Tag Archives: solidarity

Recovering the Disposable:  A Labor Day Reflection, Dr. Robert Zuber

2 Sep

Nothing will work unless you do.  Maya Angelou

The only effective answer to organized greed is organized labor.  Thomas Donahue

The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings.  Albert Schweitzer

We are in this together, this accumulation of scars, this world of objects, this physical and temporary heaven that so often takes on the countenance of hell. What matters is kindness; what matters is solidarity. Olivia Laing

People are not crucified for helping poor people. People are crucified for joining them.  Shane Claiborne

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.  George Orwell

We stand with the demonized so that the demonizing will stop. We situate ourselves right next to the disposable so that the day will come when we stop throwing people away.  Gregory Boyle

Solidarity involves commitment, and work, as well as the recognition that even if we do not have the same feelings, or the same lives, or the same bodies, we do live on common ground.  Sara Ahmed

Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work. Gustave Flaubert

Without labor nothing prospers.  Sophocles

Yes, we have come to another Labor Day, the end of summer for all in this hemisphere, the end of innocence for some, the end of fans stuck on “high” and waking by the light of the dawn rather than the drones of an alarm, the end of consuming farm-fresh fruits at a volume that would give fruit bats indigestion. 

With due regard for the degree to which I now have to borrow energy from holidays to find enough inspiration to post, there is actually much of value to share from this weekend.   This is the time when we recognize the panoply of skills and occupations which make this world prosper to the extent that it can be said to do so.  Within a single building or neighborhood, the various ways in which people piece together lives and livelihoods are inspirational, if not always recognized as such.  People engage in their “work,” honored and not, fairly compensated and not, enjoyable and not, empowering and not, in an effort to take care of what is most important to them and navigate our increasingly complex and technology-driven societies. 

And while we tend to pay little attention to those who pick up our trash, care for our elderly, harvest our fruits and vegetables, run the credit cards for our “happy meals,” or perform many other tasks that the rest of us would wish not to do without, were we to sit with this inattentiveness for a bit we would have to admit that our consumer-driven and competitive cultures currently require vast amounts of this labor, labor which we might have dabbled in during a more youthful incarnation but which most who bother to read these posts would not see as containing any element of aspiration.  That we need so much of what too many of us tend to disregard if not outright disrespect (and this would include vital minerals mined by children under horrific conditions) is a discontinuity more akin to a profound moral failure than some clever incarnation of unearned privilege.

And of course, threats to those “hanging on” with jobs that don’t compensate sufficiently and demand a great deal physically and mentally continue to grow.  The growth spurt of artificial intelligence which (like much “advanced” technology) no one I know was asking for, threatens labor in many fields and contexts, but certainly those “hanging on” the most.  AI promises to kick to the curb those who have barely managed to stay on the sidewalk with not even a “thank you for your service.”  Indeed, one of the reasons that I have long advocated for “universal basic income” (UBI) is that it would provide just enough “order and regularity” such that people could choose to care for gardens and relatives, to join religious or political movements, to create art and meaning for others, to increase rather than reduce the amount of “intentionality” in the world, to provide real alternatives to the desperate pursuing of dead-end jobs that fail to provide basic security for families and in the age of AI are set to evaporate like raindrops in a desert. 

UBI would allow people to cultivate and practice skills which they possess but have not had opportunity to incarnate. Indeed, part of the honoring of Labor Day is directed towards the dazzling array of skills by which I am continually surrounded, skills I admire but don’t have, skills I need from others and cannot generate within myself. Indeed, as someone whose skills set is quite narrow and limited, confined now to writing pithy things when the mood hits and providing advice for policymakers who pretty much have no intention of heeding it, I am continually astounded by what people are able to do in this world – the cabinets and clothes they make, the repairs that keep old cars and houses functional, the ability to maintain water resources and other civilian infrastructure. the vegetables and fruits they know how to plant and harvest – these and much more are skills which I do not possess but can certainly respect and even revere. These are among the skills that keep our world from plunging into utter discouragement.  These are among the innumerable and necessary responses to tasks for which my name will never appear on any call list.

But in the end, honoring is a relatively easy bar to achieve if it does not produce more than sentiment or what is now commonly known as “virtue signaling.”  For as we honor labor there is the obligation to solidarity with the laborer, the people who endure the grind which keeps this leaky ship of ours afloat.  Solidarity takes real effort, occasionally even real sacrifice.  It involves telling the truth about the ways in which so much labor strips away the dignity we insist upon for ourselves.  It involves concrete actions in political and economic realms to ensure that those who work in fields and factories have at least basic access to health care and educational opportunities for themselves and their families. And it involves counter-balancing false narratives, including setting straight what has become the “universal deceit” about “job stealing,” criminally-minded immigrants who seek only to sow violence and discord amongst our erstwhile law-abiding citizenry.

On this Labor Day, more and more of us are facing a crisis of disposability as more and more technical, financial and political power concentrates in the hands of those with large ambitions couched in “solutions” which are largely self-referencing.  This crisis applies to me, to my neighbors, to many millions of workers all global regions. We are all at risk of having our skills and values denigrated outright or at a miminum restricted to smaller and smaller circles of interest. Indeed, as I write this, the “common ground” of labor which we would do well to acknowledge and support appears to be collapsing under our feet.  Let us pledge before the next Labor Day to restore at least some of its firmness. 

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Brave Heart: A Mindset for Sustainable Development, Dr. Robert Zuber

11 Jul
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Solidarity isn’t merely a task, it is a pleasure and the best assurance of security.  Erich Fromm

Sometimes it is nothing more than gritting your teeth through pain, and the work of every day, the slow walk toward a better life.  Veronica Roth

For if they come for you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.  James Baldwin

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.  Mark Twain

Our minds must be as ready to move as capital is, to trace its paths and to imagine alternative destinations. Chandra Talpade Mohanty

The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Solidarity is not discovered by reflection but created.  Richard Rorty

In a week that witnessed renewals of armed violence, assassination attempts and successes, and heat excesses oozing from virtually every pore of the earth’s membrane, the UN met in the context of the High Level Political Forum (HLPF) to consider a way forward on our lagging sustainable development (SDG) commitments.

In largely virtual formats, figures of global prominence from government, private investment houses, universities and a bevy of civil society organizations shared their sense of what was possible to achieve now given a world still struggling with COVID-19 variants and vaccine inequities. Despite the constraints imposed by time and (occasionally) technology, several plenary discussions and (especially) side events made substantial contributions to our search for a common, viable way forward on issues from poverty and governance to food security and climate change, reminding us of the struggles of the moment but also summoning us to take bolder steps, to embrace bolder measures, to build a healthier, more sustainable world while the opportunity to do so still presents itself.

As one might imagine, the pandemic occupied center-stage, with the Foreign Minister of Barbados reminding the opening session of the HLPF that vaccine access (the “what”) is key to allowing tourism-based economies in the Caribbean and elsewhere to at least begin to recover.  But in a theme recurring throughout the week, the “how” of equitable vaccine distribution and access remained elusive.  As that same session, the World Health Organization’s Dr. Tedros chimed in that in the absence of “local health security,” global health security and other SDG commitments will surely remain “off track.” But Tedros also highlighted “profound gaps of sharing” in our world and urged efforts towards a “pandemic treaty” to identify and address new pathogens before they are allowed to replicate the current levels of social and economic ruin to which many government officials this week consistently pointed.

As others also reminded the digital UN audience, the current pandemic might be the most recent, major impediment to SDG implementation, but it is hardly the only one. Indeed, as OXFAM’s director and others made clear, the tendency to “privilege private wealth over the public good” was in force well before the pandemic.  COVID-19 did not create the food insecurity that ravages millions under threat from climate change and armed violence.  It did not invent what was noted throughout the week as the “shrinking civic space” which endangers journalists and civil society leaders alike and allows disinformation to flourish.  It did not create pervasive discriminations of race and culture which Costa Rica’s Ambassador Chan noted perpetuates the existence of “second class citizens” and impedes progress towards equality, let alone genuine “equity.”  And it certainly did not invent the gross inequalities of power and income which have only grown more grotesque during the pandemic.  As noted by the World Food Program’s David Beasley, as many as 41 million people in our world are now facing grave food insecurity which could be alleviated if we could only find the $6 billion dollars to do so, a mere 0.2% of the $28.7 trillion dollars in global wealth generated last year despite pandemic limitations. 

The pandemic, as many have noted this week, has also become a “cover” of sorts for steps that we know we need to take but now have an “excuse” not to do so.   Many during the HLPF, including VP of the Economic and Social Council, Mexico’s Ambassador Sandoval, called again for urgent action on matters from “decent work” to “full digital connectivity” which have long been on the UN agenda. Beyond the HLPF, a discussion this week, in the General Assembly on the UN’s global counter-terror strategy yielded insights from many, including from the Malaysian representative who advocated for the creation of “mental firewalls” against the growing (and equally well-known) ability of extremists to radicalize its youth.  Terrorists have not taken time off during this pandemic, as many delegations noted, but our responses to these threats, as Afghanistan warned, have largely remained “static.”

So what do we do now?  How do we move from the “what” that we well know to the “how” which continues to elude us in more than a few key areas of sustainable development and which is more urgent with each passing day, let alone with each passing HLPF?  What is missing in our individual and collective approaches? To reiterate, we know that we have agendas of longstanding, some of which have become more severe during the pandemic, and which require urgent and practical attention.  We know that we must do more to eliminate corruption and illicit financial flows.  We also know that we must do more to open avenues of concessional finance and relieve the debt burdens of the small island and least developed states, to respond to the call of Seychelles president RamKalawan for assistance on problems that “everyone knows exist” and for which “we should not have to beg on our knees.”  We know that we need to push back harder on violence against children and schools, on our stubborn digital divides, on disinformation by climate and COVID deniers, on threats to progress on rights for women, persons with disabilities and cultural minorities, on the seductive messaging of terror groups, on trade-related and other regulations that continue to privilege the privileged.  And we know, as Italy’s Minister intoned, that we have an obligation to “rethink” governance and public institutions at all levels, ensuring that we can sustain peacebuilding in conflict and climate-affected states and create “people-centered justice systems” which have a real chance to ensure accountability for the grave crimes which we continue to perpetuate against one another.

It is a large agenda, as large as the SDGs themselves, a test for the global community unlike any we have taken on in our history.  And it will continue to require more from each of us, including the will to renounce what Pakistan’s Ambassador Akram (ECOSOC president) referred to as “wishful thinking,” the belief that these problems will somehow resolve themselves without deep and effective partnership-based policies.   A similar theme was invoked by South African during the HLPF side event on racial discrimination, reminding us that laws “can only go so far” towards the eradication of racism in the absence of complementary, supportive social structures.

And complementary, supportive peoples.  Those of you who still read these posts surely know where this is going – a plea for bravery and solidarity to embrace the challenges of the moment, challenges that will do us in unless we find in ourselves and each other the energies and capacities needed to reverse a bevy of current, worrying trends.

Fortunately, the HLPF seems to have embraced this need as well.  This week, Under-Secretary Liu advocated a “global response plan” for the pandemic.  UNICEF’s director Fore urged a “shared purpose” to enhance the welfare of children now suffering in multiple ways.  The IMF’s Managing Director Georgieva invoked the need for “bravery to move towards the light” and stay focused in our pursuit of sustainable development.  Dr. Tedros and many others called for a narrowing of our “sharing gaps.” Costa Rica’s Chan highlighted the benefits of pluralism, noting that “each new culture introduced, each new language spoken, makes us richer.” Tunisia expressed the hope that a recent Security Council agreement on Syria humanitarian assistance reflects a fresh and “common will” to resolve conflict and related political impasses. And Mexico’s Sandoval aptly summarized a trend across this HLPF, noting that there is “big hope for the world if human solidarity prevails!”

One could well ask, What is going on here?  It seems that the mindset much conducive to multilateralism is coming out of a bit of hibernation in helpful and productive ways.  Yes, there is hope for the world if solidarity prevails.  Yes, there is hope for the world if we all take responsibility for fixing what we can, healing who we can, and doing both by reaching out to others for whom the “essential blocks of social protection” are blocks we largely have in common.  Beyond resolutions and legal frameworks, beyond the stale rhetoric sometimes characteristic of UN spaces, virtual and otherwise, such hopeful solidarity requires a different type of bravery, a different breed of investment, a commitment to hearts and minds more open, honest and engaged than we have allowed them to be in quite some time; a commitment as well to pick up the pace of our often “slow walk” towards a better life, to address challenges at the speed and in the multiplicity of forms in which they now appear to us.

Let’s run with this one before we change our minds, before we return to that space where physical courage is abundant but moral courage is rare, before we frighten ourselves into inertia by the energy and “grit” needed to generate “alternative destinations,” create greater solidarity with the entire natural order, and dare speak the truths we know to speak.  As Fromm suggests, solidarity may well be a pleasure, but it is also key to our security in a world where security for many millions is clearly at a premium.  To grasp it, we must dare to grasp each other, to brave the holding of hands and affirm in practical terms the interconnectivity which lies at the heart of all life, including our own.

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Covid-19 and Global Solidarity, By Professor Hussein Solomon

17 Apr

Editor’s Note:  Reader of this space are quite familiar with the words of Hussein Solomon, a good friend of Global Action, a leader of our efforts to promote rapid-reaction peacekeeping, and a distinguished lecturer in the Department of Political Studies and Governance at the University of the Free State in South Africa. Here he rightly calls attention to global problems (including the current viral pandemic) that can only be solved through a more deliberative global solidarity. 

In April 1994 the heinous apartheid regime in my country, South Africa, came to an end as its citizens celebrated its first democratic elections. April 1994 was also the beginning of the Rwandan genocide with almost a million Tutsis killed – a stark reminder of the grave dangers of ethnocentric nationalism. The demise of apartheid South Africa, more than anything else, was a demonstration of global solidarity in action. Anti-apartheid movements existed across the globe and these put pressure on their respective governments who in turn sanctioned the apartheid pariah. At one point, 90 percent of all South African exports were under one sanction or another compelling the Nationalist Party into negotiations with its arch-rival, the African National Congress. This then paved the way for a democratic dispensation to come into being. There was no similar attention or international solidarity with Rwanda as the massacres unfolded. Indeed, the United Nations responses were woefully inadequate – a fact acknowledged by Kofi Annan himself. But, it is unfair to lay the blame on the UN itself. The UN is held hostage by the national interests of its member states and these national interests do not always accord with the global interest.

Recognizing, the imperative for global solidarity and action and in an effort to prevent more Rwandas and Bosnias I joined other like-minded people across the globe through Global Action to Prevent War to push for the creation of a United Nations Emergency Peace Service (UNEPS) which was to serve as a rapid response force under the direct authority of the UN. The force was to consist of between 15,000 and 18,000 personnel and were to be a permanent, standing force pre-positioned at UNEPS-designated bases around the world. Despite our best lobbying efforts, no formal UNEPS arose as many nation-states continued to operate within the framework of the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648. As conflicts raged across the globe, as death and destitution became the norm from Mindanao to Darfur and Colombia, states stubbornly guarded their sovereignty whilst paying mere lip service to global solidarity. In an act reeking of selfishness, political elites recognized that in a rapidly globalizing world, insecurity anywhere threatens security everywhere; whilst at the same time refusing to surrender an iota of sovereignty to an international body to secure the very citizens they are legally obliged to protect.

Fast forward to 2020, with the Covid-19 virus having already infected 2.2 million people, and resulting in the deaths of almost 145,000 of the world’s citizens. Political elites continue to act as if national responses will turn the tide against a pandemic which shows no respect for sovereignty or national borders. The European Union’s shocking aloofness to Italy’s plight in the face of Covid-19 demonstrates that even at regional level such solidarity does not exist. Perhaps the most selfish display of this kind of “leadership” emanates from Trump’s America which saw him attack the World Health Organization and prepare to cut off funds to the organization at the very point when the WHO constitutes the only truly international body to coordinate responses to a global pandemic.

In facing an existential threat of this magnitude, now more than ever we need to surrender aspects of national sovereignty and embrace global solidarity. This would mean strengthening the authority and capabilities of the WHO. It would mean compiling a global roster of health professionals. It would mean truly global efforts at finding a vaccine. And it would mean global production of everything from masks and face shields to ventilators. Only global solidarity can see us through this crisis.

As the pandemic moves to African shores, such solidarity would mean strengthening regional structures such as the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and our continental body – the African Union. It would mean accepting and taking our lead from the WHO. And it would mean bringing on board expertise from non-state actors like Doctors without Borders, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the International Red Cross and Red Crescent. It would mean embracing the true spirit of Ubuntu.

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