On Dec 21, 2008, at 10:14 PM, Patrick Bond wrote:
> First, facing myriad forms of financial crisis, we might consider
> quite recent examples of community and citizens’ groups generating
> impressive defense against financial degradation. Consider two micro
> examples -- the 1990s housing ‘bonds boycotts’ in South Africa’s
> black townships and Mexico’s mid-1990s ‘El Barzon’ (the yoke)
> movement against banks – as well as a stronger form of IMF Riot than
> is normal: the Argentine revolt against malgovernance and
> international debt/banking control in 2001-02 that led to a debt
> default of $140 billion.
Why did these actions/movements have so little effect, in what should have been more promising political/economic environments than the U.S.? Mexico's governments have, if anything, moved to the right over the last decade, and we all know the sad story of South Africa.
Should I have cited these in the LA Times exchange? They would have had no resonance in the U.S. - and they don't seem to have had all that much impact in their homelands.
Doug