Mass protests in Washington D.C. April 15-17

www.globalizethis.org
www.abolishthebank.org
www.dc.indymedia.org

Join The Struggle Against Global Exploitation
Protest the Domination of Unaccountable Financial Monsters. In this case, the World Bank!




After some stupendous days of action including our Cacerolazo March and Festival of Resistance, the Mobilization for Global Justice is looking forward to more actions to bring the world's attention to the gross injustices perpetrated by international financial institutions under cover of secrecy and back room deals.

Upcoming Meetings​

• GENERAL MEETINGS: Upcoming Meetings: Wed. Dec. 29th, Jan. 12th, Jan. 26th and then every Wednesday starting in February, always 7-9 pm, at St. Stephen's Church, 1525 Newton St. NW, (near 16th & Newton, enter at the side door). From the Columbia Heights metro, walk west on Irving, then north on 16th.

A Better World Is Not Just Possible, But is Under Construction!

Call for a Mass Mobilization April 15-17th, 2005 During the Spring Meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund

The April 16, 2005 meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank will represent the five year anniversary of the first major demonstrations against these institutions in the United States. Again we will gather in the streets of D.C. on A16 to show that our resistance to these institutions and their greed only grows stronger. A16 will once more be the day we show that our dreams for a better world are not only possible, but under construction at this moment, in all corners of the globe- and the IMF and World Bank, with all their efforts to demolish these dreams and actions, can never stop us.

The World Bank claims to combat world poverty. The IMF claims to promote global economic stability. For the 60 years of their existence, they have done neither. The World Bank has poured billions into dams, mining, and other projects that have caused immense social and environmental destruction, displacing poor, often indigenous, people from their lands and livelihoods, and destroying fragile ecosystems. The IMF has destabilized the economies of countries like Korea, Thailand, and Argentina, creating mass unemployment. Together, the IMF and World Bank have trapped poor countries in a cycle of unpayable debt. To extract debt repayment from them, they have imposed conditions such as budget caps, user fees for health care, and privatization of water. These policies have impoverished billions. They have also corroded self-determination and corrupted political systems, making governments accountable to foreign creditors rather than their own people.

Instead of building the world that they have promised, the World Bank and IMF have plunged it into a global crisis that is now more urgent than ever. The number of people in abject poverty worldwide is at an all-time high, and more and more people lack access to water, healthcare, education and other basic services. The world is headed for environmental disaster, while World Bank fossil fuel projects account for half of world carbon dioxide emissions. The global AIDS epidemic is spreading -- 7,000 people in Africa die of AIDS every day. And now it is quickly reaching crisis proportions in the Caribbean, India, Thailand, and Eastern Europe. According to the United Nations, 30,000 people worldwide die every day as a direct consequence of IMF and World Bank-imposed cuts in social services.

Over the 60 years of their existence, the IMF and World Bank have shown themselves to be utterly arrogant institutions which completely ignore people's voices worldwide and systematically enrich multinational corporate interests at the expense of nature and of the rest of humanity. It's time to demolish these institutions and build a better world.

Each day people around the world people are coming together to construct a better, more just world. Not only are they demonstrating in the streets, but they are actively reclaiming their communities. In South Africa, citizens too poor to afford the privatized water have dismantled water meters and learned plumbing to connect homes to water services. In Argentina unemployed workers are taking over the factories they used to work in and running them as a collectives. Facing the devastating effects of World Bank and IMF Structural Adjustment Policies, people throughout the Global South are working everyday to take back their rights to water, health, land, a clean environment, and self-determination. Five years after thousands of activists came to Washington DC in the first mass show in the U.S. of dissent and solidarity with the global struggle against the World Bank and IMF, the Mobilization for Global Justice is calling for people to come to Washington DC April 15-17th, 2005 to protest the institutions during their semi-annual spring meetings and to celebrate the other, more just world that is under construction due to the daily resistance of millions of people worldwide!

Get Involved:


E-mail mgj@riseup.net

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Nice.

You have to wonder, though, how many of the worlds problems would vanish if half of the worlds population died.

 

I think the problems would still be here. But it would be easier to deal with. Everybody who has some rationale thinking to them knows that the world is WAY too overpopulated.

 

If the problems would be easier to deal with with 3,000,000,000 people dead, then ought we not let the IMF and World Bank go about their business?

 

haha, you have me wondering about you now bud...
pretty twisted thinking, but ok, if you say so.

besides, if we "let them go about their business", other things will happen in the dark of night such as the further-militarization of our police forces here at home. These things happen simultaneously by design.

 

No, those things happen because you bother to vote. Regardless of who it is a vote for.

Have you no concept of the basis of democracy?

 

OSF, if you can stop speaking in code...and actually make a point, maybe we can begin to understand eachother. And now, I have no clue where you stand on this topic.

 

Well revo, I am all for helping the fight against the injustices of the world. But understand that the protesting we do does nothing to help. I say this for more in depth reasons than you would usually hear in arguments against protests. Generally, and I admit I am guilty of using the traditional drone response, people will argue that your protests do nothing to help and only disrupt, albeit for a very short time, innocent persons lives. I am not taking that approach anymore. I will argue that your protests do nothing to help and indeed help solidify the very principles you are protesting against, thus making it harder for the real revolutionaries (admittedly very few and far between) to bring about the changes that might be necessary in present day. In short, you are helping the government and concurrently the IMF and World Bank, the organizations that depend on the principles your government assumes for their very existence.
It all goes back to the very principles of the democratic republic. More specifically, of the principles of law in a democratic republic. In order that a democratic republic may exist it must be based on a constitution, which the people of the republic love. Love is the principle of a democracy. Montesquieu, in The Spirit of Laws (which can be read online here http://www.constitution.org/cm/sol-02.htm, it is a long book but the chapters and books are relatively short. The titles of the chapters makes it quite easy to pinpoint where this discussion derives its assumptions) argues that people must be educated in order that they love the law. Of course there is no lack of evidence to support the idea that, while the term love may not be applied here, there is a great hegemony in American culture. People live by and respect the laws that govern them. It follows that there would be such hegemony by the very idea that the country is a democratic republic, that is to say that the people are (theoretically) directly responsible for those laws. I say theoretically because I understand the turn away from the contract that underlies the founding of your great country. I intend to touch on that later. Your protests show that even those that do not support the government are included in the hegemony it has helped create. Every time a protestor throws a rock through a window it is frowned upon. Protest heads encourage people to protest peacefully, that is, within the protection of the law. Even in protest the laws are loved. To an outside observer, defined as one who is not a supporter of democratism, such action is absurd. The contract, upon which the founding fathers of your great nation agreed, was meant to ensure that, when the government does not hold up its end of the bargain, it could be overthrown by the people. Not once has that happened in your country. One might make a case that he American Revolution was just that, but we ought to keep in mind that it was a civil war, not a revolution.
The problem with overthrow is the violence. The problem with the violence is not that it is unjustified but that it is contrary to the love of law. It is difficult to make the necessary changes through violent means and remain a proponent of democratism. No matter who is revolting, if they do it violently, they must live by the same principles and contracts that the government they revolt against did. They must propagate and continue that very love of the law that means to protect against violent revolution. It is the very respect that protestors have for how they would do things (same equation as the Bush government, with substituted values) that keeps them peaceful. It is this love of democracy that keeps people doomed to accept the failure of their government in regards to the contract.
Or it is a knowledge that what the government does is right. Not right in the sense of objective truth, but according to the principle of democracy that states “what is right is what more than 50% of voters want”. In which case I have to ask the purpose of protesting. If you have voted than you have declared your acceptance of loss. You understand that you may be voting for the loser and if your candidate loses fairly, you must accept that defeat because you love the democracy. Your vote and your peaceful protest show your love. It would be absurd to think that you would vote and not accept it if you lost. There could be no democracy without that love, which includes honorable defeat.
The next logical step in thinking from a view opposed to mine would be to remind me that this discussion and this particular protest is not directed against the government but against NGOs. But such a reply denies the essential truth of corporatism. The idea that any particular NGO is going to have to be tied to the government will. It is not hard to see that the USA (leader of the free world, shaper more accurately than) would have to have some say in what any NGO does and says, as without such consent no civil society could exist.

At this point, what say you?