Subject: MAI & PC campaigning

From: Stefania <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 05 Apr 98 08:55:07 +0100 ( + )

hi I'm new on the list.

I'd love some help on this one thing I'm struggling with right now:

I've been avoiding getting too involved in political / campaigning work for ages now, whilst thinking where I can best utilise my energy and limiting myself to supporting others who are hard at it + a bit of work on the fringes.

Mostly what has put me off is noticing what crap design there is around much campaigning work - meetings are structured badly, people spend loads of energy fighting each other, irrelevant angers get mixed up in the soup, etc, and the end result is far too many wonderful visionaries ending up burned-out & disillusioned.

I'd like some help in thinking how to design this stuff better.

I set up and now run a permaculture charity and we are very hard at work building the alternative (lots of community projects reclaiming land, building LETS, eco-buildings, recycling projects, box schemes etc.), I've done all the stuff about my own home and lifestyle (and the work continues), but it's bugging me that I increasingly feel that it may be time to fight too - am I just noticing more, or are the multinationals really getting vicious now?

I was at the Rome youth food summit a couple of years back, which was a real eye-opener for me, and we are giving support to the Save Our Standards campaign and to the genetic engineering thing through our box schemes, but I feel I should be doing a lot more.

I re-read  "Woman at the Edge of Time" (Eileen Morgan -  I think) recently and I'm amazed by what a visionary book it was/is - I think it should become a standard Permaculture text-book (alongside Door into Ocean).  There's a really scary vision about multinationals actually owning people in one of the alternate futures and it's looking more and more to me like it's not that far-fetched anymore.

anyway, if anyone out there has useful thoughts / leads on this please let me know.

love
Stefania 

................. suff about MAI  if you're interested ..................

E, a Canadian friend, wrote:
TNCs are the large transnational corporations that are set to run most
of the world's governments these days.  The genersl belief is that there
is too much democracy.  The MAI is the Multinational Agreement on
Investment, a sort of Charter of Rights and Freedoms for the
corporations that for us is the step that completes the job started in
NAFTA.  It is less harmful for the USA because most of the TNCs are US
based.  For Canada and most other countries it gives corporations so
much power that Parliaments won't matter.  It gives corporations the
right to conduct business and move their operations wherever and
whenever they like without any government regulation.
They will have no obligation to create jobs locally, or pay taxes
there.  Here in Canada it would ban our cultural protections. leaving
our artists and creators at the mercy of US entertainment giants (hard
enough now, when we live next door).  It would free corporations from
environmental protections.  Furthermore, it would allow foreign
corporations to sue governents for billions of dollars in lost future
earnings if they want to create new environmental or citizen-protection
regulations.

Sounds strange, doesn't it, but it is true.  Furthermore, it has been
negotiated in secret, without public discussion or debate.  This is true
all over, and France, for one country, is fighting it.  That's what I
meant by educating people on this issue.  We are already seeing what
globalization and privatization are doing to our country, and the major
brainwashing that has been perpetrated on us about the reasons for the
debt and deficit.  You can read up about the MAI and its possible impact
on Canada on www.web.net/coc

And anyone else interested.  There is  a writeup in Ralph Nader's  "Public
Citizen" for Jan/Feb, on MAI and WTO.

Also at:  www.citizen.org or specifically:  
<A HREF="http://www.citizen.org/pctrade/mai.html">mai.html at www.citizen.org
</A>

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From: Marsha Hanzi <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 01 Apr 1998 17:13:56 -0800

Stefania,
	I also feel as you do.  In addition to  my general PC work, I have just
joined Greenpeace, and am participating in anti-MAI programs, basically
informing people here in Brazil, which certainly will be one of the
countries hardest-hit by this new pact...Fortunately its deadline
signing time ( end April) has been put off, but surely the
Transnationals have not given up.  They basically want to legalize what
they already are doing.... There is a moment where we have to stand up
and say NO!  There is a point at which it is no longer enough to work
our backyards and the neighbor`s backyard, nor to create beautiful
ecovillages... The vast population of this planet wants a cleaner and
fairer management of the world-- we can  no longer stand passively by
and let this takeover happen...I still think that the first fundamental
step is to have viable alternatives (PC)-- just protesting is not
enough..... But we also have to refuse to let this intrusion happen. 
Perhaps the MAI-- in its blatant and absurd disregard for everything
which is decent ( basically MAI says that anything that interferes with
their profits-- be it environmental laws or human rights-- is illegle)--
will wake people up.  The first reaction is always disbelief-- "That`s
impossible!" The second reaction is revolt. "How could they  DARE to do
something like that!"Perhaps that`s what we need to be shaken our of our
lethargy and do something....
	We have an excellent example from the McLIBEL case in England.  The
corporation got so much negative advertising that they basically lost
the battle...

Marsha Hanzi
Instituto de Permacultura da Bahia
BRazil

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From: Marsha Hanzi <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 01 Apr 1998 17:13:56 -0800

Stefania,

Marsha Hanzi