[WSF-Discuss] [Fwd: [Iwc] Fwd: Building hemispheric unity from below... Americas Social Forum & Economic Crisis]

Sat Nov 1 06:37:22 UCT 2008

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	[Iwc] Fwd: Building hemispheric unity from below... Americas 
Social Forum & Economic Crisis
Date: 	Sat, 1 Nov 2008 10:39:04 +0530
From: 	Meena Menon <meenamen at gmail.com>
To: 	iwc at wsfindia.net <iwc at wsfindia.net>, igc at wsfindia.net 
<igc at wsfindia.net>
References: 	<GMEOLPFFFABEMLDFIPIOOEDDECAA.wkatzfishman at igc.org>

*From: *Grassroots Global Justice <michael.leonguerrero at gmail.com 
<mailto:michael.leonguerrero at gmail.com>>

*Date: *

October 29, 2008 9:16:35 AM PDT

*To: *

membership at lists.ggjalliance.org <mailto:membership at lists.ggjalliance.org>

*Subject: [GGJ America's Social Forum delegation] Building hemispheric 
unity from below...*

*Building hemispheric unity from below... *
Jerome Scott & Walda Katz-Fishman

In the 21st century we're fighting a global enemy; and, therefore, we 
are going to have to have a global movement.

Americas Social Forum 3 – a convergence of hemispheric struggles
We gathered 7,000 strong at the Americas Social Forum 3 (ASF3) in 
Guatemala City in a dynamic convergence of social movements of the 
hemisphere. We gathered in an historic moment of deep structural global 
economic crisis; intensifying war, militarism and repression; social 
destruction of our communities; and ecological crisis threatening the 
survival of the planet. The power of Indigenous struggles for 
sovereignty and mother earth; of women and working class feminist 
struggles against patriarchy, militarism and violence; of compesina/o 
struggles for land and life; and of student and youth struggles for 
their future was highly visible throughout the social forum.

Guatemala has been the site of centuries of imperialist domination and 
U.S. intervention and occupation – including the U.S. overthrow of 
democratically elected President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman in 1954 in the 
name of anti-communism. The Guatemalan people suffered decades of 
U.S.-backed civil war in which revolutionaries and the left experienced 
huge losses. Guatemalan women today are confronting widespread femicide, 
with 100s of women murdered every year. The ASF3 Facilitation Committee 
was determined that this historic memory and these realities be lifted 
up, as well as the ongoing struggles of Guatemala's social movements,

The task of building hemispheric unity – as a strategic next step in 
building the global anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movement from 
below that envisions another world and has the collective power to make 
it happen – is central. The peoples of the hemisphere are tied together 
by a long history of genocide of Indigenous peoples, enslavement of 
African-descent peoples, and exploitation and oppression of the working 
classes and the women of these classes and peoples. Part of the 
international responsibility of U.S. social movements is to stay the 
hand of U.S. empire and war in the hemisphere and globally.

The current moment and capitalism's global economic crisis: the system 
is broken

What was especially important about the participation of U.S. social 
movements in the ASF3 was our discussions with the hemispheric social 
movements about the economic crisis coming from the U.S. and spreading 
throughout the world, and its meaning for our struggle for another 
world. In the early centuries of global capitalism, capital's drive for 
primitive accumulation of wealth though military conquest, theft of land 
and resources, and exploitation of labor (slave labor and wage labor) 
was the common tie of working peoples of the Americas. In the late 20th 
and early 21st centuries, global capitalism's application of new 
technologies and tools (computers, robots, etc.) to production, 
distribution and communication and new forms of financial instruments 
and speculation again link our peoples in life or death struggles. 
Today's economic meltdown and our growing unemployment and poverty 
reflect a deep structural crisis of global capitalism, not a cyclical 
crisis from which there will be full recovery and new prosperity.

In the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, as production took a leap forward with the 
application of electronics – computers, robots, automation, 
digitization, etc. – global capital and global corporations could no 
longer make maximum profits the same old way, i.e., from the 
exploitation of labor in the productive process. Workers, with their 
labor, are the only commodity that produces new value. And, what 
determines the value of commodities is the socially necessary labor time 
contained in them. With fewer and fewer workers needed in production, 
capital turned to other ways of maximizing profit, especially 
speculative capital, which is the basis of neoliberal policies.

These realities gave rise to the neoliberal assault on working people 
and the environment in the developing and eventually the developed 
countries. Through privatization, deregulation, and destruction of the 
social safety net, infrastructure, and public services, capital was able 
to set in motion a global race to the bottom; to transfer public 
dollars, public land, and public property to private ownership, market 
forces, and new sources for profit; and to renew the centuries old 
appropriation of land and natural resources from Indigenous peoples 
across the globe.

Till the 1970s the U.S. economy was 90% real economy (production in 
auto, steel, rubber, etc.) and 10% speculative economy (speculation in 
complex financial instruments). By the 1990s this was reversed: 10% in 
the real economy and 90% in the speculative economy. Throughout this 
period the continual expansion of credit (along with growing debt), 
allowed for the expansion of the market.

By the 21st century even these processes could not generate sufficient 
profits to satisfy global capital, resulting in the creation of even 
more exotic and toxic financial instruments – hedge funds, derivatives, 
packaging and sale of mortgages including subprimes, credit default 
swaps, etc. – in an orgy of speculation. Together speculation and credit 
created a widening gap between the price of commodities and the amount 
of value contained in them, resulting in bubbles bursting, financial 
meltdowns, and a freeze on credit.

Given the crisis on Wall Street and the global financial sector that 
peaked in 2008, global capital and its governments were faced with a 
decision: the biggest bailout in world history and transfer of taxpayer 
dollars to private corporations or the financial collapse of global 
capitalism. The U.S. government stepped up with the bailout of Fannie 
Mae and Freddie Mac, biggest U.S. home mortgage holders; brokered sales 
of Wachovia and Washington Mutual, and investment bank Bear Stearns 
(while Lehman Brothers went bankrupt); and bailout of AIG, world's 
largest insurance company, etc. To date the price tag for the U.S. 
people is over $1 trillion, and over $2 trillion for the world's peoples.

With all this money flowing, none of it is going to the working class 
and the poor. And, in this stage of global capitalism, each successive 
economic crisis will be deeper, wider, and more destructive than the 
previous one. Capitalism will not collapse on its own, it will not 
transform into a socialist economy, but it will and is transforming into 
a fascist state. The criminalization of social movements and our 
challenge to global capitalism is the threat they are preparing for, 
propaganda notwithstanding, with more prisons, new repressive laws, new 
concentration camps, and domestic deployment of military forces. While 
global capital moves toward fascism, we as social movements move toward 
an anti-capitalist transformative vision and collective liberation.

Hemispheric unity building toward global movement

Global capital – our global enemy – knows what its for. The question is, 
do we know what we're fighting for and how we're going to get there?

Global and hemispheric social movements have used the social forum 
process to gather, to dialogue, to vision, and to chart the path 
forward. We, as U.S. social movements, have participated in that process 
and organized the US Social Forum in 2007 to form deeper relationships, 
unity, and internationalism; build movement infrastructure; and advance 
our vision and struggle.

The ASF3 was a powerful moment and convergence. From throughout the 
hemisphere social movements of those most oppressed and exploited were 
in the leadership. There was much discussion about the electoral and 
governmental forms throughout Latin America and especially of the ALBA – 
the Venezuela-led alternative to the "free trade" model of global 
capitalism, including the Bank of the South.

A question that came up time and again was: "What do we mean by 
socialism in the 21st century?" Socialism, a cooperative society, is the 
next stage of human history. The challenge to our social movements is to 
vision the content of this society. For U.S. social movements this is 
the next step.

Critical related questions include: "What does Indigenous sovereignty 
look like in the 21st century with many contending forces for land and 
resources?" And "How do social movements insure the visibility and 
participation of African-descent struggles in the hemisphere?"

Joel Suarez of the Martin Luther King Center in La Havana, Cuba 
observed: "The US Social Forum and this forum mark the closing of the 
loop in U.S. participation in the Americas social movements. Now we can 
truly talk about a process of the Americas."

Only we, as conscious and visionary forces within and with the social 
movements, can finish capitalism off. The future is up to us. Make it 
happen.

--
Posted By Grassroots Global Justice to GGJ America's Social Forum 
delegation 
<http://ggjalliance.blogspot.com/2008/10/building-hemispheric-unity-from-below.html> 
at 10/29/2008 09:07:00 AM

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

another world is possible! another US is necessary!

we are making our history!

walda katz-fishman

301.367.1079

wkatzfishman at igc.org <mailto:wkatzfishman at igc.org> 

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