Wojtek
> -------- Original Message --------
>
> 10 Good Things about Another Bad Year
> By Medea Benjamin
> t r u t h o u t | Perspective
>
> Friday 29 December 2005
>
> As we close this year, a year in which we were pummeled
> by the Iraq war, attacks on our civil rights, and Mother
> Nature's fury of hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis, there
> is no shortage of reasons to feel bruised and beaten. But to
> start the New Year with a healthy determination to keep on
> fighting, we need to reflect on the good things that
> happened. And there are plenty.
>
> One continent alone - South America - could provide more
> than ten examples of wonderful progressive victories, but
> I'll just list some of the highlights.
>
> 1. Hugo Chavez has shown how an oil-rich nation can use
> the country's wealth to provide education, healthcare and
> small business opportunities for its people - and we here in
> the US have discovered an oil company we can feel good about
> buying gas from: Venezuela's CITGO.
>
> 2. Bolivians have, for the first time in their history,
> elected an indigenous president, Evo Morales. The former
> llama farmer and coca grower has fought against "free trade"
> and the privatization of his nation's resources, and has
> brought new hope to indigenous people throughout the continent.
>
> 3. Anti-war activists - who once represented a
> much-maligned minority - now represent the majority of
> Americans who agree that the war in Iraq was a mistake and
> the troops should come home as soon as possible. And with
> Cindy Sheehan and Cong. Jack Murtha, we finally had
> spokespeople the mainstream media listened to!
>
> 4. In an historic blow to the Bush administration's
> five-year attempt to destroy the Kyoto Protocol, the climate
> summit in Montreal ended with even stronger measures to
> combat global warming. At home, nearly 200 cities are taking
> their own Kyoto-type actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
>
> 5. The Senate ended the year with a spurt of defiance,
> refusing to permanently extend the expiring provisions of the
> Patriot Act, blocking the Republican maneuver to attach
> Arctic oil drilling to a defense spending bill, and passing
> John McCain's anti-torture amendment.
>
> 6. Despite a concerted offensive to lift the president's
> sagging public support, George Bush's approval ratings are
> still below 50 percent, his economic agenda (from the
> privatization of social security to the repeal of the estate
> tax) has unraveled, key cronies from Lewis Libby to Tom DeLay
> have fallen from grace, and 2006 might just put impeachment
> back into the congressional lexicon.
>
> 7. Labor, community activists and women's groups have
> mounted a spirited campaign against the behemoth of
> behemoths, Wal-Mart. And a California jury awarded $172
> million to thousands of employees at Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.,
> who were denied such basic rights as lunch breaks, with 40
> similar lawsuits pending in other states.
>
> 8. With the wild swings in gas prices, SUV sales have
> plummeted (Ford Explorer down 52%, Chevrolet Suburban down
> 46%), the sale of hybrids has doubled, and the US House of
> Representatives actually held a forum on the "peak oil theory."
>
> 9. In a great win for farm workers, the Coalition of
> Immokalee Workers forced the fast food giant Taco Bell to
> raise the price for picking tomatoes (nearly doubling many
> workers' salaries), and now they're ready to take on an even
> bigger bully: McDonald's.
>
> 10. The global movement for peace and justice proved it
> was alive and kicking: witness Argentina during the Free
> Trade Agreement meetings, Hong Kong around the World Trade
> Organization ministerial, and the ongoing rallies against the
> war. The steady growth of the fair-trade movement also shows
> that we are not just protesting, but we're also building a
> more sustainable economy.
>
> Let's make 2006 the year we broke the right-wing tide,
> refused to give pro-war, free-trade Democrats a free ride,
> and built a "people's movement" with some muscle to it. We
> might just get some lessons from our southern neighbors. If
> Mexico City's progressive mayor Manuel Lopez Obrador becomes
> Mexico's next president, Latin America's revolutionary fervor
> will be smack up against the Texas border. Que viva el poder
> popular en 2006!
>
> --------
>
> <mailto:medea at globalexchange.org>Medea Benjamin is the
> co-founder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women for Peace.
>