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Fostering Strategic
Dialog
As part of a new IRC focus, the staff and associates of both
the U.S.-Mexico border program (BIOS) and the Global Affairs
program are spending more time in promoting dialog among progressives
on key issues such as U.S.-China policy, differences in policy
recommendations among North-South NGOs, drug control policy,
and Iraq policy. On the U.S.-Mexico border, a critical forum
for dialog is the Annual Border Environment Meeting (Encuentro).
BIOS director George Kourous, as a member of the Encuentro’s
planning committee, played a central role in helping to organize
a series of citizen roundtables feeding into a citizen’s
agenda presented to U.S. and Mexican officials. John Gershman,
codirector of our Global Affairs program, worked with the Friends
Committee on National Legislation and the Asia Pacific Center
for Justice and Peace to draft a Progressive Statement on U.S.-China
relations, designed to counter China bashing and set a more
constructive agenda for the progressive community. In June,
the coalition will be circulating this statement to other organizations
and church groups for their endorsements. Global Affairs’
Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF) project is involved in a similar
effort regarding U.S.-Iraq policy, and Stephen Zunes, FPIF’s
Middle East editor, is drafting a consensus statement based
on an FPIF-sponsored forum at the Institute for Policy Studies
(IPS) in March. During the course of the next year, Stephen
will be joining the IRC as a contract employee, working primarily
on FPIF’s “Self-Determination and Governance”
project.
In the Media
Both BIOS and FPIF were all over the media in the past couple
of months. John Gershman spent a week answering press inquiries
during the height of the spy plane incident. He was one of three
commentators on the cable network MSNBC, bringing a voice of
reason and progressive principles into the general atmosphere
of China bashing. John was also one of four presenters at an
FPIF-cosponsored press conference in May addressing the new
militarization of U.S. defense strategy. Other speakers at this
IPS-organized event were Lawrence Korb of the Council of Foreign
Relations, Cindy Williams of MIT (and author of a new FPIF policy
brief), and Bill Hartung of the World Policy Institute. John’s
commentaries on the deterioration of U.S.-China relations have
received close media attention in the Asia/Pacific region, being
picked up by such important electronic news sources as China
Online and accounting for a new surge of FPIF website visitors
from the region.
Closer to home, the Albuquerque Tribune reprinted the
borderlines UPDATER article on the serial murders of
women workers in Ciudad Juárez, and the Diario de
Juárez reprinted a borderlines article describing
proposals to develop U.S.-Mexico energy connections. Our coverage
of the Bush-Fox summit also received broad attention, being
picked up, for example, by Político Magazine,
a leading source of news and opinion targeted at Latino readers
in the United States.
In the Policy
Debate
On all fronts, even the tamest of liberal agendas are under
attack. On the U.S.-Mexico border, the environmental mandate
of the Border Environment Conservation Commission (BECC) may
be taking a hit from forces in the U.S. and Mexico who believe
that environmental protection and citizen involvement are getting
in the way of bottom-line development. BIOS has joined with
a number of NGOs to ensure that BECC and its important work
in areas of infrastructure development, sustainability, and
public participation are not undermined. Though far from ideal,
BECC has proved open to citizen concerns—such as those
recently presented by BIOS, which were then incorporated into
BECC’s revised guidelines for public participation. BIOS,
through a widely distributed survey, is demonstrating to government
officials that attempts to downsize BECC will meet with strong
and well-informed citizen opposition.
FPIF is part of a national coalition of groups organizing
to block the nomination of Otto Reich as the State Department
head of Western Hemisphere affairs. This right-wing Cuban American
is just one of a rogues gallery of presidential appointments—all
of whom are profiled in the Republican Rule section of the FPIF
website. Tim McGivern, FPIF’s Outreach Director, has focused
on raising awareness among youth and student constituencies
about Reich’s nefarious operations—including his involvement
with a group of sweatshop companies. Another area of strategic
focus over the past couple of months is U.S. drug control policy,
including the war in Colombia. We have brought together leading
experts on the drug war for a new series of policy briefs and
commentaries, which FPIF is circulating to the media, policymakers,
and citizen groups.
Working with
Constituencies
Both BIOS and FPIF provide concise and authoritative policy
analysis that citizen groups can use in their own education
and organizing—and we see signs of our success in just
about every critical issue along the U.S.-Mexico border or in
U.S. foreign policy. A recent issue of borderlines on
energy policy provided key background information and analysis
to a gathering of leading border actors involved in “Energy,
Trade, and Environment” issues that was sponsored by the
Southwest Center for Environmental Research and Policy in April.
But not just activists appreciate borderlines and the borderlines
UPDATER. “I love it. It’s very well researched,
and I always read it the minute borderlines arrives,” said
Maher Tadros, Advanced Concepts Group, Sandia National Laboratories,
U.S. Dept. of Energy.
The IRC’s FPIF staff didn’t make it to the April
protests and alternative summit in Quebec City, where the leaders
of the hemisphere gathered to discuss the Free Trade Area of
the Americas proposal. But our policy briefs and commentaries
on the FTAA and the free trade agenda were widely distributed,
including “Women and FTAA” by Marceline White (of
Women’s Edge) and “FTAA” by Karen Hansen-Kuhn
of Development GAP. Just name the leading global affairs issues
of the past couple months—climate change treaty, U.S.-China
relations, missile defense, Israel-Palestine tensions, etc.—and
FPIF was there with timely commentary, research, and analysis.
As part of a new IRC effort to reach out to students and youth,
we have inaugurated our Student
Activism In Focus webpage along with special direct and
electronic efforts to involve students in our global affairs
work. FPIF intern Jason Donato, who traveled to The Hague late
last year for the UN-sponsored climate change talks, recently
finished a documentary video on the contentious negotiations,
with narration by Pulitzer Prize winning author (and FPIF expert)
Ross Gelbspan. Back at home, Tim McGivern moderated a panel
at the Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation conference on
“Drug Policies for the New Millennium” in Albuquerque
at the end of May.
Electronically, the IRC is reaching all over the world, and
FPIF has experienced a surge in international visitors. Nabil
Baradey wrote: “I have been reading and translating FPIF
articles for a local Arab newspaper, and the reaction was really
good. In general, your efforts have brought back to us some
hope of a balanced U.S. policy in global affairs. They prove
that, in the U.S., there are still people who hold to their
principles and human responsibility. Thank you very much for
all that.”
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