PGA Bulletin
Number 1, March 1997
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Table of contents:
1. Letter from the Geneva Welcoming Committee
2. Peoples' Global Action Manifesto
3. Plans of action
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[2]. Peoples' Global Action Manifesto (2/2)
Oppressed ethnic groups
The black communities of African origin in the Americas suffered
for centuries a violent and inhuman exploitation, as well as
physical annihilation. Their labour force was used as a
fundamental tool for accumulation of capital, both in America and
Europe. Faced with this oppression, the Afro-Americans have
created community-based processes of organisation and cultural
resistance. Currently the black communities are suffering the
effects of "development" megaprojects in their territories and the
invasion of their lands by big landowners, which lead to massive
displacement, misery and cultural alienation, and many times to
repression and death.
A similar situation is being suffered by other peoples, like
Gypsies, Kurds, Saharouis, etc. All these peoples are forced to
struggle for their right to live in dignity by nation-states that
repress their identity and autonomy, and impose on them a forced
incorporation into a homogeneous society. Many of these groups are
viewed as a threat by the dominant powers, since they are
reclaiming and practising their right to cultural diversity and
autonomy.
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Onslaught on nature and agriculture
Land, water, forest, wildlife, aquatic life and mineral resources
are not commodities, but our life support. For decades the powers
that have emerged from money and market have swelled their profits
and tightened their control of politics and economics by usurping
these resources, at the cost of the lives and livelihoods of vast
majorities around the world. For decades the World Bank and the
IMF, and now the WTO, in alliance with national governments and
corporate powers, have facilitated manoeuvrings to appropriate the
environment. The result is environmental devastation, tragic and
unmanageable social displacement, and the wiping out of cultural
and biological diversity, much of it irretrievably lost without
compensation to those reliant on it.
The disparities provoked within and between countries by national
and global capital have widened and deepened as the rich spirit
away the natural resources from communities and farmers, farm
labourers, fishworkers, tribal and indigenous populations, women,
the socially disadvantaged - beating down into the earth the
already downtrodden. The centralised management of natural
resources imposed by trade and investment agreements does not
leave space for intergenerational and intragenerational
sustainability. It only serves the agenda of the powers that have
designed and ratified those agreements: to accumulate wealth and
power.
Unsustainable and capital-intensive technologies have played a
major role in corporations' onslaught on nature and agriculture.
Green revolution technologies have caused social and environmental
havoc wherever they have been applied, creating destitution and
hunger instead of eliminating them. Today, modern biotechnology is
emerging, together with patents on life, as one of the most
powerful and dangerous weapons of corporations to take over the
control of the food systems all over the world. Genetic
engineering and patents on life must be resisted, since their
potential social and environmental impact is the greatest in the
history of humanity.
Waging struggles against the global capitalist paradigm, the
underprivileged work towards the regeneration of their natural
heritage and the rebuilding of integrated, egalitarian
communities. Our vision is of a decentralised economy and polity
based on communities' rights to natural resources and to plan
their own development, with equality and self-reliance as the
basic values. In place of the distorted priorities imposed through
global designs in sectors such as transport, infrastructure and
energy, and energy-intensive technology, they assert their right
to life in the fulfilment of the basic needs of everyone,
excluding the greed of the consumerist minority. Respecting
traditional knowledge and cultures consonant with the values of
equality, justice, and sustainability, we are committed to
evolving creative ways to use and fairly distribute our natural
resources.
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Culture
Another important aspect of globalisation, as orchestrated by WTO
and other international agencies, is the commercialisation and
commodification of culture, the appropriation of diversity in
order to co-opt it and integrate it into the process of capitalist
accumulation. This process of homogenisation by the media not only
contributes to the breakdown of the cultural and social networks
in local communities, but also destroys the essence and meaning of
culture.
Cultural diversity not only has an immeasurable value of its own,
as reflections of human creativity and potential; it also
constitutes a fundamental tool for resistance and self-reliance.
Hence, cultural homogenisation has been one of the most important
tools for central control since colonialism. In the past the
elimination of cultural diversity was mainly accomplished by the
Church and by the imposition of colonial languages. Today mass
media and corporate consumerist culture are the main agents of
commodification and homogenisation of cultural diversity. The
result of this process is not only a major loss of humanity's
heritage: it also creates an alarming dependence on the capitalist
culture of mass consumption, a dependence that is much deeper in
nature and much harder to eliminate than economic or political
dependence.
Control over culture must be taken out of corporate hands and
reclaimed by communities. Self-reliance and freedom are only
possible on the basis of a lively cultural diversity that enables
peoples to independently determine each and every aspect of their
lives. We are deeply committed to cultural liberation in all areas
of life, from food to films, from music to media. We will
contribute with our direct action to the dismantlement of
corporate culture and the creation of spaces for genuine
creativity.
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Knowledge and technology
Knowledge and technology are not neutral or value-free. The
domination of capital is partly based on its control over both.
Western science and technology have made very important
contributions to humankind, but their domination has swept away
very diverse and valuable knowledge systems and technologies based
on centuries-long experience.
Western science is characterised by the production of simplified
models of reality for experimental purposes; hence, the
reductionist scientific method has an extremely limited capacity
to produce useful knowledge about complex and chaotic systems like
agriculture. Traditional knowledge systems and
knowledge-production methods are far more effective, since they
are based on generations of direct observation of and interaction
with unsimplified complex systems. Therefore, capital-intensive,
science-based technologies invariably fail to achieve their goals
in complex systems, and many times provoke the disarray of these
systems, as green revolution technologies, modern dam technology
and many other examples demonstrate.
Despite their many failures, capital-intensive technologies are
systematically treated as superior to traditional,
labour-intensive technologies. This ideological discrimination
results in unemployment, indebtedness and, most important, in the
loss of an invaluable body of knowledges and technologies
accumulated during centuries. Traditional knowledge, often
controlled by women, has till recently been rejected as
"superstition" and "witchcraft" by western, mostly male,
scientists and academics. Their "rationalism" and "modernisation"
has for centuries aimed at destroying it irretrievably. However,
pharmaceutical corporations and agribusiness have recently
discovered the value and potential of traditional knowledge, and
are stealing, patenting and commodifying it for their own gain and
profit.
Capital-intensive technology is designed, promoted, commercialised
and imposed to serve the process of capitalist globalisation.
Since the use of technologies has a very important influence on
social and individual life, peoples should have a free choice of,
access to and control over technologies. Only those technologies
which can be managed, operated and controlled by local peoples
should be considered valid. Also, control of the way technology is
designed and produced, its scopes and finalities, should be
inspired by human principles of solidarity, mutual co-operation
and common sense. Today, the principles underlying production of
technology are exactly the opposite: profit, competition, and the
deliberate production of obsolescence. Empowerment passes through
people's control over the use and production of technology.
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Education and youth
The content of the present education system is more and more
conditioned by the demands of production as dictated by
corporations. The interests and requirements of economic
globalisation are leading to a growing commodification of
education. The diminishing public budgets in education are
encouraging the development of private schools and universities,
while the labour conditions of people working in the public
education sector are being eroded by austerity and Structural
Adjustment Programs. Increasingly, learning is becoming a process
that intensifies inequalities in societies. Even the public
education system, and most of all the university, is becoming
inaccessible for wide sectors of societies. The learning of
humanities (history, philosophy, etc.) and the development of
critical thinking is being discouraged in favour of an education
subservient to the interests of the globalisation process, where
competitive values are predominant. Students increasingly spend
more time in learning how to compete with each other, rather than
enhancing personal growth and building critical skills and the
potential to transform society.
Education as a tool for social change requires confrontational
academics and critical educators for all educational systems.
Community-based education can provoke learning processes within
social movements. The right to information is essential for the
work of social movements. Limited and unequal access to language
skills, especially for women, hinders participation in political
activity with other peoples. Building these tools is a way to
reinforce and rebuild human values. Yet formal education is
increasingly being commercialised as a vehicle for the market
place. This is done by corporate investment in research and by the
promotion of knowledge geared toward skills needed for the market.
The domination of mass media should be dissolved and the right to
reproduce our own knowledges and cultures must be supported.
However, for many children throughout the world, the
commodification of education is not an issue, since they are
themselves being commodified as sexual objects and exploited
labour, and suffering inhuman levels of violence. Economic
globalisation is at the root of the daily nightmare of increasing
numbers of exploited children. Their fate is the most horrible
consequence of the misery generated by the global market.
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Militarisation
Globalisation is aggravating complex and growing crises that give
rise to widespread tensions and conflicts. The need to deal with
this increasing disorder is intensifying militarisation and
repression (more police, arrests, jails, prisoners) in our
societies. Military institutions, such as U.S.-dominated NATO,
organising the other powers of the North, are among the main
instruments upholding this unequal world order. Mandatory
conscription in many countries indoctrinates young people in order
to legitimate militarism. Similarly, the mass media and corporate
culture glorify the military and exalt the use of violence. There
is also, behind facades of democratic structures, an increasing
militarisation of the nation-state, which in many countries makes
use of faceless paramilitary groups to enforce the interests of
capital.
At the same time, the military-industrial complex, one of the main
pillars of the global economic system, is increasingly controlled
by huge private corporations. The WTO formally leaves defence
matters to states, but the military sector is also affected by the
drive for private profit.
We call for the dismantling of nuclear and all other weapons of
mass destruction. The World Court of The Hague has recently
declared that nuclear weapons violate international law and has
called all the nuclear-weapons countries to agree to dismantle
them. This means that the strategy of NATO, based on the possible
use of nuclear weapons, amounts to a crime against humanity.
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Migration and discrimination
The neo-liberal regime provides freedom for the movement of
capital, while denying freedom of movement to human beings. Legal
barriers to migration are being constantly reinforced at the same
time that massive destruction of livelihoods and concentration of
wealth in privileged countries uproot millions of people, forcing
them to seek work far from their homes. Migrants are thus in more
and more precarious and often illegal situations, even easier
targets for their exploiters. They are then made scapegoats,
against whom right wing politicians encourage the local population
to vent their frustrations. Solidarity with migrants is more
important than ever. There are no illegal humans, only inhuman
laws.
Racism, xenophobia, the caste system and religious bigotry are
used to divide us and must be resisted on all fronts. We celebrate
our diversity of cultures and communities, and place none above
the other.
* * *
The WTO, the IMF, the World Bank, and other institutions that
promote globalisation and liberalisation want us to believe in the
beneficial effects of global competition. Their agreements and
policies constitute direct violations of basic human rights
(including civil, political, economic, social, labour and cultural
rights) which are codified in international law and many national
constitutions, and ingrained in people's understandings of human
dignity. We have had enough of their inhuman policies. We reject
the principle of competitiveness as solution for peoples'
problems. It only leads to the destruction of small producers and
local economies. Neo-liberalism is the real enemy of economic
freedom.
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II
Capitalism has slipped the fragile leash won through centuries of
struggles in national contexts. It is keeping alive the
nation-state only for the purposes of peoples' control and
repression, while creating a new transnational regulatory system
to facilitate its global operation. We cannot confront
transnational capitalism with the traditional tools used in the
national context. In this new, globalised world we need to invent
new forms of struggle and solidarity, new objectives and
strategies in our political work. We have to join forces to create
diverse spaces of co-operation, equality, dignity, justice and
freedom at a human scale, while attacking national and
transnational capital, and the agreements and institutions that it
creates to assert its power.
There are many diverse ways of resistance against capitalist
globalisation and its consequences. At an individual level, we
need to transform our daily lives, freeing ourselves from market
laws and the pursuit of private profit. At the collective level,
we need to develop a diversity of forms of organisation at
different levels, acknowledging that there is not a single way of
solving the problems we are facing. Such organisations have to be
independent of governmental structures and economic powers, and
based on direct democracy. These new forms of autonomous
organisation should emerge from and be rooted in local
communities, while at the same time practising international
solidarity, building bridges to connect different social sectors,
peoples and organisations that are already fighting globalisation
across the world.
These tools for co-ordination and empowerment provide spaces for
putting into practice a diversity of local, small-scale strategies
developed by peoples all over the world in the last decades, with
the aim of delinking their communities, neighbourhoods or small
collectives from the global market. Direct links between producers
and consumers in both rural and urban areas, local currencies,
interest-free credit schemes and similar instruments are the
building blocks for the creation of local, sustainable, and
self-reliant economies based on co-operation and solidarity rather
than competition and profit. While the global financial casino
heads at increasing speed towards social and environmental
disintegration and economic breakdown, we the peoples will
reconstruct sustainable livelihoods. Our means and inspiration
will emanate from peoples' knowledge and technology, squatted
houses and fields, a strong and lively cultural diversity and a
very clear determination to actively disobey and disrespect all
the treaties and institutions at the root of misery.
In the context of governments all over the world acting as the
creatures and tools of capitalist powers and implementing
neo-liberal policies without debate among their own peoples or
their elected representatives, the only alternative left for the
people is to destroy these trade agreements and restore for
themselves a life with direct democracy, free from coercion,
domination and exploitation. Direct democratic action, which
carries with it the essence of non-violent civil disobedience to
the unjust system, is hence the only possible way to stop the
mischief of corporate state power. It also has the essential
element of immediacy. However we do not pass a judgement on the
use of other forms of action under certain circumstances.
The need has become urgent for concerted action to dismantle the
illegitimate world governing system which combines transnational
capital, nation-states, international financial institutions and
trade agreements. Only a global alliance of peoples' movements,
respecting autonomy and facilitating action-oriented resistance,
can defeat this emerging globalised monster. If impoverishment of
populations is the agenda of neo-liberalism, direct empowerment of
the peoples though constructive direct action and civil
disobedience will be the programme of the Peoples' Global Action
against "Free" Trade and the WTO.
We assert our will to struggle as peoples against all forms of
oppression. But we do not only fight the wrongs imposed on us. We
are also committed to building a new world. We are together as
human beings and communities, our unity deeply rooted in
diversity. Together we shape a vision of a just world and begin to
build that true prosperity which comes from human empowerment,
natural bounty, diversity, dignity and freedom.
Geneva, February-March 1998
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