[Peace] Fwd: April 5, Global Justice Teach-in

[Alfred Kagan]

>
>
>Dear friends and colleagues:
>Hope you are fine and having an enjoyable break.  As some of you 
>already know and have generously provided funding to us, we have an 
>exciting opportunity to host three leading international public 
>intellectuals and activists on our campus via a Global Justice 
>Teach-In Tour during Monday April 5, 2004.  These Global Justice 
>Teach-In Tours are organized in conjuncture with a mass mobilization 
>at the end of April during the annual IMF/World Bank meetings.  The 
>extent of enthusiasm from various units to host these activists on 
>our campus has been overwhelming.  Below we have included additional 
>info about the event.


>This year marks the 60th anniversary of the World Bank and the 
>International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the 10th anniversary of the 
>founding of the Washington-based international network 50 Years Is 
>Enough(http://www.50years.org)  The 50 Years Is Enough Network, in 
>partnership with allies such as Jubilee South, the Indigenous 
>Environmental Network, SouthWest Workers Union, and others, is 
>planning a Global Justice Teach-In Tour in conjuncture with its mass 
>mobilization at the end of April during the annual IMF/World Bank 
>meetings. 
>
>
>
>Speakers'short bio (Please note the list of visitors may change 
>pending on visa confirmations)
>
>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.
>
>T.S. Subramanian (Mani)  Tamil Nadu, India
>People's Union for Civil Rights/Human Rights Tamil Nadu Initiative
>
>T.S. Subramanian (Mani) has been a movement activist for the past 
>three and a half decades.  He was an underground revolutionary for 
>many years before coming above ground in the 80s.  He has led and 
>been integral to movements for the assertion of Dalit (the 
>untouchablecaste) rights, including land rights and violence and 
>repression committed against Dalit communities.  He has also been 
>involved in the fisherpeoples movement, plantation labor struggles, 
>environmental movements (including organization around nuclear 
>sites), and issues of globalization.  He is also a free lance 
>journalist and part of several human rights organizations, including 
>the People's Union for Civil Rights and the Human Rights Tamil Nadu 
>Initiative.  He is on the National Steering Committee for Mines, 
>Minerals, and People since its inception.  He has faced violence 
>himself and has been in prisonfor confrontational struggles.
>
>Sam Vuthy Phnom Penh, Cambodia,
>Womyn's Agenda for Change Project
>
>Sam Vuthy works with the Womyns Agenda for Change Project in 
>Cambodia, an Oxfam Hong Kong project.  He has also worked with Oxfam 
>Hong Kong (OHK) directly from 1998 2000.  He has experienced first 
>hand the intervention of external powers such as the World Bank, the 
>IMF, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the World Trade Organization 
>(WTO), and the United States government in his country, which for 
>him has meant a long period of separation from his parents and 
>family, the murder of his father and other family members, growing 
>up in a refugee camp, and finally returning to Cambodia only to see 
>it liberalize, privatize and deregulate at the command of these 
>international institutions and foreign governments.  It is these 
>life experiences that have led him to become active in Cambodia, 
>critiquing the Banks, the Fund, and the WTO, especially in the areas 
>of the so-called Poverty Reduction Strategy Projects (PRSPs), the 
>devastating effect on gender imbalances, and other Bank and IMF 
>policies.
>
>


-- 


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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