[mgj-announce] An Open Letter to United for Peace and Justice

[mgj at riseup.net]

An Open Letter to United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ)
>From the Mobilization for Global Justice*

Dear friends in United for Peace and Justice,

Congratulations on organizing a very large demonstration in Washington,
D.C. the weekend of September 24-25. The numbers and the resulting media
coverage and visibility were indeed impressive.

Having said that, we would like to share with you some fundamental
political concerns of ours with:
•	the manner in which the mobilization was called,
•	what was and what was not included in the political message,
•	and how that was reflected in the way in which the organizing for the
demonstrations happened on the ground.

You might be surprised that we have issued an open letter rather than
trying to communicate with your organization privately. We have, however,
tried private, direct channels of communication both in the recent past
and earlier, and found them to be ineffective.

Our intent in writing this open letter is not to generate conflict, but to
voice constructive criticism and generate debate, which is sorely needed
in the wider peace and justice movement in the U.S. We hope for a
constructive response.

The Issues
Three days before hundreds of thousands marched in Washington, D.C. to
demand an end to the occupation of Iraq –  with parallel demands to end
the economic occupation of the global South, a crowd of several hundred
marched in the capital of Lesotho, a small landlocked country in Southern
Africa. (By the standards of a small country like Lesotho, this was a
large turnout.)

The focus of this march was to demand fair resettlement and rehabilitation
for the thousands displaced by the Lesotho Highlands Project, a series of
dams financed by the World Bank. These dams were built to collect water
for export to neighboring South Africa, even while Lesotho is afflicted
with drought. The dams have displaced thousands, and destroyed the
farmlands and fisheries that tens of thousands depend on for their
survival. The contracts for building the dams were riddled with corruption
benefiting foreign contractors, a fact that the World Bank tried for years
to cover up.

The situation in Lesotho is a microcosm of how the World Bank and its
sister institution the International Monetary Fund (IMF) operate
worldwide. To highlight a few recent developments:
•	The IMF and World Bank compelled Niger and Mali to deregulate food
prices and privatize surplus food reserves, moves which led to the current
famine in these countries, endangering the lives of hundreds of thousands.
Similar subsidy eliminations are now taking place in Iraq, where 60% of
the population depends on food subsidies for survival.
•	The World Bank is funding an immensely destructive gold mining project
in Guatemala that will exacerbate poverty among indigenous Maya people
while despoiling the environment.
•	Through the Policy Support Instrument (PSI), the IMF is expanding and
tightening its control over countries which either do not need IMF loans
or are poised to escape its economic dictatorship through debt
cancellation. The PSI will expand the IMF’s leverage over these countries,
and allow the institution to continue to impose devastating “economic
reform” programs.

Why do we mention all of this? A fact that was very well known to the
national leadership of UFPJ – though they may deny it – is that the IMF
and World Bank were meeting in Washington, D.C. the very same weekend that
they called the anti-war march. MGJ had brought this fact to the attention
of UFPJ through a letter, a few days before they issued their Call to
Action for the weekend. We also raised this issue publicly at the Unity
Meeting in Washington, D.C., organized by longtime Washington, D.C.
community leader Rev. Graylan Hagler, as well as other community
activists. UFPJ knew about the IMF-World Bank meetings before they issued
their call for protests that weekend, in good time to change course and
modify their protest plans to take the meetings into account.

By bringing attention to the IMF and World Bank meetings, we do not wish
to make the claim that resisting the policies of these institutions is
“more important” than demanding an end to the occupation of Iraq (and the
occupations of Afghanistan, Haiti, and Palestine). On the contrary, we
recognize and give a great deal of importance to the grave violations of
human dignity and to the loss of life that these occupations entail.

We have reason to believe, though, that some persons in the leadership of
UFPJ do not give any importance to the social, economic, and ecological
devastation caused by the IMF and World Bank across Africa, Asia, Latin
America, the Caribbean, the Pacific, and other impoverished regions of the
world. If that is true, it is a major problem. It shows a lack of vision,
analysis, and understanding of the political economy of the contemporary
world.

Before going further, we would like to point out that this is not about
MGJ. The more important issue at stake here is the fundamental lack of
solidarity of the leadership of important sections of the U.S. peace and
justice movement with billions of poor people worldwide, overwhelmingly of
color. It is imperative for that section of the U.S. peace and justice
movement that works mainly on foreign policy issues to recognize that the
damaging foreign policies of the U.S. are not solely about who this
country bombs and occupies, but equally about who this country starves and
exploits for the profit of multinational corporations. It is equally
important that we recognize that exploitation extends to the environment,
and that forests are clearcut, air and water polluted, and ecosystems
destroyed every day to extend economic control.

The economic control of the planet for corporate profit is a central tenet
of U.S. foreign policy. A failure to recognize this reality is also a
serious analytical failure on the part of the peace and justice movement.

We believe that this lack of vision is also self-defeating. If the U.S.
peace and justice movement is serious about ending the occupation of Iraq
(and of Afghanistan, Haiti, and Palestine), the movement needs to develop
and internalize an understanding of the motivations for and the roots of
war and occupation. The drive for imperial control of natural resources,
cheap labor, and markets has been a key part of the motivation for U.S.
wars and interventions for decades (some would argue, centuries), and a
peace and justice movement that has a strategic goal of not merely ending
this latest war but undermining the U.S. war machine in the longer term,
needs to build this understanding into its actions.

What is more, these linkages are common sense across much of the world. In
most countries, the organizations fighting neoliberal economic policies
and the organizations resisting U.S. military aggression are the very same
organizations. In Bolivia and Ecuador, the very same organizations who are
resisting IMF and World Bank-imposed policies such as water privatization,
export of natural gas, and destructive gold mining, are also involved in
struggles against the proliferation of U.S. bases and the militarized
U.S.-backed war on drugs. The Freedom from Debt Coalition in the
Philippines, who resist IMF and World Bank loan conditions, also played a
major role in the coalition that pressured the Philippines government to
withdraw its forces from Iraq. Why do we compartmentalize issues to our
own detriment here in the U.S., and why do we always prioritize getting a
few more column inches in the New York Times, or several thousand more
people at tomorrow’s demonstration, over building a genuinely broad-based
movement over the next five or ten years?

None of which is to say that there should not be a protest against the
Iraq war on the weekend of the IMF and World Bank meetings. There should
be protests against the illegitimate U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq
365 days of the year. But when these protests coincide with the IMF and
World Bank meetings in the same city in which the meetings are taking
place, it is perfectly reasonable and legitimate to expect that there be a
serious effort on the part of all concerned to integrate the message of
fighting U.S.-sponsored wars and occupations with the message of resisting
the economic dictatorship and ecological warfare of the IMF and World
Bank. These messages are not hard to integrate at all – just ask us, we
have done so already in ways that are clear, concise, and convincing!

And we are certainly not the only ones doing this analysis either. You
don’t need to take our word for anything – just read recent writings by
Shalmali Guttal of Focus on the Global South, or freelance writer Naomi
Klein, or Antonia Juhasz, or Abu Khaleel’s blog from Baghdad
(iraquna.blogspot.com), or decades of writing by Uruguayan writer Eduardo
Galeano about Latin America.

The lead-up to the September 24-25 weekend
There was much in the lead-up to the weekend that we had deep misgivings
about, but we’ll confine ourselves to observations about one particularly
disturbing event.

First, as we mentioned earlier, MGJ had sent a letter to members of the
UFPJ national steering committee a few days before they issued their Call
to Action for the weekend, with an open offer of working together with
them to integrate an antiwar and an economic justice message for the
weekend’s actions, taking advantage of a historic opportunity to link
these issues together. With the U.S. imposing an IMF-style structural
adjustment program on Iraq at gunpoint, and with Paul Wolfowitz as head of
the World Bank, this is the right time to be making these connections.

Unfortunately, the national leadership of UFPJ reacted to our letter as if
it were a threat. Three members of the steering committee came to
Washington, D.C. a few days later, and set up a meeting with
representatives from MGJ. It is a measure of the importance they give to
the issue of U.S. economic hegemony that they were 45 minutes late to
their 1-hour meeting with us, but were not willing to delay the start of
their next meeting to give enough time to meet with us. For the 15 minutes
or so that they did meet with us, they said repeatedly that their
demonstration was going to be about the single-issue message of “U.S.
troops out of Iraq.”

We publicly confronted UFPJ with our concerns at the Unity Meeting
convened by Rev. Graylan Hagler and other community activists a few weeks
later. After that, there was a sudden interest on the part of UFPJ in
talking with us. We took that interest at face value and attempted to
engage with UFPJ to try to develop and disseminate a unified message of
resisting U.S. domination, through bombs and occupation as well as through
loans and trade. We thought (mistakenly) that we had crossed a bridge to a
better relationship.

The events of the weekend
We’ll start with a brief run-down of what happened at the opening rally
for the antiwar march. It is significant that only two of a very large
number of speakers at the rally were slated to talk about the IMF and
World Bank meetings; none of the other speakers even mentioned the fact
that the IMF and World Bank were meeting only a few blocks away that
weekend.

One of the two was Virginia Setshedi, a phenomenal Black activist from
South Africa, who was treated by UFPJ in a manner bordering racism. She is
a truly visionary activist and a dynamic speaker, and yet was given only
three minutes to speak after a long procession of well-known U.S. speakers
who were given five minutes each – and often took longer than that. Far
from being honored that Virginia had come all the way from South Africa
and was willing to speak at the rally, the organizers acted as if they
were doing her a favor by giving her a platform. The way she was treated
was incredibly patronizing, and we feel very strongly that UFPJ owes her
an apology.

The other was one of our own members, Basav Sen, who did not in the end
get a chance to speak. We understand that technically, this was because of
the preceding program taking too long, and we do not mean to imply that
there was a conspiracy to keep him from speaking. It is significant,
though, that both Virginia and Basav were scheduled towards the end of the
program, and given only 3 minutes each, out of a very large number of
speakers.

We want the leadership of UFPJ to appreciate that this was far more than a
slap in the face for Virginia, Basav, or MGJ – it was a slight to people
fighting World Bank-funded water privatization, to people organizing
against IMF-imposed public spending cuts, and to millions worldwide who
are engaged in life-and-death struggles against the economic policies
imposed by U.S.-controlled institutions – including in Iraq. The least
that they can expect of those of us who are in the U.S. is some basic
solidarity!

The logistical preparations
Besides their lack of political vision, the UFPJ leadership also made
serious errors in logistical planning and preparation.

Though they had planned several days of action and were expecting 100,000
participants, UFPJ did not adequately prioritize housing. They did ask a
local DC group to help find housing, but did not provide any resources or
respond to frequent requests to coordinate efforts. This group and others,
including MGJ, formed an ad hoc committee which did manage to secure some
housing, but as the mobilization approached there was still a shortage.
UFPJ expressed great concern about the lack of housing but still did not
provide resources or coordination. At the same time they were claiming
poverty when it came to funding housing, UFPJ was running a million dollar
ad campaign and pouring a lot of money into the Operation Ceasefire
concert. As an example of poor coordination by UFPJ, they ignored the ad
hoc committee’s repeated offers to link the two web-based housing boards
where people in Washington DC could offer housing to out-of-town
activists, and out-of-town activists could request housing. It made
perfect sense to link the two websites, so that people who were looking
for housing would need to access only one website for complete
information. Despite a few conversations with UFPJ on this issue, nothing
came of it. Fortunately due to the hard work of the ad hoc committee,
there was not a housing crisis. However we will never know how many
activists chose not to stay for the full weekend or did not even come to
Washington because the housing situation was not more secure.

UFPJ’s treatment of the Direct Action Medic Network (DAMN) was extremely
unfair as well. DAMN is a small collective working tirelessly – and for
free – to keep protesters healthy and safe during demonstrations in
Washington, D.C. UFPJ initially refused to reimburse DAMN for providing
water and medical supplies for demonstrators, and expected them to staff a
medical tent at the festival even though they are not licensed medics and
it would be illegal for them to do so. There were only a few health and
safety volunteers outside of DAMN. Thus, on the largest day of action,
hundreds of thousands of demonstrators had only a small overstretched band
of volunteer street medics to rely on. In the event of an accident or
simply of hotter weather, this inadequate preparation might have resulted
in serious medical problems.

We believe there is a connection between the failures of political
analysis on the part of UFPJ, and their logistical failures. The
connection lies in an elitist mode of organizing that treats the
grassroots as a resource to exploit rather than as a source of leadership.
The grassroots has no role in determining the political vision of the
coalition; the vision and message are driven by the needs of getting on
CNN and the New York Times. Yet, the grassroots is expected to do the
“grunt work” of arranging for housing, medical support, and legal support,
without any help from the so-called “leadership”.

Conclusion – what do we want?
We seek open debate and discussion on analysis as well as dynamics within
the U.S. peace and justice movement. We know that fracturing and
factionalism weaken the movement – and that is not what we seek – but it
is equally true that conformity, unwillingness to engage in real debate,
and a refusal to air real differences when they exist can stifle and
eventually kill a movement.

Recent events have provided a great opportunity to engage the wider public
on the profound injustice of U.S. policies and politics, both domestic and
foreign. Without a wide dialogue about what exactly these opportunities
are, and how we can make the most of these opportunities in a way that is
respectful of the people affected by recent tragedies, we as a movement
will have failed.

In our own public education around the September 24-25 weekend, MGJ made
every effort to link the disaster in Louisiana, the global economy, and
the occupation of Iraq in a way that is meaningful and not merely a
laundry list of complaints. We do not claim to have been perfect in how we
have done so. The point to bear in mind is that we have tried sincerely to
make these connections, not merely to advance any particular campaign that
we are working on, but to serve what we see as the broader objective of
building a movement that connects the local with the global, and connects
the war on the poor being waged with F16s with the equally vicious war on
the poor being waged with privatization, budget cuts for social services,
gentrification, displacement, and environmental racism and classism.

We hope that this letter provokes the leadership of large national peace
and justice organizations to engage in some reflection about how not to
sacrifice longer term goals to advance short term interests. We hope this
letter gets them to think about building a movement towards a more just
U.S. foreign (and domestic) policy, and not merely a campaign to bring
U.S. troops home from Iraq. We hope this letter sparks a dialogue about
how we in the U.S. can organize in a way that is more respectful of, and
more in tune with, the rest of the world.

At the very least, we hope that this letter gets the leadership of peace
and justice organizations to organize in a manner that is respectful of
all progressive causes. It would not be acceptable for a peace and justice
group to organize a demonstration on Martin Luther King Day without making
the ongoing civil rights struggles of African Americans a central part of
the political message. It would not be acceptable to organize a
demonstration on Columbus Day without incorporating Native American
struggles for land rights and environmental justice into the core demands.

It is equally unacceptable to organize a demonstration during the IMF and
World Bank meetings without acknowledging the struggle of people across
Africa, Asia, and Latin America against these imperialistic institutions.
Nor is it acceptable to call for a demonstration in another city without
consulting with local activists first and not as an afterthought. Finally,
it should not be expected that the locals do the “dirty work” of logistics
without having a central role in shaping the political message.

We end with the observation that it would be breathtakingly arrogant on
the part of the “leadership” of so-called progressive organizations to
imagine that “the masses” are not ready for a sophisticated and nuanced
analysis, and can think only in soundbytes and bumper sticker slogans. We
talk to our neighbors, to people we meet in the subway, to cashiers at our
neighborhood grocery stores, to cab-drivers, and to other folks.
Grassroots constituencies have a far greater degree of political
sophistication than the so-called leaders of the progressive movement give
them credit for.

“The people” are ready for a political message that links fundamental
racial, economic, and gender inequalities in the U.S. with similar
inequalities on a global scale, and the role of U.S. military power in
maintaining these inequalities. They are ready for a political message
that links economic deprivation and war with global climate change and
environmental destruction. They are ready to question the role of the U.S.
political and economic system in creating and perpetuating these
injustices. Particularly after Hurricane Katrina, people are eager for
such a message. Are the “leaders” listening?

*The Mobilization for Global Justice is a Washington, D.C. based group
that works on issues of global economic and social justice and
sustainability. We believe another world is possible and necessary. We
envision a world free of corporate domination and crushing debt,
particularly in communities of color. We act to expose and change the
institutionalized violence wrought by international financial and trade
institutions such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and
World Trade Organization.