[mobglob-discuss] Fwd: Starhawk: Why Go To Washington

Wed Aug 28 11:49:58 PDT 2002

>From: "Pegi Caesar" <pegic at hotmail.com>
>To: 1stunitedftaa at sandelman.ottawa.on.ca,        
>faithottawag20 at sandelman.ottawa.on.ca
>CC: witnessottawa at yahoogroups.com
>Subject: Fwd: Starhawk: Why Go To Washington
>Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2002 22:38:33 -0400
>
>From: Jamie Kneen <jkneen at magma.ca>
>Subject: [ftaaott] Starhawk: Why Go To Washington
>
>Date: Sun, 25 Aug 2002 00:04:43 -0700
>From: Starhawk <stella at mcn.org>
>Subject: [pga] Why Go To Washington
>
>Linking the Bank and the War:  Why go To Washington?
>By Starhawk
>
>In November of 1969, President Nixon was preparing to use nuclear
>weapons against Hanoi and Haiphong. What stopped him were the
>anti-war mobilizations of that autumn. There were 'too many people in
>the street.'
>
>This September, as Bush continues to push for an invasion of Iraq, to
>support Sharon's seige of Palestine, and to reinforce the endless
>'war on terror', the streets of Washington DC will again be filled
>with protestors. A mass mobilization has been called for September
>25-29, when the World Bank and International Monetary Fund hold their
>annual Fall meetings.
>
>The protests will focus on issues of economic justice, but they are
>also a general expression of our opposition to the Bush gang and
>their policies. If they are large and successful, they too could
>serve as a deterrent to Bush's escalation of his various wars,
>provided that we make clear connections between the issues of
>economic justice and peace.
>
>What does global justice have to do with peace? Everything. The war
>on terror and the threatened war in the Middle East are integral
>outgrowths of the global corporate capitalist agenda.
>
>That system has based its legitimacy on a fiction: that by opening
>the world's resources and peoples to unchecked corporate
>exploitation, removing governments from their responsibilities as
>regulators and providers of social services, and releasing
>corporations from any community accountability, it can provide the
>good life for all. Endlessly expanding wealth will bring universal
>democracy and harmony-and you can be a part of it!
>
>But in reality, most people in the world are worse off than they were
>twenty years ago. The environment deteriorates and governments prove
>unable to grapple with serious issues such as global warming. Third
>world countries struggle under crushing loads of debt, and suffer
>further from IMF policies that enforce privatization of state
>resources and services and cutbacks in health, social welfare and
>education. Argentina, the IMF's 'poster child', is in economic ruin.
>Africa is more deeply impoverished than it was twenty years ago. In
>industrialized countries, policies of privatization, deregulation,
>corporate license and withdrawal of public support for social
>programs result in reduced services, increased prices, blackouts,
>brownouts, and unemployment, not to mention Enron, WorldCom, and all
>the rest.
>
>The promise now rings false to more and more people. Its legitimacy
>has successfully been eroded by campaigns of education, public
>information, demonstrations and direct action, and by its own flaws.
>
>The system requires a new basis of legitimacy in order to retain
>power. Since September 11, that basis has been fear. If the promises
>of the system no longer seduce us, we may still cling to it out of
>fear of a larger enemy. An enemy is such a useful thing. It justifies
>the erosion of our freedoms and huge expenditures on armaments and
>the military. It keeps us from looking too closely at what our own
>leaders are doing, and focuses our anxieties and discontents on a
>foreign menace. An enemy allows us to periodically demonstrate the
>scope and firepower of the US Military, just in case anyone in the
>world still had lingering doubts about who is the top global
>superpower.
>
>It is no accident that the enemy now wears a Muslim face. The power
>base of the Bush gang is oil. Oil is the life blood of the global
>corporate capitalist system. Only cheap oil can subsidize the
>transport of goods that make it possible for corporations to roam the
>globe in search of the cheapest labor and most lax regulations. An
>endlessly expanding economy requires endless oil reserves.
>
>To maintain their control, the oil barons need to maintain our
>dependence on oil, undercutting the development of alternative fuels
>and renewable sources of energy, denying the facts of global warming
>and of oil's environmental costs. Much of the world's oil is under
>the Middle East, so American control must be maintained there. The
>world's largest untapped reserves of oil are in central Asia: hence
>the invasion of Afghanistan. Israel acts as a surrogate for U.S.
>military power, maintaining a harsh and humiliating control over
>Palestine as an ongoing warning to the rest of the Arab and Muslim
>world. A new mythology postulating a 'clash of civilizations' reworks
>old stereotypes of a progressive, democratic West in conflict with a
>regressive, primitive, autocratic East-when in reality, repressive
>forces can be found on both sides.
>
>The mobilization needs to make these connections.
>
>How do we delegitimize fear in a world in which we have real enemies?
>Not by pretending the world is safe, or by denying that there are
>regimes that pose the threat of violence. But by challenging the idea
>that safety can be assured by military backing for systems that
>create gross inequalities and mass despair. People's desires for
>lives of dignity and hope cannot be stamped out by force. Real
>security cannot be achieved by the hegemony of U.S. military might
>backing global corporate control. Global justice is the solution to
>global security.
>
>These issues need to be faced on a global stage. Some voices in the
>movement have been suggesting that resources are better used locally
>than in going to mass mobilizations. While local organizing is always
>important, now is not the moment to pull back into a local focus. For
>this is the historic moment when the Bush forces will either win
>overarching control or be stymied. We are facing national and global
>policies that threaten our basic liberties and undermine anything we
>can achieve on a local level. It's a global system-its center of
>power is in Washington, DC, and that is the place to confront it. And
>the time to confront it is now.
>
>Now-when the false promises of corporate globalization are more and
>more evident and its legitimacy is faltering. Now-when the Bush junta
>is pushing its warmongering agenda on an increasingly unsympathetic
>public. Now-when we most need to show the power holders and the world
>that there is a strong US movement that is not willing to march
>lockstep into the war frenzy.
>
>Now-when we still have a chance to prevent the next round of slaughter.
>
>Now is the moment to fill the streets in an exuberant uprising
>against the politics of fear and the policies of greed-and to
>recognize that they are two faces of the same system, and to disrupt
>it in as many unruly and joyful ways as our imaginations can
>conceive. For systems that depend on fear are on shaky ground.
>
>We can refuse to be ruled by fear ourselves, to let fear narrow our
>choices and constrict our imagination. Courage feels good. When we
>act in spite of fear, we feel good about ourselves. When we plan and
>act with courage, when we choose our boldest and most creative
>visions, we evoke the opposite of fear, which is love, the tremor
>that can bring the fortress down.
>
>www.starhawk.org
>
>The mobilization in Washington DC is from September 25-30. For more
>information, see:
>
>AntiCapitalist Convergence
>Main Day of action:  9/27
>www. abolishthebank.org
>
>Mobilization for Global Justice
>Main Day of action:  9/28
>www.globalizethis.org       202-452-5912
>
>
>Schedule of events:
>Sept 25-29 Convergence of organizers and activists.  Trainings,
>teach-ins, and coordination for the Fall and beyond
>Sept 25-27 End Corporate Rule Teach-In: Global Struggles Against the
>IMF & World Bank organized by 50 Years is Enough and others (see
>www.50years.org)
>Sept. 25-27 CEO Summit, Ritz Carlton Hotel
>Sept. 26th Power for the People / Clean Energy Rally (day) Interfaith
>Vigil (evening)
>Sept. 27th Anti-Capitalist Convergence Action (see www.abolishthebank.org)
>Sept. 28th-29th IMF & World Bank Group Annual meetings
>Sept. 28th Mobilization for Global Justice Rally & March (day)
>                    Quarantine Actions (evening)
>Sept. 29th Social Forum and People's Assemblies being planned
>
>    From Washington to Quito
>              Join us for Corporate Fall!
>
>www.globalizethis.org       202-452-5912
>___________________________________________
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>_________________________________________________________________
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Christopher A. Shaw, Ph.D
Associate Professor
Research Pavilion
828 W. 10th Ave.
Vancouver, British Columbia
Canada, V5Z 1L8
tel: 604-875-4111 (ext. 68375)
Fax: 604-875-4376
e-mail: csshawlab at hotmail.com

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