After massive protests at the WTO summit in Seattle last November-December, and in Washington for the April IMF/World Bank meetings, the movement for global justice and against corporate globalization moves to Europe this fall. Europeans have, in recent years, a richer history of large demonstrations for progressive causes than the U.S. does.

As we go to press, our colleague Soren Ambrose is arriving in Prague, where he joins thousands of other activists for events related to the annual meeting of the IMF and the World Bank. It is five months since the historic April mobilization at the semi-annual meetings of the Bretton Woods institutions and 10 months since the protests at the WTO Ministerial in Seattle.

On September 26, 2000, across the US and in countries around the world, activists will prove that the days when the meetings of powerful international finance institutions could go unnoticed and when the policies of these institutions were unchallenged are decidedly over.

In the last issue of "Economic Justice News," Nancy Alexander and Charles Abugre wrote about the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) and its role in "whitewashing [the] blackmail" practiced by the IMF and World Bank. That blackmail, of course, is the package of economic conditions the institutions coerce governments into accepting as part of structural adjustment programs. The whitewash is the new program designed to convince us that the countries, including civil society organizations, are designing – asking for – the economic policies that have devastated nation after nation.

Reeling from widespread criticism, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and US Treasury officials have conceded that their policies have not benefited the world‚s poor. Yet they continue to claim that IMF and World Bank policies have been "pro-growth," and that the only question to consider is how to make sure that the poor share in the gains from globalization.

Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) was created by the World Bank in September 1985 for the broadly defined purpose of "enhanc[ing] the flow to developing countries of capital and technology for productive purposes under conditions consistent with their developmental needs, policies and objectives, on the basis of fair and stable standards for the treatment of foreign investment."

This past year has generated a lot of excitement and progress in the quest for global economic justice. An unprecedented number of people in the U.S. have publicly demonstrated to demand that the process of globalization benefit workers, communities, and the environment. The question of how to keep the public interested and keep the momentum going is one that thousands of activist organizations are asking.

The World Social Forum will be a new international arena for the creation and exchange of social and economic projects that promote human rights, social justice and sustainable development.

The Dakar 2000 Summit on Debt will convene in Senegal this December 11th through the 17th to gather activists from organizations in Africa and around the world who reject the condition of the African debt. The Jubilee 2000 Campaign, which demanded the cancellation of the impoverished countries' debt, added new energy to the decades-long debt cancellation movement and has mobilized millions of people world-wide.

As the anti-corporate globalization movement has gained momentum over the last year, many active groups realized that educating themselves and others about the global economy is an important task that must be an ongoing process.

The Jubilee 2000 Campaign, a global movement of coalitions of civil society organizations in both indebted and creditor countries, has been campaigning for the cancellation of all unpayable and illegitimate debts burdening the countries of the global South.