Bamako Appeal spikes controversy

Ruth Reitan

14 February, 2006

Dear all,

I've been following the discussion as best I can, but have been extremely busy with teaching so I have not been able to follow as closely as I would have liked. Essentially, I second Ruby (and probably Peter's) concerns and arguments. But at bottom, the most effective proposals have, are, and will be coming up from the grassroots through the massive transnational networks that are alive and well--on agriculture and food sovereignty and the WTO from the Via Campesina; also on the WTO and other trade agreements from, Our World Is Not for Sale; to addressing both patriarchy and poverty wrought by neoliberalism/capitalism from the World March of Women (and others); on how best to organize and fight against the war and militarism from the Global Anti-War Assembly; on radical youth ecological anarchism from the Peoples' Global Action; on fighting the debt and SAPs from Jubilee South; on environmental justice from Friends of the Earth International; on tax justice from ATTAC.

Furthermore, the only way that these struggles are going be articulated and linked to any mass coordinated action is through the networking that has, is, and will be occurring among these and other networks, who represent (acknowledging that that term is problematic) hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Such "synthesizing" appeals from academics are neither here nor there, and are not really useful, or are not going to amount to anything in terms of action without an organic process--a process which IS occurring, from what I can see, at the WSF, but not only there, also in such spaces as the Via Campesina's international meetings and forums, at OWINFS planning meetings, at regional forums, etc. Basta ya! Bamako Appeals, G19 manifestos, etc. macht nichts. This is not what we should be devoting our efforts to. Follow the movements, support them, research them, give them voice, but don't propose or suppose to do their thinking for them. They are more than capable of that, and most are anyway repulsed by this sort of patronizing vanguardism. I say NIGD should let it die the whimpering death that such appeals deserve.