Ralph Nader Incites Democracy at DC Rally

One of the highlights of our weekend of action in Washington D.C. was hearing Ralph Nader speak twice. The first of his speeches was at a teach-in sponsored by numerous groups from Jubilee USA to 50 Years Is Enough. Coming off the heels of Friday's mass arrests, the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church was packed with protestors who managed to evade the police earlier that day and protestors who had just arrived in Washington D.C., as myself and fellow Indy reporter Nick Berveiler had not more than two hours before the rally.

The rally, dubbed "End Corporate Rule: Global Struggles Against the IMF and World Bank," featured a number of speakers, most prominent of whom were Nader; Maude Barlow, author of Blue Gold, a book condemning the IMF's doctrine of water privatization; Naomi Klein, author of No Logo and columnist for the Toronto Sun; Oscar Olivera, leader of the struggle against water privatization in Bolivia; and Mohau Pheko of Africa's Gender and Trade Network.

All of the speakers delivered powerful messages; Klein showed poignant video footage shot by herself and her husband during the recent UN Environmental Conference in South Africa of locals monkeywrenching attempts by the South African government at cutting down the water supply in the poorest areas of the Johannesburg area. Olivera gave a rousing speech (which was interpreted from Spanish into English by a conference participant) condemning the policies of the IMF and World Bank, and the United States as well, for their respective roles in Latin America and across the world.

Barlow's speech about the evils of water privatization was particularly powerful, complete with a chilling anecdote about the Bush Administration's tone towards her native Canada after September 11. Apparently and unsurprisingly, Canada was pressured by the Bush Administration to pass its own version of our own atrocious PATRIOT Act, and was told that if it didn't comply with us, we threatened to make Canada "our protectorate". Imperialism at its finest.

However, the evening belonged to Ralph Nader. Nader's speech, though running a bit long, was particularly inspired. Refusing to retread the same ground as the previous speakers, his comments regarding the International Monetary Fund and World Bank were relatively brief. After touching on the issue at hand, Nader issued a warning to us that our tactics of mass protests were growing tired and uninspired, as each mass action has the same participants ("We all agree with each other too much"), and with dwindling results. For us to build the kind of mass movement needed to topple the antidemocratic corporate police state we now find ourselves in, it is necessary for each person to become personal epicenters of information. He demands the willingness for each person to talk to people they don't know, posing questions such as "what do you think of your Congressman?", and other questions designed to pull fresh blood into the political spectrum. Among the highlights of his presentation was a long tirade about the World Trade Organization. The case against the WTO is well-known. However, the aim of such a tirade was to remind us that these institutions, and the problems are all related - the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, NAFTA, the Free Trade Area of the Americas - and all serve to further the corporate capitalism that is destroying sovereign democratic practices throughout the world. Such a message was the overlying theme missing at times in other speeches, and it did not fall upon completely deaf ears.

Overall, the speeches given Friday night were inspiring. Hopefully, we will take their messages to heart.