On Sunday, April 16, 2000, about 30,000 people converged on Washington DC to create the largest protest ever in the U.S. against the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, the two multilateral financial institutions that create and impose the rules of corporate globalization on the countries of Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia. The occasion was the semi-annual joint meetings of the institutions ˜ and the rapidly emerging consciousness among U.S. activists of the horrific dimensions of the global economy. That economy, they‚ve learned, is largely controlled by frequently-obscure institutional, governmental, and corporate powers based in this country.

  This consciousness had emerged most dramatically in Seattle at the World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial conference in November-December 1999. The Washington actions were conceived as a deliberate follow-up, a way to build on the momentum and confidence established in Seattle. But its targets were hardly less worthy than the WTO; indeed, the IMF and World Bank have been around 50 years longer, and have a damning track record of creating destructions and poverty in nearly all the countries of the Global South. The tremendous success we achieved in Washington in April ˜ measured by numbers, the spirits of solidarity and purpose, media attention, and responses from our targets and from new constituencies ˜ revealed to the public and the media a more comprehensive picture of how the global economy as currently structured deliberately creates death, desperate poverty, instability, and insecurity for billions of people so that a relatively small number may continue to amass profits and power.

FULL COVERAGE OF THE MOBILIZATION FOR GLOBAL JUSTICE in this issue of ECONOMIC JUSTICE NEWS