Mn-prog-events Mailing List: Progressive Calendar 02.02.06

[David Shove (shove001]

            P R O G R E S S I V E   C A L E N D A R      02.02.06

1. Bird for Bush      2.02 9:30am [ed head]
2. Eagan peace vigil  2.02 4:30pm
3. Small is beautiful 2.02 5pm
4. Bedouin/Israel     2.02 7pm
5. Peace/precincts    2.02 7pm

6. Immigrant/hearts   2.03 9am
7. Ffunch brunch      2.03 11:30am--14
8. Counter recruit    2.03 12noon
9. Palestine vigil    2.03 4:15pm
10. Venezuela/film    2.03 6pm
11. Nelson-Pallmeyer  2.03 6:30pm
12. Raisin in the sun 2.03 7:30pm

13. George Monbiot - Buying complacency
14. Cindy Sheehan  - What really happened
15. Tom Hayden     - New day for Bolivia
16. ed             - kill kill kill kill kill (poem)

--------1 of 16--------

Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2006 19:40:30 -0600
From: wamm <wamm [at] mtn.org>
Subject: Bird for Bush 2.02 9:30am [ed head]

 [A bird from the hand,
 served up with nerve and verve, is
 worth two from the Bush.
                                    -ed]

Protest G.W. Bush As He Takes Your Future on the Road.
Maplewood 2/2 WAMM ACTION!!

Thursday, February 2.

At 9:30am, Press conferences outside the Holiday Inn, 2201 Burns Ave.,
Maplewood.

The largest group will assemble 10:30-11:30am at McKnight Road and Hwy
#94.

Earlier arrivals can then walk north to either west or east side of
McKnight Road (intersection of Hwy #94), Maplewood. Driving directions:
Coming from Minneapolis/St.Paul: go east on #94. Take exit going north on
McKnight Road (cloverleaf exit). Turn left on Old Hudson Road (a frontage
road). Park in parking lot of strip mall, just a short distance west of
McKnight Road.

For the protest, people will gather in an empty area, along the west side
of McKnight Road, facing the 3M complex or on the opposite or east side of
McKnight Road.

State of the Union got you fuming? G.W. is taking his programs - ie his
vision for your future, the future of this country and the world - on the
road. He will be hosted at 3M Headquarters in a closed meeting in
Maplewood, Minnesota. Exercise G.W. is making Minnesota the first stop on
his tour! Be prepared to arrive early, be flexible and wear comfortable
footwear. Bring signs. Sponsored by WAMM and many other groups. Organized
by Emergency Campaign for American Priorities, Americans United.


--------2 of 16--------

From: Greg and Sue Skog <skograce [at] mtn.org>
Subject: Eagan peace vigil 2.02 4:30pm

CANDLELIGHT PEACE VIGIL EVERY THURSDAY from 4:30-5:30pm on the Northwest
corner of Pilot Knob Road and Yankee Doodle Road in Eagan. We have signs
and candles. Say "NO to war!" The weekly vigil is sponsored by: Friends
south of the river speaking out against war.


--------3 of 16--------

From: Jesse Mortenson <jmortenson [at] Macalester.edu>
Subject: Small is beautiful 2.02 5pm

2.02 5pm
Cahoots coffeehouse
Selby 1/2 block east of Snelling in StPaul

Limit bigboxes, chain stores, TIF, corporate welfare, billboards; promote
small business and co-ops, local production & self-sufficiency.
http://www.gpsp.org/goodbusiness


--------4 of 16--------

From: margaret <hope4peace22000 [at] yahoo.com>
Subject: Bedouin/Israel 2.02 7pm

Nuri el-Okbi, Bedouin Leader from Negev Desert Communities in Israel
First US Visit and Speaking Tour

Thursday, Feb 2, 7pm
Peace Presbyterian Church
7624 Cedar Lake Road, StLouis Park

The Bedouin are Israeli citizens and some serve in the Israeli army, yet
like most Israeli Arabs, they experience a sort of second-class
citizenship, with inferior schools, health care and treatment by the legal
system.  Nuri el-Okbi has spent most of his life supporting Bedouin
families as they navigate the legal system trying to claim their
historical lands, reclaim confiscated sheep and goats, and defend the
villages they have built up after various dispersals in the past fifty
years. Nuri is committed to non-violent resistance, and has participated
in numerous protests, speaks regularly with world media and NGOs, and
maintains open lines of communication with the Israeli government.

Nuri will also speak at St. Cloud State University as part of NOVA Week,
on February 1, 2006, and will participate in a conference on Indigenous
Identity and Statelessness Issues on a Global Scale, February 8, also in
St. Cloud, with fellow indigenous activists, Winona LaDuke, Kani Xulam
[Kurdish activist], Professor Dia Cha [Hmong leader], and others  
Moderator, Jesse Benjamin, a St. Cloud State University professor and
Israeli-American Jewish activist, has done extensive research on Bedouin
culture and history, much of it with Nuri's guidance.


--------5 of 16--------

From: scot b <earthmannow [at] comcast.net>
Subject: Peace/precincts 2.02 7pm

Tired of war?  Ready for a change in the direction Washington is going?
Like to see more of your tax dollar go to helping rather than harming?

Then come share an evening with Sharon Sudman and Barb Toren and learn how
"Peace in the Precincts" is developing a platform of peace and a plan to
nominate candidates committed to carrying it out.
http://www.peaceintheprecincts.org/index.geni?mode=content&id=305

Join other peacemakers Thursday evening February 2nd at 7:00 PM at
Ascension Episcopal Church in Stilllwater [214 North 3rd St, 3rd building
North of postoffice ] to hear a plan to have the necessary number of peace
delegates sent from the local caucuses, to the senate district meeting, to
the state convention to insure a peace slate.

There will be a call for as many of us as possible to attend caucus night
and to become delegates to senate district and state conventions to carry
forth a peace platform for Minnesota Governor and all national house and
senate candidates.

[The Green Party will hold caucuses all over the state on March 7, the
same day and time as all other party's caucuses.  You can take the short
Dem road from here to here, or the longer Green road from here to
somewhere better. -ed]


---------6 of 16--------

From: Charles Underwood <charleyunderwood [at] hotmail.com>
Subject: Immigrant/hearts 2.03 9am

Friday, 2/3, 9 am to 3 pm, workshop "Turning the Tide on Anti-Immigrant
Sentiment: Converting Hearts and Minds," St. John the Baptist Church, 835 -
2nd Ave NW, New Brighton,  $10 and registration due 1/20.
www.osispm.org/pdf/TurningtheTide.pdf


--------7 of 16--------

From: David Shove <shove001 [at] tc.umn.edu>
Subject: Ffunch brunch 2.03 11:30am

Meet the FFUNCH BUNCH!
11:30am-1pm
First Friday Lunch (FFUNCH) for Greens/progressives.

Informal political talk and hanging out.

Day By Day Cafe 477 W 7th Av St Paul.
Meet in the private room (holds 12+).

Day By Day is non-smoking; has delicious clam chowder soup, salads,
sandwiches, and dangerous apple pie; is close to downtown St Paul & on
major bus lines


--------8 of 16--------

From: sarah standefer <scsrn [at] yahoo.com>
Subject: Counter recruit 2.03 12noon

Counter Recruitment Demonstration
 Our Children Are Not Cannon Fodder
Fridays   NOON-1
Recruiting Office at the U of M
At Washington and Oak St.  next to Chipolte
for info call Barb Mishler 612-871-7871


--------9 of 16--------

From: peace 2u <tkanous [at] hotmail.com>
Subject: Palestine vigil 2.03 4:15pm

Every Friday
Vigil to End the Occupation of Palestine

4:15-5:15pm
Summit & Snelling, St. Paul

There are now millions of Palestinians who are refugees due to Israel's
refusal to recognize their right under international law to return to
their own homes since 1948.


--------10 of 16--------

From: Lydia Howell <lhowell [at] visi.com>
Subject: Venezuela/film 2.03 6pm

Friday, 2/3, 6 pm, film "Bolivarian Venezuela" and discussion with Jon
Peterson of the Hands off Venezuela campaign, Resource Center of the
Americas, 3019 Minnehaha, Mpls.  www.americas.org


--------11 of 16--------

From: Charles Underwood <charleyunderwood [at] hotmail.com>
Subject: Nelson-Pallmeyer 2.03 6:30pm

Please join us this Friday, February 3rd from 6:30 -8:30 PM at El Nuevo
Rodeo (details below) for the second community meeting regarding Jack
Nelson-Pallmeyer running for Congress.  Our first event was a huge
success.

 Feedback included:
 I had never heard Jack speak before, this event made me want to get
involved.
 Jack gives hope.
 I was motivated by hearing everyone speak and join together.
 I felt empowered.
 Jack was succinct, powerful, and told the truth to a degree you seldom
hear.

This Friday will be kicked off with Jack sharing part of his platform and
vision.  We will spend significant time in small groups, starting to lay
the ground work for Jack's potential campaign.  The meeting will end with
Jack telling us if and when he plans to announce his official candidacy.

El Nuevo Rodeo is located at 3003 27th Avenue in Minneapolis (near Lake
and Minnehaha, you can enter from Lake Street.  It is across from
Denny's.)  They are allowing us to use their space for free, so we can
encourage you to come early and eat at their wonderful restaurant.

[I assume N-P will run as a Dem. What are the chances the Dems will
endorse him? If not, will he run anyway? And if and when he is out after
the primary, will all his backers line up for the Dem? If that is the
future, will the (non-winning) campaign raise consciousness, which could
be its best and perhaps main consequence? And once it's over, what
commitment is there to the Dems? -ed, tired of progressives being used by
and for liberals.]


--------12 of 16--------

From: Lydia Howell <lhowell [at] visi.com>
Subject: Raisin in the sun 2.03 2.03 7:30pm

"A Raisin In The Sun"
by Lorraine Hansberry
February 3rd-26th, 2006

North Community High School Auditorium
1500 James Avenue North, Minneapolis, MN

"A Raisin in The Sun" is a timeless classic. Set in Chicago, 1959, in the
modest and well-kept though overcrowded apartment of the Younger family.
There's Lena, a widow, and her two adult children, Walter Lee and
Beneatha, Walter Lee's wife Ruth and their 10-year-old son, Travis.
They're waiting for a $10,000 check to arrive, Lena's husband's life
insurance settlement. Walter Lee, Beneatha and Lena each have plans for
that money. Who gets it and what happens to the family because of it is a
tribute to the resilience and integrity of millions of black families that
stuck together and created a foundation for each generation that followed
to go further and do better. There is a reason why this play endures. Come
see what all the talk's about.

This Black History Month presentation of an American classic is directed
by Dawn Renee Jones, Alchemy Theater's artistic director & founder. The
stellar cast includes Kevin West, Artie Thompson, Tamala Hendricks,
Stephen Menya, Vince Harris, Ernest Simpkins, Marcus Woodard, Christina
Clark, Henry Allen.

PERFORMANCES
Feb. 3-26
Thursday - Saturday 7:30pm, Sunday matinee 2:00pm

TICKETS $15
$10 for Seniors & Students
Group rates available, wheelchair accessible, North High family discount

-Saturday, Feb. 11th is half price 55411 Night & Sunday Feb. 12th is
half price 55412

For more info & tickets call 763-522-6293
To purchase your tickets online, visit our box office.
www.AlchemyTheater.org

ALCHEMY THEATER P. O. BOX 19020 MINNEAPOLIS, MN 55422 763/522-6293
763/522-6294 fax www.alchemytheater.org alchemyx9 [at] aol.com


--------13 of 16--------

Buying Complacency
By George Monbiot
February 02, 2006
ZNet Commentary
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2006-01/22monbiot.cfm

Sometimes I envy the self-belief of the Daily Mail's columnist Melanie
Phillips. When Andrew Wakefield, a researcher at the Royal Free Hospital,
suggested that there might be a link between autism and the MMR injection,
she decided he was right.

Despite the failure of further studies to find any evidence, despite the
fact that Wakefield's co-researchers have dissociated themselves from his
allegation, though the medical profession, almost without exception, is
persuaded that his claim has no merit, she persists. The epidemiologists
are guilty of "category confusion"; the scientific reviewers are throwing
up "clouds of obfuscation"(1); her critics are peddlers of "ignorance,
misrepresentation and smear."(2)

She's just as sure of her position on climate change. Last year she told
listeners to the Moral Maze that manmade climate change "is a massive scam
based on flawed computer modelling, bad science and an anti-western
ideology ... a pack of lies and propaganda."(3) Soon afterwards, the Royal
Society published a "guide to facts and fictions about climate change",
whose purpose was to address the arguments made by people like her (4). It
destroyed all the claims she had been making. A few months later, the
deniers' last argument fell away, as three studies showed that satellite
data suggesting the atmosphere had cooled were faulty. New Scientist
reported that "as nails in the coffin go, they don't get much bigger"(5).

But nothing can stop her. Last week she resumed the attack. Man-made
climate change is "one of the greatest scientific scams of the modern
age", an artefact of "ideology, irrationality and pseudoscientific
sloppiness."(6) "The rate of warming over the past century," she claimed,
"is nothing out of the historical ordinary." We also learnt that "most of
[the atmosphere] consists of water vapour": the climatologists must have
been lying about that too.

As usual, the scientists have the science wrong, and only Melanie
Phillips, autodidact professor of epidemiology, gastroenterology,
meteorology and atmospheric physics, can put them right. Where does she
get it from? How do you acquire such confidence in your own rectitude that
neither the evidence itself, nor the Royal Society, nor the combined
weight of the major scientific journals can alter by a whisker the line
you have taken? Are you born knowing you have prophetic powers: that
everything you believe is and will forever be true? Or does it come with
experience? If so, what might that experience be?

The occasion for her latest outburst was a study published last week in
Nature, which showed, to everyone's astonishment, that plants produce
methane, a greenhouse gas(7). Phillips used the findings to suggest that
the entire science of global warming has been disproved, and that there is
no need to worry about the biosphere. Nature came to the opposite
conclusion: as methane emissions from plants rise with temperature,
climate change will cause further climate change(8).

But while this study does nothing to threaten global warming theory, there
is something it challenges. It should shake our confidence in one of our
favourite means of tackling it: paying other people to clear up the mess
we've made.

Both through the unofficial carbon market and by means of a provision of
the Kyoto protocol called the "clean development mechanism", people,
companies and states can claim to reduce their emissions by investing in
carbon-friendly projects in poorer countries. Among other schemes, you can
earn carbon credits by paying people to plant trees. As the trees grow,
they are supposed to absorb the carbon we release by burning fossil fuels.

Despite the new findings, it still seems fair to say that forests are a
net carbon sink, taking in more greenhouse gases than they release. If
they are felled, the carbon in both the trees and the soil they grow on is
likely to enter the atmosphere. So preserving them remains a good idea,
for this and other reasons. But what the new study provides is yet more
evidence that the accountancy behind many of the "carbon offset" schemes
is flawed.

While they have a pretty good idea of how much carbon our factories and
planes and cars are releasing, scientists are much less certain about the
amount of carbon tree planting will absorb. When you drain or clear the
soil to plant trees, for example, you are likely to release some carbon,
but it is hard to tell how much. Planting trees in one place might stunt
trees elsewhere, as they could dry up a river which was feeding a forest
downstream.  Or by protecting your forest against loggers, you might be
driving them into another forest. As global temperatures rise, trees in
many places will begin to die back, releasing the carbon they contain(9).
Forest fires could wipe them out completely. The timing is also critical:
emissions saved today are far more valuable, in terms of reducing climate
change, than emissions saved in ten years' time, yet the trees you plant
start absorbing carbon long after your factories released it.  All this
made the figures speculative, but the new findings, with their massive
uncertainty range (plants, the researchers say, produce somewhere between
10 and 30% of the planet's methane) make an honest sum impossible.

In other words, you cannot reasonably claim to have swapped the carbon
stored in oil or coal for carbon absorbed by trees. Mineral carbon, while
it remains in the ground, is stable and quantifiable. Biological carbon is
labile and uncertain.

To add to the confusion, in order to show that you are really reducing
atmospheric carbon by planting or protecting a forest, you must
demonstrate that if you hadn't done it something else would have happened.
Not only is this very difficult, it is also an invitation for a country or
a company to threaten an increase in emissions. It can then present the
alternative (doing what it would have done anyway) as an improvement on
its destructive plans, and claim the difference as a carbon reduction.(10)

There's a good example in Brazil. A company in the state of Minas Gerais
runs a big eucalyptus plantation, which it uses to produce charcoal for
smelting pig iron. Many of the locals hate it, because it grabbed their
land and it has replaced the diverse forest and savannah which sustained
them with a monoculture. Now it claims that it should be paid by rich
nations to maintain its plantations because otherwise the companies it
supplies would switch to coal. The locals allege that the company had no
intention of abandoning its trees until it saw the potential of the carbon
market. They also complain that it will be rewarded for keeping the
rightful owners off their land.(11)

But perhaps the most destructive effect of the carbon offset trade is that
it allows us to believe we can carry on polluting. The government can keep
building roads and airports and we can keep flying to Thailand for our
holidays, as long as we purchase absolution by giving a few quid to a tree
planting company. How do you quantify complacency? How do you know that
the behaviour the trade induces does not cancel out the carbon it
sequesters?

In other words I think it is fair to say that a scam is being perpetrated,
but not of the kind Melanie Phillips alleges. We know that climate change
will impoverish many people. We now know that it will make others very
rich. But their money-making schemes will have precious little to do with
saving the planet.

www.monbiot.com

References:
1. Melanie Phillips, 31st October 2005. MMR: the unanswered questions. The
Daily Mail.
2. Melanie Phillips, 8th November 2005. The case against me boils down to
smear and evasion. The Guardian.
3. Melanie Phillips, 17th February 2005. The Moral Maze, BBC Radio 4.
4. The Royal Society, 25th April 2005. A guide to facts and fictions about
climate change .
5. Zeeya Merali, 20th August 2005. Sceptics forced into climate
climb-down. New Scientist.
6. Melanie Phillips, 13th January 2006. Does this prove that global
warming's all hot air? The Daily Mail.
7. Frank Keppler, John T. G. Hamilton, Marc Brass, and Thomas Röckmann,
12th January 2006. Methane emissions from terrestrial plants under aerobic
conditions. Nature 439, 187-191.
8. Quirin Schiermeier, 12th January 2006. Methane finding baffles
scientists. Nature 439, 128.
9. Peter M. Cox, Richard A. Betts, Chris D. Jones, Steven A. Spall and Ian
J. Totterdell, 9th November 2000. Acceleration of global warming due to
carbon-cycle feedbacks in a coupled climate model. Nature 408, 184-187.
10. See Larry Lohmann, 2005. Marketing and Making Carbon Dumps:
Commodification, Calculation and Counterfactuals in Climate Change
Mitigation. The Corner House, Dorset.
11. ibid.


---------14 of 16--------

What Really Happened
By Cindy Sheehan
Daily Kos - Feb 1, 2006
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/2/1/31944/23746

Dear Friends,

As most of you have probably heard, I was arrested before the State of the
Union Address tonight.

I am speechless with fury at what happened and with grief over what we
have lost in our country.

There have been lies from the police and distortions by the press.
(Shocker) So this is what really happened:

This afternoon at the People's State of the Union Address in DC where I
was joined by Congresspersons Lynn Woolsey and John Conyers, Ann Wright,
Malik Rahim and John Cavanagh, Lynn brought me a ticket to the State of
the Union Address. At that time, I was wearing the shirt that said: 2245
Dead. How many more?

After the PSOTU press conference, I was having second thoughts about going
to the SOTU at the Capitol. I didn't feel comfortable going. I knew George
Bush would say things that would hurt me and anger me and I knew that I
couldn't disrupt the address because Lynn had given me the ticket and I
didn't want to be disruptive out of respect for her. I, in fact, had given
the ticket to John Bruhns who is in Iraq Veterans Against the War.
However, Lynn's office had already called the media and everyone knew I
was going to be there so I sucked it up and went.

I got the ticket back from John, and I met one of Congresswoman Barbara
Lee's staffers in the Longworth Congressional Office building and we went
to the Capitol via the undergroud tunnel. I went through security once,
then had to use the rest room and went through security again.

My ticket was in the 5th gallery, front row, fourth seat in. The person
who in a few minutes was to arrest me, helped me to my seat.

I had just sat down and I was warm from climbing 3 flights of stairs back
up from the bathroom so I unzipped my jacket. I turned to the right to
take my left arm out, when the same officer saw my shirt and yelled;
"Protester." He then ran over to me, hauled me out of my seat and roughly
(with my hands behind my back) shoved me up the stairs. I said something
like "I'm going, do you have to be so rough?" By the way, his name is Mike
Weight.

The officer ran with me to the elevators yelling at everyone to move out
of the way. When we got to the elevators, he cuffed me and took me outside
to await a squad car. On the way out, someone behind me said, "That's
Cindy Sheehan." At which point the officer who arrested me said: "Take
these steps slowly." I said, "You didn't care about being careful when you
were dragging me up the other steps." He said, "That's because you were
protesting."  Wow, I get hauled out of the People's House because I was,
"Protesting."

I was never told that I couldn't wear that shirt into the Congress. I was
never asked to take it off or zip my jacket back up. If I had been asked
to do any of those things...I would have, and written about the
suppression of my freedom of speech later. I was immediately, and roughly
(I have the bruises and muscle spasms to prove it) hauled off and arrested
for "unlawful conduct."

After I had my personal items inventoried and my fingers printed, a nice
Sgt. came in and looked at my shirt and said, "2245, huh? I just got back
from there."

I told him that my son died there. That's when the enormity of my loss hit
me. I have lost my son. I have lost my First Amendment rights. I have lost
the country that I love. Where did America go? I started crying in pain.

What did Casey die for? What did the 2244 other brave young Americans die
for? What are tens of thousands of them over there in harm's way for
still? For this? I can't even wear a shirt that has the number of troops
on it that George Bush and his arrogant and ignorant policies are
responsible for killing.

I wore the shirt to make a statement. The press knew I was going to be
there and I thought every once in a while they would show me and I would
have the shirt on. I did not wear it to be disruptive, or I would have
unzipped my jacket during George's speech. If I had any idea what happens
to people who wear shirts that make the neocons uncomfortable, that I
would be arrested... maybe I would have, but I didn't.

There have already been many wild stories out there.

I have some lawyers looking into filing a First Amendment lawsuit against
the government for what happened tonight. I will file it. It is time to
take our freedoms and our country back.

I don't want to live in a country that prohibits any person, whether
he/she has paid the ultimate price for that country, from wearing, saying,
writing, or telephoning any negative statements about the government.
That's why I am going to take my freedoms and liberties back. That's why I
am not going to let Bushco take anything else away from me... or you.

I am so appreciative of the couple of hundred of protesters who came to
the jail while I was locked up to show their support.... we have so much
potential for good... there is so much good in so many people.

Four hours and two jails after I was arrested, I was let out. Again, I am
so upset and sore it is hard to think straight.

Keep up the struggle... I promise you I will too.

Love and peace soon, Cindy


--------15 of 16---------

New Day for Bolivia
by Tom Hayden
The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060213/hayden

Today is Day One of the new Morales government in Bolivia. No one had
predicted the tectonic shift which resulted in a 54 percent victory for
the man everyone knows as Evo, the Aymaran Indian, leader of the Movement
Towards Socialism (MAS), and longtime head of the coca growers union.
"It's like the slaves have elected the president, for the first time in
513 years," since the death of the last Inca king, said one community
leader in El Alto, the vast Indian community that looks down upon this
Spanish colonial city.

When he organized his doomed guerrilla base here in the Sixties, Che
Guevara voiced despair in his Bolivian diaries of ever awakening the
indigenous people around him. But today, a new Bolivian diary is being
written, by Morales and the newly empowered people who elected him.

Bolivia's population mainly consists of Aymaran and Quechua people; they
are the poorest in the Americas. They won the right to vote only fifty
years ago, in a 1952 nationalist revolution that left them culturally and
economically subordinate.

What are the immediate prospects and long-term implications for Morales's
new Bolivia? On Day One there was widespread exhilaration, but there were
also creeping worries. Social activists were delighted by some of his
promises, for example, his inaugural declaration that the privatization of
water violates a "basic human right." Only days before, the Bechtel
Corporation had dropped its suit against Bolivia for alleged losses in a
water-management project that ended when protesters from Cochabamba drove
Bechtel from the country. Corporate insiders admitted that a major factor
in Bechtel's retreat was "reputational," a desire to save its corporate
image from further tarnishing.

Pablo Solon, a close friend of Morales and the country's leading critic
of corporate-driven free trade pacts, was delighted by the news on water,
almost giddy at the new possibilities, but worried that the United States
already was moving behind the scenes to thwart Morales's vision of an
independent democratic socialism, a kind of New Deal for the indigenous.

When we spoke, Solon sat in his foundation headquarters, amid dozens of
exquisite sketches from the collection of his father, a well-known
muralist. Images of tin miners with skeletal faces, and of Don Quixote
being tortured, looked down from the walls. Solon, whose brother was
murdered during military rule, was contemplating the new relationship
between Bolivian social movements and the new government they had been
pivotal in electing. The State Department reportedly already was moving to
force Bolivia into an Andean Free Trade Agreement (AFTA, as in NAFTA or
CAFTA) that would lock Morales's new government into subordination to the
multinationals. US Undersecretary of State for Western Hemispheric Affairs
Thomas Shannon was signaling privately that while Washington might be open
to "dialogue" on the issues of hydrocarbons and coca planting, the issue
of free trade itself was non-negotiable.

                       The Cost of Free Trade

In its effort to head off Morales, the US is allied with Bolivian
businessman Marcos Iberkleid, the descendant of Jewish immigrants from
Poland, and owner of a textile consortium known as Ametex (America Textil
SA). Previous US-dominated Bolivian governments have envisioned Ametex,
which employs 4,500 workers, as the motor of a textile-based exports
strategy. For Iberkleid, this requires winning an extension on tariff
preferences for textile exports to the US, currently due to expire at the
end of this year. The US says that it will favor the extension only if
Bolivia signs off on an overall free trade agreement.

One graphic example of how free trade pacts work is that the US plans to
assert a right to patent plants and animals under intellectual property
rights provisions. "It's against Andean policies and traditions," Solon
almost shouts. Further, US drug companies and agricultural interests will
seek to extend their patent rights from twenty to twenty-seven years. And
Bolivia will have to surrender its judicial sovereignty over trade
disputes, declared in Article 135 of its Constitution, to closed-door AFTA
arbitration panels dominated by corporate property interests.

Enter Iberkleid, the Bolivian point man for the free-trade agenda. His
credit rating was a "D" on December 30, according to the Fitch Ratings
Index. He desperately seeks to keep filling the orders of his principal
corporate client, Polo Ralph Lauren. The US embassy in La Paz has opened
its doors three times to welcome Iberkleid's workers in their campaign in
support of AFTA. By contrast, when Bolivian citizens petition the embassy
for the Bolivian government's own request to extradite former President
Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada from Miami to prosecute him for the deaths of
dozens of demonstrators in 2004, they get only as far as the security
blockades at the embassy gate.

Iberkleid brandishes a threat that Morales fears - the possibility that
Ametex workers will protest or, worst of all, begin a hunger strike on the
streets of El Alto, demanding their jobs be saved. In an ominous sign of
Morales's potential direction, on Day One the new president appointed the
union leader at Iberkleid's plant as the Minister of Labor.

Working conditions at Iberkleid's factory, while not technically those of
a typical maquiladora, are still based on the competitive advantage of
offering the cheapest possible labor, says La Paz economist Tom Kruze.

"We have failed in the public debate to break the false belief that we
have to export or die, " says Kruze, who specializes in labor economics.
Fabric and clothing exports to the US represent only $35 million in total.
"That's all, with this one man, Marcos Iberkleid, controlling 75 percent
of them," says Pablo Solon. Hardly the basis for an economic miracle,
Solon and Kruze also question Bolivia's future as a textile exporter when
quotas are lifted on Chinese manufacturers in 2008. Any immediate benefits
in extending US preferences for Iberkleid will be at the sacrifice of
Bolivian sovereignty under a free trade agreement.

Evo Morales knows all this. "You are right, but there is huge pressure,"
he has told his friend Pablo Solon.

Solon hopes that Evo will denounce the US pressure as blackmail. But to
illustrate the new president's vacillation, Solon swerves his hands back
and forth. "They are trying in the next thirty days to convert Evo into a
Lula," complained Pablo, referring to Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula
da Silva's acceptance of international financial rules after years of
campaigning against the "neo-liberal" agenda. As recently as November
2005, Morales returned from an Argentina summit to declare his opposition
to free trade agreements, for either the Andes or Latin America. But in
his inaugural remarks in La Paz, the new president declared only that he
would "analyze" the agreement, an equivocation that adds to Solon's
worries.

                           Ending 'El Modelo'

Such are the practical problems confronting any radical movement that
achieves political power. Evo Morales has yet to define where Bolivia will
stand in the spectrum of new Latin American nationalisms, which range from
Cuba and Venezuela, which so far oppose any free trade deals with the
Americans, to the more reformist Brazil, Argentina and Chile, which see
themselves as driving bargains for their domestic industries in a
free-trade context. In part these differences reflect different economic
realities - Cuba is under US embargo, while Venezuela is a source of oil -
rather than ideology alone. But Morales has preached a "communitarian
socialism based on the community, a socialism, let's say, based on
reciprocity and solidarity. And beyond that, respecting Mother Earth, the
Pachamama. It is not possible within the [neo-liberal] model to convert
Mother Earth to merchandise."

When I interviewed Morales in 2004, he said the "struggle is not only in
Bolivia, because el modelo [the neo-liberal model] fails especially for
the poor," adding that multinational domination "is not going to happen"
because "it's a clash between two cultures, the indigenous versus the US,
sharing versus individualism."

Morales's vice president is Alvaro Garcia Linera, a former guerrilla
leader, political prisoner, academic researcher and public commentator. He
describes the Morales-MAS coalition as one on the "center-left."
Socialism, he says, is not possible in a Bolivia where a proletariat is
"numerically in a minority and politically non-existent," and where the
economy has imploded into family and community structures, "which have
been the framework within which the social movements have arisen." Linera
favors an "Andean capitalism," which will build a "strong state" to
transfer the surplus of the nationalized hydrocarbon industry to
"encourage the setting up of forms of self-organization, of
self-management and of commercial development that is really Andean and
Amazonian." In other words, modern economic development would be embedded
in, or allied with, the traditional communal structures of the indigenous
people, instead of replacing those structures with vertical forms of
control.

In an interview with Monthly Review before the election, Morales described
socialism as "something much deeper" than the class-based model, founded
on the indigenous values. It is likely that Bolivia will contribute to
this indigenous framework to the ongoing debate over a Latin American
alternative to neo-liberalism. That suggests that he will avoid
surrendering to the free-trade model Washington demands. Instead, he is
proposing a "constituent assembly" that will transfer even greater power
to communities excluded by the colonial Bolivian state. He has said "a new
integration is possible," borrowing from the global justice movement's
refrain that "another world is possible." >

There is another factor in the equation, a North American one, often
ignored by the analysts. "We need support in the United States, not only
about our image but especially about these trade agreements," Pablo Solon
said. There is so far only a fledgling network of Bolivian solidarity
activists, compared with the US movements during the Central American wars
of the 1979s and '80s. And despite remarkable but unheralded work by fair
trade activists like Citizens Trade Watch in the US, demonstrations and
lobbying have so far only dented, but not prevented, Congressional
acquiesence in the US Administration's drive to assure corporate property
rights over labor and environmental standards. When I interviewed him two
years ago, Morales said he sided with "the many movements in the United
States struggling against neo-liberalism, and we must struggle together."

In sum, a far stronger alliance between Latin American and North American
social movements, based on a common anti-corporate, pro-indigenous,
pro-democracy agenda, might become a crucial factor in expanding the
possibilities of what leaders like Evo Morales feel able to achieve.
Twenty years after Bolivia was plunged into chaos by US-imposed
privatizations, there is an incipient rethinking of free trade in US
establishment circles. For example, Newsweek reported in January that a
"new consensus" is developing that "trade is not enough to end poverty"
and that "what's needed is more government intervention in economies, not
less. Call it a new New Deal, and get ready to hear much more about it in
2006."

But there is little sign of this welcome development in the US approach to
the new Bolivia. It is likely that multinational oil companies will accept
greater sharing of their wealth, and the transfer of controls over
industrialization, to Bolivians. But that is because their profit margins
are in the range of 30 percent, according to a corporate attorney I talked
to who had fifteen years' experience in Bolivia. But a World Bank official
I interviewed repeated the official dogma that development depends on
unfettered private foreign investment. Her key suggestion for Evo Morales
was that Bolivia's street vendors - about 70 percent of Bolivians are
employed in the "informal sector," selling Fresca and toothpaste on the
streets - should be licensed and registers so they can be taxed. It is a
trickle-up policy sure to be resisted.

                           Indigenous Icon

Whatever Evo Morales decides on the immediate question of textiles, it
would be premature to categorize the Bolivian revolution as over, or to
dismiss it as merely "neoliberalism with an Indian face." But this is the
thrust of some on the Left, as in the recent Democracy Now! interview with
James Petras, a longtime expert on the region, who says that Morales is
only a social democratic reformer Washington can live with. Petras may be
right that the new Bolivia will seek to avoid the kind of confrontation
with the United States exemplified by oil-rich Venezuela, but such
criticism underestimates the moral and political importance of the
Bolivian revolution for the indigenous poor. What Petras may be
underplaying is the large, radical left indigenous movement in Bolivia -
such as the movment led by Felipe Quispe - that is evaluating his every
policy move. The "Indian question" has rarely been an emphasis of the
left, but it still remains the central question in Bolivia, in the Andes,
in Chiapas, and much of Latin America.

Few whites or mestizos understand this as well as Linares, whose life has
been devoted to what he calls the "decolonization of the state" so that
indigenous people will govern, ending a fault line that has existed
between society and the state in Bolivia for 180 years. "Fifteen years
ago, we thought that it could come about through an armed uprising of the
communities. Today, we think it is an objective that we can attain through
a great electoral triumph." He calls for a new dialogue between
"indigenism" and a Marxism which only perceived the Indians as reactionary
or the dependent clients of humanitarian non-governmental organizations.

Nothing illustrates the profound importance of this shift more than the
inaugural ceremonies over the past weekend. Since Linares was sworn in as
vice president first, it became his duty to place the presidential sash
over the shoulders of Morales. In a moment that millions watched on
television, Morales visibly shed a tear, buckled slightly, then embraced
his friend and became Bolivia's first indigenous president. Not only had
the indigenous majority voted for him, but also at least one-third of the
white or mestizo privileged classes, an outcome that ended centuries of
brutal discrimination and marginalization.

Even more important was the ceremony on Saturday, when indigenous
spiritual leaders inaugurated Evo Morales in their own way, at the
pre-Inca ruins known as Tiwanaku, on the remote altiplano near Lake
Titikaka. There, as 30,000 or more waited and witnessed, Aymara leaders
changed Evo's clothes into native ones, removed his shoes so that he would
stand on Pachamama (Mother Earth), and gave him a walking stick decorated
in gold and silver, representing the transfer of authority for the first
time in five centuries.

There the world watched the rising of another kind of power, one more
cultural than political, that of a postmodern Indian icon. Garbed in a red
ceremonial robe and holding the staff of power, Evo Morales stood in a
portal cut from a single block of stone ten feet high, eleven feet wide,
estimated to weigh ten tons. Like the ancient portals at Newgrange in
Ireland or Maya sites in Central America, the stone portal was designed to
receive the rays of the sun at the equinoxes, a reminder of pre-Inca
science and cosmology.

The image flooded the world, over the heads of the technicians of power
and stenographers in the media, a visceral reminder that another
globalization is possible, and that the "Indian question" is not over, not
for the United States, not for Western culture, not for the progressive
left, but only beginning again.


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   - David Shove             shove001 [at] tc.umn.edu
   rhymes with clove         Progressive Calendar
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