I spent last Monday and Tuesday with Nick Cardell, Minister Emeritus of the May Memorial Unitarian Universalist Society in Syracuse, at our annual St. Lawrence District ministers' retreat. Nick recently returned from six months of incarceration at Allenwood federal prison in Pennsylvania. His crime? Civil disobedience at the School of the Americas, called by its opponents School of the Assassins, a Pentagon-sponsored training school for Latin American police and military, in Columbus, Georgia. Graduates have been linked with severe human rights abuses in their own nations.
Nick was detained in 1996 and told never to return. But he did in November of 1997, was arrested, tried and sentenced. He will be there again this November. You might say Nick is a "recidivist for justice." Now why would a happily-retired Unitarian Universalist minister - a seventy-something - spend six months of his life in prison - for a principle - like "The goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all"?
Last Wednesday I attended a dinner sponsored by our local Unitarian Universalist Service Committee Chapter. I heard a delightful high school junior speak about her two weeks last summer with the indigenous people of Chiapas, the poorest state in Mexico. Chiapas was the site of an armed uprising by the Zapatistas in the wake of the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, which they say is destroying peasant culture as huge corporations like Nestle and International Paper take over their land. There was real danger in her trip, but she was utterly ebullient as she spoke about the people who had received her so warmly. Now, why would a teen-ager spend time in such a place?
In a time of towering greed, it is reassuring to know such people exist, ordinary people doing extraordinary things. What particularly interests me on this United Nations Sunday 1998, the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is that their justice-making crossed national borders. Many of us are hard at work battling hunger, homelessness, racism, environmental degradation, economic injustice and a host of other domestic problems. However, I am afraid Americans - including Unitarian Universalists - have lost interest in global affairs.
Perhaps it is because we are simply preoccupied with our own personal concerns. Perhaps it is because there are enough American issues to consume all our time and energy, and fewer people willing or able to address them. Perhaps it is because while local issues are tough enough, global causes are utterly daunting.
And yet, never before has the world been such a global village, never before have we traveled abroad so easily or so often, never before have we been so enmeshed in the doings of the world. We affect the world every day in our economic activities, probably without thinking. It is the law of unintended consequences.
Even a visit to Wal-Mart is really a walk around the world. Wal-Mart is the envy of the retail world with annual sales of $118 billion, larger than the entire economic output of 155 of the world's 192 countries. This enterprise claims an "...unprecedented commitment to purchase American goods," and then in small print, "whenever pricing is comparable to goods made offshore." 89% of the Kathie Lee line of clothing is made offshore, mostly in Mexico, where workers are paid 50 cents an hour; and in Indonesia, where workers are paid 9 cents an hour. 83% of men's Faded Glory clothing is made abroad; while 96% of its children's McKids label is made offshore. Nine to 12-year-olds in Bangladesh working past midnight sew Wal-Mart shirts for 5 cents an hour and are beaten for their mistakes; 13-year-olds in Guatemala work 13-hour shifts seven days a week sewing Wal-Mart clothing for 31 cents an hour, and are beaten if they work too slowly.[1] Last year company operating profits were $7.6 billion; the Walton family itself is worth about $50 billion.
I accept the global free market. Nineteenth century feminist Margaret Fuller once said, "I accept the universe," to which Thomas Carlyle replied, "By God, she'd better." But I accept globalization as a human invention of finite people, not the creation of Almighty God. We Rochesterians also accept the global economy. Kodak and Xerox, among others, are heavily dependent on foreign markets. When the World Trade Organization dismissed a Kodak suit against Japanese rival Fuji for unfair business practices, we all felt it. And many among us travel to other lands - for business, for learning, for pleasure.
So where is the problem? Why do a retired Unitarian Universalist minister and a high school junior put their safety at risk in matters that may seem none of their business? More to the point, why do I speak of such issues?
I am a born Universalist; some of my earliest memories are of collecting money for Bir Zeit College in the West Bank, adjacent to Israel; I studied Africa and India and their problems. While I was definitely a small town kid - I was a budding world citizen. In 1957 and '58 I went to a Universalist Service Committee work camp in West Germany, helping refugees from the East. In subsequent years I have been in Israel, the Philippines and Mexico on church-related work. I have traveled not only to Europe but to Kenya and Japan. I would echo the ancient Greek Diogenes who exclaimed, "I am not an Athenian or a Greek but a citizen of the world."[2]
From these travels I have learned the wisdom of Martin Luther King, Jr., who said that "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."[3] And the world is unjust - at least for billions of its people - the one billion who live in abject poverty on less than $1 a day, the two billion who eke out a living on little more than $3 a day. I am tempted to say that's just the way the world is - the poor you will always have among you - and shrug in resignation, until I read that there are 358 individuals sharing the world with me who have a personal capital worth of $762 billion, equal to that of 2.38 billion poor people; until I learn that income distribution in the world is like a champagne glass - the richest 5th - including you and me - receive over 83% of total world income, while the poorest 5th - have 1.4%; until I learn about Amartya Sen, this year's Nobel Prize winner in economics. His specialty is welfare economics, income distribution, health, nutrition and poverty. He challenged the view that famine is caused solely or primarily by a shortage of food; the real cause is that the poor cannot afford to buy it. He said, "We have to pay attention to the downside of what's happening and not just the average, majority position."[4]
I am resigned about poverty in plenty until I learn that while the global Gross National Product has increased 7-fold since 1950, and a slightly smaller percentage of people live in poverty, actual poverty, communal disintegration and ecological abuse have accelerated. One would think that if trickle-down worked, these poor people would at least have gotten damp. And then something in me erupts. My conscience simply cannot live with that disparity if I call myself a Unitarian Universalist.
The world's "have" nations have taken upon themselves the task of trying to help the "have-nots" but in ways that are often questionable - or just plain wrong. Three international agencies controlled by the developed nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization, have set policies to stabilize the global economy. Recent dramatic fluctuations in the global economy raise questions about how effective they are; as one investment strategist put it, "Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without hell."[5] The persistence of poverty amidst plenty calls into question policies imposed by the rich upon the poor. One wonders if Star Trek's "Cloud Minders" is only fiction after all.
The World Bank seems to have learned from its many past mistakes - it now focuses on the poorest of the poor, now considers environment and population policy as vital economic factors. The IMF continues to impose harsh penalties upon often-poor countries that may bail them out of insolvency, but almost always to the detriment of their poorest people. Structural adjustment is the code word for economic stabilization at the expense of the world's have-nots. We are beneficiaries as we buy cheap goods from abroad.
Most Americans probably have never heard of these institutions. Too bad, since our tax dollars help fund them. We subsidize what is done - for good or ill. We neglect the international order and our responsibility for it at our peril.
The global economy has been likened to an ocean shipwreck. In this "lifeboat ethics dilemma" the one-third of the world that is rich is in a secure lifeboat, while the two-thirds of the world that is poor are in other, much-more crowded lifeboats - so crowded that the poor fall out of them and swim for a time in the water hoping to gain admission to the lifeboat of the rich. What should the passengers on the prosperous lifeboat do? Each lifeboat can hold 50 with room for perhaps 10 more people before it feels crowded and we are in danger. But we see 100 others swimming, in danger - asking for our help. Whom should we help, if anyone?
We might be tempted to try to take them all on board and be our neighbor's keeper. But our boat may then become swamped. Complete justice; complete disaster. We might just take on 10 more, reducing our safety factor, but saving those ten. What kind of ethical triage will we employ? Or we might simply say it is too dangerous to admit anyone else and save ourselves, though we will have to guard against boarding parties.
This is the ethical dilemma posed by Professor Garret Hardin who has tried to help us clarify our feelings, thoughts and values around this most precarious global economy. Of course, like all metaphors, it has limits and will be challenged. Some say it isn't that bad, let's just build more lifeboats; others will say with Thomas Malthus that the hardiest will survive and that is the way the world turns. For all its faults, however, the lifeboat metaphor presents the global economy as an ethical issue to be taken seriously.
Although apparently Nike founder Phil Knight does not. You will remember Nike has been faulted for profiting from the sweatshop conditions of its employees in Indonesia and other Third World nations. Number 17 on the "Forbes 400" list with $5.4 billion in wealth, Forbes wrote of him, "An unrepentant Phil Knight blasts his sweatshop critics: 'This isn't an issue that should even be on the political agenda today. It's just a sound bite of globalization.'"[6]
By way of contrast, J. Philip Wogaman, Senior Minister at the Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, DC, told an intriguing story that exemplifies our personal predicament. In 1986 he was a delegate to the World Methodist Council meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, while it was discussing apartheid South Africa. The Council adopted a strong resolution urging international economic sanctions to force change. When the vote came, he looked at a friend seated nearby, a vice president of a major transnational corporation with important holdings in South Africa.
Wogaman writes: "I expected him to make a speech against the move, perhaps arguing that the Council didn't fully understand the situation, that the resolution would be useless, that sanctions and divestment would do more harm than good, but he was silent. When the vote was taken, I was astonished to see his hand rise in support of the resolution. Afterward, I commented on his vote, and he replied, 'I didn't come here as a representative of my corporation.'" Wogaman continued, "One could argue that in the long run he was supporting the true interests of his corporation; clearly he was acting in support of an assertion of the wider international community transcending the free market."[7]
The intricacies of globalization are many - almost beyond comprehension. Public policy options are controversial. Personal action is problematic. Yet, somehow, like the corporate executive voting his conscience, I feel the need to take a position. My friend and colleague Nick Cardell felt compelled to act; a 16-year-old girl felt compelled to act - and so do I. I don't want to live on Stratos.
What to do? There are some obvious actions. The current Congress has held up back payment of our United Nations dues by insisting we defund international family planning agencies. That position cannot be allowed to stand. We must pay our dues; we must protect international family planning.
Some of us will find fault with transnational corporations who exploit child labor and will support UN and legislative efforts to end it, joining one or more organizations which challenge offending corporations like Nike and Wal-Mart, not by boycott, but through dialogue.
Some of us will take political action to critique the policies of the great international financial institutions urging them to redirect their policies so that the new economic order will not be balanced on the backs of the world's poor. We have a global commons; what we yet lack is a global ethic.
Some of us will take action to oppose the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, which permits corporate capital to flash across the world without regard for labor or environmental rights. As Americans try to compete with the infinite supply of poor workers around the world there is danger of a "race to the bottom" with wages falling across the globe.
I like that businessman who was a moral actor first, and a businessman second. The invisible hand of the global market must be tempered by the generous heart if we are to build the Beloved Community; if we are to avoid being the occupants of Stratos.
As Spock eloquently reminded us: "This troubled planet is a place of the most violent contrasts. Those that receive rewards are totally separated from those who shoulder the burdens. It is not a wise leadership."
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