GCAP Blog

The activity was very well attended. Participants were very interested in the presentations and in the activities of the FTF.

The launch of the plan started with a video clip prepared by the support team of GCAP. It's about the mobilisation of women in 2007 around the GCAP demands.

Pam Rajput made the presentation of the tribunal in India. Previously we showed a video that you can all access following the link below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXyy1tMi2-k

Lysa John, though not present at the CSW, was very present through her voice in the video and the hard work she did for the tribunal.

Martha Rico presented the tribunal in Peru explaining how cases were selected and the whole process that led to the verdict. And Josephine Kamel introduced the plans for the tribunal in Egypt that will take place on 14 March.

All presentations generated great interest. And it became clear that we need to share with the list and beyond the process of the tribunals as this was particularly appreciated by participants as a way to organise their own tribunals back home.

We then launched the mobilisation plan for 8 March and distributed all documents with the demands resulting from the tribunals and others, like the ones related to the Gender Equality Architecture Reform and the financing for gender equality.

We also distributed post cards for sending to the UN General Secretary and others that can be sent to the policy makers or others that women believe should receive them as they are in a position to act. These cards are available for download from the internet and we will also be sending you copies by e-mail.

As I write this I cannot but remember the participation of a Masai woman from Kenya who, during the debate, said that poverty tends to be defined in terms of having one or two dollars a day, but that lacked all significance for her culture, as what is important for the Masai is having cattle, not dollars. She went on saying that she knew that at the end of the meeting, like in all meetings, it would be said that more information could be download from www and that she and so many other women in the world had no way to get to that www wherever it was! Hers was a strong statement reminding us about the diversity of cultures, of realities, of world views, of possibilities, and of ways to construct wealth and happiness. It is certainly part of what we, at the FTF want to send as a message in terms of unveiling different ways women have to confront poverty and build livelihoods.

See the photo gallery

Ana Agostino, GCAP IFT Co-Chair

On Day two of the Bali Conference, countries were divided over whether to discuss a provision on binding targets to curb carbon emissions.  Apparently, there is no explicit agreement to include targets in the Bali Roadmap or to leave this discussion for the next round of negotiations in Poland in 2008 and Denmark in 2009. The so-called Bali Roadmap is expected to create the next phase of commitment after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 20I2.

I’m guessing a thought balloon popped up in your head just after reading this intro. And it says: But what’s needed are targets! In fact, what’s needed are hard caps on emissions!  Millions of poor people are suffering right now from the negative impacts of climate change, hello? Action is needed now, not in 2008 or 2009!”

My thoughts exactly.  Talk about being of one mind.  

Then again being of one mind seems a remote possibility in the Bali talks. It seems that the most important thing here, the issue on which the talks hinge is whether a compromise with the United States will be achieved. The consensus from reading the media reports on the second day of the talks is this: failure to reach a compromise will weaken the Bali Roadmap. Right. But isn’t failure to curb emissions quickly going to destroy millions of lives, lands and livelihood?

Incidentally, the US and UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer seem to be of one mind. They both uttered the same analogy about the Bali talks as being some kind of a first date in which the parties are not expected to make a commitment. De Boer has made a statement to the effect that a marriage contract is a culmination of a love affair, not the topic of discussion on the first date. Then comes the US with “We will be very open and flexible, but we don’t want to start off with anything here in the beginning of the process that is going to pre judge what ultimately may be concluded by 2009. So to the extent that this is analogous to a first date, we don’t want to sign the marriage contract yet.”

Thought balloon pops back up with “I hate commitment phobes!” Ok, so maybe that wasn’t what your thought balloon says.

So to the extent that the US calls the Bali talks a first date, we can conclude that this is not going to work. First dates don’t work, it’s the law of physics. Thing is, for me, when you are running out of time, you don’t go on first dates. You plan and make a decision to commit to someone who will make you happy or contented or at least someone you can tolerate – or you make a decision not to make a commitment at all. Imagine you only have one year to live, would you go on successive first dates hoping something will work out with someone along the way?         

Anyway, talking about commitment, legally-binding targets indeed have to discussed in Bali. It is urgent to make an action now and not next year on reducing emissions drastically.  There is no debate that voluntary commitment does not work. The European Union has taken this position and it has announced that it should take the lead on setting legally-binding targets that should be discussed in Bali. Moreover, it announced that it is moving closer to achieving its collective emissions reduction target in 2010 to 7.4% below the 1990 level, which is just short of the 8% reduction target for 2012.#

lani villanueva

It's day 4 of the conference and I, for one, am exhausted. I know how delegates from some of the poorer nations must feel. I remember several years ago when I first became an activist, a round of WTO negotiations was taking place and I was told of the difficulties for poorer nations to even follow negotiations at these big conferences. I don't think I really appreciated then what this meant, but being here in Bali it is obvious that rich nations can flood the various meetings with experts whilst poorer nations must surely be expected to bring magicians who can be in seven places at once.

The main conference centre is a hive of activity with highly technical discussions going on in several fora including the UNFCCC, the Kyoto Protocol, the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technical Advice (SBSTA), the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) and others. That is not to mention the countless bilateral discussions, meeting of political groupings such as the G77 and the EU, the packed schedule of side events and official briefings, the press conferences...the list goes on.

To cover all of these meetings, the Australian government has, according to the official participants list, 110 delegates attending the conference. That, surely, is more than enough to provide genuine experts to all of these complex areas and ensure Australian interests are met in the negotiations. Australia is facing severe consequences from climate change as a major drought has plagued the country for at least the last 6 years. Indeed, the new government swept to power partly on the back of it's commitment to ratifying the Kyoto protocol, an act it carried out on the first day of the conference.

The Seychelles is at far greater risk. Recent reports on the island show that extreme weather events are becoming more common and that global warming has led to intense bleaching of the beautiful coral reefs that exist of its shores. The Seychelles has 3 people registered for the conference. With no offence intended to those delegates, it is clear that the two representatives of the Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources and Transport along with one Ambassadors, can not be expected to follow such complicated negotiations.

Talk about an unfair playing field.

I think this is a crucial role for NGOs at conferences such as this. GCAP, as well as Oxfam and other agencies, are working hard to ensure that the poorest people and nations are not forgotten during these meetings. That the impact on humanity is not subsumed by technical jargon.

I was privileged to join a panel at a meeting in the fabulous civil society compound near to the main conference centre yesterday. The compound, unlike its ultra-modern conference centre counterpart, is built as a temporary Indonesian village boasting raised wooden huts with thatched roofs, open sides, no central heating, and masses of passion from the mainly Indonesian participants. There were at least 80 people sat cross-legged on reed mats at the meeting I addressed and, following three presentations, there was a clamour for their stories to be heard. We heard from Indonesian farmers who are now only able to harvest rice once a year whereas before it was twice, from teachers in Jakarta whose students sometimes cannot get to school due to increased flooding, from an activist in Kalimantang whose livelihood is being destroyed as owners of a massive coal mine cut down forests and pollute the area.

This is where real action is happening, not inside the cozy air-conditioned confines of the conference centre. This is where there is real passion for change. As civil society activists, it is imperative upon us to make delegates hear these voices.

We will continue to do so.#

NUSA DUA, BALI -- Expect humidity with increased carbon emissions might as well be the weather forecast yesterday when the United Nations Climate Change Conference opened in the posh Nusa Dua tourist enclave in Bali, Indonesia.

Expect heavy traffic and loads of contradictions might have been an advisory as well.

More than 10,000 people from 190 countries, including five heads of states, environment ministers, industry lobbyists, and civil society and environmental campaigners are taking part in the event, which seeks to create a new treaty to replace the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol.

I was stuck in traffic on my way to Nusa Dua yesterday morning and almost came in late for the conference opening and the 9:00 am media stunts to take place in front of the Bali Convention Center where the conference is being held. I arrived two minutes after nine, nervous and pleased at the same time because I thought I would be stuck on the road forever, inside a Blue Bird, the local cab, the fare for which costs an arm and a leg.

Riding a bicycle to the site makes sense – in fact, hundreds of bikes are being provided by the UNFCCC for the delegates for free. By biking, one can get past the traffic jam caused by the huge SUVs carrying government officials and all sorts of posh delegates who, to be sure, will not be taking part in the parallel Civil Society Forum activities. But one can also get serious sunburn from riding exposed to the sun in hot Bali weather. One can get sick as well from the pollution caused by the increased number of fossil fuel-guzzling automobiles on the streets, which have added to the already high number of motorcycles, the locals' main mode of transport, -- which adds up to the greenhouse gas emissions and environmental stress.

Say Bali and the word paradise comes to mind – if you say Bali years ago, that is. Today, Bali stands for paradise lost. Intense tourism, pollution, deforestation, warming weather, the 2004 Indian Ocean quake that triggered massive tsunamis in many parts of Asia, as well as the terrible terror bomb attacks in 2002 and 2005 have reduced it into one of those popular island getaways, which require one to first read a travel advisory if one is planning to go there.

This week until next, Bali is in the center of the global discussion of a future climate regime. The Bali meeting will have to produce ways to reach a consensus on climate adaptation and mitigation, transfer of technology from developed to developing countries and financing scheme to curb and overcome the impacts of climate change. This is taking place while logging, most of it illegal, destroys thousands of hectares of land in Bali and all over Indonesia, adding up to the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Indonesia has one of the world's largest areas of rainforests. Massive illegal logging and burning of forests have stripped it of more than 70% of its original forest cover. As a result, Indonesia is now the world's third biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, next to the United States and China. Today, the Jakarta Post bannered a story on Indonesia's state minister for the environment Rachmat Witoelar's optimism that a consensus would be reached during this conference. Witoelar said many governments have warmed up to the idea of creating a new agenda for negotiating solutions for the warming of our world.

But while others have warmed up, the US remains frosty to the idea of drastic emission cuts. The US is seen as the biggest obstacle to forging a new pact with binding limits on emissions. George Bush has stated that they are keen on a common, long-term goal decades in the future without specific targets or limits. Curbing greenhouse emissions, he said, must be ""in a way that does not undermine economic growth or prevent nations from delivering greater prosperity for their people."

It has been seventeen years since the first global climate treaty was signed by almost all the world's nations, which set voluntary goals for curbing the emissions of greenhouse gases. The Kyoto Protocol, the first legally binding treaty signed by most of the world's leading greenhouse gas producers, was ratified in 1997 as an addendum to the original pact, setting mandatory limits on emissions for the industrialized countries that ratified it. The US refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol citing drastic emission cuts would harm its economy and that China and India are two of the world's major emitters, which should also curb their emissions.

Today, seventeen years later, those countries that ratified Kyoto have largely failed to meet their targets. And the US remains as pig-headed about setting specific targets as before.

The UNFCCC, however, has stated that any long-term policy response to climate change must be acceptable to all, including the US. The debates and compromises are on.

Yesterday, GCAP's Ben Margolis was interviewed twice and twice he was asked for his opinion on the US position. It seems that the biggest issue here, which dominates discussion and which the media is picking up at the expense of drowning the voices of groups vulnerable to climate change, is what is the framework for negotiations that is acceptable to the US.

lani villanueva

Bali is beautiful. This small tropical island, part of the Indonesian archipelago and perched off the East coast of Java is, for the next two weeks, playing host to a major UN climate change conference.

I am here for the first week of the conference with colleagues from the Global Call to Action Against Poverty – the world’s largest anti-poverty movement, with national platforms in more than 100 countries. I will try to send updates from the conference looking at both what is being discussed – but also to give a flavour of the conference itself.

There is no longer serious debate that humans are causing significant climatic changes, and that the poorest nations and people in the world are being hit first and hardest by these changes. So can Bali be the moment when negotiations truly begin on a crucial follow up to the Kyoto Protocol as well as on other vital areas including adaptation and deforestation?

My initial impression is, perhaps unhelpfully. Let me explain.

First the conference itself. Planes carrying delegates (the irony is lost on few) come down low over the narrow strip of water that separates the island from Java, and land at Denpasar on the South tip of Bali. Those delegates are whisked away in gas-guzzling people carriers to the exclusive resort of Nusa Dua, home to countless five star hotels and to the main convention centre where the meeting will take place.
 
In luxurious surroundings, and under the hot Balinese sun, delegates waft from hotel to conference centre in taxis, bell boys carry suitcases into air-conditioned rooms, talk is of clause 4 of this and article 15 of that, Balinese security guards and police patrol the boundaries, and locals are kept firmly out. In such surroundings I fear the emergency of climate change is lost. Radical action suppressed by freshly fluffed pillows.
 
And yet, around 12,000 government officials, civil society activists, UN staff, private sector representatives and others are arriving over the weekend for the 13th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and there are, perhaps, a few important features that distinguish this meeting from its predecessors and give hope that decisions can be made. 

The unity of dialogue, the role of civil society, and the timing of the conference are all playing a role to ensure that this conference is definitive in shaping global decisions. 
 
Having recently been at the World Bank and IMF annual meetings, it is already clear that civil society is far more integrated into the process here than at the Bank and Fund. Here the negotiation halls are open to all accredited delegates, the civil society forum is running parallel to the main conference and dialogue is free and open between all sides.  This is highly significant as it means that decisions reached will have been done so in a relatively transparent manner and are therefore more likely to have the support of all key actors.
 
Not unrelated is the fact that this conference is historic in the unity role players are facing in the debate.  While in many areas of economics and politics, different interest groups are brought to the discussion table largely to protect their own interests in a largely zero sum game, with climate change, business, government, and civil society stand to lose, and lose in a drastic way, if there is not unified, quick action.
 
Finally, the timing of this conference is working in its favour.  The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has become a widely accepted body for scientific evidence on climate change allowing a vital agreed basis for dialogue on agreements and future treaties. It’s fourth assessment report released this year highlights the need for drastic action in the most startling terms yet.
The ravages of climate change are already being felt, from Bangladesh to New Orleans. There is now widespread public awareness about climate change, and the more it is affecting the lives of citizens, the more they are demanding action from decision makers.  With a political incentive to act together against climate change, Bali could just be the place where promises are finally turned into action.

For the sake of all of us, let’s hope so.

Ben Margolis

Last week the whole Philippines shut down. Everyone was in the cemetery. While no one was looking, a little girl who had lost hope hanged herself.   

November 1 through November 2 is Day of the Dead in the Philippines. During this time, it’s tradition to go to the cemeteries and pay homage to your dead relatives. Families pitch tents or set picnic tables over the graves of their dearly departed and celebrate with a great deal of food and chit chat.

This year’s Day of the Dead took a different turn for the family of 11-year old Mariannet Amper who had committed suicide on November 2 after she had lost hope that her family would ever rise from poverty. She tied a nylon rope around her neck and hanged herself at their home in Davao City in Southern Philippines. 

Her father is a construction worker who has no steady projects, her mother a laundrywoman who earns poverty wages. They barely have money for food and school expenses.

When she died, her family found under her pillow a letter she wrote for a local TV show that grants wishes. She wanted a school bag, a bicycle and jobs for her parents.  They also found a diary where she wrote her pain and anxiety about living with poverty. In an entry dated October 5, she wrote in Filipino: “It seemed as if we were absent from school for a month now. We stopped counting how many absences I had. Christmas is getting near, I didn’t notice.”  

When her story was being reported over the radio, the government was holding an anti-poverty workshop at the Manila Hotel.  Asked by media for a reaction on Mariannet’s death, a government official remarked that the case was “isolated.’

That dim-witted government official is actually right. It was an isolated case. Hers is a case of a life isolated from comforts, from social services, from assistance, from hopefulness. She lived a life of begging for leftover rice from neighbors, of missing school repeatedly, of coping with the recurring sickness of her father. She lived a life of filth in a miserable shack without electricity and clean water.     

Today’s leading newspaper reported Mariannet’s short, sad life; what she did and say the day before she took her own life. Two sidebar stories accompanied the report. One screamed “11 Million Filipinos among 1 Billion living on less than $1 a day.” The other says “We are all to blame for her death.”  

Her story was nagging at me since I heard it while riding a cab on my way to work. The next day, I read excerpts from her diary in the newspaper and I burst into tears. I was upset that it had come to this that a child would kill herself because poverty had killed her spirit. There was no way out for her. It was the only option left. Then I read the sidebar story about how we are all to blame for what happened to this little girl. I wanted to pick a fight.

“Not only the government, but somehow we are all to blame for the fate of an 11-year old girl in Davao, who took her own life because she was poor,” the article began, “this is the moral lesson conveyed by some of the country’s religious leaders.”

I wrote a letter to the editor seething with rage. It is offensive that the country’s leading newspaper had published such a despicable view side by side with the story on an unfortunate life and death of a child. They should have solicited other people’s reactions and statements, too, instead of settling for a knee-jerk, warmed over, tasteless statement that doesn’t really put things in perspective.

It is irresponsible, tasteless even to suggest that we are all to blame for what happened, I ranted. “I am neither overcome with guilt or shame nor stricken with remorse. I am not guilty of driving a young child to her death, so do not lay blame on me. Do not take me on a guilt trip.

“If there is a moral lesson here, it is a lesson for a president and her economic planners who like to hype about economic growth rates and ignore the fact that the incidence of hunger has been increasing. The latest survey from local pollster Social Weather Stations show that the incidence of hunger in the Philippines has reached a new high. In the fourth quarter of 2006, at least 19 percent of families in the country, roughly 3.3 million households, experienced involuntary hunger at least once in the last three months. Fifty-two percent of those polled also described themselves as poor.

“Add to this the fact that the occurrence of desperate people climbing billboard structures or holding their children hostage because they couldn’t find a job is becoming more frequent and that current data shows that 10.8 percent of the country's population survive on just $1 a day, and another 41.2 percent make do with less than $2 daily.

”I am not guilty of stealing from the national coffers or squandering precious resources that should have gone to social services spending thus causing widespread hunger, desperation and utter helplessness.

“I am not guilty because it is not my personal failure that Mariannet lived in poverty and died because of it so do not manipulate me to feel somehow responsible for her death.”

I am not guilty. I am really, really angry.#

lani villanueva           

There is something wrong when 38.8 million people stand up in solidarity against poverty across the world in one day, and it's nowhere prominent in the major US press.  It's wrong that of those 38.8 million, yes 38.8 MILLION, North America only contributed 109,828 to that number (see at stand against poverty website).

I don't claim to be a political activist, in fact, far from it.  I have my views, but don't ask me to stand up and be able to eloquently and convincingly debate them.  I also don't claim to have the answers...did I contact the press and try to get the word out?  No. (to my defense, I had only heard about the Stand Up world-wide event less than 2 weeks before it was to happen, and did, on short notice organize a small 14 person event in my community.)  That again, to me means something is wrong.  How come I hadn't heard about it?  Moreover, how did I not hear that last year 23.5 Million people stood up for this same cause and broke a world record?  I watch the news, read the newspaper every day.  I may not be an "activist" but I do consider myself pretty well informed on world events, and a strong advocate of social justice.

I probably sound like a broken record you've all heard before, but if something's broken, shouldn't it be fixed?  All too often we hear on the nightly news and in the newspaper of the casualties of war, the killings of kids, by kids, in our own towns.   It leads a person to want to turn off their television and tune it all out.  There is too much violence, too much hurt, too many crooked politicians.  The list could go on and on.  But you know what?  There are also a hell of a lot of people out there combating every one of those issues and trying in their own way to make this world just a little better.  And the more we hear these stories, the more hope there is that one day we'll overcome these issues.

So why is it, when 38.8 MILLION people Stand Up and Speak Out for something as important as extreme poverty - something 189 world leaders pledged to eradicate by 2015, including our very own United States, it's not a MAJOR story? 

The point of Stand Up and Speak Out was to show how many people DO care, and hold the governments responsible for the promises they made.  But if 38.8 MILLION people stand up, and it's not deemed newsworthy, then something is wrong.  Something is wrong when you go to "Google News" and type in "stand up against poverty" and you have to dig 4 pages deep before you come to an article published by a US new source. 

I don't believe in the "ugly American" any more than I believe in the "Islamic terrorist" or the "lazy illegal immigrant."  Individuals are terrorists, individuals are lazy, and yes, some individual American's behave very ugly.  What I DO believe, is that humans are generally good people.  38.8 MILLION of them proved that yesterday.  But unfortunately, millions more don't know that, because apparently it's not newsworthy.

Sincerely,

Jill Allison
Bainbridge Island, Washington
ghosthair@gmail.com

This letter was sent last week to several local and national news agencies in the US.

On October 17th more than 40 million people spoke out against poverty. This is remarkable global call to action and one that will become louder and stronger in coming years, and more and more difficult for political leaders to ignore.

This week I have had the privilege of leading a fantastic team on behalf of GCAP working on bringing the voices of so many people to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund whose annual meetings are taking place now in Washington DC. The team has been working together for the last few weeks to put on a series of events and meetings to bring the global call directly to these two institutions whose policies and loan conditions often have horrendous consequences for the poorest people in the world.

It has been an incredible week. We have got to know the several blocks between the office we have based in and the World Bank extremely well but barely seen any other part of the city. Now, on Sunday night we are all foot sore and weary but looking back on a very successful few days.

On Thursday the team put out a press release highlighting the incredible coordinated political movement that took place the previous day and the delegations in more than 30 countries that lobbied senior ministers and heads of state.

On Friday a small GCAP delegation met the Dutch World Bank board member – Herman Wijffels, and put our demands to him on behalf of GCAP friends around the world. There was an interesting discussion around how civil society organisations lobby the Bank and Fund and a feeling from the Bank that CSOs are too broad in their demands for more transparency and good governance without really specifying there demands.

On Saturday the GCAP team joined a march organised by a number of organisations that ended in Murrow Park right outside the World Bank. There were well over a thousand people on what was a lively and colourful march although I am not convinced there was a clear enough point to the march for it to really have any impact. GCAP spokespeople were interviewed on the march by, amongst others, SABC and the Washington Post, and we used the opportunity to highlight the plight of our GCAP friends Daniel and Netsanet who have been prisoners of conscience in Ethiopia for two years.

Today, Sunday, has been the biggest day of action. A press conference was held at 10:30 this morning with Sylvia Borren, Andrew Kumbatira, Dian Kartika Sari and Christophe Zoungrana all representing on the panel.

This was followed by an audio-visual highlight in the form of a performance of the poverty requiem and display of global ‘avatars’ right in front of the World Bank main entrance. Thanks to tremendous hard work by a great team, by 1:00 pm a choir of 150 were joined by more than 50 dancers in a powerful and emotive performance of the Poverty Requiem (http://www.povertyrequiem.org). This team had also done a great job of promoting the performance and  drew a good crowd of onlookers including the Dutch Finance and Development Ministers and several media outlets. The performance was also watched over by 140 life-size cut-outs – known as Avatars -  representing all the countries with GCAP coalitions plus a number of individuals. Each Avatar also stood for 340,000 people who stood up against poverty on Wednesday.

It has been a very busy and difficult week at the culmination of months of planning and organising. Walking round the Bank and speaking to both staff, delegations and CSOs, everyone knows about and is talking about GCAP, the Requiem and the Avatars – it has been seen as a unique and powerful lobbying method. Our objective in coming here was to represent the voices of millions of people round the world. Through song, symbolism, hand-outs of the declaration, direct lobbies and media relations I believe and hope we have achieved our goal.  We asked to be heard so lets now see if those in power at the institutions were listening.

Here are some pictures.

By Ben Margolis

Twenty-four hours later, the numbers are out.  Twenty-four hours after scores of Stand Up and Speak Out events were held across the globe to mark World Poverty Day, which saw multitudes of people stand up on streets, paved and unpaved, posh hotel ballrooms, sports coliseums and town squares, schools and offices, marketplaces and hill tops, the final numbers were revealed. Over 38.7 million people in 111 countries have stood up and spoken against poverty. We have broken the Guinness World Record for the largest number of people to “stand up against poverty in 24 hours,” which we ourselves set last year at 23.5 million.

Yet, twenty-four hours after this triumphant announcement, new numbers were coming in: 11 dead and more than a hundred wounded in an explosion that ripped through the Glorietta 2 shopping mall in Makati City in Manila, Philippines early Friday afternoon; 126 dead and 248 wounded in Karachi Friday evening after a suicide bombing believed to be the deadliest bomb attack in Pakistan's history.

I hear the news and I bite my left thumb nail reflexively, numbers running through my head. More than 38.7 million people around the world. 111 countries. 24 hours.  27.6 million in Asia. The highest number delivered by a region. That’s nearly three-fourths of the total number. Of these, the Philippines total was 7.1 million, which is 18% of the total. And if my math is correct, that’s one Filipino for every five individuals that stood up on Oct 17. Pakistan, which held an unprecedented Stand Up and Speak Out event that unfurled a 10-km long banner, the longest in the world, signed by one million people, delivered a total of 2.3 million.  

I bite my nail some more and, for some reason, I remember that Friday morning’s featured cab music: a Nickelback song that goes, “something's gotta go wrong, coz I'm feelin' way too damn good.”  There’s no way this is a presentiment, of course.  Sometimes some things just don’t make sense. Sometimes things happen and you find yourself unable to react or think of something. Your mind is just vacant of any thought and you fumble about for something to say or think amid the apparent senselessness. Because there was one day when dense crowds materialized in public spaces, dense crowds of people from all walks of life that stood together, shoulder to shoulder, basking in shared aims and camaraderie. Because the next day, hard explosives ripped through dense crowds of people who were having lunch on an ordinary Friday or hanging out with friends and family or standing shoulder to shoulder during a slow, celebratory procession to welcome a leader who was back after eight years in exile.  

On my way home that Friday night, numbers were still running through my head, numbers I couldn’t count: the number of people who feels outrage at these latest brutalities, the number of families who have lost a son, daughter, father, mother, friend, the number of times I left my son in a book shop at the mall to browse for an hour or two while I went to get a haircut or pay the bills or shop.  “One-two-four,” the cab driver barks.  I realize he was pointing at the gate of my house.  Then he adds, “Seventy.” I give him a hundred pesos. He gives me a change of twenty. Fine, I tell myself.  Christmas is more or less ten weeks away. # 

lani villanueva

On my two recent visits to the UK and in London specifically, over the last two months and both admittedly combined, not longer than 1 working week, I was astounded by the conditions facing working people particularly those working in supermarkets, bookshops and pharmacies. Here my experience was with Marks and Spencer’s, Boots, and Borders Bookshops.

The cashiers were all standing. I was astounded. I asked the one Ghanaian origin new slave, at Marks and Spencer’s: hey bro, why don’t you sit?” He laughed and said that he sits after work. All the working time – 7 hours I believe – Standing. I further asked, if they had union representation, he laughed off, my question.

At another time as we were seeking Ha-Joon Chang’s Kicking Away the Ladder, as we have on an earlier visit bought his latest Book Bad Samaritans, and bookshop after big bookstore. They were standing. When visiting the Boots for cosmetics I asked an Asian worker there: “someone stole your chair!” he was cool, and replied that “we never had chairs, it was like
this when I began working here.” Thus, it was clear that this was a condition of employment and was I thought underwritten by a belief by the bosses that commercial and catering workers are more productive when they are standing.

I was concerned that the strong union movement, led by the Trade Union Congress that I had known over the decades may be fading, but I was equally concerned that this was not an issue for the National Union of Students, Oxfam, and Action Aid are seemingly silent on this basic violation of worker and human rights. I was aware of the irony that whilst we are campaigning for the world community to “stand up and speak out against poverty in terms of the Global Call to Action and supported by the United Nations and other UN agencies – here workers were standing all day whilst their rights were being trampled. Most of the workers were either old or new immigrant communities and almost all I saw wore my skin – dozed with a lot of healthy melanin.

The highlight of the Stand UP campaign is the 16 and 17 October – the latter being the UN recognized international day for the eradication of poverty. Last year over 23 million people stood up and broke the Guinness Book of record for the most number of people standing for such a progressive cause. In part the stand up is aimed at creating awareness of the Millennium Development Goals and to create awareness on the powers that be – corporates and governments to do more to create a justice based society.

I wondered whether the unions could not take this as a dispute to the International Labour Organisation or whether civil society should not join with the union and the TUC. A labour lawyer in South Africa volunteered to do a class case for UK workers – wont that be a good case of solidarity!

Hassen Lorgat

my last visit was returning from london 23 September 2007 not reluctantly ...