“Son of Fast Track” Attacks!

            Legislative experts expect another House vote on “Fast Track” around mid February. They say, “We can win this one!” On December 6^th, the gobble-lizers were able to squeeze a 215-214 vote against working people after a lot of chicanery in the House of Representatives. Now we have another shot at them and a lot more ammunition:

1.      Their own dirty deals are backfiring on them

2.      Argentina, the “poster child of globalization” is in flames directly over the International Monetary Fund

3.      Growing worldwide awareness of the true effects of undemocratic globalization

4.      The 2002 elections are nearing. Every day we get closer is another reason why they will be afraid to vote for more gobble-lization!

5.      Locally, we had a great success with the movie, “Life and Debt.”

6.      Jobs with Justice actions on Jan 17  and Jan 19 can help us gain more friends in the fight

7.      Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, formerly considered a “fence sitter,” may be a strong ally.

 

Fair Trade Watch held a conference call at noon 1-8-02. I listened in and reported on Dallas events. Jere Locke reported from Austin. The main strategy recommended was “reward and retribution” for the U.S. Representatives based on their December 6 vote. This works out well for North Texas, because Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, a key figure in world politics, will send representatives to our action at 1408 N Washington in Dallas at 5 PM on January 17. She voted on our side.

 

The phone conference also revealed other opportunities for us. At 10 PM on Feb 5, PBS is airing a Bill Moyers special on NAFTA cases. We’re supposed to organize parties, etc, to emphasize the program. I think the name of it might be "Fighting Democracy." We are also supposed to think of ways to write letters to editors, etc.

 

Every year, while the World Social Forum takes place in Puerto Alegre, Brazil, the World Economic Forum meets. This is the summit for gobble-lizers! They used to meet in Davos, Switzerland, but apparently they haven’t been invited this year. So they plan to meet in New York Jan 31 to Feb 5. Expect corporate and government bigwigs all the way up to Bush & Cheney, the New York people said. NY Fair Trade and other groups are mobilizing for a series of events called "speak truth to power" to resonate the World Social Forum in Brazil on progressive alternatives to the neoliberal model. At a World Economic Forum meeting in the early 1990s, the World Trade Organization was first conceived. They said, “We need to be there on the streets, with our PR events, etc. Let us know if you want to join us." They have a section on the web page called "Davos on the Hudson." Apparently, there are links to all these important web sites at www.tradewatch.org.

**

Anti “Gobble-lization” Panel

Addresses Movie Audience

Environmentalist Molly Rooke organized a discussion after the movie.

Gene Lantz of Jobs with Justice (left) and Cliff Pearson of Uproar joined in

More than 75 people, almost a capacity crowd, attended a special showing of Life and Debt at Dallas’ Angelika Theater on the evening of December 29. Environmentalist Molly Rooke played the key organizing role. Jobs with Justice, Uproar, and other organizations helped. About 20 volunteers arrived early to help with literature and a panel presentation afterward. The literature table contained explanations of the movie and explanations of the effects of undemocratic globalization throughout the world. The Dallas Peace Times was available, as was an excellent short pamphlet by AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney titled, “The Struggle for a New Internationalism.” The pamphlet is available from www.aflcio.org or http://journal.georgetown.edu.

The movie was made from a short book, A Small Place, by Jamaica Kinkaid. It explains the effects of undemocratic globalization on one country, Jamaica. The reggae music and personal interviews with the victims of international corporations made the movie well worthwhile. Former Prime Minister Michael Manley carries the main load of explaining how the International Monetary Fund brought disaster to his island nation, but an excellent interview with a leader of the IMF corroborates everything Manley claims. Short interviews with Haiti’s Jean-Bertrand Aristide and Ghana’s Jerry Rawlings keep the audience aware that the message of destruction is not limited to Jamaica.

With the streets of Argentina in flames because of that country’s relationship with the International Monetary Fund, the movie audience had no problem understanding the horrifying depths and widths of the problem.

One of the movie’s starkest approaches is to juxtapose scenes of Jamaicans’ human misery with scenes of chubby pink and white tourists. Most of the Jamaicans interviewed also framed their explanations in terms of non-industrialized countries opposed to industrialized countries, most particularly the United States. That is the main strength of the hammering message of the film experience, but it is also open to criticism from an ideological point of view. It isn’t the workers of other lands, particularly not the tourists, who are causing the awful misery of the world. The villains are predatory transnational corporations who have seized control of their own governments and then, using the three main instruments of world economic control, overrode most of the governments of the world. The corporations’ instruments are the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization.

In fact, as was pointed out by the panelists, the misery that the corporations wreak on Jamaica is also being visited on the working people in the industrialized nations. Much of what is wrong with the United States economy is the direct result of the same international policies destroying Jamaica. The panelists talked about actions such as consumer boycotts, political action, and direct action. All were agreed on harmonizing the efforts of the concerned organizations.

**

Meet You at the Movies!

Life and Debt is showing Friday, Dec. 21st. - Jan. 3 at the Angelika Film Center, Mockingbird Station, 214-841-4700. A panel discussion was held after the 7 PM showing on Sat. Dec. 29.

 

Life and Debt also opens in Houston on Feb. 8, at the Museum of Fine Arts and in Austin on March 8 at the Dobie theater - please spread the word!

 

The excellent NY Times review below makes it clear just how timely and important this film is in the debate over the role of the IMF, World Bank, and World Trade Organization in developing countries, in this case Jamaica. The movie is remarkable because it not only deals with all of the human and labor rights, environmental and economic policy issues deftly but also

because it works artistically. You'll love the reggae music!

 

For more information: www.lifeanddebt.org

 

'Life and Debt': One Love, One Heart, or a Sweatshop Economy?

 

MOVIE REVIEW

By STEPHEN HOLDEN

 

The term "globalization" is so tinged with rosy one-world optimism that it's easy to assume the essential benignity of an economic philosophy whose name vaguely connotes unity, equality and freedom. But as Stephanie Black's powerful documentary "Life and Debt" illustrates with an impressive (and depressing) acuity, globalization can have a devastating impact on third world countries. The movie offers the clearest analysis of globalization and its negative effects that I've ever seen on a movie or television screen.

 

  "Life and Debt," which opens the Human Rights Watch Film Festival this evening at the Walter Reade Theater and continues its run on Saturday at Cinema Village, focuses on the deeply troubled economy of Jamaica and how that country's long-term indebtedness to international lending organizations have contributed to the erosion of local agriculture and industry.

 

  Far from being a dry exegesis crammed with graphs, pie charts and talking heads spewing abstract mumbo-jumbo, the film goes directly to the farmers and factory workers whose livelihoods have been undermined. In basic everyday language, they explain how high interest rates have helped devalue the local currency, raising prices for their produce and permitting wealthier countries to import the same products and sell them more cheaply.

 

  The hard-nosed lending policies of organizations like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank may not deliberately set out to undermine fragile third world economies dependent on their aid. But as the movie shows, the market forces that operate once these organizations become involved are an economic form of Darwinism. The fittest economies prosper while the weaker ones tend to be snared in an endless and escalating cycle of debt repayment that eventually erodes the debtor country's economic base. The banks' lending policies are, of course, determined by the wealthier countries, especially the United States and those of Western Europe.

 

  These dry economic realities are leavened by the cool, ironic lyricism of a voice-over narration by Jamaica Kincaid, who adapted the text from her nonfiction book, "A Small Place." Adopting the alluringly soothing tone of a subversive tour guide, Ms. Kincaid informs potential tourists of the things that will be hidden from sight should they visit Jamaica.

 

  "When you sit down to eat your delicious meal, it's better that you don't know that most of what you are eating came off a ship from Miami," she says.

 

  That's just one of a long list of things she mentions – from primitive hotel sewage systems that empty directly into the ocean

to the dire poverty of Kingston's slums - that all but the most intrepidly curious visitors to the country will not see. Recurring

through the film are unsettling images of jolly, overfed American tourists engaged in activities like beer-drinking contests in

Jamaica's luxury hotels.

 

  One result of the country's crumbling economy is the vulnerability to exploitation of Jamaica's needy labor force. A segment about Jamaica's free trade zones introduces us to workers who toil five or six days a week in near-sweatshop conditions for the legal minimum wage of $30 a week sewing garments for American manufacturers. No unionization is permitted in these foreign-owned garment factories where shiploads of material arrive tax-free for assembly before being transported back to foreign markets. Those who dare to make waves are fired.

 

  The movie visits a plant that used to sell high-quality chickens for Jamaican consumption but whose business has been undermined by the dumping of cheaper, low-grade chicken parts from the United States under the guise of free trade. And until recently, Jamaica's banana industry flourished thanks to an agreement with Britain allowing a tax-free import quota. But through the World Trade Organization, the United States has protested the agreement, forcing Jamaica to compete with multinational corporations based in Central and South America where labor is cheaper.

 

  These are just a few of the stories told in a film that despite all the bad news it delivers refuses to raise its voice. Among the

prominent Jamaicans interviewed the most eloquent voice belongs to Michael Manley, the former prime minister who reluctantly signed some of the agreements that have damaged the country's economy.

 

  Speaking more in sorrow than in anger, he acknowledges that his country made mistakes along the way. But the overall impression left by this devastating film is of the global economy as a dog-eat-dog world where the usual culprits, the United States and its multinational corporate clients, have the advantage.

 

LIFE AND DEBT

 

Produced and directed by Stephanie Black; narration written by Jamaica Kincaid, based on her book "A Small Place";

directors of photography, Malik Sayeed, Kyle Kibbe, Richard Lannaman and Alex Nepomniaschy; edited by Jon Mullen; music by Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers, Bob Marley, Dean Fraser, Buju Banton, Sizzla, Harry Belafonte, Mutabaruka, Rolando E. McLean, Peter Tosh and Anthony B.; released by Tuff Gong Pictures. Opens

Sept 21st  at Cinema Village, 22 East 12th Street, Greenwich Village. Running time: 86 minutes. This film is not rated.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/15/arts/15LIFE.html?ex=1000702436&ei=1&en=a52

2b9ffc3201c82

Juliette Beck

Economic Rights Coordinator

Global Exchange

2017 Mission St. Ste 303

San Francisco, CA 94110

415-558-9486 ext. 254

415-255-7498 fax

Check out Global Exchange's moderated listserves on the Global Economy; Fair

Trade; and Human Rights in Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Palestine, and

California: http://www.globalexchange.org/getInvolved/lists.html

**

Sweeney Writes “Struggle for a New Internationalism”

Jobs with Justice has ordered extra copies of a new pamphlet by the President of the AFL-CIO, John Sweeney. “The Struggle for a New Internationalism” explains the effect that neo-liberalism has on workers and especially on American workers. As currently effected, “gobble-lization” works great for giant transnational corporations, but lousy for everybody else. Sweeney puts it all into perspective and makes practical recommendations for a far better system.

 

It is printed by the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs Winter/Spring 2001. See http://journal.georgetown.edu or www.aflcio.org.

**

How Does Undemocratic Globalization Affect You?

 

The fanatical corporate drive for undemocratic globalization brings together what might have formerly been considered as separate social  movements:

 

Immigrants

The conditions imposed by corporate globalization are forcing workers all over the world to leave their homes and migrate into the industrialized nations. When they arrive, they face even more intense discrimination as they are used to further reduce all wages and job benefits.

 

Job rights

As migrants run toward the industrialized nations, factories and jobs rush in the other direction. Corporations use NAFTA and other "trade" agreements to search out the worst workplace and environmental situations.

 

Women

Afghani atrocities and sexual discrimination in the industrialized countries are both encouraged by the worldwide corporate profit drive. Students and young children face the worst of the world's workplace discriminations.

 

Environment

Corporations use "free trade agreements" to pollute in areas formerly protected by local laws. The "free trade" pushers disdain both local and international agreements that were supposed to protect our air and water.

 

Democracy

The rights of individuals are shoved aside by international corporations. Laws that were gained by centuries of struggle and suffering are shoved aside by international "trade" agreements!

 

Peace

Nations that resist corporate demands can expect bombers, missiles, and blockades! What is "Free Trade" but war by other means?

 

Labor Unions

(see Coming Events Page)

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