At The Black Commentator

Submitted by Prometheus 6 on September 25, 2003 - 4:18am.
on News

From: Apartheid Still Matters: Framing and African American Internationalism

Understanding the political arena as a global one is the best solution to the ongoing plight of African Americans today. We will not solve our employment problem until we understand labor as a global phenomenon, employers as global actors, and much of the wealth in our country (and the world) as the plunder of corporate thieves, rinsed in the blood of Africans and other indigenous peoples. The ability of the corporate agenda to dominate the American landscape is directly dependent on their strength as global competitors. Depressed wages, the increased gap between rich and poor, the sale of the public domain (schools, water and utilities, roads, prisons) to privateers, the lack of political challenge to the two headed beast we call a democracy—all these are features of the tableau before us. As corporate wealth and power grow unfettered, Africans throughout the world share a special place of exploitation, regardless of their nationality. African Americans need a much greater presence in the growing movement against corporate globalization; that movement could use some color. We need better and deeper connections to popular movements and organizations in other countries

For myself, I see corporate globalization as fairly inevitable; it's had too big a head start, has too much momentum to be stopped in its tracks. But I think it can be deflected. It doesn't have to be the great evil it has the potential to be.

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Submitted by don (not verified) on September 25, 2003 - 11:46am.

The article highlighted some of the more disturbing trends in developing countries, like privatization of the water supply and specifically focuses on past economic crimes in South Africa as a result of apartheid, so my comment here doesn't really directly address those issues. I think one practical solution for American corporate globalization would be to support a countervailing globalization of the American labor movement. Why not laws in this country that mandate that each time an American company sets up a factory to do business in a developing country, that it be a union shop? I know what the reaction to that will be from the globalists and the free traders and the Wall Street Journal editorial page, but why not? What better more practical way to ensure the rights of workers who currently have no power to defend and protect themselves against multinatis. (hey if the conservative crowd can rail against "multiculti" I can rail against "multinati" :-))