activists following the Jedi Code?

A climate justice activist I know has this as her e-mail signature:

There is no emotion; there is peace
There is no ignorance; there is knowledge.
There is no passion; there is serenity.
There is no chaos; there is harmony.
There is no death; there is the Force.
-The Jedi Code

Interesting to think of the Jedi Code as a code to use in a different kind of struggle. My friend is trying not to save a galaxy far, far away from an evil empire but to save our own humble planet Earth from a force that threatens to destroy all human life: the carbon cycle.

sexism and wild horses

Masked in gentility, your offer says, I possess the value of the abstract male. You do not. I have power and capability. You do not. Masked thinly in traditional old-fashioned common sense, he asks me if I need help with my luggage, in a demeaning voice, calling me “Miss.” I am not a child and I am not weak. I am certainly stronger than some old and futile man who barks at his wife, commands and instructs, and asks, “Who do you think you are?” All his wife can do is feed him and go to sleep, tucked uncomfortably into a generic blue seat on this train that I’m stuck on. He sits behind me and accuses her in ignorant bleats. He orders her to do the most minute tasks, criticizes when she doesn’t do things his way, instructs with the bloated words of a master. She complies, offers a few flat, defeated remarks and then escapes into a freer world behind her eyelids.

Don’t mistake me for some harnessed mount. I am a wild horse and my will has not been broken.

Often I forget that I grew up in a family where I was not as constrained as others, that I am privileged to have grown up in a world that allowed me to grow to my true size as a person, not clipping me back to shape me as a proper woman.

I grew up with a mother who allows herself to dream. She uses the power of her machines and her technology to propel her to new worlds. When I was a child, she used to pile my sisters and I into the family car and cruise ravenously down country roads, trying to find out everything about everywhere by going and seeing. She liked to go “exploring” behind the wheel of her automobile. She grew up as a wild country girl who drove the pickup truck around the farm by the time she was eight and would jump off the barn loft two stories high into big piles of hay. My mother makes websites now that she’s older, explores the online world ferociously and is the sole visionary and daily manager of a website that gets thousands of hits per week.

My mother was raised, for the most part, by her two aunts, strong old women by the time she was in her teens. One of my aunts, Edith Rogers, was the first woman to be in the local government, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. I never knew her, but look at photos of her and I’m proud to say that I bear her resemblance. And I have the strength, wildness and rebellious spark of my mother, too.

I’m also proud to say that I possess the quickness and ire of my firey German grandmother, a young teenager in Frankfurt during World War II. She escaped on bicycle from British soldiers who were firing on her and tightened her belt to survive. Later in life, when she could no longer suffer through the overbearing strictures of my grandfather, she had the strength to divorce him. My grandmother is 82 years old and not only living independently, driving herself and her friends around and climbing stairs, but volunteering with her local community theater.

I come from some very strong women.

So yes, I refuse your offers to saddle me, to put a rope around my neck and lead me into domesticity, I refuse to go quietly into your world in which you are the arbiter of power. I will buck you in an instant if you attempt to commandeer me. I refuse to let you deny me my own power. Make no mistake: You will have to shoot me if you want to dominate me, because you will never break my spirit.

The violent face of free trade: Government forces kill indigenous Peruvians defending the Amazon

As Peru wakes up this morning, many will decide whether to engage in strikes to stand against "free trade" and support indigenous people of the Amazon who were tragically attacked last week by their government. The official death toll from last week's police attack on indigenous people in Peru is 30 lives lost, though it is estimated that many more have died. They died while protesting the harmful impact of the US-Peru Free Trade Agreement on their forests, their families, and their ancestral lands.

On Friday morning of last week, police descended on encampments near the town of Bagua, where a peaceful blockade was in effect to keep private companies from indigenous forest lands. These ancestral lands had been recently opened up to private companies in unconstitutional, fast-tracked Peruvian laws pushed through as a result of the US-Peru Free Trade Agreement, which went into effect February 1, 2009. Some reports indicate that the government forces had initially given the indigenous people until 10 AM to decide whether to leave or stay, but then descended at about 6 AM, opening fire and tear-gassing while many were still asleep. The indigenous groups mostly appear to have been armed only with spears. At some point government forces also attacked people in the town of Bagua.

Survival International, a UK-based organization supporting tribal peoples, is calling this massacre Peru's "Tiananmen Square."

Alan Garcia, president of Peru issued a statement explaining why his government committed these acts. Ben Powless, Mohawk Indian from Ontario and blogger for rabble.ca, describes Garcia's statement:

Garcia declared the Indigenous elements to be standing in the way of progress, in the path of national development, wrenches in the gears of modernity, and part of an international conspiracy to keep Peru down.

“The president thought we would be docile in accepting plans that could completely change the way we hunt for food and raise crops, and we are not,” Juan Agustín told the New York Times, a Shipibo Indian and a leader of the Peruvian Jungle Interethnic Development Association.

Nelson Manrique, a political analyst with Catholic University in Lima, told the Associated Press that Garcia is trying to "deliver the Amazon to multinationals."

"We don't get anything from this huge exploitation, which also poisons us. We've never seen any development and my community lives in poverty," local Aguaruna leader Mateo Inti told The Associated Press in Bagua.

This tragic attack yanks the mask off of the true face of "free trade." These trade agreements are weapons in an all-out war. Corporate interests and governments of well-to-do politicians will use whatever violent means they can to steal resources from people so they can keep the global economic machine oiled and humming along so that they can get richer and richer.

We need local, living economies that work for everyone. Global justice means placing people, planet, and principle before profit. Unregulated trade does not work for the people. The Peru free trade massacre only exposes the true violence of unfair trade law... we mourn for them and struggle to ensure their lives were not lost in vain. Today the world will see that people in Peru are willing to wage strikes to stand behind our basic rights, the right to healthy ecosystems and intact communities, rights that "free trade" policies work against.

Photos: Thomas Quirynen

happiness in the midst of collapse - something to smile about

When viewed from outer space, one might say that the main objective of the human race since the Industrial Revolution has been to develop. "Development" is a sacred word to your local town hall, the sounding floor of the UN, and micro-financiers from Ghana to Sri Lanka.

And we've been very good developers. We've built everything to make us go faster, longer, and stronger, from malls to missiles to microchips. The standard of living of the average person in the US has increased to include all the standard comforts that may have been afforded by your typical feudal lord from England or Japan. Yet, if you take a more nuanced view of humans, and actually ask one of us, "What is the goal of your life?" The answer you usually get is something that boils down to "I just want happiness."

Do our developments lead to happiness?

In an insightful New York Times column, Daniel Gilbert says that happiness levels in the US have decreased since the before the global economic collapse that we've been experiencing for the past eight months. But he makes the important distinction that human happiness is not really in flux according to increased or decreased wealth. The real reason that the economic collapse has impacted happiness has more to to with uncertainty. He writes:

But light wallets are not the cause of our heavy hearts. After all, most of us still have more inflation-adjusted dollars than our grandparents had, and they didn’t live in an unremitting funk. Middle-class Americans still enjoy more luxury than upper-class Americans enjoyed a century earlier, and the fin de siècle was not an especially gloomy time. Clearly, people can be perfectly happy with less than we had last year and less than we have now.

So if a dearth of dollars isn’t making us miserable, then what is? No one knows. I don’t mean that no one knows the answer to this question. I mean that the answer to this question is that no one knows — and not knowing is making us sick.

So it is actually financial uncertainty, not the decrease in our bank accounts that is making us unhappy. Gilbert concludes:

Our national gloom is real enough, but it isn’t a matter of insufficient funds. It’s a matter of insufficient certainty. Americans have been perfectly happy with far less wealth than most of us have now, and we could quickly become those Americans again — if only we knew we had to.

Happiness has nothing to do with the fact that the average American is less able to engage in highly consumptive activities like going to Disneyland or stuffing their closets with unneeded fashion and accessories.

So why has our global society spent the last 150 years seeking more and more stuff, leisure, and comfort, like we're on some crazy global joy ride? Not to make us happier, that's for sure. We can be perfectly happy without a bull market, a trust fund, or land holdings. And for most of us, who aren't among the rich and famous, that's something to smile about.

An agreement that isn't good for anyone: The Panama Trade Promotion Agreement

People and planet should come before profits, but the proposed Panama trade plan would mean greed rules. The Senate Finance committee is meeting tomorrow to discuss the proposed Panama Trade Promotion Agreement. Top trade negotiator Ron Kirk is trying to ram through this agreement by July 1, when the Panamanian head of state Martin Torrijos leaves office. But this is just another free trade agreement that is bad for the people of Panama, it’s bad for the planet, and it’s no good for people of the US. We should call upon Congress to stop it now.

There’s a rancher that I know who raises cattle in the San Blas mountains of Panama, who I’ll only call Uncle Rickie. I met Uncle Rickie when I traveled to Panama in November of 2008, and I remember him for being a jolly fellow with a big belly who proudly bounced his new granddaughter Antonia, his first grandchild, on his knee.

If the Panama agreement went forward, Uncle Rickie would have to contend with a host of difficulties. The first would be that US cattle ranchers, who enjoy hundreds of millions in subsidies from the US government (US livestock farmers got handouts of about $344 million in 2003, for example,) would suddenly be able to sell duty-free to Panamanians. At the same time, Uncle Rickie will have to compete with a dramatic influx of cheap pork products from the US. Pro-pork lobbyists think that increased sales to Panama will result in $20.6 million in increased revenue. Uncle Rickie will have a lot of trouble making a profit by selling his beef to the Panamanian market, and eventually he may have to sell his land.

Farmers should be allowed to sell to their local markets. Local, living economies are good for everyone. If officials pass the harmful agreement, farmers like Uncle Rickie will no longer be able to carry on farming. Who would be there to buy the land of farmers who are forced to sell? Companies from the US and other rich nations, and maybe some wealthy Panamanians who support this agreement. This leads to a consolidation of power and decision-making as fewer people own more and more of planet earth. But people have a right to self-determination and autonomy, and the Panamanian government should respect that right.

Another supporter of the Panama agreement is Caterpillar, maker of heavy machinery used for logging and constructions. They are frothing at the mouth thinking of all the Panamanian trees that they can cut down and the increased heavy machinery sales that will result.

By the time little Antonia is going on her first date, the forests of Panama will probably be decimated, the clean rivers and pristine stands of old growth trees a distant memory. Verdant ecosystems will be forever ruined for incredible species like the blue morpho butterfly, which I first saw shining iridescently as it soared through the rainforest in the Boquete region of Panama. Like all of us, Antonia has a right to intact ecosystems, which Caterpillar seeks to undermine through supporting this trade agreement.

Another group who will be thrown under the bus if this agreement passed would be the Kuna Indians, a Panamanian ethnic group who have preserved their cultural heritage. Traditional farmers and artisans, these indigenous peoples will also face steep competition and many may have to abandon the ecologically sustainable, culturally rich ways of life their ancestors have known for thousands of years.

Will Antonia benefit from a more productive national economy? Probably not. Even looking at the brute economic indicator of gross domestic product, this trade agreement does not promise positive effects.

A similar trade agreement offers foreshadowing of what could happen if the Panama agreement goes through. NAFTA, a 1994 trade agreement between Canada, the US and Mexico, has shown that increased unprotected trade with the US is not likely to promote self-government, support local, living economies, or benefit most people at all.

GDP growth has been unequal after NAFTA, with Canada growing an average of 3.6 percent per year, the US growing 3.3 percent and Mexico growing only 2.7 percent. The average Mexican did not benefit from this growth, as income inequality has risen. Wages of Mexican workers decreased by 18 percent in the first five years. The predominant occupation in Mexico prior to NAFTA was farming, but many farmers, mostly in Central Mexico, were forced to sell or abandon their land after subsidized corn from the US flooded into Mexican markets, leaving the Mexican farmer unable to compete. Corn is indigenous to Mexico, and was farmed mostly sustainably. But now what is left is forced to compete in an atmosphere of industrial agriculture.

After NAFTA, Mexico has maintained a trade deficit with the US, meaning they import more than they export. This leaves the country hemorrhaging money and exports, which isn’t good for anyone in Mexico.

Furthermore, trade agreements like this one are bad for US workers, as we lose jobs here in the US. In just the first seven years, NAFTA had caused the loss of 766,030 jobs in the US. And it will cost us tax dollars, too. By 2002, the US Department of Labor had qualified 408,000 workers extensions on their unemployment benefits because their jobs had moved to Mexico.

Trade between the US and Panama totaled $2.1 billion in 2002. US exports account for about $1.8 billion of that amount. This means that for every $10 worth of goods that the US sells to Panama, Panama sells only $1 worth of goods to the US. The exports Panama sells to the US account for a tiny fraction, only 1.4 percent, of its GDP of $21 billion. Yet it is willing to sell its people down the river for this pittance.

The farmers who’ll be forced to sell their land and migrate may be forced to relocate to the city of Colon, where there are jobs in the Colon Free Trade Zone, or Zono Libre. When you picture a free trade zone, picture “Pleasure Island” from the Disney cartoon Pinocchio. For rich companies, a free trade zone represents a lawless area free from tariffs, taxes, or pesky labor or environmental laws. It usually looks like a collection of warehouse-like buildings on the edge of a port city that is protected by barbed wire. Working people (such as ex-farmers) travel into these zones each morning to do the most tedious grunt labor in return for low wages. Corporations like the low wages, while the workers are usually just desperate for any work they can get. Ships pull up to the buildings, unload raw materials like T-shirt fabric or radio parts, workers assemble them, and the finished goods get shipped to rich countries where people can afford them.

In his 2008 State of the Union address, Bush asked Congress to approve the Panama trade agreement, gleefully exclaiming that the agreement “will support good jobs for the finest workers in the world: those whose products say ‘Made in the USA.’” That sentiment is perplexing to anyone familiar to Zono Libre, where low-paid workers work in unsafe work conditions to sew together textiles bound for the US valued at $400 million per year for companies like Orotex, with offices in Farmington Hills, Michigan. Textiles and clothing account for about 24 percent of the work done in Zono Libre. This happens as US workers lose more and more textiles jobs (stat), yet purchase more and more clothing (stat).

For all the celebrated freedom that free trade measures like the Colon Free Trade Zone has received, you would think that Panamanians would be better off, however the average Panamanian is not better off. Income inequality has risen, placing Panama among some of the most unequal countries in Latin America. Panama’s index for income inequality is 60, according to a World Bank report. As the report says, “[Inequality] is more obvious in urban areas like Colon, where the close, physical juxtaposition of the modern, dynamic wealthy sector with poor city slums accentuates the perceived gap between rich and poor.”

I have never seen Colon since my Panamanian friends have insisted that if I were to travel there I would become a certain victim of a mugging or kidnapping. But the real Panamanian danger isn’t really frustrated urban poor who see wealth all around them but can’t touch it. The real danger is the Panama trade agreement.

Some are arguing that this trade agreement is needed to rescue the US economy. But Panama’s entire economy is 0.15 percent the size of the US economy. The US has one hundred times more people than Panama. That’s right, I’m saying the country is tiny. For US officials to undermine people’s basic rights in order to do business with this small country in the hopes that its tiny economy will deliver us from certain economic death is a mistake.

If passed, this agreement will harm Panamanians like Uncle Rickie. It will negatively impact little Antonia and make her economic future less certain. It will not benefit the average Panamanian but is likely to lead to a decrease in self-government and a spike in income inequality, as NAFTA did. And it will not benefit people in the US. Our Congress should vote an emphatic “no” on the Panama Trade Promotion Agreement. 

The Financial Times on the Future of Capitalism?

A fascinating series in the Financial Times has been exploring the future of capitalism. What's groundbreaking is that it has been giving voice to economic earth-shakers like Richard Layard, who says that we need a fundamental shift away from competitive capitalist values. In a March 11, 2009 FT article, Layard writes: 

[W]e should stop the worship of money and create a more humane society where the quality of human experience is the criterion...  [W]e need a trend away from excessive individualism and towards greater social responsibility. Is it possible to reverse a cultural trend in this way? It has happened before, in the early 19th century. For the next 150 years there was a growth of social responsibility, followed by a decline in the next 50. So a trend can change and it is often in bad times (such as the 1930s in Scandinavia) that people decide to seek a more co-operative lifestyle. 

From a news industry standpoint, if the Financial Times is willing to give voice to those who are openly opposing some of the key tenets of our economic system, it is time for all progressive communicators who call for a better way forward in this time of economic crisis to start questioning even more deeply. We have a lot of communications work to do if we are going to begin to shift societal values toward a more ethical value system and away from the values of greed. But if the Financial Times is willing to do it, so must we.

A story that needs to be told: The Story of Stuff

The New York Times finally wrote up "The Story of Stuff," a fantastic video detailing our why we all need to consume less. The video was orchestrated by Annie Leonard, an activist and thought leader in the progressive movement. In twenty minutes, the video takes us through the entire production-consumption process, pointing out the ways in which it is ruining the planet, exploiting low-income countries and communities, and making all of us "consumers" less happy.

"It's a system in crisis," says Leonard in the video. "You cannot run a linear system on a finite planet indefinitely."

The New York Times reports:

The video certainly makes the facts stark and at times very political: “We’ll start with extraction, which is a fancy word for natural resource exploitation, which is a fancy word for trashing the planet,” she says at one point. “What this looks like is we chop down the trees, we blow up mountains to get the metals inside, we use up all the water and we wipe out the animals.”

I first heard about this video a year ago when a dear friend, who is as passionate and granola-crunching as environmentalists get, sat me down with her dial-up modem and insisted I watch this online video, which had taken her four hours to download. I knew that if this online video had reached my tech-hating friend, who is just barely on e-mail and has sworn off cell phones, it had really gone viral. This put a big smile on my face, because "The Story of Stuff" is a story that very much needs to told. I'm glad that the New York Times finally agrees.

Coming in fourth place in Survive DC

Over the weekend I participated in a fantastic event called Survive DC, a giant city-wide game emulating how one would have to behave in case the city was infiltrated by zombies. 

The event involved running (or taking public transit) to six checkpoints throughout the city, performing various tasks at the checkpoints such as singing campfire songs, drawing a picture with crayons of "What I want to be when I grow up") (I drew a social butterfly, which is kind of like a media relations activist), and touching the Spaghetti Monster's noodly appendage. 

In between the checkpoints, you had to run really, really fast from the "chasers," people who could tag you, thereby eliminating you from being a "runner." If you were a running player who got tagged, you became a chaser.

My most memorable experience of being chased was when there were three chasers behind me. In order to avoid my fun being killed, I had to vault a fence (after which I skidded to a halt on the pavement, creating an unsightly gash on my elbow), and then dashing across the street just in front of an ambulance with its sirens on. I ducked into a corner liquor store at the end of the next block, with blood gushing from my arm, which seemed a bit frightening to the owner and customers. When the ambulance cleared, the chasers were gone and I made my get-away.

Organizers say that there were about 600 participants. I came in fourth place, behind a team of three Marines who were doing the race together. What can I say? When you have a herd of zombies behind you, you run really fast.

Raising the Voices of Immigrant Rights and Global Justice

On Mayday I marched to the White House to rally for immigrant rights. I had learned of the protest several months before through David Thurston of Casa de Maryland. When I walked up to the park where the first rally had been planned, David, the consummate organizer, juggling multiple tasks, handed me a clipboard and asked, "Can you do press sign-in?" But of course I could do press sign-in! 

I was there because I care deeply about creating a more people-centered, sustainable global economy. The global justice movement is the immigrant rights movement. We call for an end to unfair neoliberal and hyper-capitalist policies that force people to migrate in the first place. These policies, imposed by institutions like the IMF, World Bank, and WTO, take food right off of the tables of working families in poor countries, impose harmful free trade policies, property taxes, and other unfair laws. Once these policies are in place, people often have no recourse than to leave the rural homestead to look for a job in the city. (Spurring rural-to-urban migration has been part of a popular development strategy, as engineered by those in power, even though it is incredibly harmful, disruptive, and an entirely wrong-headed long-term strategy.) If the city's economy isn't big enough to accommodate all of these job-seekers, they start looking to other countries.

No matter where people migrate, everyone has a right to their basic needs - food, clothing, shelter, and autonomy. In my view, the best solution is for people to have the freedom to stay in their hometown and not have to migrate in the first place.

For the rest of the day I assisted the organizers by doing what I love to do: Expand the impact of the day's events by getting the voices of people doing great work into newspapers, magazines, radio and online media, and getting their faces in front of the hefty cameras of network news. Changing the world starts with just raising your voice.

Why has news of swine flu gone “viral”?

Two years ago, when SARS bird flu fears caused people to kill off flocks and stop eating meat, I was living in San Francisco, at that time considered a hot spot for the virus to reach the US. At that time, I took a zen attitude, made sure to get plenty of rest, fruits, and vegetables, and didn’t worry, even in Chinatown.

Now I’m living right down the street from the workplace of one confirmed swine flu patients, an Energy Department staffer who had traveled with Obama recently to Mexico, came home and spread it to his family. But am I wearing a surgical mask? Nope.

Some people are very afraid. Chinese authorities have been quarantining travelers from Mexico willy-nilly, while the schools of Fort Worth, Texas, keeps its 80,000 students home for a week and people of faith are pushing not just prayer as a solution, but refraining from taking communion wine and even the traditional “handshake of peace.”

So why am I so unconcerned? Because I’ve taken a close look at the numbers. The Center for Disease Control estimates that about 36,000 people in the US die each year from the flu. But swine flu had only killed one person in the US, a Mexican toddler visiting Texas. Much more dangerous than swine flu is lightning strikes, which slay an average of 62 American lives per year, according to the NOAA. There have, however, been about 230 confirmed cases of this flu in the US.

Heart disease is the umber one killer in the US, claiming about 820,000 lives in the US in 2006, yet we don’t see people running screaming from McDonalds or buying up all the jogging shoes at Wal-Mart.

Even Janet Napolitano, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, says “by and large, people should carry on with their normal, everyday lives.” The experts and officials clearly state that the only people who need to change their behavior at all are those who show symptoms of the flu.

So, swine flu is more a disease of the press than the scary pandemic it’s supposed to be. But if so, why has basically every news outlet made a major news item out of a disease that has only claimed one death?

Is this media circus just a news Frankenstein gone out of control – once the media created demand for news on swine flu, it spread like wildfire? Or is this some scheme to sell more papers at a time when many news outlets are in danger of going on the dole? Some believe there is a more sinister reason at work, that someone has gotten the media train rolling, like preparing us to push through pet legislation by the pharmaceutical industry, or an effort by a government agency snatching up our civil liberties, or maybe a larger share of the federal government pie. Still others feel that this could be some smear on immigrants. (Buzz among conspiracy theorists has reached a pitch.) One thing is certain, it is a clear example of the dangers of media hype.

There is no clear indication of why this media storm around swine flu has been so pandemic, but this has certainly been an example of a news item gone, well, viral. Until the numbers get a little more convincing, though, I'm more worried about getting hit by lightning than death by swine flu.

weekend of giving voice to global justice

My feet are sore, my voice is scratchy, my dishes are piled high. I've just completed another fantastic weekend to give voice to global justice. 

I'd been organizing these actions with Global Justice Action, a fantastic and spirited group in the Washington DC area, for five months. We planned a weekend of action April 24-26 to oppose the neoliberalist agenda during the bi-annual meetings held between two very destructive organizations, the IMF and the World Bank. I helped with some of the more colorful tasks, such as throwing a fundraiser and driving around to "liberate" sign-making materials, but my main role in the group was to help with the media outreach.

About three weeks before our actions, G20 decision-makers met to address the global economic crisis. Ridiculously, they decided that they would address the crisis by prescribing more of the bad medicine that got us into this mess in the first place. They decided they would work to give the IMF another $1.1 trillion in funds - sort of like deciding to give a drug dealer control of the rehab.

Neoliberalist policies that the IMF is built upon push countries' economies further into the hole, and make the lives of people in the Third World a lot harder. Whether in the name of economic growth or human development, the IMF's fundamental role is highly problematic. Most countries would be better off if the IMF had never stepped in at all.

The IMF's failings are one reason not to choose them to bail us out. But there are other absurdities in choosing to fund them in our time of need. The IMF is a bank like any other, not a charity organization. It makes its billions off of the interest it collects when it makes emergency loans to countries who find themselves in crisis... why would it be to the IMF's benefit to try to help countries toward long-term sustainability?

This proposed boone of $1.1 trillion to the IMF, as frustrating as it was, gave our planned actions that much more significance. We were able to quickly pivot our messaging to include not only broad condemnation for these institutions, but to oppose the $1.1 trillion. We incorporated these concepts into messaging for all of our creative forms of resistance - the 5K Run on the Bank, the punk show, the roving exercise-themed dance party, the People's Economic Forum (eight hours of our own solutions to the economic crisis!), the family-friendly march, and more.

We wound up with a very high volume of press coverage for the weekend, including several major print outlets such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, and all major TV news outlets such as ABC, CNN, and Fox News. It was nice to know that our impact was enhanced through these venues.

The outcome? Global decision-makers and the world got a clear message that the global justice movement is back. 

Time to get serious about blogging now!