Capital Times (Madison, Wisconsin) | November 1, 2001 | Editorial
The international movement to protect workers, small-business owners, farmers, consumers and the environment from the excesses of corporate-sponsored "free trade" initiatives is often mischaracterized as an "anti-globalization" crusade.
In truth, corporate executives who gleefully skip from country to country in search of poor people and green places to exploit are the ones who lack global vision. The true internationalists are those activists from India and South Africa and El Salvador and the United States who seek to globalize the struggle against economic inequality and injustice.
A true leader of that movement, Cheri Honkala, will speak at 7 tonight at the UW Red Gym on "Reclaiming Our Economic Human Rights." The founder of Philadelphia's Kensington Welfare Rights Union, Honkala recognizes that, as American corporations go global, coalitions of poor and working-class Americans must do the same.
Working closely with Madison activists, who play a leadership role in the U.S.-El Salvador sister cities movement, Honkala has forged a close working relationship with Lorena Martinez, a similarly energetic and courageous woman who leads the Association of Rural Communities for the Development of El Salvador. Running with an idea promoted over many years by activists with the Madison-Arcatao Sister City Project, Honkala and Martinez have forged the Poor People's Campaign for Economic Human Rights in the Americas. And they have gained commitments to the cause from groups in Canada, Brazil and Mexico.
Honkala and Martinez understand that globalization in the form of corporate-sponsored free trade pacts, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, do nothing to better the conditions of poor and working-class families. (In fact, under NAFTA, wages have dropped for Mexican workers while at least 700,000 U.S. factory jobs have been lost.) These two wise women are working together to promote a better globalization: one that begins with the principle that exploitation of workers and the environment, displacement of family farmers, and the denial of democracy is wrong - no matter where it occurs.
Instead of top-down globalization, Honkala and Martinez promote globalization from below. Instead of globalizing corporate exploitation, they argue for globalizing justice. That's why they oppose the wrong-minded proposal - now before the U.S. Congress - to grant President Bush "fast-track" authority to negotiate a hemispheric Free Trade Area of the Americas.
As Honkala will tell you, globalization from above harms the people at the bottom in every country. Only globalization from below will make the promise of a healthy and prosperous future available to all.Capital Times (Madison, Wisconsin):
