BREAKING THE BANK II: Mobilization for Global Justice, May 2000
(77 min.)
Transcribed by Darrell G. Moen
Return to Part I
Walden Bello (Focus on the Global South): The World Bank was very much involved with the Suharto [former dictator of Indonesia] regime in Indonesia. Its resources (and everybody now acknowledges that there was a great deal of corruption with World Bank resources in Indonesia) helped prop up Mr. Suharto.
[Caption insert: Indonesia's army is accused of genocide against the people of East Timor.]
Walden Bello (Focus on the Global South): The World Bank was one of the chief backers of Mr. Marcos in the Philippines in terms of providing [financial] resources. The World Bank in South Korea in the years of the dictatorships provided tremendous resources that were very much involved in keeping the military dictatorship in that country going.
Unidentified participant: Globalization is doing two things. It's promoting war and it's providing the means to wage war. So in the first place, you have the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO, which are the main vehicles for globalization, restraining governments, promoting unfair trade, driving down human rights, and really destroying the fabric of what is required for healthy communities (particularly in the developing world, I mean it has that effect here as well, but really has that effect in the Third World).
Walden Bello (Focus on the Global South): They were lending projects, which were structured within an authoritarian, technocratic sort of context that resulted in disempowering local communities and empowering authoritarian governments. This is the sort of record the World Bank has had. And you cannot just reverse that record with just a few words like "We're now for anti-poverty," because the essence of these programs such as "structural adjustment," "liberalization," "deregulation," "privatization" of the doctrinaire sort remains the same. It is just the rhetoric that has changed.
Unidentified participant: There are 36 wars in the world that are going on right now and all of those wars are civil wars, largely as a result of those states breaking down, falling apart. Many of these wars, there has been a history of IMF intervention that you can find if you go back and look through the history, you can find those connections. When you have, a breakdown of what we call human security, when people don't have clean water, when they don't have a proper education, when they're denied basic human rights, and then the state even begins to break down itself in some of these cases, what you have are the conditions for war.
This is an actual advertisement from Boeing Corporation. This is an Apache helicopter with Hellfire missiles attached. This helicopter costs $18 million to build. Look at the caption, it's in an actual magazine that's distributed to governments and militaries. It says, "It keeps the peace. In a dominating, intimidating sort of way." This is the face of the new global economy. This is the power that enforces the inequality that globalization produces. This technology can only be made by a handful of countries, industrialized countries that spend billions and billions of dollars on military spending. In this particular case, the United States.
[Caption insert: The World Bank has funded over 600 dam projects and displaced over 10 million people worldwide. In 1975, The Guatemalan department of electricity, INDE, began the Chixoy dam project. In 1976, INDE announced to the people of Rio Negro that the Chixoy Project was going to displace their community.]
Carlos Chen: The World Bank gave loans to build the dam, which destroyed our community. The community never wanted to leave their land - ever. INDE promised to the community that they would build us nice homes, give us good land, create a fishing cooperative, and build a bridge across the dam so the cattle could cross the river. Tons of promises. But it was a falsehood, there was nothing. Some people received a minimal sum to cover their lost crops. They bought things like cattle and horses with this money, but these things were later taken by the civil defense and the army.
[Caption insert: Between February and September of 1982, 369 people were murdered by the military and the paramilitary - more than half the community's entire population. At the time of this violence, the filling of the Chixoy Reservoir was about to submerge Rio Negro.]
Carlos Chen: My wife urged me to hide in the mountains. She told me that I couldn't stay in the house because they killed her father, her brother, and many people.
[Caption insert: On March 13, 1982, Carlos' wife, along with 177 Rio Negro women and children were brutally tortured and murdered in the hills near the village.]
Carlos Chen: The children screaming, gun shots, everything that happened there. On March 14, we arrived at the site of the massacre where I saw lots of blood, shells, and cigars they had used to torture the women, clothes and kids' toys scattered. So that day, all the survivors left for good. We went to the mountains, and nobody was left [in Rio Negro]. I thought the rest of my family would survive because they were women and children. I thought the army or the patrols wouldn't kill them. On March 13, the moment I saw that they had killed them, I decided to end my life. Then, I realized that killing myself is not the answer. So I decided to defend my life so that one day, I would tell [the world] what had happened to my family.
[Caption insert: On April 16, 2000, Carlos Chen came to Washington D.C. to ask for reparations.]
Don Kegley (United Steelworkers of America, Spokane, WA): These corporations are moving all their capital through the IMF and World Bank to Third World countries, and then exploiting the workforce there.
Michael Moore (TV personality): Good afternoon. We've just been told that because of the demonstrations in the streets today, the IMF was unable to start their meeting. You have one vote and I have one vote, all right? When it comes to our economy, we're cut out, we're not part of that [decision-making process]. We do not have economic democracy in this country.
Gerald McEntee (President, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees): We are united in our goal - to oppose the boundless greed of the global economy and we've got to get rid of the Republican right-wing in the Congress of the United States.
Kendra Fox-Davis (President, United States Student Association): The impact globalization has had on students internationally is being experienced by students in this country as well. We are also burdened with debt - it's just called student loan debt. Students are workers. And so on behalf on students, I want to share my tremendous respect and solidarity for the trade unionists who are in the crowd today because together we are building an incredible movement.
George Becker (President, United Steelworkers of America): The arrest of the students and activists is shameful for this nation. And they refuse to let you exercise your constitutional right to protest. This is the power of a corporate state. You can't fight these corporations by yourself. They're too powerful and too big. It takes groups like this, everybody coming together. And even then, it's a hell of a battle.
Thomas (Chesapeake, Maryland): This protest is very important because capitalism is destroying the country little by little.
Brad Janzen (University of Oklahoma student): Well, it was an incredible display of unity that capped off an incredible weekend of organizing. I think it's been a huge success.
Anita Wheeler (Young Communist League): Different organizations, church groups, labor, and we all came together with one common focus and that's a very good feeling and this is the first time in my life I've ever felt anything like that. I know I'm still young, but I think it's really something good to have early on, so you know it's possible and there is hope.
Vandana Shiva (Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Natural Resource Policy): The Green Revolution, which is really the introduction of chemical agriculture under forced circumstances to countries like India, was 100% financed by the World Bank.
Peter Rosset (Institute for Food and Development Policy): The kind of folks who were behind the Green Revolution at the beginning were the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation in the 1950s who were concerned that if the issue of hunger in the Third World wasn't addressed, then poor people in those countries would be ripe for communist subversion.
Anuradha Mittal (Institute for Food and Development Policy): In the 1960s, the World Bank was very happy to provide the Indian government with loans for setting up chemical industries that would produce fertilizers and pesticides for the use within the country. And of course, the amount was not enough, so they also helped us with loans to be able to bring in international companies such as Union Carbide.
[chanting: "Union Carbide, you can't hide. We accuse you of genocide!"]
Peter Rosset (Institute for Food and Development Policy): So what they did was that they took the advances in U.S. agronomy and crop breeding, which were basically breeding new varieties of crops that were more responsive to chemicals (chemical fertilizers, chemical pesticides, and controlled irrigation water) and bring those to the Third World.
Vandana Shiva (Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Natural Resource Policy): No farmer could take credit of any kind if he didn't buy the new seeds and the new chemicals. And internationally, India's foreign exchange borrowings went up three times just in one year of the Green Revolution.
Anuradha Mittal (Institute for Food and Development Policy): Once the farmers were used to it, the subsidies were taken away because the World Bank and the IMF were telling the Indian government that you have too many loans, you have a big debt, and we have to get rid of that debt.
Marc Lappe (Center for Ethics and Toxics): There were dramatic increases in yield as a result of the Green Revolution, mostly in the United States. In Third World countries like Mexico, India, and elsewhere, farmers initially had success but ultimately discovered, with the over-reliance on chemical pesticides and fertilizers, that they were contaminating water aquifers, that they were having chemical runoff that was creating havoc with neighboring estuaries and fields, and that they ultimately couldn't afford to maintain the irrigation levels and the scale of production which was dependent so much on the chemical infrastructure.
Anuradha Mittal (Institute for Food and Development Policy): On the one hand, you can say you have this fantastic chemical pesticide or whatever that will take care of your rice crop, but in the case of India which used to have 50,000 varieties of rice, every farming community would plant at least 20 or 30 varieties of rice, some of which would have more resistance to drought or some of which would have more resistance to certain pests, so even if you had a severe pest infestation or even if you had a drought, you would still have a crop. But the fact that we have moved away into this single-minded, mono-culture we have actually made ourselves more open to destruction and more susceptible to droughts and pests and things like that.
Nunu Kidane (International Development Exchange): Human suffering must be alleviated. God knows that we have enough resources to feed everybody twice and then some. Then why is there poverty [and hunger]?
Vandana Shiva (Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Natural Resource Policy): If we have hunger today in larger quantities, it is because the systems of agricultural production that pretend to grow more food actually rob more food, both from nature and other species as well as from poorer people. If 800 million people are hungry today, every one of those 800 million people 10, 20, 30 years ago used to grow their food and feed themselves. World hunger is created by destroying peoples' capacity to feed themselves, which includes both the destruction of small farming systems as well as the destruction of peoples' entitlements. That's in the rich countries as well as in the poor countries.
Nijoki Njoroge Njehu (50 Years is Enough Network - Kenya): Across the street about a block and a half from here at the Safeway supermarket, I'm able to get Costa Rican bananas for 69 cents a pound. I grew up on a farm. I know what it takes to raise crops like bananas. And I'm very, very much aware that that pound of bananas costing me 69 cents a pound [here in the U.S.] means that someone has been massively exploited.
Anuradha Mittal (Institute for Food and Development Policy): So it brings us back to this whole "export economy" that developing nations have been told to move on. We have been told that we do not have to worry about growing our own food because of this technology, which is present in countries such as the United States - they can grow food for us. And yet what we find is that we are starving our own people because now we're either growing bananas or coffee or tulips for export. So that whole self-reliance that we had, in which the farmers grew food crops to feed their own communities, that principle has been thrown out of the window for the sake of the dollar economy or the export economy.
Michael Moore (gadfly): Well, I think Wall Street has already gotten the message. Why do you think there's such a massive police response to this here? It's not because they believe that kids are going to burn a couple of Starbucks down. That's not what's going on. That response is massive because they realize that this movement is way beyond their control.
Jim Drew (attorney): This particular demonstration is being treated altogether differently by the police. The FBI and the Secret Service are very much involved in planning the police strategy. The first arrests were on Wednesday where the police, actually the FBI, pulled over a car that had some chicken wire and some pipes. Things the police said would make sitting in streets more effective, but which are also equally useful for building puppets.
Kent Richards (Ashville, North Carolina): We were charged with possession of implements of crime and conspiracy to possess implements of crime. I felt confused. They didn't tell us as first why they were stopping us. They didn't tell me that I was under arrest. They didn't read me my rights.
Jim Drew (attorney): I'm sure that there is police dressed up as demonstrators, but they don't need to. They can just walk into the meetings. They're open. It's not a secret movement at all.
Kent Richards (Ashville, North Carolina): Well, it kind of scares me. We supposedly have the right to assemble, the right to protest, the right to free speech. But what I see going on here is a censorship of those rights before we have the chance to exercise those rights.
Jim Drew (attorney): There were many cracked heads. People that ended up bleeding because of attacks by police batons.
April Flowers (Hartford, Connecticut): People were marching and the cops came in from over there. And the people were just sitting there on their knees and the cops started beating on people. And a lady got slashed on her side. It was very hectic.
Jim Drew (attorney): What was intended this weekend was a classic example of civil disobedience, possibly sitting down in streets but non-violently. This is exactly the same thing that happened in the 1960s civil rights movement and the 1970s in the anti-war movement. That's been preempted and prohibited by the police, Secret Service, and FBI. That was their tactic on Sunday, to use violence against the demonstrators as opposed to arresting them. So there're going to be a lot of police brutality lawsuits. [at the Legal Communication Center for the A16 Mobilization]: All the legal observers that are out in the field who have cell phones call in and we then dispatch lawyers from here to those arrest sites.
Volunteer (Legal Communication Center for the A16 Mobilization): That's McPhearson Square, it's a park. You, in theory don't need a permit, but you know, that's gone out the window today.
Stephon Wilcox (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma): It's high time that today's young and old come together and say something about this travesty that's going on in society. We should never look down on people who are out here risking life and limb to make a statement and try to get things rolling and force change in the societies we live in.
Unidentified participant: Most people don't [get involved] in politics because politics is negativity. And if you can make it lively, it gives energy instead of draining energy.
Unidentified participant: Social movements build when the politics get into the theater and the theater gets into the politics.
Unidentified participant: We are making a visual metaphor that the IMF is the loan shark of the world.
Unidentified participant: There's something so uplifting about doing a kick line while we're being watched by snipers in a helicopter
Unidentified participant: I think art can do work in a way that yelling and screaming can't. I mean thoughts are one thing, but when you "feel" that something is right, that's when people move.
Unidentified participant: It feels good because sometimes it gets a little scary, and then you hear people shouting support and it makes you feel a lot better.
Unidentified participant: We've got more style, and for God's sake, we've got a marching band! Do the Feds have a marching band? I don't believe the police have a marching band.
Unidentified participant: I think music adds a really important element to what goes on here. It brings everyone together, and it pacifies some situations that could otherwise get really ugly and dangerous.
Unidentified participant: You can't get upset with the puppets. They're so non-threatening and so benign. So it shows that we're not out here to be hostile and not to be an adversary.
Unidentified participant: It's a festive atmosphere, like I said, it's a festival of resistance and we're going to demonstrate that not only do we have the power, we can also have fun.
[taped interview question: "Do you believe that there's been an exclusion in photographs and film of your involvement in this so that the face that is shown is the face of White, middle America opposed to it being an international face?"]
Unidentified participant: Just for once, you know, put the camera on people of color who are actually voicing their opinions and not looting some store and running away.
[Chanting: We are Africans! We are Africans! And we know what's happening!]
Mali: A lot of times we don't pay attention to what happens to our youth. What happens is that a lot of they have compared to the rest of the world. My father's from the Philippines, I have a lot of family in San Pablo and a lot of my relatives work in the sweatshop factories that Nike and other corporations have [in countries like the Philippines]. So they really have to work hard to earn a living, and girls are being employed there for like 14 cents an hour.
Nisrin: My life is political given who I am. I stepped foot into the United States being Sudanese, being Muslim, being Black. But the way I see my activism is representing people who can't do what I'm doing right now. It's my responsibility to do that.
Minda (Just Act): I think it's kind of sad that there's not more youth of color here. I think we need to represent more for ourselves because you come out here and there's a lot of White folks and that's cool, but we really need to represent [our concerns] because we're the communities that are being the most affected by globalization, both in our homelands and here in our communities in the U.S.
Luis (Direct Action Network, Los Angeles): Like if you go to the [Direct Action Network?], they'll ask "Why don't we have people of color here?" And their answer is, "Oh, we're recruit more." Like what, you're going to bring like six people of color in and [that'll make it all right]? That's their idea of how to deal with issues of "democracy" within the organization or of people of color taking part in a movement that is really "their" movement, right? How do you hold people accountable who never evaluate themselves? I mean, there's no evaluation. We're the only ones who are going to evaluation this, right? After Seattle [demonstrations against the WTO], who really evaluated it?
Lily (Just Act): We can't wait for them to wake up or come to the realization that maybe we're excluding some people. We have to let them know that we're feeling alienated and we don't want to feel alienated. We want to feel that we're all a part of this movement.
Demetrio (League of Filipino Students, Chicago): Solidarity is very important, but solidarity is nothing when you do not know what your role is as an individual and as a community.
Unidentified participant: Right now, everyone is lined up outside of the World Bank center and we are trying to block delegates from coming through. The Peoples' Assembly March joined with anarchists to block this intersection. Right now, we're just blocking this intersection and trying to keep delegates and police from pushing us out of the way. There's a line of police on horses trying to get us to move, but we're not moving.
Emery (Next Movement): Although we weren't able to completely shut down the IMF and World Bank meetings, we were able to make a statement to America and to the world that youth of color are concerned about how globalization is happening. And we're not going to let it happen in the way it's happening in which it's [further] marginalizing people who are already marginalized.
Hop Hopkins (Brown Collective): They wanted to be invited. Well, nobody invited us. Why didn't we get invited? Invited? Why did you need to be invited to the liberation struggle? Either you recognize that you're a part of it and you're already there, or you don't.
Unidentified participant: We share a view and we share a dream and a vision of a world that is very different from the world that we live in today. I'm not afraid of globalization. The task that we have at hand is to change globalization, to make it just, to make it globalization that does not pit workers against other workers, that does not destroy the environment, that does not end up deciding who rules and who dies. It is a globalization that serves human needs and that does not make people, the environment, and other kinds of resources goods and services to be traded.
Unidentified participant: I do think that the unions are starting to look at this from a global standpoint. I think that it's just a matter of time here before once they see the lack of democracy in this situation here in our nation's capital, that they will act. I hope that they call for a general strike, myself.
Unidentified participant: We're really building a movement here, and this is our political moment. And we're telling the world that we know what they're doing, what they're meeting about, what kinds of decisions they're making that are affecting our people, and that we're just not going to take it anymore.
Unidentified participant: It's the bad things that are being globalized like inequality, like environmental injustice, and so what we are trying to do is globalize ourselves and globalize our resistance to capital.
Vandana Shiva: Suddenly the world is hearing a different voice that's saying, the young people in this country do not want to participate in this. They are rejecting that system of privilege creation and saying, "We want a different world based on justice and equality. We want a different world that uses the scarce resources of this earth with respect and sustainability. To me, the most touching part of what's happening right now is that the young people of America have voted against American imperialism and American consumerism which is what globalization is all about.
Unidentified participant: We've already succeeded. Whether that meeting goes on or not, people across middle America, people across this country are going to ask: What is the IMF? Why are so many people opposed to it? They're going to start asking questions and wonder about it. And the fact that this issue has been brought to public attention at all is a success.
Unidentified participant: [interviewer: The folks watching this video, what can they do?] One, they can stop watching the video and get up and do something. We need people to get actively involved, not just by words, we don't necessarily need your money. We need your bodies, your physical presence. Change comes by numbers, by the amount of people you see here. This is what will make a change.
Unidentified participant: It's become like a fever, a momentum. People are beginning to look at issues. It's not about a group of people trying to lock arms and just keep those delegates out, but we're seeing all the attacks and protests that concern every area of our lives. Guess what? We know that we need to resist, but more than that, we need to win. We've been resisting a long time. We're battling now to win.
[caption insert: We dedicate this program to Key Martin, 1944-2000, of Peoples Video Network and International Action Center, who died of complications from tear gas exposure in Seattle. He was an inspiration to video activists and a great comrade.]
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