Rethinking Global Giving
Trade protests are prompting a review of grant-making policies
By STEPHEN G. GREENE
blah, blah, blah .....(fill in civil society slime of choice.)
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They are all deeply concerned, no doubt, but about what is the question. (Do I smell funding?)
Before I get started on that, thanks to all who went off to DC and the reports that are coming back. You all have to remember the rest of us (me at any rate) are essentially kept in a vacuum due to the giant sucking sound coming from mass media. I depend on Lbo for news. (Max, Doug, Chuck0, and others--Doug tell Richard S. hello from Berkeley. Sure would have been fun to put on my vasoline--might use olive oil this time--carry my vinegar squeege bottle--we used to get the lime and lemon plastic juice things from a liquor store in a pinch--and duct tape newspapers around my kidneys and gut---ah, nostaglia. Do they still do that stuff?--oh and welding gloves for the cannisters. Wouldn't gogles help with the pepper spray? I've still got my old army surplus jacket--except it is over at the ex-wife's--have to double park since their Volvo and SUV fill up the only spaces, beat down the front door and listen to a bunch of bourgeois shit from her before I could get to my kid's closet to get it.)
I've been trying to figure out a way to make trickle down imperialism and neo-colonialism relevant and meaningfull to the US working class, particularly black/latino/asian communities--outside an explicit union context. (Outside the union connection, because most are not in unions)
I think this apparently silly nonsense from the corporate do-gooder front organizations sort of points the way. Remember they are the assholes who brought us those ever helpful community projects that turned into get rich quick schemes for the principles and local politicans, corrupt contractor tokenism, lots of forms and little action, rich boards of directors, fees for services, etc, etc--hordes of volunteers and no wages.
Maybe the hint is to see the world like a giant community development project, complete with red-line banking, rip-off real estate scams, slime contractors, out of town developers, total exploitation of poverty for the benefit of some strip mall full of franchised consumer-shit (made off-shore by children, slaves and prisoners--or the other end of the same stinking process). Meanwhile the streets, schools, libraries, transportation and public services rot amid the glittering trivia of capital.
But to make this linkage work, we need those raving left-wing empirical studies that show millions go in and billions go out while nothing gets done. We need those studies, those figures, those easy to understand examples because as the think tanks and foundations crank out their crapolla, there has to be the concrete figures to show they're full of shit. I mean, I personally don't need to be convinced, but their media needs to be refuted point blank with concrete and verifiable realism.
I noticed Clinton (to avoid DC) was in East Palo Alto promoting computers for kids (probably microsuck network vouchers). So where is all the benefit from that high tech miracle of Silicon Valley and the new global economy--barely a mile or so up the street? The extreme contrast between East Palo Alto and the rest of Silicon Valley presents the same core dialectic that US trickle down imperialism does to the rest of the world. These are reciprocals of one another. But the point is to make that connection for East Palo Alto, and therefore make explicit their link to the rest of the exploited world. (for non-locals, the entire bay area is ringed with rust belt communities, left over from WWII industrialization from E.Palo Alto, Hunter's Point to North Richmond).
Hard not to notice there is already a kind of sliding off to the side, an eliding of issues, where the establishment feels the concern of the earnest young, hopelessly idealistic demonstrators. Yes we are with you, but you have to work with the system, reform it, not tear it down. Hmm, where have I heard that before? The conintelpro has only just begun.
Chuck Grimes