Even as we prepare for the gigantic fall mobilization at the IMF/World Bank annual meetings in Washington, I find myself most excited about returning home to Kenya next week for the first time in nearly two years. It's not just getting to see family and old friends that has me so excited, though that's a key part of it. What is really making my heart sing is the opportunity to be part of the first East African Regional Seminar on Debt.

I get to combine family and work, for my mother, Lilian Njehû, is one of the key organizers of the Seminar in Nairobi. My mother, who has been an activist for social and environmental justice for as long as I can remember, is my mentor and role model. In December last year, she represented the Interfaith Group Kenya, a member of the Jubilee 2000 debt campaign, at the Dakar (Senegal) 2000 Pan-African conference on debt. For the first time I got to attend a conference with my mother as one of her peers. It was in the East Africa caucuses in Dakar that the need for a seminar like next week’s was recognized, and that she offered to recommend that the Interfaith Group Kenya serve as host.

The idea that was birthed in Dakar will be realized next week. I'm very grateful to the friends and supporters who have helped make it possible for me to be able to go to Nairobi for the Seminar. The 50 Years Is Enough Network Steering Committee agreed to support the East African initiative by allowing me to assist in fundraising. To raise funds for the Seminar, I had the invaluable support of Steering Committee members Susan Thompson of the Columban Justice and Peace Office and Hanna Petros of Ustawi in Seattle (who was also in Dakar), as well as Sister Ellen Lynch, CSC of the Sisters of the Holy Cross and Jere Locke, a former Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya and debt and fair trade activist from Texas (who was in Dakar too). It has been a team effort and I feel honored to have been a participant.

The 50 Years Is Enough Network has long believed that it is the role of activists in the U.S. and other parts of the North to put pressure on their governments and the international financial institutions, which act as agents for Northern governments. We believe that this approach, in solidarity with our colleagues' work in the Global South, is a winning strategy. Our colleagues in the Global South push their governments to change and address the internal problems which, combined with the agenda of corporate-led globalization, exacerbates poverty and injustice. North and South, East and West, we are united in our demands for global justice. We demand this of governments everywhere; the international financial institutions (IMF and World Bank); multilateral institutions (United Nations agencies, the World Trade Organization, regional development banks, etc); multinational corporations; and the various agents and agencies which without our consent and without accountability make the rules of the global economy which continue to shape our lives and influence those of generations to come.

The cornerstone of these efforts is education, broadly defined to include reaching both decision-makers and the general public. The facts speak for themselves: the current socio-economic, militaristic political system does not work for the majority of the world's peoples. In fact it is weighted against us and has proven detrimental to our well-being on many levels. At the same time people around the world keep demonstrating their resistance to oppression and showing their commitment to justice. The current system, people everywhere keep saying, in many different voices and ways, is not anywhere near the best that is possible. There are treatments, even cures, for diseases, that don't reach the sick because it wouldn't be profitable enough. In the words of one of my favorite posters, military systems "can deliver weapons around the world in minutes", but not water and food to people in need. People in some countries are considered "unaccustomed" to high standards of living and therefore receive lower quality services in refugee camps than people from some other countries. Some people because of skin color, accident of geography, gender or socio-economic class, or the type of government/leadership in their countries, deserve more, less, or no consideration. And the list goes on. It has been called global apartheid.

The East African Regional Seminar on Debt is for me a tremendously encouraging sign, growing as it does from discussions at a Pan-African conference in Senegal, and taking as its challenge regional capacity-building and greater cooperation among debt campaigns in an entire region facing many related political and economic challenges. The growing number of South-South exchanges are fostering a consciousness in the South that the challenges are not limited to one's own country or one's own region, but are the consequence of a global economic system that oppresses all of the countries of the Global South, and, not incidentally, large segments of the population in the North as well.

The Last IMF/World Bank Meetings?!

Of course there are plenty of other things to do! I anticipate that even while I'm in Nairobi, I'll be spending a fair amount of time on the telephone and e-mail to stay on top of plans for the fall mobilization.

Some people are already referring to the 2001 joint annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank in Washington as their "last meetings." In most cases it's probably a rhetorical gesture to point to the institutions’ antiquated role, or to the power of the movement opposing them and the anticipated strength of the planned demonstrations.

But suddenly it actually seems possible that these will be their last meetings. I'm not predicting total victory for our movement in three monthsÕ time; but I do believe it is possible that we'll have made these institutions unpopular enough that no city will want to host them.

Why do I think this? Because the massive demonstrations we helped organize at the institutions' spring meetings in AprilA 2000 woke up a lot of people in the U.S. to what the IMF and World Bank, sitting right in Washington but hardly known to most North Americans, do in the rest of the world. Because in Prague, site of the 2000 annual meetings, officials decided to close the three-day meetings a day early in light of massive demonstrations and a virtual surrender to the protestersÕ success in challenging the institutions to defend the poverty, environmental destruction, and loss of sovereignty which accompany their interventions (the final day was recently and silently dropped from this year's schedule). Because in May of this year, the World Bank cancelled its prestigious annual conference on development issues rather than confront protests in Barcelona.

And finally, and most significantly, because of the news on July 10 that the IMF and World Bank have decided to shift the location of the bulk of their meetings from large hotels in a residential Washington neighborhood to their own buildings in downtown Washington. The reason given was not fear of protests, but rather complaints from residents of the area near the hotels. This is no fabrication: for perhaps a dozen years, residents of the Woodley Park neighborhood have complained bitterly about the invasion of limousines that accompanies each annual meeting. With limousines trucked in from the surrounding area, and reportedly even as far away as New Jersey, residents have coined the term "limo-lock" for their annual days of frustration. At a Woodley Park community meeting a few weeks ago, the police chief gave a presentation and found that the majority of the concerns expressed were not about the protesters but rather about limo-lock. In this respect, at least, the move downtown is long overdue.

In Prague, World Bank President James Wolfensohn commented that the institutions might have to meet less frequently (they now meet twice annually, with the fall meeting being the larger affair) or find a way of "meeting" on the Internet. The Barcelona meeting was replaced by an eight-hour global "webcast" covering the same topics that would have been included in the live sessions. Now that the institutions have shown that their meetings are cancel-able and relocate-able, the commitment of economic justice activists to keep them moving and canceling will likely gain momentum.

However, the rule makers of the global economy should and must understand, this movement is not about meetings in a physical space. Rather the issues at hand are the policies, practices, and programs of the agencies and agents that implement their vision and priorities of our world. We do not share their vision or priorities, especially when the articulation - the rhetoric - belies the reality or results. Actions do speak louder than words, so all the reports and talk about poverty reduction and growth; wanting to "break the chains of debt" (Wolfensohn actually said this at the 1999 annual meetings in Washington); talk about fighting HIV/AIDs in Africa and a gigantic red AIDs ribbon adorning a World Bank building; reports and talk about women; or changing the name of the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (ESAF) to the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) mean nothing if policies do not change. We continue to do our homework and to evaluate each announced change in policy or approach to see whether it truly is something new or just a repackaging of the same old stuff. And we continue to be disappointed.

Gearing Up for the Fall Mobilization: Sep. 26 - Oct. 3

The preparations for the fall mobilization shifted into high gear in June with a meeting of some 70 national and regional activist organizations with an interest in globalization issues. This meeting was convened by the 50 Years Is Enough Network and Jobs with Justice and hosted by the AFL-CIO. It brought together community-based organizations, labor unions, immigrant rights organizations, fair trade advocates, churches and religious organizations, youth organizations, and various human and economic rights campaign groups. For two days we discussed strategies for working together more closely, not only to make the events in September and October successful, but also to secure concrete victories and continue to build the movement for global justice. It was heartening and empowering to strategize together and affirm our collective commitment to transform the rules of the global economy from profit-driven to people-centered.

Those attending the June meeting agreed to three goals for short-term concrete victories: 1) the defeat of President Bush's campaign for "fast-track" trade negotiating authority and with it the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) "free trade" agreement (which was the target of demonstrators in April in Québec City); 2) the prevention of a new round of negotiations and adoption of a General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) at the World Trade Organization (WTO); and 3) the immediate cancellation of 100% of the debt claimed by the IMF and World Bank from impoverished countries, to be accomplished from the institutions' own resources and without externally-imposed conditions.

We also agreed to support the fall actions for Washington that were being sponsored by the various organizations represented: an Immigrant Rights March on September 26; a "Behind the Label" anti-sweatshop action focusing on clothing retailers on September 28; a 2-day teach-in on the IMF, World Bank, and globalization (Sept. 27-29); the direct action at the September 30 IMF meeting; and a large rally the same day at the Ellipse behind the White House. The Teach-In is in lieu of the 50 Years Is Enough Network's international activists' conference and is one of the key events that we will work on; we are also working on a "touring teach-in" in the U.S. and Canada in the three weeks before the mobilization. If you are part of an organization or university that might be interested in hosting a half- or full- day teach-in, please call or write us as soon as possible to see if we might be able to collaborate.

The Mobilization for Global Justice (MGJ), which brings together many talented Washington activists, is in full swing, with working groups on the direct action, trainings, logistics, educational programs, and many more meeting on a weekly basis. We were founding members and continue to work within the MGJ and with national, regional, and international allies and partners to make the September/October actions in Washington the biggest, most powerful, and most effective demonstrations for economic justice yet.

Come to Washington, DC from September 26 - October 4, 2001. Organize a solidarity action in your community. Educate yourself and others about the issues and struggles for global justice. Take a stand for the planet and for the world's oppressed peoples. Speak truth to power - remember the words of Fredrick Douglass "power concedes nothing without a demand". Demand justice for all.

Our Demands and Our Future

The 50 Years Is Enough Network "Demands of the IMF and World Bank" on pages 8 and 9 of this issue of Economic Justice News represent our platform for the fall actions. I believe we have never been closer to achieving these goals, especially the calls for transparency and debt cancellation. When I think back to where things stood when the 50 Years Is Enough campaign was founded in 1994, I realize that the progress that has been made is truly remarkable. I remind myself of this every so often, and recognize that our goals, however grand they might sound, truly are achievable. It is on my trips to the Global South that I am freshly reminded of the urgency of meeting those goals. Here in the North it has been an exhilarating time, to be sure, but it is the knowledge that the exhilaration felt in the South is matched by a sense of outrage and exasperation at all that has already been allowed to happen that keeps me working toward that day of genuine justice I feel confident we will make happen.

I am proud and privileged to work with so many committed people who articulate and share the vision of global justice that includes (but is not limited to) immediate debt cancellation; sustainable livelihoods; an end to domestic and international structural adjustment; environmental protection; an end to sweatshop labor; global food security; people-centered and people-driven priorities; an end to corporate welfare; respect of human and labor rights; gender justice; and much more. Our work and challenge is clear and monumental. Much is at stake, but "we have nothing to lose, but our chains."