The face of evil?

The implication of the "good vs. evil" rhetoric used by President Bush to characterize the war on terrorism "is a sort of insight and ultimate judgment that most Christians are a little uncomfortable with," said James Dunn, a professor of Christianity and public policy at Wake Forest University (Christian Science Monitor, 2/6/02). "When that sort of ultimate certainty comes along, you have the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Puritan hangings.

"The great divide is economic, educational, medical – all those things that separate the haves from the have-nots," said Dunn, who is also concerned about the implications for separation of church and state in the president’s language.

Food with strings attached

Anuradha Mittal, codirector of the Institute for Food and Development Policy (Food First), used the recent experience of her native India to explain the problem with "food aid" in an interview with The Sun (2/02):

"Of the 830 million hungry people worldwide, a third of them live in India. Yet in 1999, the Indian government had 10 million tons of surplus food grains: rice, wheat and so on. In the year 2000, that surplus increased to almost 60 million tons – most of it left in the granaries to rot. Instead of giving the surplus food to the hungry, the Indian government was hoping to export the grain to make money. It also stopped buying grain from its own farmers, leaving them destitute. The farmers, who had gone into debt to purchase expensive chemical fertilizers and pesticides on the advice of the government, were now forced to burn their crops in their fields.

"At the same time, the government of India was buying grain from Cargill and other American corporations, because the aid India receives from the World Bank stipulates that the government must do so. This means that today India is the largest importer of the same grain it exports. It doesn’t make sense – economic or otherwise.

"This situation is not unique to India. In 1985, Indonesia received the gold medal from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization for achieving food self-sufficiency. Yet by 1998, it had become the largest recipient of food aid in the world. I participated in a fact-finding mission to investigate Indonesia’s reversal of fortune. Had the rains stopped? Were there no more crops in Indonesia? No, the cause of the food insecurity was the Asian financial crisis. Banks and industries were closing down. In the capital of Jakarta alone, fifteen thousand people lost their jobs in just one day. Then, as I traveled to rural areas, I saw rice plants dancing in field after field, and I saw casava and all kinds of fruits. There was no shortage of food, but the people were too poor to buy it. So what did the U.S. and other countries, like Australia, do? Smelling an opportunity to unload their own surplus wheat in the name of ‘food aid,’ they gave loans to Indonesia upon the condition that it buy wheat from them. And Indonesians don’t even eat wheat."

Feminist economics

Feminist economists and global women’s organizations have undergone an evolution in their approach to economic policy, Maria Riley explained in a recent Center of Concern newsletter (Center Focus, 6/01). She identifies four stages:

1) WID (Women in Development) focused on integrating women into the economic development process through measures such as credit availability, land reform, training and education.

2) GAD (Gender and Development) recognized gender – "the social roles, expectations and responsibilities assigned to women and men because of their biological differences" – as a way to understand how political, economic and social policies impact women and men differently. GAD, for instance, looks at the way IMF and World Bank policies cause cutbacks in public sector services, shifting the burden of social responsibilities onto the household, the realm of women’s unpaid labor.

3) A call, based on GAD analysis, for "mainstreaming gender in all policies and programs" – demanding a voice in all areas of economic policy-making, not only in so-called "women’s economic issues." Riley says this is a formidable task because "trade economists and negotiators consider trade and investment gender-neutral, and because the major NGO groups addressing trade and investment issues, such as organized labor, environmental groups and many Southern NGOs [non-governmental organizations], generally do not have a gender analysis."

4) An emphasis on empowerment and human rights, which would put social policies at the center of economic policies, so that "the soundness of economic policies would not be based on market criteria, per se, but in terms of whether they ultimately succeed in bringing societies to achieving social justice."

"Visitability" victories

Naperville, Ill., and Pima County, Ariz., became the first two municipalities in the nation to require wheelchair-accessible features in new private homes, The New York Times reported in February (2/07/02).

Naperville passed an ordinance Feb. 6 requiring that new homes be built with 32-inch-wide ground-floor doorways, wood blocking behind bathroom walls capable of supporting grab bars, and the placement of electrical outlets and light switches at heights reachable from a wheelchair. Along with these measures, Pima County also mandated that new homes be built with at least one wheelchair-accessible entrance.

"The votes are a victory for the 15-year-old ‘visitability’ movement, which wants provisions of the Americans With Disabilities Act that now apply to public places and apartment buildings to be extended to private homes as well," the Times explained. "The goal of the movement is to ensure that disabled people can freely visit their neighbors.

"The issue has led to battles pitting minority rights against property rights, as home builders and others resist universal mandates that benefit only a small part of the population."

Proponents of the change argue that the larger community, and not just the individual, has an interest in the way homes are constructed.

"‘When someone builds a home, they’re not just building it for themselves – that home’s going to be around for 100 years,’ said Eleanor Smith, a teacher from Decatur, Ga., whose organization, Concrete Change, has lobbied for visitability legislation around the country. ...

"One man said the regulations were a matter as much of safety as of convenience, particularly in case of fire. A city councilman recalled the difficulty he had helping his wife, who needed a wheelchair temporarily, into the bathroom. Another man who uses a wheelchair pointed out that ‘everyone is one accident from being in this chair.’"