Archive for March, 2007
During lunch I caught up on some posting. Right next to me were Vernita and Dale Kennon.
Planning for rain, Vernita and Dale had packed their lunch and were eating in the auditorium. The two got involved with ONE through Bread for the World and the Evangelic church. Vernita told me that they’re listening with two ears today, as they are reps for their synod are in charge of spreading information to 115 congregations.
The issue of debt cancellation is not necessarily intuitive to everyone, so having someone like Monét around is truly valuable. Mónet started off having everyone do a role play, lending fake, paper money to each other, making the intricacies of debt relief much more tangible.
Then Monét walked through the Jubilee Act, and in doing so, helped to flesh out a lot of details about how the loans were lent, how conditionalities work and explaining odious and illegitimate debt.
I really recommend going through the sheets Monét handed out, which discuss:
-Which countries require debt cancellation in order for us to meet the Millennium Development Goals?
-How does debt cancellation work?
-Does the JUBILEE Act ensure that debt cancellation funds go to poverty reduction?
-How will the JUBILEE Act address odious and illegitimate debt?
-Why does the JUBILEE Act prohibit harmful economic conditions attached to the debt cancellation?
-How will we pay for this expanded debt cancellation?
-What can Congress do in 2007?
-Jubilee Act Summary
-Jubilee Act FAQ
First I jumped into Annisa Wanat of ONE’s group on the budget. Annisa started off by having everyone in the room introduce themselves.
-Katie is here from Minneapolis. She read Jeffrey Sach’s book The End of Poverty years ago, and ONE has helped her advocate the changes she wants to Congress.
-Barbara is here from Lakeview, Minnesota. She got hooked into ONE through Bread for the World.
-Sherry is the president of an elementary school. She’s a mom, and she’s busy, but she’s found that she can still take action through the ONE Campaign emails. (Just recently Sherry was asked to lead a in-district lobbying meeting in a ONE email, and she wanted to come to the budget session to learn more.)
-Ron Schulte drove in from Des Moine Iowa this morning! He’s been taking email actions and it’s been great for him to see many of his actions be fruitful. Ron wanted to come to this training to find out how to take his work to the next level.
-Rachel is from Afton, MN, and heard about ONE through U2.
-Ben (who I met during registration) drove in from Wisconsin to attend this training. He first heard about ONE from an email that a friend forwarded to him. He came to get more involved.
Time was ticking and I still wanted to learn more about the Jubilee Act, so I ducked out and headed into Monét in depth-session…
Next we are breaking into small sessions to go over issues in depth. All the people here (about 100) are choosing between the following groups:
-HIV/AIDS, led by Jane Ascroft of CARE
-Millennium Development Goals, led by Anne Batchelder of ONE
-Hunger, led by Mike Batell of Bread for the World
-JUBILEE Act and Debt Cancellation, led by Monét Cooper of Jubilee
-Federal Budget: the pivotal next three months, led by Annisa Wanat of ONE
-Trade and the Farm Bill led by Lou Hille of Oxfam
Below are ONE newest fact sheets on our major issues. I’m running off to join a group or two and will report back!
-More and Better Aid
-Debt
-Trade
-Clean Water
-Education
-Child and Maternal Health
-HIV, Malaria and Tuberculosis
Also check out: Oxfam’s fact sheet on the Farm Bill.
Jane Ascroft from CARE is talking about development assistance. Jane shares with us her families’ initial reaction to her work. Her family thought the U.S. spent 10-20% of the federal budget on poverty funding abroad. No guessed anything under 10%.
In truth, the U.S. spends less than 1% on development assistance for the 1 billion people living on less than $1 a day.
What does development assistance buy?
-$1 in development assistance saves $7 in emergency relief
-Every year of education for girls yields gains for health and economic indicators
Jane quickly walked though the budget process, and when it is the most critical for us as ONE members to contact our representatives. Annisa will go into more length on this in the afternoon.
Learn more about aid by looking through Jane’s full powerpoint presentation.
Next Mike Batell from Bread for the World is talking about fair trade.
The majority of people in the world live in rural areas and make their living through agriculture.
Right now, the U.S. taxes provide large farmers with $16 billion worth of subsidies. Most of which goes to large industrial farms. These subsidies make it impossible for small, family farms in the U.S to compete and they make it impossible for small, family farms internationally to compete.
According to the World Bank, successful completion of the Doha round at the WHO, would lift 144 million people out of extreme poverty (That’s Minnesota’s population times 30.)
“Right now, somewhere, there’s a man with a family whose only source of income is the cotton he grows. But when he goes to the market, no one will buy that cotton anymore, because now there’s cotton there that is cheaper.”
This is not the working of the free market. That cheap cotton comes from the U.S., where it has had the benefit of heavy subsidies.
We keep preaching that the path to the end of poverty is through free trade and open markets, and those poor countries have opened their markets to U.S. goods, but the U.S. has denied our markets to them. This is the antithesis of our free trade doctrine.
For every $1 poor countries receive in aid, they lose $2 due to unfair trade.
We should pursue fair trade not just because it will lift millions out of poverty, but because its in our best interest. The World Banks estimates that successful completion of the Doha rounds would result in billions more dollars in economic output, money that would benefit both poor and rich countries.
ONE members support reform to the U.S. Farm Bill. Instead of helping small farmers, as it was originally intended when it was created during the great depression, 78% of this money goes to the 8% largest corporate farms. “The U.S. is being taxed to make rich farmers richer and poor farmers poorer, both here and abroad… Changing the Farm Bill is our chance to change the system.”
Watch Mike’s full powerpoint here.
Monét Copper from Jubilee is walking us through the history of debt and its impact on people in developing countries
The debt crisis began, she tells us, in the 1960′s. The U.S. spent a lot more money than it earned, so we printed more. The eventual impact was that banks had a lot more money, and to make even more money, they started to loan that money to developing countries.
With the surplus of money to loan, banks didn’t thoroughly research who they were lending to or if countries could realistically pay the money back.
In the late 70′s, interest rates rose significantly. The U.S. was headed into a recession and many of these banks started to call these countries, saying they needed the loans paid back. Many countries just couldn’t pay them.
International banks stepped in, like the IMF and the World Bank, and designed plans to help them pay off the loans. These banks set up “structural adjustment programs” and “conditionalities.”
This meant, they started to change people for things they didn’t use to have to pay for, like water and electricity, and that they were changed user fees for things like school and healthcare. For a poor family, these fees often meant that their children no longer went to school, sick people didn’t get care, and since a family couldn’t afford clean water, they’d bath and cook in dirty, contaminated water. Perhaps their loans being paid off, but at what costs?
In 2005, the G-8 cancelled the debt for 21 countries in the global south. But it was only for 21 countries.
A study by the Jubilee Debt Campaign shows that a minimum of 61 more countries need debt cancellation in order for the world to achieve the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals.
A couple of Jubilee’s main asks:
-The G-8 debt deal only included 3 banks. Jubilee wants all the major international financial institutions to commit to debt cancellation.
-An end to conditionalities.
-Debt Audits: Jubilee wants the world to look at how much of this money was lend to dictators? How much was illegitimate? How much was odious? And how much can we cancel?
So what can we do? Support the Jubilee Act.
Monét passed out some documents about debt and the act, which you can find below.
-Why Drop the Debt 1
-Why Drop the Debt 2
-Jubilee Act FAQ
-Jubilee Act Summary
