October issue of Economic Justice News

The October issue of the 50 Years Is Enough Network's newsletter,
Economic Justice News, is now being mailed to subscribers. The articles
are also on 50 Years' website, at http://www.50years.org/ejn/v4n3/

Below is the lead article. If you would like to subscribe to the hard
copy, please send $25 for one year to:

50 Years Is Enough Network
3628 12th St., N.E.
Washington, DC 20017

In the Wake of September 11 . . .
**Street Protests Cancelled, But Movement for Global Justice Goes
Forward**

By Njoki Njoroge Njehu and Soren Ambrose
50 Years Is Enough Network staff

*The Promise of Cleveland*

We were in Cleveland for the Jobs with Justice annual conference from
September 7 to September 9. Jobs with Justice, a national coalition of
labor union activists, religious organizations, and community groups,
has been a close ally and partner of the 50 Years Is Enough Network
since the April 2000 mobilization at the spring meetings of the IMF and
World Bank. The conference drew nearly a thousand people from around the
country, plus several international activists. We facilitated the
participation of Jonah Gokova from the Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and
Development, Molly Dhlamini from the Student Union for Christian Action
in South Africa, and Harry Clerveau from the Federation of Unions of
Electrical Workers of Haiti.

Jobs with Justice has become a key meeting point for the messages of the
anti-corporate-globalization movement and the domestic struggles for the
right to organize and a living wage, and against privatization and
corporate greed. At the Jobs with Justice national conferences one sees
the energy that has renewed labor’s role in the left, and propelled the
AFL-CIO toward more progressive positions and more genuine international
solidarity.

The buzz at this conference, a very loud buzz, was eager anticipation of
the upcoming mobilization at the IMF/World Bank annual meetings in
Washington. We left Cleveland with re-invigorated optimism, feeling that
the fall mobilization would not only raise public awareness of corporate
globalization to unprecedented levels and garner more substantial
attention in the media, but also that we just might win concrete changes
in the way the IMF and World Bank do business, and thus in the structure
of the global economy.

*A World Suddenly Changed*

Thirty-six hours after getting home, we, along with the rest of the
world, turned on our televisions to see the World Trade Center, and then
the Pentagon, in flames. For us, as for many Kenyans and Tanzanians, it
was an experience terrifyingly reminiscent of the August 1998 bombings
in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, watching live footage of fires and
bleeding injured people, especially in downtown Nairobi, as people
mounted desperate rescue missions.

It is already a cliché to say that what happened on September 11 changed
the world. Yet because it is still so recent and because so many of us
had the unusual, terrifying and, for most of us, unique experience of
watching what was at once a world-historical event and an action so
outlandish as to make it seem like a fever dream or a Godzilla movie, it
is probably not surprising that we need to remind ourselves of it
frequently.

As it began to sink in and we started to match up the new reality with
the more familiar one, we felt certain that the IMF and World Bank would
cancel their meetings. They had already drastically cut the length of
the meeting, and it was becoming apparent that they were not relishing
the public relations battle they seemed poised to lose. The meetings
themselves are little more than ceremonial obligations; why not take the
new high road so suddenly in view and avoid a lot of potholes at the
same time?

Because the U.S. Treasury Department is the official host of the
meetings, it took a while for the obvious to become official. In the
meantime we, along with other organizers and in the different coalitions
we were working with, especially in Washington, considered what to do
about the events and activities we had been planning for months. For the
50 Years Is Enough Network, with a well-defined mission and scope which
preclude shifting our focus to, say, anti-militarism, it was very clear
that the prospect of delivering our critique of the international
financial institutions was neither possible nor appropriate in the face
of this massive catastrophe. Three Teach-In Tours to 25 cities with over
70 events were already under way and the "Ending Global Apartheid"
Teach-In planned for the end of the month in Washington, DC was coming
along well. Most of the communities hosting the Teach-In Tours clearly
wanted to continue and our colleagues from Haiti, Panama, India, the
Philippines, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, and Brazil were also
comfortable with continuing.

Despite all the conversations and all the essays, it is still impossible
to know the real, or the lasting, meaning of September 11. One possible
positive outcome would be a puncturing of the myth of U.S.
"exceptional-ism," a deeper sense in the U.S. that it is a country like
any other; it is not exempted from the anger and violence everywhere in
evidence. The most similar events, and arguably the most recent single
events that could claim a significance comparable to September 11, are
the dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
Those attacks may have ended the last world war, but they also heralded
a new political era — a Cold War marked by intense paranoia, the massive
waste of resources on military technology, overblown claims of virtue
and evil, the frequent refrain of "patriotism" and "security" as cover
for gross abuses of the government’s coercive and investigative powers,
and the subordination of the principles of democracy and justice to the
imperatives of geopolitical power dynamics, in which virtually any
conflict could quickly become a U.S.- Soviet proxy war.

September 11 could become the start of another cold war, at least in how
values and facts are distorted. We could be embarking on an era in which
the stated principles of the wealthy countries are even more blatantly
at odds with their behavior. Between the fall of the Berlin Wall and
this moment, the distance between official rhetoric and actual reality
has been substantial, but the rhetoric at least provided an opportunity
for opponents to expose the hypocrisy of the institutions which claim to
assist impoverished people but in fact prioritize safeguarding the
profits of corporations.

Already U.S. government officials and officers of the IMF and World Bank
have spoken openly of using the institutions’ resources to reward
countries, such as Pakistan, for cooperating with U.S. demands, and
denying funds to those which do not join the U.S. coalition. This use of
the international financial institutions as instruments of the U.S.
political agenda has been going on for decades, but since the end of the
Cold War there has been a reluctance to acknowledge the fact publicly,
which has itself acted as a valuable restraint on the U.S. government’s
inclination to use the institutions to serve its own narrow purposes.

Should such an atmosphere descend on the U.S., the organizing priorities
of the movement for global justice would likely have to change.
Engagement in dialogue with the IMF and World Bank, an exercise the 50
Years Is Enough Network generally finds of limited value, would become
pointless, since political imperatives would explicitly outweigh
humanitarian or developmental priorities. Mass mobilizations of the type
we were planning for the last week of September would likely become more
difficult to organize as authorities worry even less about safeguarding
constitutional rights.

If this sort of forecast proves true, we suspect our work would place a
relatively greater emphasis on organizing and educating on the local
level, working to make people see the links between their economic
circumstances and the perverse structure of the global economy ­ exactly
the sort of work that Jobs with Justice helps us accomplish. We would
also encourage Congress to continue questioning the institutions, and
challenge the media to continue unraveling the power dynamics
under-girding the global economic system. The need for activists in the
U.S. to work in conscious solidarity with progressive forces throughout
the Global South will only become more critical, both with regard to
IMF/World Bank issues and with regard to the overall policies of the
U.S. government.

At the "Ending Global Apartheid" teach-in, which the 50 Years Is Enough
Network co-sponsored with Essential Action, the Center for Economic
Justice/World Bank Bond Boycott, Global Exchange, and the Jubilee USA
Network from September 27 to September 29, leading activists from
Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, Europe, and North America
spoke about the prospective problems and potential they see in the new
political era. Focus on the Global South, a 50 Years Is Enough Network
South Council member with offices in Bangkok, Mumbai (Bombay), and
Manila, has already proposed that an international strategy session take
place in about a month’s time, when the new political climate will
probably be clearer. The international organizations present in
Washington for the teach-in considered the possibility of making such a
session part of the World Social Forum preparatory meeting in Dakar,
Senegal in late October, and will be contacting the organizers there
shortly.

*What Might Have Been*

The mobilization planned for Washington for September 23 - October 3,
2001 would likely have attracted more people than the April 2000 events,
which drew between 20,000 and 30,000 protesters. The Washington DC
police, who generated a lot of "hype" for the event, claimed to be
expecting over 100,000 demonstrators — a number no organizer for the
Mobilization for Global Justice, the local coalition coordinating many
of the events, ever claimed.

One of the reasons we might have seen a significantly larger turnout
than last April was the deeper involvement of the AFL-CIO. Last year,
the AFL-CIO endorsed the rally in the last few days, and wasn’t able to
devote many resources. This year, it got involved over the summer and
committed significant resources and staff time to the rally. In
addition, the Mobilization coordinated more consciously with the
religious community, and, along with the 50 Years Is Enough Network, was
strongly supporting a prayer service and vigil on the evening of
Saturday, September 29. Although the rally was cancelled, the prayer
service took place, with the theme adjusted from a unified focus on the
IMF and World Bank to the issues of violence, economic and otherwise.

In comparison to the April 2000 mobilization, we had more time to
organize educational events this year, and as a consequence were able to
co-sponsor three speaking tours in the eastern half of the United
States, each with two or three speakers from the Global South. "Ending
Global Apartheid: A Teach-In for Action on the World Bank and IMF" also
went forward, albeit with a slightly revised and abbreviated schedule
due to cancellations by speakers who could not arrange alternate travel
plans from the South. But even with some sixty speaking slots, we
confronted an over-abundance of high-quality speakers rather than a
shortage.

The week of actions, far more varied than last year’s, was slated to
begin with a rally for immigrants’ rights at the Capitol on September
25, an event that has now been postponed. The ensuing days included a
"clean energy march" (exposing the World Bank’s support for fossil fuel
energy projects), a series of labor actions targeting retailers selling
sweatshop products, Taco Bell (a leading buyer of tomatoes from Florida
union-busters), and one of the city’s major parking lot empires (which
seeks to deny fair wages and organizing rights to immigrant workers
fleeing structural adjustment in Ethiopia, Eritrea and Central America),
a protest targeting Citicorp, cited as the world’s most destructive
financial services company, and a rally and march opposing the
militarization of Latin America.

The IMF and World Bank took far more notice of our efforts this year
than last. Over the summer they announced their decision to re-locate
their meetings from their usual venue, the city’s largest convention
hotel (the Marriott Wardman Park), to their own buildings in downtown
Washington. While they cited the surrounding community’s apprehensions
about massive crowds and potential turbulence as their reason for
moving, the residents were at least as upset about the annual influx of
limousines into their streets and driveways — a source of bitter
complaint for many years. The Metropolitan Police Department of
Washington launched a vigorous effort to portray the protesters as a mob
of unruly, violent, and under-infomed young people. The police campaign,
unburdened by fidelilty to facts or propriety, encouraged the media to
focus on the question of "violence," despite the fact that the reporters
who were in Washington for last April’s demonstrations knew that there
were no incidents of protester violence then. When the police announced
in August their probable intention of building a nine-foot fence around
the IMF, the World Bank, the White House, and the Treasury Department,
the 50 Years Is Enough Network joined other organizers in a lawsuit
seeking to preserve the right to assemble and protest in an effective
manner consistent with our constitutional rights (i.e., within eyeshot
and earshot of the targets).

In response to the police department’s fear-mongering, and its
outrageous request for $50 million (ultimately whittled down to $29
million) from the federal government to provide security, the
institutions decided to compress all of their meetings into two days, a
decision which would have had the effect of making the institutions even
less transparent than they already are.

The 50 Years Is Enough Network joined with Global Exchange, Jobs with
Justice, and Essential Action to challenge the institutions to a public
debate — something that was arranged quite easily in April 2000, but
which seemed to get more complex this year. The IMF and World Bank took
the very unusual step of replying via a joint letter prominently
displayed on each institution’s website, a step which inspired a brief
frenzy of media attention and a front-page story in the Financial Times.
We never did finalize details of the debate, which is now on hold. We do
intend to make sure that debate, and others, take place in public soon.

Media coverage, in general, was even heavier than last year, or at least
was present earlier. Some of it did focus on our issues (e.g. structural
adjustment, institutional transparency, debt cancellation, etc.). Our
success in turning some reporters away from the "violence question" was
greatly assisted by the fact that the organizing coalition, the
Mobilization for Global Justice, agreed to a set of four demands of the
institutions, which were largely drawn from the 50 Years Is Enough
Network’s list of eight demands, worked out in consultation over many
months with the members of our South Council. The demands included a
call for comprehensive debt cancellation, an end to structural
adjustment programs, the opening of Board meetings to the media and
public, and an end to support for environmentally and socially
destructive projects. By the time of the attacks, we had been
interviewed and quoted by the Washington Post, the New York Times, NBC,
the Financial Times, the Boston Globe, the BBC, Institutional Investor,
L.A. Weekly, O Estado do São Paulo,and various radio and television
programs around the country. On September 11 itself, the Financial Times
published the first of a series of articles on the international
movement for economic justice, and they used Soren as the poster-child
for showing that the movement has become a "mainstream" rather than a
"fringe" phenomenon. The rest of the series, alas, was postponed
indefinitely.

Apparently as a result of all the attention being paid to our work, the
head of the IMF’s office of External Affairs decided to go on the
offensive. Thomas Dawson responded to a letter by Soren appearing in the
Washington Post which detailed how much the IMF and World Bank would owe
if they were taxed as a normal profit-making enterprise. Dawson accused
him of being "disingenuous" for not highlighting his link to the 50
Years Is Enough Network (one of the organizations ostensibly provoking
these expenditures). A week later, he attacked Soren again on the same
score, but this time at a press briefing. His harshest words, however,
were reserved for 50 Years Is Enough Steering Committee member Robert
Naiman; he even accused Naiman’s employer, the Center for Economic and
Policy Research (CEPR), of stealing its name from a British
organization. That the IMF had chosen to respond to CEPR’s studies
demonstrating the failure of globalization policies by critiquing its
name, and to the 50 Years Is Enough Network’s argument that the
institutions should contribute to their host city by assailing Soren on
a point of etiquette, assured us that we had the institutions on the
defensive.

*Congressional Victory Signals Continued Momentum*

While the events of September 11 have interrupted, at least in the U.S.,
the sense of momentum the movement for global justice had established
with street protests around the world, there is every reason to think
that in the institutions themselves, in the op-ed pages, and in the
legislatures of the world, our message has penetrated sufficiently that
we will not be thrown backward.

The first concrete indication that the spirit of unity that has made
headlines will not be extended to the IMF and the World Bank came on
Friday, September 21. The U.S. House Subcommittee on International
Monetary Policy met that day and approved by a wide margin legislation
that would demand of the regional development banks ­ surrogates and
mirror-images of the World Bank ­ that they release far more
information, on an earlier timetable and to a wider audience, than what
the World Bank had announced earlier in the month would be its new
practice on information disclosure.

While Congress alone cannot change the rules of the banks, and while
this bill is not yet law, it is clear that the move has bipartisan
support in the U.S., and that there is substantial backing for
meaningful change at the institutions. But even beyond those
requirements, the bill also demands that the institutions open their
Board meetings to the media and public observation ­ a demand hardly
anyone dared to voice even a year ago. These provisions clearly put the
World Bank on notice that similar demands could, and probably will, be
made of them when it next requests funds from the U.S.

The same legislation also took the important step of building on our
victory last year in passing legislation requiring the U.S. to oppose
"user fees" ­ financial charges ­ from the most impoverished people in
the most impoverished countries for the most basic services, such as
primary health care and primary education. The Treasury Department had
opened a loophole in last year’s legislation to avoid implementing the
provision; a bipartisan Congressional coalition came together to repair
the wording.

Finally, an amendment proposed by Rep. Barbara Lee (who gained recent
fame as the lone member of Congress to oppose President Bush’s request
for a "blank check" authorization of military force, to require the U.S.
to oppose projects at the regional development banks which include any
dam not adhering to the recommendations made by the World Commission on
Dams, a blue-ribbon panel formed in part by the World Bank and including
corporate executives. The Commission made surprisingly strong,
far-reaching suggestions about curtailing large dams and building them
only under very specific conditions. After the unveiling of its report,
the World Bank announced it would not abide by the Commission’s
findings. Rep. Lee’s amendment passed, but not before being "watered
down" somewhat. Despite the changes, the resulting legislation, if it
becomes law, would be an unprecedented restriction on development loans
for environmental reasons. This provision, too, is a significant warning
sign for the World Bank.

*Final Thoughts . . .*

Through all the organizing for the September mobilization and all the
agony and turmoil of the September 11 attacks, we have tried to bear in
mind at all times the need to stay the course. We know that children are
dying of preventable and curable diseases at a pace hardly any different
from when UNICEF estimated 19,000 such deaths every day. We know that
environmental devastation grows daily in the service of quick profits
for corporations. We know that debt servicing and the austerity programs
it inspires continue to deny millions basic services, sustainable
livelihoods, basic labor rights, and dignity.

We know, finally, that the commitment to, the thirst for, global justice
has not been quenched, in the U.S. or anywhere else. Indeed, people in
the U.S. can now more readily see the meaning and value of true
solidarity. Just as people around the world have offered those in the
U.S. their unreserved solidarity — despite all the harm done by the U.S.
government and corporations — so, in turn, we believe that the extension
of solidarity to others by people in the U.S. should become easier.
Feeling more vulnerable than ever, people in the U.S., particularly
those in the more privileged classes, may see more deeply into what a
life without security is like. We in the U.S. can, and must, expand our
capacity to see people not as reflections of particular governments or
as demographic statistics, but as individuals. We have new opportunities
to look honestly at the injustice of the global economy, how we are
implicated, and what we can do to make this world less unjust and less
insane. U.S. activists too can now take the time to examine where they
fit in the global movement for economic justice. Our role may for a time
be less to attract the spotlight and more to support the movement in
other countries, particularly the activists of the Global South. The
movement for global justice that has been gaining momentum through
protests, lobbying, and grassroots organizing did not die on September
11. It opened a new chapter, and one we will have to work hard to write,
so that the moment’s potential for progress is not sacrificed as the
heat of war, of violence, threatens us all.

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Neil Watkins
World Bank Bonds Boycott
Center for Economic Justice
1830 Connecticut Ave., NW, 4th floor,
Washington, DC 20009
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Web: www.worldbankboycott.org

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