Message from the Street in Mexico: 'The G20 is Illegitimate!'

[marmar]

Published on Wednesday, June 20, 2012 by Common Dreams
Message from the Street in Mexico: 'The G20 is Illegitimate!'

by Lacy MacAuley





Today Mexican President Felipe Calderon, speaking in a press conference to conclude the G20 summit in Cabo, Mexico, reinforced why so many people oppose the G20’s neoliberalism, austerity, and corporate elitism. Austerity measures, he said, are like “bullets” that need to be “reloaded” again and again. His metaphor was appropriate. G20 policies promote systems that lead to suffering, destruction of communities, and destruction of the environment. These policies are like bullets, killing the people of the world.

Here in La Paz, Mexico, a two-hour drive north along the coastline from Cabo, Mexico, the people held their own summit, as the G20 leaders and rich corporate elite met inside a militarized security barrier, in posh hotel rooms with shimmering seaside vistas. It was impossible for protesters to get closer to the official summit, though some tried to find a bus driver willing to brave the checkpoints and the security guards with automatic guns slung over their shoulders. Locals were told that no one could enter Cabo unless they were a documented resident.

Activists with the Peoples Summit, Cumbre de los Pueblos, went on a colorful march down the main tourist strip in La Paz on the evening before the official G20 summit was slated to begin. Several hundred strong, the march poured into the main plaza of the town, La Kioska, and held a rally and a rock concert. The Peoples Summit also contained two and a half days of energetic panel discussions and workshops on topics like capital flows, offshore tax havens, and climate change and adaptation.

The most enthusiastic discussions, though, were less reform-oriented – feminism, the financialization of nature, mining, workers’ struggles, corporate tourism development – discussions on creating our own solutions outside the security barrier in Cabo. Many summit participants felt that the hopes of the people cannot be expressed through the dry and corrupted policies of the G20. ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/06/20-8

[sabrina 1]

1. Good for them. They are not the only people in the world who see the

threat these Global organizations have posed to the people of the world. I guess people around the world are waking up, fast.

Unelected foreign entities should not be making rules for sovereign countries, especially with no input from the people of those countries.

[marmar]

2. Sometimes you kick, sometimes you get kicked.....