Think Globally, Act Locally

People Before Profit

Chapter 6:  The UN, The Barbershop, and Global Democracy

I.                   The push for change toward global democracy

A.   TINA (there is no alternative) proved wrong in history where many societies reinvented globalization

B.   Our current Constitutional Moment pushes for a change to reinvent globalization

C.   Crossroads between a fortress model (militarized globalization that puts security over freedom) or the democratic path to globalization

     1.  Fortress model laid down in US only weeks after 9/11 with threats to democracy such as the Patriot Act

     2. The “peace” of globalization could be a chronic state of terrorism and military responses to it.

     3. conditions of fear and instability

D. Global democracy attacks the causes rather than the symptoms of global injustice, and works in concert with positive sides of globalization

     1.  Empowers the world’s poor and pushes in more democratic way

     2.  Third World struggle, now, in early stages can attack globalization’s core problems because they will be able to build a global majority for their democratic agenda

E.  Global democracy would cost less than fortress model for businesses

F. Democratic governments are the only ones that will create the necessary jobs and new safety nets that will bring true security to American workers and the world’s poor.

G.  World political leaders are stressing global justice

     1.  need for reform so that the poor wave a new voice and a deal

II.                Global democrats divided into two different camps: 1^st: “UN people”

A.   idea of “globalization from below” that brings a democratic voice and justice to the world’s poor

B.   original vision of the UN and its 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights

C.   embraced the revolution against national sovereignty

D.   new global order for peace rather than profit

E.   UN founders and FDR idea of global “freedom from want”

     1.  this required a global constitutional vision subordinating property rights to broader human rights

F. vision begins with and enforceable system of global labor rights

G.  Problem with globalization isn’t too much global government but the influence of money over everything it does

III.             “Barbershop Camp”

A.   Rather than stressing world government and global constitutionalism, they see democracy embedded in the community and local autonomy

B.   Barber shoppers core vision: the democratic economy and democracy itself need a strong local anchor

C.   Only people on local level can address human rights issues

D.   View globalization as a spiritual crisis, and view it as a threat to their own capacity to be human

E.   Learned from native Americans, indigenous communities, and Gandhi

F.    Vision’s core: not democratized global businesses but sustainable community-based businesses

G.  Less UN enforcement: see UN as a threat to local sovereignty

Both see the threat of money driven interests