Call for a Mass Mobilization April 15-17th, 2005 During the Spring Meetings of the World B

Again we will gather in the streets of D.C. on A16 to show that our resistance to these institutions and their greed only grows stronger. A16 will once more be the day we show that our dreams for a better world are not only possible, but under construction at this moment, in all corners of the globe- and the IMF and World Bank, with all their efforts to demolish these dreams and actions, can never stop us.

The World Bank claims to combat world poverty. The IMF claims to promote global economic stability. For the 60 years of their existence, they have done neither. The World Bank has poured billions into dams, mining, and other projects that have caused immense social and environmental destruction, displacing poor, often indigenous, people from their lands and livelihoods, and destroying fragile ecosystems. The IMF has destabilized the economies of countries like Korea, Thailand, and Argentina, creating mass unemployment. Together, the IMF and World Bank have trapped poor countries in a cycle of unpayable debt. To extract debt repayment from them, they have imposed conditions such as budget caps, user fees for health care, and privatization of water. These policies have impoverished billions. They have also corroded self-determination and corrupted political systems, making governments accountable to foreign creditors rather than their own people.

Instead of building the world that they have promised, the World Bank and IMF have plunged it into a global crisis that is now more urgent than ever. The number of people in abject poverty worldwide is at an all-time high, and more and more people lack access to water, healthcare, education and other basic services. The world is headed for environmental disaster, while World Bank fossil fuel projects account for half of world carbon dioxide emissions. The global AIDS epidemic is spreading -- 7,000 people in Africa die of AIDS every day. And now it is quickly reaching crisis proportions in the Caribbean, India, Thailand, and Eastern Europe. According to the United Nations, 30,000 people worldwide die every day as a direct consequence of IMF and World Bank-imposed cuts in social services.

Over the 60 years of their existence, the IMF and World Bank have shown themselves to be utterly arrogant institutions which completely ignore people's voices worldwide and systematically enrich multinational corporate interests at the expense of nature and of the rest of humanity. It's time to demolish these institutions and build a better world.

Each day people around the world people are coming together to construct a better, more just world. Not only are they demonstrating in the streets, but they are actively reclaiming their communities. In South Africa, citizens too poor to afford the privatized water have dismantled water meters and learned plumbing to connect homes to water services. In Argentina unemployed workers are taking over the factories they used to work in and running them as a collectives. Facing the devastating effects of World Bank and IMF Structural Adjustment Policies, people throughout the Global South are working everyday to take back their rights to water, health, land, a clean environment, and self-determination. Five years after thousands of activists came to Washington DC in the first mass show in the U.S. of dissent and solidarity with the global struggle against the World Bank and IMF, the Mobilization for Global Justice is calling for people to come to Washington DC April 15-17th, 2005 to protest the institutions during their semi-annual spring meetings and to celebrate the other, more just world that is under construction due to the daily resistance of millions of people worldwide!


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E-mail mgj [at] riseup.net