[Peace] Fwd: Global Activists

[Alfred Kagan]

Our visitors from South Africa and Dominican 
Republic will be at the IMC tonight at 7:30 for 
an informal discussion for whoever turns up. They 
are particularly interested in talking about 
labor issues.


>X-Sender: mgoldman at staff.uiuc.edu
>Date: Mon, 05 Apr 2004 13:36:31 -0500
>To: ken Salo <kensalo at uiuc.edu>
>From: Michael Goldman <mgoldman at uiuc.edu>
>Subject: Global Activist Roundtable, Tuesday 3-5pm!
>
>Global Justice Movements and Transnational Solidarity
>A Debate with Public Intellectuals from the Global South
>
>
>Tuesday April 6th 3:00-5:00 PM
>Temple Buell Hall -Gallery room (downstairs)
>
>The promise and performance of the global 
>justice movement to build solidarity across an 
>actually existing and sharpening global 
>apartheid of racism, sexism, neo-colonialism, 
>neo –imperialism and other proxies for economic 
>class is being hotly debated. Characterized in 
>February 2002 by the New York Times as the 
>‘other superpower to American superpower’ after 
>unprecedented anti- war rallies and credited for 
>collapsing the WTO ‘s September 2003 Cancun 
>summit this transnational network against 
>corporate globalization seems set on a 
>trajectory towards achieving a more humane world 
>order. Self-reflexive reports from the 2004 WSF 
>in Mumbai, India however suggest that the 
>movement is still strenuously debating the 
>conditions of such a humane world ordered 
>through principles of transnational solidarity 
>which seeks to avoid achieving peace for some, 
>especially in the Global North, at the expense 
>of justice for all, especially in the Global 
>South. Such solidarity would require a world 
>free not only of economic inequality in all its 
>material forms but also racism, fascism, sexism, 
>neocolonialism and an increasingly militaristic 
>imperialism. The WSF manifesto claims that such 
>an alternate utopia and transnational solidarity 
>is not possible but also according to its 
>charismatic champion Arundhati Roy, “if you 
>listen carefully, you can hear it breathing’.
>Do you hear it? 
>Come and debate with three active public 
>intellectuals from the global South on promises, 
>challenges, hopes and despairs of the global 
>justice movements.
>
>VICTOR GERONIMO - Dominican Republic
>COMPA/Coordination of Popular, Union, and Drivers Organizations
>
>Victor Geronimo is a journalist and lawyer, an 
>alum of the Autonomous University of Santo 
>Domingo, and has participated in the Social and 
>Popular Movement since 1981.  As a member of the 
>Coordination Team of the Coordination of 
>Popular, Union and Drivers Organizations, a 
>space of anti-neoliberal coordination against 
>the IMF, he directed several protests and 
>general strikes from 1997-2001.  Victor is also 
>a member of the National Directory of the Unity 
>and Struggle Coordination, which recently 
>directed the two most powerful general strikes 
>of the last two decades of the history of 
>Dominican Republic, against the IMF, the Free 
>Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) between the 
>Dominican Republic and USA, indebtedness to 
>Interamerican Development Bank (IADB) and other 
>international banks.  He is also the General 
>Facilitator for the Convergence of Movements of 
>Peoples of the Americas-COMPA-(2002-2004), a 
>network that unites dozens of popular, 
>campesino, indigenous, religious, student, 
>women’s, and community organizations, and unions 
>from around the American continent against 
>corporate globalization, FTAA, WTO, IADB, and 
>IMF, and for developing alternatives to these.
>
>During his life as an activist and leader of 
>social and popular organizations in the struggle 
>since 1981 against the IMF and neoliberal 
>policies he has been the object of persecution, 
>housebreakings, jailing and other outrages in 
>evident violation of the human and 
>constitutional rights in the Dominican Republic.
>
>
>VIRGINIA SETSHEDI – Cape Town, South Africa
>Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee/Anti-Privatisation Forum
>
>Virginia Setshedi comes from Soweto.  Her 
>activism started while she was a student at the 
>University of the Witswatersrand; she later 
>became a community activist. She is one of the 
>founder members of the Soweto Electricity Crisis 
>Committee, established in 2000 to take up the 
>struggle of  inefficient electricity provision 
>for the poor in Soweto and privatisation of 
>electricity. Virginia is also amongst the 
>activists who established the Anti-Privatisation 
>Forum in Johannesburg, and now participates in 
>the Anti-Privatisation Forum in Cape Town, a 
>forum that brings together community 
>organisations who are affected by privatisation 
>in a broader sense. Presently she is working 
>with the Alternative Information and Development 
>Centre in Cape Town providing community 
>organisations with information around issues of 
>Trade, Debt, Globalisation and Privatisation.
>


-- 


Al Kagan
African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801, USA

tel. 217-333-6519
fax. 217-333-2214
e-mail. akagan at uiuc.edu
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