Free Your Markets and Your Ass Will Follow-


This is the text of a speech given by me on November 22 at "Declaration of Independence from Corporate Globalization" rally in front of Independence Mall in Philadelphia, PA.

The Stop the FTAA mobilization is the second part of the Jobs With Justice Season of Struggle. The Season of Struggle ties three mass mobilizations together in a way that, we feel, draws a complete picture of the oppression of workers world wide.

Jobs with Justice wanted to put a heavy organizing focus on the crisis facing immigrant workers in this country. This is a situation that has always been grave in our nation, no less so today. For this, we decided that the Immigrant Workers’ Freedom Ride was something we would put our energy into. But, it was obvious that the Immigrant Workers’ Freedom Ride only addressed one small part of the problem faced by these workers. The Immigrant Workers’ Freedom Ride only addressed the “road to citizenship.” The 600-800 Philadelphians that went to this mass rally in NY or took part in the many events here in town, know only too well that the legal obstacles in the road to citizenship is only the midway point in the vast desert expanse between hardship and fairness. The problems that the immigrants that we organized with face are rooted else where.

The Stop the FTAA mobilization, of course, squares off with the corporate global elite and their government backers that are driving this process of globalization.

“Globalization” Now, there is a term filled with irony. Globalization, of course means the new arrangement of power in the hands of for profit entities. But, on its surface, globalization sounds almost like a good thing. I wish my neighborhood was more globalized, right? It sounds like a very multicultural kind of thing. In a way it sort of is. For years people demanded that corporations hire more minorities and for years they fought it claiming that they couldn’t find enough qualified minority candidates. Apparently, in some fit of old, white, male guilt, the president/CEO of Nike has opened up special factories that only hire teenaged, Indonesian women to make his shoes…ah, progress.

Globalization, also reminds me of the New Left slogan: “Think globally, act locally.” Such a forward thinking sentiment! It acknowledges our interconnectedness with the whole world and announces our duty as freedom fighters. The revised mantra, however, turns this sentiment on its head. In this era, where a small cabal of wealthy power brokers, trade lives, hopes and dreams across continents on a whim, the new axiom has become, “Act globally, think locally.” The thrust being, “Search globally for markets and resources, act to localize as much profit and global resources into your own pockets as possible.” Ironic isn’t it.

That’s not where the irony ends, though. They say that the globalization is the fantastic offspring of the wealth of nations, the birth child of the old dead white guy, Adam Smith. Globalization is the invisible-hand, the free market all grown up, drunk on a bottle of kiwi flavored Mad Dog 20-20 and driving his Abrahms attack vehicle at speed down the newly paved information super highway. If G.W. has a pick-up truck back on his ranch in Waco, Texas it should have one bumper sticker on it, and that bumper sticker should say, “Free your markets and your ass will follow.”

George Bush recently stated that a side benefit of the FTAA is that “people who operate in more open economies eventually demand open societies.” Yet, few things are as ironic as the results of a decade of free market fundamentalism once it is examined more closely. The rhetoric hardly matches the reality of this brand of Stalinesque, free-market, dogma where freedom of markets equals, formerly well paid US union workers forced out of sheer need to swallow the religious message of the Bush faith-based initiative just to visit the food bank. The freedom of markets looks like the massacre of U'wa Indians to remove them from their ancestral lands on behalf of Occidental Oil Company. The freedom of markets looks like millions of US workers sitting through forced and captive audience meetings at work to hear the employer threaten their participation in a democratic collective bargaining unit. The freedom of markets looks like $8 million dollars worth of batons, tear gas canisters and rubber bullets in Miami. This freedom is to democracy as shallow, unmarked graves are to unionists from Columbian Coca Cola plants. Welcome to the new freedom, the irony is so powerful that now it is sour.

If I could, I would like to quickly return to the Season of Struggle. The Season of Struggle culminates on December 10. Jobs with Justice will highlight the final issue which is this: we have not viewed our right to organize in our community, at our school and on the job as a fundamental human right in this country since the passage of the International Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. The right to organize is as elementary a human right as the right to practice your religion or your rights to free speech. NO, in fact, your right to resist is as basic as your right to exist, and that is what D10 is all about. Jobs with Justice plans to hold our biggest Workers’ Rights Board ever. The Workers’ Rights hearing will be at the Arch Street Friends meeting house on 3rd and Arch Street, from 4-6 on December 10, International Human Rights Day. I hope to have your support and see you there. Also, please sign the VOTE NO on the FTAA ballots that are going through the crowd.

Thank you for your time.

The Politics of Fear, Guilt and War: Image is everything.

Out of deep desperation and want for the “authentic,” the public latched onto the slogan, “Image is nothing! Thirst is everything! Obey your thirst!” In 1993, Sprite begged the citizen consumer to rebel against the hype. The commercial series that sold being “real” pushed sales up 13% over the course of the campaign.

Around the same time, Bill Clinton was swept into the White House with a liberal image. But just as the commodified raps of inner-city youth in the Sprite commercial, Clinton was more image than reality®. His agenda proved to be a veritable, right-wing dream plan that weakened labor unions, the social safety net, race-baited Sista Soulja and diminished environmental and civil liberty protections. The spectacular facade of Bill and Hillary was so convincing that for eight years the liberals shut-up and the right-wing attacked the couple. The super-reality of intern-fantasy pornocracy seduced us to the media box and our own insatiable examination of a blue, stained dress revealed our cognitive dissonance. Our “thirst” was tantalized into “desire” and the reports couldn’t be too explicit.

After decades of ever growing, spectacular political displays like the national nominating conventions of the two parties complete with star studded celebrities, live rock bands and flashy news formats, and up-to-the-minute election night exit polls, the political stage shows became more important than the democracy they were supposed to facilitate. This point was driven home like a stake through the heart when in 2000, Fox News declared the winner of the Presidential Race long before the outcome was certain. It was a political declaration that said “the show must go on.” For fear of losing market share, the rest of the media parroted the claim. Al Gore, though he had more popular votes, was voted out of the power bubble by a tribal council comprised of TV producers and CEOs.

For the next three years, our thirst for “the real” has been quenched by an onslaught of “unscripted drama.” The culture factory has remained on constant feed pumping out fast food for the minds of a nation: a steady diet of nothing. The maitre d’ carted out “The Real World,” “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”, “What Not to Wear” and “While You Were Out,” which served as perfect complements to the main course: the War On Iraq ™. The substance of the meal/message was simple: My life is too boring, I don’t dress stylishly, my house is ugly and the evil doers want to kill me. All of which comprise a meal fit for the servants of a king, which meets the USDA’s Recommended Daily Allowance of fear, self-doubt and loathing brought to you Viacom, Newscorp, General Electric, Disney and Time Warner.

Not surprisingly, we Americans feel increasingly empty the more we turn to our long trusted televisions. As evidence of our depleted state from fast food news, a recent study by the University of Maryland found that if a person uses TV news for information on world affairs, then he or she is more likely to believe one of the following lies that has been implicitly and explicitly fed to us:
a) Saddam Hussein had something to do with the terrorist strikes on the Eleventh of September, 2001.
b) US troops have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq since the declared end of the war.
c) World opinion supported Washington’s pre-emptive war on Iraq.

Naturally, 85% of the people who believed any one of these falsehoods supported attacking the innocent citizens of Iraq. The perverse ingredients of this deep-crude-oil-fried debacle are coming to light. Someone has lifted the bun and is starting to ask questions. Anyone shocked by Upton Sinclair’s, “The Jungle” would be disgusted to note what the Big Mac-ifacation of information has churning out to produce the War in Iraq.

Retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner has become the modern warfare equivalent to Upton Sinclair, showing how many rats were scooped into the hopper before sausages popped out the other end. Colonel Gardiner, an expert in psychological warfare (Psy Ops), has recently released a study called “Truth from These Podia” that documents that the White House Psy Ops attack was not aimed at Iraqi citizens, but the US domestic population. The Colonel states, “This was not bad intelligence. It was much more. It was an orchestrated effort.” Amid a maze of lies and threat, believing the image seems like the only hope.

The lies were supplied in ready amounts, but one cannot help but note that the lies were happily shoveled down hungry gullets by our own hands. Information that countered White House claims on every matter from the supposed Iraqi unmanned drones to connections of Al Qaeda to terrorist training camps was widely available. It would be hard for even the cave dwelling bin Laden to not hear the low grumbling discord between fact and fiction much less the media saturated American public. To be sure, it takes a certain degree of mental reaching, a wanton desire to believe that which is not. We thirst for image… we obey our thirst!

Perhaps it was the betrayal of political principles for Clinton, or maybe remorse over not having enough energy to stop the attack on our democracy in 2000 or, perchance, our inability to turn away from the neuro-eroticism of watching those towers collapse again and again and again that has produced a mountain guilt that dwarfs even our national deficit. The truth is ugly (think vermin burger), but the guilt (yes, we ate it with relish) is even worse. A decade long consumer binge, during which we couldn’t spend enough to compensate for feelings of inadequacy, left us feeling bloated, shallow, and concerned about our cholesterol count and our colon. Unfortunately, though, we ordered another super-sized meat-wich. Image or Nothing at All!

The election of Arnold “Meat-wich” Schwarzenegger, a candidate that was so glaringly unqualified for the job, was a whole sale confirmation: we want the pretty, ideal, image more than life itself. The California Selective Recall: Extreme Political Make-Over series hit of 2003 or, after a guilty decade long political binge we felt a little guilty? Excuse us, its time to purge.

- Fabricio M. Rodriguez works as the Executive Director of Jobs With Justice in Philadelphia. He can be reached at reddazibao@yahoo.com and an extended version of this article appears at www.binformedmag.com.