Category: Globalization

Another… Two Worlds are Possible?: Ibero-American Presidential Summit and parallel Alternative Social Forum

Another… Two Worlds are Possible?: Ibero-American Presidential Summit and parallel Alternative Social Forum

December 10, 2003 by Benjamin Dangl At this year’s Ibero-American Presidential Summit and parallel Alternative Social Forum, two opposing forces in Latin America’s fierce polemic over the direction of its own social and economic progress were well defined. The twenty one presidents of Latin America were lodged in the most luxurious hotel in Boliva to…

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An Interview with Celia Martinez of the Worker-Controlled Brukman Textile Factory in Buenos Aires

An Interview with Celia Martinez of the Worker-Controlled Brukman Textile Factory in Buenos Aires

Conducted by Benjamin Dangl 8/29/05 printer-friendly version One day before Argentina’s economic crash on December 19, 2001, fifty-two workers from the Brukman Textile Factory, the majority of them women, refused to continue working until their bosses handed over their back-wages. Plagued by debt and gradual bankruptcy, the owners hadn’t paid the workers their weekly pay…

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Member of Worker-Run Factory in Argentina Was Kidnapped, Tortured

Member of Worker-Run Factory in Argentina Was Kidnapped, Tortured

by Benjamin Dangl 3/24/05 Zanon ceramics factory, one of the most prominent of the recuperated, worker-run factories in Argentina, was taken over by workers in 2001 and since then has been economically successful as a cooperative. However, as a major symbol of Argentina’s recuperated factory movement, (over 200 such cooperatives exist in the country), it…

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The People’s Bank: Microcredit in Mendoza, Argentina

The People’s Bank: Microcredit in Mendoza, Argentina

by Benjamin Dangl 3/6/05 “Without micro-credit, poor people would not be able to participate in globalization. The big question that everyone asks is, yes or no to globalization. For me, this isn’t the question. The real question is a good globalization versus a bad globalization.” Such was the perspective of Mohammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi economist…

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Occupy, Resist, Produce: Worker Cooperatives in Argentina

Occupy, Resist, Produce: Worker Cooperatives in Argentina

by Benjamin Dangl 3/6/05 During the economic crisis of 2001, when politicians and banks failed, many Argentines took matters into their own hands. Poverty, homelessness and unemployment were countered with barter systems and grassroots, micro-credit lending programs. Community groups were created to provide solidarity, food and support in neighborhoods across the country. Perhaps the most…

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Samba and Revolution: Dispatches from the International Youth Camp at the 2005 World Social Forum

Samba and Revolution: Dispatches from the International Youth Camp at the 2005 World Social Forum

By Benjamin Dangl 2/5/05 Samba, reggae and drum music pounded at the air above a sea of nylon tents. Earnest discussions sizzled in the steaming heat; people mopped sweat off their foreheads as sporadic protests clamored past. In the eclectic, globalized stew of the fifth annual International Youth Camp, 35,000 people from around the planet…

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An Interview with Heidi Boghosian: Civil Liberties in the US Under Bush

An Interview with Heidi Boghosian: Civil Liberties in the US Under Bush

Conducted by Benjamin Dangl 7/27/04 Within the last few years the strategies police use to control activist events have changed dramatically. Massive pens divided and contained protesters at the February 15, 2003 anti-war rally in New York City. Hundreds of preemptive arrests took place at The Free Trade Area of the Americas protest in Miami…

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G8 Security Clamps Down on Local Residents

G8 Security Clamps Down on Local Residents

By Benjamin Dangl 6/18/04 Published by The NewStandard, a great new independent media source. Check it out if you haven’t already! During this week’s G8 Summit on Sea Island, Georgia, suspicions of possible terrorist or protester violence led police to investigate, search and harass local citizens in Brunswick and Savannah, two cities near the Summit.…

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Unwelcoming the G8

Unwelcoming the G8

By Benjamin Dangl 6/18/04 When the leaders of the world’s eight most powerful countries arrive in Sea Island, Georgia for the Group of Eight (G8) Summit from June 8-10, activists from around the globe will be there to unwelcome them. With the Democratic and Republican National Conventions right around the corner, many protesters are converging…

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Lawyers, Guns and Money: The IMF and World Bank Celebrate Sixty Years of Infamy

Lawyers, Guns and Money: The IMF and World Bank Celebrate Sixty Years of Infamy

By Benjamin Dangl 4/27/04 Amidst belly dancers, jugglers and heavily armed police, activists from around the world converged in Washington DC on April 24, 2004 to wish the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank a very unhappy 60th birthday. While international bureaucrats congratulated each other on one more year of “reducing poverty around…

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