Jul
3
Written by:
Jim Hansen
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
We are ready to celebrate the 231st anniversary of this country's radical act of speaking truth to powerful political and economic institutions. They demand change - even in the face of being hanged for treason - because the policies those institutions imposed were depriving the people of basic rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
To live up to the standards envisioned by the Declaration of Independence, each generation had to keep speaking truth to power and to keep looking at the big picture of what this country represented.. The Statue of Liberty was created to symbolize this picture: to personify the greatness that is contained in the large and moral vision of the Declaration.
While it is easier to engage in debates that are narrow and personality-driven, the debates we celebrate on the 4th of July were not. Sure, there were narrow, petty disputes 231 years ago too, but the ones we honor are those focused on bold and moral themes. And the call to action that many people answered then was not just to reform a few rules and procedures but to change whole institutions that governed our lives.
The failure of the US Congress to address the causes of massive economic migration in this hemisphere is symptomatic of a narrow, petty, lets-just-change-a-few-procedures kind of debate that makes everyone feel small. It is also personal, focusing almost exclusively on immigrants - those with the least political and economic power. The debate has not been about about speaking truth to powerful political and economic institutions. It has avoided the broad, moral themes that our country stands for; that the Statue of Liberty embodies..
What if, starting this 4th of July, more people deliberately walked away from the petty narrow debate started spoke boldly about a world where life, liberty and happiness can be pursued by all people?
The focus will have to change. Instead of immigrants, national and international institutions will be under scrutiny along with the trade policies our government and major corporations in the world created for those institutions to implement. Accountability will be demanded not so much from a frightened worker and her family but will be demanded from institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Outside the US, the World Bank, IMF and multinational corporations are less mysterious than they are to the average person in the US..Their policies have transformed the economies of many countries and precipitated massive migration of people.
Many countries used to invest their limited resources in a social safety net to keep people from falling into desperation and violence. Yet, as the price of admission in the global economy, these countries have had to reduce or eliminate their investment in that safety net so they can pay off their debts and meet the standards of international banks. In turn, trade deals have virtually wiped out small farms and replaced them with huge corporate enterprises, turning former business owners and farmers into laborers with little hope to regain both their social or economic security.
People whose families have lived in the same village for hundreds of years are migrating to big cities in their own countries in search of work and basic public services (like a decent school for their children or hospital care for a sick family member). Many then continue looking and turn next to the US. They take huge risks in each of these moves.
In the US, by keeping the debate narrow and personal we protect the very institutions and policies that ought to be accountable to the people. Of course, the conflict in our communities that gets reported in the media is intense and personal and ripe for headlines. But by keeping the debate narrowly focused on immigrants, ordinary families then look with fear at the family across the street and that's all our lawmakers respond to. The larger story is not being told. If it were, both of those families - and millions of families across the globe - would look to each other as facing the same threats and together would demand of their political leaders that they hold powerful institutions - banks, trade organizations, etc. - fully accountable to the people.
The Statue of Liberty was erected in a time where it was thought impossible for families in most other countries could make a living, successfully build small businesses, and secure basic human needs for health and education. Today, our government has teamed up with many of those countries to cut trade deals and they have created huge international mechanisms to facilitate the movement of wealth around the globe.
Today, therefore, the Statue of Liberty should symbolize to the world that together, our governments also have the power nurture healthy communities all over the globe and require all institutions be accountable to those communities of people who simply want the same life, liberty and happiness our country's founders claimed for us.
I have found a few folks talking about this larger debate where the US steps into a role of moral leader, of super partner (rather than super power) with other nations in the world. One recent article I read by Deepa Fernandes of WBAI Radio. An easy way to force the debate is for some courageous public officials to change the debate is to demand we suspend all our trade deals until we solve the so-called "immigration" crisis. Another description is at the site Eyes on Trade which recently celebrated the demise of "fast-track" give-away of representative government to trade negotiators.
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