A World of Fairness

The Problem: Continuing Social Justice Issues

Reflections by Mike Seymour

• Poor people pay the predominant price for environmental disasters. Of the 1,836 dead from hurricane Katrina, the majority were lower income, African Americans. The huge loss of life from the 2004 Asian Tsunami (186,983) was predominantly among the poor with no means to get out of harm’s way.
• The developing world now spends $13 on debt repayment for every $1 it receives in grants. For the poorest countries, $550 billion has been paid in both principal and interest over the last three decades on $540bn of loans, and yet there is still a $523bn debt burden. (www.GlobalIssues.org) 
• Less than one percent of what the world spent on weapons was needed to put every child in school by the year 2000, but it didn’t happen.
• An estimated 16% ( 170million people) of India’s population are Dalits, or part of the untouchable class. Although the Indian constitution abolished untouchability in 1950, Dalits continue to suffer discrimination—16.2% going to primary school vs. 83.8% for others according to Government reports from 1994-95.

• US hedge fund manager James Simons topped the 2006 list of highest hedge fund managers with an annual compensation of $1.7 billion, which  equaled the amount of money the US government spent on its vast networks of national parks.
• Existing tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans will cost $300 million each day for ten years if made a permanent part of the tax code. (Tax Fairness)

• In 1960 the annual compensation of the average CEO of a major US. company was 40 times that of the average worker. In 1992 it was 157 times as much. The average CEO of a large corporation now receives an annual compensation package of more than $3.5 million-their reward for growing company profits by destroying millions of jobs. The ten highest paid CEO’s in 2000 got an average of a whopping $154 million, 4,300% higher than the top ten in 1960.
• According to OCED (Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development) the United States is the most unequal society of all industrialized nations, ranking last in terms of income equality.
• The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the poorest 48 nations (i.e. a quarter of the world’s countries) is less than the wealth of the world’s three richest people combined.
• In the USA, blacks comprise 13% of the national population, but 30 percent of people arrested, 41% of people in jail, and 49% of those in prison. (Human Rights Watch)
• About half the world (3 billion people) live on $2/day or less.
• Of the 8.75 million people in prison globally in 2002, almost 2 million of those were in the USA, which has the highest prison population of any country in the world—higher even than China (1.4 ml) which has more 4 times the total population.
• “The core of the current US administration, with the President’s concurrence, seems determined to reshape the federal courts so as to undo the civil rights and social justice gains of the last half of the 20th century.” Citizen’s Commission on Civil Rights. 

It may be too naïve to imagine that one day  all peoples on Earth will actually live equally or be all the same in material terms. That kind of dream social experiment to level the human playing field  turned out to be a nightmare in the USSR and China where half a century of communism was a big failure. Anyway, it goes against the grain of nature to have everything the same—to do away with diversity or difference.

Rather, what we may envision is that, as Gandhi said, more of us may “…live simply, that others may simply live,” meaning that we would learn to live out of a sense of obligation to and care for a larger whole. Ghandi also said “there’s enough for everyone’s need, but not for everyone’s greed.” Victim of abuse by the Lose Angeles police, cab driver Rodney King sums it up this way “Why can’t we all just get along?”

The intention for fairness, good-neighborliness and care for the social and environmental commons is not just a worthy goal today.  It is an imperative if we are to have world worth living on. Like it or not, in this globalized, interdependent world we can’t get away from our neighbors, and we can’t wreck the Earth without also undermining our own lives. As I said many times when traveling the USA fund-raising for refugee homes in Africa with my Burundian friend Prosper, we humans have to learn how to care for one another and live like a family. Without a spirit of cooperation and respect that comes from a world committed to social justice and fairness, the imbalances that can grow in society will inevitably veer toward intolerable inequalities between the haves and have-nots. At that point social tensions turn to violence and sometimes war.

When you examine closely the world’s conflict areas you’ll find that without justice there is no peace. Social unrest stems from long-term inequalities between different groups. Inequities come in the form of unequal access to education, liveliehoods and other discriminatory practices that affect people’s ability to improve their lives. True, these conflict situations are often overlaid with ethnic and religious differences, and competing sides can stoke the flames of conflict by making judgements  about the other side’s religion or culture. But people everywhere have lived peacefully with ethnic and religious differences. It’s when economic imbalances become severe that societies erupt.

Take the case of the Central African country of Burundi, which I have visited three times as part of the home-building project for refugees. For hundreds of years before the Belgian colonial regime took over in Central Africa, the three ethnic groups in Burundi lived in peace.  The Twa, or pygmy, arrived first in the region and were originally hunter gatherers. Then came the Hutu, derived from the Bantu language group, which were mostly an agrarian people. More recently arrived from the northern part of Africa were the Tutsi who raise cattle and  tend to be taller, thinner and with a more narrow nose. The Tutsi appearance was favored by the Europeans who felt the Tutsi looked more like them. To officially distinguish Hutu from Tutsi, the Belgians issued identity cards saying either Hutu, Tutsi or Twa. Where there was doubt, the colonials would take nose measurements and decide on that basis.

The Belgian regime quickly saw the advantage in giving preference to the Tutsi and put them in positions of power. This made administration of these distant colonies much easier for the Belgian government. Over time this meant that more Tutsis got an education, good jobs and were able to start lucrative businesses.  Hutu, in fact, were rarely given an opportunity to proceed beyond primary school and, therefore, were discriminated against economically.

At the time the Belgians left Burundi in the 1960’s, the government was mostly Tutsi, the military command and many soldiers were almost all Tutsi, which was a cause of discontent among Hutus, the majority group at 85% of the population. Similar imbalances in neighboring Rwanda to the north simmered for over thirty years, with periodic outbreaks of violence-mostly the Tutsi-led government preemptively eliminating Hutu elite to undercut any potential Hutu uprising. Then in a wave of Hutu pent-up hatred, all hell broke loose in 1993-94 in wide scale ethic wars that  claimed millions of lives in Rwanda, Burundi and eventually moving into Eastern Congo.

You’ll find stories like this around the globe—Iraq, Israel & Palestine, the former Yugoslavia, Sri Lanka, the Niger Delta of Nigeria, East Timor, Tibet, and the list goes on.  Pretty much in all situations you’ll find a colonial-type relationship between an advanced nation with its own economic agenda aiding one side of the conflict, and in many cases making things far worse they ought to be. Iraq and Israel/Palestine are prime examples.

Where are We?

There are plenty of inequalities and social injustices in the world, but how would we  really evaluate the state of fairness in the world?

One way is historical. From that perspective we look pretty good. In fact, since 1850 humanity has made great progress in human rights and dignity over most of the developed world.

Slavery was abolished in much of the world.  The exploitive and sometimes savage colonial regimes in Africa and India came to an end. Rights of all kinds were fought for and won. Children no longer were forced to work long hours in dim factories under unhealthy conditions. The great labor battles of the 1900’s in Europe and America guaranteed workers a fair wage, decent working hours and the right to organize on their own behalf as workers’ unions sprung up around the world and in almost all industries. Civil rights—or the rights of citizens to have their privileges and power protected by law—took many huge steps forward with the suffrage movement giving women the right to vote and the civil rights movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s under the inspiration of Dr. Martin Luther King.  In the wake of these were other rights movements, such as environmental rights, indigenous and native rights and the feminist movement which has liberated women from the gender biases that were—and still are to a large degree—institutionalized in much of modern culture, and certainly in more traditional societies.

So, fairness in the world looks pretty good from an historical perspective. This is the view largely taken by history book writers. Nations, states and their educational institutions like to show the good they are doing. Too much controversy invites debate, unrest and possible instability. So in spite of an official policy of openness and freedom of speech, freedom to tell the other side of the story in some of our key information institutions—education and the media—is hard to come by. 

If you’re a teacher in a typical public high school, you’re not likely to get the applause of your principal if you want to also teach history from Howard Zinn’s ground-breaking book A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present. Here Zinn opens with Columbus’s arrival on Hispaniola as seen from an Arawak native point of view—a sad day indeed for the natives. Zinn’s work systematically takes apart all the self-congratulatory myths of American history, by showing what happened from the point of view of those who lost like the Arawaks, African slaves, Native Americans and European immigrants doing awful labor in 19th century factories and coal mines. In seeing a different America than the one we were brought up to believe in, we’re introduced to the sobering realities that define the world of social justice, and we grow truly critical thinking students whose historical knowledge goes beyond cultural propaganda.

People have different takes on what is fair based on how they look at things.  Many people think something like this: “There have always been poor people. We don’t have the resources to help everybody. I can’t give to everything” Or “They’re poor in this life, because they were stingy in past lives, so this is a matter of karma.”  Sphere of obligation and charity in many are limited to family or friends and perhaps church, but often no further. If you’ve got a point of view that wars, poverty, injustice are “just the way things are in this world,” you’re not likely to be emotionally moved and see inequalities for what they are and feel a desire to do something about them.

However, I think we’re being called today to look outside the lenses of our fears, biases and limiting world views colored by nationalist, religious and ethnic prejudices. We’re being called to a deeper moral perspective based on the practical and moral fact that we are all one. Everything in the universe came from one source. Our lives are radically interdependent. The C02 I’m responsible for putting into the atmosphere is in some way increasing the chance that people’s crops in Africa will fail due to excessive drought from global warming. Our purchases of paper or plastic products means that some forest somewhere has fewer (or no trees), or that the petroleum complex from which plastic is made causes greater inroads into some indigenous tribe’s lands, disrupting their pristine habitat and way of life. In fact, there is very little you and I do on a daily basis—especially in the developed world, and the USA in particular—that does not have some human and environmental cost. 

Do we ever escape the impact we have on the rest of the world? No and yes. No in the sense that we cannot help but generate social and environmental costs for our living. Even if we were to retreat to the woods and become off-the-grid non-consumers, we’re still going to take from nature. On the other hand, we can pay for the bounty we receive.  We can atone for owing our existence to everything else around us by first recognizing that fact. Then, secondly, we can express our gratitude through acts of kindness, charity and self-sacrifice.

The word atonement is heard mostly in religious contexts, and means to make amends or reparation for something we did.  The root of the word atone comes originally from two words “at” and “one. So the idea is when you atone for something, you become “at one” with who or what you offended.  You become joined again with what you had become separate from, and that reunification is what keeps us spiritually alive.

People with enough can no longer merrily go their way ignorant and uncaring about the welfare of their neighbors near and far without paying a price of spiritual impoverishment in being cut off.  If you’re not emptying your cup, so to speak, to benefit those in need, pretty soon the water it holds goes stale, and you may start feeling directionless and wonder what you’re life is all about.

In addition to this inner cost, our ignorance and insensitivity incurs the outrage of those people who pay the price when our having more means less or harm for them. Perhaps it’s a 9/11 terrorist act, or insurgents in the Niger Delta in Nigeria blowing up oil pipelines, or riots, looting and fires in Los Angeles and Chicago. I would never condone this kind of violence or a terrorist taking human life. On the other hand, I understand and sympathize with the circumstances and root causes from which it arises.

For these and many other reasons, human societies throughout history have always stressed the importance of sharing what one has with others. Charity, compassion, caring for those that are less able to care for themselves are core values institutionalized by all the world’s religions. Pacific Northwest Coastal tribes such as the Haida, Nuxalt and Tlingit practiced the potlatch ceremony, bringing the process of gift-giving to a real art, and gaining in reputation the more that was given. Buddhist lay people in Mayanmar, Sri Lanka and Thailand would look upon giving to their monastic communities as an essential part of developing non-attachment and a kind heart, both felt important to realizing a favorable rebirth in the next life. Christians regularly tithe, or dedicate a percentage of their income to support their local church.

A Guide for Human Rights: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/index.htm

Behind all the sentiments I’ve expressed are widely held assumptions about what is valuable and right in human societies. This is expressed most boldly in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Drafted under the leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt at the 1948 United Nations Assembly in France, the thirty articles were referred to as an international Magna Carta , or great charter. Anyone would recognize in its lofty ideals rights we take for granted today, but which a century or more ago were scoffed at by governments and the ruling elite.

For example, that: all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights[1]; everyone has the right of life, liberty and personal security[3]; everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate to health and well-being for self and family [25]; access to a free education directed to the full development of the personality and to the strengthening of respect for rights, promoting tolerance and friendship among nations, races and religions[26]; if charged with a penal offense, has the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty[11]; no one shall be subjected to torture, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment [5]; no one shall be held in slavery or  servitude [4]; no one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honor and reputation [12]; everyone has the right of freedom of opinion and expression [19]; no one shall be subject to arbitrary arrest [9].

That the Universal Declaration of Human Rights came into being at all speaks to how far humanity has come in its recognition of the inherent dignity and worth of each person. This declaration and the world attitude toward justice  has decidedly shaped what is considered the acceptable moral rules of conduct that governments adopt towards its own and others. Now at least we have a guide to go by in judging how any government  or group of persons should act.

This is especially important since the world has a long ways to go to catch up with both the spirit and letter of the declaration.  For the most part, the injustices fall hardest on those who are most marginalized in society and least able to defend themselves; people of color, women,  children, prisoners and political dissenters, and any ethnic or religious group representing a minority in their country. Looking at how these groups are doing will give us an accurate report card on the state of fairness in the world.

Human and Civil Rights Concerns

People of African descent, of all racial groups, have suffered the most with the spread of European civilization and it’s legacy today of Eurocentric biases and attitudes that continue to relegate black peoples to inferior status no matter what country they live in. I don’t know of any nation in the developed world that has fully come to terms with  corrosive effects of the transatlantic slave trade on African descendents who suffer today the insidious root bias against people of color that is found in most cultures. There has been no national or global atonement that recognizes the deep wound to the psyche  of African descendents caused by being told in a million different ways that  they are sub-human, unworthy, savage, ignorant and not worthy to sit, eat or talk with their white brethren. African scholars are quick to point out that the elimination of physical slavery is only the beginning; that mental servitude bred by centuries of oppression is, in many ways, fare more insidious for its not being visible. 

I saw that kind of woundedness in African American kids who joined Steps Ahead, a mentoring program for at-risk youth in three Seattle high schools which I was part of.  At the beginning of the program year, many of the black youth would not be able to look me in the face and often gave me a limp handshake.  This inability to be present with strength and dignity with a white person—or any adult person for that matter—has many roots in immediate family and community culture, but the effects of history are ever-present across a broad spectrum of the African Americans I have know, many of whom  have regained a sense of pride. Thankfully, one of my great joys was when Steps Ahead students would receive their certificate and congratulations from me and other Steps Ahead board members at the end of that first year’s program, and I got to see the light in their eyes, smiles and  confident hand-shakes.

Steps Ahead students were among the lucky few in the USA and other modern societies who got a break, some loving attention from an adult and a reason to take education seriously enough to graduate at a rate more than twice the average for black students in the USA. Nationally black youth drop out of school at rates in excess of 40% in many cities, and are as likely to go to prison as they are to college. Black males are more than three times as likely to go to prison as whites. Most major cities in the US have become black ghettos, as have their schools. According to Jonathan Kozol (Harper’s, 2005), schools in Chicago, Washingotn,,D.C. St Louis, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Detroit, Baltimore, Los Angeles and New York have 75% to 96% black and Hispanic populations, reflecting changing racial compositions in the US as white flight from cities and declining urban employment have created a cultural disaster that does not generate enough concern from the white majority to take effective action.

Today racism is institutionalized in the US and, to some degree, in most other industrialized countries.  By that I mean that the systems in their half-hearted attempts and on-going failure to change the injustices, are in effect throwing up their hands in indifference. In education, for example, in spite of impassioned speeches by politicians to “leave no child behind,” a euphemism to not forget students of color, the practice and policies that fail are never cause to look at anything other than superficial remedies.  Whoever in their right mind thought, for example, that making schools more accountable through the kinds of rigorous testing we have today would do anything more create better test takers, dampen real curiosity, foster even greater student passivity, anger and hopelessness? No Child Left Behind is a gross detour from real justice and democracy, and totally misses the essential points of why youth of disadvantaged backgrounds will always fail in a system that is inherently prejudiced against them until true human dignity and self worth can be restored to them and their communities.

The Fate of Women Today

Up until the 20th century women were little more than property in most societies around the world, and not deemed worthy of an education, the right to vote, to participate in governance or the working world except as menial labor. Much has changed since then. The human rights movement has liberated many women in the modern world, but the physical, emotional and cultural abuse of women yet continues across much of the world.

In India, women who are widowed sometimes are obligated to take their own life by joining heir husband on his funeral pyre. Those that live are expected to lead a celibate life and not remarry. They are shunned from society and put on drab garments, confine herself to an inactive life and, in certain communities, cut her hair. Indian widowers, on the other hand, do not suffer any such differential treatment, and are allowed to remarry after one year of mourning. Water, by Indian movie director Deepa Mehta, is a  moving story of one such Indian girl widowed at the age of eight, and is well worth seeing.

According to the National Organization for Women (www.now.org), in the USA 1,400 women are murdered each year by boyfriends or husbands. There are 572,000 reports of physical assault, which does not consider unreported violence estimated between 2-4 million women annually. Every year, approximately 132,000 women are victims of rape or attempted rape, and women are ten times more likely than men to be victimized by an intimate. An American woman will make over the course of her lifetime anywhere from $700,000 to $2,000,000 less in income than a male counterpart (depending on her level of education), and routinely will have child custody in case of divorce, with a percentage of non-custodial fathers only occasionally paying for child support.

And what happens to American women may look tame by comparison with the abuse women take in less progressive parts of the world. Female genital mutilation (FGM) is a practice in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and parts of North America that is a cultural as opposed to religious practice. It involves the cutting off of some or all of the labia and clitoris in order to hinder women’s sexual stimulation and, therefore, supposed proclivity to be unfaithful in marriage. Since it is often done under poor health conditions, FGM can lead to infection and disease. The World Health Organization estimates that 135 million girls and women have had this painful procedure done to them, often unwillingly, with 2+ million new procedures annually. Amnesty International has now taken up the fight to do away with FGM which is seen as a human rights issue at the international level and a serious health problem in many cases.

Apart from FGM, other forms of violence against women are routine in most societies around the world, and often condoned. Even though a moral bar has been raised which has elevated the rights of women, a high percentage of women in many countries experience domestic violence in the form of physical, verbal and emotional abuse—48% in Zambia, 44% in Columbia, 42% in Peru, 30% in Nicaragua, 29% in Haiti, 225 in the Dominican Republic, 19% in India and 17% in Cambodia, according to the United Nations Fund citing some of the worst countries.

Children, both boys and girls, are in danger of multiple kinds of abuse from bring sold as sex slaves, beaten into submission to become soldiers trained to kill and like it, or forced to work in sweat shops under inhumane conditions.

The International Labor Organization (http://www.ilo.org/global/lang--en/index.htm) has estimated that 250 million children between the ages of five and fourteen work in developing countries: 61% in Asia, 32% in Africa and 7% in South America. Many of these children are forced to work, are denied an education and a normal childhood. Some are confined and beaten, and are denied the right to leave their workplace to go home to families. A few are abducted against their will as slave labor. Many work in sweatshops, which are factories working kids long hours with low wages which make all kinds of goods for export usually to developed countries. Athletic footwear, clothing, rugs, toys, chocolate and coffee are some of the products known to be made by child labor.

Commercial sexual exploitation of children is particularly bad in some parts of the world like Southeast Asia, where children are sold or abducted for prostitution and pornography. Global figures are hard to come by, but EXPAT (End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking in Children) indicates that 3% of women trafficked out of Ukraine as sex workers were under the age of 18. In Thailand, NGO’s estimate that up to a third of prostitutes are children under 18. The International Labor Organization report on child prostitution in Vietnam reported that the incidence of children in prostitution is steadily increasing, and that children under 18 make up between 5 -20% of prostitution, depending on the area.

Children are often forced into armed conflict. According to UNICEF, some 250,000 boys and girls under 18 and as young as age 7 are bearing arms, often against their will. In the last decade more than 2 million children have been killed in conflict situations, and an estimated 6 million have been seriously injured or permanently disabled. In northern Uganda alone, an insurgent goup called the Lord’s Resistance Army has kidnapped and forced as many as 25,000 children to serve as soldiers in a nightmarish civil war that the world has largely ignored.

People are imprisoned for their political views and actions and are often at risk of harsh or unjust treatment in many countries where democratic freedoms are weak or non-existent.  Notable cases include Aung San Suu Kyi (http://www.dassk.com/index.php) under house arrest by the military government of Myanmar. Kyi is a non-violent, pro-democracy activist and leader of the National League for Democracy in Mayanmar whom the military junta deemed dangerous because of her liberal ideas. When the junta called for a general election in 1990, her National League for Democracy won. Under normal conditions Kyi would have assumed the office of Prime Minister, but the election results were nullified and the military refused to hand over power. Kyi was given the option to gain her freedom if she agreed to leave Myanmar, but she has refused, dedicated to remaining a beacon of democratic hope for her people.

Recent international prison abuses that have gained wide criticism are the American handling of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad where abuse by American military personnel produced some of the most widely viewed photos showing the dark side of war. Similarly, there has been mounting national and international pressure to stop what many consider the unlawful detention and treatment of supposed “enemy combatants” at the detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. 

One of the most renown cases of unjust imprisonment in the USA is Leonard Peltier a member of the American Indian Movement which in 1973 began an occupation of  Wounded Knee, site of one of the most tragic massacres of Native Americans in our history. Peltier is now serving 27 years of a life sentence unjustly handed out by the US courts as a result of several deaths during an incident in 1973 at the Wounded Knee site on Pine Ridge. You can read about the criminal verdict handed down to Peltier (http://www.freepeltier.org/) at this site set up on his behalf. Leonard Peltier, a citizen of the Anishinabe and Lakota Nations, is a father, a grandfather, an artist, a writer, and an Indigenous rights activist. He has spent more than twenty-seven years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Amnesty International considers him a "political prisoner" who should be "immediately and unconditionally released. You can write to Leonard at Leavenworth Penetentiary (address on web site), learn about his case and make others aware of this kind of injustice which is all too pervasive in our world today.

Income Inequalities Growing

Despite the world economy being five times larger now than in 1950, one third of the world's population remains in severe poverty or living at/below $2/day. (United Nations Environment Programme’s Global Environment Outlook (GEO) Project report on major global trends at: http://www.unep.org/Geo2000/ov-e/0002.htm).  Given the extent of world wealth, few leaders disagree that this wealth disparity between the have’s and have-notes is morally unacceptable.

The USA has the worst income inequality of any country, followed by Mexico and Russia. The top 1% of the wealthiest Americans controlled almost 35% of  the nation’s wealth, higher than at any time in US history, and more so than in 1928 when the top 1% had 23% of wealth. ( Too Much: http://www.cipa-apex.org/toomuch/inequality.html).

Robert B. Reich, Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, speaks about the shift away from opportunity and democracy in America accompanying growing income inequality. His consensus us that the wealthiest country the world has seen, the dream of advancement is not nearly as possible today as it was thirty years ago, particularly when middle income earners real wages have been stagnant and fewer can afford the spiraling cost of higher education, which is mandatory for advancement.

A World of Fairness:  Some Solutions

Over the last thirty years poor and marginalized people around the world have paid the price for globalization and wealth concentration among an increasingly isolated, elite rich who more and more determine government and corporate agendas. This has led to some profoundly important confrontations with the world of privelege and—as I mention in my article One World arising—has seen the birth of a global civil society that is vigorously fighting back.

The World Social Forum & Regional Forums

The World social Forum and regional forums like the US Social Forum (https://www.ussf2007.org/)  are expressions of a new planetary culture rising up against the social, economic and environmental injustices of the world and holding forth the vision that “another world is possible.”

Social Forums are gatherings that take place in many countries where formerly disparate groups come together to find common causes for their grievances and a vision for a better world. Social Forums typically reach out to peoples of color, the economically disadvantaged, women, indigenous peoples, advocates for environmental justice, youth, labor and political progressives.

First appearing in Porto Allegre, Brazil (2001), the World Social Forum (WSF) is not just located in one place (http://www.portoalegre2002.org/homepage.asp), but was always conceived of as a world movement. It has taken place in Mumbai, India (2004), where the attendance grew to 100,000 people. Decentralized events then happened in Venezuela, Mali and Pakistan in 2006, with the 2007 event occurring in Nairobi, Kenya. The first of fourteen points in the WSF Charter read much like the Earth Charter, which is covered next: “The World Social Forum is an open meeting place for reflective thinking, democratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals, free exchange of experiences and interlinking for effective action, by groups and movements of civil society that are opposed to neoliberalism and to domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism, and are committed to building a planetary society directed towards fruitful relationships among Humankind and between it and the Earth.”

http://www.portoalegre2002.org/default.asp

The 2007 US Social Forum in Atlanta, GA. reflected a strong representation from  African-American, Latino, Asian/Pacific Islander and Indigenous communities which sought a unified approach at dealing with social justice issues and positions on global issues.  The intention of these different groups to work together towards mutual goals and to collaborate with international networks is a unique hallmark of the Social Forum phenomenon.

Organizations & Initiatives

The Social Forums are fed by literally hundreds of thousands of non-profits, non-governmental organizations, and less formal groups around the  USA and the world.  Many of these are significant contributors to a more just and humane world, and have become well-known for their activities. Some of the better known follow.

Amnesty International

http://www.amnesty.org/

Amnesty International (AI) is a worldwide movement of people who campaign for internationally recognized human rights. 

AI’s vision is of a world in which every person enjoys all of the human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights standards.

In pursuit of this vision, AI’s mission is to undertake research and action focused on preventing and ending grave abuses of the rights to physical and mental integrity, freedom of conscience and expression, and freedom.

American Civil Liberties Union (