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Midwest Tour Highlights DSA/PRD Connection: Gracias Por Todo
A lucky coincidence, admittedly. May 1 saw rallies for immigrants'
rights in major cities throughout the U.S. And at precisely that moment,
DSA launched a four cities, eleven days speaker tour with Saul Escobar
Toledo, the International Secretary and a leader of the Mexican Partido
de la Revolution Democratica (PRD). The DSA International Commission
proposed the tour in response to a priority resolution from the 2005 DSA
national convention urging dialogue between progressive elected
officials and organizations in the United States and other countries,
and a 2006 NPC statement to pay close attention to developing political
events in Latin America focused on policy alternatives to the
'Washington consensus.'
The tour was originally conceived as a brief Upper Midwest and
Manitoba gig involving the PRD, DSA, and Canadian NDP, all members in
the Socialist International. While relations to key people in the
Winnipeg NDP were renewed, this PRD-DSA-NDP collaboration could not be
developed further due to the real possibility of regional and federal
elections in Canada at the time. With the support of Midwest DSA locals,
Dr. Escobar Toledo's engagement then mushroomed into a much larger
Minneapolis/St.Paul, Detroit, Madison, and Chicago tour with multiple
venues and a whirlwind of activities. Given this structure of the trip,
it was decided early on to focus on the most pressing issue, i.e.,
migration, and tie in related topics such as trade, globalization,
NAFTA, as well as border issues, the 'fence,' and the political
situation in Mexico. First stop, Minneapolis/St. Paul. Twin Cities DSA
invites members and friends to an informal gathering with Escobar
Toledo. The editor of 'Workday Minnesota,' an AFL-CIO and University of
Minnesota partnership, college professors and students, and the honorary
Mexican consul of St. Paul are in attendance. Next, the DFL Education
Foundation, the educational arm of Minnesota's Democrats, hosts Escobar
Toledo in the downtown Minneapolis offices of the Robins, Kaplan law
firm. The article's author is introduced by longtime Congressman and
Minneapolis major Don Fraser, and I in turn introduce Saul. In my intro
I can point to an emerging collaboration between the DFL Foundation and
DSA centered around a number of international dialogue projects over the
past three years. The Minneapolis Resource Center of the Americas, a
renown local human rights and globalization in the Americas project, is
Escobar Toledo's next host. And he meets with the Dean of International
Studies and Programing at St. Paul's Macalester College, known for its
long standing commitment to international issues. In terms of audience
size, however, a local community college takes the cake; 250 students
and faculty members listen to Escobar Toledo's arguments and engage him
in a spirited debate.
In the course of the five Twin Cities engagements several key concerns
and grievances regarding immigration became apparent. Escobar Toledo
argued Mexican workers are mistreated in the U.S. as far as labor
rights, e.g., low pay, long working hours, poor working conditions, are
concerned. Second, Mexicans, on a daily basis, are informed by their own
media about their countrymen dying while trying to cross the
U.S.-Mexican border. And third, migration, that is to say, having to
leave one's home country, surviving in a foreign place, the break-up of
families, is perceived as a growing problem. There is a lack of quality,
family supporting jobs in Mexico and there is a growing gap of income
and wealth. There are 50 million people in poverty in Mexico, Escobar
Toledo describes the situation, with 20 million in extreme poverty.
Migration thus is in part the result of failed policies enacted by
Mexico's conservative elite. And it is the result of disparate living
standards between Mexico and the U.S. Both neighbors, Escobar Toledo
concludes, ought to act in a good neighborly manner and tackle these
problems jointly. Ordinarily, if some neighbors have problems with each
other, one of them may decide to move. In the case of Mexico and the
U.S., this is highly unlikely, he remarks humorously. They have been
neighbors for centuries and are destined to remain so for a long time to
come. Building a several hundred mile long fence represents the failure
of neighbors talking and listening to each other; it is the failure of
the human spirit. Escobar Toledo commented on two points of how to begin
to jointly move forward. NAFTA is lacking a human dimension. It
encourages money, goods, and company CEOs to cross borders; it
discourages workers to do the same. Furthermore, NAFTA lacks
implementation of what is called the principle of compensatory funding.
Adjustment costs of economic integration between countries of asymmetric
development should be compensated. The least developed country and
disadvantaged regions and sectors in the more developed countries then
invest in infrastructure and development projects to achieve a more
balanced integration. Spain and Portugal serve as historical precedence.
Within a generation European Union funding helped transform their
economies from Europe's 'poor houses' to ones that see eye to eye with
other Western European economies. (For the author compensatory funding
is not new as he was a direct beneficiary of it while growing up and
working in the then depressed French-German-Southern Luxembourg border
region).
From the Twin Cities the tour moved to Detroit where Detroit DSA had an
evening reception for Escobar Toledo, invited him to visit Diego
Rivera's murals at the Detroit Institute of Arts, and held a 'Latin
America and the Left' forum with him as the featured speaker. The tour
then jumped to Madison. The Latin America, Caribbean and Iberian Studies
Center sponsored a brownbag lunch meeting with Escobar Toledo. He then
addressed the crowd at the Madison May Day rally. Later, eight Madison
DSAers treated him to dinner. The next day, there was a one hour,
noon-time call-in radio show appearance on the local, progressive radio
station, and a Spanish-language taped interview that was scheduled to
air a few days later over a Spanish-language broadcast network. Escobar
Toledo was able to meet with local agencies involved with immigration
and Latino issues. Lastly, he gave a lecture at an evening event jointly
sponsored by Madison DSA and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Havens
Center. The fourth and final stop was Chicago. Escobar Toledo met up
with local, fellow PRD members and was the special guest and a speaker
at the 49th annual Debs-Thomas-Harrington dinner. The fact the dinner's
speakers spanned the North American continent was positively noted.
There was also an opportunity to meet and talk politics with DSA
national director Frank Llewellyn.
The successful completion of the four city tour showed the need for a
new beginning. Populist isolationism, jingoism, and exclusionism have
been growing in the U.S.: proponents of a 'fence' often see only a very
limited role for Mexico in a future North America. Likewise, big
business envisions this future around ever more free trade, NAFTA, and
economic globalization. And the Left? In the 1950s the European Left
built a common future around demands for full employment, strong
independent labor unions, co-determination in companies, and a 'Party of
European Socialists' (PES). Our Left needs thoughtful analysis and then
suitable building blocs for its vision of a North American future. Upon
returning to Mexico City, Saul Escobar Toledo echoed some of this: "I
think the tour was very useful. I hope it is the beginning of a new
relationship between DSA and PRD and between DSA and the migration
movement."
May, 2007
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