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TOES Brunswick '04 Program Abstracts
June 8-10, 2004Coastal Georgia Community College
3700 Altama Ave.
Brunswick, GA 31520-3644
http://www.cgcc.edu/
The 2004 TOES conference will be held upstairs in the multi-purpose room at the Coastal Georgia Community College Gymnasium. Several classrooms will be available for breakout session, press interviews, etc. The will take place in tents which will be set up on the athletic field.
TUESDAY, JUNE 8, 2004
UNACCEPTABLE COSTS OF GLOBALIZATION AND EMPIRE
If "globalization is inevitable," why does it require military might,
including a "war against terrorism" and increasing corporate power
and government interventions to effect this transition?
Has the current impetus to global empire undermined international law
and human rights? Has the logic of redemptive violence (the gods
favor those who conquer) become a self-fulfilling prophesy that
creates more violence? Is the logic of empire in conflict with all
spiritual traditions and human rights standards?
The G8, and the American Congress, should create investigative
commissions into the atrocities of the 'war on terrorism' and start
down a new path toward an inclusive and democratically open approach
to world peacekeeping.
9:00 - 10 am, June 8, 2004 Welcoming Ceremony
- Susan Hunt -- Welcome
- Pastor Zack Lyde - Invocation, recognition of local organizers
- Trent Schroyer - Introduction of Walter Wink
10 - 11:00 am, June 8, 2004 (PLENARY ADDRESS)
"GLOBALIZATION AND EMPIRE: WE HAVE MET THE EVIL EMPIRE AND IT IS US" Walter Wink
"We will test the value of a theological perspective simple enough for most people to utilize to understand and engage the Powers That Be. Quite simply, the Powers are good, the Powers are fallen, the Powers can be transformed. This framework makes possible a critique of domination that can be applied to the confluence of 'globalization from above' and American imperialism. Like two converging glaciers slowly mingling with each other, these massive forces have created the greatest concentration of economic and political power the world has ever known. Can it be humanized?"
Walter Wink is Professor of Biblical Interpretation, Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City. Previously, he was a parish minister and taught at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. In 1989-1990 he was a Peace Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace. The author of many books, including the award winning Engaging the Powers and The Human Being: Jesus and the Enigma of the Son of the Man, Walter and his wife June Keener Wink have led peace workshops all over the United States and Canada, as well as in New Zealand, South Africa, Chile, South Korea, East and West Germany, England, Scotland and Ireland.
11 - 12 noon, June 8, 2004
UNACCEPTABLE COSTS OF GLOBALIZATION AND EMPIRE
Facilitator: Trent Schroyer
- Ward Morehouse, Co-Founder, Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy (POCLAD), President of the Council on International and Public Affairs (CIPA), and Former Chair of TOES/USA. "Unacceptable Costs of Globalization and Empire"
The current impetus to global empire has undermined international law and human rights. The logic of redemptive violence is a self-fulfilling prophesy and is in conflict with all spiritual traditions and human rights standards.We call on the G8 and the American Congress to create investigative commissions into the atrocities of the 'war on terrorism' and a new path to an inclusive and democratically open approach to world peacekeeping.
- Jason Mark, Communications Director and Ford Campaigner, Global Exchange. "Oil Addiction and Empire"
- Maureen A. Kane, "All 168 Countries Need a Voice"Raw materials are mined in Africa. South America is a source of oil, food stuffs and timber. Both oil and labor come from the Middle East. Manufacturing takes place in Central America. The new countries in the former USSR are a source of both raw materials and labor. In China, work is done by children. All these countries deserve a voice. And respect (re = again, respect = look at these people openly). They also deserve to share in decision-making, to be a part of the economic community, and to share profits with their people, including their women and children. They deserve medical care, education, shelter, food, and above all, respect.
12 noon - 1:15 pm - LUNCH
12 noon, Tuesday, June 8, 2004
JUBILEE USA PRESS CONFERENCE
The press conference will feature religious leaders speaking from their faith traditions about prophetic call for debt cancellation for impoverished nations. Speakers will also address current conditions in Africa, and the need for debt cancellation in light of the global HIV/AIDS pandemic. Jubilee USA Network will also unveil a photo display at the event containing hundreds of photos of people of faith and conscience from across the United States, Europe, and elsewhere with messages to the G-8 leaders.
- Marie Clarke, National Coordinator, Jubilee USA Network
- Adam Taylor, Associate Minister, Shiloh Baptist Church; Board member, Jubilee USA, Washington, DC
- Barbara Kalima, Director, AFRODAD, Zimbabwe
- Rev. Tim McDonald, Concerned Black Clergy, Atlanta, Ga. (invited)
- Rev. Fred D. Taylor, Coordinator of Direct Action for the National office of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (invited)
- Pastor Zack Lyde, Brunswick, Ga. (invited)
1:15 - 2:45 pm, June 8, 2004
"NONVIOLENCE FOR THE VIOLENT " (WORKSHOP)
Facilitator: Walter Wink
This is a workshop for those of us who would like to become nonviolent in both our personal and social lives, but who doubt our ability to achieve it. Jesus, Gandhi, and King show us how to engage in nonviolent struggle without becoming violent ourselves; how to overcome domination without becoming dominators; and how to become spiritual activists without being turned into the very thing we hate.
2:45 - 3:30 pm - FROM THE G8 TO AFRICA TO YOU
3-day track sponsored by OXFAMFacilitors: Njoki Njehu and Neil Watkins
- Barbara M. Kalima, an Economist and social activist, is the current Director of AFRODAD (African Forum and Network on Debt and Development) based in Harare, Zimbabwe.
Ms. Kalima has extensive experience in working on debt, poverty and sustainable development issues in Africa. She has been instrumental in campaigning for debt cancellation for the third world countries, with special mobilisation efforts in Zambia. In 1998, she established and coordinated the Zambia Debt Project under the auspices of the Jesuit Center for Theological Reflection (JCTR) and Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP).
She has done research on development issues with the USAID, World Bank, Ministry of Education in Zambia, University of Zambia, ESSET in South Africa, former SAPES Trust in Zimbabwe and various NGOs both in Africa and outside.
Her published work includes research papers in Globalisering Hur Da (2002) and the Church's Search for Economic Justice (2002). She has written and presented academic, semi-academic and Teach-In papers/articles in various fora including high level government meetings and the UN General Assembly and UN ECOSOC.
Ms. Kalima has been very active in lobbying and advocating for positive policy change on the African Debt crisis. She is among the many anti-debt activists in the world who are deeply concerned about
how the debt problem has crippled most African economies and causing so much suffering for the poor. She strongly believes that each one of us has a key role to play in defining the path to our own development including the search for sustainable solutions to the many development challenges that the world is facing today. She believes that one day Africa will truly liberate itself!
3:30 - 5:00 pm, June 8, 2004
THE STRUGGLE FOR FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS AND ACADEMIC FREEDOM (PANEL)
Facilitator: Naomi Archer, Save Our Civil Liberties
- Carol Bass, Georgia Coalition for Peace and Justice
- Naomi Archer, Save Our Civil Liberties
- Steckley Lee, National Lawyers Guild
- Sohrab Rabii, University of Pennsylvania. "Academic Freedom"
5:00 - 7:00 pm - DINNER BREAK
7:00 - 7:30 pm, June 8, 2004 - EVENING SESSION
THE RAGING GRANDEES OF SAVANNAH, GA
Margaret B Betz, and a new singing group
7:30 - 9:30 pm, June 8, 2004 - EVENING SESSION
THE COST OF EMPIRE
Facilitator: Ward Morehouse, TOES
- Loretta Ross, National Center for Human Rights Education, Atlanta. "Human Rights and the Costs of Globalization and Empire"
- Jurgen Brauer, Professor of Economics, ECAAR."US Military Expenditure." US military expenditure in historical
perspective, how we measure and mismeasure that number, what it costs beyond the budgetary numbers, what it buys and does not buy, and how US spending stacks up in international comparison.
- Barbara M. Kalima, an Economist and social activist, is the current Director of AFRODAD (African Forum and Network on Debt and Development) based in Harare, Zimbabwe. "The Impact of G8 Policies on Africa" (for abstract, see 2:45 above).
Wednesday, June 9, 2004
STEPS TO ENVIRONMENTAL AND ECONOMIC SUSTAINABILITY
What are the costs of "globalization" -- and who bears them? It has been said that the earth's resources are adequate for everyone's need but not for their greed. What are the major sources of intensifying global inequality and increased environmental degradation? How are the risks and the costs transferred, and to whom?
We call on the G8 to face the truth about trends toward increasing economic inequality and ecological disaster and take the following concrete steps:
- put community rights and the earth's sustainability before corporate profit;
- turn to reducing the ecological footprint of the rich on the poor;
- to stop promoting 'catch-up' development for poorer countries, and
instead protect productive ecosystems because they are assets
essential to the livelihoods of the poor.
9:00 - 10 am, June 9, 2004
- George Friday: "Building a Winning Movement: Facing the Challenge of Racism" Introduced by Pastor Zack Lyde.
10 am - 12 noon, June 9, 2004
REVITALIZING THE GLOBAL COMMONS
Facilitator: Trent Schroyer, TOES
- Carolyn Toll Oppenheim, Public Purpose Communications. "Folk Music, the Public Domain, and the Cultural Commons"
What does it mean to own a song?" asks Pete Seeger. The current expansion of copyright law and intellectual property protection leaves fewer creative works in the "public domain" and is closing down the "cultural commons" -- our collective musical heritage. For example, if a group of fifty or more Girl Scouts sings Happy Birthday, the Girl Scouts can be sued! Songs have historically evolved through a "folk process," a term used by Pete's musicologist father Charles Seeger to describe how cultures are continually reborn.
Songs from all over the world are in the public domain. These songs continue to be used by contemporary recording artists and record companies as sources of inspiration for new songs, but are now more frequently copyrighted by the artist and taken out of the public domain. Other songs, that are creative works of artists in other countries or sub-cultures, like prisoners, or working class people, have been adapted and arranged and copyrighted by North American artists who sometimes don't even know their origins. It is important to recognize and honor the original sources of lyric and/or music content which have and continue to be included in contemporary folk music-and share the income.
We aim to convene a community of knowledgeable people in the industry -- songwriters, performers, publishers, agents, record producers, anthropologists, music historians, activists and others-to brainstorm a way to do that. We want a fair and voluntary system of sharing mechanical, print, and performing royalties from such new works with original artists and/or cultures of origin, in order to serve cultures, communities and countries which have helped inspire us.
A Project on Folk Music, the Public Domain and the Cultural Commons, chaired by Pete Seeger and incubated by C.I.P.A., will be launched at a conference on Nov. 14, 2004 at the Connie Hogarth Center for Social Action at Manhattanville College, Purchase, N.Y. C.I.P.A. has chosen to "midwife" this project, as it did with POCLAD 10 years ago, because it challenges the corporate dominance encroaching on the "cultural commons" where the "folk process" thrives and nurtures the development of music that celebrates cultures and social struggle. C.I.P.A. and POCLAD believe that without the concept of a cultural commons, no system of democracy can stay free of the triumph of
commercial interests over the peoples' rights to their own heritage.
This project also seeks to publicize the collaborative nature of folk music and the right to the historical knowledge carried by the music as intrinsic to democracy. By giving artists, their agents and music companies a highly visible way to give back, we seek to empower the people to continue to create and to educate the public about the need to preserve their right to their cultural common.
- Hans Klein, Assoc. Prof., School of Public Policy, Georgia Tech,
Atlanta, GA. "Who Controls Information in a Globalized World?"
In today's global information-based economy, control of information
can be as important as control of oil or money. Legal mechanisms
like copyright, patent, and trademark are being extended to provide
more comprehensive and long-lasting control over music, art,
literature, genetic material, pharmaceuticals, scientific research,
public databases, and a host of other information resources.
Simultaneously, global governance institutions are being put in place
to regulate the Internet and to create and enforce new property
rights. Foremost among these is the Internet Corporation for Assigned
Names and Numbers (ICANN), which functions like a WTO for cyberspace,
establishing rules that often exceed national laws but that have
little basis in legitimacy.
- Jeffery J. Smith, President, Forum on Geonomics"Who Moved Your Commonwealth?"
Corporations, militarists, and politicians are not volunteers. Rather, they excel at consuming the commonwealth. All the money we spend on the nature we use, all the monetary advantages conferred by corporate charters and other privileges, total trillions of dollars each year in the US alone. Leaving trillions on the table to be grabbed by hook or crook, we almost deserve the results we get. Yet the paradigm shivers. Alaska pays residents a dividend; other jurisdictions shift taxes from effort to "rents". Geonomic policy motivates efficient use of resources, spreads prosperity, shrinks the workweek, and enables people to grow more tolerant.
Jeff Smith, president of the Forum on Geonomics, recruits top academics and activists to this nonprofit. Editor of The Geonomist, he has appeared in both the academic press and in The New York Times. He has testified before the Russian Duma and had a bill to shift the property tax from buildings to land introduced in the Oregon legislature.
- Richard Duffee, "The G8 Empire and the Law of Diminishing Returns." The G8 Empire uses the Bretton WoodsInstitutions and currency speculation to make it possible to purchase 44 trillion dollars' worth of goods and services for 31 trillion. The missing 13 trillion worth of value flows almost entirely from the global south to the G8, a net 1.089 trillion in 2001 accruing to the US from the dollar's relative overvaluation. The impact of this transfer from poor to rich must be measured according to the Law of Diminishing Returns, which states that the benefit derived from an expenditure is proportional to the inverse log of the level of the expenditure.
12 noon - 1:15 pm -- LUNCH
1:15 - 2:45 pm, June 9, 2004
CORPORATIONS, LAW AND DEMOCRACY
Facilitator: Ward Morehouse
- Ward Morehouse, Co-Founder, Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy (POCLAD), President of the Council on International and Public Affairs (CIPA), and Former Chair of TOES/USA. "Ending Corporate Rule in a Globalizing World"
Corporate dominance is reaching new heights in the United States, and reflecting the huge size of the U.S. economy and the aggressive political and military role of the present U.S. administration, globally as well. Corporations have become the principal instruments for concentrating wealth and power in the industrialized countries. Real democracy is impossible to achieve with such concentrations of wealth and power, and hence the U.S. remains a plutocracy--rule by the rich.
For the past decade, the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy (POCLAD) has been working with many activist groups and persons throughout the U.S. to claim our rights to self-governance and to attacking corporate usurpations of political and economic rights rightfully belonging to the people. More and more local and state governments are finding ways of asserting human rights over property rights, creating crises of jurisdiction.
The challenge today is how to build people's movements that will confront the plutocracy and begin the arduous task of building a real democracy based on the princple of tangible personal benefit which shaped the populist movement a century ago.
- Bill Quigley, Professor of Law, Loyola University, New Orleans. "Catholic Social Thought and the Amorality of Large Corporations: Time to Abolish Corporate Personhood"
Large corporations rule the world. Because of their growing size and power they have overwhelmed the ability of civil governments to regulate them. In a world where 3 billion people live on less than $2
a day, current economic arrangements are not just. Catholic social thought has been critical of corporations since the 1930s and stresses the need for government regulation for the common good, subsidiarity and a preferential option for the poor. Law has bestowed on corporations the legal status of a person and has given corporations many constitutional rights and protections. Ethics, morality and Catholic social thought suggest it is time to abolish corporate personhood as a step towards returning people to the center of economic activity.
2:45 - 3:30 pm - FROM THE G8 TO AFRICA TO YOU (sponsored by OXFAM)
Facilitators: Njoki Njehu and Neil Watkins
- Irungu Houghton, the Kenyan Pan Africa Policy Advisor for Oxfam.
Known widely in African advocacy circles, he has worked closely with pan African networks on monitoring the progress of the African Union and NEPAD in Africa over the last two years. Last year, he was an active force in influencing the outcome of the World Trade Organisation Inter-ministerial in Cancun and enabling platforms to emerge around the 2003 G8 Summit in Evian. Prior to this appointment, he was founding Country Director of ActionAidUSA based in Washington DC where he worked on monitoring and influencing World Bank and IMF policies.
3:30 - 5:00 pm, June 9, 2004
DEBT BASICS: BREAKING THE CHAINS OF INTERNATIONAL DEBT
Neil Watkins and Morrigan Phillips, Jubilee USA Network Countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America are paying more in
service on old debts than they receive in new loans, aid or investment. Come learn about the origins of the debt crisis, the impact of the debt on the most impoverished people of the world, the programs associated with debt relief and restructuring, and the role of the G8 and the latest in the global work for debt cancellation.
Neil Watkins is Outreach and Communications Coordinator at Jubilee USA Network, the US arm of the global Jubilee movement working to cancel impoverished country debts. At Jubilee, Neil works with grassroots activists and organizers across the country to advocate for debt cancellation and coordinates Jubilee's media work. From 2000-2003, he co-founded and coordinated the World Bank Bonds Boycott campaign at Center for Economic Justice. Prior to working at CEJ, he was a research associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the Preamble Center in Washington. He has a degree in International Affairs from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, with a minor in African Studies. He spent a year in Senegal in 1996-97.
3:30 - 5:00 pm, June 9, 2004
TECHNOLOGY AND SUSTAINABILITY
Facilitator: Tula Tsalis
- Colleen Kiernan and Judy Jennings, Sierra Club. "Evolving into a Clean Energy Future." A presentation of the Bush Administration's record on global warming and visionary solutions to a clean energy
future. The national "I will evolve..." hybrid vehicle is stopped in Brunswick. There are visionary solutions to the global warming crisis the leaders of the G-8 should be addressing. This presentation is a part of the Sierra Club's national hybrid vehicle tour entitled "I will evolve..." illustrating the bright line issue between a cleaner, safer, cheaper energy future that protects our clean air and water and the destructive energy policies of the Bush Administration, which
is strongly influenced by the interests of the oil and energy industry lobby. Participants can test drive the hybrid vehicle and hear more on a clean energy future and what they can do to help. The website is www.iwillevolve.org (forthcoming) or www.sierraclub.org.
- Mitchel Cohen, "Genetic Engineering and the New World Order."
- Bernardo Issel, "Campaign to Stop Killer Coke" We believe the evidence shows that Coca-Cola and its corporate network are rife with immorality, corruption and complicity in murder. Workers and other victims of corporate greed cannot legislate, litigate or advertise away their problems. They must organize aggressively and take their fights into the boardrooms of those at the center of the corporate and political web of power. Corporate, financial and political power brokers can be pitted one against the other, to divide and conquer them the way they have divided and conquered poor and working people.
- Jason Mark, Global Exchange.
SUSTAINABLE MALI
- Susan Hunt, Co-Organizer (with Trent Schroyer) of TOES 2004 - Georgia Poster session on "Sustainable Mali"
While developed countries struggle to clean up the environment, many less developed countries have many sustainable technologies already in place. Mali in sub-Saharan West Africa is such a place. The posters show photographs of traditional architecture - e.g., adobe houses with adobe clivus-multrum-like composting toilets (!) -- and traditional sustainable agricultural practices - e.g., permaculture and intercropping; terraces to collect soil from run-off; crop rotation practices that allow herders to use cropland to pasture their cattle during fallow years.
5:00pm, June 9, 2004 -- $10/person
PEOPLES' SUMMIT, 109 Yardell Drive, Brunswick
- Pastor Zack Lyde, "Environmental Pollution"
- Michelle Cole Jenkins, "Conditions in Rural America"
- Pastor Isabelle Myles, "Register to Vote!"
Music and Food included in $10 price.
5:00 - 7:00 pm - DINNER BREAK
7:00 - 9:30 pm - EVENING SESSION
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE IN A GLOBALIZING WORLD
Facilitator: Frank Bove
- Frank J. Bove, an environmental justice activist who works as an epidemiologist for a federal agency. "The G8 and the environment." The presentation briefly describes the G8 and the structural adjustment policies of the World Bank and the IMF. The environmental polices of the G8, and in particular, the Bush administration, are critiqued. Issues discussed include global warming, recycling, deforestation, energy policies, toxic chemical dumping, and local
environmental problems in the Georgia coastal area.
- John McCown , Co-Director of the Sierra Club's Environmental Justice Program
- Pastor Zack Lyde
A BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATERS: FROM INTELLECTUALISM TO PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS
- Elaine Brown, President, Fields of Flowers, Inc. a non-profit, Georgia-based education corporation developing urban school model in Atlanta. "Globalization's Impact: Enslavement of our Ancestors and the Reenslavement of our People"
Kahlil Osiris: "Prisons: Their Tool of Choice for Forced Workforce Development"
Ralph David Abernathy: "Launching a Global Poor People's Campaign for
the Twenty-first Century"
June 10, 2004 PATHS TO A JUST AND SUSTAINABLE WORLD
What countersteps could begin for the development of a peaceful world community which respects the rights and needs of all people? How could technology be made responsive to these rights and needs rather than serving as an instrument for enhancing private profit and irresponsible private and public power? What can be learned from the experience of people around the world which may help in the development of genuinely democratic institutions? What institutions need to be developed which will respect diversity and be accountable?
We call upon the G8 to begin to reorder global governance so that human rights and environmental treaties take precedence over free trade in the WTO and the international financial institutions.
9:30 - 10:30 am, June 10, 2004
"WE SHOULD REALLY DETERMINE FOR OURSELVES WHAT WE'RE DOING": TUNIS CAMPBELL'S ECONOMICS OF SELF-DETERMINATION"
Part of "Getting to Know the Gullah Geeche People and Their History" Janis Mathis, Esq., Rainbow Push, Introduced by Pastor Zack Lyde
This presentation will describe an economic perspective that originated at the end of the Civil War. Tunis Campbell of the Freedman's Bureau was a tireless abolitionist who worked for the Zion A.M.E. Church. He came to Georgia with a mission. Based on Campbell's firm belief that the newly emancipated arrivals "Š should really determine ourselves what we're doing," he was able to guide the previously enslaved ancestors of today's Gullah Geeche people in the development and implementation of strategies for reconstruction based on an economic formula of
self-determination.In addition to this talk, the Gullah Geeche people who live in the Brunswick area today will describe "who we are, how we live, and what we think," through performances and history lessons based on local culture.
GULLAH GEECHEE TOUR
This is a related "Fair World Fair" event that takes place every day during the G8 Summit. It is a tour of the Brunswick area demonstrating the "Two Towns", the town as it is for the monied elite, and the town as it is for the economically and politically disenfranchised. This tour is from the Gullah Geechee point of view. Contact <>. Sponsored by the Glynn County Greens
10:30 - 11:00 am, June 10, 2004
REMOVING STRUCTURAL INJUSTICE FROM THE MONETARY SYSTEM
Stephen Zarlenga, Director: -
First task is to accurately identify the nature of money, through historical case studies which emphasize experience and empiricism over mere theory. These studies demonstrate that money's essence as an abstract social power embodied in law; not a commodity or privately created credit. Therefore by its nature it belongs within government, as the law courts do, preferably organized as a fourth branch of government.
Secondly, to understand that a battle has raged from at least Aristotle's time, over the private control of money VS the public control of money. This proves to be a highly useful divide in examining history and current moves as well.
Third, to understand the facts - that despite current prejudices against government, an examination of the actual history demonstrates a far superior monetary performance when under public control than under private control.
Finally the indicated reforms are: A) to nationalize the Federal Reserve System as the Bank of England was nationalized in 1946. Reconstitute the Fed into the US Treasury, with it eventually evolving into a fourth branch of government. B)Remove the great privilege which banks presently have to create money. C) Provide for automatic/regulated/constitutionally determined government money creation, starting with the 2 trillion dollars which American Society of Civil Engineers tell us is needed to bring our infrastructure up to acceptable levels. From there we go forward carefully using Aristotle's method, we learn by doing
11 - 12 am, June 10, 2004
THE IMPACTS OF CORPORATE GLOBALIZATION ON WORKERS
Facilitator: Tula Tsalis
- Jean L. Pyle, Ph.D., Senior Associate, Center for Women & Work;Professor Emerita, Department of Regional Economic & Social Development University of Massachusetts Lowell. "An Alternative View of the Effects of Globalization: An Increase of Women in Sex, Domestic, and Export-Processing Work"My presentation shows how the major dimensions of globalization have contributed to increases in types of work (sex work, domestic service, and low-wage production) that are gendered, span the globe, and increasingly involve the migration or trafficking of women. Examining these work categories simultaneously reveals that they have grown substantially as a result of the processes of globalization and major changes in the structure of power internationally. There are systemic linkages among the global expansion of production, trade, and finance (promoted by multinational corporations, the IMF and World Bank) and the increase of women in such gendered labor networks.
-Aaron Jacobson, Farm Labor Organizing Committee/ Comité Organizador de Trabajadores Agrícolas (FLOC), Southeast Boycott Organizer. "Roots of Despair: From Oaxaca, Mexico to Dudley, North Carolina, NAFTA to the Mt. Olive Pickle Boycott"The presentation will put a "human face" on the consequences of NAFTA, a neoliberal and G8-like trade pact, on the Mexican countryside and family farmers, discuss the current conditions of migrant farm workers in the U.S. and particularly in North Carolina, where workers are organizing against exploitative conditions and trade policies which forced their displacement, and emphasize the necessity of evaluating the G8 and other trade "agreements" based on their real, felt effects, as opposed to rhetoric and promised benefits.
12 noon - 1:15 pm -- LUNCH
1:15 - 2:45 pm, June 10, 2004
ENDING THE RACE TO THE BOTTOM
Facilitator: Ward Morehouse, TOES
- Eric A. Schutz, Professor & Chair, Economics Department, Rollins College, Winter Park, FL. "Looking Back on the Living Wage Movement" Ten-years since its inception, it is time to review the living wage movement: its roots in the public reaction to the slowdown in progressive change for working people in recent decades, its spread across the U.S. - now encompassing 120 local governments large and small - its changing strategies, and its future. It has been propelled by the insight that at the day-to-day level, just as people have been actively responsible for halting progressive change in recent times, so too may other people nonetheless press such change forward where they live. The movement has gotten most of its energy from an increasing awareness of the radical unjustness of an economic system based on the deprivation of working people worldwide. Its insistence on a just distribution of economic reward seems difficult to deny.
- Dan Everett, Computer Science Dept, University of Georgia, Athens, GA. "Ending the 'Race to the Bottom' in Wages." A well-established consequence of globalization in its current form is the "race to the bottom", in which corporations move from country to country in search of ever-lower wages. Once considered a problem primarily for manufacturing workers, the "race to the bottom" is now recognized as a very serious concern for high-prestige service workers, such as computer programmers. This talk is an overview of some of the remedies for this condition proposed by labor unions, NGOs, international agencies, and academic economists.
- Ward Morehouse, CIPA, POCLAD, Member and Chief Steward of Local 8-149 of PACE (Paperworkers, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy International Union) "Involuntary Servitude and U.S. Worker Rights"
2:45 - 3:30 pm, June 10, 2004
FROM THE G8 TO AFRICA TO YOU (sponsored by OXFAM)
Facilitators: Njoki Njehu and Neil Watkins
Dr. Godfrey Kayenze, an economic consultant and director of the Labor and Economic Development Research Institute of Zimbabwe (LEDRIZ), a
research institute of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU). Dr. Kanyenze has written widely on Africa's economic issues and development. His interests include social mobilization for poverty reduction in Africa, particularly through trade union activism in Southern Africa. He played an active role in supporting civil society participation in EU negotiations with ACP countries. His area of specialization is international trade.
3:30 - 5:00 pm, June 10, 2004
DON'T OWE! ODIOUS AND ILLEGITIMATE DEBT
Marie Clarke and Jakeya Caruthers, Jubilee USA Network
Learn how people in countries like Iraq, South Africa, Congo, Argentina and the Philippines are paying the bill for their own oppression and what you can do to support legislative initiatives to change these policies.
5:00 - 7:00 pm - DINNER BREAK
7:00 - 9:30 pm, June 10, 2004 - EVENING SESSION
PATHS TO A JUST AND SUSTAINABLE WORLD
Facilitator: Trent Schroyer
- Dada Maheshvarananda, author of "After Capitalism: Prout's Vision
for a New World"
- Marie Clarke Brill, National Coordinator of Jubilee USA Network, the US arm of the international Jubilee movement. Jubilee has almost 70 member NGOs, church denominations and citizen groups, 12 regional groups and about 9000 individual members. Marie was previously a director of Quest for Peace at the Quixote Center and a member of the
Jubilee USA Coordinating Committee. She has extensive experience in grassroots development work in Nicaragua and domestic and international advocacy work. In Nicaragua, Marie participated in sustainable development work through Nicaraguan partners in thirty of the most impoverished municipalities. Marie lived in developing countries for 12 years.
- Njoki Njehu, Coordinator of the 50 Years Is Enough Network