Dignity and Defiance : Stories from Bolivia’s Challenge to Globalization

http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520256996

Jim Shultz is Executive Director and Melissa Crane Draper is Assistant Director of the Democracy Center.

Dignity and Defiance is a powerful, eyewitness account of Bolivia's decade-long rebellion against globalization imposed from abroad. Based on extensive interviews, this story comes alive with first-person accounts of a massive Enron/Shell oil spill from an elderly woman whose livelihood it threatens, of the young people who stood down a former dictator to take back control of their water, and of Bolivia's dramatic and successful challenge to the policies of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Featuring a substantial introduction, a conclusion, and introductions to each of the chapters, this well-crafted mix of storytelling and analysis is a rich portrait of people calling for global integration to be different than it has been: more fair and more just.

The Cochabamba Water War and its Aftermath:
http://www.democracyctr.org/blog/2009/04/cochabamba-water-war-and-its-aftermath.html

Un mouvement social oublié: Chili, 1907, Santa María de Iquique

http://www.fotolog.com/proletasiii/34685479/

par Sergio Grez Toso, décembre 2007

Le 21 décembre 1907, à Iquique, port de l’extrême nord du Chili, des centaines de travailleurs chiliens, péruviens et boliviens furent massacrés par l’armée et la marine chilienne devant les portes de l’école Santa María. C’est ainsi qu’un gouvernement oligarchique noya dans le sang la « grande grève » de la province de Tarapacá, un mouvement social spontané mais qui s’appuyait sur des organisations ouvrières en formation. Quelques mois plus tard, en 1908, à Valparaíso, naissait un certain Salvador Allende.

En ce début de XXe siècle, à la veille du premier centenaire de l’indépendance nationale, la « question sociale » est brûlante au Chili. Dans les mines de salpêtre, d’argent, de charbon et de cuivre, dans les entreprises portuaires, dans les usines de Santiago, de Valparaíso, de Viña del Mar, de Concepción et d’autres villes, une classe ouvrière qui commence à adhérer aux idéaux du socialisme et de l’anarchisme est en voie de constitution. Dès 1903, face à la prolifération des grèves et des mouvements de protestation, l’Etat, préoccupé par le maintien de l’ordre social, répond aux revendications prolétaires par des massacres successifs.

Tant la classe dirigeante que l’Etat baignent alors dans un contexte global de grande prospérité. Mais la dévaluation monétaire a fait chuter le taux de change du peso chilien de 18 à 7 centimes de livre sterling, entraînant une forte hausse du prix des aliments. Malgré la dégradation de leur niveau de vie et les dures conditions de travail, les revendications des ouvriers du salpêtre de la province de Tarapacá, à la fin de 1907, sont plutôt modérées. Ils demandent à être payés en monnaie légale et non pas en bons. Emis par les entreprises, ces derniers ne peuvent être échangés que contre des produits disponibles dans les commerces (pulperías) de ces mêmes entreprises, à des prix plus élevés que sur le marché libre.

D’autres revendications s’y ajoutent : liberté de commerce pour éviter ce genre d’abus ; stabilité des salaires en utilisant comme norme l’équivalent de 18 centimes (peniques) de livre sterling pour 1 peso ; protection pour les métiers les plus dangereux afin d’éviter les nombreux accidents mortels ; établissement d’écoles du soir financées par les employeurs pour les ouvriers. Dans les entreprises portuaires, ferroviaires et manufacturières, les travailleurs d’Iquique – l’un des ports les plus importants pour l’exportation du salpêtre – exigent pour leur part que leurs maigres salaires soient augmentés afin de compenser la diminution de pouvoir d’achat entraînée par la (...)

Source: http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2007/12/GREZ_TOSO/15386

Dignity and Defiance: Stories from Bolivia’s Challenge to Globalization

http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520256996

Dignity and Defiance is a powerful, eyewitness account of Bolivia's decade-long rebellion against globalization imposed from abroad. Based on extensive interviews, this story comes alive with first-person accounts of a massive Enron/Shell oil spill from an elderly woman whose livelihood it threatens, of the young people who stood down a former dictator to take back control of their water, and of Bolivia's dramatic and successful challenge to the policies of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Featuring a substantial introduction, a conclusion, and introductions to each of the chapters, this well-crafted mix of storytelling and analysis is a rich portrait of people calling for global integration to be different than it has been: more fair and more just.

Bruce E. Levine: Get Up, Stand Up

Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite

Polls show that the majority of Americans oppose recent US wars and Wall Street bailouts, yet most remain passive and appear resigned to powerlessness. Many Americans have lost confidence that genuine democracy is possible, and Get Up Stand Up explains how major US institutions have created fatalism. When such fatalism and defeatism sets in, truths about economic injustices and lost liberties are not enough to set people free—something else is required. For democratic movements to get off the ground, individuals must recover self-respect, and a people must regain collective confidence that they can succeed at eliminating top-down controls. Get Up, Stand Up describes how anti-elitists can unite and recover dignity, confidence, and the energy to wrest power away from the ruling corporate-government partnership (the “corporatocracy”). Get Up, Stand Up details those strategies and tactics that oppressed peoples have successfully employed to gain power.

Read the following excerpt: Toward a Liberation Psychology

Carta Maior - Boaventura de Sousa Santos - A ditamole

Se nada fizermos para corrigir o curso das coisas, dentro de alguns anos se dirá que a sociedade portuguesa viveu, entre o final do século XX e começo do século XXI, um luminoso mas breve interregno democrático. Durou menos de quarenta anos, entre 1974 e 2010. Nos quarenta e oito anos que precederam a revolução de 25 de Abril de 1974, viveu sob uma ditadura civil nacionalista, personalizada na figura de Oliveira Salazar. A partir de 2010, entrou num outro período de ditadura civil, desta vez internacionalista e despersonalizada, conduzida por uma entidade abstrata chamada “mercado”. As duas ditaduras começaram por razões financeiras e depois criaram as suas próprias razões para se manterem. Ambas conduziram ao empobrecimento do povo português, que deixaram na cauda dos povos europeus. Mas enquanto a primeira eliminou o jogo democrático, destruiu as liberdades e instaurou um regime de fascismo político, a segunda manteve o jogo democrático mas reduziu ao mínimo as opções ideológicas, manteve as liberdades mas destruiu as possibilidades de serem efetivamente exercidas e instaurou um regime de democracia política combinado com fascismo social. Por esta razão, a segunda ditadura pode ser designada como ditamole.

Os sinais mais preocupantes da atual conjuntura são os seguintes. Primeiro, está a aumentar a desigualdade social numa sociedade que é já a mais desigual da Europa. Entre 2006 e 2009 aumentou em 38,5% o número de trabalhadores por conta de outrem abrangidos pelo salário mínimo (450 euros): são agora 804.000, isto é, cerca de 15% da população ativa; em 2008, um pequeno grupo de cidadãos ricos (4051 agregados fiscais) tinham um rendimento semelhante ao de um vastíssimo número de cidadãos pobres (634.836 agregados fiscais). Se é verdade que as democracias européias valem o que valem as suas classes médias, a democracia portuguesa pode estar cometendo suicídio.

Segundo, o Estado social, que permite corrigir em parte os efeitos sociais da desigualdade, é em Portugal muito débil e mesmo assim está sob ataque cerrado. A opinião pública portuguesa está sendo intoxicada por comentaristas políticos e econômicos conservadores – dominam os meios de comunicação como em nenhum outro país europeu – para quem o Estado social se reduz a impostos: os seus filhos são educados em colégios privados, têm bons seguros de saúde, sentir-se-iam em perigo de vida se tivessem que recorrer “à choldra dos hospitais públicos”, não usam transportes públicos, auferem chorudos salários ou acumulam chorudas pensões. O Estado social deve ser abatido. Com um sadismo revoltante e um monolitismo ensurdecedor, vão insultando os portugueses empobrecidos com as ladainhas liberais de que vivem acima das suas posses e que a festa acabou. Como se aspirar a uma vida digna e decente e comer três refeições mediterrânicas por dia fosse um luxo repreensível.

Terceiro, Portugal transformou-se numa pequena ilha de luxo para
especuladores internacionais. Fazem outro sentido os atuais juros da dívida soberana num país do euro e membro da UE? Onde está o princípio da coesão do projeto europeu? Para gáudio dos trauliteiros da desgraça nacional, o FMI já está cá dentro e em breve, quando do PEC 4 ou 5, anunciará o que os governantes não querem anunciar: que este projeto europeu acabou.

Inverter este curso é difícil mas possível. Muito terá de ser feito em nível europeu e a médio prazo. A curto prazo, os cidadãos terão de dizer basta! Ao fascismo difuso instalado nas suas vidas e reaprender a defender a democracia e a solidariedade tanto nas ruas como nos parlamentos. A greve geral será tanto mais eficaz quanto mais gente vier para a rua manifestar o seu protesto. O crescimento ambientalmente sustentável, a
promoção do emprego, o investimento público, a justiça fiscal, a defesa do Estado social terão de voltar ao vocabulário político através de entendimentos eficazes entre o Bloco de Esquerda, o PCP e os socialistas que apoiam convictamente o projeto alternativo de Manuel Alegre.

Boaventura de Sousa Santos é sociólogo e professor catedrático da Faculdade de Economia da Universidade de Coimbra (Portugal).
Fonte: http://www.cartamaior.com.br/

Resisting the Charms of Fake Politics, Mindless Consumption, and the Culture of Total Work

By Curtis White

Trained relentlessly to work and consume, we make daily lifestyle decisions that promote corporate profits more than our own well-being. We also find ourselves working more, living in fragmented communities, and neglecting our most basic spiritual and political values. As Curtis White puts it, “In order to live, you will be asked to do what is no good, what is absurd, trivial, demeaning, and soul killing.” Although we belong to the world’s most affluent society, somehow we never have the chance to ask: How shall we live?

With his trademark humor and acerbic wit, White raises this impertinent question. He also debunks the conventional view that liberalism can answer it without drawing on spiritual values. Surveying American popular culture (including Office Space and The Da Vinci Code) to illustrate his points, White urges us to renew our commitment to “human fundamentals” as articulated by Henry David Thoreau-especially free time, home, and food-and to reclaim Thoreau’s spirit of disobedience.

Seeking imaginative answers to his central questions, White also interviews John De Graaf (Affluenza), James Howard Kunstler (The Long Emergency) and Michael Ableman (Fields of Plenty) about their views of the good life in our time.

Dubbed “the most inquiringly wicked social critic of the moment,” novelist and essayist Curtis White is a professor of English at Illinois State University. His previous book, The Middle Mind: Why Americans Don’t Think for Themselves, was widely acclaimed. His other books include Monstrous Possibility, Requiem, Memories of My Father Watching TV, and The Idea of Home.

His essays have appeared in many publications, including Harper’s Magazine and The Village Voice. He lives in Normal, Illinois, with his wife Georganne Rundblad and their five psittacine companions.

Walden

and Civil Disobedience

by Henry David Thoreau, Jonathan Levin (Introduction)

Synopsis
Walden and Civil Disobedience, by Henry David Thoreau, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:

• New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars
• Biographies of the authors
• Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events
• Footnotes and endnotes
• Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work
• Comments by other famous authors
• Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations
• Bibliographies for further reading

Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

Henry David Thoreau was a sturdy individualist and a lover of nature. In March, 1845, he built himself a wooden hut on the edge of Walden Pond, near Concord, Massachusetts, where he lived until September 1847. Walden is Thoreausautobiograophical account of his Robinson Crusoe existence, bare of creature comforts but rich in contemplation of the wonders of nature and the ways of man. On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience is the classic protest against government's interference with individual liberty, and is considered one of the most famous essays ever written. This newly repackaged edition also includes a selection of Thoreau's poetry. Jonathan Levin is Dean of the School of Humanities and Professor of Literature and Culture at SUNY-Purchase. His research interests include nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature and culture, modernism and modernity, and environmental studies. He is the author of The Poetics of Transition: Emerson, Pragmatism, and American Literary Modernism, as well as numerous essays and reviews.

More Reviews and Recommendations

Biography
"How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live," Henry David Thoreau once observed. The American poet, essayist and philosopher certainly held himself to that standard -- living out the tenets of Transcendentalism, recounting the experience in his masterpiece, Walden (1854), and passionately advocating human rights and civil liberties in the famous essay, “Civil Disobedience” (1849).