The RWG on the World Bank and IMF met today to see where we are five months after we suspended regular monthly meetings. Since September a small group has met twice to begin a conversation about strategies for addressing some of the systemic injustices in the global economy. This was a check-in and chance to deal with some practical matters (like money).
When the RWG began (it was "housed" in our office from 1994 until about 2006), the World Bank and especially the IMF were using debt as a lever to restructure the economies of impoverished countries so they would fit into the free market neoliberal model of globalization (they still are). The RWG played a pretty significant role in challenging these institutions, initiated the Jubilee campaign in the US, developed the Economic Way of the Cross etc. But now there are many groups following the WB and IMF and these institutions are no longer as central as they once were. The RWG was losing energy. So where to now, we asked.
The smaller group that has been in conversation since September has been examining issues like where the out-of-control power of corporations came from and the intersection of the neoliberal, free-market, growth-driven global economy and ecological destruction/global warming. The questions is, how to get our arms around these huge systemic and structural roots of global failure. Stay tuned.
P.S. We decided that we are not able to organize the Economic Way of the Cross for Good Friday this year. If another group wants to use all or part of what the RWG prepared, they are welcome to do so. Anyone interested?
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