Bamako Appeal spikes controversy

Tord Björk

20 February, 2006

This is great. Finally Ruth Reitan gives us an alternative to elaborate further upon; a global political programme made by intellectuals for like-minded forces related to the WSF-process - to study the statements made "by the various networks themselves" which "are dynamic and in the process of revision through their own internal processes and through their concrete linking with other networks." The last proposal, especially, means going beyond the WSF limitations putting an emphasis on the dynamics between statements and movements capability to act. It would bring us a lot further than the endless and trivial discussion on whether WSF should be an open process or a body making political resolutions. I do believe it would be useful to look in a comprehensive way at this perspective, not only for the last three years but also in a longer perspective.

I do look forward to the work of Reitan on movement statements. But still I maintain that however great single-issue movements develop into popular movements concerned about the whole society and link up with other popular movements to build a comprehensive program, we still need a generalist approach that questions the movements.

When looking at the most comprehensive campaign in the Nordic countries last year that involved the widest range of different popular movements, this was the end poverty campaign. The way this was handled is an example of the opposite of Reitans optimistic assessment of the process as a whole. She might be right in the long run, but it is also important to have a theory about what went wrong in some countries when the movements really tried their best with broad visions.

In Sweden the campaign was a success in terms of broad participation. Both the big trade unions and churches, as well as environmentalists, Attac, and "everybody" else all joined hands signing a platform that, to church and trade union standards, was very radical. There were only three problems. One was that it delinked the North-South struggle from domestic issues thus taking away the core linkage of issues that makes them of interest for others then those specially interest in North - South issues. Thus the campaign becomes a mystery for most people, be it against privatization and neoliberal politics labelled with a lot of fancy acronyms in the South, but there was no linkage to home?

Secondly the campaigning was built by cheating with words and thus giving legitimation to the official process. The campaign stated that the millennium goals asks for fair trade, but this is not the case. The ultimate tool for achieving these concrete goals is instead a uniform global transparent (etc.) financial and trade system. There is nothing in the millennium goals definition on a system that states it should be fair, instead all the key words used in international diplomacy for the contrary are used, non-discriminatory etc..

Finally it was hard to mobilise any people to take part in the campaign. In Finland they were more involved in the Helsinki Process, but did create some charity activities for the campaign of less or no political importance. In Norway the millennium goals were criticised to pieces, and instead they made a campaign linking domestic and global neoliberal demands on the streets, and other means, in a successful intervention in the elections. In Denmark a campaign started that exploited faces of victims on a disgusting web page totally devoid from any politics differing from the millennium goals light version. On the web page, pictures of starving and needing coloured people asked for help with their eyes, all lonely except on the last page where there finally was a black crowd with empty white bowls raised above their heads. In what way did this Danish campaign, with a very large coalition behind it, reflect the qualities that Reitan talks about? I do not know? (http://www.udrydfattigdom.nu/first8.html). On the contrary I see the same neocolonial and racist attitude that also triggered the ongoing protests against Denmark in the Muslim world at the moment.

In other words it is not enough to study the statements made, we need to also look upon the way they are used. And if there, at least in some countries (as well as at WSF strongly promoted campaigns), are setbacks rather than an ever-growing process of integrating different movement perspectives, we need generalist theories and empirical knowledge on the limitations of both movements, parties, WSF or PGA as well, of course, of self-selected circles of intellectuals claiming to have generalist qualities.

yours I am afraid not to humble

Tord