Jerusalem is aglow with color and light; teeming with people from every corner of the globe. The third annual international labor convention, GLOBAL3, is about to begin.
GLOBAL1 set worldwide wage and benefit standards, making it impossible for corporations to find cheaper labor costs by moving to impoverished regions or inducing super-exploited workers to migrate for jobs offering substandard wages. Overnight, centuries of inequalities began to vanish as workers everywhere began receiving just wages for their work. But there was still much to be done.
GLOBAL2 set about designating reparations needed to adjust for centuries of environmental devastation, neglect of health and education and other basic human needs, and robbery of natural resources in oppressed regions. Creating sustainable local economies enhanced by global fair-trade networks is the focus of GLOBAL3.
The delegates are easily identified. They all wear colorful ribbons designating their union, ethnic group, and country. They all have wires attached to their ears, since everything that is said is simultaneously translated into any language, and all are carrying tote bags, with the number 3 in rainbow colors against a tan background. The bags hold conference schedules, guides to Jerusalem, commemorative coffee cups and two little pebbles. One represents the wall that once divided Israelis from Palestinians, the other—the wall that once divided Mexico from the United States.
The walls came down a few months after GLOBAL2. Without inequitable wage scales and with reparations there was no longer a need for walls to hold people from each other. The guns and army tanks that fortified these walls have also been removed. People began crossing borders to resolve conditions of the heart and soul rather than for economic need. Loved ones were reunited. Others moved to “find themselves” in the places that suited their temperaments best.
The delegates’ first task is to decide how best to spend their three weeks at the conference. There are thousands of workshops to choose from. Only one is required, it is entitled: “Never Again: Learning from 2006.”
There is no set canon for this workshop. Many presenters offer their evidence and theories for the delegates to consider. Still, there are some common themes, and the basic facts to review. 2006 was the year the United States sent the armed National Guard to protect the United States from working people in Mexico seeking jobs across the border. That was when construction began on a 350-mile wall between the two countries. It was the same year that Israel built its so-called “separation barrier” walling in Palestinians, depriving them of water rights and access to productive land, and blocking essential food and medical aid.
Many panelists are quick to point out that the walls were only symptomatic of long-term policies in Israel/ Palestine and the U.S./ Mexican border: seizing land, stealing natural resources like water and oil, creating wage differentiations based on race, ethnicity, nationality, and religion, and a super-exploited migrant labor system. Always, state-supported violence was needed to hold these systems of inequality in place. In addition, many panelists emphasize the role of racism in upholding these systems of inequality. They argue that negative stereotypes kept working people across borders of race, nationality, religion, and ethnicity from uniting.
One panelist provides a quick review of the history of the immigration debate in the United States in 2006. She shows slides of “minutemen” volunteering to build the wall in San Diego on the Mexican border. The crowd breaks into peals of laughter when someone cracks that they don’t even appear to have a minute’s worth of humanity.
The panelist does not laugh. She holds up her hand to silence the crowd. “Yes, we can laugh now,” she says. “But we must not forget how easy it is for people to be fooled into thinking that those with a different language, religion, ethnicity, history, are to blame for the oppressed conditions imposed by elites. For example,” she continues, “remember that in 2006 government officials and citizens’ groups were calling for an English-only United States.” She pauses for effect, as the crowd gasps and guffaws. “Yes, I know it sounds absurd now . . .”
She pauses to let the point sink in and then ends with: “My friends, the events of 2006 are now a receding nightmare. To keep the walls and wars from happening again, we must learn to forgive these trespasses against humanity. But making sure that it is never again will also require that we never forget.”
The next speaker takes an entirely different tack. “The second half of 2006 was the beginning of the Great Coalition. Antiwar forces came together with immigrant-rights advocates. The labor movement, already showing its backbone in the early months of the year through its participation in the burgeoning immigrant-rights movement, began to see itself as the glue that connected peace and immigrant-rights causes. They began to speak of a ‘human-rights movement without borders.’ Many of the policies passed during GLOBAL1 and GLOBAL2 were beginning to be discussed during that long summer. The mass mobilizations of that fall were unprecedented in size and diversity. We must never forget how, in one local community after another, turf and territory receded and solidarity moved from slogan to core emotion. We would do well to study this transformation so that we never move backward.”
The workshop ends there, and the delegates, exhausted but enlightened, head for the best potluck in the history of the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment