Dear P. A. ,

As a follow up to our last workshop on power, privilege and oppression, i wanted to make a few more connections to real time events for you. As allies in a struggle to understand the systems that create wrong, we are and will be connected to any uprising anywhere in the world: Haiti, Venezuela, West Africa, India. If anything, this is a good lens by which to understand the importance of economic development.

Please read on for a couple of articles and links that connect the recent global food shortage to globalization and how economic policies in the U.S. affect individuals across the world. Via the wiki on colonialism and neocolonialism, you’ll get an overview of how economic strategies of highly developed countries create a dependency by lesser developed countries that is backwards and unfair.

Some questions to think about: What are our options if food became so expensive that supermarkets had to shut down? Is it fair that one country’s internal/domestic policies become another country’s survival issue? How does colonialism, neocolonialism, economic imperialism connect to American business practices? How does it connect to our personal powers of influence and privelege as individuals who benefit (as Americans clearly do) versus others globally who do not? How is this a personal issue / what are examples of how this affect us or plays out locally and everyday?

Anyhow, happy reading. don’t worry, there won’t be any tests.. this is for your personal edification / mental calisthenics.

In struggle and community,
Vanessa

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Brazil’s Lula: food riots are wake-up call
Wed Apr 16, 2008 8:39pm EDT

By Raymond Colitt

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Foods riots in Haiti and elsewhere are a wake-up call for the world to fight harder against poverty and reduce agricultural trade barriers, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Wednesday.

“It was necessary to watch dramatic scenes for the international community to wake up to the urgency of finding a definitive solution to the challenge of poverty,” Lula said during a lunch with visiting Indian President Pratibha Patil.

Protests in Haiti over high prices for rice, beans and other staples ousted the government on Saturday.

Rising food prices showed that the world “was poorly equipped to face and solve the worst evil of our times,” namely hunger, Lula said.

Food riots also underlined the need for an agreement in the so-called Doha round of global trade negotiations, Lula said. Rich countries need to reduce farms subsidies and trade barriers to allow poor countries to generate income with food exports, Lula said on Wednesday during a conference of the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization in Brasilia.

Either the world solves the unfair trade system, or “every time there’s unrest like in Haiti, we adopt emergency measures and send a little bit of food to temporarily ease hunger.”

If Europe doesn’t open its market to farm imports, “someone will have to assume the historic responsibility,” Lula warned.

Across the globe, bread, milk and other foods have become more expensive, fueling inflation in some countries.

Patil, whose 3-day visit to Brazil was her first foreign trip since taking office last year, praised Lula’s flagship social welfare program “Zero Hunger.”

Experts blamed price increases on strong Asian demand, adverse climate in some producer countries and increased use of corn to produce fuel in the United States.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization warned this week during a conference in Brasilia that rising prices threatened to increase malnutrition in Latin America.

(For more stories on global food price rises, please see here)
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSN1633420520080417?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependency_theory

Dependency theory is a body of social science theories, both from developed and developing nations, which are predicated on the notion that resources flow from a “periphery” of poor and underdeveloped states to a “core” of wealthy states, enriching the latter at the expense of the former. It is a central contention of dependency theory that poor states are impoverished and rich ones enriched by the way poor states are integrated into the “world system.” This is based on the Marxist analysis of inequalities within the world system, but contrasts with the view of free market economists who argue that free trade advances poor states along an enriching path to full economic integration. As such, dependency theory figures prominently in the debate over how poor countries can best be enriched or developed.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neocolonialism

overview: “Neo”colonialism implies a form of contemporary, economic Imperialism: that powerful nations behave like colonial powers, and that this behavior is likened to colonialism in a post-colonial world.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperialism

(5) The political division of the world by the great powers, wherein exporting finance capital to their colonies allows their exploitation for resources and continued investment. This superexploitation of poor countries allows the capitalist industrial nations to keep some of their own workers content with slightly higher living standards. (cf. labor aristocracy; globalization)

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Tracking Agflation: Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/news/globalcoverage/agflation

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The causes of poverty and why food aid is not enough

http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Poverty/FoodDumping.asp

Food Aid as Dumping

The way the food aid programs of various rich countries is structured may be of concern. In fact, food “aid” (when not for emergency relief) can actually be very destructive on the economy of the recipient nation. Dumping food on to poorer nations (i.e. free, subsidized, or cheap food, below market prices) undercuts local farmers, who cannot compete and are driven out of jobs and into poverty, further slanting the market share of the larger producers such as those from the US and Europe. Last updated Monday, October 31, 2005.

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The costs of globalization…. various links..

INCOME SIDE – how much is trade really worth
Los Angeles Port: http://www.portoflosangeles.org/about/facts.asp
China: http://tradeinservices.mofcom.gov.cn/en/f/2008-01-10/22497.shtml
L.A. Longshoremen: http://www.pmanet.org/?cmd=main.category&id_category=126
* The domestic business impact of West Coast port trade is $1.3 trillion – roughly equivalent to the GDP of Canada or Mexico.

* As of December 2007, PMA members employed nearly 15,000 registered ILWU workers at 29 West Coast ports in California, Oregon and Washington. The workforce has increased by more than 4,000 since June 2002.

* Average full-time wages for fully registered workers top $136,000 annually. Among individual job classes, the figures for 2007 were as follows:
o Longshore: $125,461
o Clerk: $145,731
o Foreman/walking boss: $200,052

Thank you,

VLV
Program Manager