On Saturday, May 1, Lacy MacAuley and I joined a huge pro-immigrant rights rally outside the White House to show our support for civil rights. Here is a little video we made about the day.

For many years, I have worked in immigrant rights and have supported laws that make it easier for immigrants to be a part of society, such as getting a driver’s license. When one group of people does not have the same rights as the majority, they will be exploited. Right now, workers across the country are getting paid less than minimum wage because their employers threaten them. Today in Arizona, people are afraid to call the police, which means criminals have free reign. It’s unjust, unfair, and dangerous for all of us.

We applauded U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) who sat down in front of the White House in an act of civil disobedience and was arrested to show his support for immigrants.

From The New York Times coverage:

Mr. Gutierrez was handcuffed behind his back with plastic cuffs by the Park Police, and he walked in silence when an officer led him away along the black wrought-iron fence in front of the White House. Among others arrested with him were Jaime Contreras, director for Washington, D.C., of the Service Employees International Union; Joshua Hoyt, Ali Noorani, Deepak Bhargava, and Gustavo Torres, leaders of immigrant advocate organizations; and Gregory Cendana, president of the United States Student Association.

- Sarah

Just this past Wednesday (24 June 2009), a bill cosponsored by 106 Representatives was introduced to the House that would place the currently undemocratic trade agreement system into the hands of the people. The bill is called the TRADE Act, an acronym standing for “Trade Reform, Accountability, Development and Employment” (HR 3012). If passed, it would protect human rights and put environmental safeguards into effect in both past and future multinational trade agreements. It would also vastly increase the transparency of such agreements, rightly giving the ultimate power not to a select few, but to Congress. The bill is sponsored by Rep. Mike Michaud (D-Maine), the Chairman of the House Trade Working Group. Its wording advocates a strong position on core labor standards which promote fundamental human rights as defined by the UN. The bill will not only ensure these rights for US citizens, but will also protect the rights, human and otherwise, of the citizens of the country with which the agreement exists. The bill requires that in order for the US to start or continue trade with a country, that country must live up to basic human rights laws that are already in effect in the US. Passing the TRADE Act would help to give needed jobs back to Americans by making it less economic to outsource labor to countries with bad human rights records simply because they have cheaper labor.

The bill itself makes provisions that would not only change the way future agreements are created, but would call for an extensive review of agreements already in place. This would include a review of trade agreements’ impact on citizens both in the US and the country in question, and would require renegotiation of existing agreements when necessary. This would ease concerns that have been ever increasing among the world populace. Call to mind the massive protests over the G8 Summits each year, and you’ll get the idea. Up to this day world trade and all things monetary are being regulated by organizations like the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. These institutions are responsible for closed-door agreements that are written “by and for corporations” (GlobalExchange.org).

Examples of WTO rulings include laws making it illegal to ban a product because of the way it is produced, not excluding morally negligent practices like child labor. According to GlobalExchange.org, the WTO has also ruled that “governments cannot take into account ‘non commercial values’ such as human rights or the behavior of companies that do business with vicious dictatorships such as Burma.” Additionally, the WTO has blocked countries with rampant health concerns like AIDs from producing generic drugs. The WTO has cited rulings of companies’ “right to profit” to enforce such policies, and has often undermined countries’ preexisting laws in doing so.

“The TRADE Act acknowledges rights greater than a corporation’s supposed right to profit,” says Ben Beachy, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Organizer of Witness for Peace. “These include the rights of family farmers to a stable livelihood, the rights of parents to affordable medicines, the rights of all of us to environmental protections. The TRADE Act spells the overhaul of the NAFTA model that has not only failed to recognize, but has outrightly trampled, such basic human rights.”

Beachy states that the TRADE Act “launches a new era of trade.” It is “the first bill of its kind to call for the sort of trade we could support–the sort that places public health, democratic process, and decent work at the center.”

Americans are now personally aware of the disfunctionality of the current economic systems and the reality of just how global our nation’s trade has become. People are trying to learn more about what got us into this situation and how to change it. At the same time, however, it appears that the bigwigs responsible have not changed much at all, nor do they seem to have any intentions of doing so. That is where this legislation comes in. It is proactive yet extremely necessary to ensure the democratic power of the US in this globalizing world. In order to maintain control by the people, an ideal this country was based on, legislation like the TRADE Act is absolutely fundamental. For the first time, it requires that a trade agreement be approved by both Congress and the President (TRADE Act, pg44): Constitutional ideals which have been grossly ignored until this point.

A large success for transparent business practices exists in the bill’s stipulation that “if the trade agreement contains provisions related to dispute resolution, these provisions must “incorporate due process rules and procedures, including insuring… proceedings are open to the public; that public access to information… related to disputes is provided in a timely manner; and that conflict of interest rules apply fully to adjudicators.” It also requires that any dispute settlement panel addressing environmental and human rights issues “include panelists with expertise in such issues” (TRADE Act, pg34-35)!

In order to ensure acceptable treatment of citizens by US trading partners, the bill mandates that every two years a report be issued by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). This report will cite information regarding whether that country is democratic, respects fundamental human rights and religious freedom, has taken measures to combat public and private corruption, complies with multilateral environmental agreements, has adequate labor and environmental regulations, provides for governmental transparency, and maintains the due process of law. Additionally, there are exceptions to the Act in cases where a country is shown to pose a threat to the national security of the US.

The GAO would also provide information on the effects of existing International Trade like NAFTA and CAFTA which are among the trade agreements that have become considerable examples on which all other trade agreements are based. Their creation included corrupt, unmonitored and extremely exclusionary tactics that have set an unfortunate standard for international trade policies and practices. If the TRADE Act were passed, these agreements would have the potential to be tweaked or improved if Congress felt changes were necessary.

The TRADE Act is a refreshingly non-ethnocentric piece of literature that promotes the right to self-governance and autonomy, significantly pushes environmental protection and human rights causes, helps ensure the transparency of international trade, and has the potential to change the face of America to the world.

By Kelly Flanagan

This past weekend, DC saw its first annual Sacred DC, a festival for healing, arts, and activism. Massey Media’s Lacy MacAuley was intimately involved in the planning and media outreach for the festival. The organizers wanted to provide a space for dialogue and strategizing about environmental and social injustices. Held on the summer Solstice at Malcolm X Park in downtown DC, the festival was an opportunity for local residents and youth to connect while attending workshops on yoga, meditation, mural painting, and urban gardening, to name just a few.

Lacy worked closely with the co-visionaries of the project, Graciela Lopez and Zainabu Dance, to craft a media strategy that could speak authentically about the spirit of the festival. She met weekly with organizers to make sure that everyone’s ideas and voices were heard and that everyone was familiar with the “talking points,” and she coordinated the pitch calls to press and bloggers. The press release she drafted went out to local media multiple times, creating a drumbeat, and pitch calls soon followed. Zainabu and Lacy secured a press hit with WPFW’s “From the Vault.” Soon after, the Washington Examiner called. The reporter was on a tight deadline, so Lacy gave him an interview using the media messages they’d crafted.

Lacy also aggressively pitched the Washington Post, who sent a reporter and covered the story. Even as she was emceeing on the main stage, Lacy was called upon to facilitate his interview. NBC also showed up early in the day. In addition, Lacy made sure to coordinate photographic coverage of the event to offer to the press and funders of the event.

Massey Media brings this same level of attention to detail to all our clients. If you’d like to see your progressive event or cause in media, let Massey Media show you how!

- Janaki Spickard-Keeler

Abandoning emerging economies to the assistance of the International Monetary Fund is like assigning a child to a tutor who is not only failing, but bullying other children and selling drugs on the side. However, leaders at home and abroad have failed to realize the disservice they are committing and have promised the IMF 1.1 trillion dollars.

On June 10, 2009, the House Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade convened to examine issues relating to the current global, economic situation. The hearing, “Foreign Policy Implications of US Efforts to Address the International Financial Crisis: TARP, TALF, and the G-20 Plan,” devoted a significant amount of time to the domestic impact of trade agreements like the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF), yet subcommittee Chairman Brad Sherman (D-CA) opened the hearing with a statement that questioned the policies and practices of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Chairman Sherman accused the financial institution of enacting policies that were “utterly blind to the anti-genocide, anti-proliferation and anti-terrorist policies of the United States.” Such policies will allow for the likely 250 billion-dollar expansion to drawing rights to finance governments like Iran, Sudan, Syria, Burma and Zimbabwe. While, according to witness Dr. Nancy Birdsall, “efforts” are being made to reform IMF governance (such as expanding China’s voting share from 3.7% to 5.6% - currently, Belgium and the Netherlands combined hold a greater share than China), nothing is being done in regards to which nations are granted loans.

Further, and equally important, emerging nations in need of economic assistance have experienced economic mismanagement by the IMF. The IMF’s common prescription for economic growth, full liberalization of the markets, most often results in cuts to social services, high interest rates, and in the case of Malawi, the removal of all agricultural subsidies. Eight years after enacting such “recommendations,” the price of a bag of fertilizer doubled and Malawi farmers found themselves unable to purchase even one bag.

Dr. Nancy Birdsall, President of the Center for Global Development, however, supported the G-20 plan at Wednesday’s hearing, stating that “the IMF today is not the IMF of old.” She claims that the IMF now recognizes and supports the practice of deficit spending during economic crises, especially in the arenas of health and education.

Birdsall’s position is contrary to studies that show that countries engaged in IMF programs suffer. Harvard and New York University studies report that once a nation enters an IMF program, growth does not just slow, it retards.  One study found that countries under IMF programs grew at a rate of 2.04% while those not involved in IMF programs grew at a rate of 4.39%. Another study found that IMF participation had a direct negative impact on growth by producing a stigma which discourages private investors. In these times of frugality, why would the government throw needed taxpayer dollars away on a failing business?

The G-20’s plan to fund the IMF is a plan to keep the markets of developing nations open to U.S. exports. The United States’ economy, in 2008, was almost completely dependent upon exports, one-third of which went to emerging markets. In the race to save developing nations’ economies, the world powers are racing to save themselves.

While the ideal of aiding developing nations should not be opposed or criticized, it is the manner in which the major governments seek to do so with which one finds offense and fault. We should be investing in these countries through government grants and a new, modernized Foreign Assistance Act which could provide the necessary capital and assistance to transform the economic environment by developing infrastructure, education, and better health programs, but we should be doing so in a fair, effective and humanitarian manner. In 2007, the U.S. spent only 21.8 billion dollars on foreign aid, approximately 1/50 of what the G-20 leaders have promised the International Monetary Fund. The effort to remove the proposed 109 billion-dollars from the war funding bill should not be an exercise in penny-pinching; it should be an effort to find a better way.

-Kimberly Killen

Photo Credit: Africa Renewal http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/vol22no3/malawi2.jpg

Peruvian government forces attack indigenous protesters defending their ancestral lands. PHOTO: Thomas Quirynen

As Peru wakes up this morning, many will decide whether to engage in strikes to stand against “free trade” and support indigenous people of the Amazon who were tragically attacked last week by their government. The official death toll from last week’s police attack on indigenous people in Peru is 30 lives lost, though it is estimated that many more have died. They died while protesting the harmful impact of the US-Peru Free Trade Agreement on their forests, their families, and their ancestral lands.

When viewed from outer space, one might say that the main objective of the human race since the Industrial Revolution has been to develop. “Development” is a sacred word to your local town hall, the sounding floor of the UN, and micro-financiers from Ghana to Sri Lanka.

And we’ve been very good developers. We’ve built everything to make us go faster, longer, and stronger, from malls to missiles to microchips. The standard of living of the average person in the US has increased to include all the standard comforts that may have been afforded by your typical feudal lord from England or Japan. Yet, if you take a more nuanced view of humans, and actually ask one of us, “What is the goal of your life?” The answer you usually get is something that boils down to “I just want happiness.”

Do our developments lead to happiness?

In an insightful New York Times column, Daniel Gilbert says that happiness levels in the US have decreased since the before the global economic collapse that we’ve been experiencing for the past eight months. But he makes the important distinction that human happiness is not really in flux according to increased or decreased wealth. The real reason that the economic collapse has impacted happiness has more to to with uncertainty. He writes:

But light wallets are not the cause of our heavy hearts. After all, most of us still have more inflation-adjusted dollars than our grandparents had, and they didn’t live in an unremitting funk. Middle-class Americans still enjoy more luxury than upper-class Americans enjoyed a century earlier, and the fin de siècle was not an especially gloomy time. Clearly, people can be perfectly happy with less than we had last year and less than we have now.

So if a dearth of dollars isn’t making us miserable, then what is? No one knows. I don’t mean that no one knows the answer to this question. I mean that the answer to this question is that no one knows — and not knowing is making us sick.

So it is actually financial uncertainty, not the decrease in our bank accounts that is making us unhappy. Gilbert concludes:

Our national gloom is real enough, but it isn’t a matter of insufficient funds. It’s a matter of insufficient certainty. Americans have been perfectly happy with far less wealth than most of us have now, and we could quickly become those Americans again — if only we knew we had to.

Happiness has nothing to do with the fact that the average American is less able to engage in highly consumptive activities like going to Disneyland or stuffing their closets with unneeded fashion and accessories.

So why has our global society spent the last 150 years seeking more and more stuff, leisure, and comfort, like we’re on some crazy global joy ride? Not to make us happier, that’s for sure. We can be perfectly happy without a bull market, a trust fund, or land holdings. And for most of us, who aren’t among the rich and famous, that’s something to smile about.

- Lacy MacAuley

The proposed Panama trade plan would harm intact, ecologically sustainable communities like that of the Kuna indians. Photo source: www.lizasreef.com

People and planet should come before profits, but the proposed Panama trade plan would mean greed rules. The Senate Finance committee is meeting tomorrow to discuss the proposed Panama Trade Promotion Agreement. Top trade negotiator Ron Kirk is trying to ram through this agreement by July 1, when the Panamanian head of state Martin Torrijos leaves office. But this is just another free trade agreement that is bad for the people of Panama, it’s bad for the planet, and it’s no good for people of the US. We should call upon Congress to stop it now.

There’s a rancher that I know who raises cattle in the Chiriqui province of Panama, who I’ll only call Uncle Rickie. I met Uncle Rickie when I traveled to Panama in November of 2008, and I remember him for being a jolly fellow with a big belly who proudly bounced his new granddaughter Antonia, his first grandchild, on his knee.

If the Panama agreement went forward, Uncle Rickie would have to contend with a host of difficulties. The first would be that US cattle ranchers, who enjoy hundreds of millions in subsidies from the US government (US livestock farmers got handouts of about $344 million in 2003, for example,) would suddenly be able to sell duty-free to Panamanians. At the same time, Uncle Rickie will have to compete with a dramatic influx of cheap pork products from the US. Pro-pork lobbyists think that increased sales to Panama will result in $20.6 million in increased revenue. Uncle Rickie will have a lot of trouble making a profit by selling his beef to the Panamanian market, and eventually he may have to sell his land.

Farmers should be allowed to sell to their local markets. Local, living economies are good for everyone. If officials pass the harmful agreement, farmers like Uncle Rickie will no longer be able to carry on farming. Who would be there to buy the land of farmers who are forced to sell? Companies from the US and other rich nations, and maybe some wealthy Panamanians who support this agreement. This leads to a consolidation of power and decision-making as fewer people own more and more of planet earth. But people have a right to self-determination and autonomy, and the Panamanian government should respect that right.

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My feet are sore, my voice is scratchy, my dishes are piled high. I’ve just completed another fantastic weekend to give voice to global justice.

I’d been organizing these actions with Global Justice Action, a fantastic and spirited group in the Washington DC area, for five months. We planned a weekend of action April 24-26 to oppose the neoliberalist agenda during the bi-annual meetings held between two very destructive organizations, the IMF and the World Bank. I helped with some of the more colorful tasks, such as throwing a fundraiser and driving around to “liberate” sign-making materials, but my main role in the group was to help with the media outreach.

About three weeks before our actions, G20 decision-makers met to address the global economic crisis. Ridiculously, they decided that they would address the crisis by prescribing more of the bad medicine that got us into this mess in the first place. They decided they would work to give the IMF another $1.1 trillion in funds - sort of like deciding to give a drug dealer control of the rehab.

Neoliberalist policies that the IMF is built upon push countries’ economies further into the hole, and make the lives of people in the Third World a lot harder. Whether in the name of economic growth or human development, the IMF’s fundamental role is highly problematic. Most countries would be better off if the IMF had never stepped in at all.

The IMF’s failings are one reason not to choose them to bail us out. But there are other absurdities in choosing to fund them in our time of need. The IMF is a bank like any other, not a charity organization. It makes its billions off of the interest it collects when it makes emergency loans to countries who find themselves in crisis… why would it be to the IMF’s benefit to try to help countries toward long-term sustainability?

This proposed boon of $1.1 trillion to the IMF, as frustrating as it was, gave our planned actions that much more significance. We were able to quickly pivot our messaging to include not only broad condemnation for these institutions, but to oppose the $1.1 trillion. We incorporated these concepts into messaging for all of our creative forms of resistance - the 5K Run on the Bank, the punk show, the roving exercise-themed dance party, the People’s Economic Forum (eight hours of our own solutions to the economic crisis!), the family-friendly march, and more.

We wound up with a very high volume of press coverage for the weekend, including several major print outlets such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, and all major TV news outlets such as ABC, CNN, and Fox News. It was nice to know that our impact was enhanced through these venues.

The outcome? Global decision-makers and the world got a clear message that the global justice movement is back.

~ Lacy MacAuley

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