Civil Society Comes Together in Latin America to Challenge the World Bank's Annual Meetings
Civil society organizations, Indigenous communities, and social movements come together to challenge the World Bank’s neoliberal agenda, which has caused massive environmental destruction and social distress on the Latin American continent.
The International Monetary Fund-World Bank Annual Meetings will take place in Lima, Peru this year from October 9 to 11. This is the first time these meetings are happening in Latin America in over 40 years. Peru is the poster child for the World Bank claiming "success" from its neoliberal policies and reforms, which the Bank is promoting to the rest of the world.
Ranking 35th in the Bank's Doing Business survey, Peru scored the second highest position in Latin America in 2015. This, according to the World Bank, means that Peru has created a regulatory environment "conducive to business." The Peruvian development model, based on extractive industries and exports of raw materials, however, has concentrated the country's natural resources and wealth in the hands of few private corporations at a high cost for the Peruvian population.
During the 2014 Annual Meetings, Our Land Our Business, a multi-continental campaign of over 270 civil society groups, organized a twelve-city simultaneous demonstration to protest the negative effects of the Bank's neoliberal policies and Doing Business rankings. This year, this broad coalition reiterates its rejection of the World Bank's failed development model.
A civil society event is organized on October 7, 8 and 9 under the coordination of the Alternative Platform. The event is a space for civil society and social movements to challenge the Bank's policies. Cesar Gamboa, Executive Director of Derecho, Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (DAR), one of the groups organizing the event, said, "It is important for the world to know that the people of Peru oppose the World Bank's influence on our country. We hope others around the world will stand with us because we all have been lied to, that somehow poverty will end thanks to the economic growth resulting from foreign direct investment, deregulation, and a 'business friendly climate'. We are told that for development to come we must liquidate our natural resources, give up workers' rights and destroy Indigenous Peoples' livelihoods."
In the 1990s, the World Bank's Structural Adjustment Programs embraced by President Alberto Fujimori's government initiated three decades of deregulation and privatization aimed at making the country more attractive to foreign investors. While the World Bank's loans to Peru increased significantly as a result, channeling over $7 billion to the country between 1990 and 2015, the country's environment and social standards eroded. New research by the independent think tank, the Oakland Institute, highlights that the World Bank Group has played a key role in the development of mining, hydrocarbon, and agribusiness sectors in Peru, especially through the Bank's private sector arms-the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA).
Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of the Oakland Institute, said "Despite its mandate to fight poverty, the World Bank's involvement in Peru has meant a war on the poor. The Bank supports projects that have had devastating social and environmental consequences and very little benefits for the Peruvians. Its influence on the country has led to violent social clashes, an increase in unchecked corporate power, and undermined Indigenous Peoples' access to land and natural resources."
In recent years, the number of conflicts involving social or environmental issues in Peru skyrocketed from 76 conflicts identified in 2006 to 251 by 2011. In 2014, the country experienced on average 200 social conflicts every month, largely resulting from mining activities.
Peru has become the fourth most dangerous nation for environment and land activists with at least 57 people killed between 2002 and 2014, mostly due to people's opposition to land grabs, mining, and logging. In most cases, murders are attributed to the police, military, or private security guards. Both the central government and international financial institutions have failed to address this violence. Instead, Peru has pursued the same agenda, guided by the World Bank's experts to improve its "business climate."
Furthermore, Peru's economic success is a short-term achievement: the country's growth rates dropped from an average of 6.4 percent in the 2000s to only 2.4 percent in 2014. Given its high social and environmental costs, the faded economic growth has left the country with deep inequality, degraded water sources, lands, forests, and the toxic legacy of extractive industries.
Alnoor Ladha of The Rules, a global network of activists and researchers, said, "Peru is the World Bank's poster child for neoliberal development. Their bankrupt model is based on the quick sand of fossil fuels and human misery. Citizens in every nation, including the rich, have to resist the old paradigm of international development if we want to live on a habitable planet. We have to establish strong local economies that regenerate our ecosystems and our communities. This will require facing the Bank and their anti-life allies head on."
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To read the report, Peru, the Poster Child for the World Bank in Latin America, please visit: * https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/peru-poster-child-world-bank-latin-america (English)
* https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/peru-buen-alumno-banco-mundial-america-latina (Spanish)
The Oakland Institute is a policy think tank whose mission is to increase public participation and promote fair debate on critical social, economic and environmental issues in both national and international forums.
Possible Lift for Trump as Supreme Court Sides With January 6 Insurrectionist
"This is important in its own right but also signals what's to come" in the former president's immunity case, said one analyst.
In a ruling that could have implications for charges brought against former U.S. President Donald Trump, the U.S. Supreme Court decision on Friday put new constraints on how obstruction charges could be brought against individuals who participated in the January 6 insurrection attempt in 2021.
The high court voted along nonideological lines, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson joining five conservatives in the majority opinion and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joining liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan in a dissent.
According to the majority, former Pennsylvania police officer Joseph Fischer cannot be charged with obstruction of an official proceeding for joining a mob of Trump supporters who breached the U.S. Capitol to stop lawmakers were certifying the 2020 election.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion that to prove January 6 defendants, including Fischer, obstructed an official proceeding, prosecutors must show they "impaired the availability or integrity for use in an official proceeding of records, documents, objects, or... other things used in the proceeding."
The case hinged on a law enacted in 2002 after the Enron financial scandal, which the majority said was intended to apply to limited circumstances involving physical tampering.
Trump is among nearly 250 people whose January 6 cases could potentially be affected by the Fischer ruling, as they have been charged with obstructing an official proceeding.
There are 52 cases in which obstruction was the only felony conviction or charge, and The Washington Post reported that those are the "most likely defendants to be significantly affected by the decision."
Trump faces four charges in his election interference criminal case, including one count of obstructing an official proceeding and one count of conspiring to do so.
Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is overseeing the election interference case, has said a dismissal of the obstruction charges against Fischer and other January 6 defendants would not impact Trump's case, but Trump's legal team "may use [the ruling] to try to whittle down" prosecutors' arguments against the former president, according to the Post.
On social media shortly after the ruling was handed down, Trump posted the message: "BIG WIN!"
The justices are set to rule soon in another case asking whether Trump is immune from prosecution regarding actions he took while in office, like his spreading of the lie that he was the legitimate winner of the 2020 election and the actions he took to foment and support those who stormed the Capitol Building.
The ruling could negate questions about whether the 2002 law applies to Trump's conduct, suggested legal analyst Norm Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
"This is important in its own right but also signals what's to come in [the] immunity case," said Eisen.
The court sent the Fischer case back to the lower courts to determine whether the U.S. Justice Department could still prosecute January 6 defendants under the more narrow interpretation of the law.
While Jackson sided with the conservative majority, she wrote in a separate opinion that Fischer and other defendants could still be charged with obstruction if it is found that they tampered with electoral vote certificates.
Barrett wrote in the minority opinion that the question of whether Fischer can be prosecuted for an obstruction charge "seems open and shut," since the goal of breaching the U.S. Capitol was to disrupt the joint session of Congress where lawmakers were certifying the election results.
"Joseph Fischer allegedly participated in a riot at the Capitol that forced the delay of Congress's joint session on January 6th," Barrett wrote. "Blocking an official proceeding from moving forward surely qualifies as obstructing or impeding the proceeding by means other than document destruction."
'Unfathomably Cruel': Billionaire-Backed Justices Rule in Favor of Criminalizing Homelessness
"Maybe the right-wing justices could empathize with the most vulnerable Americans if they spent less time jet-setting on luxury vacations on their wealthy benefactors' dime," said one critic.
"SCOTUS just criminalized homelessness."
So said numerous legal experts and advocates for the unhoused Friday after the U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority ruled that local governments can enforce bans on sleeping outdoors, regardless of whether municipalities are able to offer them shelter space.
In a 6-3 decision along ideological lines, the justices ruled in City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson that officials can criminalize sleeping and camping on public property including parks, even when housing options are unavailable or unaffordable.
"We are disappointed that a majority of the court has decided that our Constitution allows a city to punish its homeless residents simply for sleeping outside with a blanket to survive the cold when there is nowhere else for them to go," said Ed Johnson, director of litigation at the Oregon Law Center, which represented unhoused Grants Pass residents in the case.
The decision overturned a ruling by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that found bans on outdoor sleeping violated the 8th Amendment's proscription of cruel and unusual punishment.
"Homelessness is complex. Its causes are many. So may be the public policy responses required to address it," Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority. "A handful of federal judges cannot begin to 'match' the collective wisdom the American people possess in deciding 'how best to handle' a pressing social question like homelessness."
Gorsuch suggested that unhoused people could invoke "necessity... insanity, diminished-capacity, and duress defenses" when they are prosecuted for poverty-related offenses.
In a dissent calling the criminalization of unhoused people "unconscionable and unconstitutional," Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that "sleep is a biological necessity, not a crime."
"For some people, sleeping outside is their only option," she noted.
Sotomayor continued:
Homelessness is a reality for too many Americans. On any given night, over half a million people across the country lack a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence. Many do not have access to shelters and are left to sleep in cars, sidewalks, parks, and other public places. They experience homelessness due to complex and interconnected issues, including crippling debt and stagnant wages; domestic and sexual abuse; physical and psychiatric disabilities; and rising housing costs coupled with declining affordable housing options.
"It is possible to acknowledge and balance the issues facing local governments, the humanity and dignity of homeless people, and our constitutional principles," Sotomayor asserted. "Instead, the majority focuses almost exclusively on the needs of local governments and leaves the most vulnerable in our society with an impossible choice: Either stay awake or be arrested."
"The Constitution provides a baseline of rights for all Americans rich and poor, housed and unhoused," Sotomayor added. "This court must safeguard those rights even when, and perhaps especially when, doing so is uncomfortable or unpopular."
Attorney Theane Evangelis, who represented Grants Pass in the case, cheered the decision, arguing that the 9th Circuit ruling had "tied the hands of local governments."
Some leaders in places where the homelessness crisis is most acute welcomed Friday's ruling, including Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who filed an amicus brief in the case, and London Breed, the Democratic mayor of San Francisco, which also filed an amicus brief.
"Gorsuch extensively cites San Francisco's amicus in the decision,"
noted Raya Steier, a San Francisco-based attorney who led the successful campaign to pass a local ballot measure taxing the wealthy to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for Covid rent relief and affordable housing. "Congratulations London Breed and David Chiu, this is now your legacy."
Economic justice advocates said rising inequality and housing costs have played a key role in driving the U.S. unhoused population to a record 650,000. If all the unhoused people in the country came together to form a city, it would be the nation's 23rd-largest—ahead of Las Vegas, Boston, Detroit, and Portland, Oregon—based on 2020 Census figures.
"We are in the midst of a crisis where housing is unaffordable for millions of Americans. Millions of us are just one paycheck away from losing our homes," New York-based Center for Popular Democracy Action said in a statement. "Today, the Supreme Court has made the morally bankrupt decision to allow people experiencing homelessness to be persecuted and punished just for existing, while denying them shelter and safety as a human right."
"For those who are unhoused, this will mean fines, tickets, and even incarceration for a vulnerable community already abandoned by city and state authorities," the group added.
Referring to the high court's 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling, many social media users said that "corporations are people" but "the homeless are not."
Others pointed to the millions of dollars worth of gifts and other perks—many of them undisclosed—lavished upon Supreme Court members, especially far-right Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, by right-wing billionaires, some with business before the court.
"Today's decision shows how little the MAGA supermajority cares about struggling Americans," said Tracy Adair, communications manager at Stand Up America, a New York-based pro-democracy group. "It is unfathomably cruel to punish unhoused individuals for existing on public property when they have nowhere else to go."
"Maybe the right-wing justices could empathize with the most vulnerable Americans if they spent less time jet-setting on luxury vacations on their wealthy benefactors' dime," Adair added.
Advocates for the unhoused stressed that the solution to homelessness is housing, not criminalization.
"Cities should not punish people for being poor," said Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, a housing justice and human rights group serving San Francisco. "The solution is, and has always been, safe and affordable housing."
In response to the ruling, the National Homelessness Law Center is calling on the Biden administration to invest at least $356 billion next year to fund universal rental assistance, upgraded public housing, a national housing trust fund, eviction and homelessness prevention programs, and voluntary supportive and emergency services.
'Gift to Corporate Greed': Dire Warnings as Supreme Court Scraps Chevron Doctrine
"Make no mistake—more people will get sick, injured, or die as a result of today's decision," said one advocate.
The U.S. Supreme Court's conservative supermajority delivered corporate polluters, anti-abortion campaigners, and other right-wing interests a major victory Friday by overturning the so-called Chevron doctrine, a deeply engrained legal precedent whose demise could spell disaster for public health and the climate.
The high court's 6-3 ruling along ideological lines in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce significantly constrains the regulatory authority of federal agencies tasked with crafting rules on a range of critical matters, from worker protection to the climate to drug safety.
The majority's decision was written by Chief Justice John Roberts.
"The weight of human suffering likely to arise from this decision should keep the justices up at night," said Emily Peterson-Cassin of Demand Progress, a watchdog group that called the decision "a gift to corporate greed."
"The Supreme Court is threatening safeguards that protect hundreds of millions of people from unsafe products, bad medicines, dangerous chemicals, illegal scams, and more," Peterson-Cassin added. "By handing policy decisions usually deliberated over by experts to lower level judges, the Supreme Court has set off a seismic political shift that primarily serves only the most powerful corporate interests."
Stand Up America executive director Christina Harvey issued a similarly stark warning: "Make no mistake—more people will get sick, injured, or die as a result of today's decision. Some ramifications of this decision won't be felt for decades, but they will be felt."
The Chevron doctrine, which stemmed from the high court's 1984 ruling in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, held that judges should defer to federal agencies' reasonable interpretation of a law if Congress has not specifically addressed the issue.
In her dissent, liberal Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the consequences of upending Chevron could be vast given that it underpinned "thousands of judicial decisions" and has "become part of the warp and woof of modern government, supporting regulatory efforts of all kinds—to name a few, keeping air and water clean, food and drugs safe, and financial markets honest."
Kagan noted that unlike the Supreme Court, federal agencies are staffed with experts that should be granted deference to interpret ambiguities in laws written by Congress, which "knows that it does not—in fact cannot—write perfectly complete regulatory statutes."
"When does an alpha amino acid polymer qualify as a 'protein'?" Kagan asked. "I don't know many judges who would feel confident resolving that issue... But the [Food and Drug Administration] likely has scores of scientists on staff who can think intelligently about it, maybe collaborate with each other on its finer points, and arrive at a sensible answer."
By overturning the Chevron doctrine, the liberal justice wrote, the Supreme Court's majority demonstrated that it "disdains restraint, and grasps for power."
"This is the outcome of a multi-decade crusade by big business and right-wing extremists to gut federal agencies tasked with protecting Americans’ health and safety."
An array of right-wing and industry organizations—including groups with ties to the Koch network and Federalist Society co-chairman Leonard Leo—pushed the Supreme Court to scrap the Chevron doctrine, and Friday's decision could embolden separate legal challenges.
"Anti-abortion activists are celebrating the ruling as a big win for their plans to further restrict medication abortion," The New York Timesreported Friday, citing a strategist for Students for Life who said that "getting rid of Chevron is the first domino to fall."
"They see the decision as a new precedent that can work in their favor as they seek to bring another case against the Food and Drug Administration to the Supreme Court, which rejected their bid to undo the FDA's approval of the drug earlier in June," the Times added.
Climate advocates warned the ruling could also be devastating for the planet, potentially hamstringing the Environmental Protection Agency and other departments as they attempt to rein in planet-warming pollution using existing law. The American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. oil and gas industry's largest lobbying group, celebrated Friday's ruling as environmentalists voiced dismay.
"Today's reckless but unsurprising decision from this far-right court is a triumph for corporate polluters that seek to dismantle commonsense regulations protecting clean air, clean water, and a livable climate future," said Food and Water Watch executive director Wenonah Hauter. "This decision brings into sharp relief the critical importance of electing presidents who will appoint Supreme Court justices guided by science and sound legal precedent."
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said that Friday's ruling "by an extremist Supreme Court eviscerates four decades of legal precedent that protects Americans’ rights to clean air and water, safe workplaces, and healthcare by preventing the dedicated civil-servant experts who staff our federal agencies from implementing the laws enacted by Congress."
"That is why Congress must immediately pass my Stop Corporate Capture Act, the only bill that codifies Chevron deference, strengthens the federal-agency rulemaking process, and ensures that rulemaking is guided by the public interest–not what's good for wealthy corporations," said Jayapal. "Make no mistake: this is the outcome of a multi-decade crusade by big business and right-wing extremists to gut federal agencies tasked with protecting Americans' health and safety to instead benefit corporations aiming to dismantle regulations and boost their profits."