.

The Forum was an historic occasion, not only because this was the first of the Social Forums to be held in this country, but because it marked a small but significant shift in the focus of the movement, embodied in the slogan “for another world to be possible, another U.S. is necessary”.  Recognizing that those of us in this country. have a unique role to play in working alongside the rest of the world to create a more just kind of globalization, the focus was squarely on what we can do from within the “belly of the beast”.  How can we use our position within the most powerful country in the world to undermine the hegemony that causes so much harm to others?

Revolutionary not only in content but in form, the USSF, perhaps more so than any previous Social Forum, practiced “horizontalism”, passing over the giants of the non-profit world and the big names of the Progressive Left and focusing instead on recruiting smaller grassroots groups made up of women and people of color.  The result is a smarter, sharper, more dynamic movement led primarily by people who are not necessarily white men (in other words, by people who have the most direct, lived experience of oppressive regimes and are most hurt by them).  There was no single iconic figure who stood out.  The USSF was ordinary people working together to do extraordinary things.

The organizers of the event also went to a lot of effort to make the forum language accessible.  Language access volunteers made sure written materials, including the official schedule of events and workshop descriptions were available in both Spanish and English, and simultaneous interpretation (including sign language) was provided at most events.

What was most remarkable about the USSF however, was how this phenomena has truly become a “movement of movements”.  Organizers and participants both put a lot of emphasis on making the connections between issues that we are usually taught to believe are separate and unrelated: from ending the illegal occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan to abolishing absurd ideas such as the corporate privatization of water; from supporting unions in their efforts to organize workers in the U.S. South to advocating for immigrants’ rights and opposing the construction of a wall on the U.S. Mexico border.  There were over 1,000 workshops over three days of the forum; to even try to summarize them would be fruitless and would miss the point: neoliberal economic globalization involves an immense variety of issues around the world but they are all connected to the single goal of powerful corporations, international institutions and individuals to create a worldwide economic system that benefits the few by the blood, sweat and tears of the majority.

The USSF demonstrated that what we are witnessing is the emergence of an organic, diverse, multi-faceted but unified resistance to the globalization of capitalism.   This is a movement that is stronger for its diversity, harder to control for its horizontalism, smarter for its inclusiveness, and faster and more dynamic for its organic pluralism.  That makes it extremely powerful and that’s what will make it successful.  As neoliberal economic globalization has spread around the world so has this movement to oppose it.  Marx explained that capitalism contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction.  That seed is now sprouting and taking root.  The convergence in Atlanta this past week demonstrated this.

I met Karl Marx!

... well, okay I met Fenton Wilkinson playing Karl Marx in a production of Howard Zinn's play Marx in Soho but I swear it was possibly almost as inspiring as meeting the original.  (Well, actually I don't know if I'd want to meet the original ---we'd probably have a very awkward conversation) But I was reinvigorated by this event tonight.  Beginning with something the woman who introduced the play said about the Independent Progressive Politics Network... I can't find the quote at the moment (I think the recording I made didn't turn out) but it was something about working for electoral change (out of immediate need?) while also believing in the fundamental corruptness of the system as such.  Just the idea that they don't find this inherently contradictory intrigues me.  Not in a judgemental way at all.  I'm just curious.  I want to know more about their thinking on this. Could this actually be a logical strategy? hmmmm....

Then Mr. Marx came on stage and expounded on the nature of capitalism and the working class and the purpose of theorizing and philosophizing about the world... you know, the usual stuff.  He even gave some glimpses into his personal life, his relationship with his wife Jenny and his children.  It was very superficial by nature (but it is just supposed to be an introduction) and didn't distinguish between oh, let's say early Marx and later Marx (really how would they do that? we change so much throughout the course of a lifetime!  It's common sense but still we expect people maybe especially historical people to be static pictures) and it didn't portray any um... what's the word?  Things that would make him a complex character?  Ambiguities?  A man as smart as Marx must've had a lot of ambiguities.  His head must've held lots of contradictory thoughts at the same time.  But ya know, this wasn't a character-study.  It was more like Marx for dummies.

Nonetheless this show really got me excited.  Especially the part where he talks about the Paris Commune  when for the first (and only?) time Marx's vision of democratic communism* was actually tried out and how we can and should think about how we could get there again.... how we're even closer than we think to being able to do so.  I'd like to think more about that too.  I have lots and lots to think about tonight.  Tomorrow's another looooong day.

* democratic communism is a term that I know is technically redundant when talking about Marx's idea of communism but I still feel it clarifies things to add it in.

The tragedy of the commons is the theft of the commons

Aristotle wrote in Politics that "that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it" thereby initiating the "tragedy of the commons" theories which hold that if everyone has access to a common resource no one has the incentive to take care of that resource. 

I was reminded of this today when watching this excellent documentary here at the Social Forum about the privitazation of water.  Thirst is a film that looks at three communities where this has been an issue.  In Stockton, California the mayor had the brilliant idea that the city could save money by privatizing the water company and local residents campaigned hard for the right just to vote on the issue (they were unsuccessful apparently).  Bolivia, however, was adament about kicking out Bechtel who wanted to do the same thing in their country.  And in India a man named Rajendra Singh travels across the country organizing communities to resist the selling of this precious resource to private corporations.  One of the women interviewed said that this idea of privatizing all the water in the world is like the "theft of the commons" by the corporations.

Isn't that an interesting way of putting it?  The "theft of the commons".  True, eh?  Water is an essential natural resource that belongs to all of us.  Anyone who tries to claim it for him or herself (corporate or not) is insane.

To steal something that belongs to everyone.... Isn't that just what people who believe in the "tragedy of the commons" theories are worried about?  That people in their own self-interest will just take all they can (e.g. add another sheep to their herd and another and another and another ad infinitum) and not think about sustainability (e.g. how many sheep the pasture can support)?   In other words, that they will externalize their costs (onto the environment) while internalizing the profits (from having yet one more in their herd).

What's the point of all this?  Just that I thought it ironic that some people use the "tragedy of the commons" theory to argue for privatization which, as the water wars demonstrate, is clearly NOT in the public's best interest.  And that the REAL tragedy of the commons is the THEFT of the commons (beause then there are no more commons).

I think that we have to be careful about pushing the analogy too far but the validity of the first scenario --a sort of free-for-all where anyone can do anything (e.g. add as many sheep as the pasture will bear) with little or no regulation by the community does NOT mean that the opposite extreme --the second scenario (privatization)-- is therefore the right way to go.  They both lead to the same place in my book... lack of incentive to do the two absolutely essential things here: a.) care for the land and b.) share the resources.   In fact, they're not opposites at all... they're the same thing, aren't they?

Just a thought inspired by another day at the Social Forum....now off to watch Marx in Soho!  Happy evening everyone!

Guest worker programs: The mountain comes to Mohammad

Another thought on guest worker programs.  Here's an interesting way to look at them: In this era of neoliberal economic globalization, where multi-national corporations can move their sweatshops around to the country desperate enough to offer the most misery and exploitation of their workers and thus the more profit for the corporation, who is the corporate sector left out of this game? 

Of course it's the big agribusiness companies who can't move fields of corn and wheat as easily as Nike can move a maquiladora.  So it seems to me, the point of the guestworker programs is a case of if Mohammad can't come to the mountain, the mountain can come to Mohammad.  If you can't move your company to the third world, you can bring the third world to the US, in a sense.  A permanent subclass of workers, they call it.  The slave class maybe they will come to be known.  A new era in globalization!  And few people are talking about it.

Globalization: inevitable and alterable

Globalization: Inevitable and alterable

by barb howe

Nayan Chanda doesn't want you to worry about globalization.  It's not about world-wide cutthroat capitalism, rampant consumerism or a race to the bottom for wage-slaves.  No, he says, it's about "an expression of human desires that date back to the dawn of time" according to the NY Times' review of his new book BOUND TOGETHER How Traders, Preachers, Adventurers, and Warriors Shaped Globalization. 

Before you rush off to puke at this sickly sweet sentimentality let’s give Mr. Chanda credit.  He’s right about one thing: globalization is nothing new. But that is hardly an insightful contribution to the discussion.  Scholars studying the phenomena have been saying that at least since the 1990s and some like International Relations theorist Robert Keohane argue that they've been saying it since the 1970s.  Few are arguing that there's anything new about contemporary economic globalization even in the aspect of scale (the world has seen other periods of history with as much or more international trade apparently).  What's different about contemporary globalizations is the particular format, the technologies that characterize it today, especially in the field of information and communication.

For Mr. Chanda globalization in the general sense of the term may be about primordial human desire but for most of us it has a much more tangible effect on our lives.  It’s about losing jobs to those who will work for less and less money overseas.  It’s about multi-national corporations externalizing their costs onto the people and environments in poor third world countries.  It’s about sweatshops and child labor.  Neoliberal economic globalization is about money and profit.  Period.  Other globalizations are often about resisting these things as every meeting of the World Social Forums indicate (“Don't you externalize your costs on me!” say the poor of the world).

Globalization --or more accurately globalizations with an 's' because as indicated above there are many different kinds-- are certainly not a new phenomena and are probably here to stay but that's not a recipe for impassive acceptance as Mr. Chanda seems to imply.  He makes the age-old argument that this phenomena is natural and therefore cannot and should not be resisted or directed in any way.  The book after all is not entitled BOUND TOGETHER How everyday people in the non-ruling class shape globalization.  For him, it’s the elite, the “traders, preachers, adventurers and warriors” who are in control.  The rest of us need not trouble ourselves. 

Whenever anyone tells us that something is inevitable, it's usually with the intent to diminish/deflect critiques of it.  Let's turn that notion on its head.  Anything human beings make, human beings can change.  Globalizations of some kind or another may be inevitable but they are not unalterable.  We have a choice which one or ones we want to see predominate.  Do you want the McDonaldization of the world or do you want to globalize social/economic justice and human rights?

Don't believe them when they tell you that you can do nothing.  Subvert the dominant paradigm.  It’s your world, despite what people like Mr. Chanda tell you.  It’s people like you and me who really shape globalization.

Control of resources

Interesting editorial in today's New York Times by Antonia Juhasz: Whose Oil is it, anyway? 

In March 2001, the National Energy Policy Development Group (better known as Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force), which included executives of America’s largest energy companies, recommended that the United States government support initiatives by Middle Eastern countries “to open up areas of their energy sectors to foreign investment.” One invasion and a great deal of political engineering by the Bush administration later, this is exactly what the proposed Iraq oil law would achieve. It does so to the benefit of the companies, but to the great detriment of Iraq’s economy, democracy and sovereignty.

Juhasz' editorial is a good one pointing out the colonialist nature of this law without using the i-word  (imperialism) but the first sentence started me thinking along different lines.  She says

TODAY more than three-quarters of the world’s oil is owned and controlled by governments. It wasn’t always this way.

Until about 35 years ago, the world’s oil was largely in the hands of seven corporations based in the United States and Europe [since merged into these four: ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP].

Wow.  How did that happen???  That governments wrested control of this crucial natural resource away from corporations?  And they did this during a period of time that has seen the power of corporations skyrocket to unprecedented levels in human history?  How did it happen and also what does that mean? Is it a good thing? 

I have no idea about the first but think it would be worth our while to find out (meaning in the interest of people-lovers and those who want to globalize human dignity and social justice rather than profits).  As for the second --what does it mean/ is it a good thing?-- I'm not sure either but my initial reaction would be that depends.  On the particular government that has control.  If that government is of the people, by them and for them [e.g. Venezuela] and the benefits of that resource is distributed to the people, or if the government uses the people (and the resources for that matter) for its own ends [e.g. some oil-dictatorships in the middle east]. 

But how interesting that starting out like that, the author of the editorial  --which is otherwise an excellent editorial -don't get me wrong-- but she immediately set up a certain dichotomy with governments on one hand and corporations on the other.  Which of the two controls the resources?  See how it limits us right from the start to those two choices?  There's no alternative presented; we have to stick it in there ourselves: hey! what if the people controlled the resources?  You know, the people who work with and use those resources?  Is it so radical to think that the resources of the Earth should be used to the benefit of humanity (and a healthy earth is to the benefit of humanity mind you, lest I be accused of being species-centric! haha).

Anyway it's just an interesting thing to think about what different kinds of globalizations mean for control of resources: neoliberal economic globalization puts the control of resources into the hands of the corporations [in which case what she says about more governments being in control of the oil fields than corporations is a great indication that this sort of globalization is not unresisted].  Non-globalization -or say, a less-globalized world where nation-states reign supreme-- would put the control of resources into the hands of governments which may or may not be a good thing.  Or you could have a people-centered kind of globalization (centered around internationalized social movements and the like) that could put the control of the resources into the hands of the people.  These are the options I see. 

So don't fall into that trap of letting them make you think you can either have rule by the governments or rule by the corporations.  Rule by the people is a possibility if we make it one.  Let's not rule it out!

Economic globalization: Subverting the best of intentions

Here's a story to watch: Los Angeles --known for having the most polluted port in the world-- is going to try to clean it up.  I just saw the report on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer (no direct link yet but for now you can find the story on this page or try this audio link) and the city has announced an ambitious new plan to  be implemented over a five year period.  It would involve requiring that ships coming into the port be cleaner and belch less noxious gases into the atmosphere. 

All this is great news, right?  Sure, if they can do it.  If the WTO doesn't derail them because this is exactly the type of thing that countries get sued over under this wondrous new system we call the Bretton Woods Agreements (i.e. free trade).   

Remember dolphin safe tunafish?  Nice sentiment: make fishing boats use nets that don't trap and kill dolphins while they're trolling for tuna.  No one could be against that, right?  Even if they aren't fuzzy, dolphins definitely fall into the cute camp.  Everybody loves dolphins.  Except when that love gets in the way of the almighty dollar (i.e. trade).  Which it did/does for some countries who don't want to or --let's be generous here-- can't afford to reoutfit their boats and use safer nets.  So when the US tried to ban the sale of tuna fish from countries who didn't use dolphin safe nets and those countries sued us under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT, now the WTO) and won.  You can read a good summary of the case here.

The point is this: this is just another reminder of the danger of neoliberal economic globalization.  Countries surrender their sovereignty when they sign into the World Trade Organization or take a loan from the World Bank or submit to the IMF's restructuring of their economies.  This is why Chavez wants to get Venezuela out and is working with other countries to create alternatives to the BWI (Bretton Woods Institutions --the IMF, WTO and the World Bank).

So keep your eye on the ports of Los Angeles.  I bet somehow, someway someone will argue that those restrictions to clean up the port restricts free trade and the good people of L.A. end up having to strip that part out of their five year plan.

For further reading:
Free trade: At what cost?
Structural Adjustment, a major cause of poverty.

Economics from below

Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus wins Nobel Peace Prize, warns of the dangers of neoliberal economic globalization:

"Challenging economic theories that he learned as a Ph.D. student at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville in the 1970s, he said glorification of the entrepreneurial spirit has led to “one-dimensional human beings” motivated only by profit" (from the NY Times article)

(It was the "challenging economic theories that he learned as a PhD student" part that caught my eye!